Looking at him gave her a shivery feeling, like the hairs on her skin were standing upright, so she avoided it. A very strange feeling, yes, but not… frightening.

No, she wasn’t afraid of him. He wasn’t a Bad Man; she was sure of it because of the dogs.

The man’s black brows had drawn down; they made angled shadows over his eyes. “I came out here not just to hunt. But to find you.”

Apprehension tightened her abs; this couldn’t be good. How would he have known who she was, that she lived back here?

Koa moved to the side of pork and raised her knife. “We can talk while we’re butchering then,” she said. “I don’t have a refrigerator. I have to get the meat into…where it can be preserved.”

She didn’t want to speak of her place. Of her smokehouse.

The hunter went to the opposite side of the hog. She heard the sound of his knife slicing in; though the pig was too big to see across, his movements had a confidence that spoke of experience.

She relaxed a little and focused on her own task.

“I was looking for you to tell you something. About your friend, Ella,” he said.

Koa’s started, then peered around the carcass to meet the hunter’s gaze. His eyes were the rich dark brown of the soil in her garden. She couldn’t see a pupil in them, but she could read concern in their tightened corners.

“What happened to Ella?” Her breath caught in her chest. “How do you know her? Is she all right?”

“She’s okay. She’s safe now. I took her topside, to a women’s shelter. I hope she’ll stay there and have the baby at the hospital, and leave Abalo.”

So many words, each of them important, but how?

Who was he to be able to do all this?

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