Red Wolf's Return. Mary Forbes J.

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СКАЧАТЬ names, Ethan.”

      Ethan again. Twice in less than sixty seconds. “Randy Leland, Linc’s boy and the mayor’s grandson—”

      “I know the Lelands,” she retorted. Her eyes softened. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. It’s just…Let’s say it doesn’t surprise me.”

      Of course it didn’t. Linc Leland and Jock Ralston—and sometimes her second-in-command Gilby Pierce—had blighted Ethan’s high school years, and Meggie, his noble, valiant Meggie, had tried to install herself as his shield. Until he’d had to physically fight Linc and Jock—and get his nose busted—to prove himself.

      He gave her a half beat. “I also saw your son.”

      “Beau?” Her pupils pinpricked. “With Randy? When?”

      “Last weekend.” Labor Day weekend. “Sunday to be exact. They were popping shots at deadwood on my land.”

      She typed in his response. “Did you talk to them?”

      He hesitated. Her son hadn’t welcomed Ethan’s intrusion. “I told them to use the range at Livingston or Bozeman, that they were on private property now.” Her son had shrugged and said something about how Old Man O’Conner never gave a rat’s ass before, why should Ethan?

      He’d told the boy if he didn’t get his ass off the property right quick, he’d find it hauled down to the chief’s office. Or words to that effect. The kid had laughed.

      “Did they leave?” Meggie asked.

      “They did.” Just to be sure, he’d followed them until they were in Beau’s Chevy pickup and roaring down the dirt road that wound around the lake and hooked up with the pavement to Sweet Creek’s town proper.

      “Was that the only time you saw the kids on your land?”

      “Beau was there once before, far as I know.”

      Her expression remained bland. “When?”

      “End of July. He was walking along the lakeshore around seven-thirty in the evening.”

      “With the twenty-two?”

      “Over his shoulder.”

      “Did you talk to him at that time?”

      “No. He was crossing my property line and heading up the mountain.” Foothill, actually. Blue Mountain was part of the timbered hills evolving into the Absaroka Range to the east.

      Meggie got out of her chair and walked to the corner window where the strengthening morning sunlight fell in a block on the floor. Ethan envisioned her conjuring pictures of her boy on the mountain beyond. “Still doesn’t mean those kids shot that eagle.”

      “You’re right,” he conceded. “It doesn’t.”

      It could have been someone else, an adult, a poacher or poachers trafficking eagle parts. Off and on such stories had been on the nightly news, in the papers. Stories relaying the profit of wildlife products such as bear claws, teeth and gall bladders, antler velvet, hooves from elk and deer.

      Of feathers and talons from birds of prey.

      Or it could it have been a brash sixteen-year-old proving a point to his mother, officer of the law.

      She returned to the desk. “I’ll need a statement from you. Please,” she added, and again the severity in her eyes lessened. “When Beau gets home from school this afternoon, I’ll talk to him.”

      Ethan didn’t envy her the job. He’d heard the rumors, the gossip. Over the past year and a half, Meg McKee’s boy had transitioned into the classic badassed teenager.

      The way he’d been once.

      Old history, Ethan.

      Except, people didn’t forget. Not in this town. Restless to leave, he took the pen and notepad she dug from a desk drawer.

      “The room across the hall’s more private,” she said, and he saw something in her eyes. Something that had him wanting to reach over, touch her hair, that sleek short bob skimming to her chin. So different from when she’d been young. When touching had been easy and natural and they’d been crazy about each other.

      Ethan shoved back his chair and stood. He’d seen the nameplate on the door of the interview room when he stood on the threshold of her office. The office of Meg, the cop. Meg, the woman he barely recognized.

      She rose with him. Their eyes held. A long moment passed and all he could think was how nearly two decades had altered little of her physique. She retained those same long lean bones, but, tall as she was, the top of her head still remained below his chin.

      He turned and walked across the hall, flicked on the light.

      “Ethan,” she said as he rounded the small, stark table marred with dozens of scuffs and scratches and initials. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

      “I know you will.”

      She leaned in the doorway, her chief’s badge glinting in the ruthless lighting. She had something on her mind, he could see, something that bowed between them, eye to eye, and he remembered days long past when tension between them was as foreign as a bluebird nesting in winter.

      “It’s…” she began. “It’s been a long time since…”

      Since they’d stood within each other’s proximity. Since they’d talked, actually talked.

      What do you want me to say, Meggie? That I haven’t forgotten what we had once? That I wish your best friend hadn’t died during prom week? That, God help me, I wanted so badly to soothe your grief, heal your heart?

      “How’ve you been?” she asked softly, and he saw the question was genuine and came from a history long past.

      “Good. Real good.” Same old mundane response.

      Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he glanced at the paper in his hand, focusing on his reason for being here—because if he didn’t, he’d step across the confined space and haul her into his arms. “Look, I should get this done.”

      She straightened from the doorjamb. “’Course. Just leave it with Sally when you’re finished. And Ethan? Thanks again.” With that, she walked across to her office and closed the door.

      He stared at the page. In his chest, his heart hammered. Well, it was a start, this dialogue between them. The proverbial ice had been broken. So where did he take it from here?

      Think about her later.

      He set aside her pen, drew the ever-present pencil from his shirt pocket. Trouble was, he’d never stopped thinking about Meggie McKee.

      

      In the sanctuary of her office, Meg sat at her desk, propped her elbows on its surface and put her face in her hands. Ethan.

      Still the rescuer of wild creatures. Still healer of the hurt. A thousand memories besieged СКАЧАТЬ