and donned her olive-green jacket over her sweater. No red shirt tonight. Just a lot of protection.
“You got any armor?” she asked Kel.
“Not with me.”
She hesitated, then went to a locker and tossed him a vest. “Mind yourself now,” she said. “Or stay here.”
He didn’t stay behind.
* * *
Kel was amused. Desi was quite an interesting character. She didn’t approve of sport hunting, but accepted that some of it was allowed by law, and could even summon a good reason or two, like the herds needed to be harvested to a reasonable extent, and the outfitters offered her information from their scouting trips. She liked eating game but didn’t have time to hunt.
And she told him to mind himself. As if he wouldn’t know how. He’d been an army Ranger before he’d come to this job, and had walked into a lot more dangerous situations than this. Which was not to say a warden couldn’t get shot, but it didn’t happen that often. Though people might cuss them when they got a citation or lost their hunting privileges, they weren’t inclined to murder. But it was still dangerous. Careless hunters were always dangerous.
They drove through the night toward the mountain. He already knew Cranbrook Road. It was hardly more than a cart track that was occasionally graded mainly because it provided access to the state lands hunters and fishermen wanted to get to. By keeping Cranbrook basically functional, it reduced the likelihood that hunters would travel over posted private property to go hunting.
He watched her drive with calm competence over back roads she probably knew as well as her own hand and sensed the distance in her. He wondered if he had put her that much on guard, or if the job had. She could laugh and smile, but she avoided getting personal about anything except being a warden. And she hadn’t even questioned him about his background. Pure business.
He wondered if those walls ever fell. She was appealing, and he’d really like to get to know what lay behind the warden’s facade. She couldn’t possibly be nothing but a warden. People had lives, had problems, had hopes and dreams. But Desi...always back to business.
He admitted he’d been guilty of some of that himself for a long time. When you lost buddies, you stopped making close friends. War had carved something out of him.
But what had carved Desi? Something sure had.
He forced his attention back to the job at hand. The darkness of the night was consuming. No stars, no moon. No wonder that rancher had seen the lights and fire on the side of the mountain. There was no light anywhere else.
He caught a glimpse of it as they climbed in the truck, but only a glimpse. It was a camp, not a city, and vanished in the trees almost as soon as he saw it.
“Any idea where it is?” he asked.
“Some, but I hope you’re ready to hike. You can stay with the vehicle if you want. Jos is coming to back me up.”
“I’m not staying with the car,” he said firmly. No way was he going to stand back when there might be danger.
“What do you want me to tell Jos about you?”
“That I insisted on coming, that I just got out of the Rangers.”
“I don’t like lying to my fellow wardens.”
No real surprise there. Not only did they have to work together, but they had to trust each other. He sighed. “Can they keep secrets?”
“As far as I know.”
“Then I guess I can let them all know what I’m here for. Might as well. There’s just so far undercover I can go, I guess.”
“You might need backup,” she pointed out. “You can’t run a one-man operation. If these guys come after you...” She paused. “You know, interfering with one of their hunts might be the most dangerous thing you can do. If you come across one, you’re going to need backup.”
“Maybe so. But if coming across one of their hunts were likely, you and your wardens would have already done it. No, I need to draw them out. So I ask again, do you trust all your wardens?”
This time she didn’t answer as they jolted their way up the track. When she finally pulled over onto a small patch of flat, open ground and turned off her engine, she finally spoke. “You’re a friend of mine, you just got out of the army and came to visit. End of story.”
“Fair enough.”
“And I guess that means you ought to move into the bunkhouse.” Then she slipped out of the truck and opened the crew door to pull out her rifle. Because tonight was potentially dangerous. He didn’t need a map to know that.
“How are we going to put out the fire?” he asked.
She passed him a shovel and a jerry can full of water from the bed of the truck. “The usual way.”
He could have laughed. He put the can down beside his feet and leaned on the shovel. Before long he heard another truck approaching. It turned off its headlights before it reached them.
Soon a young game warden joined them and was introduced to him as Jos Webber. He almost looked wet behind the ears, but his bearing pegged him as confident and experienced.
“Kel Westin,” Desi said as she introduced him. “Old friend. He just got out of the army rangers.”
Jos stuck out his hand. “We can probably use you, sir.”
“Well, I don’t intend to get in the way.”
Jos looked him over in the dim glow of his flashlight. “Somehow I don’t think you’re the type. Interested in what it takes to be a warden?”
“Very,” he answered. But he was wondering why Desi had decided to use a cover story for him after saying she didn’t like lying to her fellow wardens. Did something not feel right to her? Or did she think they’d tell someone outside the service, like a family member? Or maybe this whole idea of illegal outfitters had her wondering just how far this stuff went?
He hoped after this she’d talk to him some more. He kinda felt like he was dangling by a thin rope here. He might have learned the terrain over the summer, but he hadn’t learned any of the people. He was going to need to rely on Desi for that.
Jos got his long gun and soon the three of them were heading into the forest where it impossibly grew even darker. As his eyes adapted more, however, the single red-lensed flashlight in Jos’s hand gave him ample light to avoid obstacles. After a half mile or so they didn’t really even need that as the flickering of firelight began to reach them through the scattered trees. A soft bed of pine needles silenced their feet.
“Spread out,” Desi said quietly. “I’ll approach.”
“Got you covered,” Jos answered. “Kel?”
“I can bash heads. Should’ve brought my pistol.”
“Stay behind one of us,” Desi said. “And put that water where you can find it again. I hope we won’t need it.”
Much
