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waste of time but also opened the door to all sorts of bad results.
    She wouldn’t cry over Dare Callahan, anyway. There was nothing there to cry over. They had no history, no connection other than being in competition with each other, and that wasn’t going to endear him to her. No, if she was emotional about anything, it was about selling her place. She’d grown up in that house. Her dad had loved it here in western Montana, loved the people and what he did; his grave was here. Leaving here felt as if she’d be leaving him.
    No way. She was moving, she had to, but she swore to herself right then that she’d come back at least once a year, more often ifshe could manage it, to tend to his grave, to leave flowers, even to talk to him as if he could hear her. Love didn’t go away when someone died, and she would make a point to honor him for the rest of her life. He’d been a good man, and he’d devoted himself to raising her after her mother deserted both of them for some sleazy guy when Angie was almost two.
    Her dad had been enough for her. She didn’t know where her mother was, if she was even still alive, and frankly didn’t care. She had never done an Internet search on her mother’s name, and certainly never bothered to hire a professional to search. Angie’s dad had stepped up and supported her, raised her, loved her, and given her nothing but understanding and comfort when her wedding had blown up in her face. She couldn’t do anything for him now except honor him in death, so for as long as she lived and was physically able, she’d take care of his grave.
    “So help me God,” she said aloud, and felt a little better, because saying it aloud somehow solemnized it, as if she had signed a contract. She wasn’t severing all ties. She’d be living elsewhere, and eventually that new place would become home the same way her apartment in Billings had become home after she’d lived there a while. Being adaptable didn’t mean she was deserting her dad’s memory.
    Thinking of her dad made her realize she should be concentrating on the two clients who would be coming in day after tomorrow. One of them, Chad Krugman, was a repeat client, but he almost could have been someone new because she couldn’t remember a lot about him other than, as a whole, he was pretty forgettable. Thank God she had a copy of the photograph she’d taken of him and his client after the client had shot a deer, otherwise she’d have had no clue what he looked like. He was just one of those people who never made much of an impression: on the short side, but not short enough to be memorable because of it; a little balding, a little soft around the middle. Not ugly, not attractive. Just … kind of invisible.
    Even though she’d looked at the photograph, she had a hard time holding his image in her mind. The one thing she remembered very clearly was that he wasn’t an experienced outdoorsman, or a very good shot. When he’d booked her before, last year, she’d even gotten the impression he hadn’t enjoyed himself very much and hadn’t really wanted to be there, so she didn’t have any idea why he’d rebooked for this year. Bottom line, though, she didn’t care why, just that he had; she needed the income. Hunting season would soon be over, and unless a professional photographer wanted some snow shots of the mountains for a nature magazine or something, she wouldn’t have anything else for the winter.
    Maybe, against all odds, Harlan would get a quick offer on her place. She’d have to scramble to find somewhere else to live, but sooner rather than later. Now that the difficult first step was behind her, she was anxious to move on. It was that streak of realism again: Once she decided her course of action, she was ready to act.
    For now, though, she had to take care of business, and get everything organized for the trip. She’d e-mailed Chad Krugman asking for some specifics on the client, Mitchell Davis, whom he was