THAT NIGHT, JOE Pickett drove down the county road to his home in the dark. He was bone-tired from the events of the day and dull with trauma. He knew he’d never be able to unsee Clay Junior’s face and wounds, or unfeel the jolt he’d experienced when he encountered the fresh grizzly bear track in the mud. His neck ached from looking over his shoulder.
Something primal had infected him—the very real possibility of being mauled and killed by a predator over twice his size and weight. A predator that had taken out a human much younger and fitter than he was.
The cow moose that often blocked the path to his state-owned home on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River didn’t show up tonight, and he was grateful. His headlights splashed against the lodgepole pine trees and aspen as he wound down the lane.
With all that had happened, he’d forgotten that Marybeth had told him that the Romanowskis and Sheridan were coming over for dinner. He wasn’t reminded of it until he saw the white Yarak, Inc. falcon transport van and Sheridan’s midsize GMC Acadia SUV parked in front of their home.
“This is going to be tough,” he said to Daisy.
*
THEY WERE ALL at the dining room table when Joe entered the house through the mudroom. Empty plates sat in front of everyone except for Sheridan, whose lasagna was untouched. Marybeth was at the foot of the table to be closer to the kitchen, and both Liv and Nate sat across from Sheridan. They all turned toward him, and the two house dogs padded over to greet Daisy. Tube, their half-Corgi and half-Lab mix, licked Daisy’s face. Bert’s Dog, the mixed-breed Catahoula creature, stared at Joe with crazy eyes.
“Not a good day,” he said to everyone at the table.
“Did you find the bear?” Nate asked.
Joe removed his hat and shook his head. He sat down in the empty chair at the head of the table and reached out to Sheridan. His oldest daughter had two-year-old Kestrel Romanowski in her lap, and the energetic little toddler seemed content to be cuddled.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said to Sheridan. In response, she lowered her head and leaned into him. His daughter had red-rimmed eyes and her face was puffy from crying. It broke Joe’s heart. As if on cue, Kestrel wriggled free, slid down between Sheridan’s legs, and ran out of the dining room into the hallway, her arms flapping at her sides.
“I’ll watch her,” Sheridan said, following after her.
“We saved you some dinner,” Marybeth said, getting up and going into the kitchen. She returned with a pan with two large squares of lasagna remaining.
“Thank you,” Joe said. “I think I should be hungry.”
“I thought there weren’t supposed to be any grizzly bears in the Bighorns,” Nate said with a wry smile.
“There weren’t,” Joe responded.
*
NATE WAS JOE and Marybeth’s longtime friend and now Sheridan’s boss. A tall, rangy outlaw falconer with a Special Forces background, he had comfortably glided between both sides of the law throughout his life. He’d married Liv, a striking, smart native of New Orleans, and she now ran Yarak, Inc., a bird abatement business that used falcons to rid facilities of problem pests. Kestrel was their adorable daughter.
“We’ve got the Predator Attack Team coming by helicopter tomorrow,” Joe said. “I’m going to meet them first thing in the morning and take them to the scene.”
“Everybody’s talking about this on Facebook,” Marybeth said.
“It’s big news,” Joe said. “There was even a camera crew from a Casper television station out at the Double D. The Game and Fish director is beside himself and headquarters is panicking. All the higher-ups were calling me this afternoon like I didn’t know this is the fifth grizzly attack this fall.”
“I’m aware of it,” Nate said. “I’ve heard of so many cancellations from out-of-state hunters that it’s not even funny. The outfitters around here are looking at another year where they don’t get paid. First the pandemic, and now this.”
“Is Clay okay?” Marybeth asked.
“No, he’s not,” Joe said. “A highway patrol trooper volunteered to stay with him tonight and make sure he doesn’t go after that bear by himself.”
“I can see him trying to do that,” she said.
“What about tonight?” Nate asked. “What if the bear comes back?”
“We set up a command center down by the river for the time being,” Joe said. “It’ll be manned by sheriff’s deputies and local cops tonight. They brought out floodlights to illuminate the kill zone like a football field and all of the LEOs are armed up. I set a few leghold snares up by the cache in case the grizzly tries to sneak back for the body.”
The snares were designed and built by Game and Fish personnel. They consisted of quarter-inch cable and heavy metal fittings and they were anchored to nearby tree trunks. Their purpose was to hold the animal alive and in place until armed responders could arrive.
“Did Clay Junior provoke the bear?” Nate asked.
“I don’t see how,” Joe said. “From what I could tell, he was fishing in the river and the bear attacked him. That’s not to say maybe something else happened. I guess it’s possible he somehow got himself caught up between a sow and her cubs, but I didn’t see any evidence of it. No one heard any gunshots or anything, but Clay Junior was down in that canyon, so shots would have been hard to hear.”
“Did he use bear spray?” Nate asked.
“Unknown,” Joe said. “There’s a lot to figure out. Just like I don’t know if he was armed, although I assume he was. I didn’t uncover his body any further than how I found it because I needed to leave it for the forensics team. I hated to just leave him like that.”
“So what you’re saying is that there is a grizzly bear out there on the loose,” Liv said.
Joe sighed heavily. He wished it was otherwise.
“I think I’ll keep Kestrel inside for a while.”
“Good idea,” Joe said.
“This is going to panic people until that bear is found,” Marybeth said. “I’m guessing it’ll be the one thing everybody is talking about tomorrow.”
Marybeth was the best source of local intelligence Joe knew of, since the library where she worked was the epicenter of the small town. She was able to gauge the mood and opinion of the locals better than anyone.
“It was only a matter of time before this happened,” Nate said to Liv. “I’ve been telling you that.”
Liv dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Not now, honey,” she said.
Joe knew Nate well enough to guess what his friend had been saying. Nate had a special relationship with predators and carnivores in the wild that came from his years as a master falconer as well as a special operations warrior. He had radical theories about game management and man’s role in nature. Most of the theories concluded that humans weren’t as smart and all-knowing as they thought they were, that most biological scientists were quacks, that every good human intention in altering the balance of nature resulted in disaster and unintended consequences, and that if ninety percent of civilization was decimated by angry wild animals it’d be a good start.
“Excuse me,” Joe said to Nate and Liv after wolfing down a few bites of lasagna. “I think I need to talk to Sheridan.”
“I’m going with you,” Marybeth said.
Liv nodded her understanding.
“I’ll get you a drink,” Nate said. “It sounds like you need one.”
“Yup,” Joe said.
*
“THE THING IS,” Sheridan said, “I just feel so guilty.”
She sat at the foot of the bed in the guest room. Joe sat on one side of her and Marybeth on the other.
“Why would you feel guilty?” Joe asked.
Sheridan shared a glance with her mother.
“You can tell him,” Marybeth said.
“I didn’t want to say no to him,” Sheridan said while dabbing away tears on her face with the heels of her hands. “Now I won’t have to.”
Joe looked at her, puzzled.
“Nobody understands this because Clay Junior was … Clay Junior,” Sheridan said. “All the guys wanted to be like him and all the girls wanted to be with him. And for reasons I’ll never understand, he chose me. But I’m not ready, not with Clay Junior, anyway.”
Marybeth said to Joe, “I told her Clay said he had an engagement ring with him.”
“Ah, yes,” Joe said.
“I knew he was going to ask me,” Sheridan said. “Probably tonight. He said he wanted to take me to dinner and that he had an important thing he wanted to discuss. I knew what it was going to be, and I just dreaded it. I dreaded it. I told him I was coming over here tonight and he said he’d come by and we could go out later. Now none of that will ever happen and I feel just horrible. I feel horrible about what I was going to do to him, and horrible because I’m a little relieved that I won’t have to tell him no. But this—this is so horrible I can’t even wrap my mind around it.”
Joe wasn’t sure how to respond. He hadn’t wanted his oldest daughter to marry Clay Junior unless she was as wild about him as he apparently was about her. But it had all seemed so inevitable for the past year. It had all seemed like a fait accompli. Sheridan’s sisters thought she was nuts not to reciprocate Clay Junior’s feelings, and Marybeth seemed okay with having him as a son-in-law. Now all of that was off the table.
“Please don’t tell his dad what I just told you,” Sheridan said to Joe. “It would really upset him.”
“I won’t.”
“What’s so awful about this, along with everything else, is that everyone will look at me like some kind of tragic victim,” Sheridan said. “The sad fiancée.” Then, after a moment, she said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you two all of this. We should be talking about Clay Junior, not me. We should be mourning him instead of me yammering on about my feelings. I feel so … pathetic.”
“We’re glad you can talk to us,” Marybeth said, pulling Sheridan into her. “Please don’t feel guilty. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
Sheridan let out a sob that broke Joe’s heart. “He died thinking there was a future for us,” she said. “He had no idea there wasn’t.”
Marybeth gave Joe a wan smile and rubbed Sheridan’s back. He could go. He should go.
“I’m just so sorry this happened,” he said as he left the room.
*
NATE SLID A tumbler of bourbon and water on ice across the table toward Joe like an Old West bartender and Joe grabbed it. “Thank you,” he said.
Liv was in the living room wrapping Kestrel in a blanket so she could sleep for a while on the couch. Liv mimed Shhhhh to the two of them.
Nate kept his voice near a whisper when he asked, “Is Sheridan going to be okay?”
Joe shrugged. “This is hard on her.”
“She’s tough,” Nate said. Then: “I was going to send her out of town with some birds for a job in Colorado. Do you think she’s up for that?”
“I think so,” Joe whispered back. “In fact, a change of scenery might help her get over this. But you should ask her if she’s okay with it.”
Nate agreed. “We’ve got more work than we can handle right now. Liv can barely keep her head above water.”
“What about Geronimo?” Joe asked. “Isn’t he working to expand the company? Hire more falconers?”
“Eventually,” Nate said.
Geronimo Jones had become a partner in Yarak, Inc. in the past year and had taken on the challenge of growing the company to include additional locations and more master falconers. His idea of financing the expansion via cryptocurrency mining had hit a snag when the market tumbled the previous winter. Although the crypto mines he’d built hadn’t gone completely bust, they were barely breaking even.
“Geronimo is home being a new dad,” Nate said to Joe. “It’s more than he bargained for. I know the feeling.”
“So do I,” Joe said.
“He’s got some other ideas he wants to run by me, but for now we’re just doing our best to keep the business running. That’s one of the reasons Liv and I want Sheridan to take on a bigger role.”
“I think she can handle it,” Joe said.
“I know she can,” Nate said. “I’ve taught her everything I know. She’s an excellent master falconer now, and she’s better with people than I am.”
“Imagine that,” Joe said with a grin. Liv giggled at that as she approached them from the living room.
“Kestrel’s out for the count,” she announced as she joined them.
Nate poured himself a second bourbon and asked Joe, “This Predator Attack Team—do they always get their target?”
“So far,” Joe said. “They’ve been very lucky and very lethal at the same time.”
He said he’d read the recent incident reports from the bear attacks that fall and the year before.
“Some of the bears were collared previously and they were easy to find,” Joe said. “But it depends on the bear. Predatory bears tend to stick around, but in surprise or defensive encounters the bears will likely run away. I don’t think there’s any doubt this was a predatory bear.”
“What if the bear doesn’t want to get caught?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” Joe said.