“I’m grateful, Coop. I don’t know what I’d’ve done if you hadn’t been along.”

“Handled it. I’ll be by later.”

“You don’t need to-”

“I’ll be by later.”

With that, he walked away, and Willy fell into step with him.

“So you were with the police back east.”

“I was.”

“Went into private, I hear.”

“I did.”

“I recall when you used to come out as a boy, visit with your grand-folks. Good people.”

“They are.”

Willy’s lips twitched, and his stride was steady on the trail. “I heard how Gull Nodock, who works for you now, gave you a chaw one day and you about puked yourself inside out.”

The faintest hint of humor touched Coop’s mouth. “Gull never gets tired of telling that one.”

“It’s a good one. Why don’t you just give me the run-down, Mr. Sullivan. You don’t need me telling you what I need to know, seeing as you were police.”

“Cooper, or Coop. Lil and I started out yesterday morning. Around eight, maybe just after eight. We unloaded some of the gear at the campsite, by the stream, and got up here before eleven. Close to eleven, I think.”

“Good time.”

“Good horses, and she knows the trail. She’s got that camera up there. Somebody broke the lock on its cover, switched it off. She said it went down a couple days ago. She reset it. We saw the tracks left by whoever did it. Looks like around a size eleven to me.”

Willy nodded, adjusted his Stetson. “We’ll be checking on that.”

“We set up the cage, and baited it, and we were back at camp before two. She worked, I read, we had a meal, turned in. Five-twenty this morning, I heard somebody moving around. I got my gun. He was already running when I got out of the tent. I heard him more than saw him, but I got a glimpse. I’d guess about six feet tall, male. Most likely male just from the way he moved, the basic shape. He had on a backpack, and a cap. Gimme cap style. Couldn’t tell you age, race, hair color. I just got the shape, the movement as he ran, then he was in the trees. He moved fast.”

“Black as ink that time of day.”

“Yeah. Maybe he had infrared goggles. I only saw him from behind, but he moved like a f**king gazelle. Fast, fluid. Between the two of us, Lil woke up. Not long after, she got the signal the trap had sprung. It took us a good thirty minutes, maybe closer to forty to pack up, for her to contact her base. And we spent some time looking at the cat on her computer. He had a good lead on us. Neither one of us considered he’d head up there, do that.”

“Why would you?”

They’d reached the horses, and Willy gave Coop’s mare a friendly rub.

“We had light by then, but we didn’t hurry. Then she spotted the tracks. We were about halfway between the camp and the cage, and she spotted them.”

“Got an eye for it, Lil does,” Willy commented in his mild way.

“He’d circled around, crossed back to the trail, and headed up. We heard the cat scream, the way they do.”

“Hell of a sound.”

“Third time it screamed, we heard the shot.” He detailed the rest, adding the times.

“There’s no exit wound,” Coop added. “It’s going to be small-caliber. Compact handgun, maybe a thirty-eight. The kind somebody could carry easily under his jacket. Wouldn’t weigh him down on a hike, wouldn’t show if he ran into anybody on the trail. Just another guy out loving nature.”

“We take something like this serious around here. You can count on that. I’m going to let you get on. If I need to talk to you again, I know where to find you. You keep an eye out on the way down, Coop.”

“You can count on that.” Coop mounted, took the reins of Lil’s horse from Willy.

The trip back alone gave him time to think.

It was no coincidence that the camera had been tampered with, an intruder had chosen their campsite, the cougar Lil had trapped had been shot.

Common denominator? Lillian Chance.

She needed to have that spelled out for her, and she needed to take whatever precautions she could.

She assumed it was easier for a man to kill a caged animal than a human.

Coop didn’t agree.

He didn’t know William Johannsen well, and prior to now hadn’t had any professional dealings with him. But his impression had been one of competence and a cool head. He expected the man would do all that could and should be done in the investigation.

And Coop figured unless Willy was really lucky, he’d get nowhere.

Whoever had killed Lil’s cougar knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how to do it. The question was why.

Someone with a grudge against Lil personally, or with a vendetta against the refuge? Maybe both, as Lil was the refuge in most people’s minds. An extremist on either side of the environmental/conservation issue was a possibility.

Someone who knew the area, knew how to live in the wild for stretches, go unnoticed. A local maybe, Coop mused, or someone with local ties.

Maybe he’d tug on a few old connections and see if there’d been any similar incidents in the last few years. Or, he admitted, he could just ask Lil. No doubt she’d know or could find out faster than he could.

Of course that blew to hell the idea of keeping his distance. He’d already blown that, he admitted, when he’d jumped on going with her on this trip. So who was he kidding?

He wasn’t going to stay away from her. He’d known that, however much he’d tried to deny it, the minute she’d opened the door to that cabin. The instant he’d seen her again.

Maybe it was just unfinished business. He wasn’t one for leaving things unresolved. Lil was… a loose end, he decided. If he couldn’t cut it off, he had to tie it off. Screw the guy she wasn’t exactly engaged to.

There was still something there. He’d felt it from her. He’d seen it in her eyes. However long it had been since he’d seen her, been with her, he knew her eyes.

He dreamed of them.

He knew what he’d seen in them that morning in her tent, while on the computer screen the young cougar hissed in the cage. If he’d touched her then, he’d have taken her then. As simple as that.

They weren’t going to get through this new phase of their lives, whatever the hell it was, until they’d gotten past the old feelings, the old connection, the old needs. Maybe once they had, they could be friends again. Maybe they couldn’t. But standing in place wasn’t going to cut it.