On a long steady breath, he sighted the lion, waited for his shot . . .
Took it.
The gun kicked against his shoulder.
The lion let out an angry yowl. With its paws it hugged Caity’s body to its own.
Caity’s arms pushed up.
Somehow, she got air beneath her shoulders.
Now!
Spense took aim, and fired again.
The lion made a mewling sound.
Caity’s boot landed in its paunch. Spense ran toward them, preparing to leap atop. But before he reached the pair, Caity knocked the lion away and rolled out from under it.
The lion staggered back, eased onto its side, and passed out cold.
Spense lifted Caity into his arms and carried her to the edge of the clearing.
Two things he need to know right now.
First, was Caity okay?
The tight grip of her arms around his neck, her words of love whispered in between the soft kisses she planted on his cheek told him she wasn’t seriously hurt.
Second, what had gotten into that mountain lion?
An attack like this was highly unusual.
Pandy was too smart to have provoked it. And as far as he could see there were no cubs around. Which left the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
What in the hell was this animal trying to protect?
Chapter 20
Thursday, October 24
6:15 P.M.
Eagles Nest Wilderness
Colorado
Laura’s luck was holding—as usual it was no good. Because she was normally in great shape, she’d overestimated how far she could hurl that rock. But due to her weakened condition, it had landed shy of its mark, putting everyone in more danger.
She crept closer to get a better look and listen. In a flush of relief, blood rushed to her head. The little one had her radio to her ear. The dark-haired woman was on her feet, mouthing words Laura couldn’t quite make out to the tall man who’d fired the rifle. Even the lion seemed to be okay, lolling on its side, its belly rising and falling with big steady breaths.
They were all alive.
Maybe she wasn’t so unlucky after all.
And maybe life wasn’t only about luck. Maybe it was about choices, too. Laura wasn’t in the habit of choosing. In her world, her parents and her doctors had always decided for her. Like Dr. Duncan said, she just needed a bit of practice.
Her plan hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected, but one bad decision wasn’t a reason to go back to letting someone else make them for her. And there was something else that was beginning to dawn like the sun, slowly inching up over the mountaintops. She’d been willing to risk her life for a complete stranger.
She held her head higher. Noticing her cheeks were wet, she batted away the moisture. Too bad she hadn’t come across a mountain lion thirteen years ago, because in a single beat, her own heart was revealed to her.
Laura Chaucer, who did not want to die, had been willing to give her life for another—and in truth, she still was.
Locks of hair and notes in her own hand meant nothing compared to that.
It was a truth more solid than any she’d ever known.
The decisions she’d made, just moments ago, were not those of a monster.
She didn’t have the heart of a killer.
Her hands began to tingle with excitement.
Dr. Duncan had been right all along—she wished she could tell him.
She wanted to shout it for the entire world to hear.
There would be no more self-doubt—not about this.
Her theories about the monster might be wrong. She might even be as crazy as her parents believed she was, but she wasn’t capable of true evil. She could never have killed anyone and she made a silent vow, right then that she would never let anyone make her question that.
The voices carried to her on the wind again—they sounded high-pitched, urgent.
She shook her hands out and concentrated on what was taking place just a short distance away. Leaning forward, she strained to hear the conversation over the static of the radio, but couldn’t make out what the little group in the clearing was talking about.
Time to make her next decision.
She needed to know what was going on, and it was worth the risk of being found out to get closer.
Be patient.
An opportunity came quicker than she’d expected. The lion made a noise, and all three turned to check on it. Laura darted forward, then concealed herself behind a clump of trees and held her breath, listening.
“I promise I’m okay, Spense, you should check on Ranger Pandy.”
The redhead, whom Laura now knew to be a park ranger named Pandy, waved off the man called Spense. “No need. Barely got a scratch on me. Knocked the wind out of me, but after, I was just playing possum, waiting for it to get tired of circling me.” Pandy went to the lion and stroked its coat.
Unlike Laura, the ranger was fearless. Laura’s heartbeat accelerated at the realization she might soon be left alone with the lion.
“I’ve got more rangers on the way. We’re going to need to watch the cougar for a few days, make sure it has no ill-effects from the tranquilizers and . . .” Pandy arched an eyebrow at the dark-haired woman, “. . . for Caitlin’s sake. If it shows no sign of rabies after seventy-two hours, Caitlin won’t need shots.”
Spense nodded and held up Caitlin’s arm. “But she does need stitches.”
“I’ve got a medical kit in my pack,” Caitlin said. “Can you do the honors if I talk you through it?”
“I’m on it.” Spense shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
Caitlin took a seat on the ground, her legs stretched out in front while Spense dug through one of the packs. Laura’s stomach tended toward the squeamish side, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away as Spense cleaned and stitched Caitlin’s wounds. Laura’s throat tightened when he rested his hand on Caitlin’s, and at the tender way she looked at him when he wasn’t watching. From the extra glances and smiles they shared it seemed they cared about each other a lot—maybe they were even in love.
A sigh rose to her lips, but she didn’t let it escape for fear of being heard. Love was something she’d had little experience with. She hadn’t been allowed to date, and she’d never had a boyfriend. But up until now, she’d never really minded. While other girls her age were dreaming of boys, she was busy just trying to make it through another day—really living was something she’d never even considered.
Spense touched Caitlin’s cheek, and for the millionth time, she smiled up at him.
These were good people.
Laura wanted to trust them. She understood they were searching for her, and it was hard not to shout out, “Here I am!”
Maybe Spense would tend her wounds like he’d tended Caitlin’s.
Right. Just before he cuffed her and led her away in shame.
Spense pulled his jacket on, then climbed to a stand. “I don’t get it.” He was speaking to Ranger Pandy. “These guys don’t usually go after humans. I know they attack children on occasion.”
“Guess I really do look like a kid,” Pandy said without a trace of defensiveness. “But yeah, I don’t understand what made her go wild like that.”
“She’s a female?” Caitlin asked.
Pandy nodded. “Looks like it.”
“Maybe she was protecting her cubs.” Caitlin frowned. “But I haven’t seen any trace of them . . .” Her voice trailed off. She twisted her hands, as if worried. “You don’t think she might’ve been protecting . . .”
“A kill.” Spense shouldered his pack. “Pandy, you okay to stay here with her?”
The ranger nodded.
“I’m coming with you, this time,” Caitlin said.
“No argument here. Which way did she come from, Pandy?”
The ranger pointed, and Spense and Caity took off in that direction. Laura’s heart dropped to her stomach. They were headed
toward her. Crouching, she squeezed her eyes shut. If she opened them, she might be tempted to surrender as they passed by.
Laura waited until she could no longer hear their voices, then eased out from behind the trees. Spense’s boots had left muddy tracks over the rocks, easy enough to follow, and by the time the trail disappeared, she’d caught sight of them up ahead.
“Spense!” Caitlin cried out.
Laura hurried forward, barely bothering to conceal herself.
“I’ll radio for help.” He spread his feet wide and pulled a flag from inside his pack. Planted it in the ground.
Laura crept closer. The leaves rustling beneath her feet sounded so loud to her ears it seemed she had a microphone in her boots. But neither Caitlin nor Spense turned. When she got within about ten yards of them, she saw some brush that would provide cover.
She dared go no further.
Spense had his phone out, snapping photos of something near the flag on the ground.
Quietly, Laura positioned herself for a better view. Beneath a pile of leaves and loose debris she saw an arm.
Then a bare leg.
Her hands started to shake.
She blinked hard in disbelief, staring at the leaves until a hank of long black hair came into focus.
No!
Her back arched in a sudden spasm. After the first shock wave passed, she threw her body forward, clasping her hands behind her head, and pulling her face down to her knees to muffle her sobs. She couldn’t bear to open her eyes, couldn’t bear to see the terrible truth.
She gagged, and then wretched up the remnants of her freeze-dried meal.
The gore would’ve made anyone ill, but that wasn’t the only thing that sickened her.
All that blood at the cabin—it couldn’t have been Laura’s. And now she knew the thing she’d feared but hadn’t wanted to believe was really true. This was the woman whose blood soaked the floors.
And Laura knew exactly who she was.
Her friend.
Chapter 21
Thursday, October 24
6:40 P.M.
Eagles Nest Wilderness
Colorado
Laura was alive for a reason, and that reason was to stop the monster. When she’d seen her friend’s body, tossed out into the elements like a piece of meat for the animals, her will had hardened into steel.
Not one more innocent woman would die because Laura failed to act.
This evil had been on the prowl, claiming victims, for years, and no one else had even noticed, much less investigated. Not her family, not her doctors, not law enforcement.
And it wasn’t as though she’d kept quiet about it.
Several times, over the years, she’d mentioned the idea to Dr. Webber. But he hadn’t taken her seriously at all. His response was always the same: get some rest, take another pill—in other words, you’re crazy.
A refrain she’d heard her entire life.
Well, that was one tune she had to get out of her head, because if she kept on listening to it he’d be free to go on killing.
No more.
On Monday night, she’d shared the idea that there were other victims—besides Angelina—with Ronald Saas, the newspaperman. But she hadn’t any real proof, or any names, or any dates. He hadn’t been convinced. He’d said there was no evidence.
Now, she had not just one, but two locks of hair in her possession. And she had an idea about how to get more evidence, too.
She tightened her fists.
She had to stop the monster.
But the first step in completing her mission was getting down off this mountain without getting caught. She had to get back to civilization where she could think and make plans and hunt her prey. The idea of stalking the man who’d killed her friend sent a thrill up her spine, and that gave her pause. It didn’t seem normal to enjoy the idea as much as she did.
Shake it off. You’re not crazy.
The bad news was it was all too easy to go back to that old refrain—she’d have to be vigilant to stop her mind from slipping back into old habits. The good news was that finding the way down would now be simple. She had the others to guide her. They would lead her straight to the road. All she had to do was stay out of sight and hide in the lengthening shadows as darkness fell over the mountain.
The prospect of hiking down the road in the dark was daunting, but she was prepared to do it. She knew how to move noiselessly—she’d been doing it all day. The other lucky thing was they no longer appeared to be searching for her. The cops probably assumed it was her lying dead on the ground. In the flurry of activity that followed the discovery of the body, Laura herself seemed to have been forgotten.
She managed to track a man in uniform past the cabin, all the way back to the road and his truck, before she thought herself at risk of being found out. There was little cover for her here—but by now it was full-on dark. His pickup was her chance to get out the easy way, and she was determined to take it before law enforcement swarmed the area.
The truck bed was covered by a rain tarp. When the man turned his back, she lifted the tarp at the corner and crawled beneath it. As she settled herself amongst the buckets and shovels and bags of sand, the truck’s engine roared to life.
Her heart revved along with the engine.
She was going to make it down off this mountain alive.
What she had to do now was get back to Denver, then catch the monster before he struck again.
Chapter 22
Friday, October 25
7:00 A.M.
Medical examiner’s office
Denver, Colorado
Even before Spense opened the door to the autopsy suite, the anticipation of the smell sickened Caitlin. It wasn’t the mingled scents of blood and guts and vinyl body bags she dreaded. It was that je ne sais quoi, that intangible sense of one’s own mortality that hung in the air, the plus one that accompanied death to every party. But without places like this, justice might never be done. And justice was what she craved. It was one of the main reasons she got up in the morning.
Until she’d met Spense, it had been the only reason.
Bracing her shoulders, she swept through the door beside Spense and Hatcher, as though the men were escorting her to a Broadway play instead of the macabre theater that awaited inside.
“Dammit, we’re early.” Hatcher pointed at Dr. Hadley Gaines.
The skeletal medical examiner hunched over the head of a cold steel table, his white lab coat flapping around the knees of his scrubs. Air from the vent above blew what remained of his thin black hair off his forehead. His brow wrinkled in concentration as he used a syringe to extract vitreous fluid from one of the victim’s eyeballs. He then handed the sample off to an assistant and straightened, bumping his head on a hanging meat scale in the process. “Early bird gets his killer.”
“Pardon me if I don’t want to stand around and watch you pop the top off this thing and weigh its brains. I just wanna know—is it her or not?”
Hatcher’s question raised Caitlin’s hackles, perhaps, a bit unfairly, because in truth a corpse was no longer a person, so the term it technically applied. But this body the detective referred to so carelessly had belonged, only a short time ago, to a living breathing young woman. Though the dehumanization of the dead made it easier for some to do their jobs, witnessing that dehumanization never failed to make her heart shrink in her chest.
“Then come back later,” Gaines said indifferently. “Go have yourself a donut or something.”
“We might as well stay.” Caitlin certainly had no appetite for breakfast or even coffee, and they just might glean something extra if they hung around.
“I’m in,” Spense said.
Hatcher grimaced. “Fine.”
“Suit yourselves.” Gaines began the Y incision, preparing to break into the body cavity. Only this thief would be stealing the victim’s organs, and more importantly, her secrets. Without further prompting, he began narrating his crime.
<
br /> One thing Caitlin had learned: medical examiners loved to spin a good story.
“Unfortunately, the elements and the scavengers got to her before we did. As you can see, the face is unrecognizable. From the extent of body decomp, I’d estimate she’s been out there somewhere between three and seven days.”
“That as close as you can say?” Hatcher sounded irritated.
“For now, yes.”
That meant it might be Laura’s body . . . or not. She’d barely been missing three days.
“In the good news department, we’ve got Chaucer’s dental records coming, and I can tell you the age of our Jane Doe is late teens to very early twenties. Preliminary inspection of the pelvis suggests she’s nulliparous.”
“Nulli what?” Hatcher asked.
“This young woman has never borne children.” Gaines picked up the shears and went to work opening the rib cage, then began slapping organs one by one onto the meat scale while the assistant wrote their weights on a dry erase board. “The examination of the skin revealed lividity in the back, suggesting the victim died in a supine position.”
“We found her lying prone,” Spense said. “You think the body was moved?”
“Yes, but who knows if it was man or beast who flipped her over.”
“What about sexual assault—did you find evidence of that?” Hatcher asked.
“Hard to say for sure. Again, the animals did a number on her. Most of her inner thighs have been chewed off. The vaginal area is smooth, suggesting sexual activity, but in a woman her age that’s to be expected. The hands and fingernails show no obvious defensive wounds. We’ve scraped the nails of course.”
“She might’ve been drugged,” Spense said. “That would account for the lack of defensive wounds.”
“Like everything else, toxicology is pending.”
“You’ve included GHB, I hope.” Caitlin didn’t necessarily enjoy telling the man how to do his job, but the test had to be ordered specifically, it wasn’t routine.
“That and other date rape drugs.” Gaines dropped his shears and rolled the now empty body cavity onto one side, revealing a small purple dolphin on the left hip. “Did Laura Chaucer have any tattoos?”
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