The High Country Rancher (3 page)

A shriek escaped from between Mariah’s lips.

“Hang on!” Baylor pulled left on the steering wheel.

Thump! The truck jerked again, sending them into the opposite lane.

Baylor pulled it back and pushed down hard on the brakes. The pickup ground to a stop in the middle of the muddy road.

Mariah’s hand was on the door handle and she was out of the truck before he could assure her they were fine, but he doubted she’d have much to do with the notion, considering all the color had drained from her face.

He hopped out and came around the front of the rig to stare at the problem.

One lug nut was the lone survivor holding on to the right front tire.

Caution worked his nerves, and he touched Mariah’s back, feeling the tension in her body.

“Someone wanted you to have an accident. Someone did this on purpose. Those don’t just fall off.”

She had a point, but he didn’t want to tell her this was the second time in the past month his pickup had been sabotaged. He moved for the rear of the truck to get his toolbox and a lug wrench.

He’d get her off his mountain and safely back to town even if he had to carry her there himself.

D
R
. J
EROME
M
UNSEY
shined a narrow beam of light into her right eye, then her left, before he stepped back to the counter, laid the scope down and prepared a dressing to cover the scrape on her right temple.

“You’ve got a mild concussion, Mariah, but no permanent damage. You should be fine.” He moved in next to where she sat on the end of the examining table and put the dressing on her wound.

“Baylor got to you before there was any damage to the soft tissues of your appendages. You were lucky.” He stepped back and put his hands in the pockets of his blue lab coat. “Call me if you experience any dizziness, or nausea. Numbness or tingling in your hands and feet.”

“Okay.” She slipped her socks back on, head down as she tried to cover the mix of horror and embarrassment that pulsed in every cell of her body. The trip to the E.R. had confirmed her suspicions. Baylor had, in fact, rewarmed her with skin-on-skin contact. That hazy image was no dream. It was a reality that would be forever burned into her brain. Just the thought sent her imagination off on a tangent. What
was worse was the way it made her feel, all hot and bothered.

She slid Baylor a quick glance. “I’m sure it was tough for him to handle, but it worked. Here I am, good as new.” She hopped off the examining table and shoved her feet into her shoes. The sooner she got home the better. She wasn’t sure she could handle another minute with him, now that she knew the full extent of what had transpired between them.

He was a suspect in a missing persons case; she had to focus on that, rather than the heat of the sexual tension that jumped between them like an unchecked forest fire.

Smiling at Dr. Munsey, she thanked him and left the E.R., headed for the exit.

“Take it easy, Detective.” The sorry-about-that note in Baylor’s voice pulled her up short.

“You should have told me!” She felt her cheeks flame, hot and telltale. “I know you did what you had to, but it’s so…”

“Intimate?”

“Yes!” And unprofessional, she thought as she pushed through the main entrance door of the hospital and out onto the sidewalk, aiming for Baylor’s pickup parked at the curb, while she tried to pull herself together.

Baylor stared at Mariah’s backside. “Look.” He reached for her shoulder and stopped her before she could get into the truck.

She turned on him, her anger visible in the rigid set of her jaw. Her blue eyes all but sparked.

“Would it help if I told you it was clinical? I was more interested in saving your life than exploring your body.” He wrestled with a rush of desire that closed his throat.

She gave him a wary stare as he reached for the door handle and opened it for her. “Let’s get you home.”

He closed the door behind her, went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. “Where to?”

“I live at 405 Cottonwood. It’s off Sycamore on the west side of town.”

“I know the street.” He fired the engine and pulled out onto Main, searching for the right words. Why was she so upset? He wasn’t sorry for saving her life; hell, he’d probably done himself a favor, but there had to be more to it. He’d never take advantage of a woman, especially one who was borderline comatose and not in control of her faculties.

Realization slammed into his brain. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Mariah Ellis had a boyfriend? Explaining what had happened to her and how he’d saved her was going to complicate her life.

“No one besides Doc Munsey and you and I have to know what happened. I’m willing to let it go unsaid if it’ll keep the peace between you and your…boyfriend.” He flipped on his blinker and turned right onto Sycamore Street.

“Thanks for that,” she whispered. “He’ll be thrilled.”

Mariah nibbled at her lower lip and stared out at the familiar street. It seemed like an eon since she’d last driven down it. So when in that short span of time had she left her straight-talking style twisting in the wind? She should just tell him she didn’t have a boyfriend. There was no one in her life; her job had taken care of that.

“There. The yellow house on the left.” She pointed it out and tried to relax. Cop. She was a cop, she needed to start acting like one, even if she didn’t feel the vibe and hadn’t for a long time. She still had a major case to solve. Baylor rolled to a stop in front of the yellow house, with a white picket fence and massive pots brimming with pink flowers on either side of the front steps.

He couldn’t shake the disappointment of knowing she had someone in her life. Hell, he was happy for her. She was a beautiful woman. He gritted his teeth and climbed out of the pickup, meeting her on the sidewalk before opening the gate and following her up the walk.

She stopped, fished in her pocket and pulled out a house key. “Come in for a drink before you head back.”

His first response was to pass, but he didn’t; instead, he followed her inside and watched as she shuffled into the kitchen. “Is sun tea okay?”

“Yeah.” Baylor gazed around the living room. The place was neat and appointed with cushy furniture.
Her scent tinged the air, a mix of sweet and spicy. His gaze held on a piece of landscape artwork on the wall behind her beige sofa. Moving closer, he focused on the artist’s signature in the bottom right corner. Mariah Ellis.

“This is your work,” he said as she came into the living room with a glass of iced tea in each hand.

“Recognize the setting?” She smiled and he realized how relaxed she looked for the first time since he’d met her.

“The Seven Devils Mountain Range…from the Pappoose Creek side.”

“Very good.” She handed him the cold glass. “Do you want to see more?”

There was a note of excitement in her voice. Her eyes took on a sparkle he hadn’t noticed before. This was Mariah Ellis’s passion. This was what made her tick. Her art.

Moving down the hall, she showed him paintings of Mirror Lake, the Salmon River Canyon and a moose standing knee-deep in a pond at dawn feeding on moss.

“You should open a gallery. Your work is very good.”

She warmed under his praise and his breath caught in his lungs. There was something innocent about her, something as unspoiled as her art, and he wanted to kiss her in the worst way, but he reined in the urge. He’d probably get the other side of his jaw popped. Didn’t she already think he’d stepped over
the line when he rewarmed her? How would she explain a kiss to her boyfriend? Frozen lips?

He took a deep gulp from his glass and turned toward the living room and escape. He’d fulfilled his obligation. She was home safe.

“Thanks for the drink.” He handed the glass to her at the door and glanced down at an open book lying on a small table.

His heart jumped in his chest. He reached out and picked up the high-school yearbook.

Staring up at him from the page was a picture of Mariah and Amy. Arms locked, leaning against a set of lockers. The caption read, “Friends Forever.”

His gut squeezed. He looked at Mariah. “You knew my wife, Amy?”

“We were best friends our sophomore year of high school.”

A wave of caution raced through him, leaving him cold inside where he’d been warm only moments ago.

This was personal. Her suspicions about his involvement in Endicott’s disappearance were fueled by her certainty about his guilt in Amy’s death. There would never be an end to it. He’d done everything he could to save her life that night, short of drowning himself.

He closed the book and put it down. “I’ve got a long drive back to the ranch.” He turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.

“Baylor.”

He paused without turning around.

“For what it’s worth, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He didn’t look back, just stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.

He’d see her again. He knew it. Come Monday morning she’d have her cop face on, and he’d have to prove himself all over again.

“You’ve got some explaining to do.”

Young lady.
Mariah mentally finished the sentence she’d outgrown a long time ago and closed her father’s office door to keep the gossip to a minimum. Everyone in the department seemed to already know she’d spent Friday night trapped on a mountain with a suspect. She had no idea how things got spread, but they did, like butter on a waffle.

“I told you my car went into the ditch in the storm. The electricity and phone lines were down. I had no cell service up there, and no way out. If Baylor McCullough hadn’t found me, you’d be hanging at the morgue right now identifying my frozen remains, so give it a rest.”

Chief Ellis’s mouth opened, then closed as he rocked back in his chair, and studied his daughter. “Do you still think he had something to do with Endicott’s disappearance?”

Mariah swallowed, digging for her feelings on
a matter she’d been so sure of only days ago. Baylor’s guilt.

“I don’t know. But he’s hiding something. You should have seen his reaction when I spoke about Endicott. There’s definitely some animosity there.”

“Hell, yeah. Endicott pressed him to the wall. I never understood exactly why he went after him so hard. The evidence seemed to support Amy McCullough’s death as a tragic accident. But enough rage to snatch the man and make him go away? You got anyone else on the list?”

“I accounted for everyone Endicott prosecuted. They’re either walking a straight line, out-of-state, dead or back in custody. McCullough is the only one who still lives around here.”

“You’re lucky he doesn’t file a harassment suit against you. Make sure you play him straight. If he is involved, we need a clean case, no loopholes he could slip through.”

“Okay.” She stood up to leave, her nerves as tense as a race car driver’s waiting at the start line.

There was only one way to capitalize on her suspicion. She’d have to stake out the Bellwether Ranch. If she could find probable cause, she could get a search warrant. Maybe she could find what he was hiding. She just hoped it wasn’t Endicott.

B
AYLOR MOVED PAST THE
kitchen window for the third time in ten minutes, making sure he saw what
he saw. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus, dialing in the nose of the vehicle parked west of the ranch in a patch of trees a quarter of a mile away.

Detective Ellis’s white car. She’d been there since dawn. Watching, waiting for him to make a move. Amusement rippled through him. He put the field glasses down.

If determination was all it took to be a cop, she would take the prize. Too bad she was so far off target. Granted, he hated what Endicott had done to him and the effect it had on his life, but he had nothing to do with his disappearance.

Baylor headed outside to the barn. Somehow convincing Detective Ellis of that fact seemed important. If she wanted evidence, he’d show her there wasn’t any, not on the Bellwether Ranch anyway.

M
ARIAH CLOSED HER EYES
for an instant, trying to stop them from burning. She’d been on the stakeout since five this morning, and her coffee thermos was empty.

This had to be one of the worst ideas she’d ever managed to employ, at least on a twenty-five-hundred-acre ranch. Baylor could have hidden Endicott anywhere. Maybe she should give it up and go back to square one. Good, old-fashioned, pound-the-pavement, last-person-to-see-him-alive kind of stuff. Someone had to have seen something. She just had to pose the right question to the right person.

She opened her eyes and was startled. The object of her crack-of-dawn investigation stood next to her car holding the reins to a couple of horses.

“Good morning,” he said. “You’ll never get any nosing around done sitting in your car.”

Damn, she’d been caught. “You have a better plan?”

“How about I give you a tour of the ranch on horseback. You can search for Endicott anywhere you’d like.”

“And if I find him?” The air inside the vehicle went hot.

“You can cuff me and take me to jail.”

“Deal.” She rolled up the driver’s-side window, climbed out of the car and locked it. “I haven’t ridden in a while. Is he gentle?”

“Jericho? Yeah. The last person he dumped lived to tell about it.”

She grinned, feeling like a 4-H student at her first horse show.

Baylor handed her the reins, watched her mount up and settle into the saddle. He could only hope that his method worked. That the beautiful detective would drive away happy and convinced there wasn’t a body hidden somewhere on the Bellwether.

“We’ll head east. That’s the most remote area of the ranch. Lots of game trails. Abandoned mine shafts. I don’t run cattle out there for that reason.”

“Too dangerous?”

“One wrong step and you don’t come home.” He
turned his horse and headed for the main road. They’d follow it for a couple of miles and take the Bear Creek trailhead just before Harley Neville’s place.

Mariah nudged her horse up next to Baylor’s and tried to relax. The feel of her sidearm on her belt offered some comfort. Searching without a search warrant, riding next to a suspect, all seemed a little strange to her, but if it helped her pull together a case, it’d be worth the risk.

“Shoot. I forgot my lunch in the car.” She attempted to turn the horse back toward her vehicle.

“Don’t worry.” Baylor patted his saddlebag. “I brought enough for two.” He grinned and her heartbeat went haywire.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Her certainty about his involvement in Endicott’s disappearance seemed to flail whenever she was with him. Something about his easygoing style sucked her in and changed her mind.

Baylor spurred his horse and she followed suit as they settled into a slow canter that ate up the distance.

The sweet scent of honey locust and pine sap hung in the air. The rhythm of the horses’ hooves against the dirt lulled her into a contented state that she’d rarely achieved since she’d started working at the sheriff’s department.

Baylor reined his horse in and waited for her to do the same. “Here’s our trail. It’s a steep climb, but the view on top is worth it.”

There was that sensation again. That zing of pleasure across her nerves, that flutter in her chest. “Looks like it would be too much work to get a body up there.” She stared up the sloping trail as it disappeared into the trees.

Her comment put an edge of tension in the air between them, which was precisely what she needed to pull her back down to earth. Until the Endicott case was solved, and Baylor was cleared, she had to sock the odd feelings away somewhere so they didn’t interfere with her job.

“A good strong horse and some determination. It could be done,” he said without hesitation.

She stared at him, trying to gauge his emotions, but his face gave nothing away. Was he joking or dead serious, she couldn’t be sure.

“Let’s head up. Make sure it’s clear.” He tipped his hat, the one shielding his features from her scrutiny.

She fell in behind him, leaning forward in the saddle as her horse trudged up the first steep incline, then took a right as the trail switched back across the face of the mountain.

Half an hour later they reined in their horses under a massive ponderosa pine and dismounted.

Mariah’s legs were shaking as she got them underneath her and took a look around. Breathtaking vistas spread out in front of her everywhere she turned.

“What do you think?” Baylor asked, tying the horses to a low-hanging limb.

“It’s beautiful.” Already her artist’s eye was honing in on all the possible angles she could use in her work. “I could stay up here for days and have some thing new to capture on every one of them.”

“I knew you’d like it.” He untied the double-pouched saddlebag, pulled it off the back of the saddle and tossed it over his shoulder. “Come on, there’s a place to relax just up the trail.”

Mariah tagged along behind him, staring at his broad shoulders as they moved beneath his denim shirt. Every ounce of control she possessed seemed to drain away, and desire, intense and volatile, throbbed in her veins.

She swallowed, focusing on the trail ahead of them as it opened into a small meadow flanked by dense timber. A gushing creek roared from out of the mountainside, then slowed and meandered across the meadow before dumping into a pond.

A well-traveled path wound through the heart of the clearing, flanked by knee-deep bear grass, ending next to a sandy beach on the banks of the pond.

“This is perfect.” She attempted to move past him, determined to sort out all the unfamiliar emotions tangled up inside of her, but he reached out and caught her hand, pulling her toward him.

A jolt of electricity coursed through her as they
made contact. Gazing up into his face, she knew he’d felt it, too.

“Mariah…I…” What the hell was he thinking? Baylor wondered as he stared at her lips, then back into her eyes. He was a man on fire. He’d wanted to kiss her all morning and hadn’t been able to shake the desire. He’d even tried to remind himself she was a cop, out for blood, and still it hadn’t done the trick.

He pulled off his cowboy hat, gave it a toss and dropped the saddlebags as he lowered his mouth to hers. She didn’t resist. Instead, her arms came up around his neck.

Mariah’s head swam. Every nerve in her body attuned itself to the feel of Baylor’s body pressed against hers.

She opened her mouth for him, tasting him as he deepened the kiss, exploring her with his tongue in a slow, sensual rhythm. An ache manifested itself deep and low in her belly. A primal need that begged for satisfaction as he lowered her to the soft meadow grass.

Fire ignited in her veins, consuming all reasonable thought in its flame. She wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t her suspect. They were a man and a woman, locked in the heat of desire. Lost in their own private heaven. Oblivious to the world around them.

The first bullet whizzed past Baylor’s right ear and bored into the ground next to his head, sending up a spray of dirt.

Somewhere in the timberline on the other side of the meadow, the gunshot echoed back.

Drunk on desire, Baylor rocked back, staring down at her. Reality jolted him into action. Someone was shooting at them.

He rolled them both hard to the left, took her hand and dragged her to her feet.

“Run!” he yelled.

Ping.

Another bullet zinged past, hitting the ground inches behind them.

Baylor aimed for the trees two hundred feet in front of them, caution driving him as he tried to pick the safest place to go off trail. The meadow was riddled with boarded-over vertical mine shafts; one wrong step and…

Before the thought had time to solidify, the earth gave under his feet.

In a last desperate attempt to save Mariah, he yanked hard, sending her flying past him, but the cavernous hole was too big.

It swallowed them whole and they fell through the rotting boards into darkness.

Mariah hit the bottom of the pit with a thud. The air pushed from her lungs as she slammed into the ground. Pain shot through her body from the jarring drop.

Baylor hit next to her.

She heard him grunt.

Dust clogged her mouth and nose, grit showering her tongue and grating on her teeth.

She lay still and opened her eyes.

It was dark at the bottom of the hole, and it took a moment for them to adjust. She scanned the earthen walls of the mine shaft. They were trapped.

She choked back a sob, drawing on her training instead. A cool head was the best tool in a situation like this.

“Baylor, can you hear me?” she asked, encouraged by a scraping noise and a grunt.

“Yeah.”

The sound of his voice sent a charge of excitement through her. He was alive.

“How deep do you suppose this shaft is?”

“Thirty feet maybe.”

May as well be a hundred, she thought as she pulled herself up into a sitting position, looking for anything that could help them escape.

“Are you hurt?”

“Does my pride count?”

She smiled in the darkness. “No.”

“Good.”

Mariah pulled herself to her feet, dusting off the layer of dirt that coated her body. She watched Baylor stand up, testing his feet under him before he put his head back and gazed up at the beams of light pouring through the jagged slats of wood above their heads.

The shaft was tight, maybe six by six.

A chill rocked her body and she fought a wave of hopelessness. They had to find a way out or this hole would become their grave.

Baylor wiped a trickle of blood off his forehead with the back of his hand and stared up at the opening.

The walls of the vertical shaft were laced with tree roots, the only thing that had slowed their fall. Worry hammered through him, pounding his nerves to a pulp. In frustration he grabbed a root and tested it for stability, but after a hard jerk it pulled out of the wall, coating him in more dirt.

“Dammit.” He sucked in a breath and focused on Mariah, who stood still, her head cocked at an odd angle.

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“A horse.”

Baylor listened, hearing nothing at first, then in the distance the thud of horse hooves against the earth. More than one horse. Their horses, he guessed.

Caution exploded inside of him and he pulled Mariah into his arms, moving her back against the wall of the shaft. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear, as a shadow fell across the opening of the hole, blocking the sunlight for an instant.

First his hat landed at their feet, popping up a ring of dust, then the saddlebags followed, dropping at his feet with a thud.

His pulse began to hammer in his ears. Whoever had taken shots at them didn’t want there to be any evidence left aboveground. Nothing to indicate they’d ever been in the meadow. Baylor held Mariah closer. Would the shooter stare into the hole? Would he pick them off with his rifle one after the other like caged animals with nowhere to run?

The sickening clank of a board dropping into place set Baylor’s nerves on end.

The shaft of light streaming into the hole from above narrowed. Then another board and another were laid over the top until the opening was covered.