Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(27)

“Why don’t you get the grill started and then come back and tell us what’s going on with the shooting,” Marybeth said to Joe. She nodded toward a platter of raw elk steaks on the counter that had been brushed with olive oil and were already seasoned with salt and pepper.

Joe nodded his agreement while he held out a glass toward Nate, who splashed bourbon into it. Joe was exhausted from the long day and he cautioned himself about drinking too much alcohol. He’d need to be sharp in the morning.

“You look like you need it,” Nate said.

“Yup.”

Like the situation in their now-empty nest, the relationship between the Picketts and the Romanowskis had taken a decidedly unpredictable turn in the past year. Where once it had been Joe, Marybeth, and their young daughters with the violent and mysterious falconer hovering just out of the frame, now it was wildly different.

Nate was now the father of a little one, and Liv was a working mother who’d married later in life and had brought a wonderful baby girl into the world. Nate sometimes seemed to Joe to be like a samurai warrior who’d exchanged his sword and ancient code for a clip-on tie and a nine-to-five job selling women’s shoes.

But he was still Nate, and Joe was still Joe, and they’d shared too many experiences and tragedies together over the years to change that.

“I’ll give you a hand,” Nate said to Joe.

“You don’t have to.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

Joe saw something in the set of Nate’s mouth that concerned him. Something was eating at his friend.

“I’ll grab the platter and you grab the bottle and let’s go outside,” Joe said.

*

NATE STOOD IN silence surveying the trees, glimpses of the river through the brush, and the distant mountains while Joe sipped on his drink and waited for the coals to get hot. Joe was familiar with Nate’s long silences, and he was used to Nate observing things in a common landscape that Joe didn’t see. Nate regarded the terrain with the singular concentration of a falcon looking for a meal.

“You’ve got a beaver thinking of starting a dam right at the mouth of the channel that runs through your place,” Nate said. “I saw him swimming upstream along the bank with a test stick. You’ll have to keep your eye on him or he might build one next spring and flood your property.”

“A test stick?” Joe asked.

“That’s how they scout out a new location for future planning,” Nate said with mild derision. “I’m surprised you don’t know about that, being a game warden and all.”

Joe snorted. But he assumed Nate was correct. After all, Nate was the only person he’d ever known to sit naked in a tree for hours and study animal, fish, and bird behavior as if he were a charter member of the ecosystem.

“We’re just about there,” Joe said, nodding toward the coals in the grill. The secret to good elk steaks was to sear them on a very hot surface to lock in the juices since there was practically no fat in the meat.

“Are these from the cow elk you got last year?” Nate asked.

“Yup. Backstraps.”

“Nothing better.”

Joe looked up. “I assume you didn’t come by tonight to talk about beavers and backstraps.”

Nate nodded. He asked, “What’s Sheridan up to these days?”

The question came from out of the blue, even though Nate and Sheridan had history. Nate, in his role of master falconer, had long ago taken her on as his apprentice. The relationship had gone dormant after Sheridan went to college.

“I think she’s trying to decide,” Joe said. “Why?”

“Our business is growing. I need someone reliable to help out.”

“Are you asking me permission?” Joe asked. “As you know, Sheridan has a mind of her own. Maybe you should ask her.”

“Maybe I should,” Nate said. He turned back to studying the river.

Joe considered the possibility of Sheridan joining Yarak, Inc. He didn’t know what he thought about it. It would be good to have her around again and it was good Nate respected her falconry chops enough to consider her, but Joe had sometimes fantasized about his oldest daughter following in his footsteps. They’d even discussed it a few times when Sheridan accompanied him on ride-alongs when she was younger. She’d always liked being outdoors and “saving animals,” as she put it.

“Is that all?” Joe asked after several minutes. Having a conversation with his friend was filled with starts and stops.

“Do you remember Jeremiah Sandburg?” Nate asked.

“Yup. I wouldn’t mind never seeing him again.”

“He dropped by the house this morning in his new motor home,” Nate said.

“He was here?”

“And he had a warning for me.”

Nate told Joe about his conversation with the ex–FBI special agent. As he did, Joe felt a shiver up his back.

As he lay the steaks on the red-hot grill he said, “Is it just you they’re coming after? I was there, too, at the time.”

“I know that and you know that,” Nate said. “But they aren’t singing narcocorridos about Joe Pickett.”

“I suppose that’s a good thing for me,” Joe said. “But what are we going to do about it?”