“Sure.”
“He told them about the hunters, but they were long gone.”
“But they left behind shell casings?And a sign of a camp—firewood, the place where the tents had been set up, footprints, tire tracks?”
“Yes.They did check Granddad’s car to see if he had rifles in it, but he didn’t.His shoes and tire tracks didn’t match the ones at the camp.And they saw there had been three men’s boot imprints at the camp.They checked Granddad’s hands for gunpowder residue, and he didn’t have any.Then they had police officers track down the license plate of the truck the hunters drove off in.”
“And they had rifles.”
“And gun powder residue on their hands.When the police investigators tested the weapons to determine if they were the same ones that had been used to kill my grandmother, they found they were.The hunters swore up and down that they had killed a cougar that had been stalking them.”
“As a shifter, she wouldn’t have been stalking them,” Mrs.Fitzgerald.
“Right.She wasn’t.They hunted her down just because she was a cougar.”
“So your grandfather had done the right thing in letting the police handle it.”
Lacy let out her breath.“They went to prison for forty years.But those men should have been dead.”
“I agree.But if he had killed them as a cougar, they would have hunted any cougar down in the area.”
“Yeah.You’re right.”
“So do you want to tell your grandfather where you are?”Mrs.Fitz ate the rest of her dinner.
Lacy began working on hers again.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, but she could imagine he was worried sick about her.
“Did he know you were having trouble with the cougar in an abusive relationship?”
“He told me when I was first dating Timothy that he was bad news.I…I didn’t listen to my grandfather.”
“So he could be worried about you when you went missing without a word.”
Lacy sighed.“Yeah.You’re right.Knowing my grandfather, he has half his FBI agent friends who are still working at the agency looking for me.I didn’t think of that.”
She pulled out her phone and called her grandfather, afraid a text message wouldn’t cut it.He could think her ex-boyfriend was sending it or coercing her to send it.
Her grandfather answered right away.“Lacy, are you all right?”
“Yes, Granddad.I’m living in a cougar-run town, have a job at a coffee shop, and am staying with the shop’s owner for now until I get a place of my own.”
“Who is the man you’re staying with?”
She was amused that he thought it was a man and was probably worried about her hooking up with someone older.
“Florence Fitzgerald, Granddad.Not a man.She’s a retired?—”
“FBI agent,” her granddad said, sounding surprised.
She frowned and looked at Mrs.Fitz.“You know her?”
“Yeah, we worked on several assignments together.”
“Oh.So I guess you know that I’m safe then.”
“Where?”
