Silent Partner Read Online Free PDF

when I need to.”
    “I’ll bet.” Something caught her eye and Angela leaned across the table to get a better look. “How’d you get that?” she asked, touching a long scar on the back of his wrist.
    “I was wrassling a stray steer a few years ago,” Tucker explained, holding up his hand. “I’ve got this thing by the neck and all of a sudden he turns and gores me.”
    “Jesus,” Angela whispered.
    Tucker chuckled. “I was the lucky one.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Cow killed the horse.”
    Angela shook her head as she reached for the fruit, filling a small bowl with wedges of fresh melon. “So what are you doing here? Why aren’t you out roping steers?”
    “Well, I—”
    “Couldn’t wait to see me again?” she interrupted. “Even if you couldn’t come upstairs to wake me.”
    Tucker slowly wiped biscuit crumbs from his mustache with the back of his hand. “That’s a nice dress you’ve got on, Ms. Day,” he said, avoiding her question. “ Very chic. I’m sure Mr. Lawrence would approve.”
    “Thank you,” she said, impressed that he’d noticed. He didn’t seem like the type who would. “I bought it especially for the trip.”
    “It’s nice, all right,” he continued, “but you’re gonna have to change.”
    “Why?”
    “Your meeting with Mr. Lawrence is at the ranch’s upper cabin, and there’s only one way up to it other than by helicopter, which we don’t have.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Horseback. And that dress would make the ride mighty uncomfortable, maybe even dangerous.”
    “I’m not getting on a horse,” she said flatly. “No way.”
    Tucker shrugged. “Suit yourself. But if you don’t, you won’t be meeting Mr. Lawrence.”
    An hour later, Tucker hauled himself up into a Western saddle strapped to the back of a huge black stallion, then leaned down and held out his hand. “Put your left foot in the stirrup and take my arm,” he ordered. “And swing your right leg over the horse’s ass on the way up.”
    “Lord,” Angela murmured, careful to avoid the butt end of a rifle protruding from a saddle holster. Then she was behind Tucker and they were moving ahead when he dug his heels into the animal’s flanks. Instinctively, she grabbed his wide shoulders. “This is no fun,” she called nervously, swaying from side to side.
    “What’s your problem?” he asked with a smile, guiding the animal away from the lodge and out over an open field of pristine snow.
    “I’ve never been on a horse before,” she admitted, resting her face on his broad back. Again she became aware of that soothing leather smell. “It seems higher when you’re up here than it does from the ground.”
    He laughed loudly. “You’ll be all right. Just make sure you throw yourself clear if we go down.”
    She moaned.
    “I’m only kidding. We’ll be fine.”
    “Hey!” she yelled.
    “What?”
    Angela pointed at two men near one corner of the lodge who had just pulled up in snowmobiles. “I thought you said there was only one way to get around without a helicopter.”
    “Snowmobiles wouldn’t do us any good.”
    “Why not?”
    “You’ll see.”
    Soon the open field stretching away from the lodge was behind them and the horse was climbing a trail that twisted through the thick pine forest covering the mountain. The trail grew steadily steeper and the trees sparser until they broke into the open. Then the trail quickly turned into a narrow, rocky path that seemed barely etched into the side of a vertical wall.
    The view from the private dining room had been nothing compared to this. To her left Angela could reach out and touch the rock face soaring above them—it made her dizzy when she looked up. To her right, the mountain fell five hundred feet straight down to the bottom of a canyon. Her heart rose into her throat once when the horse stumbled going over a large stone, but Tucker skillfully brought the stallion back under control. Now she understood why a snowmobile