And a man could find a game of poker or blackjack day or night if he wanted to gamble. But the proprietors weren’t likely to murder a man in the back room and feed him to the pigs.

Progress.

He dealt with the paperwork, the forms and waivers, so he could move the family group along when they arrived. And so he could carve some time for his own devices.

He pulled a ginger ale out of the cold box, since he’d buzzed his blood on coffee that morning. People passed by, and some likely glanced in. They’d see a man going about his business, keyboarding on a computer that, to Coop’s mind, desperately needed replacing.

He opened Lil’s file. He might not be an investigator anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to investigate. He’d have preferred being sure her list of staff, interns, and volunteers was complete. But he had enough to keep him busy. The staff, past and current, hadn’t netted him a thing. He probably knew more about all of them now than some would be comfortable with, but he knew more about a lot of people than most were comfortable with.

Though Jean-Paul had not technically been staff, Coop had done a run on him. Broken relationships were petri dishes waiting to brew trouble. He knew the French guy had been married and divorced in his early twenties. It was likely Lil had that information, and since it didn’t seem to be relevant, Coop simply filed it away. He found no criminal, and a current address in Los Angeles.

Stay there, Coop thought.

He’d uncovered a few criminal brushes on staff, but nothing more violent than the vet having a scuffle during a protest on animal testing fifteen years earlier.

The former interns comprised a bigger chunk. They were a diverse group, economically, geographically, academically. He followed some through college, grad school, into careers. A quick scan showed Coop that a high percentage of interns Lil had trained pursued careers somewhere in the field.

He found some scrapes with the law as he picked his way through. Drugs, DUIs, a couple of assaults and/or destruction of property-usually connected to drugs or alcohol.

Those would earn a closer look.

He did the same with the volunteers-any whose names actually made it into the files, he thought, annoyed.

He culled out any who’d lived in or moved to the Dakotas. Proximity could be a factor, and he believed whoever was harassing Lil knew the hills as well as she did.

In the tedious way it demanded, he cross-referenced the assaults, the drug busts, the DUIs with geography, and got a single hit.

Ethan Richard Howe, age thirty-one. A trespassing hit in Sturgis, and that was close, when he’d been twenty, charges dropped. Carrying a concealed weapon-.22 revolver-without a license two years later in Wyoming. And an assault that looked like a bar fight and had put him inside for a year and a half in Montana at the ripe old age of twenty-five.

Early release, time off for good behavior. And, thought the former cop, to move inmates out as others moved in.

Three hits, Coop mused, one for being where he didn’t belong, one for a weapon, and the last for violence. He’d give Howe a closer look.

He started to move on, then had to break as the Dobsons arrived-Tom, Sherry, and their two teenage daughters-for check-in.

He knew his job and it was more than getting forms signed, more than making sure the customers could actually sit a horse. He chatted with the father, gave little back stories on each of the horses. Took time as if he had an endless supply of it in his pockets.

“It’s a good, easy trail,” he assured Sherry, who seemed more nervous than excited. “There’s nothing like seeing the hills on horseback.”

“But we’ll be back well before dark.”

“Gull will have you back by four.”

“You hear about people getting lost.”

“Now, Sherry,” Tom began.

“Gull grew up here,” Coop assured her. “He knows the trails, and so do the horses. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I haven’t been on horseback in ten years.” Sherry stepped onto the mounting block Coop provided. “I’m going to ache in places I forgot I had.”

“You can get a good massage right here in town, if you’re interested.”

She glanced back at Coop, and for the first time a little light gleamed in her eyes. “Really?”

“I can book you one, if you’re interested. Maybe for five o’clock?”

“You can do that?”

“Happy to.”

“Five o’clock massage. I don’t suppose I could get a hot stone?”

“Sure. Fifty or eighty minutes?”

“Eighty. My day just got a lot better. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. You have a nice ride.”

He went in, booked the massage, wrote up the particulars. The business would get a referral fee, which didn’t hurt. Then he shifted gears and went back to Lil’s file.

He started a new run on the women. He leaned toward a man in this case, but he knew better than to discount the female. He hadn’t gotten a good enough look that early morning to be absolutely certain. In any case, a woman might be the connection.

He worked his way through the ginger ale and half the ham sandwich his grandmother had packed him. He couldn’t stop her from packing his lunch, and had to admit he didn’t try very hard.

It was nice to have someone who’d take the time, take the trouble.

Marriages, divorces, kids, degrees. One of the earlier interns in the program now lived in Nairobi, another was a vet specializing in exotic animals in L.A.

And another, he noted as his instincts hummed, had vanished.

Carolyn Lee Roderick, age twenty-three, missing for eight months and a handful of days. Last seen in Denali National Park, where she’d been doing fieldwork.

He followed the hum and dug out what he could on Carolyn Roderick.

AT THE REFUGE, Lil shook hands with Brad Dromburg, the owner of Safe and Secure. He was a beanpole of a man, obviously comfortable in his Levi’s and Rockports, with a close-cropped head of dark blond hair and green eyes. He had an easy smile, a firm hand, and a voice with just a hint of Brooklyn.

“I appreciate you coming all this way, and so quickly.”

“Coop tugged the line. Is he around?”

“No. I-”

“He said he’d try to make it by. Some place you’ve got here, Ms. Chance.” He stood, hands on his hips, studying the habitats, the compound. “Some place. How long have you been in operation?”

“Six years this May.”

He gestured over where some of her interns had set the poles for the new habitat. “Expanding?”

“We’re acquiring a melanistic jaguar.”

“Is that so? Coop said you’ve had a little trouble. Someone compromised one of the cages?”

“The tiger enclosure, yes.”

“That would be a little trouble, all right. Maybe you could walk me around, give me a feel for the place. And what you have in mind.”

He asked questions, made notes on a PDA, and showed no particular nerves when he walked up to the enclosures to study the doors, the locks.

“That’s a big boy there,” he said when Boris rolled over to stretch in front of his den.

“Yes. All four hundred and eighty-six pounds of him.”

“It took a lot of balls or stupidity to open that cage, middle of the night, gamble that big boy’s going to go after the bait and not the live meal.”

“It would, but the fresh kill would be more appealing. Boris was trapped, illegally from what I can dig up, when he was around a year old. He’s been in captivity ever since, and he’s used to the scent of human. He’s fed in the evening, to continue to stimulate the hunt by night instincts, but he’s used to being fed.”

“And he didn’t go far.”

“No, fortunately. He followed the blood trail to the bait and settled in for his unexpected predawn snack.”

“Takes some balls to come out here and shoot a mickey into him.”