Lone Calder Star (Calder Saga 9)

Stunned, Boone threw her a shocked look, then yanked his gaze back to Quint. “That’s a damned lie. I never said anything of the kind.”

“Worried, are you?” Quint smiled with a cold kind of pleasure.

“No cattleman would mess around with anthrax.” Boone’s denial had all the readiness of something rehearsed.

“How true,” Dallas said in a voice brittle with control. “But the Rutledges stopped being cattlemen a long time ago.” She turned to Quint, her chin lifting fractionally. “Would you like to know why he hit me?”

A puzzled wariness leaped into his expression as if Quint sensed something amiss. “Why?”

“Because I refused to act as his spy and keep him informed about your plans the way I’ve done in the past.” She watched as his gray eyes narrowed on her with an intermixing of disbelief, anger, and pain. The sight was like a fist closing around her heart.

“She’s making the whole thing up,” Boone rushed in denial. “Everybody knows she’s been trying to make trouble for us ever since her grandfather lost his ranch.”

Quint unleashed the sharp edge of his temper on Boone. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you. Just get in your truck and get the hell out of here.”

Boone took a sideways step, hesitated, and pointed an accusing finger at Dallas. “I tell you she’s lying. You can’t trust anything she says.”

“I can’t trust you either,” Quint fired back. “Now get.”

Boone ran a calculating glance over Quint. Satisfied that he had planted all the doubt he could, he sidled clear of the white pickup and backed up a few steps before turning to his own pickup.

Dallas waited in silence, cold all over, but Quint never turned to her until Boone drove off. When he did, his gaze bored into her, demanding and probing.

“Is it true what you said? You’ve been feeding him information?” Disbelief lingered that she could have betrayed him like that.

The guilt of it weighed on her. “I intended to tell you before now, but…the time never seemed right,” Dallas admitted.

“But how? Why?” His voice was thick with anger.

“That day I came to the ranch and told you Boone made threats against Empty—that part was true. I knew I could never persuade my grandfather to quit working for you, so I did what I had to do to protect him.” It was an explanation. Pride wouldn’t let her beg for his understanding. “I hardly knew you then, Quint.”

He stared at her, wrapped in a fury and pain that ran deep and hot. Too hot. Not trusting himself to speak, Quint turned and walked back to the idling pickup, slipped behind the wheel, and slammed the door.

Dallas watched him drive off. There were always consequences to be faced with every action taken, but Dallas had never guessed there would be so much pain with this one.

Chapter Seventeen

The Cee Bar ranch yard was blessedly empty of other vehicles when Dallas drove in. She parked the old white pickup in front of the ranch house and climbed out, hastily scrubbing the dampness from her cheek with her hand.

But it didn’t seem to matter how many tears she wiped away; there was always another waiting to slither down her face. It was all part of the big, hollow ache in her chest.

Creaking door hinges came from the porch as Empty emerged from the house. “I’ll give you a hand bringing the groceries in.” Spindly but spry legs carried him quickly down the steps to the walkway.

Dallas pressed a quick finger to a corner of her eye, blotting away a gathering tear, and took a long galvanizing breath, steeling herself for this meeting with her grandfather. In an attempt at normalcy, she lowered the tailgate and went through the motions of dragging the sacks onto it.

But it was the reddening mark on her face from the hard blow Boone had given her, and not the dampness on her cheeks, that Empty’s sharp eyes noticed. His demand for an explanation was instant.

There was no longer anything to be gained by avoiding the truth, and Dallas didn’t try. She told him everything, omitting only Boone’s admission about the anthrax. The explosion that followed was one she had anticipated.

“You did what!” Empty thundered in outrage. Dallas didn’t bother to repeat it. He knew exactly what she’d said. “How could you do that? My own granddaughter siding with the Rutledges! By God, I oughta take a belt to you. What was going through that head of yours?”

“I explained that.” Dallas absorbed his wrath with remarkable stoicism, thanks to a pain of a different kind that had left her numb.

“To protect me!” The contempt in his voice told her exactly what he thought of that reasoning. “For your information, little lady, I’m not so old that I can’t look after myself. And I sure don’t need you stabbing me in the back while I’m trying. I tell you, it flat turns my stomach to think of my own flesh and blood doing the Rutledges’s bidding.”

“Not anymore,” Dallas reminded him. “I told Boone that he’d received the last information from me that he was ever going to get.”

“A little late, wasn’t it?” Empty snapped.