Currently, his grandfather’s attention was centered on his daughter-in-law, Jessy Calder, who, under Chase’s able tutelage, had been running the Triple C for the last twenty-odd years since her husband’s death. Jessy sat on a corner of the desk, her boy-slim body angled toward Chase. She swiveled to face the doorway when she heard Quint’s footsteps.
“We were just talking about you, Quint.” In a single, fluid motion, Jessy straightened up from the desk.
“Mom said you wanted to see me.” Quint swept off his hat and walked the rest of the way into the room, dividing his curious glance between the two of them. But there was little that could be read from their expressions. “What’s up?”
“That’s what we want you to find out,” Jessy stated. “How soon can you be packed?”
Quint halted in surprise. “To go where?”
“Texas. We’ve been leaving messages at the Cee Bar for the last week, but none of our calls were returned. Today I asked the sheriff down there to check it out. I got off the phone with him just a few minutes ago. There was no one at the ranch—and no one had been there for at least a week, as near as his men could tell.”
Quint frowned. “I thought you hired somebody from the outside to manage the operation at the Cee Bar.”
Jessy released a half-irritated sigh and nodded. “Sam Evans, by name. We hired him about a year and a half ago.”
“Have you had any problems with him before now?” Quint asked, following his first thought.
“Not with Sam,” Jessy replied without any hesitation. “Although the last few months he has complained that all his hired help kept walking out on him after only a few days’ work.” Her shoulders moved in a vague shrug of confusion. “I don’t know. Maybe he got tired of doing all the work by himself and quit without bothering to notify us.”
There was something in the inflection of her voice that told Quint she didn’t totally believe that. “You think that would be out of character for him, don’t you?” he guessed.
Jessy’s innate sense of practicality surfaced. “It doesn’t matter what I think. The fact remains he’s gone—bag and baggage, according to the sheriff,” she added. “We need you to fly down there and take charge of the ranch until we can hire someone else.”
“If that’s what you want, I can be packed and ready in an hour,” Quint stated, then cocked his head at a puzzled and inquiring angle. “But why me? We all know there are any number of men here at the Triple C who have more ranching experience than I do.”
The question was directed at Jessy, but it was Chase who answered, “Back in June, Max Rutledge offered to buy the Cee Bar. I turned him down flat. Shortly after that, Evans started having trouble keeping help. It could be just a coincidence. But my gut tells me it isn’t.”
Max Rutledge. Quint knew the name well. He had met Max’s son and heir, Boone Rutledge, during Boone’s very brief engagement to Quint’s cousin Laura, but he knew Max mostly by reputation. And it was a ruthless one.
The Texan was reportedly worth millions, thanks to his vast petroleum and banking investments. And numbered among his many holdings was the Rutledge family ranch, which just happened to border the Cee Bar.
Quint understood that it was a troubleshooter they wanted more than someone with ranching skills. In that he was uniquely qualified, considering that until a few months ago, he’d been an ATF agent for the Treasury Department. And it was that background in law enforcement they wanted.
“I’ll have the twin-engine fueled and waiting for you,” Jessy said and reached for the phone.
Winter pressed an early darkness over the Texas landscape. The cold front had passed on through the area, taking the clouds with it and leaving a bright glitter of stars in the evening sky.
The headlight beams on Quint’s rental car illuminated the two-lane highway in front of him. At this hour there was little traffic on it, and nearly all of it headed in the opposite direction. As he rounded a bend in the road, Quint noticed a cluster of lights in the near distance that looked to be a mixture of streetlamps and partially lit buildings. According to the directions Jessy had given him, he was to pass through the small town of Loury, Texas, before he reached the Cee Bar.
Within minutes, the city limit sign loomed along the shoulder and Quint reduced the car’s speed to match the posted number. The two-lane road cut straight through the center of town. Block buildings, some with brick facades and others with modern awnings, marked the town’s business district. Most of the buildings stood empty, a few of them with optimistic FOR LEASE signs displayed in their dusty storefront windows.
In all there weren’t more than a half dozen vehicles parked along the street, and a majority of those were in front of a well-lit building on the corner. A large sign above its long windows aptly identified the place as the Corner Café. In big, bold letters painted on the glass, it advertised HOME-COOKED MEALS.
Knowing that it was unlikely there would be anything edible at the ranch, Quint decided to grab something to eat now and save himself a trip back to town. He found an empty parking slot in front of an adjacent building and pulled into it.
There were only five other customers in the restaurant when Quint walked in. Out of habit born of his previous training, he let his glance touch each of them, automatically committing their faces to memory. An elderly couple sat in a side booth, sharing a sandwich, while a rear table was occupied by three men dressed in cowboy hats, pearl-snapped shirts, and faded jeans. Two of them were hunched over their coffee both noting his arrival with idle glances, while the third was busy making short work of a cream pie.
All the stools along the short counter were empty except for the one on the far end. A girl in a waitress’ apron was perched on it, an opened textbook on the counter in front of her along with a spiral notebook.
Quint opted for one of the tables closer to the front of the café, pulling out a chair that gave him a view of both the door and his fellow customers. As Quint took his seat, the waitress threw him a distracted glance, reluctantly pushed the book back a notch, and slid sideways off the stool, giving Quint a glimpse of her long hair, fastened together at the nape of her neck with a tortoiseshell clasp. Under the glow of the fluorescent lights, it was the same shiny color of a new penny. He didn’t see anything to change his opinion when she approached his table, an attractive girl, on the young side, not over seventeen.
She placed a glass of water on the table and looked him in the eye, studying him with the idle curiosity of a local toward a stranger in town. For the first time Quint noticed the unusual light brown color of her eyes, neither hazel nor golden, but a startling tan.
“Would you like some coffee while you’re looking over the menu?” There was an automatic quality to the question that came from frequent usage.
“I’ll take coffee and tonight’s special.”
“You mean the meat loaf?” She gave him a look that clearly questioned his judgment. “Bad choice. You can’t pour enough ketchup on Tub’s meat loaf to make it taste good.” There wasn’t a trace of malice or derision in her statement. On the contrary, it came across as a good-natured warning.
Quint couldn’t help smiling. “What would you suggest then?”
She responded with a
