Chapter Seven
SUMMER STARED AT the sliver of light escaping into her bedroom through a slit in the curtains, sleep eluding her.
After Peter’s shocking revelation, she had eventually recovered enough to re-engage with the conversation, and together with M?rten and Jacob had asked endless questions of the head ranger, and answered endless questions in return.
But the result had been a big, fat blank.
None of them could come up with an explanation for why both she and Paige may have been targeted.
They’d all agreed that perhaps some rest might help them finagle out the reason, and so just after midnight, they’d gone to their separate bedrooms. Summer hoped everyone else was doing better at getting some sleep than she was.
Summer had mulled over and over the time she’d spent in Yellowstone with Paige, relating every detail she could remember to Peter, while the other three sat around the table and listened intently. Now, she did it again and again in her head.
Summer had been contacted by a project officer for the Montana Ecological Services Field Office who’d asked if she were available to help with a feasibility study they were running to document how a small population of black-footed ferrets living on the outskirts of the Yellowstone National Park might be impacted by a proposed new gold mine to be built in the area.
These diminutive carnivores thrived on a diet of primarily prairie dogs, but they’d been thought to be extinct from the western United States when ranchers cleared them out to make room for their cattle.
They were rediscovered in the early eighties, however, and then biologists used a captive breeding program to build up the numbers, releasing some limited populations onto ranches and federal land around Yellowstone.
It’s very rare for an animal to come back from extinction, and Summer had been thrilled to be invited to join the enterprise.
The project officer had told her the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, USFWS, had a vested interest in the program and so they’d allocated a ranger to accompany her on the field trip.
The ranger would help plan and conduct the nighttime catch and release survey.
Which was how Summer met Paige. She and Paige had gelled almost instantly.
They were around the same age, and both had a passion for conservation and the environment.
Paige had an infectious laugh that lit up her bright, hazel eyes and made her cheeks wobble with mirth.
Paige was the same height as Summer, but with a lot more curves, and at first Summer had been fooled by her looks, thinking her soft.
But she soon discovered that Paige was as fit—if not fitter—than her, and could bound up a rocky incline, a full pack on her back, with the determination of a mountain goat, leaving Summer panting in her wake.
Paige was strong and tenacious, and it was only because of her help and guidance that Summer had recorded some amazing videos of this small creature in the wild.
They’d spent five days and four nights traipsing through areas the ferret frequented, carrying all their gear on their backs and camping out under the stars.
Paige was also a great benefit when they encountered ranchers or property owners, which they invariably did, as most of the animal habitats were situated just outside the boundaries of the national park.
Paige’s official uniform lent an air of authentication to their little venture that Summer wouldn’t have been able to pull off if she’d been alone, and Paige, who could talk the hind leg off a donkey, sweet-talked them all into allowing them access to their land.
However, none of her recollections had helped her to figure out why Paige might have been abducted—because that was what Peter was afraid of, even though he was loath to voice his concern—and for Summer’s apartment to be ransacked and then her possibly nearly kidnapped as well.
She rolled over in bed, then slipped out from underneath the covers, her mind revolving through her and Paige’s time spent out in the wilderness.
Was it something to do with the project itself?
They were looking into how the mine might affect these animals.
Could the mining company be hoping to quash the endeavor?
The Montana Ecological Field Office was yet to release their report; Summer had sent her photos and videos to the project officer almost as soon as she returned to Seattle, but they were still pulling together all the data and records from other researchers collaborating on the study.
Summer knew the outcome would not be favorable for the Gold Mine.
Everything pointed to the mine being a huge disruption to the ferret population.
Once the environmental report was handed to the Bureau of Land Management, it would have to reconsider its options.
Hopefully, it’d stop the mine in its tracks.
Or at the very least force them to reconsider the location, reducing the mine in size to leave a large enough buffer zone for the animals to remain untouched; which would also put a large dent in their profits.
Summer flicked on the bedside lamp, pulled a sweater over her head and grabbed her backpack, tugging it up onto the bed next to her.
Maybe if she looked at the photos she’d taken on that field trip, they might jog her memory.
She withdrew her laptop and waited for it to boot up, giving thanks once more that she hadn’t left it in the apartment the other night so the thief could potentially steal it.
It took a few moments to find the correct folder.
This might take a while. There were hundreds of photos; Summer had documented the entire trip, but she’d only sent the relevant ones of the ferrets to the project officer.
There were plenty of other images of the amazing wilderness.
A luminous sunset from the top of Pelican Cone, the sparkling ripples of the waters of Yellowstone Lake, and so many other vistas in between.
Chewing her lip, she bent her head over her computer and began to scroll.
What felt like only moments later, there was a light tap at the door. Summer checked the clock on her screen and was shocked to see she’d been stooped over the photos for an hour. It was now two a.m.
“Come in,” she called out softly. M?rten’s face appeared around the crack in the door.
“Sorry, I saw the light under your door. Couldn’t you sleep either?”
“No,” she consented as M?rten came all the way into the room and shut the door quietly behind him.
She couldn’t help but notice how his black T-shirt fit ever-so-snugly over impressive biceps as he raised a hand to run it through his silvery hair.
She had heard the term sexy and disheveled before, but never in her wildest dreams had she thought to use it herself on a man standing in front of her.
At this particular moment, however, it seemed one-hundred percent appropriate.
M?rten exuded that exact air; his hair was sexily sleep-tousled, his silver eyes heavily lidded, his manner unguarded and vulnerable.
Something clenched tight in her chest, and then something echoed that clench much lower down, between her legs.
“Whatcha doin’?” he asked as she stared dumbly at him, unable to form a coherent word.
“Um…” She tried to corral her thoughts, but then he raised both his arms above his head and stretched, exposing a wedge of washboard-flat stomach, and her mouth hung open.
Oh. My. God. His abs were amazing. Well-defined, his skin ever so slightly tanned, with a faint trail of darker hair leading down beneath his waistband.
Summer shook her head. Blast. He was affecting her again, when she needed to be thinking clearly.
“Um…” she said again. Then, she snapped her mouth shut and pointed at her computer. “I was going through all the photos I took on our trip to Yellowstone. I thought something might jump out at me.”
“Good idea,” he said, walking over and sitting on the bed next to her without being asked. Like, right next to her. So close she could almost feel the brush of his shoulder through the thick material of her sweater. “Can I help?”
“Um…” God, she sounded like a broken record.
Get it together, Summer. “Sure.” She pointed to the current photo on the screen of a tall metal fence running across a small clearing and then disappearing into the tree line in the distance.
“This was taken on day four of our trip, when it was getting late. We were looking for a campsite. We were on federal land by that stage, right where the mining company had already built some preliminary structures.” Summer almost laughed at the audacity of the company.
“They were so sure they were going to get approval they’d started building roads and set up a whole raft of demountable offices, as well as many large sheds housing all kinds of equipment, and had even started work on a small power plant,” she scoffed.
“This section of the proposed mine site, where all the supporting infrastructure was situated, wasn’t supposed to be considered in the scope of our study.
It was the open-pit ore extraction sites, the waste storage areas, and the access routes that would affect the ferret populations the most. But we were passing right by, and so I asked Paige if we could take a look.
These large fences surrounded it, so we didn’t go in.
” Oh, but Summer had wanted to. She’d even pleaded with Paige, but the ranger had stood firm.
“We can’t be seen to be breaking the law,” Paige had said, her normally jovial face serious for once. “We can’t give this gold company any ammunition they might use to get this study stopped.” Summer had grudgingly agreed; it’d be stupid to get caught trespassing.