Black Hills

and a cool head. He expected the man would do all that could and should be done in the investigation.
    And Coop figured unless Willy was really lucky, he’d get nowhere.
    Whoever had killed Lil’s cougar knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how to do it. The question was why.
    Someone with a grudge against Lil personally, or with a vendetta against the refuge? Maybe both, as Lil was the refuge in most people’s minds. An extremist on either side of the environmental/conservation issue was a possibility.
    Someone who knew the area, knew how to live in the wild for stretches, go unnoticed. A local maybe, Coop mused, or someone with local ties.
    Maybe he’d tug on a few old connections and see if there’d been any similar incidents in the last few years. Or, he admitted, he could just ask Lil. No doubt she’d know or could find out faster than he could.
    Of course that blew to hell the idea of keeping his distance. He’d already blown that, he admitted, when he’d jumped on going with her on this trip. So who was he kidding?
    He wasn’t going to stay away from her. He’d known that, however much he’d tried to deny it, the minute she’d opened the door to that cabin. The instant he’d seen her again.
    Maybe it was just unfinished business. He wasn’t one for leaving things unresolved. Lil was . . . a loose end, he decided. If he couldn’t cut it off, he had to tie it off. Screw the guy she wasn’t exactly engaged to.
    There was still something there. He’d felt it from her. He’d seen it in her eyes. However long it had been since he’d seen her, been with her, he knew her eyes.
    He dreamed of them.
    He knew what he’d seen in them that morning in her tent, while on the computer screen the young cougar hissed in the cage. If he’d touched her then, he’d have taken her then. As simple as that.
    They weren’t going to get through this new phase of their lives, whatever the hell it was, until they’d gotten past the old feelings, the old connection, the old needs. Maybe once they had, they could be friends again. Maybe they couldn’t. But standing in place wasn’t going to cut it.
    And she was in trouble. She might not believe it, or admit it, but somebody meant to hurt her. Whatever they were to each other, whatever they weren’t, he wasn’t going to let that happen.
    As the camp came into view, Coop slowed. He flicked back his coat and rested a hand on the butt of his gun.
    Long precise slashes ran down the length of both tents. Bedrolls lay sodden in the icy stream, along with the cookstove he’d used that morning to fry bacon, make coffee. The shirt Lil had worn the day before lay spread out on the snow. Coop would’ve made book that the blood that smeared it had come from the cougar.
    He dismounted, tethered the horses, then opened Lil’s saddlebag to find the camera he’d seen her put in that morning.
    He documented the scene from various angles, took close-ups of the shirt, the tents, the items in the stream, the boot prints that weren’t his, weren’t Lil’s.
    Best he could do, he thought before digging out a plastic bag that would stand for an evidence bag. With his gloves on, he bagged Lil’s shirt, sealed the bag, and wished only for a pen or marker to note down the time, date, and his initials.
    He heard the approach of a horse, thought of Joe. Coop stowed the shirt in his own saddlebag, laid a hand back on his weapon. He let it drop when the horse and rider came into view.
    “She’s fine.” Coop called it out first. “She’s with the county sheriff. She’s fine, Joe.”
    “Okay.” Still mounted, Joe surveyed the campsite. “You two didn’t have a drunken party and do this.”
    “He had to come back, double around again while we were up above. It’s quick work. Down and dirty. Probably took him ten minutes tops.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, that’s a question.”
    “It’s one I’m asking you, Cooper.” Joe slid off the saddle, held the reins in a hand Coop imagined was white at the knuckles under his riding gloves. “I’m not an idealist. I know people do fuck-all. But I don’t understand this. You’d have a better idea on it. You’d have thought about it.”
    Lies often served a purpose, Coop knew. But he wouldn’t lie to Joe. “Somebody’s got it in for Lil, but I don’t have the answers. You’d have a better idea, or she would. I haven’t been part of her life for a long time. I don’t know what’s going on with her, not under the