Blood soaked the multicolored saddle blanket and dripped to the ground below. “Holy smokes, Lady. What the hell happened?”
Jennie led the horse to the nearest tree, tied her up, giving her very little slack from her head to the tree. Skimming her fingers along the horse’s neck, she worked her hands over to the saddle, the source of the horse’s obvious pain.
What was causing the bleeding? Lady had been fine when she’d saddled up less than fifteen minutes earlier.
She laid the stirrup gently over the top of the saddle, talking to the horse the entire time. With one hand she loosened the cinch strap and pulled it free. Using as much care as she could muster, Jennie eased the saddle from the horse’s back, lifting it straight up and off. Lady leaned hard against the reins, swinging her backside away from Jennie and the saddle.
The sheepskin lining on the underside of the saddle was soaked in blood as was the blanket still on the horse’s back.
When Jennie lifted the blanket, Lady whimpered, her ears laid back and her withers twitched. Jutting out of the middle of a bloody patch was the metal corner of a razor blade.
“Oh my God.” No wonder Lady tried to throw her. The entire time she’d been riding, the razor dug deeper into the horse’s flesh. Lady’s back was clean when she’d tossed the blanket over her in the barn.
Jennie raised the blanket and found a cut in the middle where the razor had sliced through. An inspection of the saddle revealed another cut buried in the sheepskin underside.
They didn’t use razor blades in the barn and none of the ranch hands shaved anywhere near the horses.
Then how the hell did the blade end up in her saddle?
Leaving the saddle and blanket on the ground, Jennie untied Lady and led her back toward the barn. She’d return later for the saddle and blanket. First, she needed to tend to her horse’s injury, and then she’d find out what happened.
As she walked, she pondered the conundrum of the razor blade. They had no reason to store razor blades in the tack room. How could it have gotten in there and under her saddle? The saddle normally rested on a saddletree inside the tack room. A razor blade would have fallen off. Could someone have intentionally planted the razor in her saddle? The idea made her sick to her stomach. Who would be so cruel to a horse? Another thought followed close behind the first. Had someone intended to hurt her?
If so, why? There had to be a logical explanation. Who would want to hurt her? She didn’t have any enemies except the Morgans and they stayed on their ranch. For the past ten years, not a single Morgan dared cross the boundaries between the Flying W and the Bar M. The only person who’d ever wanted to hurt her was her ex-husband, and he was dead.
Chapter One
Cameron Morgan pulled his cowboy hat from his head, leaned his eye against the scanner next to the door and waited for the green light to pan across his eyeball. When the lock clicked open, he straightened and stepped through the heavy glass doors into the spacious offices of Prescott Personal Securities. After being gone for the past month on assignment, he felt as if he was coming home. He inhaled, expecting the soothing scents of eucalyptus and furniture polish. Instead, an acrid aroma stung his nostrils.
“Hi, Angel,” he said to the receptionist behind the bleached pine countertop. Cameron wrinkled his nose. “Was there a chemical spill somewhere?”
Angel, the street punk adopted by the agency’s owner out of some attempt at being charitable, rolled her eyes. “’Sup?” She barely looked up as she smacked her gum between black lipstick-covered lips while she painted another coat of dead black polish on her clawlike fingernails.
Cameron wrinkled his nose. Ah, the source of the odor. “Do you have to do that here?”
She answered by raising her brows. No wonder memos from Angel were often misspelled and calls were misdirected. With nails like that, she couldn’t possibly hit the right keys on the computer keyboard or the telephone switchboard. Despite the everything-black, Goth look, she showed an occasional spark of intelligence that invariably took everyone by surprise and she was puppy-dog loyal to the boss.
“Any messages?” he asked.
“Give me a few, and I’ll check.” She capped the fingernail polish and shook her hands, blowing on the wet paint.
“A few” meant some time in the next hour or two—if she remembered after the paint fumes subsided and her brain activity reengaged.
Cameron shook his head and continued on to his office.
Before he’d gone five steps, Angel called out, “Hey, wait. I was supposed to tell you something.”
Perhaps the cloud of vapor had cleared and she was remembering. Cameron turned and smiled, encouraging the young woman.
Her pale forehead wrinkled and her thickly lined eyes squinted to slits. “Oh, yeah, the boss wants you in the conference room.”
“When?” Cameron tapped his Stetson against his thigh.
She stopped chewing her gum long enough to snort and say, “Like, now. I believe her words were ASAP.” She resumed blowing on her nails and smacking her gum.
Letters. A S A and P are letters. Cameron inhaled and blew out a calming stream of air before he smiled again. This wasn’t the first time Angel had delayed an urgent message or misdirected a memo. He couldn’t even count the number of times they’d had to call the repairman to fix the copier after she’d done whatever she did to break it. One of the machine mechanics had gone so far as to nickname her the Angel of Death. “Thanks, Angel. What would we all do without you?” Hire a real secretary?
“I don’t know, but you better hurry,” she said without looking up.
When Cameron entered the conference room, every gaze turned toward him. Four other agents sat around the table and an elegant blonde stood at the head. He nodded toward his friend, Jack Sanders, seated to his left and then fixed his attention on the woman standing, Evangeline Prescott, head of Prescott Personal Securities. “You wanted to see me?”
With her long blond hair pulled back in a French twist and wearing a medium gray skirt suit, Evangeline was a cool professional with a warm smile. She looked much better than she had when she’d first lost her husband in a plane crash two years ago. Perhaps she was finally moving on.
Evangeline stood with a laser pointer resting in her palm and her back turned to a projected view of a map depicting the state of Colorado. With a brief smile she nodded toward a seat. “Good. You got my message. If you’ll take a seat, I’ll explain why you’re here.” She nodded, the few curls that had managed to escape bobbed with the motion. “Remember the disk that arrived at the office during the Nick Warner case?”
The head of Prescott Personal Securities made it a point to keep all bodyguards abreast of the caseload. Cameron nodded.
“Cassie deciphered the codes and she’s been working with Lenny to figure out what exactly we have and what it means.”
“How’s that going?” Cameron glanced from Cassie, who hadn’t looked up yet, to William Lennard, affectionately nicknamed Lenny, the group’s incredibly adept techno geek.
“Good, Cam,
