Page 2 of Wind Valley

Now he always went with whiskey first.

After Lachlan had added a generous dose of whipped cream to the drink, Pinky took a sip and smacked his lips, while Lachlan moved to the new espresso machine to make Maura’s drink. Bear, the owner of The Fang, had recently bought the machine, primarily to make Lila happy. She loved her foamy drinks. Judging by Lila’s blissful expression lately, it had worked. Among other things, obviously.

“Tell me about the scare,” he said over his shoulder. “Another standoff with a moose?”

“Oh no, the moose don’t bother us much at Pinky’s place,” said Maura. “They seem to know that Pinky’s a crack shot who has a moose phobia.”

Pinky gave a full-body shudder. “One of ‘em chased me into a ravine on my way to Goldpan Creek. Had to climb a tree to get away. Turned out I was allergic to the sap and I broke out in hives. I was stuck up there, itching like a sumabitch, until that moose decided I wasn’t worth the wait.”

Lachlan lost track of their conversation while he activated the foamer wand, which was loud. He never knew how many of Pinky’s stories were literally true, slightly exaggerated, or completely fabricated. No one in town did. No one challenged him, either. Pinky was Pinky.

But Maura was listening to him with total fascination, her head propped on her hand, eyes wide. Lucky Pinky—not just a new audience for his stories, but someone primed to soak in every word because he was family.

She turned her smile on him when he set her cappuccino in front of her. “Thanks, Lachlan.”

He nodded and was about to turn back to clean out the tamper when she reached over the counter and touched his arm.

“Don’t go yet. We want to tell you about what happened this morning. You might have some ideas about it.”

“Me?” He felt his eyebrows lift. “Pinky’s lived here decades longer than I have. There’s not much he doesn’t know about this place.”

“Oh, there’s plenty. Shit keeps coming up. Lotta secrets buried in those mountains.” He would have looked more like a wise old man if he hadn’t had whipped cream smudged across his mustache.

Maura handed Pinky her cocktail napkin as she addressed Lachlan. “We thought you might have a scientific explanation.”

Now things were getting interesting. “I’ll bite, then. An explanation for what?”

Maura tucked her curly dark hair behind her ears, readying herself to launch into her story. She wore a black sweater with neon-green stripes down the arms, with chipped nail polish to match. Not a lot of women wore nail polish here, at least not in the winter. But Maura didn’t really live here. She was on some kind of extended break for mysterious reasons she didn’t want to talk about, which caused wild speculation around town.

“So,” she began, “we were sitting around watching the sun rise, it was probably about nine thirty this morning. Pinky has a bird feeder outside his living room window.”

“Better than TV,” Pinky declared.

“Debatable. I miss TV. Anyway.” Maura tossed a rueful smile at Lachlan. “We were just watching the white-winged crossbills at the bird feeder. The sky was slowly getting light, so at first we didn’t notice. But then we saw all sorts of movement out in the yard. Well, it’s not really a yard. It’s a clearing combined with a junkyard, basically.”

“I get the picture.” It was a very common one out here. People gathered “resources,” also known as “old cars” or “broken equipment.” Lachlan had yet to see a tidily mowed lawn or a trimmed hedge in Firelight Ridge.

“So what was the movement?”

“It was animals. They were sort of…fleeing. Just a couple at a time, or sometimes just one at a time. Not fast, as if they were scared. In fact, they didn’t seem worried about being out in the open. Sometimes they’d stop and sort of stagger around. It was the oddest sight. They were all going the same direction.”

“Which was?”

Maura glanced at Pinky. “It was southwest, right?”

“Yeppers, southwest. Right across my property. Snowshoe hares, three lynx, two red foxes.”

Lachlan frowned as the picture formed in his mind. “They were probably running from a predator.”

“But what? They’re used to the eagles. Bears don’t bother the little guys,” said Pinky. “Anyway, they’re all tucked up in their dens by now.”

“Wolf?” The Wrangell Mountains had plenty of wolves, both gray and black.

“Maybe, but we never saw one. We kept watching for about an hour. Eventually the wildlife parade stopped, but it was very strange while it lasted.” Maura’s dark blue eyes flicked up to meet his. “I took some photos, do you want to see?”

“Sure.” He also thought it would make sense to look at a map. Although he knew where Pinky lived, he wasn’t quite sure about the orientation of the ridges and valleys around his place. “I wonder if the earthquake affected them.”

A quake registering 6.0 on the Richter scale had struck the area shortly after Christmas. It had been deep enough that no one suffered much damage, at least aboveground. Below the surface, things had shifted.

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