of a major regional drug ring coming out of California, and I’ll be asking my assistant, Sergeant Pepper Warner, to set up deep-cover info to protect you. She was a forensic FBI agent and I worked with her when I was a SEAL over in Afghanistan. I recruited her once I left the military and became sheriff here in this county. She’s the best of the best. You’ll work with Pepper and she will be your contact from here on. Pepper will have a line into me about you anytime she needs it. She’ll be your go-to person. Are you okay with that?” He drilled her with a sharp look.
“More than fine,” she admitted. “I—I never expected this level of help . . .”
“Well,” Seabert growled, moving the screen back toward him, “welcome to Silver Creek and my county. We take care of our own.”
Those words sunk into the fear and anxiety that she always kept a lid on, deep inside herself. Her hands were clasped in her lap, damp, but now her tense fingers began to relax. “Should I color my hair a different color?”
“Won’t hurt,” Dan said, “if you’re okay with that?”
“I’d feel better. My biggest worry is someone getting hurt because I’m here.” She touched her long, black hair. “Maybe cut it shorter?” She saw Chase wince but he said nothing, avoiding her glance in his direction.
“Even better,” Dan said.
“I’ll do it.”
* * *
On the way back to the ranch, Chase said, “I know this is none of my business, but you have beautiful, long hair halfway down your back. Couldn’t you just dye it for now?”
“It’s worth it, Chase. Hair grows back. I’ll use a rinse on my hair, not dye it. In fact, I’ll use henna as a rinse. At least that is natural.”
He smiled a little as he drove back to the ranch. The day was young, the sky a pale blue, clear, the sun warm and welcoming. “Just tell me when you’re going to do it so I’m not shocked by the change,” he teased, giving her an oblique look, one corner of his mouth lifting.
“I’ll give you some warning. Are we going to the wildlife center now?”
He slowed the truck and turned into the huge gate of the ranch. “Sure are. I gave Jenny a call earlier this morning, that we were coming. She’s excited to meet you.”
Cari sat back, feeling less and less tense and worried. Maybe Dan Seabert was right: Dirk would stick to the drug turf he knew because he had all those connections he’d made over the past decade there. Maybe he would forget about her parents and her, as his whole world had always orbited around the drug and criminal culture.
* * *
Chase introduced Jenny to Cari and it sounded like old home week to him. The two women gravitated to one another like opposite ends of a magnet and he grinned to himself as he stood back, watching them hug one another. For the first time since Cari had landed, Chase saw her finally beginning to relax. She wore the set of jeans she had on yesterday, changed to an emerald-green long-sleeved top with a cream-colored vest over it that hung around her hips.
She had her long, black hair in a ponytail and he silently bemoaned the fate of all that beautiful, silky, gleaming black hair being cut off. That was a selfish desire on his part and he knew it. At age thirty, he was wise about sex, lust, and making love to a woman. Cari was the type of woman he’d met in his dreams but never in person. Not until now. Chase wasn’t too eager to tell her that, either, because she was about to become his employee. That meant hands off and keeping his foot out of his mouth.
Since the #MeToo movement, and a lot of frank talks with his mother about it, Chase began to see how the male patriarchy had branded him with certain ways to see women. He’d gone through a couple of years after #MeToo, taking a hard look at what patriarchy had done to women and men. And he’d spent those years afterward—with the help of his mother, who was a very wise woman—cleaning out the branding of the patriarchy he’d unconsciously taken on, and replacing it with respect toward all women, treating them as equals and never as sex objects or seeing them as less than human. He saw a number of men around him doing