Midnight Prey

by Caroline Burnes

  Shadoe looked down at the ground. “Where is he?” She had a bad feeling. Very bad.

  “The truth?”

  She looked up. “You’re a friend of his?”

  “Cal Oberton. We went through training together and for some unknown reason, we’re normally assigned to the same project. Now you asked where Hank is. I was hoping maybe he was with you.”

  Shadoe shook her head. “The Double S would be the last place he’d go.”

  “I see.” Cal’s voice sounded as if he did. “I didn’t believe it when Harry said you registered a complaint. Hank must have been his usual tactful self and made you mad as hell.”

  Cal’s good-natured understanding made Shadoe smile. “That’s one way of putting it, but Hank probably feels the good-natured part of it comes from my end.”

  “Well, he was a little torqued out about that wolf. Hank and I have worked a lot of cases together, and he’s always concerned about the wildlife, but these wolves are something else. There’s some link between him and these animals.” Cal hesitated. “Hank likes to push the envelope. I’m afraid this time he may have gone over the edge.” He looked directly at Shadoe. “After the complaint you filed, Code ordered him back to Washington for disciplinary action. Sometime last night Hank packed his equipment and took off. We’ve been hunting him all day.”

  “Took off? Without a trace?” She recalled Harry Code’s words—that Hank had run away. “Hank isn’t the type of person to run away from his problems.” No, that was the type of person she had been, once.

  “As I said, Hank was personally involved with these wolves. I don’t think he’s run.” Cal looked into the thick forest. “I think he’s out there, looking for Thor.”

  Shadoe didn’t respond. Deep in her heart, she knew Cal Oberton was correct. Hank wouldn’t abandon the wolves. But he had gone out alone. Without the support of his fellow agents or the ranchers. She stood up. “I need to see Mr. Code and explain that the complaint I registered was done in a moment of anger.”

  Cal shook his head. “That won’t make a bit of difference to Code. He’s been looking for something to nail Hank with and you just gave him the hammer. Taking it back now won’t help Hank.”

  “But at least if I wrote a letter, or explained-”

  Cal’s head shook again. “My best advice to you is let it go. Harry can’t do a thing until we find Hank. Maybe then it would help. But if you go to him now, he’ll have plenty of time to figure out a way around you retracting the complaint. And he’s been wanting to put it to Hank for a long, long time.”

  Shadoe hesitated. She hated to leave the camp without straightening out the mess she’d made, but maybe Cal knew best. “Okay,” she agreed. She’d talk it over with Billy and see what he thought.

  “You don’t have any idea where Hank might be, do you? If we could find him, we might be able to straighten this out before it goes any farther.”

  Shadoe was struck with a sudden thought. “There’s a cabin. It’s on state property, just north of my ranch. We used to go there and camp a lot when we were younger. Hank knows about it, and he knows that my father and the local ranchers always kept it stocked with food and wood for a fire.” She felt dead certain Hank would head for the cabin if he intended to stay in the mountains on a hunting expedition.

  “Great!” Cal put his arm around her and squeezed her tight. “Listen, we have to get to Hank and convince him to come back to the camp. If he doesn’t, Code’s going to pull out all the stops.”

  “Hank isn’t easy to convince about something he doesn’t want to do.” She knew that from long experience.

  “You can do it, Shadoe, if anyone can. The man has been in love with you for years.” Cal started down the path. “If we don’t bring him in, Harry’s going to label him a rogue agent. And Hank could lose a lot more than his badge.” He looked back at Shadoe. “He could lose his life.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Shadoe replaced the telephone and sat for a moment with Totem in her lap. The cat purred as Shadoe’s fingers stroked her fur. “Where is old Billy?” she asked, but Tctem had no answers.

  She stared at the telephone, mentally urging Billy to call her back. She’d left messages for him at the sheriffs office, at the barber shop and at Hoss’s barbecue where he liked to hang out for lunch and at other times when the coffee or company were good. It was odd that no one had seen him.

  The incident with the gunshot in the woods nagged at Shadoe. She hadn’t reported it to the feds, but it was something Billy should know. The ranchers needed to be kept in line. If they killed the wolf, it would be a disaster, as Billy had pointed out. Based on their hunting skills, they were as likely to kill each other-or an innocent by stander—as they were the wolf. Any way she cut it, the would-be hunters spelled trouble. Billy needed to know. Dang his hide, where had he gone?

  Holding Totem in her arms, she went to the front balcony and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. She had about five. hours of daylight left. Just enough.

  “I might as well do it,” she said as she put Totem down. “I’m driving myself crazy just hanging around here worrying.”

  Picking up a rifle, she went to the barn. In fifteen minutes she had Chester and Ray, two reliable geldings, saddled and ready to go. Riding Chester, she set off toward the north leading Ray. It was a crazy notion, but she intended to bring Hank back down with her, whether he wanted to come or not. She was positive he was holed up in the cabin.

  She pressed the horses into a ground-covering trot and tried to put her mind in neutral, but she kept coming up with plans on how to handle the rapidly approaching encounter. Hank would be furious. She knew his temper well, though over the years he’d honed an edge on it that hadn’t been there as a young man. He would resist all efforts to talk sense into him. But he was in this mess partly because of her—no matter what Jill said—and she was going to make the effort to put things to right. There was no undoing what had been done in the past, but she could assume the responsibility for her actions. It wouldn’t change anything, except her feelings about herself. She was sick of turning tail, worn out with running.

  Once she’d gotten things straight with Hank, she was going to come back to her ranch and start working with the new foals and honing Luster’s skills for the next competition. Since the competition in Billings, she’d had eight calls about breeding to Scrapiron, and the mares would be coming in the latter part of the month. With stud fees and mare care, this was a good first step in her horse-breeding business. There would be testing, teasing and breeding, and she wouldn’t have a spare minute to worry about Hank, or for that matter about John. She was thoroughly disgusted with both of them, and men in general.

  As she headed north, the pastureland gave way to rockier terrain. The open meadows were replaced with steep trails sheltered on both sides by firs and a few hardwoods just brave enough to show the first tips of greenery. The wildflowers were beginning to dare the spring, and Shadoe pulled Chester to a halt as she crested a steep rise and looked down into a valley showing the russets, pale greens, yellows and blues of a Montana spring.

  The land caught at her heart with a sudden fierceness that pushed everything else from her mind. There was no place like it, no sensation equal to that of topping a crest and seeing the untouched wilderness fall away beneath her feet in a rolling vista of colorful wildflowers surrounded by boulders and trees. This land spoke to her blood, to her need to be free and alive.

  How had she denied this love for so long?

  Sighing, she nudged Chester forward and Ray obediently trotted along beside her. She was more tired than she’d thought. Watching for the wolf had worn her down, but she couldn’t forget that the big, powerful killer was out there somewhere.

  It was three o’clock before she neared the cabin. She’d have about fifteen minutes to fight with Hank before they had to leave to return—or face the dangers of traveling back along the mountains in the dark. As willing and game as Chester and Ray were, they didn�
��t have the surefootedness of mules or pack burros. She trusted them, but she also knew that they had been bred and trained for something other than mountain climbing in the dark. And certainly not with a wolf on the loose.

  Hank could argue on horseback—and she was sure he would fight until the mountains gave back his grumbling. To her surprise, she found she was smiling at that thought. In times past, she and Hank had sat up entire nights debating a point or an idea.

  Two hundred yards from the cabin she dismounted and tied the horses to a scrub tree. She was ninety-nine percent positive Hank would be at the cabin, but there was that single possibility that someone else was there, some camper or one of the other ranchers. Or maybe even the person who’d been in her barn. It always paid to be cautious.

  On the long ride, Shadoe developed her own theories about what had been happening in Lakota County, and they involved a third party. She didn’t believe Hank would turn Thor loose knowing that every rancher in the area would be out to shoot him on sight. Without the pack, Thor would be more likely to move down to ranches rather than hunt with his comrades in the wilderness.

  Hank absolutely hadn’t turned Scrapiron loose. She’d seen him and the intruder at the same time. That left a third party.

  But if Shadoe could resolve some of the problems she faced in Montana by adding an unknown third party, she could not do the same for Kathy Lemon’s accusations against Hank. She’d slapped Hank with the charge and then gone into the house. She’d given him no time to respond, if he had an inclination to do so. Not really. This time she wanted a yes or no—while she looked into his eyes. One simple answer.

  When she came within sight of the cabin, she stopped. The place looked deserted. If she hadn’t known Hank as well as she did, she would have simply said the cabin was empty. But he had been trained by a master—her own father. Jimmy Deerman had known how to walk without leaving prints, to wander through the wilderness without upsetting the animals around him. And he’d also known how to stand so completely still that he didn’t register on a person’s vision. Hank knew those things, too.

  Shadoe walked directly to the front door. One thing she didn’t want to do was startle Hank, especially if he was asleep. And he might well be if he’d spent the better part of the night and morning walking down from Stag’s Horn.

  “Hank.” She tapped on the door lightly. “Hank!”

  She heard his footsteps and composed her face into a blank. She might be able to hide her expressions, but she couldn’t deny the sudden rapid beating of her heart, or the feeling of breathlessness that made her inhale deeply before the door opened.

  “Shadoe.” He spoke her name and looked at her for a moment as if he had stepped into a long-awaited dream. Then his features hardened.

  His face was stu bbled with a light growth of blond beard, and his eyes looked tired. It was a look Shadoe recognized from a time long past, and she felt a twist of pain. She had been the source of that look.

  “Get your gear.” She spoke softly, knowing he would resent an order of any kind. “We need to head home before it gets any later.” She had not meant to say home. For all of her rehearsing on the way up the trail, she’d bungled it at the very last. To cover her embarrassment, she went on. “I brought a horse for you. You’ll like Ray. He’s a lot like you. Stubborn.”

  Hank ignored her attempt to lighten the moment. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Lucky guess. I went up to talk with your boss. He said you’d cut out.” She used the term deliberately. Her emotions were in turmoil, and she’d always been able to draw a rise out of Hank with minimal effort.

  Hank gave her a black look and walked back into the cabin.

  He hadn’t invited her in, but Shadoe followed him anyway. She took in his pack against the rough-hewn wall, the chair pulled up to the window where he’d been gazing down into a small clearing. Watching. For what?

  He went back to the window. Shadoe felt terribly awkward. Hank stood with his back to her, gazing out as if she weren’t there. She’d already told him why she was there—to take him home. Apparently, he wasn’t going to mount Ray unless she could convince him with a little more than logic. Now she had to tell him why she was there.

  It was damn hard to do with him giving her his backside. She cleared her throat, but he continued to ignore her.

  “Don’t make this any harder, please.” She swallowed and waited for him to turn around. Her gaze lingered on the sunlight in his blond hair, the softness of the blue flannel shirt he wore. It would be the same color as his eyes. It would be soft and smell of him. She’d always loved to fall asleep with her head resting on Hank’s shoulder as he drove her home from a dance or a movie. He had been her source of comfort, of total security. If he would only turn around and look at her. But he didn’t.

  “Hank, I owe you an apology.” She took a hesitant step forward. “For making Billy call your boss.and for when I left Montana. I shouldn’t have done it the way I did. I just couldn’t do it any other way at the time.” She swallowed. “I was weak. After Dad was killed, I didn’t want to care about anyone or anything. I just shut myself down and ran.”

  He turned slowly then, stopping when he fully faced her. His blue gaze moved over her face, as if he meant to read the truth in her features rather than her words. “For a long time, I thought it was something I’d done.”

  She nodded and felt a lump in her throat. “I know that now. At the time, I didn’t think about how it would feel to you. I couldn’t think about anything except getting as far away as I could. Or drown in the horror of it all.” She swallowed twice. “So I ran. And I ran some more. And it got so that it was easier to run than to stand still and think.” She shrugged, knowing that she was on the verge of tears. If she ever allowed herself to start crying, it would take a long time to stop. Tears were weakness, and Hank had seen enough of her weakness.

  “I would have helped you.”

  Shadoe forced herself to look at him. She owed him that much. He would have helped her. By running, she had denied him that way of assuaging his own grief. “No one could help me, Hank. When Dad died. I didn’t allow myself to feel anything for a long, long time. I couldn’t let you help me because I would have had to feel something for you. You always made me feel, sometimes more than I thought I could bear.”

  More than anything in the world, Hank wanted to step over to her, to brush the tears away from her cheeks and hold her against him. He knew the feel of her, the way her chin would touch just at his breastbone, the way her fingers would curl on his chest. The need to touch her was a terrible pain, but he resisted it. It seemed that Shadoe Deerman was a continuation of bitter lessons for him. He had to learn that this was the past. Whatever they had shared was over. He forced down his desire to reach out to her and found the residue of his anger.

  “And what about me? You simply left. No telephone call. No address. Your mother wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone. There was talk you’d been put in a hospital.” He laughed, but it was bitter. “I called every hospital, even the mental institutions, in the state of Montana. And then someone told me that you could be there under an assumed name. But I didn’t give up. I started going to each one, looking for you.”

  “Oh, Hank.” She couldn’t help the tears now. She could see him, a kid of eighteen, spending his Sundays looking for a girl who had simply vanished. The fact that she had been more dead than alive didn’t relieve her of the pain she had given him.

  “Finally, about nine months later, Jill told me she’d gotten a letter from you. She said you were in college, and that you were dating a senior. She said I should forget you.”

  Shadoe brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. She was overwhelmed by emotion, and she wanted to walk out the door and ride—to escape to anywhere except where she was standing. But her days of running were over. “Mother insisted that I put Montana behind me. She said it would only make it worse to stay in touch with my old friends. I finally wrote Jill, because I w
as so homesick and so alone. But I made it sound like everything was fine. I made up the part about dating someone so I didn’t sound so pathetic.” Shadoe smiled and shook her head. “Always the pride. Always.”

  “By the time Jill got your letter, I was neck-deep in debt at Copperwood. A smart man would have let it go then, but I hung on and on, until when it did go, there was nothing but bad debt for me.”

  “And so you went east and went into the wildlife service.”

  “I got a scholarship.”

  “And you came back to Montana.”

  “Just long enough to establish the wolves. There’s nothing here for me any longer.” He felt the first flash of satisfaction at the expression on her face. But that moment was short-lived. He had hurt her, and he found that it did not truly relieve his own suffering. The damnable truth was that it only heightened it.

  The pain his words generated surprised Shadoe. At last she looked away. “And I came back to try to find the part of me I left here. My courage.” She turned so that her profile was to him. “I didn’t know exactly why I came back here until this very minute. But it’s the truth. I can’t go forward with my life until I find the rest of myself.”

  “Like the old warrior Two Crows.” Hank’s voice had softened a tiny bit. He knew her well enough to know what this admission cost her. Whatever she had done in the past, he had to admire her for this moment. “He lost his courage in a fight with a bear.”

  “And he couldn’t go to the land of the clouds without it.” Shadoe remembered. Vividly. It was one of her favorite stories that her father had told.

  “He was too old to walk the mountains, so he went on a dream quest.” Hank took up the story.

  “And in the dream, he saw that his courage had been found and taken by an eagle. He knew that she would not willingly return it to him. He would have to trick her.” She felt like the old warrior, except she had no dream to show her where she’d left her courage. She was stumbling along in the dark, without even the guidance of a dream. “The warrior was lucky. He found that part of himself he had lost. I’m not so certain I’ll be able to do the same.”