Undercover in Conard County
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Rachel Lee
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When hunters threaten local Wyoming wildlife, investigator Kel Westin vows to catch the perpetrators. But as he's sent to work undercover with game warden Desi Jenks, Kel finds himself caught off guard by his need to protect her, too. Something tells him both he and Desi are kept awake at night by pasts that won't let go. Desi trusts no one. That includes the sexy former army ranger living in her bunkhouse, posing as a poacher to bait the ring. As a dangerous group gathers in the mountains, she must put her life in Kel's hands, a move that will change their fragile, growing bond forever…
Prologue
Six men sat around a poker table in the back room of an historic hotel somewhere in Wyoming. They were only vaguely aware of its history, but the bullet holes that pockmarked the expansive wood bar out front hinted at it. The place was supposedly haunted, too, but they didn’t care and didn’t believe.
They had business to discuss.
A new outfitter had shown up late last spring, and from what they could tell, he was unlicensed. The men at the table were unlicensed as well, lying to clients from out of state, telling the nonresidents that they could legally hunt under the outfitter’s license. Not true, but they didn’t care.
No, they led the hunts into public lands as far away from possible observation as they could get, wined and dined the hunters to make them feel like big deals, then got them their damn trophies, knowing these guys would leave the state immediately.
Babied them, is what they did, sometimes even setting up the shot and aiming the rifle.
It was good money, all of it carefully laundered out of state.
But now some new guy was horning in, and he could be big trouble. Losing a few trophies to the hunters he guided wasn’t as much of a concern as his lower charges. He could force them all to charge less, especially if he got enough people to work for him.
The bigger concern was that if he screwed up he’d bring a lot more scrutiny to bear and could cause their operations to cut way back until the heat went away. Also, they couldn’t afford to take this fight public by reporting him. Not when they’d spent so long carefully burying themselves below the state’s radar.
The burly guy with the ponytail slapped his cards facedown on the table. “We gotta eliminate him. As in dead.”
The other men nodded. If this interloper had just played nice with them, they might have let him in, but instead he’d started a solo operation. No respect. Dangerous.
“Okay,” said a man whose face was nearly as grooved as the mountainous landscape. “Accidents happen, people disappear out there. Find out where his base is.”
“I’m hearing Conard County,” said the ponytail man. He knew a lot more, but he wasn’t about to share or reveal his sources to anyone. They had to be well protected. But this guy he wanted dead? He wasn’t what he pretended to be, a fact that ponytail kept to himself. Knowledge was power and he had it. The last thing he wanted was for his partners to wet their pants and run.
“Well, hell,” said the man with mountain terrain for a face. “He hasn’t set up shop, that I’ve heard.”
“Just about to,” said ponytail. “And that’s one of our most profitable areas.”
“Yeah,” said one of the other men, his voice gravelly from cigarettes, his face weathered until it looked like a map. “He dies. Just make it look like an accident.”
The ponytailed man nodded and never mentioned that they had a second target: that nuisance of a warden, Desi Jenks. One favor for another. If they guessed that they’d probably all turn into frightened grannies.
Then they went back to playing cards, unaware of all the past times when just such murderous plans had been laid here.
