The Wrangler And The Runaway Mom. RaeAnne Thayne

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      “Sane people don’t take vacations wading around in cow manure and playing around with hoof picks, whatever those nasty-sounding things might be,” Special Agent in Charge Lane Beckstead responded on the phone.

      Cradling the cellular phone in the crook of his shoulder, he worked the pick to pry a rock out of Scout’s front left shoe. He grunted in frustration as his bandaged hand slipped on the hoof pick. It had been two weeks since he was injured during an arrest, and still the damn thing was about as useful as teats on a bull.

      “If I were sane,” he muttered, tightening his grip despite the pain, “I wouldn’t be working for the Bureau in the first place—”

      “Amen,” Joe piped up.

      Again Colt ignored him. “—which means we wouldn’t be having this conversation and I wouldn’t be taking the first vacation I’ve had in eight years. Besides, maybe I like wading through cow manure.”

      “Exactly my point. You’re the only person I know who would choose to spend your vacation on a cattle ranch in Montana. What’s the difference between whatever you’re doing there and taking up this little job for me on the rodeo circuit?”

      “The difference is, I deserve this vacation. I’ve been on the Spider Militia case for nearly a year. I’m tired, Lane, and the last time I spent longer than a weekend at my ranch was two directors ago.”

      Tired? That was an understatement if he ever heard one. Burned out, more like. Sick of the lying and the intrigues and the bureaucracy. Eleven months of working to infiltrate a hate group in the Northwest had left him exhausted, disillusioned about whatever shreds of humanity might be left in the world.

      He needed the peace he found only here at the ranch where he had been raised, where he had the clean, pure scent of pine surrounding him instead of the stink of hatred and violence, and only a few ghosts to disturb his sleep instead of the legion that haunted him in the field.

      “Twenty bucks says you’re not going to be getting your vacation,” Joe murmured.

      “McKendrick,” Beckstead replied, “you’re the only agent in the Bureau who knows the business end of a cow from a rump roast. We need you on this case. Now we’ve traced our witness, a Dr. Margaret Prescott, to a rodeo in Durango last week. She’s using the alias Maggie Rawlings and has taken a job providing medical care to injured performers on the rodeo circuit. We know where she is and where she’s going but we don’t have any way to get an agent close to her.”

      The “royal we” the FBI was so fond of grated on his nerves, as it always did. Damn, he was tired of it all. Colt let Scout’s foreleg drop to the ground and gave him a slap that sent the gelding cantering off through the corral, his newly cleaned hooves kicking up little clouds of dust.

      He pinched at the headache beginning to brew between his eyes. “And you think I could manage to get close to this Maggie Rawlings?”

      “You have to admit, you’re the logical choice. Besides the fact that you’re a damn good agent, you’re the only cowboy we’ve got. The lone ranger, so to speak. You have any idea how hard it is to find another special agent who’s ever even seen a rodeo, much less competed in one?”

      Colt snorted. “I rodeoed in college. I was twenty-two years old last time I was stupid enough to ride into the ring. Twenty-two and a hell of a lot more reckless.”

      “This is a big case, McKendrick. Huge. Michael Prescott embezzled millions from at least two dozen clients over the years. He gambled most of it away but some is still hidden away somewhere, and we owe it to those clients to try to find it, to those people who trusted him to invest their life savings.” He paused, then poured it on. “To those little old ladies who lost everything.”

      “Like the little old ladies who whacked him?” Colt said dryly.

      Beckstead gave up the motherhood and apple pie routine. “Okay, so he ran with a bad crowd, too. Look Colt, I won’t lie to you We’re after somebody bigger than our dirty accountant ever dreamed about being. For at least one of his clients, Prescott offered a nice extra service. He prepared a set of phony books for somebody we’ve been after for a long time. Lucky for us, though, we discovered the accountant kept a copy of the real records. Insurance, maybe, or extortion. Who knows. We think it’s on a computer disk in the same place he hid the money. We figure if we can find it, we can nail his client.”

      Colt didn’t want to be curious. If not for this damned inquisitiveness, he never would have joined the Bureau in the first place, after his stint as an MP in the Marines, back when he had nowhere else to go.

      “How big?” he finally said. “Who was Prescott in with?”

      “Big. Damian DeMarranville.”

      The string of epithets Colt bit out at the name didn’t seem to surprise his boss. “Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say,” Beckstead drawled. “You and DeMarranville go way back, don’t you?”

      “Far enough.” Colt thought of lost innocence and broken trust. The face of his former partner formed in his mind, and he frowned. The decent, decorated agent who had trained him had just been a front; he’d been hiding insides as rotten and worm eaten as a whole tree full of bad apples.

      “Prescott was dumb enough to think he could steal from the big dog himself and get away with it,” Beckstead went on. “Skim a little off the top and think nobody will notice.”

      He jerked his mind from the past. “Stupid and slimy. A bad combination.”

      “A deadly combination.”

      Colt leaned on the split-rail fence and stared at the hard blue of the Montana sky, at a pair of magpies darting across the air, at the mountains bursting with color. He wanted to stay right here, dammit. Just for a little while, until the ghosts became too loud.

      But he wanted DeMarranville more.

      “How does the wife fit in?” he finally asked.

      “We’re not sure, other than that she witnessed the hit by two of DeMarranville’s associates. Carlo Santori and Franky Kostas. You know either of them?”

      “Yeah. Not the nicest crowd. Is she clean?”

      “We don’t know. I doubt anybody could be married to Prescott for six years and keep out of his business, but you never know. That’s what we want you to figure out.”

      Nobody was innocent. If he’d learned one indisputable lesson in the last ten years, it was that.

      “Why don’t you just haul her in for questioning?”

      Beckstead paused. “Frankly, she’s safer where she’s at.”

      “If the Bureau can find her, DeMarranville sure as hell can. Seems to be the smartest thing would be to put her into protective custody.”

      “It’s not that easy right now.”

      The SAC was hedging. Colt had worked with him long enough to read the signs. “What aren’t you telling me?”

      “We think Damian still has contacts on the inside. How else could he have escaped prosecution all these years?”

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