Rachel Lee - Undercover In Conard County

She had to remain calm and collected. It was her job. Much as the anger churned in her stomach, she had to keep her head clear. It wasn’t always easy. She’d been businesslike with Jake because she had to be, but she shared his fury.

This was happening too often. In her five years at this station, she’d seen the increase, and she had little doubt that the trophy hunters were coming from outside the state.

Yeah, locals poached. It happened often enough, but the main difference was, while they might exceed the limits of their licenses, or even hunt without one, they kept the meat. They wanted the meat.

Trophy hunters were something else altogether. A big, beautiful ram had been killed just so some idiot could put its head on a wall and its skin on the floor. Wasting the meat was against the law, too, so even if this jerk was licensed to take that ram, he’d committed a crime.

Not to mention the little bit of trespass that was involved. Now Jake would have to spend days looking for where they’d broken through his fence, while guarding his herd from wolves who might now think they could find easy pickings there. Bad for Jake. Bad for the wolves. Bad for the whole darn ecosystem.

Desi enjoyed a lot about her job. She loved keeping an eye on the migratory animals, making sure they were able to trek and that they were healthy. She loved everything about protecting the wildlife around here, even when it meant giving someone a hard time for fishing without a license, or exceeding the catch limit. And she loved it when she caught a poacher.

But this...these guys weren’t going to be easy to catch. They came and went like ghosts, clearing out as soon as they had their trophy. They didn’t hang around waiting for a neighbor to become suspicious or someone to catch sight of what they were doing and call the wardens. Nope. Ghosts.

* * *

As she drove through town on her way back, she waved to people she recognized, and pulled over once to share a few words with Julie Archer, who kept wanting her to join “the gals” for lunch. Except Desi’s job didn’t often leave a lot of regular time for socializing. She liked the group of women, though, and kept telling herself she was going to make time for lunch with them some weekend. After hunting season.

When she got back to the office, the closed sign still hung in the window. That didn’t surprise her. Five wardens worked out of this station, covering thousands of square miles. Most of them only checked in by phone except when there was a big meeting or they needed to coordinate on something.

Being senior warden, she was based here.

The two-story office was on the edge of town, just a small distance from a quiet neighborhood. They kept it up pretty well so it looked good, all stained wood with sturdy shutters for the windows. Her living quarters were upstairs, a leftover from days long gone. It also had a small dirt and gravel parking lot, and a blue truck with a shell was waiting there as she pulled in.

Seeing the truck, she pulled up near it instead of driving around back to the shed with the evidence lockers.

Curiosity punched her anger down a little bit, then when the guy immediately climbed out, her anger deserted her completely. An instant attraction hit her as if by magic.

He wore a plain blue shirt under a blue quilted vest, tight jeans. Every inch of him bespoke a fit, well-muscled body. As he walked toward her on hiking boots, she felt another burst of attraction. He moved easily and his dress spoke woodsman, not cowboy. Ah, cut it out, she told herself. No time for this. She had a problem to deal with.

She climbed out to face him and got another surprise when she realized how tall he was, and she wasn’t short herself. Smiling gray eyes set in a square face looked at her from beneath a camouflage ball cap.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“You must be Warden Jenks.”

“Yes, sir.”

He offered his hand. “Kel Westin, WIU.”

Wildlife Investigative Unit? Surprised, she shook his hand, feeling an electric jolt at the contact, and summoned a smile. “Come on inside.”

“Thanks.”

As he followed her inside, Desi wondered if something had gone wrong. What was he investigating? Her? One of her wardens? But no, they didn’t investigate that stuff, did they? Her heart rate picked up a little bit. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t casual.

“Coffee?” she asked. She sure wanted some.

“Thanks. It’s been a long day. And you look like you’ve had one, too.”

“Poachers,” she said succinctly as she readied the pot to brew. “Worse, trophy hunters.”

“Would you believe that’s exactly why I’m here?”

She hit the start button on the coffeepot and faced him. He looked to be in his late thirties, eyes the color of a storm-heavy sky, his skin pleasantly weathered by the elements. A lean face. “ID?” she asked. If this was going any further, she had to be sure she wasn’t talking to her poacher.

Without comment, he reached into his hip pocket and slipped out a leather case. Flipping it open, he showed his badge and photo ID.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem. Thing is, I’d like it if you’d keep that under your hat. Don’t even tell your other wardens.”

Her attention sharpened even more. “Why?”

“Because I’m here to investigate the poaching and I’m going to do it undercover by starting my own outfitting business. The less people know, the better.”

“Hallelujah,” she said quietly, and finally pulled out her chair to sit at her desk. “I didn’t think anyone was listening.”

“Oh, we’ve been listening. It’s just this isn’t the only place where this is happening and we’ve got limited manpower. Thing is, we just recently got intelligence that all this trophy hunting might be linked to a single very active ring. But we need evidence, so here I am.”

She thought about what he’d just said and felt her heart quicken. A ring? It suggested huge problems. She came out of her thoughts about how big this could be with a start as she heard the coffee finish brewing.

“Grab a chair,” she said, pivoting her own to reach for two mugs on the counter behind her and pour them full of coffee. She passed him one. “Let’s talk about today, then you tell me what you need.”

He picked up the mug and drank deeply, then rose immediately to refill it. At least he didn’t ask her to. She was a little prickly about her gender because women were so rare in the service, and some of the men didn’t hold them in very high regard. But she supposed that wasn’t fair. Most of the trouble she got about her gender came from miscreants she was about to cite. Men who said things like, “They let women have guns, too?”

Then Kel Westin sat across from her again. “So, about today?”

* * *

Kel waited patiently for her to speak. Her reputation had preceded her. She was young for a senior warden, which spoke highly of her skills and service. But he hadn’t expected blue eyes and curly dark hair like a tousled nimbus around her head, or the curves he could see when she pulled off her insulated vest and tossed it onto another chair. Her red shirt was beginning to show some wrinkles from a long day.

“Today,” she repeated, standing to pull off her utility belt and place her gun in a locker. “A local rancher, who’s also the city police chief, found a bighorn sheep decapitated and skinned on his property. Looked to be around two days old, maybe a little less because the wolves hadn’t finished it. Anyway, his property is fenced and posted, so the poacher must have broken down part of his fence as well. The meat was wasted.”

“Damn,” Kel said, watching her as she paced to the window and back, discovering that it was suddenly easier to think about how attractive she was. He shook his head and stared down into his coffee. “What do you think brought the sheep down from the mountains?”