“I always had a weakness for a woman with a guilty conscience.”

“Oh!” Tess spun around. Her horse spooked and stepped sideways.

In the shadows below the cliff Adam slouched in the saddle of his black mare. His smile gleamed like the Cheshire cat’s. “What brings you over my way?”

“I’m just out for my afternoon ride,” she said casually, leaning down to pat his bloodhound. “And what are you doing up here? Lose a cow?”

“I’m looking for rustlers, trespassers—or anybody who speaks English instead of Dog. You know there’s a toll for using this trail, don’t you?”

Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat. How did Adam do this to her with just a look? “Th-there is?”

“Yep. You have to come to my cabin and let me make supper for you. And you have to say something besides ‘woof’ while I cook it.”

“I…don’t know if that’s such a…good idea.”

“Goodness never even crossed my mind,” he assured her huskily. “Still, that’s the forfeit and it’s got to be paid.”

This was crazy. At best, Adam Dubois would complicate her life, which was complicated enough already.

And at worst?

His grin was wicked. Welcoming. She wondered how he’d kiss.

Dear Reader,

Well, here you have it, the sixth book in my series about the imaginary town of Trueheart, Colorado, and its surrounding ranches. You may remember Tess Tankersly from The Wildcatter. Last time we looked in on her, she was a mischievous twelve-year-old. A passionate bird-watcher and horse lover, Tess was barely starting to discover that most fascinating beast of all—man.

Thirteen years later (as time is measured in Trueheart), Tess is ready to meet her own alpha male. Not that she’s precisely looking, you understand. Tess has a couple of woebegone lynx on her hands—and one short summer in the high country to help these endearingly big-footed cats learn to survive in the wild. But can Tess survive the attentions of a mysterious, maddening cowboy named Adam Dubois?

You might also recall Adam from True Heart. He was the line camp cowboy whom rancher Tripp McGraw saw as dangerous competition in his courtship of Kaley Cotter. Now Adam’s back, and it turns out he’s much more than a smiling Cajun cowboy. He’s a moonlighting detective, with a mystery to solve and an elusive woman to chase.

So there are hearts for the capture and the game is afoot. Hope you enjoy it!

Peggy Nicholson

More Than a Cowboy
Peggy Nicholson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one’s for Amy Mower the cat-lady

and her surly half-pint lynx

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

CHAPTER ONE

“OH, SWEETIE! Oh, baby! Oh, you poor thing!” Tess Tankersly crouched before the pen and laced her fingers through the metal mesh. “How could they do this to you?”

The furry shape huddled at the far end of the cage didn’t open its eyes. Lying in a filthy nest of shredded newspaper, the big cat looked dead at first glance. Its ribs and shoulder blades and hipbones stood out starkly below the matted pelt.

Was it even breathing? Tess drew her nails along the mesh—and was rewarded with the faintest quiver of one black-tasseled ear. “You don’t belong in there,” she crooned to the animal. “Locked away from the sunshine. No snow to run through. No trees to climb. This isn’t right! Not right at all.”

She sat back on her heels and looked up at the hand-lettered sign wired to the top of the home-built cage.

Danger! Look, but don’t touch!

Canadian Lynx. Killer of the North Country!

“Yeah, right. Bunny rabbits, beware.” Tess leaned forward again to peer through the wire.

A free spirit of the forest and mountains imprisoned in a box so small it could barely turn around! Tess doubted the lynx could have stood upright in there.

But was it even well enough to stand? Tess had grown up on a ranch. She knew a sick animal when she saw one—the harsh coat, the hunched misery.

She had never been able to bear cruelty to animals. Hated to see wild things caged. Normally you couldn’t have dragged her to a roadside petting zoo, for fear of sights just like this. But one of her pickup’s tires had gone flat a few miles back toward Albuquerque. Although she’d changed to her spare, with two hundred miles to go between her and home, and a forecast of a late-spring snowstorm for this evening, she’d thought it wiser to stop and have the flat repaired at the first gas station she came to.

Killing time till the mechanic could get to her job, she’d made the mistake of following the signs that beckoned from across the two-lane country highway. Hazeltine’s World-Famous Petting Zoo promised

Adorable, Exotic Animals!

Thrilling Beasts and Hideous Reptiles!

Hug the Llamas and Hold the Rabbits!

There wasn’t a child in all of New Mexico who would’ve allowed his hapless parents to drive past that sign without stopping. And even at twenty-five, Tess still had a child’s delight in animals. Growing up far from the nearest town, she’d had more friends with four legs than two. So she’d paid her dollar admission and entered the dimly lit, dingy concrete-block building that housed Hazeltine’s zoo.

And past the not-so-huggable llamas—llamas bored enough to spit—then the pen of black-and-white goats who begged for treats and nibbled at the hem of her jacket… Beyond three cages of resigned rabbits and a cracked aquarium housing a surly bull snake mislabeled as a Deadly Diamondback Rattlesnake! she’d come at last to this…this outrage.

She gazed around, angry words leaping to her lips as the proprietor shuffled up behind her. “This cage is too small. And your lynx, Mr. Hazeltine, just look at him! He’s sick.”

“She. Ol’Zelda’s just taking a catnap, missy. She don’t get lively till sunset.”

“No, sir, I’m sure she’s ill. See how her eyes are running? And her nose? And clearly she hasn’t been eating. I’m a wildlife biologist, and believe me, you’ve got a sick animal here. She needs a vet.”

Bristles rasped as he rubbed his weathered jaw. “Well, maybe she has a cold. She’ll get over it, same way we all do. Sniffle and wait.”

Or she wouldn’t. Maybe Zelda had no reason to live, if this smelly box was all life offered. She hadn’t been made for this. “Do you even have a license to keep wild animals?”

“Hey, hey, if you’re going to start ragging on me, maybe you should take your money back and get on outta here. I do the best I can. And Zelda there’d be a lady’s coat if it wasn’t for me. Bought her off a fur farm up in South Dakota last year. She’s got nothin’ to complain about. Only one complainin’ is you.”

Tess stood, wove her fingers together and clenched them till they ached. Temper. She had a hot one at the best of times, and when she saw things like this— She swallowed a swift retort. Probably Hazeltine was doing the best he could. But whether he was or not, the point here was to save all that ragged, desperate beauty before it slipped away.

That was the whole point of her life, trying to save the creatures that ought to be saved.

“I’m sorry. I’m glad you took her away from a fur farm. How anybody could—”

But that was another wonder, for another day. How much money would she have left after paying for the tire? Eighty dollars? Maybe ninety and change? Somehow Tess didn’t think Hazeltine’s World-Famous Petting Zoo accepted credit cards, and it must be miles to the nearest ATM. The cat needed hope and help now—right now. She thrust a hand into her coat pocket and gripped her wallet. “Considering that she’s sick and she needs a vet, would you sell her to me? I’m headed up past Santa Fe. I’m sure I could find a doctor there to look at her.”

Hazeltine scratched his jaw again, and his squinty little eyes slid away over the surrounding pens. “Hadn’t rightly thought ’bout lettin’ her go. Zelda’s the star attraction, you know. Kids like to be scared of something.”

“You’ve still got that magnificent rattler,” Tess wheedled. “And truly, I don’t think you’ll have Zelda much longer without a doctor. And vet bills for an exotic cat can’t be cheap.”

He grunted wry agreement and bent to look down into the cage. Blew out a disgusted breath and straightened. “Reckon I could take two hundred for her. Cash.”

“I…could do that.” The mechanic across the road had admired the elaborate stainless-steel rack system on the back of her pickup, a gift from her father at Christmas. Surely she could cut some sort of deal, if she offered it to him cheap? “I’ll take her! Umm, please.”

Hazeltine’s smile shifted from wary to gotcha. “Then there’s the cage. Lotta work and material went into buildin’ that cage. You wanna buy that, too?”

THE NEW ORLEANS Police Department health plan didn’t allow for private hospital rooms. As soon as they’d determined that Detective Adam Dubois meant to go on living, they’d moved him from the blessed isolation of Intensive Care down to a double room on a post-surgical ward.

If Adam hadn’t been sworn to uphold the law, protecting and serving civilians everywhere, no matter how undeserving, he’d have thrown his roommate out their fourth-floor window. Him and his television that yammered from lights-on till lights-off beyond the curtain that Adam had insisted on drawing. Him with his non-stop snoring that sounded like a chainsaw with water in the gas tank—Gasp, wheeze, rumble, snort-rumble-grumble!

Adam gave himself one more day of this nonsense, then he was out of here, even if he had to crawl.

Clutching a pillow over his face with his good arm, teeth gritted and muscles tensed, he didn’t hear his visitor arrive. When a finger tapped his wrist, Adam jolted half-upright, then swore at the pain. “Crap! How many times do I have to tell you not to wake me?”

But when he dragged the pillow down, he wasn’t glaring up at Nurse Thibodaux, with her sexy smiles and her offers of backrubs. Or Nurse Curry with her prune mouth and her ready syringes. “Gabe! What are you—?”

But the answer was obvious. Adam and his cousin had always been close, as close as two grown men could be who lived a thousand miles and a world apart. If Gabe was the one who’d been shot, nothing would’ve kept Adam from his bedside. “Who told you?”

“Hospital contacted me—or contacted my answering machine. Sorry I couldn’t make it sooner. I was up in the San Juans, snow-tracking lynx. Didn’t get the message for almost a week.”

Right, he’d listed Gabe Monahan as his next of kin on the insurance forms. There was nobody closer, legally or emotionally. Still. “You didn’t need to…” His voice had roughened and his eyes stung. Damn! His emotions had been up and down, all over the map, since the shoot-out. He swallowed audibly and swung his head toward the curtain, while tactful Gabe busied himself with pulling up a chair and settling in.

“Sure, but it was a good excuse for a break,” he said, his words discounting the worry in his eyes as he looked Adam over, then studied all the damnable devices he was hooked up to—monitors, IV lines and worse gizmos. “Figured I’d drop by and pay my respects, then chow down on crawfish at Mam’ Louisa’s before heading back to snow country.” He leaned closer and scowled at Adam’s chest. “They’ve sure got you gift-wrapped. What’s below all the bandages?”

By now Adam had learned better than to shrug. “Coupla busted ribs.” He’d taken a few kicks there, before he’d rolled far enough away to draw his gun. “Cracked collar-bone—bullet clipped it.” The same bullet that had collapsed his right lung.

“Nurse at the desk said you almost bled out, that was why all the intensive care. Took ’bout five quarts to top you up, she said?”

Adam shifted irritably. His life was his own to control. And information about it was strictly his to dispense or withhold, and generally he withheld. But let a pack of bossy women start giving a man sponge baths, and next thing you knew, they’d figure he was theirs to gossip about. “I wasn’t counting. Took a hit in my thigh, that was the bad one. Grazed an artery.”

“Ouch!” Gabe winced in sympathy.

“Oh, could’ve been worse. I must’ve straddled that bullet. Two inches higher and an inch right, and I’d be singing the lonesome blues, falsetto.”

“You always had the devil’s own luck.”

Which was a ludicrous statement, on the face of it. Adam was the cousin who’d lost his alcoholic father to a car wreck when he was twelve, then lost his mother a year later when she collapsed under the burden of grief and double shifts as a barmaid, trying to support them. Gabe was the cousin who’d grown up surrounded by a large and loving family on a southwest Colorado ranch. He’d been nurtured by a stay-at-home mom during the same years that Adam had passed through a grim series of foster homes, skipping school to run with the toughest street gang in the city.

Adam’s luck had turned around when his mother’s brother—Gabe’s father—had discovered his whereabouts and his situation. From age fifteen to eighteen, he’d lived with Gabe’s family, learned to cowboy, and relearned what it was to be loved by good, caring people. Another year and it would’ve been too late. He’d seen enough lost kids in his job to know how close he himself had come to the edge. So, yes, he supposed he did have his share of luck. “At least at poker,” he admitted wryly.

“And women.”

Short-term scoring, sure, he did all right, but the long-term win? His one time at bat—with Alice—he’d struck out big time. Swung for the bleachers and fallen flat on his face.

He started to shrug, then caught himself. “What can I say? Women are crazy for badges. And uniforms. Can’t tell you how I hated giving mine up when I moved into Homicide. Was a real heartbreaker trade-off.”

“Yeah, I can see you’re hurting.” The cousins grinned at each other till embarrassment set in, and Gabe glanced down. He plucked at the sheet hem. “So…when do they let you out of here?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“That’s not what the nurse—”

“Tomorrow, or I start tossing TVs.” He hooked a thumb toward the racket beyond the curtain.

“Ah.” Gabe nodded understanding. “Okay, but after that? I suppose they’ll be giving you some recuperation time?”

“More than I’ll want.” Being a homicide detective wasn’t simply a job, it was a calling. Maybe if he’d had a woman or a family to distract him—but then, how could a good cop allow himself to be distracted?

The cases were endless and they were fascinating, and they tended to eat a man up. You might stagger home wired yet exhausted, night after night, but your job counted for something. You felt it made a difference.

Feeling like that, you didn’t tend to set it aside at the end of your shift, or switch your focus to the things that mattered to civilians. Because what hobby could be half as meaningful? What sport could give a man the same rush as going eyeball-to-eyeball with a gunman? What woman could compete with the adrenaline high of a righteous arrest?

Which was why so many detectives lived wistfully single in spite of themselves.

“That’s what I figured. So I was wondering…” Gabe still fingered the sheet. “Maybe once you’re back on your feet, you’d consider helping me out?”

Adam cocked his head. Gabe, the golden boy, needed his help? Gabe, who’d always had his ducks in a row, be they feminine, academic or professional. “Sure, but with what?”

“You know I’ve been working on the lynx reintroduction project? For four years now.”

“Big spotted cats, with goofy clown feet and Mr. Spock ears,” Adam remembered. “Bringing ’em back to Colorado.” Gabe had explained his mission with enthusiasm several Christmases back, when the project was just getting off the ground. He was a conservation biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, DOW for short. A few years ago, the DOW had concluded that lynx had become an exceedingly endangered species in Colorado—there were maybe two left in the state, as far as anyone knew—and it was time to save the critters from extinction.

In spite of the howls of protest from the cattlemen and sheepmen and skiers, they’d imported a hundred or more of the big cats from Canada and Alaska. Then they’d freed them in the San Juan Mountains, the wildest, roughest region of the southern Rockies, hoping they’d go forth and multiply. “You brought in the fleabags at a thousand a pop, I think you told me. So?”

Gabe turned up his hands and showed them empty. “So then…where are they?”

CHAPTER TWO

“WILL SHE LIVE?” Standing across the exam table from the veterinarian, Tess cupped one of Zelda’s outsize paws between both her hands.

Dr. Liza Waltz glanced up from the sedated lynx, then down again at the thermometer she held. Her sandy brows drew together. “I don’t know yet. Three degrees above normal.” She set the thermometer briskly aside and returned with a stethoscope.

Tess stroked silky gray, black and buff-brindled fur and watched anxiously as the examination proceeded. Waltz was supposed to be the best vet for exotic cats in Santa Fe. After each of four phone calls to local vets had brought up the woman’s name, Tess had driven straight to her office. The vet had interrupted a scheduled appointment to walk out to Tess’s pickup. She’d peered into the cage in the truck bed, which Tess had covered with a tarp against the wind, sworn under her breath, then run back for sedatives and a noose pole to control the cat.

Zelda had been too weak to fight the injection. Within minutes Waltz had her on the table, and now Tess bit her bottom lip as she waited for a verdict.

The vet muttered something to herself and removed the stethoscope from her ears. “Not good,” she allowed, fixing Tess with accusing gray eyes. “How long has she been this way?”

“I don’t know.” Tess explained how she’d acquired the lynx, and from whom. “Hazeltine mentioned there’d been a second lynx, a male, who shared Zelda’s cage.”

“Two in a cage that size!”

“Exactly. He bought them from the same fur farm last year. I asked him what had happened to the male, and he hemmed and hawed, then told me he’d sold him a few days ago to somebody who needed a barn cat. But frankly, I think he was lying. My guess is the male died, and it suddenly occurred to Hazeltine that I might back out on the deal if I thought Zelda was that sick. So he spun me a feel-good story instead.”

Waltz growled something under her breath as she switched her attention to the cat’s belly. Her gaze grew distant while her fingers gently kneaded and squeezed.

“Checking for pregnancy?”

“Right, although she’d have to be four or five weeks along for me to feel kittens. Or for an ultrasound to show them. Is there any chance she could have been bred in the past week or two?”

Tess turned up her palms. “I suppose anything’s possible. But given the size of their cage, and that the male was removed recently, and that he may have been ill—”

“Seems unlikely,” the vet agreed. “Malnourished as she is, it’d be a miracle if she could conceive, even if she were bred. So…” She patted the lynx’s shoulder, then turned to a refrigerator in the corner. She stood, considering vials for a moment, then chose one and reached for a syringe. “I’ll have to culture her saliva to be sure, but we’re going to assume it’s not simply viral pneumonia—that by now she’s got bacterial complications. We’ll see if a bolus of antibiotics can knock it back while I’m waiting for the results.

“Meanwhile she’s dehydrated and underfed, so I’ll run an IV line. Give her saline and glucose for now. Tubal feeding by tomorrow if she isn’t eating.” Her left hand probed delicately across a gaunt gray haunch, then she set the needle, injected its contents and glanced up at Tess. “If I can save her, this isn’t going to be a cheap fix. She’s badly run down.”

Tess grimaced in agreement. And there was no way she could go to her father for help on this one. Ben Tankersly might have more money than God, but like most cattlemen, he wasn’t fond of predators. He’d tell her the only good lynx was a dead one, and he had his own stuffed specimen in his office to underline the point.

But Tess had worked each summer through college, and socked every spare penny away. Like both her older sisters, she’d learned early that if she didn’t want to dance to her domineering father’s tunes, she had to pay her own piper. “I can handle it.”

Waltz pried open the lynx’s jaws and bent close to study her curving fangs. Gently she lifted the gums aside to reveal the back teeth. “All intact. That’s something, anyway. So what did you pay for her, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Pretty steep for a half-dead cat.”

“Now ask me what he wanted for the cage,” Tess suggested, straight-faced, then added as the vet raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Five hundred.”

As they burst out laughing, she realized that here was somebody who might become a friend. They clearly shared the same passion for animals. Though the vet was inches shorter than Tess’s slender five-foot-seven, she had a combative bounce and an intensity that made her seem much larger. Tess suspected she couldn’t have picked a better ally to help her save this cat.

“Slick,” Liza Waltz agreed, when she could speak.

“Very slick. I was tempted to say, ‘keep your crummy ol’ cage,’ but then I took another look at Zelda’s fashion accessories.” Tess pressed a thumb gently against the center pad of the cat’s forepaw. Saber-sharp claws flexed into view, then retracted as she released the pressure. “And I thought…mmm…well, yeah. Maybe I don’t want her riding in my cab, till we’ve gotten to know one another better.”

“I should probably tell you this after you’ve paid my bill, not before, but…even if I can save her, if you’re thinking you’ve bought yourself a thirty-pound lap cat, you’d better think again. Lynx make rotten pets.”

“No, she’s a wild animal. I understand that.”

But Waltz had already launched into a passionate lecture that she’d obviously made before. “If I had a dollar for every bozo who thought he wanted a lion or a tiger or an ocelot for a pet! I mean, sure, it’s a wonderful fantasy—I wanted a cheetah when I was ten. But reality’s quite another thing. For instance, this kitty…” She paused to smooth her hand across the lynx’s soft tawny and cream-colored belly. “Once she gets her strength back, she’ll be able to clear twenty-four feet in a single bound. Now picture that in your living room.

“And will she scratch the furniture? Oh, baby—we’re talking shreds! Ribbons! She’ll go through a couch a week if you give her the run of your place.

“And as for spraying…male or female, spayed or unspayed, exotic felines mark their territory—and you—and everything else they can find to anoint. And we’re talking buckets.”

“Euuuw! No, I’m not up for that.”

“But I can’t tell you how many people are—till they try to live with a wild cat. Then once they do figure it out, they come crying to me or the zoo or the pound or a big cat sanctuary, because although they love their pet, they just can’t keep it. So naturally, they want to find a loving, happy home. But…”

“But?” Tess fingered a black-tasseled ear. Yes, she could see how someone could fall in love with the idea of owning a lynx.

“But since people just keep on buying and trying, seventy or eighty of these animals come up for adoption each year in this country. Every last zoo is full to overflowing—they don’t need another lynx. The big cat sanctuaries are desperate for operating funds and cage space. They can’t afford to take on more pets-gone-bad. If the pound dares to place a lynx, then it just comes bouncing back again, once the new family gives up. So…” The vet shrugged, turned away, washed her hands at the sink.

“So?” Tess wondered.

“So when the owners run out of options, they dump the animal in some forest and try to tell themselves a cat that’s lived all its life in a cage or indoors will learn how to hunt before it starves. Or if they’re responsible, they put the poor beast down. Or suddenly the wife is wearing a fancy coat and a sheepish grin. But any way you cut it, there’s no happy ending. Which brings me to you.”

Tess jumped as the vet swung to aim an accusing finger at her.

“Assuming she lives, what do you mean to do with her?”

“I…haven’t thought it out, very far. This wasn’t something I planned. Zelda just happened.”

“Start thinking.”

“Well…I live on a ranch north of Trueheart, Colorado. At least, that’s where I’ll be living this summer, while I finish writing my dissertation. I suppose I figured I could free her there, maybe, and set up a feeding station outside. And hope that eventually she learns to hunt.”

Though she’d have to do this secretly. The cattlemen of Colorado were up in arms about the recent reintroduction of lynx to the San Juan Mountains. Tess’s father had been one of the main financiers of the lawsuits that had tried and failed to block the Division of Wildlife from bringing the animals back to the state. And when Ben Tankersly drew a line in the sand, his ranch manager and all his cowboys stepped up and toed it, if they valued their jobs. So Zelda would find no welcome at Suntop.

“Well, Problem One. If you’re talking about one of those suburban excuses for a ranch—a ten-acre ranchette—forget it. Lynx are territorial, but they need a range of five to a hundred square miles. You’ve got a female, so figure on the smaller side of that, but all the same. Have you got that kind of room?”

“More than enough.” Suntop was larger than Ted Turner’s ranch, larger than Forbes’s. Back in the 1890s, Tess’s great-great-grandfather had carved his vast spread out of the foothills of the San Juans, and Tankerslys had guarded it jealously ever since. Now Ben ruled there, king of his own small kingdom.

“I live at Suntop,” Tess admitted. When pressed to say anything at all, she generally put it like that. Strangers tended to assume she worked on the ranch rather than that she was a member of the family. She hated the way people looked at her when they learned she was a Tankersly. As if they were calculating her worth to the penny. And once they started adding it up, she was too proud to explain that she might be land rich, but she was cash poor. And likely would always remain so, if she wanted to live life her way.

So it was best just to disclaim or downplay all connection with Suntop, whenever possible.

“Suntop!” Liza Waltz let out a long, low whistle.

“Yeah, that should be room enough, but here’s Problem Two. Lynx hunt at six thousand to nine thousand feet. Is the ranch that high?”

“Not the home range,” Tess admitted. “But the summer grazing, up in the high country, borders on that kind of elevation. Then north of that is all national forest, the San Juans, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of wilderness, going up and up.”

“That would do. That’s not far from the area the Division of Wildlife chose for its lynx restoration program. Which brings me to another point.” The vet paused for a minute while she set up an IV bag on a pole, then taped Zelda’s left forepaw to an immobilization board. “You’re sure Hazeltine purchased her from a fur farm?”

“Yes. I insisted he give me all her papers, and they prove it.”

Liza grunted as she inserted the needle in a vein, nodded in satisfaction, then hooked up the tubing. “I’ll need to check those. The reason I ask is, if by any chance Hazeltine lied—if he trapped himself one of the Colorado DOW’s lynx—we’ve got to hand her over. They’re protected by the Endangered Species Act, state and federal, and believe me, we don’t want to mess with those guys!”

“No, but I’m certain her papers are in order.”

“I’ll have to call that fur farm to confirm it, because the DOW’s imported one hundred twenty-nine lynx into Colorado over the past four years, and do you know how many of them are left?”

“I haven’t really followed it lately. I know the program hasn’t gone as well as they’d hoped.”

Liza snorted. “The numbers have dwindled down to forty-seven cats, which can still be tracked by their radio collars. If Zelda isn’t one of the missing lynx, then where the heck are they?”

BY THE TIME Gabe returned with their take-out supper, Adam had managed to gimp his way to the picnic table on the screen porch. The evening breeze was mild for April, but not cool enough to dry the sweat he’d broken getting on his feet. He wiped a wrist across his forehead and called, “I’m out here,” when Gabe came through the kitchen door bearing grease-spattered brown paper bags.

“Geez, I turn my back for ten minutes and you’re out of bed!”

“Barbecue ribs and clean sheets are an ugly mix. Besides which, I was bored.” When Adam had insisted on signing himself out against his doctor’s advice, Gabe had decided to extend his visit and see him settled at home. But three days of devoted nursing and nagging was getting on both men’s nerves. It was just as well Gabe was headed back to Colorado tomorrow.

Adam sighed at the thought. “Wish I was headed west. Spring skiing, instead of swatting mosquitoes.”

“Then come with me,” Gabe suggested, as he tossed napkins and a bottle opener on the table. He ducked back into Adam’s pocket kitchen for plates and silverware. “Plenty of room at the home ranch, and you know Mom would love to pamper you. Since the twins went off to college, she’s got too much time on her hands. She’s been wallpapering everything but the border collies, and bugging Dad to take tango lessons. A mission to whip you back into shape is just what she needs.”

Adam grinned, shook his head and, popping a cap off a Negra Modelo beer, handed it over. “Thanks, but no thanks. Connie’s overwhelming enough when a man can run, but right now, while I’m feeble… First thing your mother would do, is start matchmaking.”

Gabe clinked his bottle against Adam’s in a rueful salute. “Too true. She couldn’t believe, when I called them yesterday, that you don’t have a steady girlfriend to take over once I’m gone.” His voice rose an octave and turned fretful. “A pussycat like Adam? Are those Louisiana women all blind and crazy?”

“Plenty of foxes in these woods, but they’re all marriage-minded, even the ones who swear they aren’t. So me, I’m taking a much-deserved sabbatical. Sleep this month, chase women later.” Adam took another swallow of beer. “Unless you still want help with your missing lynx problem?” Gabe hadn’t said a word about it after his first visit to the hospital.

His cousin’s brows drew together above a sticky red curve of sparerib. He set the bone aside to wipe sauce off his mouth. “I’m thinking maybe I was a bit hasty, suggesting that. Seems like you’re going to need a long, relaxing recuperation, and we’re racing the clock here.”

“They’re disappearing that fast?”

“Roughly four a month since January.”

They gnawed for a while in meditative silence till Adam said, “You sure you’ve got a problem? I mean, one of outside interference. You had more than average snowfall this year, didn’t you? So maybe they froze to death. Or they couldn’t find game in all that snow. You’ll find their bodies come snowmelt.”

Gabe shook his shaggy blond head. “They’re all wearing radio collars, which transmit to both satellites and planes, when we do flyovers. And each collar has a kill switch. If the animal stops moving for four hours or more, the collar sends out a death signal. Then we try to get somebody out there pronto, because sometimes not moving means the lynx is injured or trapped and we could help it.

“But of the cats that have vanished since January, all of their collars simply stopped sending. No live signal, no dead signal. Just…silence.”

Adam reached for the salt shaker. Reached an inch too far—a burst of sizzling fire streaked across his chest. He paused, blinking, then drew his hand back. Sat, testing each breath for a minute, then said casually, “Would you pick up the signal if the cat was down in a canyon, or holed up in a cave?”

Gabe lifted the shaker, used it, then set it down six inches closer to Adam. “You wouldn’t. The signal’s strictly line of sight. But when he came out, the satellite should pick him up again.”

“Well, maybe there was a cat convention at some point, in a cave. A St. Paddy’s Day blow-out or a Valentine howl-along? And an avalanche wiped out the whole tribe at once?”

Gabe grinned. “’Fraid not. Lynx are notoriously antisocial. They hunt and live alone. In mating season, March through early April, they keep company for maybe a week, but that’s it.”

“Except for mamas with kittens, I suppose.”

“Right, but since we haven’t had a single female deliver a litter in four years of hoping and waiting and praying, that isn’t an issue, either.”

“Hmm.” Adam served himself a second helping of potato salad. “What if they decided they missed Alaska or Canada or wherever they originally were snatched from and just started walking? ‘The cat came back,’ as the song goes.”

“Yeah, that was our first theory. A few from every group we’ve imported have gone walkabout, ending up in Utah, or New Mexico or even Nebraska. The males in particular can get restless. It isn’t unheard of for a tom to travel fifty miles or more a day for a week, though generally they do that in mating season, looking for ladies. But the satellite searches a wide band. If one of ’em made it to Las Vegas or Laramie, the collar signal would still beam up their location.”

“And it hasn’t,” Adam murmured to himself. “The case of the missing lynx. So…” He cocked a brow at his cousin. “Who’s got a grudge against these furballs?”

“Try the Cattlemen’s Association and every sheep-herder in the state, for starters.”

“Lynx kill cows? I didn’t think they were that big.”

“A big one tips the scales at forty pounds, and they’d eat nothing but snowshoe hares, if they had their druthers. When hares are scarce on the ground, they take pine squirrels or mice or the occasional ptarmigan. I guess a real bruiser might jump a sheep or two a winter, if he were desperate. But this isn’t like the wolf packs up in Yellowstone. You could drop a thousand lynx into cow country and never know the difference. They’re shy and elusive and they hunt by night. Short of some caterwauling in mating season, you’d never know they were there.”

“So why the fuss? I seem to remember some lawsuits, a few years back, trying to stop your program before it started.”

“Politics. In 2000, lynx were finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And that means, whether the feds want to or not, they’re compelled by law to protect lynx habitat. And that’s where the rubber meets the road.

“The grazers fear that their grazing allotments will be taken away so the cats can hunt in peace. The loggers are scared that they won’t be able to cut trees in lynx territory. The Outfitters’ Association is worried they won’t be allowed to guide big-game hunters where the animals prowl.

“And the ski resorts, well, you remember the rumpus between the environmentalists and Vail resorts when they wanted to expand their ski runs into the Super Bowl area—the last place where native lynx were spotted in Colorado? Remember the Earth Liberation Front burned down twelve million dollars’ worth of ski lodges to protest the plan?”

Adam gave a lawman’s grunt of disgust.

“Bringing lynx back to the state has pretty well stopped ski development cold. Till the DOW can determine just how much habitat lynx need, and where they need it, we can’t allow any more development in the high country.”

“So they’re popular cats,” Adam said wryly. “No wonder they’re disappearing. Any cowboy with a rifle…”

“Who’s willing to risk a one-hundred-thousand-dollar federal fine and a prison term for killing an endangered species,” Gabe reminded him. “And sooner or later, word always gets out. Very few people have the nerve.”

“Yet your cats are vanishing, four a month. That sounds like something a little more…methodical than a trigger-happy cowboy. Got any theories who it might be?”

“Nope, but I’ve got a theory how he’s doing it.” Gabe opened a second beer for each of them. “Somebody’s using our own radio collars to hunt them down.”

“You can get the equipment to do that?”

“Yep. Buy the tracking antennas and earphones right off the Internet.”

Adam whistled softly. “Clever! And cold.”

“It’s just a notion of mine, nothing the Division has officially considered. But that’s when I thought of you. Investigating is what you do. And you’ve got a cover you could use.”

“Line-camp cowboy,” Adam mused. Three years ago, after Alice left him, he’d seriously considered quitting police work. While he’d searched his heart, he’d spent a summer cowboying in the high country north of True-heart, Colorado. “That would allow me to fit in up there, move around some. Are you losing lynx in that area?”

“That’s just about Ground Zero, or close enough. But the herds head up the trail about seven weeks from now and…” Gabe glanced at the crutches leaning against the wall. “I hadn’t realized, when I first spoke, how badly you were…”

A useful summer in the mountains, rather than stewing and fuming around here, till some doctor cleared him for duty? “Count me in, Gabe. Seven weeks from now I’ll be ready to sit a horse.”

CHAPTER THREE

LARSON NEVER chose the same place twice for their meetings, but he always picked the same kind of bar, Natwig noted grimly. Ferns and mirrors. Chrome and marble. Micro-brewery beers at eight bucks a pop, and watch the bartender smirk if you asked for a Budweiser on tap.

The clients would be all ski and city types, glossy and blow-dried, with not a care in the world. Those with high-altitude tans had gotten them on the slopes at Telluride and Crested Butte, not packing mules into back-country canyons, or crouching still as a lichen-covered slab of granite, hour after hour, waiting for a line of elk to cross a ridge and step into range.

Natwig’s restless gaze touched the mirror behind the bar, where a weathered, squint-eyed face stared blankly back at him. What’s wrong with this picture? It was he who was out of place here, standing out like a crow on a snowfield. If any of his friends should see him here, they’d know something stunk.

But then, no man he respected would set foot in a place like this. So maybe Larson wasn’t dumb in his choices, after all. Still. Let’s get a move on, dammit! Natwig finished his beer, smacked the bottle down on the polished mahogany and stood.

The drill was, he was supposed to wait till Larson showed, then follow him out to the parking lot. But down at the far end of the room, Larson was dawdling over his second margarita while he flirted with a giggly blonde who kept tossing her curls, showing off a glittery pair of diamond earrings.

Karen always wore a pair of turquoise studs that Natwig had bought her their last year in high school. Wonder if she’d like something like those sparklers?

The way he was going, he’d never find out. Every dollar he earned from this job would go to paying her medical bills and hanging on to the ranch. He shoved out through the door into frosty night air and drew a grateful breath. Too much perfume and aftershave and air freshener back there. What the hell am I doing?

What had to be done.

Arms folded against the cold, he slouched against the door of his pickup. When Larson finally sauntered out, Natwig unlocked his door. He scooped the paper bag off the floorboards, then strode across the parking lot to Larson’s Porsche—not even a year old, with not a speck of mud to mar its gleaming curves. The passenger door swung open as he approached, and he ducked inside. Set the bag between them.

“How many?” Larson’s manicured fingers reached for the parcel.

“Two.” He watched with contempt as the city man pulled out the collars, counting for himself. Didn’t he know better than to doubt a man’s word? Or realize what that kind of distrust said about the worth of his own word?

“Why only two?” Larson inspected the crushed transmitter on each collar, then dropped them back in the bag.

“Like I told you last month. It’s harder tracking lynx this time of year. Most of the snow’s melted, and what’s left is too crusty to take a print.” And the one shot he’d got at the big male north of Creede, after three days of hard stalking, he’d missed. But that failure he’d keep to himself.

“My…clients…won’t be pleased.”

“If your friends reckon they can do better themselves, tell them they’re welcome to try.”

And just who were Larson’s clients? People smart enough to want a cut-out, a middleman, separating themselves from their dirty work. People with deep pockets, to pay the kind of bounty Natwig was collecting.

The Cattlemen’s Association could raise that kind of cash. Or the ski developers. Or the timber industry, easy.

The goat-and sheepherders? Somehow Natwig didn’t see it. And as a member of the Outfitters’ Association himself, he’d heard nothing but the usual bellyaching at their annual gathering. No plan of action to fix the situation, and if there had been, they wouldn’t have needed to farm the job out.

“They’ll expect better next month.” Larson pulled out his wallet, and peeled off twenty bills from a fat wad.

As each thousand-dollar bill was laid upon his palm, Natwig felt the pressure in his chest ease the tiniest bit. Twenty thousand. Before Karen had broken her back, he’d have called that a fortune. A family with a man who could put meat on the table could scrape through a year on twenty grand.

As long as everyone stayed healthy. But now…

“And here are your latest locations.” Larson passed over a folded paper.

Imagine a world where a satellite a hundred miles overhead could pinpoint the whereabouts of those soft-stepping ghosts of the forest to fifty yards or less?

Imagine a world where somebody hired to protect all wildlife could be bribed to secretly access the DOW computers, then print out their animals’ latest locations, and pass them on to their enemies?

Not my kind of world.

Except he was trapped in it, sure as a lion up a tree. He could snarl all he wanted, but he was under the gun.

“Don’t expect too much next month. Lynx tend to travel in the spring,” he warned Larson as he gripped the door handle, eager to be out and away. “They’ll be searching for mates, looking for fresh hunting grounds.” He’d tried a couple of times to explain that just because the satellite pinpointed each cat one day per week, that didn’t mean the lynx would then sit tamely waiting till he came hunting.

If these locations were stolen from the computer yesterday, why, by today, every one of these forty-seven cats could be fifty miles to hell and gone across the mountains. Larson’s paper only gave him the place to start looking, no guarantee of finding.

But something about all this high-tech bullshit seemed to make a man arrogant, brash as the dumbest horse in blinders. If a computer said it was so—why then, it must be so. Nothing to it. Just reach out and shoot someone.

As Natwig shoved open the door and stepped out into clean air, Larson leaned over to give him a bland farewell smile. “My clients expect better.”

THEY’D RENDEZVOUSED outside of Trueheart at midnight, then Liza in her Jeep, with its caged rear end, had followed Tess’s pickup, towing its tandem horse trailer, north. Toward the high country.

A horseman could have ridden a straighter and shorter route to the summer range up through Suntop land. But constrained to travel by vehicle—and in secret—they had to circumnavigate the ranch. Their route wound up through the mountain valleys to the east, then spiraled north, then west, then finally south again.

Sixty slow-going miles of road dwindled from public two-lane to frost-heaved one-lane to muddy Forest Service and logging tracks. The scent of pine and snow blew through Tess’s open window. The jewelled eyes of deer gleamed in her headlights, then their graceful silhouettes bounded across the road and into the trees.

“Coming home,” Tess half sang aloud, as if the lynx in the car behind could hear her. “Hang on just a little longer, baby.” Liza had sedated the cat lightly for the drive, but she hadn’t dared give her more, since Zelda would have to be knocked all the way out for the final leg of her journey.

It was two hours before dawn when they reached the trailhead east of Sumner Mountain and parked. Just a whisper of cold wind stirring the pines. Stars so big and bright you could pick out colors by their light. “How is she?” Tess asked as she joined Liza at the back of her Jeep.

“Not happy.” The vet dropped the tailgate to reveal the caged interior, and a low feline moan seconded that opinion.

“But she looks good,” insisted Tess, while Liza inspected the lynx by flashlight. “She looks wonderful!”

Once the cat had recovered from pneumonia, Liza had moved her to a large kennel behind her house, west of Santa Fe. Seven weeks of intensive feeding had worked a miracle. Zelda’s ribs were no longer visible beneath her glossy coat and, even sedated, she seemed bursting with energy.

“Oh, she’s spunky enough,” Liza said broodingly, “but I’d still like her to gain more weight. A lot of her bulk is just that fabulous coat.”

“But you said she’s ready for freedom,” Tess worried. They’d discussed this at length.

“Given our schedule, I guess she’s got to be.”

They didn’t dare wait longer. Last week had seen spring roundup at Suntop and all the surrounding ranches near Trueheart. Now that the new calves were branded, within a week or two, the herds would be driven north to their summer range.

Liza and Tess had agreed that it was best if Zelda were acclimated and freed before the cattle arrived in the foothills. Lynx were shy and wary at the best of times. Commotion in the area while Zelda was choosing a den and a territory, might persuade her to seek these elsewhere.

But it was crucial to their plan that Zelda stick around, close to where Tess could feed her, till she’d learned to hunt her own food.

And so this rush to get her settled and happy and accustomed to being fed in a certain place at a certain time before the herds arrived. Cats were conservative creatures who liked dependable rituals, Liza maintained. The fewer surprises, the better.

“Will you tranq her now?” Tess asked the vet.

“Not till you’re ready to ride. You don’t want her waking somewhere along the way.”

“Better believe it! I don’t know who’d enjoy that more—me, Cannonball or Zelda.” Tess had picked the steadiest horse on Suntop to carry the lynx, and a pack horse that was nearly as sensible. Still, she found her nerves were skittering as she tightened the girths on both saddles, bridled up, then fitted her various packs and bundles into place. Steady or not, she could just imagine how Cannonball would react to a yowling, struggling cat in a basket strapped to his back—her own private rodeo, in the midst of dense forest, or on a cliffside trail!

Liza supported one-half of the collapsible metal cage while Tess lashed it to the right side of the pack mare’s saddle. A second four-foot-by-four-foot stack of steel-mesh squares was hung from the left side to balance the load. The mare snorted and rolled her eyes. “How far is it to your site?” Liza dithered. “You’re sure you can you find it in the dark?”

“It’s about nine miles to the southwest of here, and yeah, I know the trails. And it’ll be dawn by the time we reach the point where we really have to bushwhack, so…don’t worry.” Tess smiled to herself. Somewhere in those weeks of custody and nursing, cat-loving Liza had lost her professional objectivity. She was as anxious as a mom sending her only daughter off for her first time at summer camp.

Not that Tess wasn’t worried, as well. If they couldn’t give Zelda the wide, wonderful world she deserved—if the cat couldn’t learn to survive in that world—neither of them had the heart to stuff her back in a cage. Which left only…another kind of injection. Sleep without waking.

And even if she succeeded in reintroducing Zelda to the wild this summer, Tess still had other worries.

Like the imminent arrival of half a dozen line-camp cowboys, who were paid to keep their eyes wide open for anything strange going on in their territories.

Like the chance of being caught in what they—and her father!—would see as a gross betrayal of their way of life.

If they caught her aiding and abetting lynx, they’d see her as Tess-turned-traitor. Tess on the side of the tree huggers and the despised government bureaucrats—and against her neighbors, her family, her friends.

And she could argue till she was blue in the face that lynx and cows were perfectly compatible, that the cattlemen had nothing to fear but fear itself. But ranchers were as stubbornly conservative at heart as…cats.

So here she was in the middle, walking her usual tight-rope between what she loved and those she loved. Anyway you cut it, it was bound to be a nerve-wracking summer.

And on top of that—in my spare time—I’m supposed to be finishing my dissertation! Tess reminded herself with a grimace. For the past year, she’d studied beavers in a riverine habitat. This summer she needed to analyze her data and write up her conclusions, if she wanted to earn her doctorate, and be qualified for a field biology position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service next fall, which she most certainly did.

“Now, you’re going to keep her caged for at least three days?” Liza fretted.

“As long as she and I can stand it.” Tess would have to camp near the cage till she freed the cat. It was spring after all, with the black bears awakening from their winter fasts. Though lynx weren’t part of their usual menu, bears were omnivorous, and they sure knew how to take apart any container with food inside. Tess wouldn’t dare leave Zelda trapped and defenseless.

Thinking of that, she went back to the pickup, unracked her rifle, then settled it into its saddle scabbard.

“What’s that for?”

Tess smiled at her friend’s note of alarm. Liza was from Massachusetts. She’d only come west after graduation from vet school. Apparently, like many easterners, she viewed firearms solely as lethal weapons. Instruments of heartbreak and destruction.

Tess took the view of the tough and capable Western men who’d raised her. A rifle was simply a tool that a responsible person used responsibly. No more or less dangerous than a car or a threshing machine. The only thing she’d ever killed with a gun was a tin can, but still… “I brought along some red-pepper spray in case of bears. But I’ve always wondered if that really works—or just turns ’em into furry buzzsaws. So this is for backup.” Which, please God, she wouldn’t need.

“O…kay.” Liza didn’t sound convinced, but then it wasn’t she who’d be sleeping alfresco forty miles from the nearest kindly policeman. “And you’ve got the chickens?”

“Right here.” Tess loaded the cooler that held four flash-frozen roasting chickens into the left basket hamper on Cannonball’s back. “And I’ve already stashed another fifty in the kerosene freezer at the cabin.”

She’d claimed the highest, tiniest, most tucked-away cabin on Suntop’s summer range for herself for the next three months. Her father and sisters were used to her jaunts into the wilderness, so they hadn’t been all that surprised when she’d announced that she intended to live in the mountains for the summer, rather than stay at the Big House on the ranch. No distractions or socializing wanted or needed while she hammered out her dissertation, was the excuse she’d given—and they’d bought it.

She’d driven up a few days ago to this trailhead and packed in everything she’d need at the cabin for the period, including a three-month supply of frozen birds. “Well. All we need now is the star of this show.”

Liza sighed, nodded, and turned toward the Jeep. Murmuring soothing endearments, she used a noose pole and a pair of elbow-length leather gloves to immobilize the growling lynx, then injected her with the sedative.

She brushed angrily at her lashes as Tess closed the basket lid over the curled-up sleeping cat. “You’ll tell me if she needs anything? Goes off her feed or…”

“She won’t run too far away,” Tess assured her, though she was by no means sure. “Zelda’s grown to love her chicken dinners. She’ll stick around till she knows she can feed herself.”

Or she wouldn’t.

But then, didn’t freedom always come with risk? Tess had always found the risks worth facing. Three days from now, when she opened the cage door, she figured Zelda would agree.

“SO, ZELDA, what do you think? Is it starting to feel like home?” On her way to the pool where she washed each morning, Tess had stopped to check out her charge.

The lynx lay in feline loaf-of-bread position at the front of her cage, fore paws tucked demurely under her breast, back paws folded beneath. With her yellow eyes half closed, she seemed relaxed as any tabbycat, although she was pointedly ignoring her visitor. The comical two-inch black tufts on her ears twitched at the sound of Tess’s voice, then her gaze returned to the massive fallen tree beside her cage…to the dark hole beneath its mossy trunk.

“You’re right. It would make an excellent den,” Tess assured her in a soft voice. “Location, location, location.” She’d chosen this site with care—an old-growth spruce forest, because lynx typically denned in such deep, dark places with their excellent cover. A hundred yards to the west stretched a wide swath of younger trees where, years before, an avalanche from the peaks above had scoured the slope. Time had patiently reseeded the scar, and now it was covered with wildflowers and twelve-foot saplings. Tess’s research over the past month had told her that lynx favored that sort of terrain for hunting. The smaller trees let in the sunshine, which nourished the flowers and grass, which drew the snowshoe hares. And the lynx who loved them.

“One of these days, if the DOW ever gets its act together and provides you with a boyfriend, this would make a perfect den for kittens,” Tess told the cat. “Which reminds me, Liza meant to check you again, to make sure you aren’t in a family way.” The vet had intended to palpate the lynx after she’d sedated her.

“I remember tucking you into your basket while we were jabbering away about rifles and bears. But I don’t remember Liza examining you. Did we just get distracted? Or did she do it while I was fussing with the pack mare?”

The lynx turned to give her a haughty stare over the wonderful double-points of her neck ruff, which resembled a Victorian gentleman’s gray-and-white-barred side whiskers, edged in formal black.

“Guess you wouldn’t remember, since you were asleep,” Tess reflected. “And I reckon you figure it’s none of my business anyway.”

The lynx stood to stretch magnificently, forelegs, then back. She stalked away on her oversize paws—furry snowshoes that were designed to let the cat run atop the fluffiest powder. Her black-tipped stub-tail stilled as a gray jay swooped low past the cage, then quivered with furious attention when the bird landed on a nearby branch.

“Soon,” Tess assured her, standing and stretching, too. She could have chatted happily for hours, but it was safest for Zelda if she lost her tolerance for people. Her best chance for a long, healthy life in these mountains was to shun all humans, friend and foe alike. For that reason, Tess had pitched her tent fifty feet to the west, within easy earshot if a bear came calling, but otherwise out of sight.

She shouldn’t linger now. She sighed as she collected her rifle and her kit. “Better get ready,” she advised the lynx. “Today’s the day.”

She’d wait till noon, when a lynx normally would be dozing. This time, instead of giving Zelda her chicken inside the cage, she’d show it to the lynx—then set it at the entrance to her proposed den. She’d open the cage door and walk away.

If all went as Tess hoped, Zelda would step out timidly into freedom. Then, overwhelmed by the sudden expansion of her world, made nervous by the too-bright light of noon, she’d snatch up the chicken and scuttle into cover beneath the fallen tree. She’d spend the rest of the day there, eating and gradually growing accustomed to a feeling of safety and rich possession. The den would begin to take on her scent.

Meantime, Tess would collapse Zelda’s cage and carry it away.

By twilight, when her instincts urged Zelda to come out and prowl, maybe the burrow beneath the tree would already feel like a haven, a home to return to. A place where food had been provided before. Where she’d find it again and again, in the following days, thanks to Tess and her cache of frozen chickens.

And so her life in the wild would begin.

Ducking under and around ancient trees, then between head-high thickets, Tess came at last to the stream, which angled across the slope. For most of its course, the brook ran shallow and clear—icy-cold from the snows above, narrow enough to step across. But at this point it paused in its chuckling journey and widened to a pool—another reason Tess had chosen this site for Zelda’s den.

She set the rifle and her kit to one side and knelt, then unbuttoned the top button of her shirt. Then the next. An absent smile curved her lips as she pictured Zelda’s spotted, big-footed kittens crouching on the rocks beside her, peering fascinated into the pools. Ears pricked as they searched for minnows.

An excellent place to raise a family.

CHAPTER FOUR

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, Adam had driven his truck up to the trailhead north of Sumner line camp. From there he had made several trips, backpacking a summer’s worth of books and supplies two miles downhill to the cabin.

Too tired to head back at the end of the day, he’d stoked the wood-burning stove and stayed on, figuring he’d return to the valley in the morning. There was still plenty to be done before the cattle drive started. Plus, tomorrow night he’d meet Gabe in Durango—go over final thoughts and plans for this investigation.

Sumner line camp was Adam’s old stomping ground from three summers ago. Last time he’d lived at this cabin, he’d been mourning Alice. A two-year engagement that should have ended with a wedding had ended instead in betrayal. His ring returned with a pretty apology, and her lukewarm hope that they could still be friends.

But if Alice didn’t want to build a home and family with him, Adam could do without her friendship. Without any reminder of her—or what might have been.

Stung by her loss and the part his job had played in their breakup, he’d even considered quitting the police, going back to his Colorado roots to start life over again as a cowboy. He’d spent that summer up here in the high country, relearning that he needed more of a challenge in his life than a herd of cantankerous cows.

That September he’d gone back to New Orleans, back to the force, with a renewed dedication.

And with his heart on the mend, he’d sworn to himself that he’d never risk it again. Since Alice, Adam had devoted himself to loving women well—but never seriously.

Still, sleeping in his old bunk, he found a ghost of that summer’s loneliness had crept upon him in the night. Flooded with memories both painful and pleasurable, he’d woken at dawn. Instead of heading back, he’d gone out walking. Wandering miles farther than he’d intended, he came at last upon a stream.

And heard a woman’s voice.

Pure wistful imagination, Adam assured himself. Nothing but the babble of running water weaving around the remnants of last night’s dreams.

Whatever its source, it trailed off after a minute. He shrugged and walked on, eyes on the stair-stepping run of narrow pools. If a lover was too much to wish for, then maybe there were trout?

A movement ahead caught his eye and he looked up.

And there she was.

A dark-haired woman kneeling on a rock, both hands cupped as she dipped them to the pool.

He sucked in a startled breath and froze.

Her hands scooped water and splashed it on her face. She made a muffled, laughing sound—it had to be freezing—then smoothed her palms over her tousled hair, brushing it back off her brow. Her fingers met at the nape of her neck—she laced them and stretched her spine. Small, high breasts rose with the sinuous movement and Adam bit back an instinctive groan.

Again she bent to the pool. Bathed her face and swan neck. “Yow!” Drops of water glistened on her throat and the curves that the flaring halves of her shirt revealed.

Enchanted, he moved closer—

And stepped on a branch. Crack!

She didn’t glance toward the sound, but turned smoothly away, reached—and swung back again. A rifle swung with her, rising, seeking…

At the sight of that rounding bore, years of hard-earned reflexes kicked in—Adam dived for cover. He hit the ground good shoulder first, then rolled. A bolt of lightning slammed across his chest, sizzling sternum to shoulder point. “Shit! Merde!” If he’d rebroken his collarbone! Or had she shot him? But no, he’d heard no retort.

“You’re…not a bear.” She’d risen to peer into the bushes where he’d landed.

“Dammit!” One minute he’d been whole and well, nothing but flirtation on his mind.

And now? Adam drew a shaking breath and pushed up out of a drift of last year’s leaves. Pain played a savage piano riff down his ribcage. “Hell!” He hated feeling helpless. If she’d shoved him back to the bottom of the hill he’d been scrabbling up with such effort…

“Or maybe you are.” She’d shifted her rifle up and away, but not so far it couldn’t quickly swing back. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Did I—?!”

“Well, I don’t like being snuck up on,” his tormentor said reasonably. The corners of her mouth curled, then straightened again. “’Specially not in spring, when the sow bears have cubs.” Cradling the rifle across her left forearm, she reached casually for her buttons, fumbled at the lowest one, single-handed.

“Put the gun down before you drop it,” he growled, rising stiffly to his knees.

Her slate-green eyes narrowed. Her hand paused in its effort. “No need.” A pulse fluttered in the damp hollow of her throat.

So her coolness was a front. The cop in him was glad she was wary of a strange man, even though her grip on the gun set his alarm bells to jangling. “Look, I’m turning around. So set the gun down nice and easy and use both hands, okay? Much safer for both of us.”

He turned his back and seized the moment to run his own hands up his ribs. Painful, but no new jagged bumps where they’d mended. He fingered his collarbone and winced. Likely pulled a muscle as rebroken the bone, but—the hell with it. If he couldn’t cowboy this summer, then he couldn’t do the job he’d promised Gabe. He swung around again.

Caught in the act of fastening her top button, she froze as their eyes collided.

The moment stretched out…his breathing quickened. Possibilities spun in the air like dust motes sparked by the sun.

Her fine eyes widened and he knew she read his thoughts, knew she wanted to look away. Was too proud to let him win this silent clash.

With calm deliberation she finished her task, while a dusting of rose painted her high cheekbones.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked suddenly. She hadn’t just dropped out of his dreams.

She wore running shoes, not serious hiking boots. He scanned the rocks around her feet and found no sign of a backpack. Just a canvas overnight kit. “You’re camping up here?” By herself?

But then, her reluctance to put down that gun showed a woman on her own. If she’d had a companion, a mate, she’d have simply set it aside and called for backup. So…definitely alone. Adam’s eyes flicked to her left hand—ringless—and he felt a surge of unabashedly male satisfaction.

“I’m…” She drew a knuckle along her top lip. Her long lashes fluttered as she glanced away, then looked back again.

Adam cocked his head and waited. Whatever came next would be a lie.

“I’m doing research up here. Beaver.”

He almost shouted his laughter aloud. “Beaver.” A couple of flat rocks made a path across the pool and he stepped across, trying not to grin. So you can’t lie worth a damn. I’ll remember that. “There’s no beaver this high up.”

“That’s what I’m…verifying. I’m a wildlife biologist.” When lying, it was best to stick as close to the truth as possible, Tess had always heard. Still, this stranger wasn’t buying it. “Doing a thesis on beaver and tamarisk trees,” she babbled on. That part was true, anyway, although her research location had been Utah, not the San Juans. “The way one affects the other, and how both affect their environment. Water quality. Bird food. Habitat. Fire conditions.”

“Really.”

He was so lean and beautifully put together, that his size came as a shock. When he stopped before her, she had to tip her head back to meet his gaze. Eyes blue as a mountain midnight and dancing with laughter. Somehow she knew now he’d never hurt her. Still, that laughter made him… Dangerous. As instinct whispered, she stooped for her gun.

Their heads nearly cracked as he crouched along with her. “Allow me, cher.”

Like she had a choice?

When they rose again, the rifle was firmly in his possession. “Nice piece.” He cracked it open, removed its bullets, closed it and gravely handed it over. “Bit heavy for beaver, isn’t it?”

“I study beaver. I don’t shoot them.” And wherever he’d come from—there was a touch of the deep South in his low, lazy voice—it was someplace where they’d failed to teach him that it was rude to confiscate a woman’s bullets. Patronizing, if not downright paranoid.

“Ah. And do you have a name?”

She’d liked him grizzly-bear grouchy more than she liked him laughing at her. “I do,” Tess agreed airily, then glanced around for her kit, leaned down to collect it. When she straightened, she found her snub had bounced right off him. His smile had only deepened.

The man had a smile to give a woman pause. A lush bottom lip that was finely carved and…mobile. The upper was severe, yet oddly sensitive, as if he hardened it more in pain than cruelty. His angular jaw was blue-black with beard shadow; he hadn’t shaved this morning. And, as Tess noted this, the nape of her neck prickled, as if those bristles brushed deliberately, deliciously across it. A hot wave washed up her thighs.

She tossed her head and turned aside, cheeks warming, too. Get a grip, girl! So she hadn’t had a serious relationship—any sort of relationship—for almost a year now; that didn’t mean she had to show her lack here. Not to a man who was bound to be trouble.

Trouble in more ways than the usual if he turned uphill, she realized belatedly. Thirty yards of bushwhacking would bring him to Zelda’s cage.

A more logical course was to follow the path along the stream, she told herself. She’d set him an example, heading west along its bank. Once out of sight, she could cut up through the new growth to where she’d picketed her horses. Swinging back to face him, she retreated in a casual backward drift while she asked, “And what are you doing up here?”

He had no pack or bedroll, and only an idiot would hike the San Juans this time of year without them. But though he might be irritatingly self-assured, this was no fool.

It was too early for line-camp men. Besides which, cowboys never traveled on foot. So that left—precisely what?

“Spent the night at Sumner cabin.” His weight shifted as if he had half-decided to follow her.

“Oh. So you know Kaley and Tripp?” Sumner cabin had belonged to Kaley Cotter’s spread, the Circle C. Then a few years back she’d married her neighbor, rancher Tripp McGraw. Their combined grazing allotments stretched to the south and east of this spot. If the McGraws vouched for this man, then he couldn’t be quite a rogue, no matter what he seemed to be.

“I do.” And she knew them, too, Adam realized with satisfaction as he changed his mind about following her. That meant when he described his rifle-toting babe to Tripp McGraw, he’d learn her name. How to find her.

Because whatever she thought—and damned if she didn’t look relieved as she murmured a noncommittal, “Ah,” then flipped him a jaunty wave and turned off to the west—this wasn’t the end of their acquaintance.

This was only the beginning.

Still, missing her already, he couldn’t resist calling after her, “Hey!” Beautiful!

She swung back around, her dark brows tipped up like a crow’s wings in flight.

“Your bullets, you forgot them.”

“Oh…yeah.” She dug into a pocket of those snug jeans he’d been trying not to stare at. Held up something in her closed fist that rattled. And gave him her killer smile. “Well, keep ’em. Plenty more where those came from.”

So I’ll consider myself warned, he promised her silently.

A warning he was bound to ignore.

“CUZ, YOUR TASTE in dogs is headed south,” Adam declared, sauntering over to Gabe’s parked pickup. “Way south.” The big red hound gazing dolefully over its tail-gate took his insult for a compliment and waved his tail. “He looks like a melted bloodhound. A sawed-off, melted bloodhound.”

“Touch of basset in there somewhere,” Gabe agreed, stepping down from his truck. “All those bags and droops. Still, pretty is as pretty does. This is Watson. Belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Watson…” Adam presented his knuckles for the obligatory snuffle and sniff, then snatched them back as an enormous pink tongue took a swipe at him. “As in Sherlock’s shorter, dumber partner?”

“The very same.” Gabe nodded at the cab of his truck. “Care to eat in your place or mine?”

“Mine, unless you want drool all over your rear window.”

Gabe had suggested that they meet at a diner in Durango, but Adam had vetoed that, voting instead for this rendezvous at a scenic overlook above the city. Maybe it wasn’t as comfortable, but when working undercover, a wise man lived his role from the get-go. A fool broke cover unnecessarily—and sometimes didn’t live long enough to regret it.

Not that Adam was expecting that level of trouble here in sleepy southwestern Colorado. Whoever he was hunting was a catkiller, not a mankiller. But all the same, why take a chance on someone linking him to a top biologist with the Division of Wildlife? This part of the state was enormous in size, but not so blessed with population. Strangers were noticed.

So from now till hunt’s end, he’d be Adam Dubois, freebooter and line-camp man, just a smiling Cajun cowboy, drifting through life. Not a care in the world. No worry to anybody.

“You babysitting?” he inquired in the truck, while he traded one of the cold Coronas he’d brought for a roast beef sandwich.

“Nope. Watson’s for you. He’s on loan from a friend in Montana, a biologist with the Forest Service. That hound’s the best lynx tracker in the lower forty-eight.”

“No.” Adam frowned at the dog in the truck ahead. With his chin propped on the tailgate, the brute gazed at them pitifully. His woebegone face was wrinkled in concentration, as if he were trying to levitate a sandwich and call it home. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Adam had had a dog once upon a time. A gangly, knock-kneed yellow mutt he’d found on the street. He’d been a grab-bag of every breed you could name, but brave? Damn, but that dog had been gutsy, and with a great sense of humor to boot. Johnny, he’d named him. Johnny-Be-Good. They’d shared the same bed from the day he’d found Johnny to the day the social workers had dragged Adam off to his first foster home.

They’d promised they’d give him his pet back in a week or so, but that had all been a soothing lie. By the time Adam had realized this and gone looking for his friend, hunting through every pound in New Orleans a thirteen-year-old could find, the dog was…gone. He blinked his eyes rapidly in the waning light and scowled. “Last thing I need up there is a chow hound.”

Last thing he needed was a dog, or anybody else, tripping up his heart. That was one lesson he’d learned and learned very well. First with his dad, then his mom, then Johnny, then most lately with Alice. Alone was the safe way—the only way—to travel.

“Besides,” he continued into Gabe’s disapproving silence, “the only dogs that are welcome on the summer range are working dogs. Cattle dogs. Any mutt that runs the cows is sure to be shot.”

“He minds his manners. Heels, comes, sits and all the usual. When Watson isn’t eating or tracking, he’s sleeping, according to Tracy. He wouldn’t get in your way.”

“He’d take up half the cabin I’ll be living in, and five’ll get you ten he snores. No thanks.”

His cousin shrugged and bit into his sandwich. Some hundred miles to their west, the sun was a blood orange, squashing itself past a jagged line of purple mountains. A splash of fiery juice, then it squeezed on down. The ruddy light cooled instantly to blue. Down in the valley, the city twinkled.

“It’s a pretty big area you’ll be patrolling,” Gabe observed mildly, at last. “The lynx are spread out over some two thousand square miles, and no telling which one of them our guy’ll decide to stalk next. Reckon it’d be like hunting for an ant in a sandpile, if you don’t know where to look. At least Watson could point out the cats, then you’d take it from there.”

Adam shrugged and sipped his beer. The dog drooled in the twilight. “Think he’s still operating out there?” Adam asked finally, to break the edgy silence.

“’Fraid so. We’re down to forty-four animals. Collar YK99M3, a male from our original batch, stopped signaling last week. Last heard from ten miles north of Creede.” Gabe sighed and reached for the rolled map he’d brought from his truck. Unscrolling it across the dash, he tapped an inked-in asterisk with a tiny notation beside it. “He vanished right there. And that one really hurt. He was one of the lynx I flew up to the Yukon to collect and bring back here. A big healthy two-year-old with a white bib on his chest like a housecat, and paws like catcher’s mitts. Freed him myself. He looked so…right…floating off into the woods, the day we let him go. Home and free.”

Gabe rubbed a hand across his face. “Dang it to hell! How anybody could bring something that pretty down… Why they’d ever want to…”

Adam grunted his sympathy. That was something a homicide cop often wondered, seeing the aftermath of killings in the city. The good and the beautiful willfully smashed. Ruthlessly brushed aside. Such a waste, such a shame. Any time you could stop it, you felt a little bit better, a little bit bigger. Like you’d done your part, fighting the good fight. Making the world safer for the fragile things that mattered.

Taking the map from his cousin, he spread it over the steering wheel and squinted in the dusk. Checked its mileage scale, then grimaced. Damn, but the West was big! Distance took on a whole different meaning out here. He’d known it already, but looking at it now, peak after peak, range upon range… And roaming out there somewhere in all that craggy wilderness, a bunch of forty-pound cats…

And whoever was stalking them.

“You really think he’d be useful?” The mutt had a home and an owner, after all. He was only on loan. No commitment necessary, beyond opening his cans for the next three months.

“Show you something.” Gabe slid out of the truck, strode over to his own, and leaned in its open window. He pulled out a battered Stetson, then offered it to the dog. “Kitty, Watson! See the kitty?”

The dog pranced and nosed the hat, yodeling his approval. That hollow banging was the sound of his tail, slamming the sides of the pickup.

“Nice kitty. No, boy, sit. Staaay.” The dog sat with an anguished yelp and Gabe brought the hat to Adam’s window. “Lynx hatband,” he noted, pointing to its greasy circlet. “Tracy found it in an antique store. It’s got to be fifty years old at least.”

“And she trained him on that? You sure he’s not chasing mothballs?”

“He’s found plenty of lynx in the Mission Mountains. They’re doing a census up there and he’s accounted for most of ’em, at least in Tracy’s section. Distract him for a minute and I’ll show you.”

Adam sighed, grabbed a bag of potato chips and went to the hound. Stood glumly by while the dog inhaled one chip after another, then wiped his hands on his jeans as Gabe returned from the dark. “Now what?”

“Let’s finish our supper.”

They ate, talking when the mood hit them, but mostly in comfortable silence. The same way they’d ridden the range as kids, not so far from where they now sat. Adam said finally, “Had my own notion about how we could nail this creep. Most economical way of making a collar.”

Gabe turned to prop his shoulders against his door. “How’s that?”

“We do a sting. Instead of searching the mountains for the bad guy, we sucker him to us.”

“I like it, but how?”

“You said, back in N’Orleans, that the one thing these cats haven’t done is have kittens. Is it still that way?”

“So far, I’m afraid so. Oh, we’ve seen signs of courting behavior. According to their satellite signals, the males have been moving around for the last six weeks, searching for ladies. But with only forty-four lynx remaining, they’re spread so thin on the ground, and they only have a one-week window to find each other, while the females are fertile…”

“So nobody’s scored yet?” Adam demanded dryly.

Gabe shook his head. “No. Not that we know of. We’ll try to contact as many of them visually as we can this summer, especially any females whose signals go stationary. Maybe a queen will den up with kittens, though if she does, she’ll keep them well hidden. It’ll be next winter before we know for sure. We’ll snow-track them then. Look for juvenile footprints following a female’s.”

“But kittens, that’s what the pro-lynx camp wants, right? It’s the proof that your repopulation program is starting to work.”

“Exactly, but—”

“So kittens are the last things the anti-lynx camp wants to see in Colorado. There’s your bait.”

“How are they bait when we haven’t got any?”

“You already report on the DOW Web site your cats’ latest doings. Their latest sightings.” Even their pictures, when someone lucked into a telephoto shot. This was pure foolishness, in Adam’s book, drawing attention to potential victims, but try to tell that to a pack of politicians and bureaucrats. He supposed the Division hoped that publicizing the lynx re-intro program would get the public behind it. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad notion, considering the DOW was spending a million or more of the taxpayers’ money.

“So…” He tapped the map northwest of Trueheart, Colorado. “You post on your Web site that one of your females has moved to this location, where I’ll be waiting. That she’s been spotted and she’s knocked-up for sure. Set to drop a passel of kittens any day now.”

“They only have three or four, usually.”

“Fine. Four imaginary kittens. You plant them in my backyard, and I guarantee you, your perp will come hunting. If he’s smart enough to buy his radio direction finder off the Internet, then he’s bound to be checking your Web site for the latest news on his quarry. Heck, if you report every time one disappears, then he can read his own score sheet. Better believe he’s tuning in.”

Gabe rubbed his jaw. “It might work… I think it would work. Now all I have to do is persuade my boss to try it.”

“Your problem, friend.” Adam drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Meantime, you gonna show me ol’ Watson’s stuff?”

He lounged against the hood of his truck, while Gabe loosed the dog and commanded him to ‘fetch the kitty!’ Nose to the ground, tail waving, the hound snuffled off into the night.

“Did you lay a drag trail?” Adam inquired. By the sound of his snorts, the dog was circling the parking area.

“No need, with his nose. There’s enough of a breeze to carry an air scent. Once he gets downwind…”

“If he doesn’t find his hat, you send him back to Montana. How’s that for a deal?”

“You’re on,” Gabe agreed with a smirk.

They waited some more. Adam didn’t mind, if it ended this nonsense. He could just picture the other hands’ faces if he showed up with Watson in tow for the cattle drive. A dog with ten pounds of ear, and no cow sense? It would take him all summer long to live that one down. Cowboys loved to tease and a newcomer was fair game. Come on, Watson. Lose the kitty.

“You know any women over towards Trueheart?” he asked, to pass the time. The Monahan family ranch lay east of Durango, while Trueheart lay northwest, but on the odd chance…

Gabe cocked his head at him. “Lonesome already? Well, there’s Kaley Cotter.” It was Gabe who’d found Adam the Circle C line-camp job with Kaley’s brother, three summers ago. “But you met her. That was the year she came back, wasn’t it? And I hear she’s married since then.”

“To Tripp McGraw,” Adam reminded him. He’d be riding for the McGraws this summer. “No, this is somebody else. Met her in passing, but didn’t catch her name. Hair dark as…” Wishing he’d never spoken, Adam jerked a thumb at the starry sky. That dark.

That velvety, when finally he buried his face in it, but how did he know that already? He stirred with impatience, then forced himself back to stillness.

“Then there’s Lara Tankersly, one of Ben Tankersly’s daughters,” Gabe continued. “I slow-danced with her once, at a shindig over in Cortez. Didn’t sleep well for the next year. But she moved to San Antonio shortly thereafter, and she’s a cornsilk blonde.

“Then, speaking of blondes, there’s a café in Trueheart called Michelle’s Place, and Michelle’s—” Gabe broke off as Watson came blundering out of the dark, gripping the hat by its brim. “Well, well, what have we here? Good boy! Whatta guy, whatta nose! Good fella!” He thumped the hound on his side as he accepted the trophy, then straightened with a grin. “And who needs a woman when you’ve got this for company?”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE NEXT TIME Adam saw her was the last night of the drive.

Following a century-old tradition, the combined herd of all the Trueheart ranches arrived on the summer range at sundown. The cowboys held the cows overnight at Big Rock Meadow. Come morning, the best riders would show off their mounts’ cutting skills. The cattle would be sorted by brand, then driven east or west across the foothills, to their own ranch’s grazing allotments.

Low, laughing voices rumbled around the campfire, punctuated by the occasional satisfied belch. Tonight was the cowboys’ final chance to savor Whitie and Willie’s chuckwagon cooking. Grilled steaks and barbecued beans and cornbread tonight, then tomorrow—and for the rest of the summer—it would be bachelor fare cooked in their own solitary camps.

This was their last night to pull a prank, swap a yarn or tell a joke to an appreciative audience, before they rode their separate trails. Starting tomorrow, company would be scant and seldom, not that it bothered this crew.

Line-camp men were chosen for their solitary ways. Solid, self-sufficient men, they were amiable in company and even better apart. After five days of rubbing elbows with sixteen men, most of whom were strangers, Adam had to admit he was ready for a spell of solitude himself.

“Dubois, this danged hound’s ’bout to break my heart! Claims you ain’t fed him since Christmas.” Across the fire, Jon Kristopherson scowled in mock indignation. Watson stood behind him, with his chin resting on the rancher’s shoulder. “He’s droolin’ down my collar again. Call him off.”

“Don’t you believe that beggar!” warned Willie. At seventy-five, he was the oldest hand on the drive. Too stiff to sit a saddle these days, he shared the driving of Suntop Ranch’s pride and joy, a genuine mule-drawn chuck wagon that was older than he was. And he reigned over the cookfires alongside Whitie Whitelaw. “Worthless bum stole half a skilletful of biscuits this morning, and Whitie’s been sneakin’ him bacon all the livelong day.”

Since Watson had turned out to be terrified of cows, he’d been consigned to ride on the wagon, where the old guys were spoiling him rotten. At this rate he’d be too fat to track a lynx hatband, much less a lynx.

“Watson, get your ass over here!” Adam patted the ground and the hound shuffled meekly around the circle to sit by his side, then heaved a long-suffering sigh. Adam was the only one who refused to be charmed by his “gimme” eyes. “Stay,” Adam told him sternly, then glanced up….

And there she was, stepping into the glow of the fire on the far side of the gathering. Slender as a young aspen in her boots and jeans, dark hair gleaming loose on her shoulders.

“Tess! What are you doin’ up here?” called one of the Jarretts, over a shouted chorus of similar questions and greetings. Faces brightened, bodies shifted to make room for the newcomer. Adam sat up straighter. At the edge of his vision, men were rebuckling loosened belts, tucking in shirttails and wiping greasy mouths. Seventeen men with a sexy woman suddenly dropped in their midst.

“Now, how could I stay away, knowing this was Last Night and Willie would be serving his apple pie with vanilla ice cream?” She laughed and folded gracefully down, to sit cross-legged between Rafe Montana, manager of Suntop and boss of the trail drive, and his stepson, Sean Kershaw. Firelight danced across her vivid face as she cocked her ear to something Sean said.

She was all he’d remembered and more, Adam told himself, as she glanced up and over her shoulder, then reached for the plate Kent Harris had brought her. The line of her throat lengthened with the movement—glowed golden in the flames. Adam moistened dry lips as he pictured himself laying a kiss there where her pulse beat below her ear. Another in that shadowy hollow between her delicate collarbones…

She murmured her thanks, dipped a fork into Willie’s famous pie à la mode, then closed her eyes in ecstasy as the fork touched her tongue. “Ohh!”

He must be imagining that little moan off her lips. No way it could carry over the surrounding hubbub; still Adam could hear it, clear as if she’d moaned against his mouth.

She swallowed blissfully, opened her eyes, and across the fire, their gazes met—zoomed together like two on-coming trains, blue light to widening green. Her plate fell from her fingers—she let out a yelp and grabbed for it as pie and ice cream slid into her lap. “Oh, darn! Clumsy! Oh, Willie, what a stupid waste!” She brushed at herself, looked helplessly around for a napkin.

Two men rushed off to find one. Napkins weren’t a usual part of cowboy dinnerware.

Quicker-witted than his human counterparts, Watson rose, trundled purposefully around the circle, then insinuated himself under her elbow. Slurped greedily at her slender thigh.

Seventeen men watched in thunderstruck envy as the hound licked her clean—while Tess tipped back her head and laughed. “Why, thank you, sir. And who is this?” She scratched him between the shoulder blades and laughed again as his tail whacked her in the ribs, then bludgeoned Sean.

“Watson, leave her alone! Come.”

“Oh, no, he’s wonderful!” she insisted, glancing up at Adam, then quickly back to the dog. “Can’t he stay here? Clumsy as I am, I’ll probably need him.” She slid her hands under each of Watson’s ears, then lifted them out to the sides. Held their tips. “My! Would you look at these—a three-foot wingspan! Can he fly?”

No, but they would. Together, and soon. As quickly as he could make it happen. Adam hadn’t wanted a woman this much in… He couldn’t think when he’d wanted a woman the way he wanted this one. Or why. She wasn’t pretty like butterflies or flowers. Something much better than pretty, with four times the impact, that hit him like a bolt of summer lightning.

She glanced his way again, and her smile faded. She swung her head toward Joe Abbott, who’d brought her a fresh serving of pie, and it returned.

Whatever this is, you feel it, too, Adam told her silently. He turned to his neighbor, Anse Kirby, not quite the foreman at Suntop, but Montana’s right-hand man. “Who is that?” No need to point. Kirby’s eyes were fixed on her.

“Tess.” Kirby was a man of few words and he saved them for those he knew well. Adam would have to stick around a few more years before he’d qualify.

Tess. It suited her. Started strong, ended soft. A good name for whispering in the dark. Adam swung the other way, toward Bob Wilcox, one of the JBJ crew. He didn’t know the man well, but at least he was a talker.

“Heard tell she’s stayin’ up here for the summer,” Wilcox muttered to the man on his far side. “Over at the Two Bear camp.”

“Well, that oughta liven things up,” observed the other hand. “She ain’t grown up half-bad.”

“They all did. Her daddy had an eye for the lookers, all right. Three outa three.”

Two Bear. That was the peak to the west of Mount Sumner; it towered above the Suntop Range. So. Adam drew a satisfied breath. They were going to be neighbors? For the next three months? All right, then.

Something told him he could have cut her out of this herd of friends and admirers if tonight had been his one shot at winning her. But he preferred to take his time. Cool and easy was the best way when courting a woman. Trying to rush the process only made a man look anxious.

“Dubois.” Someone touched his shoulder and Adam turned to find Rafe Montana standing behind him. “You’re riding herd the ten-till-two shift. Best saddle up.” The trail boss moved on around the circle, tapping other men.

Tomorrow, then, Adam promised himself as he rose. Or if not tomorrow, then very, very soon. He shot her a farewell look as he left the campfire.

If she noticed, Tess didn’t return it.

“WHO’S THAT?” Tess asked old Whitie as the new guy strode off into the dark.

She’d known most of these men all her life. Half a dozen rode for her father’s brand. The rest were friends and neighbors. She’d ridden roundups with them since she turned fourteen, when she’d first flouted her father’s orders, running off to tag along on the spring drive. After that there’d been no holding her back. She’d kept right on defying Ben, riding with the hands fall and spring, till she went away to college.

But she’d never seen him before. Even at fourteen, she’d have noticed.

“The Cajun? That’s Dubois. Riding line for McGraw.”

Dubois, she spoke his name silently. If Dubois worked for Tripp McGraw, that would explain why he’d slept at Sumner cabin last week. He must have been moving in. The hairs stirred along her forearms and a warm ripple of awareness lapped up her spine. So… We’ll be neighbors.

Trouble, that’s what would come of this, she knew instinctively. Trouble and excitement.

“Not from around here,” she noted casually. “Is he really a Cajun?” Or had the men simply dubbed him that, because of his French surname? Still, that would account for the trace of accent she remembered. And his teasing use of the endearment cher.

“He’s a Lou’siana boy.” Whitie’s shrug said, what more do you need? He’d brought her a cup of hot chocolate, then stayed to gossip. “I bunked at Sumner cabin with him a few years back fer a while. He was workin’ half-time for Kaley and half-time for Tripp, that summer ’fore they came together.”

“But a Cajun cowboy?” she mused on a note of mild derision. “What did he learn to ride on? Alligators?”

“Beats me. He was a close-mouthed, smilin’ son of a gun back then and he ain’t improved much on that count. Seem to recall he said somethin’ ’bout having kin over Durango way. Had his share of cow sense.”

That was high praise, coming from Whitie. Tess changed the subject before the old man could mark her interest. “I see. So…where’s Chang?” Whitie’s constant companion was a doddering Pekinese with an evil eye and a worse disposition.

“In the wagon sulkin’, if he ain’t flopped on his back, chasin’ dream rabbits. He’s been mad enough to bite his-self ever since we let that there Watson hitch a ride.”

The hound was lying with his warm spine propped against her knees. Tess scratched between his ears. “And Watson belongs to…to Dubois?” Funny how momentous that felt, speaking his name for the first time.

Something told her it wouldn’t be the last.

NATWIG LAY half dozing on the couch. Any minute now he’d find the energy to get up and stir the fire, he was assuring himself for the third time, when the phone rang. “I’ll get it!” He sat and scrubbed a hand across his face.

But Karen was already wheeling herself toward the kitchen. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be for me.” Her big orange tomcat leapt down from her lap and stalked off, tail lashing at this disturbance. The little calico that was draped across her footrest stayed put, staring fascinated at the carpet rolling past its whiskers.

Eight months ago, his lively wife would have grabbed the phone by its second ring. Natwig gritted his teeth as it rang a fifth time, a sixth, while she maneuvered her wheelchair around the center cooking island he’d built her only last year. Ought to take that out of there, so she can move easier, he told himself as she snatched up the phone.

Karen had pulled a fit the time he’d suggested it. She was going to walk again—would be riding again by next year—she kept on telling him. Your lips to God’s ear, sweetheart. But Natwig was starting to doubt it.

“Hello?” she cried happily. She’d left a message on her sister’s answering machine just before supper. “Hello? Hel-lo-o-o!” She stared at the receiver with a puzzled frown. “Hung up, whoever it was.”

“One of those damned recorded salescalls, most likely.”

“But there was somebody there. I heard a rustle.”

“Wrong number, then. How about a bowl of ice cream?”

While she tried her sister again and again reached her machine, Natwig dished out two helpings of vanilla. That finished the carton. He scraped up a final spoonful. “This one’s got your name on it.” He teased the spoon across her smile, then eased it onto her tongue.

As she savored it, her wide blue eyes looked into his. She swallowed, then made a little sound as she licked her lips—his stomach muscles jerked tight. He straightened hastily, turned to drop the spoon in the sink. It jangled against a pot he’d yet to wash.

“Honey…” She broke the charged silence. “Dr. Murray says it’s—”

“Yeah, I know he did, but…” But Natwig had hurt her already, allowing her to ride that green-broke colt. Didn’t matter that she’d begged him to let her. What kind of fool took a chance with the thing—the person—that mattered most in all his life?

And if he hurt her again, he’d never, ever forgive himself. She seemed so tiny and fragile, trapped in that hateful chair. To satisfy himself at a risk to her? No way. It was better to wait.

But wait for how long? Forever? howled a voice like a lost coyote in the back of his mind. He swallowed around a lump of rock in his throat, then said gruffly, without turning, “want some peaches on top of yours?”

Her answer was a long time in coming. “No, thanks.”

“Well, I do.” He rummaged in the cabinet, found a can, focused himself on opening it. “How about tuning in the news?”

“I could, sure, but Joe—?”

The phone rang and he snatched it up with relief. “Hello?”

“Ah, you are there. Good.”

Larson, calling him at home. Rage washed over him in a boiling wave. Get out of my house! They met once a month to conduct their business. That was the only claim Larson had on him, and that was bad enough.

Alarm swirled in anger’s wake. Something’s wrong, him calling me here where he never has before! But whatever it was, Natwig couldn’t deal with it now, not with Karen sitting there with her feelings hurt and her ears pricked. “Can’t this wait?”

“Something urgent’s come up. If you can’t speak freely from there, then go where you can and call me back. My usual cell phone number.”

“But—”

“I’ll be waiting for your call.” He hung up.

Natwig stood, his hand clenched on the buzzing receiver. Bastard! Think you own me, just because you pay me?

“Who was it?” Karen demanded behind him. “Joe?”

He blew out a breath and his shoulders sagged. Till he paid off their debts to the hospital, laid up some cash against the rehab bills that kept on coming, Larson as good as owned him. There was no other way out but sell the ranch. And if he lost his land, lost his pack animals, then how was he to earn a living?

“That was…” Lying to Karen didn’t come naturally to him, but he was learning. He’d had more practice in the past six months than he’d had in the first twenty years of their marriage. “That was Cody, over at some bar in Cortez. Says he came out to his truck and he’s got a flat and damned if his spare isn’t flat, too. Wants me to come bail him out.”

“He can’t call his wife?”

“Suzie’s not answering her phone,” he mumbled. “Anyway, I was feeling restless. Drive’ll do me good.”

Karen’s third blasted cat, the tabby, thumped up onto the counter beside him. He grabbed the animal with a snarl and deposited it on his wife’s lap. “Damned cat! Tell a dog once not to do something and it’ll learn, but a cat?”

Beast and woman stared back at him in wide-eyed, wounded astonishment. Then Karen turned her head aside and wheeled toward the living room. “Come on, Posy, let’s go watch the news.”

He took a minute to cool down, then followed, to set the bowl of ice cream and a spoon on the coffee table at her elbow. Stood, shifting from foot to foot, yearning to touch her. “I won’t be gone long.”

Her hands smoothed the cat’s fur, her eyes stayed fixed on a beer commercial, where a pack of drunken college kids cavorted on an endless, sunny beach. Not a care in their world. “Take all the time you please.”

HE MET Larson halfway to Durango, at a roadside rest stop. “What’s your problem?” he growled, as he fitted himself into the Porsche’s low seat.

“Our problem.” Larson corrected him with a chilly smile. “It shouldn’t be a problem, if you move fast. We’ve learned that a female lynx has finally bred and she’s about to give birth. One of the DOW tracking planes spotted her. Four kittens, they’re estimating. That works out to roughly three hundred thousand apiece they’ve spent to achieve that. The taxpayers are out of their minds to put up with this nonsense!”

Natwig nodded grim agreement, though he seemed to recall that the lynx restoration program was financed by a voluntary check-off on the state income tax. Still, that kind of money. He felt a tickle of fear, like a cold breeze on his cheek. No way the damned bureaucrats at the DOW could afford to let all their cats vanish. Sooner or later, somebody would figure out that this wasn’t Mother Nature winnowing the weak. Once they did, somebody was bound to come after him.

Let him come. He’d almost welcome a flesh-and-blood enemy for a change. Better somebody he could face—somebody he could pound into the ground—than this formless fear and frustration that came creeping every night to crouch on his pillow.

“—be the Division’s media darlings, if we don’t watch out,” Larson was saying. “Before that happens, before somebody gets photos of the kittens and posts them on the DOW Web site, they need to disappear. Dead. Gone. Eaten by a bear or a coyote or a porcupine or whatever they care to imagine. But out of sight, out of the public’s mind— ASAP.”

Larson’s chubby fingers drummed on the steering wheel as he glared through the windshield. “We’re just starting to see the first complaints in the papers and on talk shows that this program is a waste of time and taxpayers’ money. Momentum is building. But let the bleeding hearts and the tree huggers have a litter of fuzzy, adorable kittens to rally around and…” He shook the awful image out of his head and briskly turned. “So, get on this immediately.”

“I will, but—” Natwig paused. He had a client scheduled, the day after tomorrow. A long-time client, who’d booked a week of fly-fishing and wildflower photography with him every summer for ten years now. No way would he let the man down. An outfitter’s reputation was built on dependability, as well as on delivering whatever the client wanted, from a trophy buck to a rare bird sighting.

But try to tell that to Larson, who saw him only as a tool for his own purposes.

“But what? This is crucial. Time is of the essence here.”

“Well, it may take a while, running the queen down. If she has a litter, she won’t be straying far from her den. And she won’t let the kittens out to play for weeks, not till their eyes open and she thinks they’re old enough.”

“She’s not a—a soccer mom, she’s a dumb animal!”

Dumb? I’d like to see you up there, with nothing but your claws and teeth and wits to feed your family. You and yours would starve in a week! Natwig dwelt on that comforting image for a minute, then said, “Once she’s down in her hole, my equipment won’t pick her up. It’s line of sight, remember? So if she isn’t moving around much, it’ll take longer. I may have to circle in till I cross her prints, then track her to her den.”

“Whatever it takes. Just do it. My…friends have authorized a bonus. An extra five thousand per kitten, on top of your usual ten.”

Natwig gulped, did the math. Five times ten, plus four times five—seventy thousand dollars, all in one den? That would put him past the halfway mark on his debt. No way could he take this assignment and shove it, much as he’d love to.

“But there’s one stipulation to that bonus.” Larson gave him an odd look—a twitch of guilty pleasure, instantly buried. “Since the kittens won’t be wearing a DOW collar, my clients will need some other sort of proof that you took them.”

No way. Natwig let his face relax, the way he did at poker. Not a chance. That would go against everything he was doing. “Like a scalp, you mean?”

Larson pursed his lips. “Or a tail, if that’s easier.”

What would be easy would be to grab this creep by the back of his greasy neck, then slam his head against his fancy steering wheel—half a dozen times. But how to say “no,” without giving his game away? “That would spoil the pelt,” Natwig said at last. It wouldn’t, but he could trust this city slicker not to know that.

Larson gave a little crow of delight. “With all we’re paying you, you’re selling their furs on the side?” Greed, now that was something he could understand.

“Why waste a good pelt? I’m tanning ’em and keeping ’em, for now. I’ll sell them next year, once the fuss dies down,” Natwig added, to head off any objections.

“So suppose I take a picture of the kittens when I catch them. As proof.”

“You could get a photo at the nearest zoo,” Larson noted dryly.

“A photo taken in the wild, not in a cage. Brought to you at the same time as their mother’s collar, with its Division of Wildlife number? It’d be more trouble to fake that, than to bring you the real thing. But if you don’t trust me…” Natwig reached for his door handle.

“No, no, I’m sure that will do,” Larson said hastily. He drew a folded paper from the pocket of his suit. “Here’s her latest coordinates. It’s Collar AK00F6.”

“That Alaskan hussy? Wasn’t she hunting over near Silverton?” Natwig had spent a week on snowshoes, looking for her in February. He’d crossed her tracks a dozen times, without once sighting the sly boots. Finally he’d concluded that she was holed up in one of the mines. The mountains up there were riddled with old shafts, and it would have taken half a lifetime to find her. So he’d gone on to easier prey.

“Yes, but she’s moved. You told me they do that.”

“Yeah.” But why would she abandon a perfect territory for nesting? He shrugged. Maybe she’d hunted it thin this winter and so had to move on. Whatever. “Where is this location?”

“Practically your own backyard. She’s in the peaks north of Trueheart.”

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