CLAWS 2

by Stacey Cochran

  Kindle Readers’ Reviews of CLAWS

  “I don’t know how long he spent in this area, but Cochran has nailed it.” - E. J. McGill, author of Immaculate in Black

  “Fast paced book that keeps you on edge.” - Bethany Stambaugh

  “Could not put it down. Fast paced page turner of a book.” - Ira B. Steinberg

  “CLAWS was one of the first books that I downloaded for my Kindle and I couldn't stop reading. Makes you think twice about going camping.” - Holly Christine, author of The Nine Lives of Clemenza

  “A truly terrifying book. Stacey’s use of locations is impeccable.” - Richard Childers, author of Kings of California

  “Suspense with a bit of politics and romance... Cochran gives the reader insight into both sides of the issue regarding wild animals' habitats dwindling due to increased human population.” - Cynthia L. Wallace

  “Like ‘Jaws’ in the forest.” - Jason Hess

  CLAWS 2

  STACEY COCHRAN

  Prologue

  Rain hammered the tent.

  Beth Jansen and her eight-year-old son Ethan lay inside in the darkness and dampness, feeling cold and wet. The air smelled of mildew and insect repellent. Ethan coughed.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Everything is fine,” she said. “Settle down. Go to sleep.”

  Rain pooled on top of their tent, seeping through in drops that fell on the sleeping bags.

  Beth had wanted this trip to Colorado to work for months, was desperate for it to work. Ethan was her youngest of three boys, and his growing up unsettled her. Her oldest boy was eighteen, and he had dropped out of high school the year before, moved a thousand miles from home, and worked at a pizza joint. He lived in a dive that Beth couldn’t block from her thoughts at night.

  The middle boy was sixteen and had flunked the ninth grade. He threatened her daily that he would leave, and Beth knew it was just a matter of time before he took off to join his older brother. She wouldn’t be surprised to find him gone when she got home from this trip.

  This wasn’t how she’d pictured motherhood when she was a girl growing up on a farm in Gilbert, Arizona, and it ate her up inside to think that she was failing as a parent. Women around her neighborhood talked about her behind her back. They talked about her outbursts and about her husband’s walking out on her when the youngest was still in diapers.

  But maybe the third boy Ethan would turn out alright. Maybe. He still had some time before he’d hit his teen years, and if she gave him quality time now, she thought, he might not turn on her as badly when he became a teenager.

  She started humming Amazing Grace.

  Ethan flicked on his flashlight.

  “Turn it off,” she said.

  Ethan shined the light at the tent’s ceiling. They could see where the weight of the water pressed down on the fabric.

  “I thought I heard something,” he said.

  “Off.”

  Ethan clicked off his flashlight.

  “I’m cold,” he said.

  His mom said nothing.

  “I hate camping,” he said.

  “Hush,” she said. “Be still.”

  Ethan looked at the water dripping down on top of his sleeping bag. Lightning flashed across the sky, followed by an enormous rumble of thunder. Their campsite was going to get washed away.

  Beth sat up in her sleeping bag. The rain continued to pound the tent. She unzipped her bag and leaned toward the front tent flap.

  “What’re you doing?” Ethan asked.

  “Shhh,” Beth said. “Sleep.”

  She stepped outside and swept her hand over the rain cover. Water poured down the sides. She thought about walking back down the mountain to her car. She and Ethan would be drier in the hatchback, but they probably wouldn’t get any sleep.

  She could carry the tent and rain cover to a Laundromat in Durango in the morning. They could wash it and dry it, but the walk back down the mountain to her car was over three miles. It would take them at least an hour, provided they didn’t get lost. And it was pitch black out.

  Beth saw something move out of the corner of her eye, and adrenaline hit her. She swung around. Her hair was soaked, and she rubbed water from her brow. She squinted into the darkness and rain.

  Another bolt of lightning ripped from the sky, brightening the forest. Thunder crackled and enveloped them.

  “God,” she gasped.

  “Mom?” Ethan called from inside the tent.

  “Hush,” she said. “Hand me the flashlight.”

  “I’m scared.”

  Beth knelt down and looked inside the tent. “The flashlight, Ethan.”

  He sat up in his sleeping bag and handed the flashlight to her. She took it and let the tent flap close.

  Ethan saw the flashlight turn on through the fabric of the tent. His mom stepped a few feet away, and she shined the light from right to left across the far end of the campsite. Ethan waited for some response, and the rain continued to pour.

  The light went out, and Ethan heard growling.

  “Mom?” he called.

  No reply. She’d been standing about ten feet away when the flashlight vanished, and Ethan leaned forward and pulled the tent flap back. Rainwater spattered up off the ground, and he saw the flashlight was still on. It had fallen down among thick grass at the edge of their site. Ethan didn’t see his—

  “Mom!” he shouted into the rain.

  Again, no reply. The rain poured down on him. He scanned the darkness at the edge of the site, and terror took hold.

  Oh, my God, he thought. Oh, my God!

  The fear was paralyzing. He lay down flat in the middle of the tent, his eyes looking out to the left. He didn’t want to move. He couldn’t move. He was afraid to call out.

  Then, he heard something large moving outside the tent. He knew it wasn’t his mom. He knew it was a wild animal. It sniffed at the tent, and Ethan saw its nose pressing down against the fabric. His eyes went wide, the adrenaline so intense that he was in shock.

  The animal moved around to the front of the tent.

  Ethan heard a deep burbling noise, followed by three breathy “whoofing” sounds. The animal exhaled and padded around outside in the rain. It was huge.

  And then, everything became silent. It sounded like the animal had walked away. Ethan lay on the floor of the tent, terrified beyond any other fear he’d ever known.

  Ten seconds passed. The rain continued to hammer the tent. The floor was wet, and Ethan’s shirt had soaked through. It was cold, and his breath steamed. He lay there another ten seconds willing the animal to go away.

  Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.

  He didn’t hear it at all, and slowly, he raised himself up off of the floor. He sat on his knees, as though in prayer, and he stared at the tent flap hanging loosely in front of him.

  If he just looked and saw that the animal was gone, he would be alright. He just needed to know that it was gone. He didn’t want to die, and so he started to reach forward to pull the tent flap back.

  His hand was one inch away from the flap.

  He reached forward and touched it. Ethan started to pull the flap to the right.

  All of a sudden he heard a roar so loud it ripped apart his world.

  A giant bear’s head emerged through the flap.

  Ethan screamed and fell back into the tent. The bear swung right and left, cords and stakes ripping up from the earth. Ethan screamed and screamed, but then the bear’s head came forward and its mouth bit his right leg.

  Ethan screamed!

  The tent fell on top of him, and he batted wildly at it. The bear pulled him from the tent, but Ethan managed to turn over and clawed at the ground.

  He felt mud and earth, and he swung around. The b
ear did not let go of his leg. Tears streamed down the sides of his face. His mouth was wide, screaming like no other scream he’d ever screamed in his life. Then the bear let go.

  Ethan had a quarter of a second to try and roll over. He saw the flashlight in the grass. He could smell wet animal fur. The ground was wet, grainy and cold. He had mud on his hands, and he could taste a granola bar he’d eaten an hour ago.

  He saw something lying in the grass at the edge of the site. It looked like a shoe sticking up from the weeds.

  Then the bear was over him. Enormous.

  He screamed, “Please, God, help me!”

  The bear’s mouth came down towards his face, and everything faded to black.

  One

  Frank Dalton glared across his desk at Angie Rippard with unconcealed hatred. He was a backwoods political man who wielded his Telluride mayorship like some sort of mafia kingpin. Angie had read up on his back story and found he’d been divorced four times, but she held that information in quiet reserve.

  “There are no grizzly bears in southwest Colorado,” Dalton barked. “None. Do you hear me, Ms. Rippard? And frankly, I don’t have time to waste on a woman like you. With ski season getting underway, there are issues far more important in Telluride than a desperate biologist and a governor who believes in ghosts.”

  Dalton wore a black cowboy hat cocked back on his head at an angle, and he kept pushing his glasses up on his nose. The lenses were as thick as Coke bottle bottoms, and they made his blue eyes look like fish eyes.

  Angie said, “The governor believes that the San Juan grizzly may not be a gho—”

  “And her obvious mental lapse in funding a woman like you as some sort of half-assed maverick research biologist is a total waste of tax-payer dollars.”

  The misogynistic undercurrent of Dalton’s statement was so palpable that Angie thought she had misunderstood him. Her brow furrowed, not believing that any twenty-first century human being could be so transparently hateful. She was about to ask him what he meant, but Dalton made it plenty clear.

  “Women are not meant to be researchers, Ms. Rippard,” he said. “And maybe it seems a tad bit out of step to you, but I don’t believe they’re meant to hold elected office either. There was a time in the great state of Colorado when women knew their place. After all, the constitution of the United States clearly says ‘All men are created equal.’ Women, on the other hand, are nothing more than housewives and whores.”

  Angie stared at him. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Finally she said, “Are you insane?”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Rippard?”

  “First off,” she said, “it’s Doctor Rippard. Secondly, I don’t know what Cro-Magnon universe you fell out of, but I was asked to be here. The governor of Colorado believes you have the last remnant of Colorado grizzlies up here in these mountains.” She looked out Dalton’s office window at snow-capped La Junta and Palmyra Peaks to the southeast. “Now whether she’s right or whether she’s wrong remains to be seen. But that’s why I’m here, ’cause if there’s a pocket of Colorado grizzlies in the San Juan Mountains, they’d be the most endangered mammal in North America.”

  Dalton smirked but said nothing. Angie could smell his body odor across the desk.

  She continued, “And, Mayor Dalton, I’m aware of the amount of money paid to cede the 550 land to Abraham Foxwell. I’m aware of his plans with W.D.A. Corp. That’s why I’m here; because if, and again I say if, there is a remnant population of Colorado grizzlies up there, he’ll be forced to suspend construction, and he’ll have to move his slash-and-burn development elsewhere.”

  Frank Dalton stared emotionlessly at her. The silence in the room was hot enough to fry an egg on. Outside his office window a gentle snow fell silently, and trucks and SUVs crawled slowly up the two-lane downtown street. Local weathermen were predicting eight to ten inches for the coming twenty-four hours.

  “Are you done?” Dalton said.

  Angie stared.

  “Are you quite finished, Ms. Rippard? Because I was going to offer you my help. A number of my associates are connected with the proposed resort. Five hundred million dollars is an amount of money that a woman of your experience simply cannot understand. I might as well be talking Swahili.”

  Angie leaned forward to say something, but Dalton plowed through her.

  “That kind of money is just a glimpse of what Abraham Foxwell would do with full access to those mountains. His resort would create a new economy for an economically depressed section of the state around Silverton, south to Durango—hundreds of jobs in construction alone. And once the resort was up and running? Revenue from construction alone would be enough to put food on the table of a lot of out-of-work laborers from Durango to Ridgeway, and that’s not mentioning the resort itself with a proposed six thousand skiable acres. We would rival Aspen-Snowmass to the north. And if he connects his resort over the mountains to Telluride, we would be the largest ski resort in the world, Ms. Rippard. The largest. In the world. Do you understand what that means?”

  Angie had not heard these actual numbers before. “Six thousand acres,” she said. “That’s nearly half of San Juan County.”

  “Now, I’m obliged to introduce you to the power surrounding that resort, but you’re going to need to show some respect to these billionaires or they’ll laugh at you like a fart in the wind. And if you think my attitude is unflattering, you haven’t seen anything. The kind of money associated with the proposed resort, the kind of money that builds ski resorts, it’d think nothing of cutting your throat and leaving you in the woods to die. And they’ll do the same to any grizzly bear they find living up there. To them, the government’s position was made crystal clear when it said the last San Juan grizzly was shot and killed by Ed Wiseman in 1979. To them, there are no grizzlies in the San Juan Mountains, and they’d like to keep it that way.”

  “But that may not, in fact, be the c—”

  “Now, if you’d like to play like a nice little girl, I’ll show you around town. Reluctantly. But if you insist on treating me with a lack of respect, I’ll throw you to the wolves.”

  Angie was speechless. Her mind raced at light speed. Her breathing was shallow, her palms clammy and cold.

  I’m going to kill this son of a bitch, she thought. I swear to God, I’m going to kill him.

  “Now,” Frank Dalton said, “I have more important things to attend to in my day, and I’m certain your feminine needs require a transitional period while you move into town. It’s my understanding you’re living alone. Ain’t right for a woman to live alone. If you ask me, it’s strange.”

  Angie bit her lip and sat forward in her seat; her hands gripped the chair’s armrests.

  “So,” he continued, “I will allow you three days to establish yourself in town. You’re moving into a home out past Matterhorn Road, I understand. Not a very safe location considering the gun-owning citizens that far south in the county. I’d wear bright orange if I was you. Or, better yet, camouflage might be best considering your position.”

  Angie stared at him.

  He grinned. “Most folks think people like you are nuts, like the wackos who say they’ve been abducted by space aliens. Believing in Colorado grizzly bears is tantamount to believing in ghosts. This new ski resort, on the other hand, is real and could create a stable economy. Many of the working class folks outside of town are going to want to see you hung up, Dr. Rippard. It’s just a word of caution.”

  Angie sat silently, staring at him. Dalton gazed across the landscape of his desk at her. Slowly, Angie’s blue eyes rose up to meet his gaze. Her brown hair was back in a ponytail, but several strands hung down on either side. She was beautiful in a rugged self-reliant kind of way, yet she was sophisticated enough to move from three weeks in the backcountry to a Denver boardroom arguing conservation agendas to real estate developers. Angie moistened her rosy lips, and an index finger came up and tapped his desk. She looked into Dalton’s eyes.r />
  “Tell me one thing,” she said.

  Dalton frowned.

  “If there are no grizzlies up there,” she said, “if you feel so emphatically, so unequivocally certain that there are none—no grizzlies at all—in the San Juan mountains, why did you vote just four years ago toward a resolution making it illegal to hunt and kill grizzlies in San Juan County? If there are none, why would you need to do that?”

  Frank Dalton stared at her. He stuttered feebly a moment and then fell silent. He could think of no answer that wouldn’t compromise his position.

  Two

  Abraham Foxwell had silver hair and ice-blue eyes that peered out from the eighty-second floor of Makalu Tower. The building was the highest in Denver and the third tallest in North America behind the Sears Tower and the Empire State Building. It had initially been named Makalu Tower after the fifth highest mountain in the world to correlate with its being the fifth highest building in North America. That status had changed after the terrorist attacks of 2001, when Foxwell’s fifth highest building became the third highest.

  The view from the eighty-second floor was astounding.

  Twelve hundred feet above the Denver city streets and three hundred and sixty degrees around the boardroom, the view had astonished the most powerful people on earth. To the east, Colorado was a flat sea that stretched two hundred miles to Kansas. Foxwell liked to hear his people say that on a clear day, they could see all the way to the Atlantic. To the west, the snowcapped Front Range loomed over the city.

  Twelve men sat around the boardroom table. There were three women. Everyone was dressed in business attire. Everyone watched Abraham standing by the window. He gazed out at the Front Range.

  “What do we hear from our man in Telluride?” he said.

  One of the suits spoke. “He briefed the biologist this morning.”