Mariette And The Cowboy (Western Night Series 2) by Rosie Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

with her an hour or so previously would still be there to realise she was not? She had to pray that someone would raise the alarm. But, she also wondered if these fools had been wise enough to check out the office before whisking her away. She could only pray that the evidence she had been working upon, her materials for the meeting had not been asked for by their mysterious boss, and had been left behind. She doubted if any of them was capable of any kind of initiative.
    The journey seemed to take days, but may only have been a few minutes. She drifted in and out of consciousness and was glad of it as her head was pounding from the clump she had received. She was occasionally woken by a jolt in the road, and when she was she tried to find a way to look around, to see where they were. Trying to work out where she was headed for was not hard though, if her evidence was right she would be going somewhere North of Fort Worth, to meet Mr Benjamin Arrandale.
    After another blackout, she came to and found herself seated in front of a desk. She had been tied securely to the chair, and though she was still gagged it was at least a clean rag this time. There was nothing in the office other than the desk and two chairs. Mariette had to hope that meant they hadn’t brought her evidence with them. Melissa would be able to follow the trail. The door opened and a sharply dressed man, with an overly waxed moustache entered the room. He moved to the chair where he sat down with an unmanly grace. He had perfectly manicured nails, and long slender fingers that made her feel oddly repulsed. “What on earth do you want with me?” she spat as he removed the gag. “You have no right to keep me here.”
    “You are of course right my dear. I do have no right to keep you here. But you have no right to be interfering in my business. I am doing nothing illegal, and have every right to buy whatever land I choose, if the owners of that land choose to sell it of course.”
    “If everything was so legal, then why am I here? You wouldn’t need to silence me if you weren’t treading too close to the line. I have the proof too. You have been poisoning feed deliveries and other essential supplies from your stores. But they are only added to the orders of the farms and ranches that you want to buy.  Property all across Texas that was once profitable is now almost at crisis point because you want to buy land that ‘might’ have oil under it. Oil you have no way to access, and may never be able to. Even if buying the land is legal, the rest of it sure as hell isn’t – especially when you are doing it on the back of a huge gamble. You are ruining people’s lives. I hate to break it to you, but that is exactly what newspapers are for – to report just such injustices.”
    “You have no proof, and I could sue you for printing such lies. You truly do have a very vivid imagination Miss Macardle.”
    “But I do have the proof,” she laughed. Arrandale looked at her with a puzzled look on his pale brow. “And the best part of it is, I was working on it when your goons arrived. They didn’t think to bring it too did they!” A look of icy rage flashed across his face, his pale eyes flashing at the door. Mariette was over the moon, she had judged the men well – he hadn’t gotten his hands on the evidence. Susannah would be sending the Sheriff, Caleb and Hardy to rescue her, and getting it printed as she sat here.
    “But there is no proof,” he tried to bluff her.
    “You’ve lost this round Arrandale. I may not be able to prove you poisoned every farm, but I do have witnesses to the orders you gave, and proof from one up near Dallas. They noticed the difference a little quicker than most because you got greedy – upped the levels of arsenic. You wanted that one quicker didn’t you. Thought you might lose out to someone else? Or were they just too stubborn and you wanted to teach them a little lesson?”
    Furious Arrandale stormed from the room,