of us do.”
“Is that why you are so alert? Earlier today I noticed how you seemed to be scanning the area around you, almost as if you had radar on or something. I’ve seen you do that on the ranch, too.”
“That’s sniper stalking,” he said. Slowing down, he made a turn into Three Bars. It was a mile down the well-cared-for dirt road to the main area of the ranch. “Sometimes snipers have to go into cities or crowded places. They have to sense or see their quarry and then fade back into the background and disappear.”
“You aren’t obvious about it, that’s for sure.”
“You’re very good at sensing, too,” he said. “I think because of your inborn sensitivity, your use of your senses in general, that you’d make a very good sniper.”
She groaned. “That is not much of a compliment, Chase.”
“It is a compliment. Sometimes I watch you from my truck when you’re working around one of the hive areas. And if you’re alone, I hear you speak to them in a very quiet, low voice. You walk very softly, you don’t make any fast or sudden moves. It’s almost as if you become a bee yourself when you are there with them.”
She laughed a little. “Well! One of the first things we teach young beekeepers is to never make sharp, sudden movements around bees. They take that as an attack and threat. I used to follow my mother around the hives my grandfather had in Hawaii. She taught me to walk and move like she did, like a ballerina in slow motion. I remember she told me to pretend I was a warm, quiet breeze moving in and among the hives, that my arms were like slow, beautiful clouds, and that the bee people would love me for being the sky.”
“Nice to put it that way,” he murmured, looking around at the green pastures. In some, there were wranglers herding a group of cows. In others, there were sheep or goats. “She was teaching you to be one with the bees.”
“Yes. But as a sniper you were melting into and becoming one with your environment. Right?”
“Exactly. Or to lie or sit for hours, camouflaged, unmoving. Snipers are very patient people.”
“So are beekeepers,” she said, smiling.
He drove over to the office and parked. “Let’s unload these three boxes and give them to my forewoman, Tracy Hartimer. Then, we’ll drop off a box at the raptor facility.”
“I met Tracy once. She’s hilarious! What a sense of humor. And she always wears a pistol on her hip.”
“Tracy seems to be a magnet for trouble,” Chase said with a sour grin, taking two of the boxes. Cari took the third box and they carried them to the front door of the office.
“OMG!” Tracy yelled, standing up behind her huge, messy desk. “I’ve died and gone to heaven! Chase, you rascal, you! I can smell those donuts clear over here!”
Cari laughed and set one box on her desk. “Chase said you’d distribute them.”
Rolling her eyes, Tracy opened the box, snatching a chocolate-covered donut. “Well, pardner, don’t believe everything he tells you.”
Chuckling, Chase set the other two boxes on the desk. “Figured on your next run around in the truck, you’d hand them out.”
Tracy took a second chocolate donut. She held up her hands to Cari. “Did the boss warn you about a two-donut gun slinger?”
Giggling, Cari shook her head.
“Yeah, she’ll shoot donut holes at you,” Chase said, backing away from the desk as Tracy munched contentedly.
Cari couldn’t stop laughing. This was the first time she’d seen these two together. “Oh! You two are a comedy team!”
“Naw, just donut-starved wranglers, Bee Queen.”
Raising his brows, Chase looked over at her. “Is that Tracy’s nickname for you? You know she gives everyone some kinda name, earned or not.”
“Tracy and I met when I was working with Theresa. We’d just put the last of the Flow Hives in place and the bee packets had come in. She stayed in her truck because she said bees didn’t like her.”
“There’s some truth to that,” Chase admitted, winking over at Tracy, who had polished off the first donut and was working hard on the second one. His forewoman was tall, lean, and all hard muscle. Her father, Lance, had trained her well, over a twenty year period, for this job. He had died two years ago and she’d easily stepped into his boots.
Wiping her mouth with a tissue from the box on her desk, Tracy gave Chase a jaded look. “Actually,