Undercover In Conard County. Rachel Lee

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      He offered his hand. “Kel Westin, WIU.”

      Wildlife Investigative Unit? Surprised, she shook his hand, feeling an electric jolt at the contact, and summoned a smile. “Come on inside.”

      “Thanks.”

      As he followed her inside, Desi wondered if something had gone wrong. What was he investigating? Her? One of her wardens? But no, they didn’t investigate that stuff, did they? Her heart rate picked up a little bit. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t casual.

      “Coffee?” she asked. She sure wanted some.

      “Thanks. It’s been a long day. And you look like you’ve had one, too.”

      “Poachers,” she said succinctly as she readied the pot to brew. “Worse, trophy hunters.”

      “Would you believe that’s exactly why I’m here?”

      She hit the start button on the coffeepot and faced him. He looked to be in his late thirties, eyes the color of a storm-heavy sky, his skin pleasantly weathered by the elements. A lean face. “ID?” she asked. If this was going any further, she had to be sure she wasn’t talking to her poacher.

      Without comment, he reached into his hip pocket and slipped out a leather case. Flipping it open, he showed his badge and photo ID.

      “Thanks,” she said.

      “No problem. Thing is, I’d like it if you’d keep that under your hat. Don’t even tell your other wardens.”

      Her attention sharpened even more. “Why?”

      “Because I’m here to investigate the poaching and I’m going to do it undercover by starting my own outfitting business. The less people know, the better.”

      “Hallelujah,” she said quietly, and finally pulled out her chair to sit at her desk. “I didn’t think anyone was listening.”

      “Oh, we’ve been listening. It’s just this isn’t the only place where this is happening and we’ve got limited manpower. Thing is, we just recently got intelligence that all this trophy hunting might be linked to a single very active ring. But we need evidence, so here I am.”

      She thought about what he’d just said and felt her heart quicken. A ring? It suggested huge problems. She came out of her thoughts about how big this could be with a start as she heard the coffee finish brewing.

      “Grab a chair,” she said, pivoting her own to reach for two mugs on the counter behind her and pour them full of coffee. She passed him one. “Let’s talk about today, then you tell me what you need.”

      He picked up the mug and drank deeply, then rose immediately to refill it. At least he didn’t ask her to. She was a little prickly about her gender because women were so rare in the service, and some of the men didn’t hold them in very high regard. But she supposed that wasn’t fair. Most of the trouble she got about her gender came from miscreants she was about to cite. Men who said things like, “They let women have guns, too?”

      Then Kel Westin sat across from her again. “So, about today?”

      * * *

      Kel waited patiently for her to speak. Her reputation had preceded her. She was young for a senior warden, which spoke highly of her skills and service. But he hadn’t expected blue eyes and curly dark hair like a tousled nimbus around her head, or the curves he could see when she pulled off her insulated vest and tossed it onto another chair. Her red shirt was beginning to show some wrinkles from a long day.

      “Today,” she repeated, standing to pull off her utility belt and place her gun in a locker. “A local rancher, who’s also the city police chief, found a bighorn sheep decapitated and skinned on his property. Looked to be around two days old, maybe a little less because the wolves hadn’t finished it. Anyway, his property is fenced and posted, so the poacher must have broken down part of his fence as well. The meat was wasted.”

      “Damn,” Kel said, watching her as she paced to the window and back, discovering that it was suddenly easier to think about how attractive she was. He shook his head and stared down into his coffee. “What do you think brought the sheep down from the mountains?”

      “They might have used dogs. Or maybe the animal was sick. I have samples to send to the lab and a carcass in my truck that I need to get into an evidence freezer, but in the meantime...” She put her camera on her desk and turned it around so he could see the screen. With a punch of the button, a slideshow started. “Have a look. Too bad it rained the last two nights.”

      “Maybe that’s all that kept the wolves from scenting it sooner.”

      She nodded, then settled onto her chair again. “I hate to think of that sheep being driven down the mountain like that. Terrified by bush beaters or dogs...it doesn’t matter. Out of his element, on the run, all so somebody could decorate his wall.” She slapped her palm on the desk. “We only issued twenty-two permits in this area for bighorns this year. We don’t have a big enough population to sustain this kind of hunting.”

      That was the struggle for which Wyoming Game and Fish had been created. Back in the 1880s, Wyoming’s streams had become sterile of edible fish. So fisheries were their first step. Then in 1921 Game and Fish had been created and in 1929 had been given the power to limit the harvesting of game and fish both. Since then healthy populations had rebounded, but it was a never-ending battle.

      Desi Jenks was right: they couldn’t afford this poaching. Not of bighorns. Some other populations were large enough to withstand some of it, like antelope, but the bighorn? There was a reason they’d permitted only twenty-two to be harvested this year in her area, and that was a larger number than in some areas that were being poached.

      “No clues, I suppose?” he finally asked as he scanned her photos of the scene.

      “I wish. I pulled another bullet but you know they’re useless without a gun to match them to. Standard round for a thirty-thirty hunting rifle, and you wouldn’t want too big a hole in your sheepskin rug.”

      “The skinning was expert,” he remarked. “The decap appears to have been done by some kind of butcher’s saw.” He sat back. “They didn’t want to damage the skin or head. To hell with the rest.”

      She nodded and picked up her own coffee, leaning back in her chair. “Experienced.”

      “Yeah.” He tried to ignore the loveliness of the woman who sat across from him, just a normal male response that should be ignored, focusing instead on what this piece added to the puzzle. Not much, he decided. It was more of the same.

      “What about you?” she asked.

      “I’m going into competition with them. See if I can draw them out by threatening their cash stream.”

      She frowned. “That could be dangerous.”

      “It could, but we’re getting nowhere otherwise. They pop up under different names every season. New phone number every week, then no phone number once they’ve got enough customers. All payments made by cash. Absolutely nothing we’ve been able to trace, including their internet postings. In fact, all that stuff has started diminishing and we suspect they’re getting most СКАЧАТЬ