She stood up with a little giggle and sauntered toward the bushes. “Gù Brath’s number is programmed into the phone. You might stand a chance if Mom answers. If Daddy does, you better have a good story ready.”
“Are you nuts? I’m not lying to your father.”
She stopped and looked back, arching one delicate brow. “It’s your funeral.”
“I’m telling him our trip is taking longer than we thought because of the baby, and that I didn’t realize how out of shape you’ve let yourself get.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you find the deer yard?”
Jack bent down to hide his grin and continued packing up camp. “I found a herd of thirty or forty of them holed up about three miles due north.” He stopped to look at her. “They seemed healthy. They certainly had plenty of feed. I did come across a yearling moose carcass, though. It looked to me like a mountain lion brought it down.”
She had just started into the bushes, but swung back around to face him. “A mountain lion? You’re sure? There’s never been a documented sighting of one around here that I know of.”
“It was definitely a large-cat kill.”
Her face beamed. “Do you know what this means?”
“That you were smart to bring your gun?”
“It means that if I can confirm a mountain lion is living in the area, they can’t build a resort here.”
“Do you think the developers will be as happy with this news as you are?”
“Of course not. But that’s why the state requires a study. That way the developers won’t put too much money into a project before they find out they can’t build.”
“And if the developers send someone out here to quietly shoot the cat, will that make their little problem go away?”
“Not if I’ve already documented it. All I have to prove is that this area has had a mountain lion living here recently. It will then be designated a large-cat habitat, and all development will be banned.”
He waved her away. “We can discuss this later. We’re burning daylight.”
She didn’t move but frowned instead. “You said three miles north. You couldn’t have covered that much ground in the time you were gone.”
“Actually, I zigzagged a lot. I really traveled a total of eight miles.”
She eyed him dubiously. “In three hours? That would mean you went…” She calculated in her head and then glared at him. “Nobody can do that on snowshoes.”
“He can if he thinks a hungry cat is dogging his trail. That kill was over a week old. Will you get going? I’m hungry, and I can’t wait to get home and slap a TV dinner in the microwave.”
Jack gave a silent chuckle when she stomped off into the bushes. He pulled his revolver from the back of his waist and stashed it in his tank bag, then walked over to Megan’s sled and rummaged around in her saddlebag for the phone.
“Greylen,” he said when the sword-wielding laird answered. “This is Jack. I just want to let you know that we’re still at the north end of the lake. We should be back home in three or four hours.”
“What happened? Did ye have sled trouble? Where’s Megan? I’d like to speak with her.”
“She’s in the bushes at the moment. You have seven daughters. Surely you remember what it was like traveling the backcountry with a pregnant woman.”
There was a pause on the line, then a soft laugh. “Aye, I remember. So what delayed ye, other than bathroom breaks?”
“A detour down an unmarked trail,” Jack told him. “And a couple of naps. The weather’s been good, and Megan is thoroughly enjoying herself. I think she’s missed being out in the field. She’ll call you as soon as she gets home.”
“Take your time traveling back, and don’t overrun your headlights. The deer and moose like to use the trails at night.”
“We’ll be careful. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Chief.”
Jack hit the disconnect button with a chuckle. Apparently Greylen wasn’t acknowledging they were on a first-name basis. But if Jack was going to run the MacKeage gauntlet, he would do it as an equal. Highlanders had nothing on Cree warriors.
“Was my father very mad?” Megan asked, emerging from the bushes, a bit winded and pink faced.
“Would you be worried if he was?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “He’s all bluster. At least with us girls,” she clarified. “I’ve decided to come back up here tomorrow or the next day. If I can document a mountain lion in the area, it will shut down the study before it’s even begun.”
“And you’ll be out of a job.”
“That’s the way this business goes.”
“Megan, did you notice anything…oh, I don’t know, anything strange when we were on the tundra? Did you see any sign that there might be oil under that section?”
“Oil? You mean like bubbling tar pits that swallow up woolly mammoths and sabertooth tigers?”
Jack shook his head seriously. “I’ve been thinking about Mark Collins’s connection to Billy Wellington, Billy’s connection to your study, and your connection to Collins by way of this job. Honestly, don’t you find it odd that the common factor here is Collins?”
“It’s what he does, Jack. Mark is in the consulting business, and he hires biologists for studies all over the world. Why are you so convinced there’s something fishy going on?”
“Because a man was murdered.”
She sat down on her sled and looked up at him. “Okay, just for the sake of argument, let’s say Mark was involved in that man’s death. What has it got to do with me?”
Jack sat down on his own sled, which was parked beside hers. “This is just a theory. Call it a hunch if you want, but I think Collins was hired by someone—an energy company, maybe—to make sure your study didn’t expose the fact that there’s oil or natural gas under that area of tundra. So Collins put Billy Wellington on the study to keep an eye on things.”
“But that implies Billy might have killed that man.”
Jack shook his head. “There would be too much money involved to trust something like that to a kid. And Billy was really shaken by that guy’s death. I think he told Collins that the government worker had discovered something, and Collins sent someone more experienced to deal with the problem.”
“That still doesn’t connect anything to me.”
“Unless you discovered the same thing the government worker did.”
“But what? I didn’t see anything that pointed to oil.”
“What about that dead arctic fox you found, and those half-eaten ptarmigans? Did you ever find out what killed them?”
“No. I took DNA samples, but I gave the carcasses to—” Her eyes widened. “To the government worker! He was supposed to send them to Ottawa.” She stood up. “And remember that dead snowy owl I found three days earlier? I gave him that carcass, too.”
“Did he send them out?”
“No. He was waiting for the supply plane to arrive.” She sat down again, stunned. “My God, do you think those dead animals are the link?” she whispered. “Could that man have been killed because of what had killed them?”
Jack took her hands in his. “It’s a good possibility, if those birds ingested oil, and the fox and owl ate them and also died. It’s also possible that Collins wants those DNA samples you took.”
“But why wait four months to try to get them from me?”
“You’ve been surrounded by a small army since you’ve been home, and Gù Brath is a veritable fortress. I suspect Collins did send someone to Pine Creek, but when he realized he wasn’t going to get your samples by stealing them, he decided to simply hire you to get close enough to find them.”
“I—I suppose that makes sense. Except that I found the job on the Internet. How could he know I’d even be looking?”
“I suspect the job was posted just to make it look legitimate. Chances are if you hadn’t seen it, you would have gotten a letter from Collins soon. Then, when you checked it out, you would have believed him because the job had been posted long before he contacted you.”