Rancher's Deadly Risk by Rachel Lee

like quicksand? Maybe she had felt braver at school, but the prospect of being home alone at night now didn’t seem quite so safe. Harder to be above it all.
    “There’s no explaining the humor of a teen.”
    She knew he was right: the grosser, the better. They’d certainly achieved a total gross-out for her. “Then maybe we shouldn’t have called the sheriff.”
    “Why? It may have been just an ugly prank but it remains it was vandalism and possibly another attempt to bully you. Having the sheriff investigate may have put an appropriate fear in certain people. There comes a point, Cassie, when you’ve got to realize that stuff you got away with as a child is no longer acceptable or even legal.”
    He paused, realizing he must seem to be going around in circles. Well, he probably was, between her damned scent and his own uncertainty about what was happening.
    “I’ll be honest with you,” he said slowly. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here. I’m wondering what’s been bubbling beneath the surface at the school that I’m not aware of. That makes me uneasy. Obviously, something has been getting out of control. On the one hand, I’m trying to paint it in the best light because I know these kids. Or thought I did. I don’t want to think the worst of any of them. On the other hand, I guess I shouldn’t minimize it. There have been three transgressions we know about with you. Four if we add James. I’m not going to dismiss it, but I’m not going to be Chicken Little yet, either. The mind of a teenage male is impenetrable.”
    She surprised him by losing her haunted look and actually laughing. “You’re right, it is. And girls aren’t much better at that age.”
    Girls weren’t much better at any age, he thought a little while later as he drove her home. He’d certainly never figured them out.
    “Thanks for a wonderful time,” she said as he walked her to her door. “I really enjoyed it.”
    “So did I,” he answered more truthfully than he would have liked. He had to bite his tongue to keep from suggesting they do it again.
    “And thanks for the reassurance,” she added as she unlocked her door and opened it. “You’re right. I know perfectly well that youngsters that age aren’t always thinking clearly. They get a wild idea and follow through.”
    “Still, we have to put the brakes on it. And we will.”
    She was still smiling as she said good-night and closed the door.
    He walked back to his truck, keys jingling in his hand, and thought about it all, from the bullying to the rat to the evening just past. The thoughts were still rumbling around when he got home.
    Something wasn’t right. Something. He’d grown up here, gone to school here, been away only during his college years, and now had been teaching for a decade.
    His nose was telling him something was wrong. Very wrong. The question was what. And who. He didn’t want Cassie to be needlessly scared, but he couldn’t lay his own concerns to rest.
    Somehow, in some way, a scale had tipped, leading to some ugliness against a teacher that was so unusual around here it couldn’t be ignored.
    What happened to James Carney concerned him, of course, but that fit better into the parameters of the kind of ordinary ugliness people were capable of. It had a frame of reference, one they needed to put a stop to, but well within the range of “normal,” however wrong.
    Threatening phone calls and dead rats. If it had just been the rat, he would have been almost positive it was someone’s bad idea of a prank. But added to that phone call, he couldn’t begin to dismiss it.
    Nor could he stop wondering if the real problem wasn’t students at all now.

Chapter 4
    C assie’s apprehension eased over the next few days. Nothing untoward happened, James was back in class looking all right, if a bit edgy, but when she tried to talk to him as he was leaving, he gave her an angry look and hurried away. Things were still not right in his world,