“General Kenobi, target sighted, a thermal detonator,” he said. In his mind, Noah pictured a galaxy slave clad in a chain mail bikini. If only the universe would actually send him someone like that.
Then he changed his voice to a wise baritone with a bad English accent. “I trust you will find what you seek. And … shit.” A pale shadow glimmered in the road right in front of him. He turned the wheel and eased off the accelerator. The truck fishtailed. Rudy scrabbled around on his seat, trying to stay put. In the middle of the road stood a big-eyed doe, ribs showing through its thick winter coat.
He leaned on the horn. The doe sprang into action, sprinting across the road, leaping the ditch and disappearing into darkness. Midwinter was the worst time of year for the wildlife. The starving season.
The radio station played its usual test of the emergency broadcast system. He turned it off.
Almost home. There were no landmarks visible to tell him so, just an inner sense that he was nearing home. Other than college and vet school at Cornell, he’d never lived anywhere else. Each rural mailbox was supposed to be marked by a tall segment of rebar, but the snowdrifts were too deep and the rebar and mailboxes were buried.
He sensed but could not see Willow Lake, which lay to the left of the road. Willow Lake was the prettiest in the county, a natural beauty fringed by the Catskills wilderness. At the moment it was invisible behind the curtain of snowfall. Noah’s place was across the road from the lake and slightly uphill. Along the lakefront itself were several old summer cottages, unoccupied in winter.
“General Azkanabi, we need reinforcements,” he said, hearing the imaginary music swell in his ears. “Send me someone without delay!”
In that instant, he noticed … something. A glimmer of red in the snowy shadows. The whistled theme song died between his teeth. He eased off the accelerator and kept his eyes on the crimson glow, eventually making out a matching light. Taillights, which seemed to belong to a car stuck in a snowbank.
He stopped the truck in the middle of the road. The car was still running; he could see a plume of exhaust coming from its unnaturally angled pipe. The taillights poured an eerie red light into the night. One of the headlights was buried in the snowbank. The other illuminated the deer that had been hit.
“Stay, boy,” Noah ordered Rudy. He grabbed his kit, which contained enough tranquilizer to put down the deer. He lit his flashlight, an elastic headlamp.
Switching on his hazard lights, he emerged into the stormy night. The flying snow and howling wind sliced at him like blades of ice. He hurried over to the car, spying a single occupant inside, a woman. She seemed to be fumbling with a cell phone.
She lowered the window. “Thank God you came,” she said, and got out of the car.
She was inadequately dressed for the weather, that was for sure. A high-fashion coat and thin leather boots with tall, skinny heels. No hat. No gloves. Blond hair, blowing wildly in the wind, partially obscured her face.
“You got here so quickly,” she yelled.
He figured she thought he was from roadside assistance or the highway department. No time to explain.
She seemed to share his urgency as she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the front of the car, wobbling a little on her boots. “Please,” she said, her voice strained with distress. “I can’t believe this happened. Do you think it can be saved?”
He aimed the beam of the headlamp at the deer. It wasn’t the doe he’d spotted earlier, but a young buck with a broken antler on one side, three points on the other. Its eyes were glassy and it panted in a way Noah recognized—the panicked breaths of an animal in shock. He saw no blood, but so often, the injuries that killed were internal.
Damn. He hated putting animals down. Hated it.
“Please,” the stranger said again, “you have to save it.”
“Hold this,” he said, handing her a flashlight from his kit to supplement the headlamp. He eased himself down next to the animal, making a soothing sound in his throat. “Easy, fella.” He took off his gloves, stuffed them in a pocket of his parka. The rough coat of the deer warmed his fingers as he palpated its belly, finding no sign of fluid, no abnormal softening or heat. Maybe—
Without warning, the deer scrambled into action, legs flailing for traction in the deep, soft snow. Noah caught a sharp blow to the arm and backed off. The animal lurched to its feet and leaped over a snowbank; Noah instinctively moved in front of the woman to shield her from the hooves as the animal clambered off into the woods.
“I didn’t kill it,” the woman said. “You saved it.”
No, he thought, although it must have looked impressive, what with the deer jumping up as soon as he placed his hands on it. He didn’t say so, but there was still a good chance the buck might collapse somewhere in the forest, and die.
He turned off the headlamp and straightened up. She shone the flashlight into his face, blinding him. When he flinched, she lowered the beam. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Pulling on his gloves, he asked her, “Where are you headed?”
“Twelve forty-seven Lakeshore Road. The Wilson place. Do you know it?”
He squinted, getting his bearings. She had run her car off the road right by his driveway. “Another few hundred yards down toward the lake and you’re there,” he said. “I can give you a lift.”
“Thank you.” Snowflakes caught in her eyelashes, and she blinked them away. He caught a glimpse of her face—startlingly pretty, but pale and strained. “I’ll get my things.” She handed him the flashlight, then fetched a purse and a big tote bag from her car. There was also a roll-aboard, fluttering with tags. In the glow of the dome light, he could see words in some foreign language—’s-Gravenhage? He had no idea what that was. And another with an official-looking seal, like from the State Department or something. Whoa, he thought. International woman of mystery.
She turned off the ignition and the lights. “I don’t suppose there’s anything to be done about the car,” she said.
“Not tonight, anyway.”
“I’ve got a few more bags in the trunk,” she said. “Do you think it’s safe to leave them?”
“Probably not a huge night for thieves.” He led the way to his truck and opened the passenger-side door. “Get in the back,” he ordered Rudy, and the dog leaped into the jump seat behind.
The woman hesitated, clutching the purse to her chest and staring up at him. Even in the dim light from the truck’s cab, he could tell her eyes were blue. And she was no longer regarding him as the Deer Whisperer. Now she was looking at him as though he were an ax murderer.
“You’re looking at me as if I’m an ax murderer.”
“How do I know you’re not one?”
“Noah Shepherd,” he said. “I live right here. This is my driveway.” He gestured. The drive leading up to the house, flanked by pine trees weighted with snow, now lay beneath knee-deep drifts. A glimmer shone from the front window, and the porch light created a misty yellow aura around the front door. The entranceway to the clinic, kennels and stables lay off to the left, the security lights barely visible.
She paused, touched her teeth to her lower lip. “Even ax murderers have to live somewhere.”
“Right. So how do I know you’re not an ax murderer?”
She seemed completely unperturbed by the question. “You don’t,” she said simply, and got in the truck.
As he walked around the front to the driver’s side, Noah wondered if strange forces were at work. He wasn’t given to thinking of such things, but hadn’t he just been wishing for someone? Was the universe listening after all?
Of