No Ordinary Cowboy. Marin Thomas

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      Chapter Two

      “You know he hates me, don’t you?” Maddie’s alert brown eyes shone with sympathy. Tony strangled the steering wheel as he drove along the highway on the outskirts of Stagecoach. He wasn’t looking forward to facing Cal Durango. The man blamed him for his son’s death and he had a right to.

      Not a day passed that Tony didn’t regret leaving the bar after Michael had assured him he’d find a ride home if he drank too much. If Tony could travel back in time, he’d have stayed until Michael had finished celebrating, or he’d have coaxed him out of the bar before he’d had one too many beers.

      He turned down the road leading to the Durango ranch house and passed beneath a stone archway with the iron letters DR at the top. A mile later, he parked in front of the sprawling hacienda with the covered front porch that ran the entire length of the home. The house sat in the shadows of a rocky incline that blocked the wind and provided shade from the afternoon sun. The yard had been landscaped with palm trees and colorful vegetation reminiscent of a California resort, not the Sonoran Desert.

      Tony stepped down from his truck. “Get the hell off my ranch, Bravo.” Cal Durango sat on the front porch, smoking one of his expensive Cuban cigars.

      “Be happy to hit the road as soon as I unload this cargo.” Tony snapped his fingers. “Come on, Maddie.”

      The stubborn boxer wouldn’t budge.

      Tony reached for her collar, but Maddie scrambled into the backseat.

      “Damn dog’s a nuisance. Should have put her down long ago.” Durango acted tough as nails, but Tony knew the death of his son had cut him off at the knees and he was a broken man on the inside.

      “Got a leash?” Tony asked.

      “Here’s one.” Lucy stepped out the front door. Had she been eavesdropping? She skipped down the steps and clipped a tether to Maddie’s collar. “Naughty girl.” Lucy tugged the dog from the truck. “She must have come back after I left.”

      “Left where?” Lucy’s father stood on the top step and glanced suspiciously between Tony and his daughter.

      “Maddie misses you, Tony,” Lucy said, ignoring her father’s question.

      “Enough about the damned dog. Get off my ranch, Bravo.”

      “I’d like a word with you first.” Tony moved closer to the porch.

      “A word about what?”

      “We believe—” Tony had yet to convince his boss of his hunch “—that underage girls are being kidnapped and brought over the border then sold into the sex trade in the Midwest.”

      “How awful,” Lucy said.

      Durango chomped on his cigar. “And this concerns me how?”

      “We suspect members of a Mexican cartel are crossing into the United States between the San Luis and Lukeville ports of entry then making their way north through Stagecoach.” Tony paused for a moment to allow the information to sink in. “We have reason to believe the men are using your ranch as a shortcut through the area.”

      “You got any proof of that?” Durango puffed on his cigar.

      “Witness reports spotting young females walking on your property along highway 41.”

      “Reliable witnesses, or illegals you didn’t catch at the border?” Durango asked.

      “Reliable witnesses. I’d like to take a look around your place.”

      “Have your boss call me. I’ll consider giving him access, but not you.”

      “Dad!” Miffed at her father’s rude behavior, Lucy spoke to Tony. “Thank you for bringing Maddie home.”

      Tony flashed a half smile and her pulse fluttered with yearning, just as it had each morning he’d kissed her goodbye after each of their motel rendezvous. They’d kept their affair a secret because Tony’s mother had been old-fashioned and expected her son to marry a Hispanic girl. Of course, Lucy’s father wouldn’t have approved of Tony, because he hadn’t come from СКАЧАТЬ