to help with planting. He owed for feed and branding supplies and things like that. But the land was hers now, free and clear. There was a lot of land. It was worth millions.
She could have sold it and started over. But he’d made her promise not to. He’d known her very well by then. She never made a promise she didn’t keep. Her own sense of ethics locked her into a position she hated. She didn’t know anything about ranching!
Her father mentioned Dariell, whom everyone locally called Dal, all the time. Fine young man, he commented. Full of pepper, good disposition, loves animals.
The loving animals part was becoming a problem. She had a beautiful white Siberian husky, a rescue, with just a hint of red-tipped fur in her ears and tail. She was named Snow, and Meadow had fought the authorities to keep her in her small apartment. She was immaculate, and Meadow brushed her and bathed her faithfully. Finally the apartment manager had given in, reluctantly, after Meadow offered a sizable deposit for the apartment, which was close to her work. She made friends with a lab tech in the next-door apartment, who kept Snow when Meadow had to travel for work. It was a nice arrangement, except that the lab tech really liked Meadow, who didn’t return the admiration. While kind and sweet, the tech did absolutely nothing for Meadow physically or emotionally.
She wondered sometimes if she was really cold. Men were nice. She dated. She’d even indulged in light petting with one of them. But she didn’t feel the sense of need that made women marry and settle and have kids with a man. Most of the ones she’d dated were career oriented and didn’t want marriage in the first place. Meadow’s mother had been devout. Meadow grew up with deep religious beliefs that were in constant conflict with society’s norms.
She kept to herself mostly. She’d loved her job when she started as an investigator for the Bureau. But there had been a minor slipup.
Meadow was clumsy. There was no other way to put it. She had two left feet, and she was always falling down or doing things the wrong way. It was a curse. Her mother had named her Meadow because she was reading a novel at the time and the heroine had that name. The heroine had been gentle and sweet and a credit to the community where she lived, in 1900s Fort Worth, Texas. Meadow, sadly, was nothing like her namesake.
There had been a stakeout. Meadow had been assigned, with another special agent, to keep tabs on a criminal who’d shot a police officer. The officer lived, but the man responsible was facing felony charges, and he ran.
A CI, or Confidential Informant, had told them where the man was likely to be on a Friday night. It was a local club, frequented by people who were out of the mainstream of society.
Meadow had been assigned to watch the back door while the other special agent went through the front of the club and tried to spot him.
Sure enough, the man was there. The other agent was recognized by a patron, who warned the perpetrator. The criminal took off out the back door.
While Meadow was trying to get her gun out of the holster, the fugitive ran into her and they both tumbled onto the ground.
“Clumsy cow!” he exclaimed. He turned her over and pushed her face hard into the asphalt of the parking lot, and then jumped up and ran.
Bruised and bleeding, Meadow managed to get to her feet and pull her service revolver. “FBI! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
“You couldn’t hit a barn from the inside!” came the sarcastic reply from the running man.
“I’ll show . . . you!” As she spoke, she stepped back onto a big rock, her feet went out from under her, and the gun discharged right into the windshield of the SUV she and the special agent arrived in.
The criminal was long gone by the time Meadow was recovering from the fall.
“Did you get him?” the other agent panted as he joined her. He frowned. “What the hell happened to you?”
“He fell over me and pushed my face into the asphalt,” she muttered, feeling the blood on her nose. “I ordered him to halt and tried to fire when I tripped over a rock . . .”
The other agent’s face told a story that he was too kind to voice.
She swallowed, hard. “Sorry about the windshield,” she