Zack (Armed and Dangerous Book 1)
Cheyenne writing as Jaymie Holland
Cheyenne writing as R.S.Collins
CHEYENNE MCCRAY
Zack: Armed and Dangerous
Copyright © 2015
Zack: Armed and Dangerous by Cheyenne McCray
All rights reserved. No part of this e-Book may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
E-book conversion by
Bella Media Management
.
Cover by Scott Carpenter from
http://www.pandngraphics.com.
Published by Cheyenne McCray LLC.
13-Digit ISBN: 978-1-939778-65-9
Zack: Armed and Dangerous
was published in print only with St. Martin’s Griffin.
Zack
has its foundations in a novel titled
Wildfire
that I wrote years ago for Ellora’s Cave. If you read that short novel, you will find this endeavor different. Much longer and richer with more action, adventure, and mystery.
Zack
takes place in Sulfur Springs Valley in Cochise County, where I grew up. My parents’ ranch is twenty-five miles from the Mexican border.
Along the lines of change, much has changed within the government since I originally wrote
Wildfire,
referred to above. Under the Department of Homeland Security, agencies and departments have been reorganized and restructured. I hope I have accurately reflected some of those changes in this novel.
May you enjoy Zack Hunter and Sky MacKenna. And as I’ve been told many times:
You’ll never look at cheesecake the same way again.
At this time, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Public Affairs, southern Arizona is the number one corridor for the smuggling of persons, and probably close to that for narcotics, especially marijuana.
Within Arizona, the west desert—between Nogales and Yuma—would be the number one corridor, with Cochise County the next highest area. In 2006, more than seven hundred thousand pounds of marijuana were seized along the Arizona border.
ICE will investigate any crime with a nexus to the border, to include the virtual border, as the day of more and more computer-based crimes is upon us. ICE has some of the broadest investigative jurisdiction and authority of any law enforcement agency.
ICE investigations include traditional customs fraud (such as the over- or undervaluation of goods/merchandise), child pornography, cross-border money laundering, and more.
Any violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) falls within ICE jurisdiction. This extends beyond human smuggling/trafficking to include persons who overstay visas, gangs, and any other criminal activity where there is an international nexus.
According to ICE, the list is very extensive. The list would include cattle rustling, if there is a nexus to the border.
While Skylar MacKenna inhaled the familiar smells of dust, livestock, and testosterone, she couldn’t help but enjoy watching the men work. The flex of muscle, lean bodies in tight Wrangler jeans, leather chaps, tanned forearms... it was enough to leave any woman panting.
Skylar shifted in her saddle as she watched her ranch hands count the cattle they’d rounded up over the weekend. Empress, Skylar’s Quarter Horse, pawed at the ground beneath them as the sorrel mare tossed her head and whickered.
The sight of the hard, muscled bodies should have moved Skylar, but... no man had since
him.
She didn’t want to think about him. But sometimes memories of Zack Hunter came to her hard, fast, and unbidden.
The busy hum of deep male voices and bawling cattle filled the otherwise still air. Saddle leather creaked as Skylar leaned down and rubbed the side of Empress’s neck.
Skylar frowned and straightened in her saddle.
Damnit,
why couldn’t she let those memories go? It was such ancient history.
As she pushed up the brim of her straw Resistol western hat, Skylar’s gaze followed Luke Rider, her new foreman, as he rode his dun, the Quarter Horse’s powerful haunches bunching as she flowed smoothly between Luke’s thighs. Now there was one fine-looking male—a bad boy with luscious chestnut brown hair, wicked blue eyes, and a body that was made for sweaty sheets and long nights.
In the past month since Skylar had hired him, Luke had definitely given her the impression that he was more than interested in breaking her no-dating-employees rule. And considering how gorgeous he was, even she called herself a fool for not taking him up on his unspoken invitation. But she just wasn’t interested. Besides, why complicate a perfectly good business relationship?
And then there was Wade Larson, who owned Coyote Pass Ranch, the spread neighboring hers. For years the man had made it clear he wanted her. She’d dated him a few times recently, and Wade was a handsome man, but she never felt that sizzle with him like she’d had with Zack. So despite Wade’s continued persistence, she had broken it off and intended to keep it that way.
Damnit.
She was over that idiot, Zack Hunter. Ten years was too long to allow that man to come into her mind and trample all over her heart and soul.
Sweat trickled between her breasts and she unfastened another snap on her western shirt, hoping a light wind would kick up and cool her skin. As she shifted again, the small Smith & Wesson in the holster on her waistband felt comforting. She was a crack shot—her father had taught her to shoot from the time she could hold a firearm.
Arizona was a “right to carry” state and for years she’d had a concealed-weapon permit. She kept the S&W on her most of the time in case she ran across a rattlesnake—but also because it made her feel safer as a woman who lived alone in a valley on the Mexican border. The Flying M Ranch rested at the foot of the Chiricahua Mountains that were like a railroad for drug and illegal immigrant smuggling from Mexico into the United States.
September sunshine heated her face, the sky an achingly clear blue. Not even a breeze stirred the mesquite bushes or tumbleweeds on her ranch.
September.
A strange sensation came over her as her thoughts turned unwillingly to another September—almost exactly ten years ago, when she’d met the dark and dangerous Zack Hunter. Skylar closed her eyes. Apparently there was no stopping it. Her hand automatically moved to her throat and she finally allowed herself to remember. Memories came to her, sharp and vivid. The sound of his deep voice calling her Sky, rather than Skylar like everyone else did. His sinful grin, his muscled chest and athletic build. And the feel of him sliding inside her— “Skylar?”
She snapped her eyes open, a rush of heat flushing up her face to the brim of her hat as she looked into Luke’s intense blue gaze. Her foreman was sitting astride his dun, and his face was coated with dirt and sweat. It just made him look even sexier.
With his forefinger he pushed up the brim of his Stetson, his handsome face creased into a frown. “You all right, boss?”
Skylar pulled her shirt away from her chest, trying to cool off, and pretended not to notice how his gaze drifted to her cleavage. “Where do we stand with the count?”
Luke’s jaw tightened and his features hardened. “We’re down over fifty head.”
“Fifty?”
Skylar clutched Empress’s reins, unable to believe what Luke had just said. “How the hell did they steal so many without us being on to them?”
Luke’s gaze had a predatory gleam before he tugged his mare’s reins and turned back toward the corral. “I don’t know,” he said over his shoulder, “but I aim to find out.”
Skylar looked off toward the mountain range two miles away at the foot of her property. What the hell was going on? It was like the mountain was opening up and swallowing her cattle whole.
With a groan of frustration, Skylar guided Empress across the rangeland to the barn. For a moment Skylar considered going on one of her usual long rides to clear her head, but it was already getting late in the afternoon.
The livelihood of her ranch depended on her livestock. She raised the best Angus in the valley and she was working to develop a profitable breeding program. Satan, her prized yearling who had a pedigree a mile long, was her hope for building a championship breeding program that would put the ranch far into the green.
If her herd continued to diminish, her ranch would gradually be destroyed before she had a chance to make it as profitable as she was working toward. She wouldn’t have the cash to pay for more championship breeding stock. Eventually she wouldn’t have enough income to pay her ranch hands.
No way was she going to let that happen. One way or another she would see to it the bastards were stopped—the bastards who were stealing her ranch’s future.
***
It was a road he hadn’t traveled for almost ten years, Zack Hunter realized as his black government-issued Ford Explorer hit a pothole, jarring his teeth along with his memories.
Sunshine glinted off the windshield, endless acres of grass and barbwire fence scrolling by as he guided the SUV down the dirt road to the MacKenna Ranch. One of the largest ranches in the county, the Flying M was over a half-hour drive from Douglas, a dingy town along the Mexico border in southeastern Arizona.
September.
It had been September when he’d first met Skylar MacKenna.
Zack’s SUV shimmied along the dirt road, but he barely noticed as his thoughts turned to Sky—her smile that had held all the innocence of youth and all the promise of a woman.
He had loved looking into her seductive eyes that were an unusual color of green, the same shade as her August birthstone. Her copper hair had felt so soft and silky every time he slipped his fingers through it—he loved when she left her hair down.
How often had he circled the tantalizing mole above her left breast with his tongue? And God, those legs. He could almost feel her long legs clamped around his hips and hear her sensual cries as he buried himself inside her.
Damn.
He’d grown hard just thinking about her.
Zack’s jaw tensed as he thought about the girl—the woman— he’d walked away from all those years ago, six months after they’d met. She’d been nineteen, starting her first year of college, and he’d been twenty-three, a deputy with the county sheriff’s department.
Sky had been the only woman to see past his hard exterior to his very soul.
He shifted his grip on the steering wheel, the scenery a blur as it passed by. How he’d wanted to cherish her, protect her from what evil there was in the world.
His thoughts crowded him as he remembered Sky’s teary face the night he’d been arrested. Her promises when she’d come to visit him that everything would be all right.
But her eyes had been filled with horror and he’d been certain that it was because of what he’d done.
Even though charges had never been pressed and he’d been able to return to his job with the county sheriff’s office, Zack had thought he wasn’t good enough for her.
Sky had been so young, so vibrant. But she was also a straight arrow, no toe over the line, not under any circumstances. A man who skirted the law, no matter what his reasons, well, that wouldn’t work for Sky.
Still, she’d acted like he’d nearly crushed her heart, leaving her like he did.
At the time he thought he’d done the right thing when he’d told her good-bye. That she’d been too young.
And his demons too dark to slay.