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Wynona shook her head. “No, I’m on tender hooks just like you.”
He blinked and then stared at her, momentarily disoriented. What had she just said?
She caught him staring. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I’m really tired, and I think I misunderstood you. What did you just say?”
She laughed brightly. “I said I was on tender hooks. It means like you’re waiting with bated breath for something, like you can’t wait to find out the answer so much that it hurts.” She shrugged. “It’s something my grandmother used to say.”
The disorientation in Tucker’s brain grew to an audible buzzing that was almost disabling. What was going on?
Wynona glanced at the front of the room and then gave his arm a squeeze. “I haven’t heard any bad news, so I think that it’s good news.” She smiled again and then slipped into the crowd. He watched her go, frozen somewhere between stupefied and horrified.
There was no way, right?
He mentally scrolled back through all the messages he and May had exchanged, looking for other similarities, but he couldn’t find any, and he convinced himself that this was just some wild coincidence. Two different women who work nights for the government incorrectly used the phrase tender hooks. It wasn’t impossible.
The alternative was that she had lied to him. May lived in South Dakota. Wynona lived in Nebraska. If she had lied about where she lived? The idea made him feel ill.
A woman stepped up to the podium and introduced herself as Sarah Jutting from U.S. Fish and Wildlife. She’d come all the way from Lakewood, Colorado. So that’s why they couldn’t have a press conference until noon.
Sarah Jutting used a whole lot of words to say very little. She introduced countless officials, most of whom were not in attendance and probably had nothing to do with the situation at all. She was just licking boots. Tucker had never been a big fan of political types, but right now he was disliking them even more than usual. He promised himself that he would repent of that later. Right now he just wanted to get through this.
Finally, she got to the toad. He expected her to invite Wynona to speak, but she did not.
Instead, Sarah Jutting took complete credit for the finding of the western Blake toad. After giving an exhaustive history of the toad, she described the process by which they’d found it. The trouble was, her description didn’t much resemble what had actually happened.
Tucker did not have the energy to care.
He could feel the tension in the room thickening as all of the hunters and guides waited for the announcement they really cared about, but it never came. Sarah thanked everyone for coming and then asked if there were any questions.
How out of touch could she possibly be?
Of course, the first question was about opening day.
She flashed the asker—a man Tucker did not know—a smile that did not reach her eyes. “We will be continuing to send teams out into the forest to look for more data. The more data we have, the better we will be able to make these types of decisions.”
“What?” the man yelled. “You didn’t answer my question!” A chorus of grunts expressed the crowd’s agreement. “Are we going to hunt on opening day or not?”
For the first time Sarah looked a little nervous. Good. She deserved to be nervous. “At this time, and this is subject to change based on data, but at this time, this portion of the Black Hills will be closed to hunters.”
The room erupted.
Jonas Shucker turned to glare directly at Tucker.
People started shouting their questions:
“How big of an area will you shut down?”
“When will it be open?”
“What about regular elk season?” He meant, would he be able to get his elk with his rifle when the time came, but Tucker wasn’t confident that Sarah knew that.
“Is there a chance it’ll open late?”
“Why does she need to shut it down at all?” a veteran guide yelled. “We promise not to shoot the toads!” This one got a few laughs, but none from Tucker. He was too busy grinding his teeth together.
Hadn’t he been told that if they found the toad that they could go hunting on opening day? Had he imagined that? And if he had not imagined it, who had reneged on their word? Had it been Wynona or her boss? He was furious. He didn’t like feeling used. He didn’t like being manipulated.
