Page 22 of Sear
Then Silvers spotted some additional blood drops a few yards away, and they were off again. Lucas followed the two men as they tracked the wounded bear as far as a trailhead parking lot.
The police report had mentioned that a pair of hikers had found Rob here, and driven him to the medical clinic in town.
End of the trail for you guys, Lucas thought with dark amusement as he watched Bickham and Silvers fruitlessly search the parking lot before they were forced to admit they’d lost the spoor.
When they finally gave up, Bickham cursed all the way back to the place where they’d left their truck.
Concealed in the vegetation, Lucas watched them drive away.
Maybe he hadn’t gotten a confession or caught them in the act of hunting after dark, but at least he knew he was definitely on the right track with these two.
Bickham and Silvers were guilty as hell.
Now Lucas just had to find a way to prove it.
* * *
When he returned to the cabin, Lucas opened his case file and transcribed everything he’d heard and observed while following Bickham and Silvers around.
Then he prepared his clothes and gear for tomorrow’s hunting trip, set his alarm for oh-dark-thirty, and crawled into bed.
It took him longer than he expected to fall asleep.
Images of Malia marched relentlessly through his head. He couldn’t keep his thoughts away from musing about how damned hot she was, and wondering what she’d look like naked. That led to fantasies about having her in his bed right now, moving against him, surrounding him with wet, hot, tightness.
Lucas groaned and reached beneath the sheets to take care of his painfully stiff problem. He couldn’t afford to spend hours salivating over her. He desperately needed to sleep.
Tomorrow he’d be alone with Bickham and Silvers in the wilderness somewhere. He would need to be on his A-game.
And that wasn’t going to happen if he spent half the night tossing and turning because he couldn’t keep a sweet, way-too-young woman from starring in his dirty, dirty imagination.
Chapter 7
Monday, August 9
The next afternoon, Lucas headed back to his cabin, ready to write up his notes after a very long and tiring day spent with Bickham and Silvers.
Then he spotted a green-and-white Bearpaw Ridge Police SUV parked on the side of the highway. And Malia knee-deep in weeds, bent over the drainage ditch, photographing something.
He slowed his pickup as he passed her. His grouchiness abruptly vanished at the sight of her curvy figure.
Part of his bad mood was due to the fact that they hadn’t had any luck finding game. Not so much as a rabbit had crossed their path. This was both a good thing and a bad thing, as far as Lucas was concerned.
No indiscriminately slaughtered animals. But also, no grounds to get that arrest warrant. And not a single shot fired, so no forensic evidence, either.
The only things that had happened were a lot of drinking, smoking, and bragging. Lucas had done his best to tamp down his frustration as he spent hours listening to Bickham and Silvers bullshit about everything from politics to how many elk they’d bagged the previous hunting season.
From long experience, he had expected that today would probably be about gaining the suspects’ trust.
To that end, he had made a quick run over to the town’s bakery in the pre-dawn darkness. There, he’d bought a cooler’s worth of excellent breakfast pastries and sandwiches, plus three coffees and a second cooler filled with beer.
All of the items had been accepted with delight when he met up with his new friends in The Hair of the Dog’s deserted parking lot.
Bickham offered to drive, so Lucas loaded the coolers in the truck bed and handed over two of the coffees before climbing into the truck’s luxurious, leather-upholstered crew cab.
It was a pleasant change from hanging out with the usual redneck poachers. The interiors of their pickups were usually filthy, littered with fast food wrappers and old beer cans.
Not only did Bickham have a brand-new, top-of-the-line pickup, but it was immaculately clean on the inside, though it reeked of stale cigarette smoke.
