The thought reminded him of the woman who ran the saloon, Jenny Spencer. Cain remembered Jenny from high school. Petite and always smiling, she was popular with the kids in school. He’d noticed her one day when one of the football jocks had been picking on a boy named Felipe, a Latino kid about half the guy’s size.
Jenny had gotten right in the jock’s face and warned him he’d better back off or else. The jock and his buddies had laughed their asses off, but they’d left Jenny and the kid alone.
She’d only been a freshman, way too young for him. He’d been a real bad boy in those days, hung out with an ugly crowd, but he never would have hurt an innocent young girl.
Jenny was no longer a kid. With her curly brown hair and big green eyes, she was even prettier than she had been in school. Her figure had matured from girl to woman, which made him think about her in a way he hadn’t back then. She still had that girl-next-door appearance, and she still intrigued him.
Cain was now a respectable citizen, and after her divorce, Jenny was available. He wanted to find out more about her than the gossip he had heard, to satisfy his curiosity if nothing else.
He was meeting her at five o’clock tomorrow. Meeting her, not picking her up. The feisty young woman she had been before was still there.
Cain smiled.
It was an hour later that he arrived at his destination, the Cross Bar Ranch, the sixteen-hundred-acre property he had purchased two years ago. He owned a house in Scottsdale, not far from Barrett Enterprises, and a condo in Vegas, but the ranch felt like home, the first real one he’d ever had.
White fences surrounded the main house, as well as the barns, alfalfa fields, and pastures where a herd of purebred Black Angus cattle grazed. Turning into the fence-lined lane that led to the sprawling single-story, Spanish-style home, Cain spotted a white sheriff’s SUV with gold lettering on the side parked out front.
Deputy Sheriff Hank Landry stood on the front porch talking to his housekeeper, Maria Delgado, a short woman, twenty pounds overweight, with straight black hair worn in a single long braid. She did the housework and cooked for him, but returned to her husband at night. Cain was fortunate to have her.
Maria pointed the deputy in Cain’s direction and closed the front door, leaving the situation to him.
“Deputy Landry,” Cain said as he climbed down from the truck. “I hope you’ve brought good news.” Landry was lean, in his early fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He was relatively new to the area, having worked in the Sheriff’s Department for less than six months.
“Just wanted you to know we did as you asked,” Landry said. “Took a couple of deputies and went out to have another look at the pasture where you said the horse went missing.”
“And?”
“It’s rained since you first reported the incident. Any vehicle tracks were washed away. The department has put out a bulletin on the theft, but so far nothing useful’s been reported.”
“That’s too bad. Looks like you wasted a trip.”
“Didn’t want you to think we weren’t doing our job.”
“Of course not,” Cain said, with a hint of sarcasm the deputy missed. He wasn’t happy with the effort the Sheriff’s Department had put out so far. Or maybe it was just Landry, who was in charge of the district.
“I’ll let you know if anything breaks on the case,” the deputy said.
“I’d appreciate it.” Cain watched as Landry turned and headed for his SUV.
So far he wasn’t a fan. Their conversation had left him exactly where he’d been before. Minus a half-million-dollar championship cutting-horse stallion that had disappeared without a trace.
The horse belonged to him, and Cain kept what was his. It was time he did a little investigating of his own.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WAS A STEEP WALK UPHILLSTREET, A THIRD OF A MILE TO THEGrandview Hotel. Jenny crossed the parking lot, climbed the tall concrete front steps, and pushed open the door.
Cain Barrett stood in the middle of the room in conversation with one of the men in the construction crew. With his height and muscular, broad-shouldered build, the man was impossible to miss. Jenny had to admit he looked good in a pair of black jeans and a white dress shirt rolled up to the elbows.
On one sinewy forearm, a tattoo disappeared beneath the crisp white fabric. There were ugly scars on the backs of his hands that she had noticed when Cain had been sitting across from her at the bar. A pair of low-topped leather work boots covered his big feet.
Jenny had googled Cain Barrett that afternoon, found article after article written about him, the rags-to-riches story of a man who had come from nothing and become a multimillionaire. Cain had been abandoned as a child and was raised by his grandmother, whom he credited with making him the success he was today.
The article told how Cain had been a high school dropout until Nell Barrett had persuaded him to return to school. He had finally graduated, taken a small grubstake, all Nell could afford to give him, and set out to make his fortune. Which he had done in spectacular fashion.
After years of backbreaking labor in a series of Arizona mines, Cain had partnered with Barton Harwell, a fellow miner a few years older and more experienced. Together, they started prospecting on their days off. During their hunt for gold—the ore most miners hoped to find—they purchased half a dozen abandoned mining leases.
They worked the leases for three years before Harwell got discouraged and sold his half interest to Cain, who kept on working the claims.
