She looked up. Hank was a lean, handsome man in his early forties, with dark hair and kind brown eyes. He’d moved from the Lower 48 five years ago with his wife, Sarah, and their eight-year-old daughter. She considered him a friend, but not the kind she’d tell, well, the story of her stupidest moment. “It’s just, um, a . . . guy.”

“I see. Not any guy. The guy.”

Right. “It’s in the past. Bygones. I think that he’s probably forgotten about me, and I need to do the same. Have—have done the same.”

“Except for the ghost.”

“Yeah. So, what’s the deal with the bear?”

“She had given birth.”

Echo stilled. “What?”

“But her milk had dried up, so we’re not sure if the cub is dead or if she stopped nursing prematurely. It’s possible that’s why she was out of her den early, looking for food.”

“If she wasn’t shot in her den.”

He lifted a shoulder. “There’s no way to prove it. Not unless you have a camera on the den.”

“We’d have to look at the footage, and these cameras don’t send back a feed—we have to get the recording manually, but . . .” She handed Hank the report. “My dad is driving me crazy. You know he tracks Elsa and her cubs every year. A few of her cubs are tagged, but mostly it’s about Elsa. According to the telemetry, she’s not moving. I think she’s still denning—it’s too early for a mama to be out of her den, but my dad thinks it’s because she’s already been murdered, and her collar removed. He wants to go out and check, but—”

“I understand. He gets too close to a mama bear this early, and if she is awake and nursing, it could be very dangerous.”

“He says that if this bear was out—like Idaho said she was—then Elsa should be out too. I disagree. I know we’ve had a warm spell for a week or so, but it shouldn’t be enough to trigger a mama bear coming out of hibernation.”

“Which means, you think this bear was killed in her den.”

“And her cub left to die.”

“Those are some pretty serious poaching allegations.”

“But I can’t prove it.” She sighed. “I’d like to get a look at the camera in that area, however. I might be able to catch our dead bear out roaming before she was shot. If not, it’s not proof that she was in her den, or of the poaching, but it might help us figure out if Elsa is hibernating or not.”