Rancher's Deadly Risk (21 page)

An odd thing happened as they were wrapping up the presentation that afternoon. It was as if her brain had refused to process all that had happened on Friday: the shoving she had endured when they were dancing, the vandalism of her car. Maybe she’d been refusing to accept a lot since she’d found that rat on her desk.

Whatever, a shell seemed to break and it all hit her and hit her hard, as if she’d been living in a fantasy where these things only appeared to be happening. But they were actually happening. Really and truly.

She knew when she went home, whether later today or tomorrow, she was going to be alone with a fear she didn’t want to recognize, had indeed been sublimating for the most part.

She had been in some kind of denial, and now denial deserted her.

Breathing became suddenly difficult. She bent over at the table, wrapping her arms around herself, battling down a tide made of equal parts rage and fear.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed.

“Cassie? What’s wrong?”

“I think...it just hit me. All of it.” She had to squeeze the words out as if she were using the last oxygen in the room. Afternoon light was turning golden. The wind still moaned occasionally from outside, but there was no air inside. None. She felt her brain begin to swim.

Linc was suddenly beside her, pressing her shoulders. “Get your head down,” he ordered, but gently. “Put it down.”

The table was in the way. She felt him turn her chair with surprising strength, then press again until her head met her knees. She gasped for air, feeling her gorge rise at the sickening accumulation of things she had been trying not to think about.

He rubbed her back as she remained bowed over. “I wondered,” he said. “You were entirely too calm on Friday. I wondered when this was going to hit you.”

She couldn’t believe it had taken this long. Memories surged, filling her mind’s eye. The rat. The Carney family at the hospital, her car, the confrontations, even that phone call. One thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t feel safe. No, she was scared. Everything that had happened was such an overreaction to detentions that at last it really began to terrify her.

Whoever was behind some of this was unhinged.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “He’s sick!”

“Sick?” He was still rubbing her back gently. “The guy who vandalized your car?”

“And killed that rat.”

He was silent a for a few seconds, then pulled a chair over so that he sat beside her. He resumed rubbing her back gently. “It did cross my mind,” he admitted. “It’s so out of proportion.”

At last she was able to suck in a full lungful of air and then another. But the sick feeling and the fear hadn’t fled.

She straightened slowly, realizing that her world had altered yet again. Making love with Linc, discovering so much passion and delight, had been an earthquake by itself. But now she was having another one.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I’ve been trying to put it in the category of stupid pranks.” Her gaze tracked to him. “All of a sudden I can’t do that anymore. Tell me I’m overreacting.”

He hesitated visibly. “I can’t do that. I wish I could. But even if there’s only the merest possibility—and I admit it crossed my mind—it would be really stupid not to be cautious. That’s why I didn’t want you to be alone. Partly because I was worried about when this would hit you, and partly because I can’t be a hundred percent certain it’s not going to escalate.”

“Then why did you suggest taking me home?”

“Because you have a right to make your own decisions. If you wanted to get home, I’d take you.”

She closed her eyes, trying to absorb what felt like a series of blows: realizing that all that stuff last week had been real, that her car was still sitting in her driveway with flat tires, one of which had been punctured, that there really had been a butchered rat on her desk, that a lot of people seemed to be angry with her for turning over the rock under which bullies hid...and that Linc’s sole reason for bringing her out here this weekend was protective.

Man. Had she been using his attention as a distraction? Or had she been totally distracted by his attention? And how could she have so minimized the threatening actions against her? The flickers of fear that had penetrated before were nothing like the full-scale epic of horror and guilt she was feeling right now.

“Cassie?”

It was a question of some sort, but he didn’t say what he wanted to know. Maybe it was just a check to see if she were still alive and breathing. Which seemed to be the main part of his interest in her.

He’d offered to take her home, saying it had to be her decision. Nice, except now she was wondering if he thought she hadn’t liked his lovemaking and just wanted to get out of here. Or if he was looking for nice ways to get rid of her.

On top of everything else that had just come home in a gut way, she felt too confused to sort anything out. Someone wanted to hurt her. Of that she was now fairly certain. But there was no way to know how far he or she might go. Maybe they just wanted her to quit and leave town. Maybe it would stop there. Or maybe they had some kind of real grudge she couldn’t begin to imagine.

“Damn it!” The words exploded out of her as everything coalesced into anger. Anger at least wasn’t confused and she almost welcomed it. Rising, she hugged herself and started to pace the length of the kitchen.

“What?” he asked.

“Do you even need me to explain?”

“Probably not,” he admitted, “but you might as well get it all out. It usually feels better.”

“That depends on how I get it out. Something like this creep is doing...” She let go of that thought, focusing instead on something else.

“Okay, I’m scared. It might not stop with the car. Best case, this creep leaves me alone, having made his statement of disapproval. Or maybe because word of James’s suicide attempt is probably getting around. You’d have to be a cretin not to climb back under your rock in the face of that.”

“You’d think.”

“Assuming, of course, that people know it might have been associated with him being bullied.”

“We know it was. His family knows. They’ve certainly been talking, and we’re going to talk about it at the assembly.”

“But that assumes whoever is trying to get me to quit and leave town hasn’t got some other axe to grind. Or isn’t just out-of-control nuts. And frankly, reacting this way to detentions is so over-the-top. That’s what’s scaring me. Even one of the student’s own mothers just wanted to defend her son. All she did was confront me in the parking lot and insist her son couldn’t have done anything wrong. I’ve faced that before, I’ll face it again. That’s within the realm of normal reaction. Even the pushing while we were dancing. That was just some people who wanted me to be aware they didn’t think that was enough to merit action. I don’t think it’s associated with the other stuff at all, like the phone call, or the rat and my car. Those exceed a typical response.”

“I agree,” he said quietly.

She paused her pacing and looked at him. Why did he have to be so gorgeous that she kept wanting to forget everything else? “What you said about the basketball championship. Could somebody really get this heated over something like that?”

“Heated, yes. Enough to make you feel threatened? Not most people.”

She nodded. “I agree. But I don’t have the pulse of this place the way you do.”

“Well,” he said dryly, “I do believe most of us left the Wild West and showdowns at high noon behind us.”

That caused her a pang. “I wasn’t trying to insult your neighbors. It’s just that last week you said...”

“I know what I said. I was trying to explain why people might be upset that a star basketball player could be unable to play if he gets another detention. What I said about the rat...” He shook his head. “Cassie, I wasn’t trying to minimize it, not really. Yes, kids here are more used to that kind of thing because of hunting and ranching, but to do something like that to send a message...” Again he shook his head. “I just didn’t want you worrying needlessly if that was the end of it. Clearly that’s not the end.”

“So you were just trying to reassure me?”

“Yeah. I was worried about it at the time, and I’m still worried.”

“I’m a big girl,” she said sharply. “Don’t try to shield me or brush things off.”

“I’m sorry.”

But she didn’t want him to be sorry. He was a naturally protective man as she had learned this past week. It had probably been instinctive for him to not want her to get too upset without further cause. “Don’t apologize. Just don’t do it again.”

“Fair enough. So where does this get us? Are you going to pack and leave for other parts?”

“No.” Of that much she was certain. She might be frightened of where this could go. Clearly she was the target of someone who was angry with her. But how much of a threat was he? She fought to tamp down the morass of fear that tried to rise again.

Slowly she returned to the table and sat. “I’m mad. I’m stubborn. I’m not going to be pushed around by some coward who makes anonymous phone calls, slashes my tires and uses a dead rat to get his point across. What’s more, I was really starting to like this town.”

“And?” he asked.

“I’m staying. I’m going to ride it out. I’m not going to turn tail.”

“It could get dangerous. I can’t promise you it won’t. Not after two very obvious threats of violence, that rat and your car.”

“They’re probably just threats,” she said decisively. “But even if they aren’t I’m staying. I’m going to keep working to put an end to bullying, and to teach my students the best that I can. I absolutely refuse to give in to a bully, and that’s what this guy is.”

“Then you’d better get ready to have me around a lot until we’re sure this is over.”

“I can deal with that.” Which was a rather offhand way of skirting the truth: she
wanted
him around. Giving herself an inward shake, she told herself to focus on work, on her job, on her students. It had saved her before.

Chapter 9

T
hey made love again that night, but only once. Cassie didn’t know if she imagined that Linc seemed a little withdrawn, but she knew she was tightening into her protective shell again. The passion filled her with melancholy even as it carried her to heights of delight. Barriers that were at least partly hers, and perhaps partly his, seemed to be rising again.

The feeling stayed with her as he took her home in the morning, as he called his friend to come take care of her car while she prepared for school. The magic of Saturday seemed to be waning.

All to the good, she told herself, even as she began to realize that brave words spoken in the shelter of Linc’s ranch seemed almost foolhardy now that she was faced with returning to school.

For the first time she felt honestly nervous about going to work, about facing her classes. So far her students didn’t seem to have joined the anti-Cassie camp, but what if the antipathy she had experienced on Friday had now reached them? What if she looked into hostile faces?

She’d deal with it, she promised herself. She’d deal with it the way she had dealt with so many things in her life: by ignoring it until it went away. Often that was the only option.

Her first indication of a sea change came from the mechanic Linc had called. When she tried to give him her credit card for the tow he waved it aside.

“No charge for any of this, Ms. Greaves,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to think that folks around here would approve of whoever did this.”

“But...” Even as her heart swelled with appreciation, she felt guilty. “You need to make a living, too, Morris.”

“I’ll make one even if I do this. Put that card away.”

She was sure her mouth didn’t close until her car disappeared down the street on the back of the truck.

“Wow,” she said finally.

“Plenty of generous people in the world,” Linc remarked. “The ugly ones seem to get the most attention, though.”

She couldn’t argue with that. The next sign of a shift came before her first class. Les came looking for her, and he was beaming. “You’ll never guess what’s going on.”

“What?”

“Some townspeople, mostly parents, are setting up a fund to help James Carney’s family with medical bills and counseling costs. And what’s more, the school email and voice mail is full of requests for a special evening assembly for parents to discuss bullying.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“I told you an assembly was the best way to handle this. Now we’ll get the parents involved. I hardly dared hope we’d get such a response.”

“We might not have,” she reminded him. “Except for James. Have you heard anything? Linc and I were at the hospital Friday until he was out of danger, but I haven’t heard since.”

“I called his mother this morning. He should be released today, but she’s not planning to bring him back to school.” Les sighed, a frown settling over his round face. “She said it was just until he had some counseling, but I don’t know, Cassie. This was a terrible thing. People are responding positively, but that doesn’t mean we can change the culture overnight.”

“I’m sure we can’t. But this is a giant step.”

A giant step that brightened her morning considerably, as did the students in her classes, who seemed to want to do something, whether it was sending some kind of message to James and his family, or taking on the bullies in their midst. Suddenly it seemed too long to wait until the Friday assembly. Everyone wanted to do something constructive
now
.

Behind that, though, she sensed something else, a kind of uneasiness. It came, she thought, from awareness of their own past transgressions, from the near loss of someone their own age. From guilt and awareness of mortality. Not knowing what else to do, she put her lesson plans aside for the day and just let the students talk, making a mental note that they might need to get the school psychologist in on this.

The day became emotionally exhausting for her as she tried to guide students through their mixture of feelings. Some started out tough, insisting they would never kill themselves over anything as stupid as bullying. Some spoke about how they had been bullied and how it had made them feel. In class after class, a slow consensus was reached: bullying was a bad thing.