Chapter One
“Mal, are you sure this is a good idea?”
Mallory Quinn let out a hard sigh and shot her best friend Mike “Kid” Shorter a pointed look. “We’ve already been through this. My source—”
“How do we know we can trust him? Even you admit that you don’t know the guy. Don’t you think it’s kind of suspicious that he’s so willing to squeal on his neighbor?”
The thought had occurred to her, but she couldn’t simply discount the man’s claims. “My source is a rancher, too. Who better to know what’s going on? He said they’re raising the cattle and knowingly sending them off to a slaughterhouse that uses inhumane methods of putting them down. If we can’t get people to stop eating meat, the least we can do is to make sure that the companies providing the meat are doing so according to the government’s guidelines.”
Mallory loved all kinds of animals. She couldn’t think about hurting any living thing. However, she was also practical and realized that it was a fact of life that most people ate meat. If she couldn’t change an entire country’s attitude about feeding off other living creatures, then she’d at least make sure the killing of the food source was as humane as it could be. Her job as a bank teller was mind numbing. Her work as an animal activist excited and fulfilled her. She and Kid, who worked as a teller in the same bank, often took their vacation time to travel around the country and check out rumors of inhumane cattle treatment.
“I agree, but your source is the neighboring rancher. Don’t you think there might be a conflict of interest? That maybe he has something to gain from telling lies about these guys who run the Triple X Ranch? Maybe they’re competing for the same water source. Or hung up on the same woman. You never know what that guy’s motives might be for squealing.”
The Triple X Ranch. The name alone would’ve caught her attention, even without her source telling her about their shady practices. Why would anyone give their ranch that name? Unless, of course, they had other shady things going on. That, however, wasn’t any of her concern.
“The same woman? Kid, I think you’ve been reading too many romance novels.”
Yet she had to admit, even if only to herself, that Kid could be right. The man who’d contacted them through her website and had talked them into coming out to the middle of Nowhere, Texas, had seemed a little odd. He’d had amber-flecked eyes and overly large teeth. Teeth large enough to be called fangs. But she couldn’t judge her sources by their looks, could she?
Kid shook his head, sending his long, red ponytail flipping across his lower neck. At two hundred and fifty pounds and standing six feet, five inches tall, Kid wouldn’t get lost in a crowd. Yet although he was bigger than anyone Mallory had ever seen, he was also the sweetest, gentlest man she’d ever known. They’d met at the bank, which hired both of them at the same time, and they’d become fast friends overnight. If he hadn’t been gay, she might’ve thought about a different kind of relationship. She’d given him his nickname, calling him Kid like he was her kid brother, to remind herself that he wasn’t sexually available to her.
“I don’t think that’s the case. Most ranchers are friendly with their neighbors, so it’s telling that he told us about them.” She took a good, hard look at the herd grazing in the pasture. They didn’t appear mistreated, but then again, they weren’t only talking about mistreatment on the ranch, but at the slaughterhouse the ranch sent its cattle to. Granted, the cattlemen weren’t in control there, but didn’t they have a responsibility of knowing what methods were used? Unless, as she suspected, they didn’t care. That alone made them culpable.
“Look, Kid, if you don’t want to be a part of this, it’s fine. Head back to the van and I’ll get the job done without you.”
He frowned, turning his big, lovable mug into the face that reminded her of a bulldog. “I can’t let you do this alone. But let’s get going, okay? The sooner we get this done, the sooner we find a hotel with a hot shower.”
His beefy hands took hold of the barbed wire and spread the dangerous lines apart. After dropping the paint cans and brushes on the other side of the fence, Mal eased her body between the barbs and into the pasture. She turned, and with heavy gloves on, took the wire from him.
“Do you think you can get through without getting caught?”
Kid eyed the small space and shook his head. “Not a chance.” He held up his finger. “But I think I’ve got another way.”