“Vali Lokisen, huh? What kind of a name is that anyway? Japanese?” Susan looked up from her enormous white coffee mug, her brunette curls bouncing in the morning light.

“Uh.” I pushed back from the table. “I think I’m going to get a scone. Would you like a scone? Or more coffee?”

Susan’s smile widened, and my cheeks burned. I stood and walked away from the table with as much dignity as I could muster. We were having coffee at the Whole World Cafe, a vegan, gluten-free, co-op sandwiched between the bars and art galleries on Bozeman’s Main Street. The place was packed with college students and dirtbag climbing bums. I rubbed my forehead; the headache nipping at my temples was getting worse, and the cafe’s weird New Age electronica music wasn’t helping matters.

Very stupidly, I finished an entire bottle of wine by myself last night as I tried to think of a plausible story to tell Susan. By the time I poured myself the very last glass from the overpriced bottle I bought after cashing Barry fucking Richardson’s alimony check, I had a brilliant story. It was totally believable, not at all creepy, and didn’t sound half as batshit crazy as the truth.

This morning, I couldn’t remember a word of that story, and it didn’t help that I woke up crying for some stupid reason. I’d walked to the coffee shop, trying to at least remember the premise that had sounded so appealing last night. Nothing. I showed up twenty minutes late. Susan was already on her second soy milk latte, and she looked suspicious.

The kid behind the counter had aggressively orange hair under his cowboy hat, gauges in his ears, and a barbell through his nose.

“Hi,” I squeaked, feeling old and significantly lamer than everyone around me. “I’d like a scone, please.”

He grunted something, and I handed him my credit card. After another five minutes someone shoved a blue plate at me with what must have been a scone on it. I took a deep breath and walked back to Susan’s table.

Susan was beaming. “So, you met him in the park,” she said. “This....Vali.”

My mind raced as I took an enormous bite of the scone. It tasted like sawdust. I took a sip of coffee to force it down before I finally managed to stutter, “Yes, this last trip.”

“With your grad students?”

I shook my head. “Before they showed up.”

“And he was, what? Tall, dark, and handsome?”

“Well, he, uh—” I coughed and glanced at the front door. “He—”

Susan started laughing. “Oh, Karen! You had a real wildlife encounter!”

I stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got no idea the kind of things that happen in the backcountry,” she said. “That’s what we used to call it when I was a park ranger. A real wildlife encounter.”

I opened my mouth to disagree with her and then closed it again. A real wildlife encounter. Actually, that pretty much summed it up.

“So, did you sleep with him?” Susan’s wide smile and sparkling eyes said she’d already guessed the answer to that question.

“Really, Susan? That’s all you want to know? If I slept with him?”

Susan shook her head, and her wild curls bounced. “Nah, I don’t really care if you actually slept with him. I was more wondering if you fucked him.”

I rolled my eyes. That was Susan in a nutshell; she was not a euphemism type of gal. “Well, uh, kind of,” I said, my voice hardly more than a whisper.

Susan made a face. “Kind of? How can you ‘kind of’ fuck someone?”

“Stop it,” I hissed, casting a furtive glance around the coffee shop to make sure none of the kids in here were my students.

Susan leaned back and waved her hands in surrender. “Hey, good for you! I guess I don’t need all the details.” She sighed into her latte, her pained expression making her disappointment very clear. “So, did you get his number? You going to see him again?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t exactly have a phone.”

Susan sighed again, a dreamy look on her face. “Damn, do I ever miss being a backcountry ranger.”

I choked on my coffee and coughed so hard Susan reached across the table to hit me on the back. After that, everyone in the coffee shop stared at us. Under the scrutiny of several dozen hipster twenty-somethings, Susan mercifully changed the subject.

“You coming fishing with us on Saturday?”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“What? You haven’t been in ages. We’re hitting up the Gallatin canyon, and there’s a late stonefly hatch.”

“I know,” I said, running my fingers along the blue plate holding the scone. I did love the women’s fly fishing group, but if I didn’t get another grant this year, the whole tenure process might be in jeopardy.

“If you tell me you have to work, Karen, I swear to God I will force feed you the rest of that scone.”

I winced.

Susan threw her hands up in the air. “Seriously? Did you move to Montana to work on a Saturday?”

Anger flared deep in my chest, hot and sudden, and I smacked my palms against the formica table, making my blue plate jump. “I moved to Montana to be a professor, damn it! So, yes, I suppose I did!”

Susan’s eyes widened and she looked around the room. Everyone was staring at us again.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I sank into my chair, wishing I could hide behind my sawdust scone. “It’s just...the semester just started, I’ve got a ton of data to analyze, and my latest grant proposal got rejected.”

She smiled. “Hey, it’s no problem. I wouldn’t be your friend if I couldn’t handle your crazy.”

I grinned back and drained the last of my coffee.

“Maybe you just need another real wildlife encounter,” Susan said, pushing back from the table.

“God, wouldn’t that be nice,” I said with a sigh.

****

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL Saturday morning.

I tried not to think about the women’s fly fishing group driving up the Gallatin Canyon as I watched the morning sun illuminate Hyalite Peak on the far side of the valley. I hated working on Saturdays, but there was no way around it. If I wanted money to fund my research, I had to get my grant approved this year. And that meant reading through all the feedback, finding out why they rejected me, and changing the entire proposal. Even if I thought they were all wrong.

Especially if I thought they were all wrong.

I parked my Subaru in the empty faculty lot and slammed the door shut. First thing Saturday morning, and I was already in a bad mood. Great. Just fucking great.

The lights in the science building hallway flicked to life as I walked through the echoing corridors, trying not to think of all the other things I could be doing with a beautiful Saturday morning in early fall.

The lights above me flickered and buzzed as I froze in the hallway. The door to my lab was ajar.

“I locked this,” I whispered to myself. “I locked this Friday night.”

My heart jumped as I approached the open door. My lab doesn’t have a plethora of valuable equipment, but still. I’ve got a half dozen computers, and meth heads are always looking for stolen scales. If someone took one of our notebooks, we’d have no way to retrieve that data.

I stopped just outside the door and made a fist around my keys. The lab was totally dark, and a weird, labored rasping drifted through the open door, like a machine that had been left on and was starting to die. I eased the door open as quietly as possible.

Zeke. It was Zeke. He was sprawled across his desk, face down and snoring. Loudly. The lights flickered to life when I entered. He barely stirred.

“Zeke? You okay?” I called.

Zeke shifted and sat up, blinking bloodshot eyes. He smelled like cheap beer and cigarette smoke.

“Hey, mornin’, Boss Lady!” he said with a wide smile, showing off his broken front tooth.

“Zeke, what the hell are you doing in the lab?”

He yawned, stretched, and wiped drool off his cheek. “Sleepin’.”

“Yeah, I figured that part out on my own. But why? Don’t you have an apartment in grad student housing?”

“Well. Funny thing about that.” Zeke scratched himself and yawned again. “The missus wasn’t too happy to see me last night.”

“The missus? Since when do you have a girlfriend?”

He grinned. “Since August.”

“Zeke, it’s September. Early September.”

“Yup,” he said, twisting his neck to both sides. “She moved in last week. Then things kinda went downhill.”

“Ah,” I said, briefly wondering if I should try to look sympathetic. “Well, good luck with that. Listen, if you really need a place to stay—”

“Nah, nah. Although hell, sleepin’ at a desk. Shit. I think you’ve got the right idea, Boss Lady, what with your whole long distance, inter-species—”

“Stop. Stop it right there,” I said, holding up both my hands.

“Fine, fine.” Zeke held his hands up in surrender. “But hell, what are you doing here? Isn’t it Saturday?”

“Yeah. It’s Saturday,” I said, opening a window to air out the lab.

“Well, don’t you know Saturday’s are for cookin’ a pound of bacon and nursing a hangover?”

I glared at him.

Zeke belched and shook his head. “Damn, Boss Lady, never mind,” he said as he backed toward the door. “I’ll just leave you to it, then.”

He was gone before I could think of an appropriate response, leaving the whole lab smelling like cheap beer and unwashed male graduate student. Gross. I rubbed my temple, where the beginning of a headache was starting to coalesce. It looked like I’d be working in my office this fine Saturday.

****

MY CELL PHONE RANG from somewhere under the stack of papers on my desk. I shoveled them aside, grateful for the distraction. I was only halfway through the reviewer comments on my rejected NSF grant, and I’d already decided every single one of the peer reviewers could go to hell. Slowly, and hopefully painfully.

My phone was sitting face down in the middle of the textbook for my Introduction to Ecology class. I flipped it over, expecting Mom, then frowned. It was John Rodriguez. John studies the interactions between wolf and coyote populations in the park, and he’s also just about the only member of my department I actually like. I swiped my finger across the screen to answer.

“Hey, John, what is it?”

“Karen. They’ve shot a wolf.”

My stomach dropped out from under me. “Oh, no.”

“It was just outside Yellowstone. I’m headed there now,” he said. “Karen, it was... it was a rancher.”

I shot to my feet. “Motherfucker!” I screamed into the phone. “Those goddamn rednecks!”

More wolves are killed by humans than all the other causes of mortality combined, which pisses me the fuck off. And that’s why, ever since the press conference where I was asked to leave the room, John tries to be the public face of Montana State University’s wolf research program.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, pacing to the window.

“That, uh, that’s why I’m headed down. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, the sick feeling in my stomach growing. “What wolf? What wolf got shot?”

“I don’t know. A big male, apparently.”

The room spun. I closed my eyes. “What color?”

“Uh, let me check,” I heard the phone shifting. My heartbeat felt very loud, and I tasted something bitter in the back of my throat.

“Doesn’t say,” he said, finally.

“I’m coming down,” I said, slamming my laptop shut.

“No! Karen, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” John stammered.

“West Yellowstone, right?”

John sighed loudly. “Just let me do the talking this time, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, glancing at the clock. I wouldn’t be to West Yellowstone for at least ninety minutes. “John, when you find out what color the wolf is, you call me back.”

“Okay... Are you going to tell me why?”

“Just do it!” I yelled, and I slammed the phone down on top of my computer bag.

A big male. I pressed my palms against my eyes.

Don’t be Vali. Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be Vali.

****

HIGHWAY 191 WOVE IN and out of the Beartooth mountains, crossing the Gallatin river half a dozen times as it climbed toward West Yellowstone. It was a beautiful day. The sun sparkled off the dancing mountain river, and the tall grasses nodded with the full seed heads of early autumn. My stomach felt like a lead weight; tears bit at the corners of my eyes. I checked my cell phone every few seconds as I lost service, regained service, then lost service again. My phone found a single bar of cell service just as I drove past Big Sky Country ski resort, which was the kind of exclusive, ultra-expensive place Barry fucking Richardson would like.

My phone rang. For a second, I was afraid to answer.

I bit the inside of my cheek and swiped my screen. “Yes?”

“Gray,” John said. “A gray male. No radio collar.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding since Bozeman. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “And Karen. I think it did kill a calf.”

“So fucking what?” I yelled, my anger flaring again. “Don’t they know they can be compensated for livestock losses? Stupid fucking ignorant—”

“You know it’s not that simple,” John said, cutting off what would have been a damn fine rant. “It’s hard to prove the cause of death. You know that.”

“Yeah, I also know that wolves are fucking sentient creatures, with more right to be here than the goddam cattle!”

John was silent. I could almost hear him shaking his head in erudite disapproval. “When’s the last time you had a hamburger?” he finally said. “Where do you think that beef came from?”

I ground my teeth together to keep from telling him to shut the fuck up.

“I’m almost there,” I said, hanging up the phone.

I took a deep breath and tried to loosen my death grip on the steering wheel. It wasn’t Vali. But still, it could have been him. It could have been a lone black wolf who was shot this morning. I watched the mountains unfold through my windshield. I’ve got to warn him.

I’ve got to spend the night in Yellowstone.

****

IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME to find the ranch where the wolf had been shot. So long, in fact, I started to suspect John had given me the wrong address on purpose. I finally spotted the tiny, rusty address marker that matched my hastily scrawled notes and turned down a rutted dirt road.

This did not look like a prosperous ranch. The family lived in a trailer at the end of the road, surrounded by broken down vehicles. One of the pickup trucks had a fading bumper sticker that read “SAVE 100 ELK - SHOOT A WOLF!” I tried very hard not to kick the rust-spotted bumper as I left my car.

A dust plume rose in the distance, and the low whine of a four-wheeler filled the air. I shaded my eyes with my hand and watched two vehicles crest the nearest hill. The four-wheelers pulled into the yard, kicking up dirt and belching clouds of blue smoke. John was riding behind a young man, hardly old enough to be out of high school. I was guessing his father and grandfather rode the second four-wheeler. Their sun-lined faces were hard, and their eyes narrow.

“Thank you again for all your help,” John said, dusting himself off as he came to his feet.

“Welcome,” said the young man, curtly.

John nodded at me. “Mr. Leavenworth, this is my colleague from MSU,” he said. “Karen, this is Gage, Rick, and Stan Leavenworth. They were kind enough to take me to the site.”

John emphasized the word kind. I noticed a shotgun strapped to the back of the second four-wheeler.

“I’ll be sure to put livestock loss in my report,” said John. “And remember, you can file that compensation form.”

The older man - Stan, I thought - snorted, demonstrating exactly what he thought of government compensation programs. Undeterred, John turned back to the young man, pulling a business card out of his dust-covered jeans.

“Gage, you remember what I told you about MSU. I’d be happy to give you a tour. We’re always looking for bright, young students.”

Gage smiled. He looked, for the first time, both very young and very shy. The expressions on the older men’s faces softened somewhat.

I opened my mouth. John shot me a panicked look, shaking his head.

“Anything... I can do to help?” I asked, lamely.

“I think we’re all done here,” said John, positioning himself between me and the ranchers. “Thank you again for all your cooperation. We’re all in this together.”

The older ranchers just nodded, expressionless, but Gage smiled again, his dusty fingers curled around John’s business card.