“After I squeezed the cash out of them, I guess I’d make them give me things,” Stacey said at last. “But I’d draw up fake bills of sale because I’d want a paper trail. Everything would need to look legitimate from a legal perspective. But really they’d just be handing over whatever I demanded. Now you’ve got me thinking like a gangster. I guess the trick would be doing it gradually, so as not to kill the golden goose. Squeeze somebody too hard, and they’ll say, ‘fuck it,’ and go to the cops. Or they’ll show up at my house with a gun because they no longer care if they die, as long as they take me with them.”

The liquidated rooms inside Jewett’s ancestral house made sense now.

“What if you owned a woodlot?”

“Easy,” Stacey said. “I’d cut the hell out of it and sell off the wood. Eventually I might get them to transfer the property to me for development or resale, but only after there was nothing else left.”

When I’d told her she understood my thought process, I hadn’t expected this tour de force of criminal thinking.

“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.

“The same way you do. My dad always says a good warden needs to have some poacher’s blood in his veins.”

“That describes me. I’m not sure it describes you.”

“Because I don’t have a dark side? You must have different memories of our years together than I do. What’s this about anyway? What have you gotten yourself into? Because it doesn’t sound like a typical warden investigation.”

“Bruce Jewett.”

“What?”

“Remember that name, OK?”

She brought her phone closer to her mouth. “Are you in some kind of danger?”

“I was in danger a few minutes ago. I’ll be all right when I’m back on the road.”

Her end of the line went very quiet. I thought I had lost the signal. But then she spoke again.

“No, you’re not all right.”

Stacey and Ora both had powerful intuitions. Charley and I joked about the mother and daughter being clairvoyant. But their perceptions were often uncanny in their accuracy.

“I’m going down a hill, and there’s black ice. Maybe that’s what you’re picking up with your ESP.”

“It’s not ESP. It’s me knowing you and sensing you’re afraid.”

That was why I hadn’t called Dani, I realized. I hadn’t wanted to show that side of myself to her. Even after everything she and I had been through, I hadn’t been able to share my fears with my girlfriend.

“I’ll call you to explain when I’m safely home.”

If I had predicted what she would say next, it might’ve been something about taking care. Instead she blew my doors off.

“Mike, I love you.”