A man stood beside the wagon, putting something under the windshield wiper. He wore a black cowboy hat, a faded denim jacket, jeans, and black cowboy boots.
He moved away from the wagon and suddenly stared up right at her window. Their eyes met. He had a lean, tanned face with a few days’ growth of stubble. His frame beneath the jacket and T-shirt was wiry and fit, and he looked to be a few years older than her.
He frowned up at her. Grabbing her shirt off the bed, she hurried out of the room and down the steps. She heard a car start up, and by the time she opened the front door of the lodge, she heard the car moving away down the resort drive, out of sight behind the trees.
Pinned beneath the windshield wiper on the truck fluttered a note. She freed it from the blade and read it:
You’re not welcome here. Leave while you still can.
Alex’s face flushed. She’d expected to be treated like an outsider in Bitterroot, but she hadn’t expected outright hostility like this. Clenching her jaw, she gripped the note.
If people were going out of their way to drive up here and threaten her, she couldn’t imagine what they were going to be like in town when she was on her own. She was not looking forward to it, but she had to go there for supplies.
Returning inside, she brushed her teeth and packed her small daypack with a bottle of water and a couple of peanut butter granola bars.
Then she climbed into the old wagon and headed toward Bitterroot to get all the supplies she needed to build the wolverine camera traps. While most of it she could get at a hardware store, she needed one thing that was going to be awkward to get. Meat. And it had to be meat that wolverines would normally eat in the wild.
She preferred to use roadkill or an animal seized from poachers. At least that way, the death could have some good use in the end, some meaning to a terrible demise. If parts of the animal could be used to help conserve another, then maybe a tiny gleam of good could come out of a bad situation.
Alex pulled out onto the main road that led to the town, retracing the way she’d come the day before with Ben. Snow clung to the high peaks in the north, and the scent of sagebrush filled the valley she passed through. A few darker clouds had gathered above the peaks, the mountains creating their own weather system.
The old truck performed wonderfully, purring down the highway, and she bounced around a little on the bench seat when she hit patches in the asphalt where frost heaving had created holes.
She rolled the window down, sticking one elbow out, easing into the rhythm of the drive. It certainly was a pretty trek to the town, even if it was a bit long. She had just leaned back in her seat and was considering switching on the old radio when a dark blue pickup revved up behind her.
She expected it to pass, so she drove a little closer to the shoulder to give it room. No traffic was visible in the oncoming lane for more than a mile before the road bent away out of sight.
But the beat-up truck didn’t pass. It revved its engine, moving up dangerously close to her rear bumper. She looked in the rearview mirror at the driver, but the morning sun was hitting the windshield in such a way that all she could see was the sky reflected back to her.
She slowed a little, in case the driver was nervous about going around her for some reason. But the truck just crept closer. It wasn’t going to pass.
She accelerated back to fifty-five, and still the truck stayed on her tail. No other cars were visible in any direction. The truck swerved dangerously behind her, fishtailing, and sped up into the oncoming lane.
Good. They did want to pass.
In its haste, the truck overcompensated, shooting onto the shoulder of the opposite lane, sending up a spray of loose rocks that pinged off the side of her wagon. Then the truck corrected and swerved into the oncoming lane, but remained driving just behind her.
She slowed, giving it time to overtake her car. The bend in the road was coming up fast, and she couldn’t tell if any cars were coming in the opposite direction.
But the blue pickup didn’t speed up to pass. It crept up alongside her and stayed there, driving in the oncoming lane.
She chanced a look at the driver, but once again the glare on the window was too bright to see much. She thought she could make out a lone driver. The truck sped up until it was just ahead of her, still in the oncoming lane. She could see there was indeed a single driver, no passenger, but due to the quarter angle, she couldn’t get a look at his face. She thought of the man who’d put the note on her car, but this driver had a light brown cowboy hat and a beige suede jacket. She didn’t think it was the same person.
Just as she expected him to pull ahead of her and merge back into the correct lane, he slowed again. The bend was just ahead. It was now or never if this guy was going to pass her before he had no view of the oncoming lane.
But he didn’t pass.
He swerved suddenly back toward her, and she had to slam on the brakes and veer onto the rocky shoulder to narrowly avoid being hit.
She cursed, the loose rocks on the shoulder jarring, dirt flying up in a dust cloud behind her. She slowed to a stop and the truck decelerated, staying in the right-hand lane a little ahead of her.
“Damn drunk,” she said aloud, waiting for him to go along his way. But the pickup came to a complete halt, idling in the right-hand lane. Slowly it started to back up. For a second she wondered if he wanted to apologize, but then he was veering straight backward, aiming for her on the shoulder, going way too fast to just want a friendly chat.
She slammed her wagon into reverse and angled back onto the roadway. When her tires hit the pavement, she changed gears and gunned the engine, hoping to steer clear of him and pass. But he gunned his truck, too, matching her speed, cutting her off.
“What the hell?” Alex breathed. She stopped again in the right-hand lane, and the other truck stopped just in front of her. She tried to pull around him and again he matched her moves, blocking her from moving forward.
“Enough of this shit,” she cursed, swinging around him onto the grass just off the shoulder.
She gunned the wagon, getting ahead of him and racing toward town. Maybe they’d pass another car, and he’d lose his nerve in front of a witness. She reached a bend in the road and took it fast, sliding along the bench seat. Ahead lay another straightaway, and the newer truck had no problem overtaking her. It raced up behind her, then swerved into the passing lane.
No other vehicles were on the road. So much for witnesses. Reaching into her pack, she felt around for her phone. She pulled it out and dared a glance at the screen. No signal. She didn’t think there would be, but it was worth checking if this jerk was planning to run her off the road.
Wrenching his wheel to the right, he swerved into her lane. She slammed on her brakes and moved toward the shoulder, evading him. He slowed down, too, staying abreast of her, and tugged sharply at his wheel again. She sped up, hitting the shoulder, her tires spinning in the loose gravel there. This time he stayed in her lane, driving her more and more onto the shoulder. Her tires spun, slowing her down. The man swerved his truck to the side, almost hitting her fender. She slammed on the brakes and steered off the shoulder, bumping down a sloped embankment covered in sagebrush. A gravelly wash paralleled the road, and she came to a stop nose down into it.
Staring up the embankment, she saw the pickup stop above her. Quickly she steered her wagon into the wash. The pickup idled above her, then gunned its engine a few times. She was ahead of it enough now to see the license plate, and she made a mental note of it.