Page 56 of Three-Inch Teeth

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CATES WAS TOWELING off when Soledad rejoined him. The man could cover ground quite quickly with his braces, faster than if he walked.

“What’d he say?” Cates asked.

“He didn’t say much,” Soledad said while he removed the stiletto from his left crutch and cleaned the blood off the blade with a used towel. Then: “You might consider wearing some kind of disguise when we go buy the fruit. Too many people seem to know you in this state.”

*

ON THE WAY out of the facility, Cates passed by the ticket booth and looked at his reflection in the window. Johnson and LOR had already gone out to the truck.

He did look good now that he had his belt buckle back, he thought. That Winner son of a bitch had hidden it in his underwear drawer and it had taken a while to find it.

The lights were shut off in the office, but he could see the soles of a pair of red Converse sneakers sticking out from beneath the counter.

“One good thing about these small towns,” Soledad said, “there’s not so many cameras. But even with that being the case, I suggest we skip town and go buy that fruit in Worland or Buffalo. Let’s get out of town before someone starts looking for your rodeo fan.”

Cates slowly turned around in the passageway next to the ticket booth to take in Axel Soledad, who was behind him. Soledad winked at him as he glided by on his braces. Now Cates understood much, much more about his new traveling companion. The man was strategic, pragmatic, and absolutely ruthless.

And that the two of them might, in fact, fulfill their common cause and wipe out that Venn diagram together.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Yarak, Inc.

JOE FOUND NATE in a shed next to the falcon mews on the Yarak, Inc. property, an assemblage of buildings located in the center of a vast sagebrush bowl several miles off the highway. Nate was dismembering dead jackrabbits with his hands to prepare for the nightly feeding. The small dark shed smelled of blood and the musty odor of exposed viscera. Nate had replaced his shoulder holster with an over-the-shoulder falconry bag that contained thick gloves, leather jesses, and whistles used in training.

“Is Clay sleeping it off somewhere?” Nate asked over his shoulder. Joe was flummoxed, as he always was, by his friend’s intuitive ability to know who was approaching without actually looking up.

“County jail,” Joe said. “They said they’d call me when he finally wakes up. That poor guy is a mess.” Then: “The Mama Bears are hightailing it back to Jackson with a couple of citations in their pockets. I suspect that they’re not real pleased about that.”

“They’re lucky to be alive,” Nate said. “I hung around the cliff until I was sure you had that situation handled.”

“Thank you.”

Joe cleared his throat and said, “Dulcie Schalk was attacked and killed on her family’s ranch outside of Laramie. Marybeth is absolutely gutted by the news, of course. They were tight. But this might be our bear.”

Nate went still for half a minute.

“Repeat that,” he said, and Joe did, adding, “Jennie Gordon is on her way to the scene. We should know more when she gets there.”

“Dulcie?” Nate asked.

Marybeth had once confided to Joe that she suspected Nate had feelings for the county prosecutor, although to her knowledge he’d never acted on them in any way. That was before he’d married Liv. Nate’s reaction to the news, Joe thought, confirmed that his wife had been prescient once again.

“What happened?” Nate asked.

“We don’t have all the details yet, but apparently she was on a walk on her ranch when she was attacked and killed. Her dad found her and said she had a handgun and a canister of bear spray on her that hadn’t been deployed. It must have happened quickly.”

“Did the dad actually see the bear?”

“No. He just saw the result.”

“Damn.”

“Yup.”

“Help me feed my birds,” Nate said. “Then we’ll go inside. Like I told you earlier, I have some thoughts to run by you.”

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