in good repair, mostly because she could not afford to lose any cattle. Yet he was here, working. Her mouth went dry.
“Strays?” she repeated.
Her cattle were the only ones up here, and she was missing more than a few. Izzie had a sick feeling in her stomach.
“You catch any?”
His expression was serious. “Some.”
“How many?”
“Izzie, someone just shot at you. I’d feel a whole lot better if we had this conversation out of range and behind cover. I’ve got room in my trailer for Biscuit.”
He remembered the name of her favorite horse. What else did he remember? Their first kiss? The night she let him go a little too far? Or the day she told him she could not see him anymore?
They rode through her downed fence, the wire lying on the ground. She didn’t see any cattle on the road, but she swung down to lift the wire.
“It’s been cut,” she said.
He dismounted, too, glancing back toward the woods, his rifle still out and ready.
“Get behind the trailer.”
“The fence,” she said.
“The hell with the fence.”
“Did you do this?” she asked.
In answer, his color rose and his jaw set. Then he grabbed her with more force than necessary and hustled her over to the horse trailer.
Clay opened the gate and lowered the ramp. She loaded Biscuit and exited the trailer to find his mount tied to the ring on the side of the trailer. She watched him disconnect the trailer hitch.
He jerked his head toward the truck. “Get in, Bella.”
He hadn’t called her that since her sophomore year in high school on the night she told him she must stop seeing him.
Why, Bella? Why?
Clay rounded the trailer, and she heard the gate shut with a resounding clang.
“I can’t leave Biscuit.”
Clay took hold of her arm and muscled her along. He was much bigger and stronger than she recalled. He had to release her or the gun to get the door open, and he chose her. He motioned to the interior, and she slipped into the cab. Then he jogged around the front of the grille and slid the rifle into place on the rack behind them.
She caught the movement and shouted.
“There!” she said, pointing.
Someone moved on the top of the tree line. Clay leaped into his seat and started the truck, accelerating into the U-turn and narrowly missing the opposite ditch.
They traveled a half mile down the hill before he lifted the radio from his hip.
“My brothers are coming. Don’t want them riding into gunfire.”
She nodded her agreement to that. He must mean Gabe and Kino. Gabe was the new chief, and Kino was now a police officer for the tribal police. Izzie had heard that Clay’s little brother was about to be married.
Clay called his office, relayed the details and clipped the radio to his belt. He glanced in the side mirror and then back to the road. “Who are they?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look.” She dabbed at her cheek and winced. The blood was already drying on her face. “Why would men with automatic rifles be sneaking around in those woods?”
“A good question,” he said. “What’s up there?”
“Just another pasture. Oh, and a road. The tribe just improved it. It’s gravel now. They did a really nice job.”
“Why would the tribe improve a road going to pastureland?”
Izzie wrinkled her brow as she thought about that. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just an open field?” he asked.
“Well, there’s some dry fill up beyond the pasture, some digging. The tribe uses the dirt to fill holes. Maybe that’s why they need the road. To bring in bigger equipment?”
“Maybe.”
But he didn’t sound convinced, and his tone made her realize she should know what was happening on the land she leased. Izzie needed to get some answers.
Clay had sworn he’d never be back here.
But here he was, sitting in the police station interview room. The room that he had hoped to never see the inside of again. The very same room where he had been brought in handcuffs. Had it really been eight years? Seemed like yesterday.
Clay felt the sheen of cold sweat cover him, and he tried to tell himself that this was different.
Was it? Or was he in that kind of trouble all over again?
They had met the authorities at the bottom of the pasture. After the tribal police had cleared the scene and found no sign of the gunmen, one of Gabe’s officers had taken Clay’s rifle, and they had told Izzie that fifty-one of her cows had been impounded for trespass on tribal lands by a representative of the General Livestock Coordinator—in other words, by Clay. After hearing that news, Izzie hadn’t spoken to him once on the long drive to the station, and he expected that she’d never speak to him again. That realization was more disturbing than sitting in this damned room again.
But he hadn’t done anything wrong. Unless he had. You didn’t have to know it to have done it. He’d learned that lesson well enough. Maybe this was just like the last time, only it was Izzie setting him up. Letting the cows out, calling the manager’s number, drawing him into a gunfight.
No, that was just crazy, his stupid paranoid fears rearing up like a horse in the shoot at a rodeo. Tighten the cinch. Open the gate. Watch it buck. Eight seconds and all you could do was hold on. Clay held on now. He’d tried to make the right decisions. Tried to think before he acted. Tried not to take everything at face value, not be so gullible. But when he’d seen Izzie running for her life, he hadn’t thought about the consequences. He had just ridden full speed into gunfire.
Clay rested his head in his hands and drew a deep breath. He still felt sick to his stomach.
He’d asked Gabe to call his boss and tell him where he was. Clay knew that if there was even a whiff of misdeeds, Donner would fire him. He’d do anything to keep this job. Anything.
He’d been lucky to get hired in the first place—with unemployment so high on the Rez and so many men searching for honest work, men without his priors.
His younger brother, Kino, came in to speak to him. Kino had been on the force about a year, acting as a patrolman. It was something
