Black Hills

by Nora Roberts

  “Yah,” Gull said, mimicking their accent. “You betcha. Anyhow, we could use more groups like that.” Gull watched their progress from under the brim of his battered brown hat. “We’ll be getting them now that it’s coming on spring.”

  “It may be coming on spring, but those boys are going to freeze their dicks off tonight pissing out that beer.”

  Gull grinned. “Well, yeah. Hope it thaws out for the groom before the honeymoon. So, boss, I got that guided in another hour. Family trail ride. The pa runs a good two-eighty. I was going to put him up on Sasquash.”

  “He’s good to go. Do you have any plans for tonight, Gull?”

  “Can’t say I do.” Gull’s grin widened with his wink. “You asking me on a date, boss?”

  “I’m too shy,” Coop said, and it made Gull guffaw. “Lil’s had some trouble over at her place.”

  “I heard about it.”

  “She could use some help, if a man didn’t mind freezing his dick off.”

  Gull gave his crotch a subtle pat. “South Dakota peckers don’t freeze so easy as a drunk’s from Fargo.”

  “Must be from all the jerking off,” Coop mused, and put Gull in stitches again. “Can you take a turn at guard duty over there tonight? Say two to six?”

  “Sure, boss, I can do that. Need anybody else?”

  No hesitation, Coop thought. No complaint. “I could use two more men who you trust not to shoot themselves, or anybody else.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about that. I’ll think on it. I guess I’ll go see about getting those box lunches for this guided.”

  “I’ll check them in when they get here.”

  When they parted ways, Coop went to the storefront. The old desk faced the window and gave him a view of Deadwood that wasn’t quite what he imagined Calamity Jane and Wild Bill had seen in their day. Still, it maintained its Western flavor, with its awnings and architecture and old-timey lampposts. Its feel, he supposed, as the town spread and climbed its way up the hills. Cowboys mixed with the tourists; saloons cozied up to souvenir shops.

  And a man could find a game of poker or blackjack day or night if he wanted to gamble. But the proprietors weren’t likely to murder a man in the back room and feed him to the pigs.

  Progress.

  He dealt with the paperwork, the forms and waivers, so he could move the family group along when they arrived. And so he could carve some time for his own devices.

  He pulled a ginger ale out of the cold box, since he’d buzzed his blood on coffee that morning. People passed by, and some likely glanced in. They’d see a man going about his business, keyboarding on a computer that, to Coop’s mind, desperately needed replacing.

  He opened Lil’s file. He might not be an investigator anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to investigate. He’d have preferred being sure her list of staff, interns, and volunteers was complete. But he had enough to keep him busy. The staff, past and current, hadn’t netted him a thing. He probably knew more about all of them now than some would be comfortable with, but he knew more about a lot of people than most were comfortable with.

  Though Jean-Paul had not technically been staff, Coop had done a run on him. Broken relationships were petri dishes waiting to brew trouble. He knew the French guy had been married and divorced in his early twenties. It was likely Lil had that information, and since it didn’t seem to be relevant, Coop simply filed it away. He found no criminal, and a current address in Los Angeles.

  Stay there, Coop thought.

  He’d uncovered a few criminal brushes on staff, but nothing more violent than the vet having a scuffle during a protest on animal testing fifteen years earlier.

  The former interns comprised a bigger chunk. They were a diverse group, economically, geographically, academically. He followed some through college, grad school, into careers. A quick scan showed Coop that a high percentage of interns Lil had trained pursued careers somewhere in the field.

  He found some scrapes with the law as he picked his way through. Drugs, DUIs, a couple of assaults and/or destruction of property—usually connected to drugs or alcohol.

  Those would earn a closer look.

  He did the same with the volunteers—any whose names actually made it into the files, he thought, annoyed.

  He culled out any who’d lived in or moved to the Dakotas. Proximity could be a factor, and he believed whoever was harassing Lil knew the hills as well as she did.

  In the tedious way it demanded, he cross-referenced the assaults, the drug busts, the DUIs with geography, and got a single hit.

  Ethan Richard Howe, age thirty-one. A trespassing hit in Sturgis, and that was close, when he’d been twenty, charges dropped. Carrying a concealed weapon—.22 revolver—without a license two years later in Wyoming. And an assault that looked like a bar fight and had put him inside for a year and a half in Montana at the ripe old age of twenty-five.

  Early release, time off for good behavior. And, thought the former cop, to move inmates out as others moved in.

  Three hits, Coop mused, one for being where he didn’t belong, one for a weapon, and the last for violence. He’d give Howe a closer look.

  He started to move on, then had to break as the Dobsons arrived—Tom, Sherry, and their two teenage daughters—for check-in.

  He knew his job and it was more than getting forms signed, more than making sure the customers could actually sit a horse. He chatted with the father, gave little back stories on each of the horses. Took time as if he had an endless supply of it in his pockets.

  “It’s a good, easy trail,” he assured Sherry, who seemed more nervous than excited. “There’s nothing like seeing the hills on horseback.”

  “But we’ll be back well before dark.”

  “Gull will have you back by four.”

  “You hear about people getting lost.”

  “Now, Sherry,” Tom began.

  “Gull grew up here,” Coop assured her. “He knows the trails, and so do the horses. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

  “I haven’t been on horseback in ten years.” Sherry stepped onto the mounting block Coop provided. “I’m going to ache in places I forgot I had.”

  “You can get a good massage right here in town, if you’re interested.”

  She glanced back at Coop, and for the first time a little light gleamed in her eyes. “Really?”

  “I can book you one, if you’re interested. Maybe for five o’clock?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Happy to.”

  “Five o’clock massage. I don’t suppose I could get a hot stone?”

  “Sure. Fifty or eighty minutes?”

  “Eighty. My day just got a lot better. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. You have a nice ride.”

  He went in, booked the massage, wrote up the particulars. The business would get a referral fee, which didn’t hurt. Then he shifted gears and went back to Lil’s file.

  He started a new run on the women. He leaned toward a man in this case, but he knew better than to discount the female. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look that early morning to be absolutely certain. In any case, a woman might be the connection.

  He worked his way through the ginger ale and half the ham sandwich his grandmother had packed him. He couldn’t stop her from packing his lunch, and had to admit he didn’t try very hard.

  It was nice to have someone who’d take the time, take the trouble.

  Marriages, divorces, kids, degrees. One of the earlier interns in the program now lived in Nairobi, another was a vet specializing in exotic animals in L.A.

  And another, he noted as his instincts hummed, had vanished.

  Carolyn Lee Roderick, age twenty-three, missing for eight months and a handful of days. Last seen in Denali National Park, where she’d been doing fieldwork.

  He followed the hum and dug out what he could on Carolyn Roderick.

  AT THE REFUGE, Lil shook hands with Brad Dromburg,
the owner of Safe and Secure. He was a beanpole of a man, obviously comfortable in his Levi’s and Rockports, with a close-cropped head of dark blond hair and green eyes. He had an easy smile, a firm hand, and a voice with just a hint of Brooklyn.

  “I appreciate you coming all this way, and so quickly.”

  “Coop tugged the line. Is he around?”

  “No. I—”

  “He said he’d try to make it by. Some place you’ve got here, Ms. Chance.” He stood, hands on his hips, studying the habitats, the compound. “Some place. How long have you been in operation?”

  “Six years this May.”

  He gestured over where some of her interns had set the poles for the new habitat. “Expanding?”

  “We’re acquiring a melanistic jaguar.”

  “Is that so? Coop said you’ve had a little trouble. Someone compromised one of the cages?”

  “The tiger enclosure, yes.”

  “That would be a little trouble, all right. Maybe you could walk me around, give me a feel for the place. And what you have in mind.”

  He asked questions, made notes on a PDA, and showed no particular nerves when he walked up to the enclosures to study the doors, the locks.

  “That’s a big boy there,” he said when Boris rolled over to stretch in front of his den.

  “Yes. All four hundred and eighty-six pounds of him.”

  “It took a lot of balls or stupidity to open that cage, middle of the night, gamble that big boy’s going to go after the bait and not the live meal.”

  “It would, but the fresh kill would be more appealing. Boris was trapped, illegally from what I can dig up, when he was around a year old. He’s been in captivity ever since, and he’s used to the scent of human. He’s fed in the evening, to continue to stimulate the hunt by night instincts, but he’s used to being fed.”

  “And he didn’t go far.”

  “No, fortunately. He followed the blood trail to the bait and settled in for his unexpected predawn snack.”

  “Takes some balls to come out here and shoot a mickey into him.”

  “Necessity is often the mother of balls, so to speak.”

  He smiled, stepped back. “I don’t mind saying I’m glad he’s in there and I’m out here. So that’s four gates, including the one for public access during operating hours. And a lot of open land.”

  “I can’t fence off the entire property. Even if I could, it would be a logistical nightmare. There are trails running through the hills that cross this land, my father’s, others’. We’re posted private around the perimeter, and the gates tend to stop people. My priority is securing the compound, the habitats. I need to keep my animals safe, Mr. Dromburg, and keep everyone safe from my animals.”

  “That’s Brad. I’ve got some ideas on that, and I’m going to work something up. One of the things I’m going to recommend are motion sensors set outside the enclosures. Far enough that the animals won’t set them off, but anyone approaching the enclosure would.”

  She felt her budget wince in pain. “How many would I need?”

  “I’ll figure that for you. You want more lights. Sensor goes off, alarm kicks on, lights flood this place. An intruder’s going to think twice about trying for a cage at that point. Then there’s the locks themselves, and that goes for your gates as well as your cages. Interesting situation,” he added. “Challenging.”

  “And—sorry I have to be crass here—expensive.”

  “I’m going to work out two or three systems I think would work for you, and I’ll give you an estimate on each. It’ll be a chunk of change, I won’t lie to you, but getting it at cost’s going to save you some serious moolah.”

  “At cost? I’m confused.”

  “It’s for Coop.”

  “No, it’s for me.”

  “Coop made the call. He wants this place wired up, we wire it up. At cost.”

  “Brad, this place runs on donations, funding, charity, generosity. I’m not going to turn yours down, but why would you do all this and not make a profit?”

  “I wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for Coop. He calls, it’s cost. And speak of the devil.” Brad’s face lit up as Coop started down the path toward them.

  They didn’t shake hands. Instead they greeted each other with the one-armed, backslapping hug men favored. “I wanted to be here sooner, but I got hung up. How was the flight?”

  “It’s a long one. Jesus, Coop, it’s good to see you.”

  “And I have to give you a job before you come out. Have you been around?”

  “Yeah, your lady gave me the tour.”

  Lil opened her mouth, then shut it. No point in breaking up the reunion by pointing out she wasn’t Coop’s “lady.”

  “You’ll have to excuse me. It’s feeding time.”

  “Seriously?” Brad asked.

  He looked like a kid, she thought, who’d just been shown the biggest cookie in the jar. “Why don’t I get you both a beer, and you can watch the show?”

  Brad rocked on his heels as Lil walked away. “She’s sexier than her picture.”

  “It was an old picture.”

  “Seeing her in the flesh, I’d say the chances of you coming back to New York are slim to none.”

  “They started out slim to none, and she wasn’t why I moved here.”

  “Maybe not, but I haven’t seen many better reasons to stay.” Brad looked over the habitats, up to the hills. “Hell of a long way from New York.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “I’ve got to fly back tonight, so we’ll have to keep it to the one beer. I had to shuffle some things to get out here today. But I’ll draw up a couple of options in the next day or two. I’ll get them to you, and I’ll make sure I’m back when we do the install. We’ll lock it down for you, Coop.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Lil stayed busy, and out of Coop’s way. Old friends, to her way of thinking, needed time to catch up.

  She and Coop had been friends once. Maybe they could be again. Maybe this pang she felt was just missing him, just missing her friend.

  If they couldn’t go back, they could move forward. It seemed he was making the effort, so how could she do less?

  She finished up in her office just as Coop walked in. “Brad had to go. He said to tell you goodbye, and he’d have plans for you to look over within the next few days.”

  “Well. For a day that started out as bad as this one, it’s ending well. I just got off the phone with Tansy. Cleo is as advertised. Gorgeous, healthy, and she’ll be ready to travel tomorrow. Cooper, Brad said he’d be doing the security system at cost.”

  “Yeah, that’s the deal.”

  “We should all have such generous friends.”

  “He likes to think he owes me. I like to let him.”

  “My IOUs are piling up in your hat.”

  “No they’re not. I don’t want an accounting.” Irritation darkened his face as he took another step toward her desk. “You were the best friend I ever had. For a good part of my life you were one of the few people I could trust or count on. It made a difference to me. In me. Don’t,” he said when her eyes welled.

  “I won’t.” But she rose and walked to the window to look out until she had control. “You made a difference, too. I’ve missed you, missed having you for a friend. And here you are. I’m in trouble and I don’t know why, and here you are.”

  “I have a possible line on that. On the trouble.”

  She turned. “What? What line?”

  “An intern named Carolyn Roderick. Do you remember her?”

  “Ah, wait.” Lil closed her eyes, tried to think. “Yes, yes, I think . . . Two years ago. I think nearly two years ago. A summer