Prey: A Novel Read online

  Harlan blew out a breath. “That’s what I thought. Damn it.”

  His tone dragging with reluctance, Dare asked, “Where’s she going? Do you know the area?”

  “Yeah. She gave me her location, and the name of the men she’ll be with.” Harlan passed along that information. “She’s supposed to call me when she gets back.”

  “What are they hunting?”

  “Bear, going by the bear call I saw her packing.”

  Dare grunted. “And both of her clients are first-timers?” He meant the first time hunting bear in particular, not hunting in general, but he didn’t have to explain himself to Harlan.

  “I don’t know about the client’s client; he might be experienced.” Harlan felt he had to be fair about that, considering all the other bad thoughts he was having about these two men whom he didn’t know. He cleared his throat, bracing himself for a sharp rejection as he moved to the main part of his objective. “Like I said, I have an uneasy feeling about this; don’t know why. Do you know anyone who could check up on her while she’s out there, kind of? You know, so she won’t know she’s being checked up on?”

  There was a moment of silence during which Harlan could all too plainly imagine Dare holding the phone out and staring at it in disbelief, then his ear was blasted with a shout so raspy it sounded as if it had been fashioned out of sandpaper. “You want me to check up on her? That’s what you’re asking, right? There isn’t some convenient ‘anyone’ who’s going to be up in that area.”

  “Unless you’re busy,” said Harlan, totally without shame or guilt; in fact, he felt a sense of triumph. If Dare had had a guide trip himself, he’d have immediately said he was busy, but he hadn’t, which meant he wasn’t. Harlan had taken a gamble.

  “I don’t have anyone coming in, but that doesn’t mean I’m not busy,” Dare said, sounding thoroughly pissed.

  “I know I’m asking a lot—”

  “A helluva lot more than you know. In case you haven’t noticed, Angie and I don’t exactly get along. She won’t appreciate seeing me.”

  “I had noticed,” Harlan admitted. “And if she sees you she won’t be happy. But I’d rather she be unhappy than raped or dead.”

  “You really think something like that might happen?”

  “Normally I don’t even think about it. This time, though, I’ve just got a bad feeling in my gut.”

  “Shit,” said Dare, but it wasn’t a dismissal of Harlan’s instincts. If anything, it was an acknowledgment from someone who had been in a lot of tense situations and tight places; cops and soldiers learned to pay attention to their guts, more so than the general population. Harlan didn’t think he was psychic or anything like that, but he did think that people had an animalistic sixth sense that could warn them of impending danger, if they’d only listen to it. Maybe Angie had picked up some of the same sense of danger and would be extra cautious, which might be all that was needed, but maybe she was too preoccupied with her situation to notice some details.

  “I’ll think about it,” Dare finally said grudgingly. “But if I do go up there and she shoots my ass, I’m holding you responsible.”

  Fuck this. Angie Powell wasn’t his problem. She was a pain in his ass, but she wasn’t his problem.

  Dare made a habit—no, a religion—of not taking on other people’s shit if he could find a way around it, and he was no goddamn babysitter. Harlan was just being an old woman, worrying about Angie because his gut told him something wasn’t right. More than likely he just felt overprotective because she was his dead best friend’s daughter, he’d watched her grow up, and all that other psychological crap, so he’d worked himself into a fit of guilt. He was discounting that Angie had chosen to be a guide, knowing damn well that taking men she didn’t know out for days or even weeks at a time would be part of the deal. She was a smart, tough cookie; she’d have thought of all that, and taken precautions.

  But Angie was going through a tough time, selling out and moving, so probably Harlan was just feeling extra protective. That explained it as well as anything else.

  Dare snorted as he went through to the kitchen and snagged a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. He could just imagine what would happen if he showed up at her campsite, checking up on the little lady like some Old West throwback. Angie Powell would kick his ass if he even hinted that she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. Well, she’d try.

  In spite of his sour mood, a smile twitched at his mouth. She pissed him off with those drop-dead looks she gave him, she got on his last nerve without even trying, but the mental picture of her coming after him with both fists swinging lifted his mood. For one thing, he’d win any tussle with her. For a second thing, the tussling would be fun. For a few seconds he enjoyed the scenario, imagining that almost-skinny body wiggling against him, that world-class ass right there where he could get his hands on it—yeah, right before the part where she head-butted him and broke his nose, which was way more likely than the ass-grabbing part, though if he kept his mind on the fight and his hands where they were supposed to be, she’d never be able to get near his nose, or his balls, or any other vulnerable part. He’d have to decide ahead of time if getting his hands on her ass was worth a knee in the balls.

  His dick twitched a Hell, yeah! Dare snorted again. Stupid fucker … literally.

  Spend a week up in the high country trying to stay hidden and watch over Angie Powell at the same time? What, did Harlan think he lived in a vacuum and didn’t have his own shit to take care of?

  Some of that shit was in a pile on the kitchen table, waiting for him. God, he hated paperwork. He loved what he did, but he fucking hated the nit-picking shit that went with it, the stack of crumpled receipts that he swore to God multiplied during the night. Maybe he should hire someone to do the books for him. He was making enough money now—though if he bought Angie’s place, that extra money would disappear. Things would be tight for a while, but if he could make all his plans work …

  Damn it, if she got killed on this guide job, all of those plans would evaporate. The property would be tied up for however long it took the estate to be settled. He didn’t know who her relatives were, if she had a will, anything about that side of her life. If he wanted that land, she needed to be alive.

  Damn it.

  He growled as he took his bottle of water to the table and sat down. He picked up his calendar and flipped through it. Yeah, everything there was duplicated on his computer, but he preferred to keep the names of clients and the dates of their scheduled hunts written down on paper. It was nice to have a computer backup, but he didn’t quite trust that the info would always be there when he needed it. Power outages, computer viruses, the blue screen of death … yeah, paper and pen were better.

  The calendar was a map of his success. At first glance, it was a mess of chicken scratching. Maybe his penmanship wasn’t great, but he could decipher it and that was all that mattered. Notes were scrawled in the margins of the notebook-sized organizing calendar, plans and names were scratched out here and there, and in some places other names were added in. He didn’t get many cancellations, but it happened. Sometimes there were other clients on standby, regulars waiting to take the place of the ones who’d backed out for one reason or another—regulars who would prefer to wait for him than to sign on with someone else. He was proud of that, that for some hunters it was Dare Callahan or no one.

  The calendar told him exactly what he’d known it would: He didn’t have anything scheduled for the next ten days. There was no one on standby, either; the end of the busy season was coming up fast. The last few months had been so busy, Dare wouldn’t mind taking a short break. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other things to do. The camps could always use maintenance, and he was always behind on his paperwork, witness the mound of receipts right in front of him now. He wasn’t exactly a nester, but he needed to take care of a pile of laundry before he ran out of clothes, and he needed to lay in some more firewood for winter, and stock up