Undercover Hunter(64)
“Well...” She hesitated. “Some were, of course. With some guys it was just youthful testosterone, you know? I don’t think they were really aware of it. Most kept in line the way they would with their sisters or I wouldn’t have stayed in for so long. Occasionally, I had to prove I had brass cojones, or that I could outfight them. I learned a lot.”
“I hope some of them did, too.”
She laughed. “You bet they did.” She lifted an arm as if flexing his biceps. “Like I said, it’s mostly muscle. But there was a lot of quick thinking involved, too. If I could defuse a situation, I would. I didn’t have anything to prove, really. Except to a few idiots, anyway.”
He nodded, sipping coffee and leaning back with a contented sigh. “At first when we got together, you seemed loaded for bear. I was wondering how we’d get along.”
“I was awful and I know it. But you seemed so reluctant to work with me I thought you might fall in the classification of misogynist. So I was protecting my turf in advance, I guess you could say.”
“Your point was taken. But the truth is, I’m not a misogynist. Never was. My mother would have kicked me from one end of the barnyard to the other. Or my dad would have. Funny story.”
She leaned toward him eagerly. “Yes?”
“When I was about nine or so I was all full of being a guy. Hanging out with the guys around the ranch, picking up a lot of bad habits. Anyway, one night my mom wasn’t feeling well and my dad told me to do the dishes. Macho idiot that I was, I announced that was woman’s work.”
“Ooh.” She couldn’t help smiling.
“My dad read me the riot act and made me do the dishes for the next month. One thing he said really stuck—There’s no men’s work, there’s no women’s work, there’s only honest work.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
He half smiled. “He’d have liked you. He wanted to hire a woman to help with the horses, but the ranch owner wouldn’t hear of it. Dad fumed for days. A man ahead of his times, I guess.”
“He raised a good son.”
“Time will tell. Okay, then, do we work or play?”
She thought longingly of climbing back into the bed with him, accompanied by discomfort as she realized how close she had let him come. But apart from that, the inescapable reason for their presence here wouldn’t let her go. Somehow they had to get ahead of this killer. Find some key, some way, to get at him.
“Are you asking me what I want or what I think we should do?” she finally said.
He sighed and straightened in his chair. “That was my answer.” He reached for the files and pulled them back to the middle of the table. “You found one clue we missed, that web thing. Let’s see if either of us can find another.”
“I wish I could get online. I’d be studying the habits of spiders.”
“I think you already gave us a lot. I agree, he knows these kids. They trust him. That last boy had probably confided that his dad was going to pick him up after school. For most kids, that would be a special event, rather than taking the bus. Maybe they even planned to stop somewhere and get a treat. Whatever it was, our killer knew about it. I think you’re a hundred percent right about that.”
She looked down at the papers beneath her fingertips. “It could be a cop.” She hated to say the words, but the possibility couldn’t be ignored.