“Gotcha.” I pulled out my pocket knife and dug around the bullet. With my gloved hand, I carefully extracted the hunk of metal and placed it in another evidence bag. We were gonna get this fucker.
I turned to see David marching down the path. I met him halfway. “Sir, I didn’t know you were coming out.”
He grimaced at the mare. “I wanted to see what you were able to find. We can’t have people hunting out of their allotted areas. We need to find this guy before they hurt someone.”
I wanted to argue that someone had already been hurt. The mare wasn’t human, but that didn’t make her loss any less real. I bit my tongue. At least David was taking this seriously. “We’ve got some leads.”
“Fill me in.”
I walked David through what I believed happened and showed him the threads and the slug. “Between this and the bullet I’m sure they’ll find in the mare, at least we’ve got something. When we get a suspect, we can compare ballistics to their firearms.”
David studied the evidence bags, and then his gaze flicked to me. “Good work. But no one’s going to approve of an autopsy for a horse. This bullet you found is enough.”
I hated that the mare wasn’t getting the respect she deserved, but David was right. One bullet was all we needed to nail this guy. “All right. I’ll make sure they get logged, and the bullet gets sent off to the crime lab as soon as I’m back.”
David made a beckoning motion with his hand. “I’ll take them. I’m headed back now.”
“Thank you, sir.” I handed him the evidence.
“Keep me apprised of anything else you find.”
“Will do.”
I would find whoever did this. And I was going to nail them with everything I had.
I rolledmy truck to a stop outside Jensen’s guest house. The urge to check on her, to make sure she was okay had been too strong. I hopped down and made my way up the path. Rapping on the door three times, I waited. Her SUV was here, so I assumed she was home.
The door swung open, and Walker stood there. “Hey, man, what’re you doing here?”
Jensen appeared behind him, her dark hair piled into a haphazard bun on the top of her head. And she wore an apron dotted with what looked like tomato sauce. “Hey, Tuck.”
I forced my gaze back to Walker. “I just wanted to check on Little J, make sure she was okay.”
Jensen’s head fell back, and she let out an exasperated sigh.
Walker stiffened. “What do you mean, check on her? What happened?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Of course, she hadn’t.
Jensen threw up her hands. “Iwas never in any danger.” She pinned me with a stare. “The only thing you need to worry about is figuring out who needs their hunting license revoked. Have you found any leads?”
I opened my mouth to answer her, but Walker cut me off. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
I took a few minutes to fill Walker in. The longer I talked, the redder his face got. He spun to face Jensen. “That was so fucking stupid.”
She arched a brow. “Excuse me? One, watch your language, Noah is upstairs. Two, don’t you dare pull that attitude with me.”
I was pretty sure there was smoke coming out of Walker’s ears. “You should know. Better than most. It is incredibly dumb to go out onto any of these trails alone. Anything could happen, and you would have had no one to help you.”
Jensen’s hands went to her hips. “I had a fully stocked pack and my phone. I’m not an idiot. I was less than a mile from my car.”
Walker rubbed his temples. “There are about two places in a five-mile radius up there that get service. What if you had gotten hurt?”
Jensen’s jaw hardened. “I didn’t.”
“Well, you could have. You can’t pull this kind of shit. You have a son.”
I sucked in a breath. Walker froze. He knew he’d crossed a line as soon as the words left his mouth.
