That was one hell of a night. Amber had not opened herself up to a man like that in a long time, but not an ounce of her regretted her decision. AJ was beyond anything she’d expected. They had definitely taken things to another level. She had wanted to take things further, but was glad that things had ended where they had.
She’d felt silly for asking him to just hold her, but he hadn’t hesitated for a moment. He had just pulled her into his arms, and held her tight.
Recalling the sound of his heartbeat made her smile. In theory, it would’ve been nice to hear it again, but that wasn’t what was going to happen. Something like that wouldn’t be good for either one of them.
As soon as she got the bear, she was done here. He knew that just as well as she did.
Yeah, they could call each other and text and do all the cutesy things that people in relationships did, but they were both so busy it would never work.
He had been gone for nearly an hour last night. Though she had seen him go into the ranch house, she didn’t know what had been going on; for all she knew, he’d been ordering hits on people. She laughed at the thought as she laced up her boots.
The deputy had told her what they did for a living and he had vaguely explained it as well, but last night AJ definitely didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was an assassin. Not hardly. He was sweet and giving. If asked, she’d honestly have to say that he was one of the best kissers she had experienced. She could only imagine how good he would be when they actually had sex. Maybe that was reason enough not to go there. If they did, she wasn’t sure that she could leave it at a one-night stand.
After getting ready for the day in her cabin and making herself a steaming cup of coffee, she went outside and got into her truck. AJ’s lights were still off and it didn’t look like he was up yet, surprisingly.
He didn’t seem like the type who would sleep in, but he had put in some time on her.
She smiled wildly at the thought.
Yes, keeping this to a one-time thing was already going to be a challenge.
Hopefully the bear trap was sprung and she could spend the rest of the day figuring out the logistics in getting the biologists and her team out here to help her relocate the animal.
Thinking about that... She needed to do a little digging. Part of her was tempted to sit out in her rig and work. If she waited, she might get to see AJ when he came out to go to work, but then again, she didn’t want to risk falling back into his arms. She had already self-rescued from those arms once. If she fell back in, work wouldn’t be getting done—at least not the kind that got her paid.
As it was, his lights weren’t even on. She had a few minutes to get some work done before hitting the road.
She popped open her laptop and signed in to work. If she had to guess, there would be phone calls all day.
At least hunting season was over—that would limit the number of random calls that would come in from people wanting to report trespassing and the like. However, there were a few poaching calls that her deputies would need to continue digging into in order to solve and prosecute.
She pulled up her email. There were forty sitting in there from yesterday and twenty-three from just today. She had been thinking she would beat everyone to their proverbial desks this morning. Nothing appeared as if it needed her immediate attention, so she turned her focus to what she was looking for—collared grizzly-bear locations.
The locations were exact, but sometimes the data was slow to upload, with approximately a three-day lag. Sometimes, if a bear was in certain areas, the data signal wouldn’t even be attainable, but hopefully she could get a general idea.
Last year, they’d had a bear, Lingenpolter, that had been caught in a culvert trap—like the one they had set last night—and had been relocated more than two hundred miles to the north, near Glacier Park. In less than two months, the bear traveled more than five hundred miles in a zigzag pattern and had last pinged farther south than where they had originally caught him. It was incredible just how far and wide a male could travel.
If the bear on the ranch was a male, it very well may have been traveling through when it found food and holed up. If it was female, or a sow with cubs—which there hadn’t been any evidence of—it would be another story entirely. She could very well den up near the ranch and move in to the territory. Meaning, the Spades and the Martins would be dealing with her for years to come.
Amber pulled up the latest report of GPS readouts of collared bears. The information was from last week, and if she added three days to that... She pulled together a general geofence for the area.
There were four known possibilities—three females and a male.
Those were just the ones that had been caught and collared. If the reported sightings were to be believed, more than a dozen grizzly bears could have been the one that was visiting the ranch.
Based on the probabilities, she had to assume it was a female.
She clicked on bear number 832. It was, approximately, a twenty-nine-year-old sow griz who had originally been captured and tagged in a drainage twenty miles to the east. The girl had been chomping on a farmer’s chickens, then hit the garbage inside a neighbor’s garage, which led to her capture and tagging. They had moved her north, but like Lingenpolter, she had eventually picked her way back to the general area. Her epic adventure wasn’t as much of a zigzag as the boar’s, but she had steadily come back to what she no doubt thought of as home.
Amber couldn’t blame the bear, but if that was the one that they were dealing with—one that had been somewhat habituated to people and the food sources they provided and was now back looking for more—it could prove fatal for the sow. They had to have a somewhat rigid policy; a habituated bear was a dangerous one.
If this was the bear seen out here, it was very likely that the woman whose hand they’d found had fallen victim to a bad bear.
Amber was torn. She wanted to hope that the bear hadn’t killed the woman, but had only scavenged, given the alternative—both for the woman and the bear.
There was already enough of a target on grizzly bears; much of the public wanted to pull them off the endangered-species list and start to allow for an active hunting season on the predators. A woman being killed would definitely draw more strength to the case.
From a conservation perspective, predators needed to be controlled or it would lead to massive swings in predators and prey. She’d rather it be steady instead of bears overloading the balance and turning to unhealthy practices that left her holding the scale.
There was a knock on the driver-side door of her truck and she jerked back from her computer. AJ was standing outside her window, holding two cups of coffee from Starbucks.
“Oh, hey,” she said, rolling down her window. She was both excited and embarrassed at seeing him.
AJ smiled at her. He was nearly irresistible when he gave her that look. “Sorry to surprise you—that wasn’t my intention.” He handed her the venti cup. “It’s just a regular latte with sweetener, I didn’t know what you liked.”
“That was really thoughtful of you.” She took the coffee and pulled the stopper from the cup, then took a long sip. The coffee wasn’t very hot. “Is there even a Starbucks around here?”
He shrugged. “Not really, but there are a few in the city. I ran in there about an hour ago. After you left I couldn’t really sleep...” There was a tug of sadness in his voice.
Or maybe she was just hearing things. If he was upset with her, he wouldn’t have been bringing her coffee—a coffee that had taken almost an hour to get. He really was a good man.
Before she could allow herself to think about the likeable parts of him, she needed to focus. Here came the awkwardness.
She sighed. “About last night—”
He shook his head and from the pinched look on his face, he wanted her to stop.
Good. We have an understanding.
She smiled with relief and she could feel her body relax.
“You going up to check the trap? If you are, I’ll come along and show you around the ranch a little. Maybe we can track the bear a bit more and see where it’s been going.”
He stood quietly by her window for a moment, sipping on his coffee. She squirmed slightly, but really...what did it hurt if he was by her side today? If they were in the truck, working, there wouldn’t really be much time for any type of shenanigans to happen.
Besides, they had an unspoken understanding.
“I’d be happy to have you along.” She did enjoy his company.
He gave her a quick nod and made his way around to the passenger seat. “I talked to Zoey this morning. There’s a sheriff’s deputy keeping an eye on the scene. They tried to stay out of the way of your trap, and inside their car all night. I expect that the full investigation team will probably be here in the next couple of hours to go over the entire area.”
“Yeah, I don’t expect that anybody wanted to rush around in the woods last night with just a skeleton crew when there’s a grizzly around. I certainly didn’t advise it.”
“Is there a chance we can put more traps out?” he asked.
“We have one more trap that’s available, but it’s in Kalispell. If we don’t get a hit on this trap, we can start thinking about it.” She paused. “It’s my hope, though, that this bear just moved on and isn’t a continuing problem.”
He grimaced slightly, like he didn’t totally agree with her, but instead of thinking too much about his reaction, she turned back to the road.
“Baker and his team canvased a small area and collected the hand last night. They didn’t find any other remains. They dropped the hand off at the medical examiner’s office already. According to Zoey, they were going to pull some fingerprints.” The pinched expression on his face seemed to intensify as he spoke.
“That’s good. At least we can get an ID on the remains. I always like bringing closure to families. Even if they learn their loved ones are dead, it is better than living with the agony of not knowing what has happened to someone you care about.” Her thoughts moved to her brother.
He cocked his head, studying her. “You say that like you’ve been through something like that.”
It hadn’t been her intention to open up this can of worms with him, or with anyone. “What happened in the past doesn’t matter. There is only moving forward.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, not sounding satisfied in her dismissal of the subject. “Do you like being a game warden?”
She was grateful he was changing the subject as she slowly made her way toward the trap. “It can be rewarding, but challenging,” she said, smiling.
“I bet it’s a really fun job.”
“It certainly can be. Some people think we are more like law enforcement than anything, but I like to look at our profession like we are conservators of the natural resources. We protect Montana for generations to come.”
He nodded, but she could tell from the way he was staring in the direction of the location of the remains that his mind was somewhere else. Of course, he would’ve been more concerned with the comings and goings of the ranch instead of their little interlude. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about it this morning. She was as much relieved as she was slightly hurt.
She shouldn’t have been hurt, though, since this was exactly what she wanted. Ambivalence.
“You have any idea when the crime lab will be done with their tests?” she asked. AJ didn’t look away from the window and merely shrugged.
She had a sense he’d been hiding something since yesterday, but she wasn’t sure it was appropriate to ask or not. She didn’t want him to be offended, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. “Is there any way you would know who the hand belonged to?” AJ tensed. She could tell he was making an effort to not look at her.
“Odd, Detective Baker asked me the same question last night.” He paused, looking away from her. “Just know everything that has been happening in the last twenty-four hours is way outside my comfort zone.”
Everything?
If he thought the kiss, being held by him, was inside of her comfort zone, well, he had another think coming.
On the other hand, maybe he was just focused on work and not on their growing feelings toward one another. Or maybe he meant exactly what he’d said, but in a good way—like he wasn’t the kind of guy who expected or had experienced brief interludes.
Was it his way of saying that he wanted more?
No. She took a breath and tried to pull herself back to the moment. I’m overthinking this. It’s just this, riding in a truck, nothing more.
As they made it to the trap, she stopped the truck and put it in Park. From where they sat, she could see that the gate was still open and it hadn’t been tripped. No bear.
Farther down the road was a cruiser. In the front was a deputy, his head tilted back in sleep. She chuckled at the sight, but she didn’t begrudge the guy. She’d never taken a nap out in the woods when she had been on duty, but it would have been easy when a person was on their own in the peaceful timber.
Unfortunately, if this guy was caught sleeping on duty, it could very well spell the end of his career—the politics in law enforcement and in being a game warden could be brutal and unforgiving. “Should we wake him up?” she asked, sending AJ a malicious grin.
“It would be the thoughtful thing,” he said with a chuckle. “If I caught one of my team members doing this, they would be in deep.”
With her lights off, she drove up to the cruiser and let her truck roll into the front bumper of the guy’s car. The deputy woke with a start, grabbing the wheel like he thought he had fallen asleep while driving. He stared out at them for a long second before seemingly coming to his senses and realizing what he had just been caught doing and by whom. A guilty smile erupted over his features.
She laughed as she backed up her pickup and then stopped by the guy and rolled down her window. “Hey,” she said, a smile on her lips.
“Morning,” the deputy said, looking from her to AJ like he was hoping against hope that neither of them was from his department. “You caught me studying there.”
“Yeah, we noticed.” She chuckled. “How long have you been sitting out here?”
The guy looked down at his watch. “They had me roll out here about six hours ago. It was overtime for me, so... You know how it goes.”
The guy was definitely embarrassed. In an attempt to mollify his embarrassment and guilt, and any underlying concern for his job and reputation, she had to throw him a bone. “Definitely. As for studying, we didn’t see anything.” She winked.
AJ tipped his fingers in the man’s direction, reiterating her statement.
The guy perked up. “Sounds like this is a really interesting case. Baker told me a bit about it. You guys helping with the search today?”
That hadn’t exactly been her plan.
“I’m not sure if we are. We have a bear to locate,” AJ said, but he rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. “You know what area they covered last night?”
He had said he’d talked this through with Zoey this morning, so she was surprised he was asking the deputy questions. Yet, maybe he was verifying the information or hoping for more.
“They just worked the direct area last night. Inside the tape there,” the deputy said, pointing at the yellow tape that was tied up in a makeshift square around the area where they had located the hand. “Any sign of your griz?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t exactly sure what AJ had up his sleeve, but she had a feeling part of him was struggling with what had happened last night...just like she was. She quelled the urge to be annoyed as she tried to be vague and relaxed.
AJ seemed to have noticed the shift in her demeanor and he reached over and gently touched the tips of his fingers to her leg, silently reassuring her without drawing attention from the deputy. “I’m thinking we are going to go up the hill a ways, see if we can find any more signs. Let us know when the incident commander or detective arrives and maybe we can link up.”
The deputy gave them a stiff nod. “Will do, and let me know if you find anything. I’ll be here until they arrive.”
They pulled away from the deputy and she made sure to close her window before speaking. Opening her mouth, she tried to think of the exact right words to navigate this, but none came. She wanted to reprimand him for including her in his offer, but she wasn’t actually upset and it would only push him away. Though, that would be better in some ways. It would make her internal struggle that much easier to ignore.