Safety In Numbers Read online

  “We’ll put Kathy in the guest room and Chase can go into Tanner’s old room,” Red said.

  For the first time since they’d stepped into the house, Chase focused on Meredith. She had the face of a beauty queen, but if her hair were any indication of the local stylist’s expertise then he wouldn’t be visiting any of the town’s barbers. Although a luxurious black, her bangs fell unevenly across her forehead and the left side of the shoulder-length locks was definitely shorter than the right side.

  There wasn’t an ounce of makeup on her face, that he could see, and she was dressed in a pair of jeans and an oversize man’s flannel shirt. Once again a small ball of unexpected tension twisted in his gut.

  Her gaze met his and her cheeks pinkened slightly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your rooms,” she said.

  She led Kathy to a room decorated in cheerful yellow with an adjoining bath. Chase set Kathy’s suitcase on the bed, then followed Meredith down the hall. Even though the flannel shirt struck her below the hips, it didn’t hide the sensual sway of her walk.

  The bedroom she led him to was smaller than Kathy’s and had obviously been occupied by a male. The bed was a heavy mahogany covered in a navy spread. A chest of drawers stood against one wall. “Tanner? Which one is that?” he asked as he set his suitcase down.

  “Tanner is my oldest brother,” she said.

  “The one who married a princess.”

  “That’s right. Anna.” Her chin rose a touch and she met his gaze. “Tell me, what description did my brother give of me that made me so easy to find in the café?”

  “He said to look for the gorgeous, sexy woman who looked like she’d had a close encounter with a Weed Eater.” He gazed pointedly at her uneven hair.

  She raised a hand self-consciously, but before she touched her hair, she dropped her arm and narrowed her eyes, obviously not pleased as she edged toward the door.

  “The bathroom is just down the hall on the left. Feel free to head to the kitchen after you get settled in.” She slid out of the room as if she couldn’t escape him fast enough.

  He pulled his suitcase onto the bed and opened it. He’d improvised a bit on what Dalton had said. Dalton had called his sister neither gorgeous nor sexy.

  As he hung some of his clothing in the closet, he wondered how difficult it had been for Meredith West to be raised in a house filled with men. By the look of her she certainly didn’t seem to be in touch with her femininity. Not that it mattered to him. Not that he cared.

  He wasn’t here to care about anyone. He was here to do a job. It was bad enough he was here to betray a friend’s trust; the only thing that could make it worse was if he also seduced his friend’s sister.

  Chapter 2

  There was no way Dalton would have described her as gorgeous or sexy, although he certainly would have told Chase she looked like a woman who’d gotten too close to a Weed Eater.

  Meredith thought about that all through dinner that night. Dalton had arrived at the ranch to share the meal and visit with his friends. Meredith had eaten quickly, then excused herself and retreated to the stables until bedtime.

  Now, the faint gray of predawn painted the sky as she crept from her bedroom and down the hallway to the bathroom. As she showered and dressed for the day, her thoughts lingered on Chase McCall.

  Gorgeous and sexy. He had to say that. Had he been making fun of her? Nobody had ever used those terms to describe her.

  She didn’t like him and she wasn’t sure why. He’d been pleasant enough at dinner the night before, entertaining them with cop stories and talking about the good times he and Dalton had shared while they’d worked on the same case.

  But there was an edge to him, a whisper of something slightly dangerous in his eyes, an arrogant tilt to his head. She stood in front of the mirror and brushed her shoulder-length hair, then frowned.

  Maybe Savannah was right. She needed to get into the Curl Palace and get one of the ladies to trim her hair the right way.

  Fighting her impulse to pick up a pair of scissors and try to straighten out the mess, she reached for her toothbrush instead. She always cut her hair when she was stressed, and there was no denying that she’d been stressed lately.

  She’d go to the Curl Palace this morning, then head over to Sheriff Ramsey’s office to see if she could get her hands on the files of the investigation into her mother’s murder.

  She had a feeling Ramsey wouldn’t be particularly pleased by her request. “As if we don’t have enough going on around here,” she could imagine him saying.

  She finished brushing her teeth, then gave her hair a final finger comb. Her decision to get her hair professionally cut and styled had absolutely nothing to do with Chase McCall, she told herself. She would have done it whether the handsome man had come to town or not.

  Leaving the bathroom, she was glad that Tanner’s bedroom door remained closed. It was early enough that she didn’t expect anyone to be up except Smokey, who would be in the kitchen working on breakfast.

  Instead of heading into the kitchen, she walked to the front door and slipped outside to the porch. She moved directly to the railing and leaned against it, staring out at the land that stretched for miles all around.

  This was her favorite time of day, when the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon and birds sang from the trees. Scents of hay and grass and cattle wafted on the air, as familiar to her as her own reflection in a mirror.

  She loved the ranch, but there were times when she longed for the excitement of the city, the anonymity of a place where she wasn’t one of those West kids, but rather simply Meredith West.

  She drew deep breaths, filling herself up with the smells of home, then turned to go back inside. She jumped, startled as she saw the old man seated in the wicker rocking chair.

  “Smokey! Jeez, you scared me half to death. What are you doing out here?” Even in the dim light she could see the frown that tugged his grizzled eyebrows together in an uneven unibrow.

  “That woman is in my kitchen.”

  “Kathy? What’s she doing?”

  “Cooking.” The word spat from him as if he found it distasteful on his tongue.

  A small burst of laughter welled up inside Meredith, but she quickly swallowed it. As far as Smokey was concerned invasion of his kitchen was grounds for execution. “Think I’ll go get a cup of coffee and check things out,” she said.

  Smokey merely grunted in response.

  Meredith found the attractive white-haired woman in the kitchen cutting up fruit. “Ah, another early riser,” she said in greeting to Meredith.

  “You’re supposed to be on vacation,” Meredith said as she poured herself a cup of coffee, then perched at the island where Kathy worked.

  “There’s nothing I love more than cooking, especially for other people, but I rarely get a chance.” She smiled at Meredith. “I told Smokey that I’d take over this morning and give him a little vacation. Besides, I’m not sure he was feeling well this morning. He looked positively gray when he left the kitchen.”

  “He’s just not used to somebody else taking over his duties,” Meredith replied.

  Kathy smiled once again, a hint of steel in her baby blues. “Well, he’ll just have to get used to it. I intend to pull my own weight around here and at my age about the only thing I am good for is cooking.”

  It was going to be an interesting couple of days, Meredith mused. At that moment Chase entered the kitchen clad in a pair of jeans and a navy knit shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and flat stomach. The sight of him filled her with an inexplicable tension.

  “Good morning,” he said as he walked to the countertop where the coffeemaker sat.

  “’Morning,” Meredith replied. “I hope you slept well.”

  “I always do.” He carried his cup and sat on the stool next to Meredith, bringing with him the faint scent of shaving cream, minty soap and a woodsy cologne. The tension inside her coiled a little tighter. “What about y
ou? How did you sleep?”

  It was a simple question, but something about the look in his eyes made her feel like he was prying into intimate territory. “I always sleep well, too,” she replied.

  He took a sip of his coffee, then looked at her curiously. “Dalton mentioned last night that we’ve come to town at a time when things are pretty unsettled,” he said.

  “Very unsettled,” she agreed, relaxing a bit as the subject changed.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s complicated, but a couple of weeks ago we discovered that a corporation called MoTwin has been buying up property in the area.”

  “That doesn’t sound unusual. Corporations seem to be buying up property everywhere in the United States,” Kathy observed.

  “Yes, but in this case, the land they were buying was from ranchers who had died, ranchers who had been murdered.”

  “Oh, my,” Kathy exclaimed, then picked up her knife to continue cutting up a kiwi.

  “The deaths were made to look like accidents, so it took a while for anyone to realize what was going on,” Meredith continued. “The latest death was a real estate agent who had written up the property contracts on the land in question. She was murdered. A couple of FBI agents are here now working the case. We know somebody in town has to be behind the scheme, somebody local has orchestrated the deaths and that’s who we want.”

  “This MoTwin, what do you know about it?” Chase asked.

  “Not much.” Meredith took a sip of her coffee, then continued, “The address on all the paperwork is nothing more than an empty storefront location in Boston. Two men are listed as partners, Joe Black and Harold Willington, but as far as I know nobody has been able to find them or dig up any information on them. We know that the land was apparently being bought up for a community of luxury condos and town houses.”

  She took another sip of her coffee and fought off a chill at the thought that it could be a friend or a neighbor who was responsible for the deaths in the area.

  “Hopefully the FBI will find out who here in town is responsible and they’ll lock them up and throw away the key,” she exclaimed. “In any case, it shouldn’t interfere with your visit here. By the way, how long are you intending on staying?”

  Chase’s gaze was lazy and his blue eyes sparked with humor. “Trying to get rid of us already?”

  “Of course not,” she replied hurriedly. “I was just curious.” Curious as to how long she’d have to put up with the strange feeling he evoked inside her.

  “We aren’t sure,” Chase replied. “I have quite a bit of vacation time built up so we’re kind of open-ended at the moment.”

  Kathy glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’d better get back to work if I’m going to have breakfast ready at a reasonable time. Why don’t you two shoo and let me do my thing.”

  Meredith drained her coffee cup, placed it in the dishwasher, then started out of the kitchen. “Where are you headed?” Chase asked.

  “To the stables,” she replied. “I usually go out there every morning and most evenings to say hello to the horses.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  Yes, I do. You make me nervous and I don’t know why. She didn’t say that, but instead shook her head. She grabbed a jacket from a hook next to the back door, and once she stepped off the porch, Chase fell in beside her.

  “Dalton told me you’re quite a horseback rider,” he said as they crossed the thick, browning lawn toward the stables.

  At five-ten there were few men who dwarfed Meredith, but Chase did. He made her feel small and oddly vulnerable. “Do you ride?” she asked.

  “Motorcycles, not horses.”

  “Then you don’t know what you’re missing,” she replied, her steps long and brisk. They walked for a few minutes in silence.

  “Quite a spread you have here,” he said. “Did this MoTwin Corporation contact you all about selling out? You said the deaths that occurred were made to look like accidents. Anything odd happen to your father?”

  She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him with narrowed eyes. “For somebody just visiting the area you have a lot of questions.”

  “I’m a cop. Curiosity comes natural to me.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, taking in the handsome chiseled features, the spark of the early-morning sun on his hair and the guileless blue of his eyes. “Then to answer your question, no. Nobody has contacted my father about selling because they probably know that won’t ever happen. And no, nothing strange or suspicious has happened to my father.

  “One thing all those dead ranchers had in common was either no children or family to take over their ranches, or kin that weren’t interested in ranching. My father has five sons and me. Killing him wouldn’t get anyone any closer to owning this place.”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “But, I would think if this corporation planned a community of condos and town houses, they’d want this land.” He cast a gaze around. “It looks pretty prime to me.”

  “I don’t know what the intentions of MoTwin were where our land was concerned. I can’t begin to guess what was in those men’s heads.”

  They reached the stables and walked inside, where the horses in the various stalls greeted their presence with snickers and soft whinnies.

  As she walked toward where her horse, Spooky, was stalled, she paused at each of the other stalls to pet a nose or scratch an ear. She tried to ignore Chase’s nearness, but it was darned near impossible.

  The man seemed to fill the stable interior with an unsettling presence that even the horses felt. They sidestepped and pawed the ground with an unusual restlessness, as if catching the scent of a predator in the air.

  “Tell me about your other brothers,” he said as she greeted her black mare with a soft whisper. “Your father mentioned they’d all be here for dinner tonight. I’d like to know a little about them before then. Dalton has mentioned them in the past, but never went into specific details.”

  “Tanner’s the oldest. He’s thirty-five and as you know married to Anna. Zack is thirty-one and married to Kate. He’s running for Sheriff. Clay is thirty and just married Libby, who also has a little girl named Gracie. Then there’s Joshua. He’s the baby at twenty-five and he’s dating my best friend, Savannah. You met her yesterday at the café.”

  He nodded, his eyes dark and enigmatic. “Do you all still work for the family business?”

  “We did, but things are changing. Tanner was actively running things before he met and married Anna. They’re now building a house and he’s involved in that and not working so much right now. As I mentioned, Zack wants to be sheriff and it looks like he’s going to get his wish. The man who’s working as sheriff right now has plans to retire.”

  She scratched Spooky behind the ears, finding it much easier to focus on the horse’s loving, brown eyes than Chase’s cold blue ones.

  “Joshua still works for the business and so do I, but for the last couple of months things have been rather slow.” She gave the horse a final pat on the neck. “We should probably head back to the house for breakfast.”

  “So, what do you do in your spare time?” he asked as they made their way to the house.

  “I occasionally do some volunteer work, but most of the time I keep busy around here. Running a ranch the size of ours requires lots of work.”

  “Dalton mentioned to me last night that you don’t date. Why not?”

  She stopped walking and held his gaze. “First of all, my brothers don’t know everything that goes on in my life. Just because they don’t know what I’m doing doesn’t mean I’m not doing it. And secondly, it’s really none of your business.”

  She didn’t wait for his reply, but instead hurried toward the house, needing some space from the man, his endless questions and the hot lick of desire just looking at him stirred inside her.

  It was just after ten when Chase sat in the passenger seat of Meredith’s car. She’d mentioned at breakfast that she was heading into tow
n to run some errands and he’d asked if he could hitch a ride with her. He could tell the idea didn’t thrill her, but she was too polite to tell him no.

  He’d told her that while she ran her errands or whatever, he’d hang out at the Wild West Protective Services office with Dalton.

  He’d known most of the information she’d told him in the stables before he’d even asked the questions, but he’d hoped she’d give him something that would either exonerate or condemn somebody guilty.

  The Wests might never have made the FBI radar if it hadn’t been for a couple of anonymous tips that had come in pointing a finger at the family. He had no idea if the tips were valid or not. It was his and Kathy’s assignment to find out.

  “You asked me about my family earlier,” she said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had existed between them since they’d gotten into the car. “Tell me about yours.”

  As always, when Chase thought of what little family he’d had, a knot of tension twisted in his chest. He reached up and touched the slightly raised scar that slashed through his eyebrow, then dropped his hand.

  “There’s not much to tell. It’s just my mother and me. My father died a couple of years ago. He was a miserable man who gambled away his money, then drank and got mean.”

  It was a partial truth. His mother had died when he was five and his violent, drunken father had raised him until Chase turned sixteen and left home. Whenever Chase thought of his family he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. God save him from people who professed to love him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But your mother seems very nice.”

  He grinned. “Kat…Mom is a jewel. She left my father when I was ten and we have a great relationship.” This was the cover story they’d concocted, a blend of half lies and half truths. Kathy was a jewel, not as a mother but as a partner.

  “She stepped into dangerous territory this morning.”

  Chase looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “She took over Smokey’s kitchen.”

  “That’s bad?”

  She smiled and in the genuine warmth of the gesture she was so stunning that the blood in Chase’s veins heated. “That’s grounds for a firing squad. Smokey has always been fiercely territorial about his kitchen.”