Black Hills (52 page)

“Might be.”

“It’s sure not bad news,” she shot back at Willy.

“Now, Miss Lucy, in circumstances like this, I’ve got to be cautious.”

“You be cautious. I’ll be sleeping easier tonight. Come on in and sit down a minute or two. I’ve got some sun tea cold and coffee hot.”

“I’d like that, I would, but I’ve got to get on. I want you to sleep easier tonight, but I want you to keep your doors locked just the same. Don’t you work too hard now. Miss Lucy, Sam.”

“I’ll be right back.” Coop walked off with Willy. “How long to verify it’s Tyler’s wallet, and match his prints?”

“I’m hoping tomorrow. But I’m willing to put money down it’s Tyler’s, and that Howe’s prints will be on it.”

“Are you putting the same money down that he tossed it, or dropped it?”

“That’s not a gamble I’m willing to take.”

“I’d put mine on him planting it.”

Willy pressed his lips together as he nodded. “I’d say we’re on the same page of this book. It just strikes too easy. We barely find a sign of this bastard for days. Then he leaves a trail, even after it rains, that my nearsighted grandmother could follow. I may be small-time law, but I’m not as stupid as he thinks.”

“He wants a little time, a little space, to prepare for whatever he has in mind. You make sure Lil understands that. I’ll be doing the same when I see her, but I want her to hear it from you first.”

“I’ll do that.” He opened the door of his cruiser. “Coop, the feds are putting their focus on Wyoming. Could be they’re right.”

“They’re not.”

“The evidence points there, so they’re following the evidence. All I’ve got is a gut telling me he’s hornswoggling us. That’s what I’ll be telling Lil.”

He got in the car, tipped Coop a salute, and drove back down the farm road.

 

 

 

BY THE TIME Coop got to the compound, the dusk-to-dawn lights had glowed on. He knew by the sounds the animals made they were feeding. A group of interns, finished for the day, piled into a van. Immediately, Weezer rocked out.

A glance at the office cabin told him that was locked up for the night. Still, he made the rounds, over gravel, concrete, mud to offices, sheds, stables, ed center, commissary to assure himself all was empty and secure.

Lights shone in the windows of Lil’s cabin. As he circled, he saw her—her hair pulled back from her face in a tail, the strong blue of her cotton sweater, even the glint of the silver dangles that swung at her ears. He watched her through the glass, the way she moved as she poured wine, sipped it while she checked something on the stove.

He saw the steam rise, and through it the strong lines of her profile.

Love rolled through him, over him, in one strong, almost violent, wave.

Should be used to it, he thought. Used to her after so much time, even counting the time without. But he never got used to it. Never got through it or over it.

Maybe his grandfather was right. Time was wasting.

He stepped up on the porch, pushed open the door.

She spun from the stove, drawing a long, serrated knife from the block as she whirled. He saw, in that moment, both the fear and the courage.

He held up both hands. “We come in peace.”

Her hand shook, very slightly, when she shoved the knife back in the block. “I didn’t hear you drive up, and didn’t expect you to come in the back.”

“Then you should make sure the door’s locked.”

“You’re right.”

Time might be wasting, Coop thought, but he had no right pushing now.

“Willy’s been by?” Coop asked and got down a second glass.

“Yes.”

He glanced at the stove, the bottle of good white wine. “Lil, if you’re thinking of a kind of celebration dinner—”

“When did I suddenly go stupid?” She bit off the words. Snapping more out as she took the lid off the skillet and made him lift his brows when she poured the good wine over the chicken she had sautéing. “He’s no more in Wyoming than I am. He made sure he left enough signs for them to follow, and might as well have put up a ‘Here’s a Clue’ sign pointing to that wallet.”

“Okay.”

“It’s
not
okay. He’s trying to make fools out of us.”

“Which is worse than trying to kill us?”

“It adds insult. I’m insulted.” She grabbed up her wine and drank.

“So you’re cooking chicken using twenty-five-dollar-a-bottle wine?”

“If you knew anything about cooking you’d know if it’s not good enough to drink, it’s not good enough for cooking either. And I felt like cooking. I told you I could cook. Nobody said you had to eat it.”

After she’d slapped the lid back on the skillet he crossed to her. He said nothing, just grabbed her, tightening his hold when she tried to pull away. Drawing her in, holding her to him, saying nothing at all.

“He’s up there somewhere, laughing. It makes it worse. I don’t care how petty it is, it makes it worse. So I’m going to be pissed off.”

“That’s fine, be pissed off. Or look at it this way: He thinks we’re stupid, that you’re stupid. He thinks we bought his little game, and we didn’t. He underestimated you, and that’s a mistake. It took a lot of time and effort for him to make that trail, plant that wallet. He wasted it on you.”

She relaxed a little. “When you put it that way.”

He lifted her face to his, kissed her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He ran his hand down the length of her braid, wishing he could ask, demand, even beg. And let her go. “Any hail damage?”

“Nothing major. How about at your grandparents’?”

“To my grandfather’s secret pleasure, they lost most of the kale.”

“I like kale.”

“Why?”

She laughed. “No good reason. There’s a ball game on tonight. Toronto at Houston. Wanna watch?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. You can set the table.”

He got out plates, laid them with the scent of cooking, of her, filling the air. He decided it wasn’t pushing just to ask. “Is that sexy underwear still in your dresser?”

“It is.”

“Okay.” He glanced at her while he opened a drawer for flatware. “You need to pick a date this summer. I’ll give you the Yankee schedule, and you can pick whichever game works for you. I can get Brad to send the plane. We could take a couple of days, stay at the Palace or the Waldorf.”

She checked the potatoes she had roasting with rosemary in the oven. “Private planes, fancy hotels.”

“I’ve still got my box-seat season tickets.”

“Box seats, too. Just how rich are you, Cooper?”

“Really.”

“Maybe I should hit you up for another donation.”

“I’ll give you five thousand to throw away the red number in the drawer upstairs.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

“New York and the Yankees were the first bribe. You missed it.”

She’d missed this, too, she realized. Just poking at each other. “How much to toss them all?”

“Name your price.”

“Hmm. Could be steep. I want to build a dorm for the interns.”

He turned back, head angled. “That’s a good idea. Keep them on the property. They have more time here, probably more interaction with one another and the staff. And you’d have a number of people on-site at all times.”

“The last part wasn’t a consideration until recently. Which I just don’t want to talk about right now. Housing and transportation aren’t huge problems, but they always take some work. I want to build a six-room dorm, with kitchen facilities and a community room. We’d have room for a dozen interns. Fork over enough and I’ll name it after you.”

“Bribery. I’ll consider it.”

She grinned at him. “How does it feel? To be loaded?”

“Better than it did to be broke. I grew up with money, so I never thought about it. Part of my mistake when I hit college. I never had to worry where a meal was coming from or how I’d pay for shoes, that kind of thing. I blew through my savings and then some.”

“You were just a boy.”

“You were just a girl and you made a budget, and lived by it. I remember.”

“I didn’t grow up rich. You spent plenty on me, too, back then. I let you.”

“In any case it was a come-to-Jesus when I got in a hole, which I compounded by going against my father and dropping out of college, wanting to be a cop. Still, I figured I could do it.”

He shrugged and sipped as if it didn’t matter. But she knew it did.

“I’d have the first chunk from the trust coming along so I could live thin for a while. I didn’t know what thin was. But I found out.”

“You must’ve been scared.”

“Sometimes. I felt defeated and pissed off. But I was doing what I needed to do, and I was pretty good at it. Getting good at it. When he blocked the trust payment and froze my accounts, what there was of them, it turned desperate. I had the job, so it wasn’t like I’d be on the street, but thin got thinner. I needed a lawyer, a good one, and a good one wants a good retainer. I had to borrow the money for that. Brad lent it to me.”

“I knew I liked him.”

“It took months, close to a year, before I could pay him back. It wasn’t just the money, Lil, breaking my father’s hold on the trust payment. It was, finally, breaking his hold on me.”

“His loss. And I don’t mean the control. He lost you.”

“And I lost you.”

She shook her head, turned back to the stove.

“I had to prove myself before I could be with you, and proving myself meant I couldn’t be.”

“Yet here we are.”

“And now I have to prove myself to you.”

“That’s not it.” Fresh annoyance shimmered in her voice. “That’s not right.”

“Sure it is. It’s fair. A pisser, but fair. There’s a lot of thinking time when you’re working with horses. I’ve spent a good chunk of that thinking about this. You’ve got me on probation, and that’s a pisser. You want to make sure I’m not going to leave again, and you want to make sure you want me to stay. But in the meantime, I get to have you in bed, and now and then I get a hot meal I didn’t have to make myself. And I can watch you through the kitchen window. That’s fair.”

“Sex and food and occasional voyeurism?”

“And I can look in your eyes and see that you love me. I know you can’t hold out forever.”

“I’m not holding out. I’m—”

“Making sure,” he finished. “Same thing.” He moved, fast and smooth, and had her wrapped in a kiss, layered in the warmth, in the need. He let her go slowly, and with a soft, lingering bite.

“The chicken smells good.”

She eased him back a little farther. “Sit down. It should be done.”

They ate, and by tacit agreement turned the conversation to simple things. The weather, the horses, the health of her new tiger. They did the dishes together. After he’d checked the locks—the only outward sign of trouble—they settled in to watch the ball game. They made love while the waxing moon poured its light through the windows.

And still, in the night, she dreamed of running. A panic race through the moonstruck forest with terror galloping in her chest and her breath a harsh echo. She felt the sweat of effort and fear slick her skin. Brush tore at that skin as she fought through it, and she scented her own blood.

So would he.

She was hunted.

The high grass slashed at her legs when she reached the flats. She heard the pursuit, steady, always closer no matter how fast she ran, which direction she took. The moon was a spotlight, mercilessly bright, leaving her no place to hide. Flight, only flight could save her.

But his shadow fell over her, nearly bore her to the ground with its weight. Even as she turned, to face, to fight, the cougar sprang out of the high grass, its fangs bared for her throat.

27

A day passed, then another. There were reports of sightings of Ethan in Wyoming as far south as Medicine Bow, as far north as Shoshoni. But none panned out.

The search team in Spearfish thinned, and talk in town and the outlying farms turned to other matters. Spring plowing and planting, lambings, the cougar who’d perched in an apple tree in a yard not a quarter-mile from downtown Deadwood.

People agreed over pie at the diner, across the counter of the post office, between sips of beer at the bar that the man who’d killed that poor guy from St. Paul had run off.

The trail had gone cold.

But Lil remembered the dream, and knew they were wrong.

While those around her lowered their guard, she only strengthened hers. She began to slip a knife in her boot every morning. Its weight gave her peace of mind even as she resented the need for it.

Good weather brought the tourists, and the tourists meant increased donations. Mary reported their seven percent increase for the first quarter held steady for the first weeks of the second. Good news, Lil knew, but she couldn’t work up enthusiasm.

The more settled and ordinary the days became, the more her nerves frayed. What was he waiting for?

She asked herself that question as she carried hampers of food, or hosed down enclosures, as she uncarted supplies. Every time she made her rounds of the habitats her muscles braced for attack.

She all but willed it to come. She’d rather see Ethan leap out of the woods armed to the teeth than wait and wait for some unseen trap to spring.

She could watch Boris and Delilah curled together, or see him lead, and her tentatively follow into the grass, and feel pleasure, a sense of accomplishment. But under it brewed worry and stress.

She should be helping Mary and Lucius plan the summer open house, or put real effort into helping Tansy plan her wedding. But all she could think was: When? When would he come? When would it be finished?

“The waiting’s driving me crazy.” Following another new habit, Lil circled the habitats with Coop after the staff had gone for the day.