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The bitch, however, had turned him down. Apparently she thought she was too good for him. That was fine by Flarity. Just because he wouldn’t be taking her to bed, that didn’t mean he couldn’t fuck her in other ways.
Recently, he had purchased a rather sizable contract from Duffy’s former creditor, effectively placing the woman in his debt, and ever since, he’d done everything in his power to make sure she would have trouble paying off her loan.
Flarity had been sending his henchmen to sabotage her ranch in ways that wouldn’t look like foul play. They’d knocked down her fences, released rattlesnakes into her barn—they’d even pushed boulders into the creek she used to irrigate her land.
And the plan was finally about to pay off. If the Duffy woman didn’t pay him within a fortnight, he’d be able to legally take the ranch as collateral.
Flarity didn’t really care about the ranch either.
He wanted what wasunderit.
Flarity had heard rumors that old man Duffy sometimes used firestone to make his payments to the old creditor. Well, that firestone must have come from the ground under the ranch. Of course, a simple rancher wouldn’t have the means of getting the stuff out of the ground in an efficient way, so he’d only managed to bring out a little bit at a time. Once Flarity got his hands on that land, he would set up a full-scale mining operation. He would be rich!
Of course, he alreadywasrich… but now he’d be even richer.
“So?” Flarity growled at his men. “How did the operation go?”
The two men looked at each other nervously. At last, Whittaker spoke.
“Well, once it got dark, we was going to use our flints to start a brush fire out at the edge of the pasture like you told us, but…”
“But what?”
“We got attacked, sir… by a wolf.”
“A wolf? Why didn’t you just shoot it?”
“Well, Mr. Flarity, you told us we weren’t ’sposed to make no noise. Besides, this weren’t no ordinary wolf. It was about as big as a damned grizzly bear, and its fur weren’t gray, it was red. I seen it in the moonlight.”
Flarity snorted. “A red wolf? Nonsense. In this part of the country, red wolves are extinct.”
“Now that you mention it, sir, it did have a sort of odor to it.”
“Notstink,you imbecile! Ex-tinct. It means dead and gone.”
“Oh. Well this one weren’t dead, Mr. Flarity. It was alive and angry as hell. It come running at us growling and snarling something fierce, so we hightailed it right out of there. We were lucky to get away alive.”
Flarity was just about to fling a few choice expletives at the two men when a knock came from outside. He motioned to Bartram, and the big alpha rose from his chair and opened the door.
The man on the other side was wiry and dirty looking. Despite having a youthful face, he was almost completely bald, aside from a few greasy strands of hair slicked back across his otherwise hairless pate. He came into the room practically shaking with excitement.
“Mr. Lacerda,” Flarity said. “How nice of you to finally join us. Hopefully your evening has been more fruitful than your two idiot partners’ here.”
Larcerda nodded feverishly.
“It surely has, Mr. Flarity! I followed the Duffy woman over to Rosie Redbottom’s. She got into a conversation with a big, mean looking alpha.” He glanced nervously at Bartram. “Not quite as big and mean looking as Butch over there, but close. Anyhow, I sort of dropped eaves on ’em while they was talkin’, first in the saloon and later on in the theater.”
Flarity made a rolling gesture with his hand.
“Get on with it, man. What did they talk about?”
Larcerda outlined what he’d overheard, and Flarity listened, a smile slowly creeping across his round face. By the end of it, he was grinning from ear to ear.
So, the firestone wasn’t underneath the ranch at all. It was out in the desert, and the Duffy woman was going to lead them right to it. Maybe he could even get rid of the bitch in the process. After all, it was easy to hide a body out there in the desert.
“Lacerda, you’ve done well.” Flarity opened a drawer in his desk where he kept some cash. He drew out several bills, counted them, then held them up for everyone to see.
“This is the money I was going to pay you fellows for tonight’s job. All three shares. However, since Whittaker and Guthrie didn’t actuallyaccomplishanything, I’m going to give it all to you, Lacerda. You can divvy it up with your partners however you like.”
