Page 8 of Burning Secrets

He glanced at her, a smile perking at his lips.

Probably she owed him a thank-you, because the longer they’d driven, the more she’d replayed Brutus’s behavior.

And the louder the shot had echoed in her brain.

Brutus would have ripped out her throat. She saw it in her head, and the truth had fallen to her heart, her gut, her bones.

No wonder she was still shaking.

Crew pulled up to the ranger’s station, a sort of cabin with a wide front porch, steps leading down to the street. He got out, stood on the sidewalk, glancing around as if looking for someone.

Interesting. But if he lived around here, probably he knew a few locals.

She came around the back of the truck. “Thanks?—”

“You don’t think I’m just going to leave you on the sidewalk with a dead wolf?” He raised an eyebrow.

Oh.

“Okay, um…well, let’s leave him here, let Peyton take a look at him. She’ll know what to do.”

“Peyton?”

“She’s the local wolf expert.”

He followed her up the steps and inside.

Hank Billings, the ranger in charge, looked up from his office behind a wall of glass. She’d met him earlier this summer, back when she’d landed in Copper Mountain after her three-day drive north. Grimy, smelly, and tired, she’d felt like a stalker asking for Peyton.

Hank had sent her over to the Samson Bed and Breakfast, and there, she’d cleaned up, eaten a pile of sourdough pancakes, and met her mentor.

Now, Hank came out of his office. “Jo. What’s up?”

“Peyton around?”

He glanced at her office. “She was. Not sure where she went?—”

“I’m here.”

The voice came from the door, where Peyton came in dressed in green canvas pants and a light-green shirt. “That a wolf in your truck, JoJo?”

“Brutus. He was shot.”

Peyton wore her dark hair back under a yellow handkerchief, and her dark eyes glanced at Crew.

“He was attacking me.”

Peyton cocked her head. “You get too close to the den?”

“No. I was forty yards away, easy. He came up behind me and—well, first he stood up to a grizzly, then he turned on me. He wasn’t right, Peyton. Something wasn’t right. And Cleo and her pups aren’t in the den.”

Peyton gestured for them to follow and led them into her office, a tall standing desk against one wall, a map dotted with pushpins in different colors on the other. Gear on the floor—collars, tracking devices, backpacks.

“I have a team of interns showing up in a week, going to help me tag and collar the pups.”

JoJo would like to be on that team. But they only did the work—they didn’t stick around to observe. Besides, her fire team needed her, and frankly, that was in her blood too.

Peyton stepped up to her computer, opened a screen, and peered at the tracking on it. “Cleo’s tracker is still active. And yes, it looks like they moved their den. She’s localized in an area about a half mile south of the river den.”

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