Page 14 of Three-Inch Teeth

“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.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rawlins

LATER, WHILE DALLAS Cates and Bobbi Johnson were naked in a motel room on the west side of Rawlins, Johnson drained her plastic cup of Jim Beam and 7Up and stared at his bare arms and the redness of the skin on the undersides of his forearms and the back of his left hand. She was sore and she wanted to distract him.

“You got new ink?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Let’s see,” she said.

He smiled and held up his right arm and bent it so that his fist was near his right ear. The new tattoo was large and scabbed over and she wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like a big dark half-moon with jagged edges to the inside.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

He raised his left arm and did the same pose so that the two undersides of his arms joined at the elbows.

The scabbed image was the right and left sides of a bear’s face. The bear’s jaws were open and the teeth on each side were huge.

“Rowwrrr,” he roared.

She extended her little finger from her grip on the glass to point at the six empty boxes that had been recently tattooed on the back of Cates’s left hand.

“What’s that mean?”

“That’s my special list,” he said. “Each box means something to me.” Then: “Hey, give me that pen from the desk.”

She rolled over and found it and handed it to him. Cates carefully sketched out a seventh empty square underneath the other six.

“I added another one today,” he said. “His name is Winner.”

“Who are the first ones? What is the list for?”

“I’ll tell you later. Now roll over.”

She rolled over.

Johnson knew from experience that rodeo cowboys were always ready for another ride. And for that matter, they’d stay on for about eight seconds.

*

JOHNSON HAD A plan, one she’d proposed to Cates while he was in prison, and Cates had acquiesced. They needed to get out of Wyoming, the both of them, she’d said. She would never be able to shake her history, no matter where she went in the state.

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