Free Gun Shy by Donna Ball Page B

“What the hell is going on here? Get away from that car!” The other, leaner and bespectacled but obviously in no better shape, struggled to keep up.
    Cisco barked sharply and excitedly through the partially lowered window of my vehicle. There was nothing he loved better than an adrenaline rush first thing in the morning. The two men, noticing him, and taking stock of me as I stepped back from behind the open door of the Range Rover, slowed their frantic pace a little. But the red-faced one did not look any less annoyed just because he had discovered the vandal to be a woman with a dog.
    “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
    I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Do you have a current hunting license?”
    He looked taken aback, and his companion, just then coming abreast of him, gasped, “Is there—a problem here?”
    The slight wheeze to his breathing suggested an asthmatic who had no business being out here amidst all this leaf mold, much less traversing rugged countryside with a gun. My contempt became mitigated by pity, but not enough to overcome my anger. Before I could snap back a reply, another man emerged from the woods. He wore his jacket open and his gun slung over his shoulder on a strap, which demonstrated that he might possess a modicum more intelligence than his companions, and he strode rather than ran. But he was every bit as city smooth and woods stupid as his two cohorts.
    He was scowling as he came toward us. “What’s going on here, Jack?”
    Cisco barked a greeting to the newcomer and the scowl cleared as he looked from the big, bouncing golden retriever inside the SUV to me. He said, “Is something wrong?”
    The heavy one said, “She wants to see our hunting license!”
    The newcomer raised an eyebrow. Even without seeing the smooth Caribbean tan and the two-hundred-dollar haircut, I would have recognized the authority of a man who was accustomed to being in charge—and to having things his way, when he wanted them, and without asking twice.
    He fixed me with a cool gray gaze and inquired politely, “And who might you be?”
    Of course by then I realized I was in over my head, but I never have known when to give up and start swimming for shore. So I squared my shoulders, met his eyes and replied, “I’m Raine Stockton, from the Hanson Point Ranger Station.”
    His expression relaxed as he looked me up and down, obviously making note of my tattered barn jacket and dusty jeans, not a badge or a uniform in sight. He said, “That’s the forest service, isn’t it?”
    I felt my cheeks color. I hated that. “That’s right.”
    “Aren’t hunting licenses issued by the fish and game commission?”
    I glared at him. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have to have one.”
    “True enough. But it does make me wonder what interest you would have in seeing it.”
    “I didn’t ask to see it,” I snapped back at him. “I just asked if you had one.”
    At that point the bespectacled man stepped forward, still wheezing, and held out three pieces of creased paper. I recognized the seal of the fish and game commissionand brushed the papers away. “Because if you did have licenses,” I went on hotly, “any of you, I was going to petition my state representative for a change in the law—one that does not allow for the issuing of hunting licenses to complete idiots!”
    Cisco, always eager to cheer me on, punctuated my sentiment with a bark from the window. The stranger glanced at him and smiled, and then surprised me by extending his hand to me. I recognized, from my last trip to the Asheville Mall, the scent of Ralph Lauren’s Polo for Men. “Miles Young, Miss Stockton. This is Jack Crane, my architect, and George Williams, my attorney. Reese Pickens told me you were a pistol. Good to see the old coot didn’t lie about one thing.”
    It took me far too long to put all of this together. I just stood there, glaring at him, ignoring his hand until he shrugged and dropped