by Terry Spear
She finally reached him and licked his cheek with her sandpapery, warm, wet tongue, trying to show him she was not going to bite him. That probably didn't help, either. He might think she just wanted a taste before she bit him. There wasn't any other way to do this. She reached down and bit into his jacket. He screamed and flailed his arms and legs.
So not good. But she had no alternative. She pulled him from the rock and paddled with him to the base of the opposite cliffs and the small rocky beach, her teeth holding on for dear life as she didn’t want him to wriggle free. Halfway there, he stopped fighting her, for which she was extremely grateful.
When they reached the beach, he shook violently from the cold, his lips blue, and he didn't move away from her or try to get free. She pulled him up to the rock wall and under the overhang for a bit of shelter. No one seemed to be coming to his aid. She assumed a family was camping nearby, but in her puma form, she had no way to let them know the boy was in trouble.
Again, she did the only thing she could, knowing that if the family saw her, they'd think for certain she'd claimed the boy for her meal but wasn’t hungry enough to eat him yet. She began to lick the water off his face in an effort to dry him a little and to help the circulation in his skin. He was so cold, terrified, looking up at her with huge, haunted brown eyes and didn't utter another sound. Then she cuddled against him, trying to share the heat of her body, as if he was her overgrown cub.
When he fell asleep, she moved more of her body over his, trying to warm him. The temperatures dropped as the night progressed and he continued to shiver, but not as violently with her helping to warm him some. She remembered reading about an autistic boy who had wandered off in the middle of the night from his tent, and the family dog had found him, curled up with him, and kept him warm during the drop in temperature that night. When they’d located him, the dog was praised for saving the boy’s life.
With her? They’d shoot her.
By morning's first ribbon of pink light, she heard people shouting in panic. "Mikey! Mikey, where are you!"
Shannon licked the boy's face, trying to wake him so he could call out to his family. She couldn't leave him until she was certain they'd find him and carry him to safety.
She licked him again and purred. His eyes opened, and he looked even more terrified in the early dawn light.
"Mikey!" a man hollered in the woods still too far away.
She was afraid Mikey thought she would bite him if he tried to warn his family he was here. Despite not wanting to leave him until his family located him, she leapt into the water and swam away from the rocky beach.
As soon as she did, he began to yell, "I'm here! Over here! By the waterfall!" But his words were weak, and she wasn't sure his family would hear him.
She leapt onto a rock, then looked back at him. The voices grew closer.
Men yelled again.
"Here!" the boy said and started to cry. "Here!"
She swallowed a lump in her throat.
Three men broke out of the woods and spied her across the water, standing on the rock ledge. One of the men was armed with a rifle.
"Here," the boy cried and they looked over the overhang to see him.
Two of the men scrambled down the rocky cliff to reach him, the one remaining behind pulling the rifle to his shoulder.
She leapt onto the next ledge and disappeared into the brush and prayed the boy would recover from his injuries.
She knew she couldn't stay here now.
***
Glad the last of the campers staying at his rustic cabins in the Rockies had packed up and left, Chase Buchanan liked it just like this—no humans talking and shouting and laughing. Just the breeze fluttering through the leaves, the birds singing, and the water lapping at the lake's beach nearby.
After cutting up vegetables and adding water, stew meat, and spices in the crockpot, Chase started cooking the Irish stew on low. He had his day planned out for him. He was about to begin work on one of the cabin roofs when he got a call from his US Army Special Forces buddy and now sheriff of Yuma Town, Colorado. Trouble, Chase imagined. So much for his plans.
He lifted the phone to his ear. "Yeah, Dan?"
"If you can put on your deputy's badge, I need some help."
"What's up?"
"We have a big cat near Carver's Falls that dragged a six-year-old boy from the pool after he'd left his tent in the middle of the night and wandered off. He must have fallen off the cliff. His mom said he regularly sleepwalks when he's overly tired. Now we've got to hunt down the cougar."
"Did the cat hurt the boy?" Chase was certain Dan would have told him right off if the cougar had killed the child.
"No. Just licked him and dragged him to shore, then stayed with him."
Which meant the cat must have fed recently. "Are we using tranquilizer darts?"
"Yeah, we'll turn it over to the local big cat reserve or to a zoo if we can take him in all right. But I don't want anyone hunting for cougars in the area this early. Our people are doing their last minute runs in the wilderness before cougar hunting season begins in two weeks. A couple of other men—strictly non-shifters—are still at the campsite at Lake Buchanan. They helped track down the boy and witnessed the cougar. The family has packed up and gone home."
Sheriff Dan Steinacker and Chase had seen a lot of missions together while they served in the army, and Dan knew he could count on Chase for anything.
"I hear you." Chase had planned to run tonight himself after dusk, just like most of his shifter kind did once many of the tourists went home after summer break and before cougar hunting season began. "Where do you want me to head?"
"Southside. I'll take the north. That's the way the cat went, according to the family."
"Not one of ours, is he?"
"I had my dispatcher call the alert roster, but everyone is accounted for."
Chase sighed. "All right. I'm on my way there now." His cabins were about a mile from the location and the town, seven. He'd make it to Carver's Falls before Dan arrived to check out the area. "Call you with an update later," Chase promised, grabbed his rifle and darts, and headed outside to his vehicle.
So much for reroofing a couple of the cabins he owned in the next couple of days. This time of year when the tourists were gone, he repaired the two-hundred-year-old log cabins before winter arrived. He was thinking seriously about what his grandmother had said concerning the Buchanan of old. How they'd been castle builders in Scotland, replacing the wooden Roman fortresses with stone keeps and curtain walls that could keep out the invaders.
Not that he needed stone fortifications for the security. All he wanted was something that wouldn't need constant repairs.
When Chase finally reached Lake Buchanan, he saw just three tents in one of the camping areas. Wearing parkas, three men were fishing at the edge of the lake, the chilly breeze whipping about them.
"Howdy, folks," Chase said, stalking through the woods to reach the rocky beach.
A black-bearded man nodded in greeting. A younger redheaded man, looked to be his son, maybe in his early thirties, stood next to him. Another man, blond, same approximate age as the black-bearded man, watched Chase approach, looking a little wary.
"I’m Chase Buchanan with the sheriff's department," Chase said, having been deputized by Dan when he first arrived in town four years ago, but he wasn't on the regular payroll and didn't want to be. He liked managing his cabin resort just fine. Because of that, he wasn't dressed like the sheriff and his full-time deputy—instead wearing his western boots, blue jeans, western shirt, sweater, and parka coat—not at all the look of someone serving on a police force, though he flashed a badge. "Were you with the family whose boy was injured on the cliffs?"
"Not exactly with them, but camping nearby. My son and I went with the boy's dad to search for him when they discovered the boy was missing. I have to say I've never heard of anything like it. The cat pulling the kid out of the water and then sleeping with him. He
said he woke a couple of times and the cat was covering him with his body. We figure it had recently eaten and was saving him for later."
"Yeah," the son said. "We had a housecat that brought a mouse in from outside. A live mouse and put it in her dish. She planned to eat it later. Of course, as soon as she let go of it, it ran off."
"Right, gentlemen. Thanks," Chase said. He didn’t like having to take down cougars, but he didn’t have much of a choice in a case like this. Word would spread, and gun-toting hunters were sure to take down the kid-eating cougar. That meant any cougar they spotted would be a target. Forget licensing or limits.
"Are you going to kill it?" the first man said.
"Tranquilize it if we can locate it. He might have moved on." But Chase doubted it. Cougars were territorial and if he found this to be a good hunting ground, he'd stay nearby. Wanting the men to be safe, Chase said, "You know the rules at these campsites."
"Yeah. Don't leave any food out that'll attract wild animals," the younger man said, the other men nodding.
"If you've got guns, no shooting the cat," Chase said. “We’ll take care of it.”
"Unless he attacks us without provocation," the younger man said.
"Right." Chase had to agree that if they were attacked, they had every right to protect themselves.
He said goodbye to the men, then headed for his vehicle. He drove around the lake to the south side and parked, then grabbed his rifle filled with tranquilizer darts, a canteen of water, and binoculars. He could see well with his cat's vision, especially when something moved. But he wanted to catch sight of the cat well before the cougar caught sight of him.
Cougars were solitary animals, normally yielding to other large predators like bear and wolves in a pack. So he really didn’t believe he’d have much trouble with it. But if he tracked it down too far away, he would have a time carrying him back to his vehicle so he could take him to a cat reserve that was nearby until they could find the cat a more permanent home. Most zoos raised their own cats from cubs and didn’t take in wild ones. But sometimes they did. He even knew of a wild male cougar that had mated with a cougar raised by the zoo, which brought some much needed new genes into the gene pool and she had three healthy cubs as a result. So it could happen.
He trudged through the woods, the stands of golden aspens' quaking leaves turning, some already a blazing yellow, others still a summer green, and others turning golden orange, shimmering in the fading sunlight. Cottonwoods along Cougar Creek were fading into gold, and scrub oak sported its fall finery from rusty to pinkish red, oranges, and yellows, the evergreen pines mixed among them. At the highest elevations, a fresh blanket of snow covered the upper peaks of the mountains.
He sniffed the brisk, cool air. And then he caught the big cat’s scent. The cougar had come this way. Only he was a she.
Chase just hoped he could capture her and that someone would want to take her in without causing her too much trauma. If she was young, even better. Sometimes an older cat that was used to hunting might have to be dropped off in the wilderness somewhere else to fend for herself, or be put down.
Hating this part of the job, Chase continued to track the she-cat up into the rocks.
Chapter 2
Shannon Rafferty's schedule was all screwed up. She hadn't eaten for two days now, when she'd had every intention of finding a cave to sleep in, and then hunting for some dinner. Instead, she’d had to rescue the boy. She hoped Mikey's head injury wasn't too bad and that he hadn't suffered too gravely from the effects of hypothermia. Or that her rescuing him hadn’t given him nightmares. But she was afraid it would.
She had slept most of the day in another cave farther away from the first and then when it was dusk, she would have to risk hunting.
The sky grew darker as Shannon stared out the entrance of the cave, watching for any sign of danger. She hadn't seen any hikers or hunters. Yes, she'd noticed the tents at the campsite near the lake. She'd even considered that after the men retired to their tents and their sleeping bags tonight, she could go there and catch a fish in the lake. The campers wouldn’t be able to see her at night. Then she'd have it made. But once she’d rescued the boy, she nixed that idea. If they somehow did catch sight of her, they would know she was a dangerous predator, looking for a new source of meat. Maybe even them.
It didn't matter. She couldn't have let the boy drown. Several times she'd woken during the day, thinking she'd heard a child screaming. Forget his having nightmares about last night. She was having them!
The moonlight softly illuminated the golden aspen, the leaves fluttering in the chilly breeze. She closed her eyes briefly.
She had enough nightmares to deal with without piling up any more on top of those. She had intended to stay here in the area because she hadn't located any sign of wolves or black bears. If she ran into a black bear or wolf pack? Both predators would push a cougar out of their territory or kill him.
She hadn't smelled either in the vicinity. Only cougars. And a lot of them. Cougars didn't run in packs. Which was why a cougar would be at risk when encountering a wolf pack. A lone wolf was no match for a cougar's claws and teeth. But with a lot of cougars congregating together? It had to mean they were shifters. And they kept the other big predators away. So she thought she had half a chance at surviving here. Bears and wolves would find some other place to hunt.
She'd never smelled so many cougars in one area before though and it did worry her that they’d locate her and then what? Interrogate her. Why would a female shifter run in the wilderness by herself with no camping equipment anywhere?
Even if they didn’t learn who she was, she couldn't go to any of them and ask for help. Not in her cougar form. Without clothes, she couldn’t just walk into town naked, either. Besides, she was a wanted woman, and she was certain no one would believe her word over the rest of her boyfriend’s family. Not when Hennessey Kelly was a cop, which meant she was on her own.
The crimson sky turned to blackness and all that was left was the moon and a sprinkling of stars. Shannon rose, listened, her ears perked, trying to hear anything other than the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves down below. She heard no sign of humans and leapt down to the next ledge. Thankfully, her kind could leap eighteen feet in one bound, up or down. And horizontally? As much as forty to forty-five feet. At a sprint, she could run full out for short distances at forty to fifty miles per hour, which was what she had planned—to race back to the lake, despite discounting the idea earlier, and then take however long it took to catch her meal.
She'd made it to the second rock ledge when she saw something move in her peripheral vision. A man standing on a lower ledge off to her right, his hands reaching for his rifle, slung over his shoulder. How could he see her at dusk?
He moved quickly as if he was a military man and not just a hunter. Before she could leap at him, he fired a shot, the sound ringing in her ears, echoing across the rocks. The last thought she had as she collapsed on the rock ledge above him was that she had lived a month longer than she thought she would have ever managed.
***
As soon as the she-cat landed on the stone, asleep, hopefully, Chase struggled to reach the ledge she was lying on. If he’d been in his cougar form, no problem. But to reach her as a human, he could have used climbing gear.
He hated having to shoot her as much as it felt as if he were shooting one of his own people. But he wasn't. He had just knocked out a wild cat protecting herself that might have killed him, based on survival instinct alone.
He grasped the top of the ledge, got a couple of toe holds with his boots, and pulled himself halfway up the rock face when he saw a naked woman lying on the granite, her back to him, and his tranquilizer dart in her shoulder. Shocking him to the core, he gaped at her. Holy shit.
Silky, dark brown, nearly black hair draped around her neck, the rest of her tan skin covered in chill bumps from the cold. Before he could climb on top of the ledge to reach her, and while he was still p
rocessing that the cougar was a shifter, and not a full she-cat, his cell phone rang.
His nerves, normally made of steel, shattered into a million fragments. He climbed up onto the ledge and hurried to pull the dart out of the woman's shoulder, then jerked off his parka. After rushing to lay it on the ledge and then lifting her onto it, he pulled her arms into the sleeves and then buttoned it up to her throat. The parka only came to high thigh, but he couldn't do anything about that for now. He glanced up at the cave above them, assuming she must have been staying there.
His breath coming out in a misty fog and his heart pounding hard, he made the rest of the arduous climb to reach the cave to grab her clothes and ID. He stalked inside, used his cell phone to provide some extra light as pitch black as it was in there, and found—nothing. Not a backpack, not a stitch of clothes. Certainly no ID. And she wasn't anyone he remembered ever having seen before.
He hadn’t thought he could be shocked any further.
"God, what a nightmare." He had to get the nearly naked, sleeping woman down the cliffs somehow. And he had to keep her warm until then.
He called Dan to give him an update. "Dan.”
“Yeah, I tried calling you to let you know the cougar headed in this direction at some point, but I haven’t found any sign of him. Have you discovered anything your way?”
“Yeah. I sure as hell did. I'm in one hell of a mess. I need your help… pronto."
***
Dan immediately headed back south. In all the years he'd known Chase, he'd only heard him sound this frantic about anything twice in his life. The first time was when three of their team members had died in a mine blast during a combat mission and neither could save any of them. The second time was when Chase's family had been murdered.
"Okay, slow down and say everything after: you have a naked woman in your custody."
The last Dan had recalled, he'd sent Chase to track a cougar and… Ah, hell.
