Undercover in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  “That smells wonderful,” Desi said as she slid onto a stool. “A feast. Do you eat this way all the time?”

  “Hell no,” he answered. “Just once in a while. A treat.”

  He pushed a foil-wrapped potato onto her plate, added one of the steaks, and left it to her to get a serving of the broccoli.

  The questions wouldn’t lie down, though. He had to force them aside for further consideration later. Right now he needed to focus on great food and great company. On Desi. He didn’t want her to guess that he was beginning to feel as if all of this would blow up in both their faces.

  Because something was wrong, and he was no longer just a soldier. No, now he was supposed to be something more, which meant he needed to figure a few things out.

  Quickly.

  * * *

  Desi thought Kel was tense as he sat beside her eating, but she didn’t know whether to say anything. They ate silently for a while, she remarked on how good the steak was, then waited for more than a monosyllabic response. It didn’t come.

  Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What’s going on, Kel?”

  “Sorry, I’m thinking. I don’t mean to be rude.”

  She hesitated, wondering if she should just let it go. The guy had a right to think, after all. But something was troubling her as well. “Why did you say you have an application on file? Why’d you tell them to pull it?”

  She saw him stiffen a bit, then he put down his fork and turned to look at her. “I’d really like to save this discussion for after the meal. It’s too good not to enjoy. Promise I’ll tell you later.”

  “Okay. But are you even tasting your food now?”

  At that one corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m concentrating on it. Sorry I’m so quiet.”

  “It is really good,” she agreed. “I hardly ever let myself splurge like this.”

  “Well, I have an advantage. I’m getting disability checks for my knees.”

  “Really? They must be bad.”

  “Pretty torn up,” he admitted. “The checks aren’t that big, but enough that I can buy a steak now and then.”

  “Cool.” She thought it was, too. The guy had apparently been injured while serving his country and deserved at least some compensation for it when the effects were lingering. “You said you have a lot of pain.”

  “Anybody with torn-up knees has a lot of pain. When I can’t take it anymore, they’ll give me new knees. I’m not in a rush.”

  “I wouldn’t be either,” she admitted. “I’ve heard it hurts like hell and the pain doesn’t always go away.”

  “How could it not hurt like hell when you consider what they’re doing to your leg? But that’s not what’s holding me back. I’d be laid up for a while, I’d need physical therapy, but they told me I only get one replacement per knee and it has to last the rest of my life. So...” He shrugged. “No rush here.”

  “You seem to get around pretty well.”

  “I do. It’s harder on rough ground, and I have a barometer in my knees. You know, the joke about the old guy who claims his rheumatism says it’s going to rain? Well, my knees prove it’s no joke. But a lot of pain management, for me anyway, is simply accepting it. And never running out of ibuprofen.”

  The way he said the last sentence made her laugh quietly. “But how can you hike the mountains, then?”

  “I ignore it. You get so it’s more like background noise until something happens to jam it to the foreground. Everybody has pain sometimes, and a lot of people have it all the time. I’m not special.”

  She kind of thought he was but suspected he wouldn’t appreciate hearing it. Sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with him like this made her acutely aware of him. She didn’t know what smelled better, the food on her plate or him.

  She had to make herself focus on her dinner rather than him, but that seemed the wisest course, all things considered. “So you’re going to talk to the sheriff and the police chief about your mission?”

  “I think that would be smart. Is there any reason I shouldn’t? You think they’re both trustworthy?”

  “I’m sure of it. I’d trust either of them with my life.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Frankly, I’d be happier if they knew. You think my network is good? Theirs are far better. Between them, they probably know damn near everything about everybody in this county.”

  “That’s useful.” He snared the last bite of his steak, then turned his attention to the remains of his potato.

  The steaks were large, and Desi looked at him. “If you’re not fussy, I hate to waste this steak and I’m stuffed.”

  “I never pass up good food. Far too often my diet consisted of freeze-dried everything. Maybe it’s not supposed to be possible, but I could swear the freeze-drying sucked all the flavor out.”

  “Lots of hikers and campers around here use that stuff.”

  “Then maybe they don’t have taste buds.”

  She laughed again, delighted by the way he could find humor in odd places. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “No reason you should. But I’m sure I have a good set because I can taste this dinner.”

  She was glad to see him tuck into her steak. Sure, she could have put it into the fridge to eat later, but it wouldn’t be the same. Besides, he was evidently still hungry enough to want it.

  She slid off the stood and carried her plate to the sink then hesitated before returning to her accustomed position on the couch. He’d said that he would explain to her what had happened this afternoon when he made that phone call.

  And for the first time things weren’t looking as simple as she’d initially thought. It struck her that she knew very little about what was supposed to be happening here except that he was hoping to be approached by the bad guys. Not much of a plan. Maybe his military experience had made him a good improviser, but counting on that didn’t seem like planning.

  He carried his dishes to the sink and rinsed them before bringing a fresh coffee with him to sit on the chair facing her. “Time to talk,” he said.

  She felt her heartbeat accelerate. “Something wrong?” she tried to ask casually.

  “I don’t know, but I’m not feeling good about any of this. You want to hear why? Maybe a second perspective will clear the fog.”

  “Sure.” Tucking her legs beneath her and leaning on the arm of the couch, she waited, all ears. Since looking at him was distracting, she stared down at her legs.

  “They sent me out here to start an outfitting operation, bare-bones and cheaper than the guys we’re after. On the face of it, that would get their attention if I’m cutting into their revenue stream. But I was supposed to be operating in their area, under the table, not above it. And I was supposed to let you know what I was doing here and see if we could cozy up a bit to make it look like you’d have no interest in checking me out.”

  She bristled a little. “Is that what they think of me?”

  He spread a hand. “I don’t know, Desi. Honestly, I don’t know, but I don’t know what’s going on here either. I mean, you’re a senior warden and everyone knows you rose fast. Why would they disrespect you?”

  “Because maybe some of them think this was an affirmative action type of promotion.”

  She realized he had frozen, his hands going perfectly still. After a minute he said, “Has anyone said that to you? Hinted that?”

  “Of course. It gets back to me. Some think I slept my way into this job. Every woman faces stuff like this, Kel. Surely you know.”

  “I’ve heard,” he said, then rose from the chair and started pacing. “Never knew anyone who’d faced it. Maybe I can be blind.”

  She hesitated. “Kel? It was never a problem that I was aware of when I was just a warden. The guys were pretty good about treating me a
s just another colleague except for occasional locker room lapses, which I ignored. This promotion though... I’m way young. And there are guys with a lot more experience who probably thought it should be theirs. I can understand.”

  “You shouldn’t have to understand,” he said, pivoting to face her, his eyes at once hard and fiery. “You shouldn’t have to make any excuses. All I heard about you was that you were exceptional and that the guys who work with you really like you.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I don’t work with all the wardens. I don’t even know a lot of them very well. Sure we meet, work together sometimes, but it’s pure work. Some I might not even recognize on the street out of uniform.”

  She paused. “You know, this job is often very solitary. You remember that famous Texas Ranger saying? One riot, one Ranger. I’m not going to claim we’re anything like those guys, but most of our work is just as solitary. Endless hours of patrolling, sniffing around for anything that doesn’t look right. Given how solitary we are most of the time, it’s not surprising that some might have an unflattering opinion of me. I meet with my fellow wardens here, we have summer barbecues, families included, we work together when necessary, and we bond. I can’t say that about most of the rest of the wardens, at least with regard to me.”

  He still looked angry. “So you just brush that talk off?”

  “What else am I going to do? My part of the world seems to be okay. They can have the rest.”

  He swore, paced the room a bit more then finally dropped onto his chair again, clasping his hands. “I realize I’m trying to swim upstream here, but I am so damn offended by that I’m practically spluttering.”

  She smiled, touched by his reaction. “Thanks, Kel, but let it go.”

  “I can’t. I worked with some of the first female Rangers. I was glad to have them on my six. They were as good as the best. I don’t get the problem, and I don’t get why you should have to put up with this.”

  “I’m not putting up with much,” she reminded him. “The guys I work with are all fine.”

  He continued to scowl for a while longer, ceding the discussion to her, but when she took another peek at him, she noticed his expression was changing. “Kel? Something wrong?”

  “Something’s very wrong and I wanted to talk to you about it since you’re now in it up to your neck. To begin with, I’m just a soldier. I don’t make the plans. I carry them out. So maybe I didn’t think hard enough about this.”

  “How so?” He was beginning to make her uneasy, very uneasy. Something was wrong with the plan? She had her own job to worry about and plenty to keep her busy, so she hadn’t thought about his end of all this. Something was bugging him? That didn’t make her feel very comfortable.

  “It doesn’t add up. They wanted me to look like I was running an illicit operation yet they put in a license application for me. They said it was because if anyone called to check up on me they’d be able to record whoever called. But does that make sense, Desi? Does it really? I assumed they knew what they were doing, and now that feels like a mistake.”

  Her heart quickened and she unfolded her legs so she could lean forward. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m thinking out loud. Something isn’t adding up. I want to figure out what’s wrong. So start with the insanity of me having an outfitter’s license app on file. Why? Does that make it look like I’m doing something illegal?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “In fact, I never expected to hear Jake say he’d checked on you and you say you had an application in. If I expected to hear anything it was that you needed to get going on an application.”

  “Exactly. Then the part about cozying up to you ostensibly so you wouldn’t check on me. Cripes, Desi, I walked in your door and told you exactly what I was doing. Did I really need to do any more than that? Why would anyone think that getting close to you would make me look like trouble to the ring we’re after? All it does is put you closer to the problem. Was that necessary?”

  “No.” She could see why he was troubled, and now she was troubled, too. She hadn’t given much thought to any of this except that she hoped the plan worked because at least some of the poaching would be stopped. For a while anyway.

  “If I spend much time hanging with you, no poacher is going to try to have a talk with me or warn me off either. We’re too close. And that’s what they wanted at HQ. Us close.”

  Desi felt cold ripple through her and goose bumps rise on her skin. It was an internal ice in a warm room. She hadn’t experienced that often, but she knew what it meant. She sensed something terrible on the way that would change her forever.

  “Us close,” she repeated. “But Kel...whose neck is in this noose? Yours? Mine? Ours? And if it’s me or both of us, what the hell is really going on?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” he answered grimly. “I agreed to be staked out like a goat, but I didn’t agree to anyone else being staked out with me. Now you might be. That’s plain wrong.”

  “But there’s no reason...” She shook her head trying to clear it, feeling her insides clench with emotions she couldn’t even parse. “Why would anyone want me involved like that? Because I’ve been raising the roof over all the poaching out this way? Because I’ve been requesting more wardens to deal with it? That’s not a reason to want to hurt anyone is it?”

  “God knows. I guess it depends on which bar got rattled. But it still doesn’t add up. Why make it look like I’m legit at all? Like I could get away with anything if we’re hanging together?”

  A thought so disturbing occurred to her that she had to squeeze it out. “What if I’m a suspect in the poaching?”

  He practically gaped at her. “Oh, come off it, Desi. You’ve got a stellar rep with the department, and if you were poaching why would you be raising the roof about it?”

  She raised her gaze to meet his. “Then maybe I’m in someone’s way.”

  * * *

  That did it, Kel thought. When he’d arrived in this place, he’d met a calm, pleasant woman who was very much in control of herself and her job. She felt seamless, as if she’d gotten it all together and liked it just the way it was.

  But now... Her face was pinched and she seemed to have shrunk just a little. The thoughts running through her head were clearly unpleasant. He wondered how many relationships she was rifling through trying to figure out who might want to harm her in some way.

  Pointless exercise. But something pulled at him until he stood up and crossed the room. Sitting beside her on the couch, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders casually. “I’m just speculating, Desi,” he reminded her. “Asking questions I probably should have asked before I came out here.”

  But she gave a quick, negative shake of her head. “No. You’re absolutely correct that something’s wrong. I’ve had my head in my day-to-day work, and I really haven’t thought much about what you’re doing and how it all would work. How pieces might fit. It was your job, not mine. I was just glad the trophy hunting was getting the attention it deserves.”

  He was relieved when she softened a bit, leaning into his side, but he could tell she was still asking the hard questions. “You know,” she said, “maybe I really have been a pain in the butt to someone. Someone important enough to want me out of the way. Not necessarily dead, but maybe diverted. Maybe that’s why you were supposed to get close to me, so I’d be distracted by you, or leave it all up to you. But who and why?”

  “That would have to be someone who’s profiting from the ring.”

  “I know.” Her voice was quiet. “It also means someone important enough to get their fingers into your assignment.”

  Everything inside him stilled, the way it did in the moments before a fight, when every sense was on high alert but the mind quieted, open to every impression. “I knew these guys were making loads of money
, but I never thought of them as having pull like that.”

  “Then maybe it’s time we started to.” Turning her head, she rested it in the hollow of his shoulder. He could feel her warm breath on his neck, an enticement almost impossible to resist as electricity began to dance its way to his groin.

  Ah, hell, he thought. This was something neither of them wanted. He was going to be dead or out of here fairly soon. She’d been raped and he suspected she hadn’t been with a man since. This could only muddy their thinking, muddy everything. More important, he didn’t want to leave her with any more wounds.

  But she felt so good pressed to his side, and her cheek resting in the hollow of his shoulder...well, that felt like trust. Real trust. He wasn’t sure he deserved it considering the trouble he might have brought to her door.

  Holding her like this, a gesture meant to show caring, was making it hard for him to think straight. Well, to think about anything but her, that was.

  But he knew he needed to. Since the moment the police chief, Jake Madison, had mentioned that he’d checked up on Kel, the entire picture had changed. As if looking through broken glass, for the first time he noticed that these pieces really weren’t fitting.

  How to put them together? He knew what his assigned task was: to draw the illicit outfitters out somehow. At least one of them. He should get a threat, an offer, some contact that would give him a person and maybe even a real name. A wedge. They certainly needed one, and every other way they’d tried to track this group down had failed.

  They were like ghosts, invisible except for the chill of their passing. The signs, the trophy kills, the large campsites that left nothing useful behind. But none of those trophies had ever been found in state. That meant they were going to other places, and it was like a hole in a picture that said something was wrong.

  He was equally sure they hadn’t found most of the carnage or even the locations of where these hunting parties had gone. Those mountains up there and around the state could hide a lot of things easily and quickly.

  They’d gotten whispers, hints, that something illegal was happening on a larger scale than usual. Desi had certainly raised a lot of attention about the increased trophy hunting over the last few years. And had the hunting been legitimate, they wouldn’t have left the meat behind. That big no-no had given them away as much as anything.