The Game Warden

By Mary Flodin

Fish and Game Warden is not just Kelli Cavanaugh’s job — it’s her passion. But now, she finds herself fighting not only for the watershed she swore to protect, but for her very life.

When she responds to an anonymous tip about someone dumping toxic waste in a pristine salmon creek, she is attacked from behind and knocked out. She regains consciousness to discover she’s been abducted, along with a five-year-old year old girl, by a drug and trafficking cartel. Kelli must escape and save the child, but she’s dangling over a very deep, dark precipice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paper Angel Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949139792

Mary Flodin

Before settling into the writer’s life, Mary taught environmental education, English, and art for over twenty-five years in California public schools.She lives in a cottage on the Central California Coast with her husband — a retired NASA climate scientist — and their dog, koi, chickens, and gopher herd, where she spends her time practicing permaculture gardening, plein air painting, making pottery, bird watching, swimming, and enjoying life on the Monterey Bay ... and, of course, writing.

Book preview

The Game Warden

Mary Flodin

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

copyright © 2019 by Mary Flodin

The Game Warden was originally published in 2018

in Santa Cruz Weird by Good Read Publishers

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for the purpose of review and/or reference, without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design copyright © 2019 by Niki Lenhart

nikilen-designs.com

Published by Paper Angel Press

paperangelpress.com

ISBN 978-1-949139-79-2 (EPUB)

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The Game Warden

MONDAY MORNING, MAY 1, 1999

Corralitos Creek

Santa Cruz County, California

Fish and Game Warden Kelli Cavanaugh drove her truck along the narrow, winding forest road. As the half-ton Dodge 4x4 ascended into the coastal mountains, Warden Cavanaugh kept her eye on the creek that meandered from one side of the road to the other through culverts and under picturesque bridges.

She savored the hint of summer in the warming spring morning, feeling good in spite of the Cal Tip call that had brought her up here.

Someone had allegedly built a dam across the creek and was siphoning off water upstream during salmon egg hatching season — a critical time for maintaining sufficient water flow for the eggs to hatch and the juveniles to survive the summer. The same individuals were allegedly discharging raw sewage and other effluent downstream — a disturbing allegation, and serious violation of county riparian protection ordinance.

Native Coho salmon, a keystone species critical to the overall health and biodiversity of the redwood forest ecosystem, were on the verge of extinction. It was Kelli’s job as well as her passion to protect them.

Fish and Game Warden wasn’t just a job, but a lifestyle. She put her whole self into being Guardian of Our Wildlife Heritage twenty-four seven, in or out of uniform. She considered it