Killer Cowboy

“Oh, I’m expecting a mess,” she assured him.

“One thing is for certain. People will be talking about the party for days to come. They’ll gossip about who danced with whom and whose dress was too short or whose blouse was too tight.”

“Uh-oh, that sounds like they’ll be talking about me,” Cassie said jokingly.

Adam’s dark brown eyes were warm as he grinned. “You looked beautiful last night, as you always do.” He quickly averted his gaze from her.

“Thanks, Adam,” she replied. “Now, let’s go see the damage.”

As they took off walking, Cassie thought about the man next to her. She’d come to the ranch as a city girl, a struggling shop owner, who had dreams of being a famous artist. She hadn’t known anything about cattle or ranches.

It had been Adam who had taken her by the hand and walked her through a learning process. He’d been so patient and kind and she never would have been able to manage running this place without him. She still learned something new from him every day.

He was also very easy on the eyes, with his dark brown hair and strong features. His shoulders were broad, his hips lean, and at times when he looked at her he made her feel like a desirable woman. But having a personal relationship with her ranch foreman wasn’t a particularly good idea, and she just didn’t feel that way about him, not that he’d ever made an advance.

They walked past the stables, and in the distance were the cowboy quarters, or the cowboy motel as they all called it. There were twelve small apartment units and in the back of the building was a large dining/recreation space.

Her aunt Cass Holiday had built an empire here, along with the help of twelve fiercely loyal cowboys. But this had never been Cassie’s dream. She’d been here for almost six months and it still didn’t feel like home.

As they approached the barn entrance she stifled a moan. The remains of the night’s fun were already evident. Plastic cups were strewn around the area, along with paper plates and beer and other alcohol bottles.

“Doesn’t anyone know how to use a trash bin anymore?” she said more to herself than to Adam.

“Hopefully knocking down the bandstand and picking up trash are the only real jobs needed,” Adam replied.

They walked through the large double doors and Cassie’s nose was instantly assaulted by the lingering odors of body sweat, booze and barbecue.

Many of the bales of hay had been transformed into loose hay piles, and the orange and black streamers and Halloween decorations were either on the floor or tilted drunkenly on the walls.

A large tin tub held a few sad apples that bobbed listlessly on the small amount of water that remained, and a red-and-white woman’s blouse hung on the arm of the blow-up skeleton.

“Uh-oh, who went home topless?” Cassie asked.

Adam grinned. “Amanda Wright, although she wasn’t completely topless. She had on a red, white and blue sparkly bra last time I saw her.”

“That must have been after I went to bed.” Cassie leaned down and picked up a couple of beer cans and tossed them into a nearby trash barrel.

“Don’t worry. By tonight we’ll have this place back the way it belongs,” Adam assured her.

She smiled at him. “I’m not worried. Aunt Cass was darned smart when she hired all of you.”

A flash of pain darkened Adam’s eyes. “She gave us all a chance at a new and good life. Most of us would have been dead or in jail by now if it wasn’t for your aunt.”

Cassie knew the story. When her uncle Hank had died of cancer, all the men who had worked on the ranch had walked off, convinced that a fifty-three-year-old widow would never be able to run the big place.

Cass, along with the help of a social worker, had hired on a dozen runaway boys. That had been fifteen years ago and those boys had turned into fine, honorable and hardworking men who had been devoted to Cass.

“She loved all of you very much,” Cassie said softly.

“She was the mother we never had. But now our loyalty is behind you.”

Cassie knew that, and it only made the decision she had to make more difficult. She had no idea about the troubled backgrounds that had brought all the men here, but she knew they had embraced her as their own. The men who had been big Cass’s cowboys had become hers.

She kicked at a pile of hay and frowned as her boot connected with something. “There’s something under all this hay,” she said.

She bent down and grabbed an armful of the hay and gasped as an arm appeared. “Oh, my God, there’s somebody under here.”

Adam quickly joined her and together they moved more of the hay, exposing Sam Kelly, one of the new hires. Cassie stumbled backward in horror.

It was obvious the man wasn’t just dead drunk. He was dead. He lay on his back, his blue eyes unseeing, and a pool of blood surrounded the back of his head.

Shivers shot up her spine and bile rose up in the back of her throat. “Oh, no,” she whispered faintly. Adam grabbed her and quickly guided her out of the barn.

“He’s dead,” she said and heard the beginning of hysteria in her own voice. She gulped in several deep breaths in an effort to calm herself, but it didn’t work.

“Oh, my God, he’s dead. He’s dead, Adam.”

Adam put his arms around her and she leaned weakly against him as tears burned hot at her eyes. How had this happened? Sam had been an affable young man who had instantly fit in with the other men.

What had happened to him? Dear God, who had done this to him?

“Cassie.” Adam smoothed her hair away from her cheek. “We need to go back to the house and call Dillon.”

Still she clung to him, the vision of Sam horrifying her as she thought of the seven skeletons that had recently been discovered beneath the old shed they’d torn down.

Fifteen years ago somebody had killed those seven young men with an ax or a meat cleaver to the backs of their heads, and those crimes had yet to be solved.

Was this the beginning of a new spree of death? Had the killer been inactive for all these years only to become active once again?

She hoped not. Maybe there was something beneath the hay that she hadn’t seen, something sharp and deadly. Maybe Sam had fallen backward and hit his head on that something. But if he’d accidentally fallen, then who had covered his body with hay?

As Adam led her toward the house she could only pray that Sam’s death was something far different than the evil that had taken place here so many years ago.

* * *

Chief of Police Dillon Bowie eased down in his office chair, pulled open his top drawer and grabbed the bottle of aspirin he kept there. He shook two pills out in his hand and chased them down with a swig of cold coffee.

It was his own fault he had a headache. He’d stayed too long at the barn dance, had drunk one too many glasses of whiskey and soda, and had burned with more than a little jealousy as he’d watched Cassie Peterson dance with practically every man in attendance.

Every man except you.

Of course he hadn’t asked her to dance, even though he would have liked to hold her in his arms for just a bit. Since the minute she’d taken over the Holiday ranch, he’d entertained some lusty thoughts about the petite blonde, but they had remained just thoughts without any follow-through.

He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his coffee. For the moment there was nothing pressing on his desk. The last six months had been a frenzy of crimes that had kept him busy and on edge. But nobody was in danger right now that he knew about, and he looked forward to just having some time to breathe.

While the fifteen-year-old crime that had taken place on the Holiday ranch continued to torment him, he had no leads to follow at the moment.

He finished his coffee and then leaned forward and glanced through the reports that had come in overnight, seeing nothing earth-shattering. Most of the time crime-fighting in Bitterroot wasn’t that challenging. There was an occasional domestic dispute or theft, and speeding down Main Street was a fairly common occurrence.