The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (19 page)

“I don’t care. Go on, then. I need to get to her.”

Stupid, he told himself. A risk that solved nothing. But he thought of helping Lil set up the cage, how he’d watched with her as the trap sprang.

He couldn’t leave the cat there.

“Maybe you should fire a couple of rounds, so he knows we’re armed, too.”

“He might take that as a challenge.” He glanced back at her. “You’re thinking it’s easier to kill a trapped animal, or an animal anyway, than it is a human being. It’s a mistake to think that. It depends on who’s doing the shooting. Stay back, and stay down until I tell you.”

He stepped into the open.

For a moment his skin was alive, his muscles tight and tensed. He’d been shot once, and it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.

Overhead a hawk circled and cried. He watched the trees. A movement brought his weapon up. The mule deer waded through the snow, leading the way for the herd that came behind.

He turned and walked to the cage.

He hadn’t expected her to stay once he moved, and of course, she didn’t. She stepped around him, knelt on the frozen ground.

“Would you turn the camera on? If he didn’t wreck it, that is. We need to document this.”

In the cage, the cat lay on her side. Blood and gore from the heat of the shot soiled the ground. She buried the urge to open the cage, to stroke, to mourn, to weep. Instead, she contacted her base.

“Tansy, we’re bringing the camera back up. The female’s been shot. A head wound. She’s gone.”

“Oh, Lil.”

“Make the calls, and make a copy of the video. We need the authorities here, and transportation to get her out.”

“I’ll take care of it right now. I’m so sorry, Lil.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

She clicked off, looked over at Coop. “The camera?”

“Just turned off, like before.”

“There’s a short, restricted hunting season on cougar. We’re outside that now. And this is private land, posted land. He had no right.”

Though her voice remained steady, firm, she’d gone very pale, so her eyes shone like black pools.

“Even if she hadn’t been caged, defenseless, he had no right. I understand hunting. For food, as a sport, the arguments for ecological balance as we take over more and more habitat areas. But this wasn’t hunting. This was murder. He shot a caged animal. And I put her in the cage. I put her there.”

“You’re not stupid enough to blame yourself.”

“No.” Those eyes kindled now with pure rage. “The bastard who walked up to the cage and put a bullet in her head’s to blame. But I’m a factor. I’m the reason he could.”

She sat back on her haunches, took a breath. “It looks like he came up the trail, crossed to the camera, disabled it. He circled the cage, took a look at her, stirred her up. She gave her warning call. He kept her stirred up. Maybe it was more exciting that way, who knows. Then he shot her. Fairly close range, I’d guess. But I don’t know for sure. Can’t tell. We’ll do an autopsy, recover the bullet. The police will take it and tell us what kind of gun he used.”

“A handgun from the sound of it. Small-caliber from the look of the wound.”

“You’d know more about that, I suppose.”

She did what she needed to do now, and he said nothing about the integrity of a crime scene when she opened the cage. She laid her hand on the ruined head of the young female who by her estimation had lived only one full year. Who’d learned to hunt and ranged free. Who kept to her secret places and avoided company.

She stroked. And when her shoulders began to tremble she rose to walk out of camera range. Because he had nothing else to offer, Coop went to her, turned her, held her while she wept. And wept.

She was dry-eyed and professional when the authorities arrived. He knew the county sheriff slightly, but imagined Lil had known him most of her life.

He’d be in his early thirties, Coop judged. Tough-bodied, tough-faced, sturdy in his Wolverines as he assessed. His name was William Johannsen, but like most who knew him, Lil called him Willy.

While he spoke to Lil, Coop watched a deputy take pictures of the scene, the cage, the tracks. He saw, too, Willy lay a hand on Lil’s shoulder, give it a pat before he stepped away and headed in Coop’s direction.

“Mr. Sullivan.” Willy paused, stood beside Coop and looked at the dead cat. “That’s a terrible, cowardly thing. You hunt?”

“No. Never got the taste for it.”

“I get a buck every season. I like being outdoors, pitting myself against their instincts. My wife makes a good venison stew. Never hunted cougar. My pa, he’s a hunt-it-eat-it man, and taught me the same. Don’t fancy chowing down on cougar. Well, cold out here. Got some wind going. Lil says you’ve got horses standing down yonder.”

“Yeah. I’d like to get to them.”

“I’ll walk you down a ways. Said she called her pa, and he’s on his way to meet you back where the two of you camped last night. Help you load up.”

“She needs to go with the cougar.”

“Yeah.” Willy nodded. “I’ll walk down some with you and you can tell me what’s what. I need more, I’ll get it from you later on, after you’ve had a chance to get back. Warmed up.”

“All right. Give me a minute.”

Without waiting for assent, Coop went back to Lil. Unlike Willy, he didn’t give her a comforting pat. Her eyes were dry when they met his. Dry, and a little distant. “I’ll get the horses, meet Joe back at the campsite. We’ll get your gear to you.”

“I’m grateful, Coop. I don’t know what I’d’ve done if you hadn’t been along.”

“Handled it. I’ll be by later.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I’ll be by later.”

With that, he walked away, and Willy fell into step with him.

“So you were with the police back east.”

“I was.”

“Went into private, I hear.”

“I did.”

“I recall when you used to come out as a boy, visit with your grand-folks. Good people.”

“They are.”

Willy’s lips twitched, and his stride was steady on the trail. “I heard how Gull Nodock, who works for you now, gave you a chaw one day and you about puked yourself inside out.”

The faintest hint of humor touched Coop’s mouth. “Gull never gets tired of telling that one.”

“It’s a good one. Why don’t you just give me the run-down, Mr. Sullivan. You don’t need me telling you what I need to know, seeing as you were police.”

“Cooper, or Coop. Lil and I started out yesterday morning. Around eight, maybe just after eight. We unloaded some of the gear at the campsite, by the stream, and got up here before eleven. Close to eleven, I think.”

“Good time.”

“Good horses, and she knows the trail. She’s got that camera up there. Somebody broke the lock on its cover, switched it off. She said it went down a couple days ago. She reset it. We saw the tracks left by whoever did it. Looks like around a size eleven to me.”

Willy nodded, adjusted his Stetson. “We’ll be checking on that.”

“We set up the cage, and baited it, and we were back at camp before two. She worked, I read, we had a meal, turned in. Five-twenty this morning, I heard somebody moving around. I got my gun. He was already running when I got out of the tent. I heard him more than saw him, but I got a glimpse. I’d guess about six feet tall, male. Most likely male just from the way he moved, the basic shape. He had on a backpack, and a cap. Gimme cap style. Couldn’t tell you age, race, hair color. I just got the shape, the movement as he ran, then he was in the trees. He moved fast.”

“Black as ink that time of day.”

“Yeah. Maybe he had infrared goggles. I only saw him from behind, but he moved like a fucking gazelle. Fast, fluid. Between the two of us, Lil woke up. Not long after, she got the signal the trap had sprung. It took us a good thirty minutes, maybe closer to forty to pack up, for her to contact her base. And we spent some time looking at the cat on her computer. He had a good lead on us. Neither one of us considered he’d head up there, do that.”

“Why would you?”

They’d reached the horses, and Willy gave Coop’s mare a friendly rub.

“We had light by then, but we didn’t hurry. Then she spotted the tracks. We were about halfway between the camp and the cage, and she spotted them.”

“Got an eye for it, Lil does,” Willy commented in his mild way.

“He’d circled around, crossed back to the trail, and headed up. We heard the cat scream, the way they do.”

“Hell of a sound.”

“Third time it screamed, we heard the shot.” He detailed the rest, adding the times.

“There’s no exit wound,” Coop added. “It’s going to be small-caliber. Compact handgun, maybe a thirty-eight. The kind somebody could carry easily under his jacket. Wouldn’t weigh him down on a hike, wouldn’t show if he ran into anybody on the trail. Just another guy out loving nature.”

“We take something like this serious around here. You can count on that. I’m going to let you get on. If I need to talk to you again, I know where to find you. You keep an eye out on the way down, Coop.”

“You can count on that.” Coop mounted, took the reins of Lil’s horse from Willy.

The trip back alone gave him time to think.

It was no coincidence that the camera had been tampered with, an intruder had chosen their campsite, the cougar Lil had trapped had been shot.

Common denominator? Lillian Chance.

She needed to have that spelled out for her, and she needed to take whatever precautions she could.

She assumed it was easier for a man to kill a caged animal than a human.

Coop didn’t agree.

He didn’t know William Johannsen well, and prior to now hadn’t had any professional dealings with him. But his impression had been one of competence and a cool head. He expected the man would do all that could and should be done in the investigation.

And Coop figured unless Willy was really lucky, he’d get nowhere.

Whoever had killed Lil’s cougar knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how to do it. The question was why.

Someone with a grudge against Lil personally, or with a vendetta against the refuge? Maybe both, as Lil was the refuge in most people’s minds. An extremist on either side of the environmental/conservation issue was a possibility.

Someone who knew the area, knew how to live in the wild for stretches, go unnoticed. A local maybe, Coop mused, or someone with local ties.

Maybe he’d tug on a few old connections and see if there’d been any similar incidents in the last few years. Or, he admitted, he could just ask Lil. No doubt she’d know or could find out faster than he could.

Of course that blew to hell the idea of keeping his distance. He’d already blown that, he admitted, when he’d jumped on going with her on this trip. So who was he kidding?

He wasn’t going to stay away from her. He’d known that, however much he’d tried to deny it, the minute she’d opened the door to that cabin. The instant he’d seen her again.

Maybe it was just unfinished business. He wasn’t one for leaving things unresolved. Lil was . . . a loose end, he decided. If he couldn’t cut it off, he had to tie it off. Screw the guy she wasn’t exactly engaged to.

There was still something there. He’d felt it from her. He’d seen it in her eyes. However long it had been since he’d seen her, been with her, he knew her eyes.

He dreamed of them.

He knew what he’d seen in them that morning in her tent, while on the computer screen the young cougar hissed in the cage. If he’d touched her then, he’d have taken her then. As simple as that.

They weren’t going to get through this new phase of their lives, whatever the hell it was, until they’d gotten past the old feelings, the old connection, the old needs. Maybe once they had, they could be friends again. Maybe they couldn’t. But standing in place wasn’t going to cut it.

And she was in trouble. She might not believe it, or admit it, but somebody meant to hurt her. Whatever they were to each other, whatever they weren’t, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

As the camp came into view, Coop slowed. He flicked back his coat and rested a hand on the butt of his gun.

Long precise slashes ran down the length of both tents. Bedrolls lay sodden in the icy stream, along with the cookstove he’d used that morning to fry bacon, make coffee. The shirt Lil had worn the day before lay spread out on the snow. Coop would’ve made book that the blood that smeared it had come from the cougar.

He dismounted, tethered the horses, then opened Lil’s saddlebag to find the camera he’d seen her put in that morning.

He documented the scene from various angles, took close-ups of the shirt, the tents, the items in the stream, the boot prints that weren’t his, weren’t Lil’s.

Best he could do, he thought before digging out a plastic bag that would stand for an evidence bag. With his gloves on, he bagged Lil’s shirt, sealed the bag, and wished only for a pen or marker to note down the time, date, and his initials.

He heard the approach of a horse, thought of Joe. Coop stowed the shirt in his own saddlebag, laid a hand back on his weapon. He let it drop when the horse and rider came into view.

“She’s fine.” Coop called it out first. “She’s with the county sheriff. She’s fine, Joe.”

“Okay.” Still mounted, Joe surveyed the campsite. “You two didn’t have a drunken party and do this.”

“He had to come back, double around again while we were up above. It’s quick work. Down and dirty. Probably took him ten minutes tops.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s a question.”

“It’s one I’m asking you, Cooper.” Joe slid off the saddle, held the reins in a hand Coop imagined was white at the knuckles under his riding gloves. “I’m not an idealist. I know people do fuck-all. But I don’t understand this. You’d have a better idea on it. You’d have thought about it.”

Lies often served a purpose, Coop knew. But he wouldn’t lie to Joe. “Somebody’s got it in for Lil, but I don’t have the answers. You’d have a better idea, or she would. I haven’t been part of her life for a long time. I don’t know what’s going on with her, not under the surface.”