Page 27 of Wind Valley

“Bizarre. Weird. Freaky. Strange. Wacko.” Maura held up a hand to stop the flow of adjectives from Hailey, who was apparently a living thesaurus.

“It’s not peculiar.” Elias looked offended. “Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s freaky.”

“So you have noticed something?”

“Animals always have a reason. They don’t do things for no reason.”

And try as they might, they couldn’t pry any more information out of Elias.

15

Outside, it was now full dark, the kind of dark that could only be experienced in the wilderness. No streetlights, no porch lights, no outdoor lights of any kind. What light could be seen came from inside—mostly from propane lanterns or candles, with only a few people using electric lights after dark. Energy conservation was always important out here. Solar only went so far in the winter, with so few hours of daylight, and generators were expensive to run.

All of that was to say…nights in Firelight Ridge were intensely dark and almost eerily quiet, a constant reminder of how tiny and vulnerable any given human being actually was in relation to the vast mountains and infinite sky.

The light might be gone, but Lachlan didn’t want the day to end. “Where to now?” he asked Maura when they were both back in the truck.

“Can you take me home to Pinky’s?”

Disappointment shot through him, until she added, “I’ll make you my special meatballs. My granny’s recipe.”

“You’re on. Should we pick up Pinky on the way?”

“Pinky’s fine. He’s playing cribbage with Solomon tonight. That usually ends with them throwing cribbage pieces at each other, then crawling all over Solomon’s trailer trying to find them. I went with him once and told them never again. They didn’t seem to mind. It was a very elders-gone-wild kind of situation.”

He really enjoyed Maura’s dry sense of humor. He got the sense that it was part of how she coped with the world. There were worse ways, no doubt.

As they were driving down the dark road through town, the few lights like scattered fireflies against the velvety night, he caught sight of headlights coming toward them. One was dimmer than the other, a pattern he recognized. He flashed his brights a few times, then slowed to a halt.

“Gil,” he explained to Maura as Gil did the same, on the opposite side of the road. Ani waved to them from the passenger seat.

“You’re just going to stop in the middle of the road and have a conversation?” Maura asked.

“Sure. Anyone’s welcome to join if they’re coming through town. I once learned about Eve Dotterkind’s cancer being in remission because two trucks and three cars had stopped to chitchat.”

Gil rolled down his window. He wore a black beanie and his beard was growing in thick and dark. He’d decided to grow it out for the winter, as many men here did for extra warmth.

Lachlan preferred a neck gaiter, because his beard came in as red as a Scottish peasant’s, a nearly neon shade that made people wince on sight.

“Take a look at this and tell me what you think.” Lachlan passed his phone over to Gil, who scanned through the photos of the grenade.

“Hand grenade, military issue.”

“Ha,” said Maura softly. “Didn’t I say military?”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It could be. You didn’t get close to it, did you?”

“You mean after I threw my body on top of it to protect Gunnar’s new Arctic Cat?”

Gil snorted. “Yeah right. I know you, and you’d only do such a thing to protect a soil sample.”

Maura smothered a laugh next to him. “Remind me to carry a soil sample with me, just in case I need rescuing.”

Gil turned serious. “So where did you find this?”

“Chilkoots. I didn’t bring it to them because I wanted to see what you thought first. So what do you think?”

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