Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(10)

So instead, she called Joe.

“What’s up, babe?”

“Probably nothing.”

She could envision him on the other end getting ready to go to work. He was likely pulling on his red uniform shirt with the pronghorn patch on its sleeve or packing his lunch. Daisy would be trembling with anticipation near the front door.

Although he was still limping from his injuries in the mountains the month before and he’d yet to have all of his stitches removed, Joe was nothing if not conscientious. Annoyingly so. It drove him crazy when he was not doing his job in the field, especially during the last weeks of the big-game hunting seasons. It drove her crazy that he wouldn’t stay home to recuperate and rest, like their doctor had ordered.

It was especially maddening now, she thought, since their fortunes had changed almost overnight. A lot had happened within the past month. Joe had been injured and had nearly lost his life up in the mountains. The trauma of the experience still affected her. The community itself was still in shock from the violent incidents that had taken place and the familiar people involved, and so was Marybeth. She couldn’t get Joe to talk about it yet.

Also unsaid between them was the strangest thing of all—the possibility that, for the first time in their married lives, they were . . . wealthy?

Maybe.



* * *



—

    She told Joe about the man she’d seen and what he appeared to have been doing.

“Was he sleeping there, do you think?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you can’t see where he went?”

“No.”

“You’re sure you didn’t recognize him?”

“I’m sure.”

“Make sure you check your mirrors so he doesn’t sneak up behind you in the dark.”

That sent another chill through her and she quickly confirmed that there was nobody behind her van.

“Stay put,” Joe said. “I’ll be there in twelve minutes and check things out.”

Joe knew exactly how long it took to drive from their state-owned game warden home on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River to the library.

“Really, you don’t need to do that,” she said. “I’m still on edge, I think. Now I feel kind of silly for calling you.”

“What are you doing there so early, anyway?” he asked. She could tell from the background noises that he’d shut the front door of their house and was making his way across the yard toward his pickup.

“I left you a note on the refrigerator,” she said. “I wanted to get an early start. I was hoping to knock off after lunch today so I could get home and start cooking, since April will be back tonight and Lucy’s coming tomorrow.”

“Oh, I missed the note,” he said.

Of course he had. She referred to it as his “man-scan,” the glance that often missed obvious things right in front of him. Two nights before, he’d searched the house for twenty minutes for the reading glasses that dangled from the front of his shirt. Earlier that week, he’d remarked on how he liked the “new” lamp in their living room that she’d placed there four months before.

It was especially irksome because she knew that when he was out in the field investigating a crime, he could see everything quite clearly.



* * *



—

It was on the cusp of Thanksgiving break and their three daughters were coming home for the holiday. The youngest, Lucy, was a sophomore at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. She was bringing with her an international student from Hong Kong whom she’d befriended. When Lucy had learned her friend had nowhere to go over the break, she’d invited her along. That was Lucy.

Twenty-two-year-old April had graduated from Northwest Community College in Powell with a law enforcement degree and was working for a Western-wear store. Their oldest daughter, Sheridan, was twenty-four and local, so she wouldn’t be sleeping at the house with them for the holiday. Sheridan worked for their friends Nate and Liv Romanowski, owners of Yarak, Inc., a bird abatement company. Like Nate, Sheridan was a falconer. She’d been in the middle of the trouble in the mountains with Joe and Nate, and Marybeth had still not come to grips with what could have happened to all of them.

Marybeth heard Joe shut the door of his pickup and start the motor.

“Really, you don’t have to come into town,” she said.

“I’m on my way.”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, “I’ll get out and make my way to the front door and stay on the line with you. If I see anything strange, I’ll report it and you’ll hear it as it happens.”

“That’s crazy,” Joe said. “Just sit tight.”

She ignored him, got out, hooked the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and walked toward the library with the phone in one hand and the pepper spray in the other.

There was no movement from the corner of the building or the spindly bushes.

“I’m nearly there,” she said.

“Turn around and go back to your car and lock your doors.”

“I’m twenty feet from the door.”

“Do you have your weapon available?” Joe asked.

“It’s at home in the cupboard, as usual.”