Hers to Take(8)

Kira dropped her hands and shot up in her seat to see Conner in the doorway of her tiny office. She hadn't heard him knock. How much had he heard? She seriously needed to stop talking out loud.

"Is there a wolf in the campground?"

She could have sworn she saw him try to hold back a smile. No doubt he'd like it if there was a wolf problem. Anything to make it harder for her to do her job and give him the opportunity to rub it in her face that he should have been promoted instead of her. She'd spoken to him, just like she'd promised Sasha she would, but it clearly hadn't made much of a difference to his attitude.

"No," she said quickly and stood, straightening her shirt as she did so. "I was just thinking of a book I'd read."

He didn't look as though he believed her, but that was his problem.

"Did you need something, Conner?"

He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. He would have been handsome if he wasn't so damn bitter all the time. "I just got an interesting complaint from a camper in site 25."

"Did you file it? I can take a look in-"

"I think you'll want to look at it now."

Something in his voice caught her attention. It was more than Conner being grumpy or angry. "Is everything okay?"

He shook his head, genuine concern in his eyes. "I'm not sure. But the man, a Mr. … " He consulted a piece of paper in his hands. "Brantly. Mr. Brantly reported some dead fish on the riverbanks while he was out fishing with his son. Said he wouldn't have thought anything of it except there were about five of them in one spot and they're right out front of his site, so of course he was worried about the smell. He wasn't sure if he should report it or not, but his wife thought he should let us know."

Dead fish? It was unusual for sure. The rivers in Yellowstone were some of the best fisheries around. Certainly, every once in a while, there'd be some sort of disease or natural occurrence that caused a disruption. It wasn't common but there hadn't been anything issued from the head office. "That does sound … "

"Fishy?" Connor laughed at his own joke, but Kira only rolled her eyes.

"I was going to say, strange. Site 25 you said?" Conner nodded. "Thanks for letting me know. Make sure you make note if any other reports come in. I'll go check it out and clean it up."

"Oh, don't worry," Conner said. "I ran into the new maintenance guy. He said he'd take care of it."

"Nash?" Her body tensed.

"That's him."

She grabbed the keys to her ATV and stuffed them in her pocket before she reached for her field bag. "I better go check anyway. It definitely sounds strange." She tried to be as casual as possible as she moved past Conner. "Thanks again for letting me know."

She'd only been in charge of the Riverside campground for less than a month. It wouldn't look good if she already had things going wrong and she couldn't afford to lose the job. She'd been lucky to get it after that jerk Ryan Dixon showed his true colors and admitted to using her. He'd left her like yesterday's garbage, right before his entire clan moved on. Embarrassed and heartbroken, she'd curled up in a tent and cried for days before finally pulling herself together long enough to come up with a plan. Not that it was much of one. Ashamed, alone, and out of options, she took the first job she could find. It wasn't home, but it wasn't bad either and she wasn't going to let something as small as a few dead fish screw things up just as she was getting back on her feet again.




 

 

She jammed the keys into the ignition of the ATV and fired it up, letting the roar of the engine drown out her real concern. Because it wasn't a few dead fish that she was really worried about.

It was a wolf.



He'd lived in Yellowstone half of his life and Nash had never seen anything like the pile of dead trout on the side of the riverbank. He'd just finished putting his few belongings away when he'd run into Conner. Truthfully, he'd been looking for Kira but when the other man told him about the dead fish, he'd volunteered right away to go check it out.

It was strange. No, it was downright suspicious. And from what he could tell from the fish, whatever had killed them, it hadn't been natural.

With a sigh, he looked at the fish he held in his gloved hand and tossed it into the bucket at his feet. "Such a shame," he muttered. If there was something that made Nash mad, it was when the resources of the land he loved were wasted or damaged. Whatever it was killing the fish, he was definitely going to find out.

He left the bucket and walked a little farther down the shore, keeping his eye out for more fish, when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Kira.

She was close. He could feel it. His entire body thrummed in a way that was both unusual and familiar all at once. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so aware of a female. Which was likely because he'd never been so aware. Not like this. He stopped walking and waited until she turned off her ATV and caught up with him. He turned as she came up behind him.