Kathryn couldn’t help smiling as she watched, but the longer she watched, she noticed something else. There was a pattern to the men surrounding Lucas. They moved and shifted, but he was never isolated, never alone. These weren’t just random cowpokes watching the big man ride himself a horse, these were his bodyguards and, from what she saw, well-trained bodyguards. They were probably all vampires, too.
She saw Nicholas, the vampire who’d been introduced as Lucas’s lieutenant, lean over and say something to Lucas. The vampire lord looked up then, his gaze crossing the intervening paddock and field to where Kathryn sat in her SUV silently observing. His white teeth flashed in a grin, and he tipped his hat in her direction.
Kathryn felt foolish at having been caught, especially since she really hadn’t meant to linger so long. She quickly put the SUV in gear and hit the gas, breathing a sigh of relief when the road was quickly swallowed up by the first dense cluster of trees. She’d have to be careful with Donlon. She wasn’t stupid enough to deny her attraction to him, but she was smart enough not to do anything about it. Lucas Donlon was not the kind of person an ambitious FBI agent could afford to get involved with. He was part of a secretive society that ruled itself and ignored U.S. law whenever it suited them. No one had ever been able to pin a crime on any of the vamps, though they’d certainly tried. There’d been a case out in L.A. not too long ago. It had been quickly hushed up, but the word underground was that the LAPD had tried to arrest someone very high up in the vampire hierarchy on suspicion of multiple murders.
The operative word there was tried to arrest him, because the warrant had been voided less than forty-eight hours after it was issued. And the big vamp had been released with so many apologies from the higher-ups, it was embarrassing. Adding insult to injury, it had been the vamps who found the real killer, the very human real killer, and turned him over to the authorities.
But even in cases where a vampire actually had committed a crime, the perpetrator disappeared before human authorities could get to him. No one knew for sure if the vampire offenders were imprisoned or executed, or if they were just moved somewhere else, but they were never heard from again. She supposed that was justice of a sort. Not very satisfying for the human authorities, but it saved the taxpayers the cost of a trial, and the outcome was about the same. Maybe even better.
Kathryn slowed as she approached the stone arch with its low, decorative wall. The same gun-toting guards were there. One of them waved her on. She nodded her thanks and kept going, until she saw the gleam of the whitewashed picket fence. A left turn took her back onto the paved section of road, and then the rough two-track again, until, finally, she hit the highway. She checked the dash clock. There was plenty of time left tonight. She would go back to the motel and check out the witness statements again, make some notes, then get a good night’s sleep. If she was going to be sparring words with Lucas Donlon again, she’d need all of her brain synapses firing on full. And if only she could stop the rest of her body from firing on full for an entirely different reason, she’d be in great shape.
Kathryn didn’t know what to expect when she arrived at Donlon’s ranch the next day during daylight hours. She’d considered and rejected the possibility that the gate would be unguarded. Even if the vampires were tucked away safely in their beds somewhere, there was the house and barns to consider. And the animals, which to her untrained eye looked valuable. But more than anything, she just couldn’t see Donlon being that lax about security. He pretended to be an easygoing, ain’t-life-wonderful kind of guy, but there was another side to him that she imagined could be quite deadly when it came to the fore. When she’d insisted on questioning his vampires directly, any sense of the playboy had fled, and, in that moment, he’d been all business. And when he’d ultimately told her that his people would talk to her simply because he ordered them to do so . . . she could tell he believed it absolutely. Hell, maybe it was yet another vampire thing.
In any event, there were guards in all the same places and then some compared to the previous night, but they were human instead of vampire. Whereas the white wooden arch off the highway had been unguarded last night, today there were two human guards blocking her way. She showed them her credentials, and they checked her name against a list. Since Donlon was expecting her, albeit later this evening, Kathryn wasn’t surprised when they permitted her to proceed past this first checkpoint. The second stop, the one with the stone arch, had four human guards in place of the two vampires from last night, although all four of them looked remarkably like their vampire counterparts. If the sun hadn’t been shining, Kathryn wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. She gave a mental shrug and turned over her FBI credentials one more time. The list was checked again, and she was permitted to continue with one cautionary piece of advice.
“The main house will be locked, ma’am,” one of the four humans informed her politely. “And there’s no one there to answer the door. I suggest you wait down by the barns. The trainer’s there, along with her staff. She’ll be able to give you a cold drink and a place to sit, if you’d like.”
“Thank you,” Kathryn said. “I’ll do that.”
And that’s why she found herself parking in front of the main house and walking up the flagstone paved driveway until she reached a set of wooden stairs that dropped down the twenty or so feet to where the barn and paddocks were located. It was a beautiful, sunny day, the sky a baby blue with not a cloud in sight, despite the cool temperature. Lucas’s snide remarks about her clothes the previous evening had stung, so she’d dressed casually this afternoon. Her hair was pulled into its usual tight ponytail that hung below her shoulders. Her jeans were soft and comfortable, well-worn in all the right places, and she had a white tank top tucked in at the waist. The air was chilly, despite the sunshine, so she’d pulled on a light blue dress shirt, wearing it open like a jacket. At least her footwear was good. At the last minute back home, she’d shoved her boots into her suitcase, after flashing on a sudden mental picture of herself in her FBI blue suit sticking out like a sore thumb on the streets of a dusty, wild west town, complete with raised wooden walkways and hitching rails. The only thing missing had been the Lonesome Dove soundtrack. She’d felt silly at the time, but now she was glad to have them with her. The town was a bit more modern than her vision, but she’d seen plenty of people wearing boots, so she’d been right to bring them. And it had nothing to do with Lucas Donlon and his snarky comments.
At the bottom of the stairs, she followed a well-worn path through the grass that took her to the main paddocks. There were no horses in the barn paddock this afternoon, but in the fields beyond that, she could see several animals grazing in the sunshine. They appeared well cared for and content, and not at all concerned that their owner was a vampire. Kathryn smiled to herself as she made her way past the paddock and around to an open side door.
This was a horse barn. Kathryn stopped just inside the door, struck by the unique scent of warm horse, clean hay and packed earth. It brought back memories of her grandparents’ ranch. Their place hadn’t been anywhere near as grand as this one, but horses pretty much smelled the same everywhere. Other animals probably had their scents, too. Cows certainly did, and pigs. But there was something uniquely clean about the scent of a horse barn.
She looked around and found herself on the main walkway between a double line of box stalls, every one of which appeared to be filled. Several of the horses poked their heads out to check out the new arrival, watching her with big, brown eyes. One or two nickered softly, while a big black—even bigger than the animal she’d seen Donlon with last night—snorted his displeasure, his head bobbing up and down as he kicked the wooden side of his stall.
Kathryn gave him a wide berth, heading toward the closed end of the barn where she could see a tack room through an open door. Before she got there, a woman emerged, looking not at all surprised to find a stranger in her barn. She was on the short side, no more than five-foot-two, probably less without her boots on. Kathryn would have pegged her weight at 115 to 120, but well-muscled, no doubt from working with horses. Most people didn’t understand how big horses really were, and how much strength it took to ride one properly so it would do what you wanted it to. The woman wore no makeup or jewelry. She had blue eyes and strawberry blond hair that was even longer than Kathryn’s, her braid hanging all the way down her back to her butt.
“I’m Judy Peterson,” the woman said with a friendly smile. “And you must be Special Agent Hunter. Lord Donlon said you might come by.” She took the leather glove off her right hand and held it out.
Kathryn took it, feeling the rough skin and callouses of hard work. “Kathryn Hunter,” she said. So Lucas had expected her to come early? It wasn’t enough that he was unsettlingly handsome and charming, he had to be a mind reader, too?
“I wanted to see the place in daylight,” Kathryn admitted.
“Looks different, doesn’t it?” Peterson said agreeably. “Especially my babies.” She gazed down the long line of box stalls with a proprietary air.
“You’re the trainer?”
“Head trainer. I have a couple of assistants and some grooms. Lord Donlon spares no expense when it comes to his animals.”
“He breeds them?”
“Some. Mostly he rides for pleasure. But he loves horses, and he’s proud of what we’ve done here, so he doesn’t mind letting one of his stallions cover the occasional mare or two. For a price, of course.”
“Of course. Does he ever go outside his own stock for stud?”
“No.” Peterson shook her head. “If he’s interested in a particular line, he’ll buy the stallion outright. It’s a thing with him.”
“Men and their dicks, I suppose,” Kathryn muttered.
Peterson laughed. “You’d be right about that.”
The big black suddenly kicked the side of his box stall hard enough that it rattled the whole structure, causing several other horses to protest.