Killer Cowboy (Cowboys of Holiday Ranch) Page 8

  She began to weep once again as he led her down the stairs and she saw the destruction for herself. When they were in the great room she collapsed into the corner of the sofa and stared at him with huge, frightened eyes. Her fingers worked frantically, tying and untying the belt at her waist.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said. “I don’t know why anyone would want to come after me. What have I done to anyone?”

  “I don’t know, either,” he replied. And he had no idea why somebody had killed Sam. Was this somehow all related? Certainly it appeared as if an ax had been used on the walls and something similar had killed Sam, but the idea of somebody coming after Cassie with an ax was utterly horrifying.

  At that moment his men showed up at the back door, and Dillon instructed them to search outside to see if they found anyone lurking around in the shadows of the night and then to knock on the doors of all the men and see if anyone was missing from their bunk.

  He then stood at the back door and stared out in the distance where the cowboy motel was dark. Were all of the men sound asleep or was one of them awake, remembering Cassie’s terror and smiling to himself?

  He wanted this bastard. He’d wanted him before but thinking about Cassie trembling with terror in his arms, he wasn’t going to be happy until he had the perpetrator either behind bars or dead.

  It took forty minutes for his men to return to the house, and during that time Dillon sat with Cassie, who still appeared shaken to her core. While they sat he had her tell him again exactly what had happened and what she’d heard, hoping that she might have missed something important when she’d told him the first time.

  “Everyone was accounted for,” Juan Ramirez now said. “And it looked to me like they had all been sound asleep before we knocked on the doors.”

  Deputy Michael Goodall nodded in agreement. “I didn’t see anything suspicious with any of the men and we saw nobody on the property.”

  Dillon hadn’t expected for the perp to be standing out in the moonlight with an ax in his hand, but it would have been nice if Juan and Michael had come back with something.

  He put Juan to work photographing and measuring the gashes in the walls as Michael tried to pull prints off the broken window and back door.

  Dillon had little hope that the men would be able to collect anything worthwhile. He was relatively certain that whoever had broken in had been smart enough to wear gloves.

  The bastard was so smart he hadn’t been caught for over fifteen years. Dillon knew in his gut this was an evil that had been dormant for all these years and something had awakened it once again.

  He supposed it might be possible that it was a copycat, but he didn’t think so. His belief that this was the same person who had killed those seven teenage boys was nothing more than a strong gut instinct, but it was a feeling he couldn’t deny or ignore.

  He left Cassie on the sofa and went into the kitchen to check Michael’s progress. “I’ve got nothing,” he said at Dillon’s appearance. “I can’t even lift a partial. If I was to guess, when he opened the door he wiped the knob clean.”

  “Let’s do a walk-through and see if we find anything else he might have unintentionally left behind,” Dillon said.

  It was almost three thirty when Dillon said a frustrated goodbye to his men. Cassie sat at the kitchen table with a hot cup of tea before her and he joined her there.

  “You aren’t going to leave, are you?” she asked, a faint desperation in her voice.

  He hadn’t thought about what might happen for the rest of the night, but seeing the festering fear that still lingered in her eyes, knowing the fear for her that lingered in his heart, he knew he couldn’t leave her for the remainder of the night here all alone.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. “I’m staying for the rest of the night. You go on up to bed and I’ll stay down here on the sofa. I’ll see to it that nothing happens to you.”

  She curled her fingers around her teacup. “Could we just stay up and talk for a little while longer? I’m not quite ready to go back upstairs just yet.”

  “We need to talk about what has to happen tomorrow,” he replied. “To start with you need to get an alarm installed here.”

  “Actually, I already have one. I just haven’t used it for a while. But can we talk about that kind of stuff in the morning? Right now what I really need is just some small talk to take my mind off what happened.” She offered him a weak smile. “A girl has to have some time to process when a man tries to kill her with an ax.”

  His gut twisted in knots. Thank God he’d gotten here as fast as he had. He didn’t even want to think about how terrible the night might have ended if he hadn’t arrived when he had.

  “Why don’t we go sit in the great room?” She finished the last of her tea and carried her cup to the sink. Together they left the kitchen and sat on either ends of the sofa.

  “Why don’t you tell me about Stacy.”

  He looked at her in surprise, and then remembered that Lloyd Green had mentioned Stacy at the café earlier that evening. He hadn’t talked about Stacy to anyone since she’d left town...since she’d left him.

  “Stacy was my high school sweetheart and I thought she was the woman I would be spending the rest of my life with,” he replied. “But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “What happened?” She leaned slightly toward him, bringing to his nose her attractive scent.

  “We dated and made plans together. My dream was to become chief of police here and once we married, Stacy would be a stay-at-home mother and we’d have a couple of children. After high school I got on the police force and she worked as a teacher’s aide at the grade school. I bought the house where I live now and we moved in together and life was pretty good. At least I thought so at the time.”

  He shifted positions and continued, “On the day I was sworn in as chief of police, Stacy told me she wanted more out of life than what Bitterroot could offer and so she left.”

  He was grateful that his voice had been calm and steady and held none of the emotions that had gripped him at the time. He was surprised to realize that much of the pain of that time, of her abandonment, was finally gone.

  “You didn’t know she was unhappy?”

  “I didn’t have a clue. I thought everything was on track and assumed our next step was a wedding.”

  Cassie studied his features intently. “Did she break your heart?”

  Stacy’s leaving had utterly devastated him. She had shattered almost every dream he’d had for his life. “Maybe just a little,” he confessed. “What about you? Any broken hearts in your past?” He not only was curious about her, but also wanted to get the topic of conversation off Stacy and his own failures.

  “None,” she replied after a moment of hesitation. “In the past I’ve always been too consumed about my work to have any deep, meaningful relationships.”

  “What about now? You and Adam seem pretty close.”

  She offered him the first real smile of the night. “Dillon, I wouldn’t be kissing you like I have if Adam and I were like that.”

  Thinking of the kisses he’d shared with her instantly tightened his stomach muscles. “I think we should both get some sleep now,” he said.

  “You’re right. It won’t be that long and the sun will be shining.” She got up from the sofa and he did the same. “I’ll just get you a pillow and a blanket...unless you want to come upstairs and sleep in my bed.”

  There was a definite invitation in her eyes, an invitation he’d love to accept, but if they were going to go there then tonight definitely wasn’t the right time.

  “Cassie, that’s really not a good idea. You’ve had a horrible scare and if and when we wind up in bed together, I want it to be on a night when we’re both thinking clearly and nothing bad has happened.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment and then nodded. “Okay, I’ll just grab you a pillow and a blanket.”

  Minutes later Dill
on stretched out on the sofa, his mind going over all the events of the night. His gun was on the coffee table in easy reach and it was only now that the tight knot of fear that had been in the pit of his stomach since he’d heard Cassie’s frightened voice on the phone slowly began to release.

  Who had been in her house? Who had broken the window and then come inside with an ax and smashed up her walls? According to Juan the measurements and shape of the gashes in the Sheetrock were consistent with an ax or a hatchet. And why had that somebody come after Cassie?

  She was okay for tonight, but what about tomorrow and the day after that...? In the morning he would insist she start using her alarm system every minute of every day, but that wasn’t foolproof and he knew her men came and went into the house at will to speak to her about ranch business.

  Her men.

  It would have been so easy for one of them to break in, then when he heard the siren to run out and get back in his room and pretend to have been asleep when Juan and Michael had checked in with the men.

  Dillon still believed there was a bad apple in the bunch, but that meant she also had men who would probably protect her with their lives. But who could she really trust? Who could he trust with her safety?

  One thing was clear. She was the target of a killer and one way or another he would personally make sure she was safe until the person was no longer a threat.

  He thought about her invitation to sleep in her bed, and a wave of heat washed over him. There was no question in his mind that if he’d gone upstairs with her they would have had sex. And there was no question that it would have been explosive and powerful.

  But he’d wanted them both to be clearheaded if and when that happened. She had to understand that he had nothing emotionally to give her.

  It would have been easy for him to take advantage of her tonight. She’d been frightened and needy and probably not thinking straight. If he was a different kind of man he would have taken her up on the offer, made love to her and not worried about her emotions.

  He released a deep sigh and closed his eyes. Sometimes it sucked to be a good guy.

  * * *

  He’d almost gotten caught. He lay on his back and stared up at the dark ceiling. If he hadn’t run out of the house when he had, Dillon would have seen him. He could only assume that she’d somehow managed to call for help.

  Dammit, he’d wasted too much time whacking the walls and terrorizing Cassie when he should have just silently marched up the stairs and killed her while she slept.

  And now she’d allowed Dillon to spend the night with her. She’d been his Madonna and now she was a whore. Rage pressed tightly against his ribs.

  He no longer gave a damn that her death could possibly put the ranch up for sale, making the futures of all the men here uncertain.

  If that happened he’d convince all the men to band together and buy the ranch. They could do it and that way Cass Holiday’s legacy would continue on.

  However, his need to see Cassie dead was much more personal than her potential betrayal of her aunt in a decision to sell the ranch to Raymond Humes.

  Whores deserved to die. Next time he’d make sure he got the job done right. He’d screwed up tonight, but he was a patient man and was certain there would be a next time. He smiled to himself and closed his eyes.

  Chapter 7

  Cassie awoke to bright sunshine pouring through the sheer curtains in her bedroom window. She rolled over and looked at her clock and was shocked to see it was after nine. She hadn’t slept this late since she’d moved here.

  However, she’d never had somebody with an ax coming after her in the middle of the night before. Despite the lateness of the hour she stayed in bed several moments, thinking first about the terror of the night before and then about Dillon.

  Thank God he’d arrived when he had. There was no question in her mind that he’d saved her life. But gratitude hadn’t been what had driven her to invite him to her bed.

  Yes, she knew his arms around her would have comforted her and she knew any residual fear would have vanished as passion ruled. But that hadn’t been the reason she’d wanted him in bed with her. It had been pure, unadulterated desire for him.

  Surprisingly he hadn’t hurt her feelings when he’d turned her down. She’d seen the sparks in his eyes and she’d heard longing in his voice even while he told her he’d bunk on the sofa.

  If anything, by turning down her invitation he’d only made her like him more. She truly believed he’d had her best interests at heart. And maybe he was right; it had been a little bit of leftover fear that had made her want him immediately.

  Was he still here or had he left to get back to his job as the chief of police in this town? She certainly couldn’t expect him to stay with her forever when he was the town’s head lawman.

  Still, she jumped out of bed and pulled her robe around her, then went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and hair. When she thought she was presentable enough she hurried down the stairs.

  Dillon sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee before him. He greeted her with a pleasant smile. “Good morning.”

  “It will be a better morning after I get some coffee.” She poured herself a cup and then joined him at the table.

  “I hope you slept well,” he said.

  “I did,” she admitted. “It took me a little while to fall asleep but when I did I was out like a light. What about you? You don’t look any worse for the wear of spending the night on the sofa.” In fact, he looked ridiculously handsome even though his shirt was slightly wrinkled and dark whiskers had appeared along his jaw.

  “The sofa was very comfortable.”

  “I thought maybe you’d be gone by now. I realize you do have an important job in this town.” She took a drink of her coffee.

  “Right now I’m doing my job by being here,” he replied. “I spoke to all of your men this morning and told them how important it was for them to keep an eye on you.” He reached into his pocket and then placed a single key on the table.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I asked all the men who had keys to the house, and Adam told me he did. I took it from him. Right now I don’t want anyone having keys to get inside.”

  “But the person who got in here last night didn’t have a key. He broke the window.”

  Dillon nodded. “And I’ve already contacted Will Denver to come out and replace the windowpane sometime this afternoon. Is there anyone else that you know who has a key to the house?”

  “No, just Adam.” She took a sip of the coffee, leaned back in her chair and once again the taste of fear filled her mouth. “And I guess I’d better start setting the alarm system.”

  “Definitely, and if you don’t mind, since I’m staying here I’d like to have the code.” She told him the four-digit code. “Does anyone else know it?”

  “No. I set it when I first had it installed and I never told anyone the code.”

  He nodded. “I know how your men come and go and my recommendation is that you don’t let any of them inside the house when they are alone.”

  She stared at him and the fear that had momentarily filled her mouth spread throughout her entire body. “I thought everything would look brighter this morning but now I’m afraid all over again.”

  He leaned forward. “You need to be afraid, Cassie. Somebody broke in here last night with the intention of hurting you and right now we have no idea where the danger came from or where it might come from again.” He frowned. “Is there somebody you can stay with for a while?”

  “I’m not leaving here,” she replied firmly. “This is my home. I have responsibilities here and I can’t just take off and hide out. Besides, if somebody is after me, then I don’t want to bring that danger to anyone else. We don’t even know how long it will take before I’m not in danger anymore.”

  His frown deepened. “Then I think it’s a good idea that I move in here for the time being.”

  Stunned surprise winged t
hrough her. “How are you going to do that? You have a full-time job and people in this town who depend on you to be there for them. You can’t be here with me every day and night.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “I can’t be here during the days, but I can be here in the evenings and overnight. I can make sure that what happened here last night doesn’t happen again. I don’t worry so much about the daytimes, especially since I put your men on notice to watch out for you, but it’s the nights that concern me.”

  She pulled her robe more tightly around her. “I don’t know what to say... Thank you seems ridiculously inadequate.”

  He offered her a small smile. “Cassie, this is what I do. I protect the people in this town with my life, and right now nobody is in more imminent danger than you.”

  Imminent danger. The very words scared her half to death. “Even with what happened last night I can’t wrap my head around all of this,” she replied.

  It was as if they were talking about somebody else’s life or the plot of a particularly scary horror movie. This couldn’t really be happening to her and yet it was.

  “So, what I’m really wondering is if you’re ready for a roommate,” he said.

  “I’d be a fool to say no.” She forced a smile to her lips but it only lasted a moment. “But the first thing I want to do this morning is get some of the men in here to fix the walls in the stairwell. I don’t want that damage to be the first thing I see every morning when I come down the stairs.” A shiver tried to work up her spine.

  Yesterday morning she’d trusted all of her men without question, but she couldn’t say the same thing this morning. She wasn’t sure who she could trust anymore, except Dillon.

  “Just make sure you don’t have any of them in the house alone. If you want to ask several of them to come in and fix the wall, I’m comfortable with that. You do have some good men, Cassie. It’s the potential bad one that worries me.”

  Was Sawyer, with his copper-colored eyes and easy smiles, really a killer? What about Mac McBride, who played his guitar and sang like an angel? And what about Adam, the man who had been her teacher and mentor since she’d arrived here? All the men’s faces flashed through her head, only confusing her even more. If there was really a bad apple among the bunch, she couldn’t begin to guess who it was.