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Virgil glanced at Willow. “And if you horse people—”
“Willow.”
He stopped.
Jodie nodded toward her. “Her name’s Willow.”
Virgil looked at Jodie for a long moment, then back at Willow.
“Fine. If Willow’s people stay where they’re supposed to, I don’t have a problem with it.”
Willow’s eyebrows went up, but for once she kept whatever she was thinking to herself.
Virgil bent over the map again and moved his finger six inches north, giving the observation point a better view.
Jodie figured that was close enough to peace for one afternoon.
SIXTEEN
By the time the meeting broke up, nobody was happy, but at least they had something they could work with. FHDH would have eyes on the gather, the Bureau had its safety perimeter, Virgil had his boundaries, and Jodie had a fresh page of notes full of names, vehicle information, check-in procedures, and three things Harold still needed to confirm before morning.
But the helicopters were still coming. That put a damper on anything resembling a victory celebration.
Jodie spent the next few hours doing what she did best. She made sure the radios were plugged into the chargers and the spare batteries were where people could actually find them. She checked tomorrow’s vehicle assignments twice, answered questions about where equipment belonged, found an extension cord somebody swore had vanished, and stopped two volunteers from setting up another coffeemaker on Hank’s already overworked circuit.
Sandra had taken over one end of a camp table, surrounded by camera bodies, microphones, batteries, memory cards, and enough charging cables to make Jodie itch to label everything. Willow was still pissed off, but she’d channeled it into tomorrow’s observer schedule instead of homicide, which Jodie considered progress.
Hank drifted in and out of the activity without trying to run any of it. He hauled another cooler from the barn, pointed somebody toward the outdoor spigot, found an extra folding table when they ran out of room, then disappeared again before anyone could thank him too enthusiastically. However, Jodie made certain a couple of volunteers helped him with his own horses. His veterans program was suspended until the roundup was over, so he was short a few hands.
By the time food came off the grills, the sun had dropped low enough that the barn threw a long shadow over part of the camp. The worst of the day’s heat had finally begun to ease. Jodie finally let Mac steer her toward a folding chair with a plate in her hand. Tomorrow’s gather was scheduled to start early, so nobody seemed interested in making dinner a late-night affair.
She’d made it halfway through her hamburger when she saw a pair of enormous ears sticking out from behind Hank’s barn. She stopped chewing.
No way.
The ears disappeared.
Jodie swallowed and set her plate on the folding table beside her. “I’ll be right back,” she told Mac.
“Everything okay?”
“I think I saw him.”
Mac’s eyebrows went up. “Him?”
“That stray dog.” She pointed toward the barn. “Over there.”
Jodie picked up her plate again and surveyed what was left of her dinner. Hamburger. Potato salad. Chips. None of which struck her as ideal lure material, especially the potato salad unless her goal was to introduce a half-feral dog to mayonnaise and gastrointestinal regret. She pulled a piece of plain hamburger meat from the middle of her bun.
“Good luck,” Mac said quietly, as she handed him her plate.
Jodie gave him a smile. She headed toward the barn. Behind her, conversation rose and fell around the camp. Jodie rounded the corner of the barn slowly.
Nothing.
“Buddy? Hey, buddy,” she called softly.
One enormous ear appeared from behind a stack of old fence posts, followed by a long, brown snout trimmed in white sniffing the air.
