Deadly Hunter. Rachel Lee

debating whether to take the samples into her lab, she left them in the back of her locked car unless the state wanted her to do something different. She pulled out her cell again as she hurried toward the science building, calling her contact with the state.

      “I’ll just come down and collect them from you today,” Dan Digby said. “Much safer than you handling them repeatedly.”

      “They’re in the back of my car. Let me know when you get close.”

      “Will do.”

      Well, that solved one problem, but considering the rapidity with which she seemed to be accumulating new ones, she wasn’t sure that was such a great thing.

      When she got to her classroom the first words she heard was a young man saying, “Global warming is a crock. Look at how cold it is right now!”

      Oh, boy, she thought. Here we go. She dumped her laptop case and backpack on the table beside the podium and simply waited as the students settled. Quiet came quickly enough.

      “Who’s heard of the Little Ice Age?” she asked casually.

      A couple of hands rose tentatively, but nearly forty other students remained still.

      “All right, let me do this quickly. It’s more interesting than Avogadro’s constant.”

      Laughs. They were attentive now.

      “The Little Ice Age started in the Middle Ages and didn’t fully end until late in the nineteenth century, just a little over a hundred years ago. I’m sure you’ve seen paintings of people from that era. Didn’t you ever wonder why Henry VIII was always painted wearing so many clothes? Or how people could wear the kinds of heavy clothing they did back then?”

      Now she really had their attention. “Well, it was because it was cold. It was so cold that summers were short. People couldn’t grow the kinds of crops they once had. They were starving. It helped set them up for things like the Black Plague because the rats came into town for food.”

      “Wow,” a couple of voices said.

      “But we need to get to Avogadro, a very brilliant man, so I’ll just keep this short. During the early stages of the Little Ice Age, when the climate was starting to change, the weather went through wild swings for about two hundred years. They’d get a couple of really cold years, a couple of warm years, back and forth like a pendulum. Give that some thought. But only after you think about Avogadro.”

      It seemed almost cruel to get on with her lecture, because she’d excited their interest and they wanted more. She kept a lid on it until after class. When students clustered around wanting to know more, she suggested they hit the computers and look it up.

      “Do your own research,” she said, smiling. “Don’t take my word for it.”

      It was kind of amusing, though, to realize she’d sparked the interest of quite a few of them, and of course it had not one darn thing to do with chemistry.

      * * *

      Jerrod was surprised at the knock on his door. He’d been here two weeks and not one person had knocked. Well, he might have missed some friendly overtures because he’d been so busy spending his days out in the countryside.

      He went to answer it and saw a tall man with steel-gray hair and a weathered face. The man smiled and held out his hand. “Nate Tate. Allison called me this morning and suggested I stop by and introduce myself.”

      “Jerrod Marquette. You must be the former sheriff?”

      “That’s me.”

      “I didn’t expect to meet you so soon.” He stepped back and waved the man inside. Tate looked around and Jerrod knew exactly what he saw: minimal signs of habitation, not even a chair to sit on.

      “I’ve got coffee,” he offered.

      “I never pass on a cup,” Tate answered.

      The kitchen wasn’t any better. If anyone lived here, the only sign was the hot pot of coffee on the stove.

      “Roughing it?” Tate asked.

      “Still haven’t decided what I want to do.”

      “That can be a big decision sometimes. I was lucky. I made the decision before I went to ’Nam, and she was still waiting for me when I got back.”

      “That makes you a lucky man.”

      “I guess you weren’t so lucky.”

      “Lucky enough, just not that way.”

      With no place to sit, Tate leaned back against the counter with his coffee. “Thick enough to stand a spoon in,” he remarked after he took a sip. “So what brought you to these parts?”

      “Your son, I believe. Seth Hardin. I met him a few times and he always had great things to say about this place.”

      “I should’ve figured my boy would be part of it.” Nate Tate smiled. “He’s liked it here since the first time he set foot in the county.”

      Which opened the door to some questions, but Jerrod didn’t ask. He’d just met the guy. “I was out with Allison yesterday while she collected samples from the Madison ranch. It sounds bad.”

      Tate’s face darkened. “Damn bad. I still don’t get why the Department of Agriculture is allowing the stuff to be used again in some states. I get that it’s in livestock collars. I get that coyotes can be a problem. I also get that this stuff is so dangerous it shouldn’t be permitted. Those collars get punctured. They get lost. And yeah, the poison deteriorates eventually, but how far will it spread before it does? Boggles my mind to think that killing one coyote might result in some bear dying, or some wolf, or poisoned water....” He shook his head.

      “Why do they put so much poison in the collars? Allison said it’s enough to kill six grown men. Coyotes aren’t that big.”

      “Sure kill,” Tate said. “One nip, a little on a canine tooth, and the coyote will bite the dust. From that perspective, and only that perspective, does it make sense.”

      Jerrod nodded, taking a gulp of coffee. Hot and bitter, it slid down his welcoming throat. “Nobody’s worried it might kill their animals?”

      “Some aren’t, apparently. Most of the time a grazing animal wouldn’t be affected, and since the coyote runs away he’s not likely to poison anything else until he gets sick and dies. Then you get a case like Madison’s.” Tate shook his head again.

      “Would anybody do that deliberately to Madison? Have a grudge that big?”

      Tate’s eyes narrowed, even as his lips stretched in a humorless smile. “Anything’s possible. Thing is, though, around here you might have a grudge, but you don’t mess with a man’s stock. That’s a killing offense in these parts.”

      “Really?” Apparently some of the Wild West still survived out here.

      “You get caught at it, somebody might take the law into their own hands. We have some rustling problems from time to time, and no jury around here would convict a rancher who shot a rustler. Or someone caught poisoning a rancher’s land or stock. No, you got a problem with someone, you’d best take it up with them directly.”

      “So it was probably some kind of accident.”

      “Probably. A bad one, though. If we ever found out where it came from, somebody would be paying for two Angus cows and maybe a little more, besides. I sure wish we could find out where it started.”

      “Allison doesn’t think that’s likely.”

      Tate sighed. “Mebbe not. Likely not. What little I know about that toxin gives me a real bad feeling, and the way it spreads makes it almost impossible to trace.” He cocked a brow at Jerrod. “So you went out with her on Saturday? You keeping an eye on her?”

      “I thought she shouldn’t be out there