Free Endangered (9781101559017) by Pamela Beason Page A

system does make it difficult to arrest wildlife, no matter how strong the evidence.” His expression remained solemn, but there was a sparkle in his dark eyes.
    Was he making fun of her? She retorted, “Then you could go back to your coffee and doughnuts.”
    â€œCappuccino and biscotti,” he corrected.
    Sam was grateful when his jacket chirped, covering for her lack of a snappy comeback. He plucked a cell phone from an inner pocket and flipped it open. “Perez.”
    With a glance over his shoulder, the FBI agent moved away from them into the woods until his voice was too low to be heard.
    â€œCould you stand about a half mile away from me from now on?” Kent said to her. “Maybe he’ll forget we know each other.”
    She felt a twinge of regret. “Sorry. It’s just getting to me, all this emphasis on the cougars. If everyone assumes that a cougar ate Zack, they’re going to stop looking for him. He’s out there, somewhere, waiting for help. And they’re going to go after the cougars. With guns.”
    â€œSam, believe me, I know what’s at stake here. But we have to find a way to get everyone to help, not just alienate them right off the bat.” He fanned the air in her direction again. “Don’t you need to be somewhere? Somewhere downwind?”
    She gave him a half smile. Kent couldn’t stay mad at her for long. “I do need to get going, but first I want to give you something.”
    She returned to her Civic, pulled out her search notes and the baseball cap, then trotted back to Kent. Perez joined them just as she was ripping out the page onto which she’d copied Wilson’s license number and noted the toys and cookies.
    â€œI told Ranger Gaines—”
    â€œWe don’t have a Gaines,” Kent said.
    â€œFemale, Southern accent?”
    â€œGates,” Kent corrected. “Archaeologist. She’s new. Georgia Gates.”
    â€œGates, then. I told her all this on the phone, but be sure it gets checked out.” She held the scrap of paper out toward Kent.
    â€œMay I see that?” Perez pulled the page from her hand and studied the text. She told him her impressions of Wilson. The FBI agent listened impassively.
    â€œHe’s weird,” she concluded. “And there was mud on his clothes, like he’d been down by the river. If the man I saw wasn’t Fischer, it could have been Wilson.”
    â€œNo law against being weird,” Perez responded. “And anyone could have gone to the river. But we’ll check him out.”
    â€œHere,” she said, holding out the cap. “I think this is Zack’s cap. Wilson had it in his camper. He said he found it down by the river this morning.”
    â€œWhich makes sense, since that was close to the last place you saw Zack last night.”
    â€œThe last place I saw him was halfway down the path between the road and the Goodman Trailhead parking lot. There’s a lot of riverbank between there and the RV area. If I were you, I’d get Wilson to show you exactly where he found the cap.”
    Perez locked eyes with her for a long moment. His clear brown gaze didn’t tell her whether she’d just scored a point with him or lost ten. She’d always pictured a typical FBI agent as an overweight older fellow with a crew cut, not as a tall, handsome bronze specimen who looked several years younger and in better shape than she was.
    He held out his hand for the cap. When she placed it on his palm, he gave her a curious look.
    â€œWilson washed it.”
    Frowning, Perez folded her page of notes into a neat square and pushed it into the breast pocket of his jacket, then extracted another plastic bag from his pocket and slid the cap into that.
    Turning his back to her, he said to Kent, “Something’s come up. We’ve got to get back to park headquarters.”
    Sam checked her watch as she walked with them to the parking