Killer Cargo by Dana Mentink

Author:Dana Mentink
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1857-8
Publisher: Harlequin

TEN

M aria was asleep on the couch when the sound of jangling keys awakened her.

She sat up, fighting off a dream about being trapped in a net with millions of stinging hornets. Through sleep-fogged eyes, she watched Cy put on a jacket and clip a cell phone to his narrow waist. “Are you going now?”

Cy nodded. “Yes. I came in for the keys. Sorry to have woken you.”

“Can I come?”

He hesitated for a minute. “I wouldn’t say no to some company.”

They loaded up.

She looked around. “Where’s Stew?”

“He’s trying to medicate the toads but they’re not having any of it. I’ll tell him you’re going to ride shotgun.”

The moon picked out webs of sparkles in the creek as they drove along. A heavy-bodied bird flew over the road, the silhouette of a small-tailed creature in its claws.

“A great horned owl,” Cy pronounced. “It always amazes me how silently they fly. If you weren’t looking, you’d never know one had passed right over your head.”

Maria watched the graceful hunter until it disappeared. She cracked the window to let in the clean crispness of pine and wet ground.

“Why do you have to check the grounds in the dead of night?”

“Whoever is poisoning my creek isn’t interested in being caught.”

Thinking about his explanation for carrying Randall’s picture around, she could see the logic in not wanting to be cornered by Cy Sheridan. “So you think someone is deliberately sabotaging your sanctuary? Why would they do that?”

“For profit.” He stopped at the metal gate and unlocked it. They continued on, passing the neatly cut boughs piled on the roadside.

“Cy, why do you call it One Word? You never did tell me.”

His face was luminous in the moonlight. “It’s a quote from C. S. Lewis.”

“The author?”

“Author, poet, Christian.”

She laughed. “So he has credentials. What’s the quote?”

“He said that one little word can make a big difference.”

“Like what?”

“The example he used was ‘a god or the God.’ You see?”

“I see. One word can make a huge difference.” She felt suddenly cheerful, thankful that the one true God had made their paths cross. It was refreshing to be close to a person so filled with passion for the world around him.

He waggled his eyebrows. “You only get that kind of wisdom from a frog man.”

She laughed, savoring the lightness of the moment, his humor, which was so often buried deep. “I don’t doubt it for a second.”

Cy parked the truck under the canopy of an enormous tree studded with pinecones. “We go on foot from here. If there’s anyone up there, I want to catch them by surprise.”

The path was damp but not muddy as they trekked up the increasingly steep slope. She jumped when a dog-size creature darted across the path in front of them and scurried up a tree. It looked down with glimmering eyes. “What in the world was that?”

“Gray fox. The only fox on this continent that can climb trees. I’ve seen them leaping from limb to limb. Incredible stuff.”

“Incredible,” she repeated, inching closer to Cy.

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