Sharp Shootin' Cowboy (Hot Cowboy Nights, #3)(70)

Haley’s gaze darted to the door. All the air sucked out of her lungs at the look on Reid’s face. Although his tone was deceptively bland and his stride slow as he crossed the room, his eyes were glacial and his mouth compressed. “I thought you might be needing this.” He dropped her iPhone on the desk.

“Reid…” She swallowed hard. “I…uh…this is…”

“Dr. Jeffrey Greene.” Jeffrey stood and offered Reid his right hand, but kept his left one on Haley’s shoulder.

Whether conscious or not, it was a possessive gesture she didn’t like. She shrugged it off in annoyance. “Jeffrey’s a colleague of mine. He’s here for an important meeting,” she heard herself babble.

Reid’s gaze met hers and held. “You don’t have to explain. I’m well aware of your relationship. Just came to return your phone, Dr. Cooper.”

Her stomach tied in a knot as he tipped his hat and walked out. Her first impulse was to run after him and explain, but what was there to say? In reality, she’d done nothing wrong. Still, she felt riddled with guilt.

Jeffrey’s brows rose in subtle mockery. “Your grizzly-shooting knight errant I presume?”

“He’s also a decorated marine scout sniper.”

“Ah!” Jeffrey smirked. “An equal-opportunity killer. How heartening to know that all species are on the same footing with him.”

“That’s not funny, Jeffrey,” she protested. “He’s not like that. At all.”

“Not a killer? You said he shot the bear dead.”

“And I told you that he didn’t have a choice. It was a justified kill.”

“You think so? How can you be certain? How do you know he didn’t use that horse carcass to bait the bear?”

She hesitated only for a millisecond. Maybe she and Reid didn’t agree on many issues, but his integrity was incontestable. “He didn’t. I know him, Jeffrey. He would never do anything so underhanded or unethical.”

“From your own account, he didn’t even try any nonlethal means of controlling the bear.”

“You weren’t there, so don’t judge,” she snapped. “Would you really place that bear’s life over mine?”

“Of course not. Don’t twist my words.”

“I’m tired of all this posturing, Jeffrey. Most of the people here are only trying to protect their livestock and livelihoods. How can we fault them for that?”

“The wolves and grizzlies have as much right to be here as the people do. In fact, they have even more right, as they were here first.”

“But we’ve already made amends by reintroducing wolves. They’re thriving now and have vastly exceeded our recovery goal. So are grizzlies, but they’re now encroaching into areas we hadn’t expected them to.”

“We can’t change their nature.” He gave a fatalistic shrug. “Bears and wolves will roam.”

“All the more reason for us to help find a solution that people can live with. We need to do a better job of tracking where they go. All this money we’re wasting on lawsuits would be much better spent on GPS and radio collars.”

“So you’d collar every single wolf?”

“If necessary, yes.”

“We don’t have unlimited resources. Just who do you expect to monitor them?” He gave a derisive snort. “The hunters?”

“Don’t mock me, Jeffrey. There are tens of thousands of people who watch wolves as a hobby. They even spend considerable dollars doing it. Why not train some of them to monitor the packs? We could even set up a central control system that would allow people all over the world to help. In essence it would be an early warning system. I believe we could prevent a majority of human–predator conflicts this way.”

“Too complicated and expensive,” he said, dismissing the idea out of hand.

“It isn’t!” she insisted. “I’m certain we could raise enough money for the collars, and the wolf-watchers would do it for the sheer joy of it. If people and wolves are to coexist, it’s our responsibility to meet the ranchers and hunters halfway. Many conflicts could be prevented if we just put the right measures in place.”

“And when we can’t prevent conflicts?”

“If it’s a problem animal, we’d have no choice but to remove it.”

“Remove? So in the end you advocate killing the very animals we’re fighting to protect?”

“I suppose there’s little choice but selective euthanasia, once all other means are exhausted, but we are far from that point. Why does it really have to be a fight, Jeffrey? Why is it always us against them? It’s not unreasonable that they want us to control the wolves that we brought in. Why can’t we all work together to manage the situation?”

“Because they only see one solution.”

“Maybe that’s because we haven’t done our job. Why has there been no talk about breeding control? Zoos around the country have used contraception for decades. The BLM has even adopted a contraceptive vaccine for use in feral horses. I’ve been trying to get funding to test this with wolves for the past three years, but I keep getting shot down.”

“Because it would be a waste of time and money,” he argued. “They want to hunt wolves. It’s sport to them. You can’t reason with people who kill for pleasure—people like your friend Reid.”