Black Hills

there, and the column Tansy wrote for it.”
    “Were we able to release it?”
    “It’s still gimpy. Matt doesn’t think it’ll make it out there in the world. She’s an old girl. We’re calling her Xena, because she looks like a warrior.”
    “I’ll take a look at her. I haven’t done the tour yet.”
    “I put your shots from the trip on here.” Lucius tapped his computer monitor. He wore ancient high-tops rather than the boots most of the staff favored, and jeans that bagged over his flat ass. “Dr. Lillian’s Excellent Adventure. We’ve been getting beaucoup hits.”
    As he spoke, Lil glanced around the familiar space. The exposed log walls, the posters of wildlife, the cheap, plastic visitors’ chairs, the stacks of colorful brochures. The second desk—Mary’s—stood like a trim, organized island in the chaos Lucius generated.
    “Any of the hits come with . . .” She lifted her hand, rubbed her thumb and fingers together.
    “We’ve been going pretty steady there. We added a new webcam, like you wanted, and Mary’s been working on an updated brochure. She had a dentist deal this morning, but she’s going to try to make it in this afternoon.”
    “Let’s see if we can get together for a meeting this afternoon. Full staff, including interns, and any of the volunteers who can attend.”
    She walked back and peeked into Medical. “Where’s Bill?”
    Matt turned. “I cleared him. Tansy’s taking him back. Good to see you, Lil.”
    They didn’t hug—it wasn’t Matt’s style—but shook hands, and warmly. He was about her father’s age, with thinning hair streaked with gray, and wire-rimmed glasses over brown eyes.
    He was no idealist, as she suspected Eric was, but he was a damn fine vet, and one willing to work for pitiful pay.
    “I’d better get back. I’ll try to cut Farley loose some tomorrow, so he can give you a couple hours.” Joe tapped a finger on Lil’s nose. “You need anything, you call.”
    “I will. I’ll pick up the stuff on your list later, drop it off.”
    He went out the back.
    “Meeting later,” she told Matt, and leaned on a counter that held trays and bins of medical supplies. The air smelled, familiarly, of antiseptic and animal. “I’d like you to brief me, and the rest, on the health and medical needs of the animals. Lunchtime would be best. Then I can do a supply run.”
    “Can do.”
    “Tell me about our newest resident. Xena?”
    Matt smiled, and the amusement lightened his often serious face. “Lucius named her that. It seems to have stuck. She’s an old girl. A good eight years old.”
    “Top of the scale for the wild,” Lil commented.
    “Tough girl. Scars to prove it. She took a pretty hard hit. The driver did more than most people do. She called us, and stayed in the car until we got there, even followed us back here. Xena was too injured to move. We immobilized and transported, got her in here, into surgery.” He shook his head, removing his glasses to polish the lenses on his lab coat. “It was touch and go, given her age.”
    Lil thought of Sam. “But she’s recovering.”
    “Like I said, tough girl. At her age, and given the leg’s never going to be a hundred percent, I wouldn’t recommend releasing her. I don’t think she’d last a month.”
    “Well, she can consider this her retirement home.”
    “Listen, Lil, you know at least one of us has been staying at night while you were in the field. I was on a couple nights ago. Just as well, as I’d had to extract a tooth that morning from the queen mum.”
    Lil thought of their ancient lion. “Poor grandma. She’s not going to have a tooth left at this rate. How’d she do?”
    “She’s the Energizer Bunny of lions. But the thing is, there was something out there.”
    “Sorry?”
    “Something or someone was out there, around the habitats. I checked the webcam, and didn’t see anything. But hell, it’s pretty damn dark at two in the morning, even with the security lights. But something had the animals stirred up. A lot of screaming and roaring and howling.”
    “Not the usual nocturnal business?”
    “No. I went out, but I couldn’t find anything.”
    “Any tracks?”
    “I don’t have your eye, but we looked the next morning. No animal tracks, no new ones. We thought—we think—there were human ones. Not ours. No way to be sure, but there were tracks around some of the cages, and we’d had some snow after the last feeding of the day, so I don’t know how