“No way is he driving,” Dodge said. He took off after him. “Charlie. Give me those keys!”

He reached him, grabbed his arm, turned him around. Her dad yanked away from him, but Dodge took him by both arms and backed him up to the truck. Strange to see them face-to-face, the size Dodge had on her father.

Echo didn’t know what he said to him, but her dad pulled the keys from his pocket and slapped them into Dodge’s hands. Dodge nodded, and then maneuvered her dad around the truck to the opposite door. Put him inside.

She approached the truck. “I’ll drive.”

He pulled out his keys. “I’m driving him home. You follow in my truck.” He handed them to her and pointed at his dad’s Ram truck.

He met her eyes, held them. “I got this, Echo.”

Then he got in.

Yes, yes he did.

And she wanted to weep.

Dodge simply wasn’t sure Charlie wouldn’t force Echo to turn around and take him back to the Starlight to finish off whomever he’d been fighting with.

He turned on the wipers as the slightest drift of snow hit the windshield, melted, and slid off. The afternoon sky had turned a deep pewter, the landscape a wash of gray and white, the trees a mottled dark green.

“Want to tell me what happened back there, Charlie?”

His prisoner sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window, arms crossed over his jacket. The ultimatum he’d given the man flashed through Dodge’s mind.

“I don’t want to make a scene, but I will take those keys from you. Don’t go down in front of your daughter.”

Maybe he could have been kinder, but Charlie had called him a couple ripe names as he’d backed him into the truck, so he’d decided to get to the point.

Now, however, he glanced at Charlie, and a shard of compassion separated him from his frustration. “What did that guy say?”

“It’s what he did. He’s a poacher, and he killed a denning sow, left her cub to die.”

Right. He’d heard that story a few days ago. Dodge glanced into the rearview mirror. Echo followed him a few car lengths behind.

He wouldn’t be here except for the stricken look that crossed her face in the pizza place when Charlie went down. All Dodge’s instincts had lit, and he’d found himself across the room and hauling Charlie to the street before he came back to himself.

He refused to look too deeply at that. Just old habits.

Still, it was one thing to apologize. Quite another to find himself at her house, in the quiet hour, when all ill-fated conversations about the past could rise between them.

Not going to happen. He’d drop off Charlie, then leave.

His goal was peace, not a happy ending where they reignited some long-cold romance.