Deadly Hunter. Rachel Lee

I want to talk about, even if I could. But...” His gaze came back to her. “You know, it’s a devil of a time trying to become a civilian again. Sounds crazy, I know.”

      “I didn’t say that.” And a picture was beginning to form in her mind. She wondered how far from the truth it was.

      “Regardless, you wouldn’t think I’d have lost the common courtesies. It’s just that...”

      Again he trailed off. She decided not to press him, but to let him say what he chose and avoid what he chose.

      He sighed and drained his mug. “Too many years of secrecy. Invisibility. Being in a new place brings back habits. I can’t explain more than that.”

      “I think I get it. At least some of it.”

      “Nobody who doesn’t do it really gets it. But that’s the way we want it.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “We do what we do so civilians can remain innocent.”

      It was as if he sucked the wind from her between one breath and the next. She felt an unexpected piercing pain for what must have been required of him to make a statement like that. Before she could think of a word to say, he was starting to rise, preparing to leave.

      She felt a desperate urge to not let him go, though she didn’t know why. Yes, he was attractive, but what she was feeling right now touched her in a much deeper way. She needed to do something. Say something. Give him the very welcome he seemed to want to avoid. But how?

      “Have some more coffee,” she said quickly.

      “I shouldn’t. You were grading papers.”

      Man, he didn’t miss a thing.

      “Consider it my excuse not to go to bed with a pounding headache.”

      For the first time, the very first time, the stone of his face cracked just a bit. One corner of his mouth tipped up. “You’ll still have to get the headache eventually.”

      “Sunday will be soon enough.”

      She was relieved when he walked over to the pot and poured himself more coffee. He returned to the table and sat. “I should ask about you.”

      “Sure. I’m an open book.” Only as she saw his face darken a shade did she realize how that had sounded. She spoke swiftly to cover the faux pas. “Nothing really interesting, no secrets, no jaunts to exotic and dangerous places. I grew up here, went to college and came back here to teach at the community college. Chemistry.”

      This time he settled back into the chair, looking less likely to take flight. Although she got the feeling he didn’t quite uncoil. She wondered if he even knew how.

      “Do you like it?”

      “Mostly,” she said.

      “But not grading papers.”

      “It’s the lousy chicken scratches. I think computers have killed the fine art of handwriting.”

      “So why not let them use computers?”

      “Because computers give them access to information. Every exam would essentially be an open-book test then. I do it sometimes, but other times I want to know what they really understand.”

      He nodded briefly, then drank more coffee. “Great coffee, by the way.”

      “Thank you. But not hot as Hades.”

      Again that faint flicker of a smile. “Not quite. But hot enough.”

      A silence fell, but it didn’t feel as tense. Still, she decided to fill it. “The big thing in my life right now is the state has hired me to find out how far a toxin has spread. A few weeks ago, a rancher lost two cows, and tests show it was a horrible poison.”

      “What kind?”

      “The kind that is outlawed because it’s so dangerous. Well, it was until the USDA allowed it to be used in a few states for coyote control. But to give you an idea what I’m dealing with here, a number of countries have labeled it a chemical-warfare weapon. And the way it spreads is incredible. It doesn’t just stop where it’s applied, which is scaring the ranchers and hunters.”

      For the first time she realized how intimidating it could be to have this man’s full attention. Those black eyes had looked at her before and seemed attentive enough, but now they lasered in on her. They made her think of his comment about black as hell. She had to fight an urge to pull back, knowing that he would see it and not willing to make him feel like a pariah without reason. At the same time, she felt an unexpected and unwanted tingle of sexual arousal. Dang it.

      “Tell me about it,” he said. “What exactly is it? How does it spread?”

      “Its name wouldn’t mean much to you or to most people who don’t raise livestock. It’s applied to bait to kill animals that eat carrion. Unfortunately, that doesn’t just mean coyotes. Well, it’s bad enough if it stops there, but it doesn’t. The contaminated animal can take hours or days to die, wandering away from the bait. It becomes toxic itself, so wherever it dies, it can contaminate the ground and water, and if anything eats it, it’ll die, too.”

      “Damn.”

      “Yeah. So they found the bait—at least, they think it was the bait—and only two cows have died so far. They think the cows must have licked some snowmelt or eaten some contaminated grass that was under the snow. Regardless, once the toxin was identified, we had to get into high gear because we can’t be sure what appeared to be the bait wasn’t simply an animal that had eaten the original bait. The spread could be big and getting bigger.”

      “So what do you do?”

      “Take soil and water samples to try to figure out the impacted area. At the very least to let the ranchers know whether their grazing land and water is safe, but also to try to home in on the dangerous areas.”

      “Does it break down? Disperse?”

      “Everything does, but you wouldn’t believe how little of this stuff it would take to kill a grown man. In theory, it’s supposed to be used only in livestock collars. So, for example, if a coyote bites a collared ewe on the neck, it’ll get a fatal dose of poison. But there’s enough poison in that one collar to kill six grown men or twenty-five children. If collars get lost or punctured, the poison gets into the environment. And by the way, if a collar is discarded, it’s supposed to be buried at least three feet deep in the ground.”

      He nodded. “Okay. But if it’s lost...”

      “Yeah, if it’s lost, the poison can leech into the environment. And even if it doesn’t get lost... Well, I painted the picture of what happens when an animal gets poisoned. It wanders away, dies an agonizing death and something else eats it. And there isn’t any known antidote.”

      “That could be bad.”

      “It is bad. It’s the cascade effect that makes it so awful. If it killed just once, no big deal. But it doesn’t. So until the poison dissipates to safe levels—and even sublethal levels can cause brain damage and so on—you’ve got a big-time problem that’s spreading randomly.”

      “I can’t think of a worse scenario. Do you think you can trace it back to its origin?”

      “Probably not. I wish I could. If someone wasn’t using it in an authorized collar, then they’re breaking the law in a lot of ways. Law enforcement is looking into that part, but without any success so far. But I’m sure I won’t get that far, and it’s not what I’m out there to do, anyway. I’m just supposed to take samples for the state to identify any areas that present a threat. I hope I don’t find a single one. Maybe it’s all dissipated now. Maybe it was an isolated incident. I hope to God it was.”

      “Helluva problem.”

      “Yeah.” She propped her chin on her palm and sighed. “If the weather settles down, I start