Page 35 of Three-Inch Teeth

I’m putting a plan into place. It’ll take a few days to get set up. Want to meet?

The recipient replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

From the day before: I’ll text you the address when I can.

Another thumbs-up.

Then, from a few minutes before: LOR Amusements, Jeffrey City, WY.

On my way.

Before placing the phone back where it had been, Johnson glanced at the name of the recipient.

“Doing a little spying on good old Dallas, I see,” Ogburn-Russell said as he settled back down in his chair. Johnson reacted with alarm. She hadn’t heard him reenter the living room.

“Please,” she said, trying to project calm. “Please don’t say anything to him.”

“What will you do if I keep it between us?” he asked.

“What do you want?” she asked. She regretted her words as soon as they were out of her mouth.

Lee Ogburn-Russell pointed down at his crotch and grinned. “Not now,” he said. “But at the time of my choosing.”

She sighed and moved back to her original place on the couch. Cates kicked at the front door and grunted, “Someone let me in. This bear’s head is heavier than hell.”

Ogburn-Russell scrambled out of his chair to grab the doorknob.

While he did, Johnson recalled the name on Cates’s phone and asked herself: Who the fuck is Axel Soledad?

CHAPTER TEN

Saddlestring

A WEEK LATER, JOE and Marybeth sat together at a table in the Ramshorn Restaurant and Lounge, waiting for the arrival of Judge Hewitt, who had asked them to join him for lunch. In Saddlestring, there were two choices for a midday meal: the Burg-O-Pardner, which specialized in fried foods like chicken-fried steak and Rocky Mountain oysters, and the Ramshorn, which was a step up in atmosphere and fresh food, but was chronically unable to keep staff. Apparently, the judge now preferred the Ramshorn ever since he’d sentenced a Burg-O-Pardner short-order cook for dealing narcotics.

“So what does he want to talk to us about?” Marybeth asked Joe. She was wearing a smart dark suit and a white blouse with her hair up, and had on her reading glasses so she could scan the menu. She looked to Joe to be very much the sexy librarian, and he told her so.

“Please,” she said, pretending to be annoyed at him. “I wanted to look good for our board meeting this afternoon.”

“You succeeded,” he said.

Marybeth looked him over and smiled. Joe was in uniform and he’d spent the morning on patrol in the breaklands west of town, checking deer and antelope hunters for their licenses and conservation stamps. His boots were coated with dried mud and there was a smear of blood from a hanging mule deer carcass on the thigh of his jeans.

“I didn’t dress up,” he said.

“I see that. Is there any word on how Bill Brodbeck is doing?”

“He’s still in critical condition, but stable, from what I understand. They flew him to a hospital in Denver for more surgery.”

“Poor guy,” she said. Then: “Oh, I meant to tell you that I got a text from Sheridan. She’s on her way to that job in Colorado with no problems.”

“Walden, right? Has she met her contact yet?” Joe asked.

“I don’t think so, although she said she’s hoping to find a place to stay that will allow her to bring her falcons into her room. She seems to be okay, considering all that she has on her plate.”

*

THE PREDATOR ATTACK Team, plus a new game warden from Powell, who’d been sent to fill out the squad in Brodbeck’s absence, had dispersed earlier in the week when the rogue grizzly could not be located either by air or on the ground. Although two of the culvert traps had been tripped, the creatures inside turned out to be local black bears and they were immediately released. A mountain lion had been caught in one of the snares and it, too, was freed. There had been no images of the grizzly bear on the trail cameras the team had set up on the slopes around the river.

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