After a quick nod, she turned and headed for the glass doors, and Deacon put his headset on, then stabbed at the starter. He hadn’t stepped foot in River Black in fifteen years, but he’d planned for his return every day since. While he built an empire, bought companies and ripped them apart only to rebuild and sell, he contemplated the steps he would need to see his ultimate goal realized.
Now the time had come to put that plan into action.
As the blades turned and the engine hummed beneath him, Deacon pulled up on the collective. Once he was at a proper height, he gripped the stick and sent the chopper forward, leaving the glass-and-metal world of the Cavanaugh Towers for the dangerous, rural beauty of the home he planned to destroy.
Mac thundered across the earth on Gypsy, the black Overo gelding who didn’t much enjoy working cows, but lived for speed. Especially when there was a mare on his heels.
“Is the tractor already there?” Mac called over her shoulder to Blue.
Her second in command, and the one cowboy on the ranch who seemed to share her brain in how things should be run, brought his Red Roan, Barbarella, up beside her.
“Should be,” he said, his dusty white Stetson casting a shadow over half his Hollywood-handsome face.
“Any idea how long she’s been stuck?” Mac asked as the hot wind lashed over her skin.
“Overnight, most like.”
“How deep?”
“With the amount of rain we got last night, I can’t imagine it’s more than a couple feet.”
In all the years she’d been doing this ride and rescue, she’d prayed the cow would still be breathing by the time she got there. But never had she prayed for a speedy excavation.
“Of all the days for this to happen,” she called over the wind.
Blue turned and flashed her a broad grin, his striking eyes matching the perfect summer blue sky. “Ranch life don’t stop for a funeral, Mac. Not even for Everett’s.”
The mention of Everett Cavanaugh, her mentor, and her best friend’s father, made Mac’s gut twist. He was gone. The ranch was without a patriarch now, its future in the hands of lawyers. God only knew what that would mean, for her, for Blue. For everyone in River Black who counted on the Triple C for their livelihood.
“Giddyup, Gyps!” she called, giving her horse a kick as she spotted the watering hole in the distance.
She had two hours to get the cow freed before showing up spit polished at the church. And she refused to be late.
With Blue just a hair behind her, Mac raced toward the hole and the groaning cow, reining in her horse right next to the promised tractor. Tipping her hat back, she eyed the freshly dug trench lined with a wood ramp. Frank had done a damn fine job, she thought. Maybe the cowboy was thinking the same way she was. They needed this done right quick.
She nodded her approval to the muddy eighteen-year-old cowboy as Blue’s horse snorted and jerked her head from the abrupt change of pace. “Leaving us the best part, eh, Frank?” she said, slipping from the saddle with a grin.
The cowboy lifted his head and grinned. “I know you appreciate working the hind end, foreman.”
“Better than actually being the hind end, Frank,” Mac shot back before slipping on her gloves and walking into the thick black muck.
“She got you there, cowboy.” Blue chuckled as he grabbed the strap from the cab of the tractor and tossed it to Mac.
“Get up on the Kioti, Frank,” Mac called to the cowboy. “This poor girl’s looking panicky, and we got a funeral to go to. I’d at least like to shower before I head to the church.”
As Frank climbed up onto the tractor, Blue and Mac worked with the cargo strap, sliding it down the cow’s back to her rump. While Mac held it in place, whispering encouragement to the cow, Blue attached both sides of the strap to the tractor.
“All right,” Mac called. “Go slow and gentle, Frank. She’s not all that deep, but even so, the suction’s going to put a lot of pressure on her legs.”
As Blue moved around the cow’s rear, Mac joined him, and as Frank started the tractor forward, the two of them pushed. A deep wail sounded from the cow, followed by a sucking sound as she tried to pull her feet out of the muck.
“Come on, girl,” Mac uttered, using her shoulder to push the cow’s hind end, leaning in, digging her boots in further.
Blue grunted beside her. “Give it a little more gas, Frank!” he called out. “On three, Mac, okay? One. Two. Push fucking hard.”
With every ounce of strength, Mac pushed. It seemed like minutes, hours, but it was only seconds before the sucking sounds of hooves pulling from mud rent the air, and the cow found her purchase. Groaning, she clambered onto the wood boards. Maybe she was too fast and Mac wasn’t expecting it. Maybe Mac’s boots were just too deeply embedded in the mud. Whatever the reason, when the cow lurched forward, so did Mac. Knees and palms hitting the wet black earth in a resounding splat.
“She’s out!” Frank called.
“No shit,” Mac said, laughing, grabbing Blue’s extended and muddy hand, and pulling herself up.
“Good thing you have time for that shower.” Blue barely got that out before breaking into laughter.
She lifted a brow at his clothes caked in mud, sticking to his tall, lean-muscled frame. “Not you. You’re all set. Why don’t you head over to the church right now?”
“I can’t go like this, Mac,” he said, starting out of the mud hole, wiping his hands on his jeans.
Mac followed him. “What do you mean? You look perfect to me.”
Blue took off his Stetson, revealing his short black hair. “I need a different hat. This one’s dirty.”
Mac broke out into another bout of laughter.
Overhead, the sound of a helicopter stole both their laughter and their attention.
Frank looked up from tending to the exhausted cow, and shaded his eyes. “What the hell’s that?”
Mac lifted her face to the gleaming helicopter, with a last name she recognized painted on the side in expensive platinum lettering. Damn, doesn’t it figure? Covered in cow shit, smelling like a sewer, and he picks now to make his grand entrance.
Turning away, she refused to care.
“That’d be trouble,” Blue said in a quiet, stern voice.
“You don’t say,” Frank answered.
“Deacon Cavanaugh’s come home to bury his daddy,” Mac reminded them.
“And maybe bury us right along with it.” Blue’s tone carried a heavy warning.
Mac refused to go there. Unlike Blue, she knew the history with Deacon, his father, and the Triple C. Shoot, she knew that all the Cavanaugh brothers had endured their share of misery before they’d left home for good. Come to that, so had she.
With every rotation of the chopper blades, memories assaulted her: The day Cass had been taken, the night law enforcement had told them all they believed she was murdered, and the morning they all sat in the very same church Everett Cavanaugh would be eulogized in today, their lives changed for good.
But while the boys had wanted out, Mac hadn’t been able to leave, couldn’t abandon the ghost of her friend. And no matter what Deacon Cavanaugh was coming armed with, no matter how many millions he tossed their way, she wasn’t leaving the Cavanaugh Cattle Company.
Snapping out of her troubling thoughts, she got back to work. “Let’s get this cow home,” she called to the cowboys. “Let’s do the jobs we’re being paid to do, then go pay our last respects to our boss and friend, Everett Cavanaugh.”
