The patrollers without dogs filed out, while the ones with dogs set about crating them for the morning. Nina paused beside Connor on her way out. “Stacy’s cute. How long have you known her?”
“A while.” He avoided looking at her. He wasn’t really good at subterfuge. “She’s just a friend. In town for a few days.”
She waited, as if expecting him to say more, but when he didn’t, she shrugged. “Well, enjoy her visit.”
Connor waited until everyone had left before he exited the patrol office.
Stacy was there, standing next to the ski rack. She had donned the helmet, the goggles pushed up to give a clear view of her brown eyes when she turned to look at him. “It doesn’t sound like any of your patrollers have heard anything useful,” she said.
“Hmm.” He knocked snow from his boots and clicked into his skis.
She laid her own skis beside his and clicked into the bindings. “Where are we headed?” she asked.
“I’m going to work,” he said.
“I’m going with you.” At his glare, she added, “I want to talk to you about the protest meeting I attended last night.”
“I don’t care about the meeting,” he said.
“But you should. It was very interesting.”
He said nothing but skied toward the lift, bypassing the half dozen skiers who had arrived early, waiting to board at 9:00 a.m. The liftie nodded as he skied to the line to wait for a chair. Stacy slid in beside him.
“I feel like a VIP,” she said as they settled into the chair. Connor didn’t bother lowering the safety bar, and she didn’t ask. Below them, the snow was a sea of white corduroy. “I guess you get first chair every morning, huh?” she asked.
“We do a sweep of the runs before they open, looking for any problems,” he said.
“Do you ever find any?”
“I once had to postpone opening of a run because of a lynx hanging out near the top.” He glanced at her. “It didn’t make me very popular with the guests.”
“A lynx? Really?”
“Yeah. They’re a threatened species, so we try to give them space. After an hour or so, it wandered back into the woods, and we were able to open the run.”
“That’s very considerate of the resort.”
“Consideration has nothing to do with it.” He swept a hand to indicate the terrain below them. “Except for about fifty acres full of condos and shops in the ski village, this is all national forest land. The resort leases it for the winter, but it doesn’t belong to SkyCrest. The Forest Service dictates where, when and how we operate.”
“And this expansion? Is that Forest Service land, too?”
“Yes. SkyCrest has petitioned the government to allow them to lease and develop the land.”
“Do you think the Forest Service will agree to the lease?”
“It depends. They’ll probably consider the environmental impact of development, as well as public sentiment.” He glanced at her. “The protestors don’t need to resort to violence to sway the decision. If they get enough people to sign petitions and show up at hearings to protest against the development—if they get people to lobby their government representatives—they have a good chance of persuading the Forest Service to rule against the resort.”
“Cynics would say the resort has enough money to buy the government’s cooperation.”
“I never said I wasn’t a cynic, but I think the system still works, most of the time.”
They reached the top of the lift, and she skied out in front of him. “We’re headed straight back to the bottom of this run,” he said. “Then we’ll ride back up and ski over to Top of the Mark—the highest lift-served terrain.”
He hung back, letting her get ahead of him. She was a good skier, carving effortless turns down the slope, her stance relaxed and graceful. Her formfitting black pants and short jacket emphasized her figure, and he had trouble taking his gaze off of her. If he had ever thought much about FBI agents, he hadn’t pictured one who looked like this.
At the bottom of the lift, they boarded again. “Let me tell you about the protest meeting,” she said.
“Fine. What about it?”
