by Nora Roberts
None of that had done Jim any good, because he was an amateur. An intruder.
He’d been meat.
Spry though, he mused as he munched on some of Jim’s trail mix. The fucker could run. Still, it had been so easy to herd the bastard along, to push him farther off the trail, to move him toward the river.
Good times.
He’d gotten a good shirt and a new jacket out of the match, too. A shame about the boots. The bastard had good Timberlands. And really small feet.
All in all, it had been a good hunt. He’d give Jim six out of ten. And the take was prime.
He’d considered the rain a bonus. No way the half-assed cops and rangers, the hayseed local yokels, would find any sign of good old Jim with the rain washing out the tracks.
He could have, he and those who’d come before him. Those who owned the holy ground.
It had saved him the time and trouble of backtracking, brushing out tracks, laying false trails. Not that he minded doing all that. It was part of the job, after all, and carried some satisfaction.
But when Nature offered you a gift, you took it with thanks.
The problem was, sometimes the gift was a booby prize.
Without the rain, the flooding, old Jim would’ve stayed where he’d been put—and for a good long while, too. He hadn’t made a mistake there, no sir. Mistakes could cost you your life in the wild. That’s why the old man had beat him bloody whenever he’d made one. He hadn’t made a mistake. He’d loaded Jim down good and proper and tied him down strong under those falls. He’d taken his time. (Maybe not enough time, he thought in the secret part of his mind. Maybe he’d hurried it up because the hunt made him hungry. Maybe . . .)
He pushed those thoughts away. He didn’t make mistakes.
So they’d found him.
He frowned at the handset he’d stolen weeks before. He’d heard them on their radios, scattered all over hell and back. He’d gotten a good laugh out of it, too.
Until that asshole got lucky.
Gull Nodock. Maybe he’d look up asshole Gull one of these days. He wouldn’t be so damn lucky then.
But that would have to wait, unless the opportunity jumped up and bit him. It was thinking time now.
What he should likely do was pack it up, move on. Cross over into Wyoming and set up for a few weeks. Let things cool off. Asshole cops would take a dead tourist more seriously than a dead wolf or cat.
To his mind the wolf and the cat were worth a hell of a lot more than some fucker from St. Paul. The wolf, now, that had been a fair hunt. But the cat, he had had some bad moments over that cougar. Bad dreams about the cougar’s spirit coming back and hunting him.
He’d just wanted to know what it was like, that’s all, to kill something wild and free while it was caged up. He hadn’t known it would feel so bad, or the spirit of the cat would haunt him.
Hunt him. In the dreams, under a full moon, it stalked him, and screamed as it leaped for his throat.
In dreams the spirit of the cougar he’d killed stared at him with cold eyes that left him shaking with sweat and waking with his heart pounding.
Like a baby, his father would’ve said. Like a girl. Sniveling and shaking and afraid of the dark.
Didn’t matter, over and done, he reminded himself. And he’d given pretty Lil a good scare, hadn’t he? Have to weigh the good against the bad there.
They’d be looking for him hard now, over good old Jim. It’d be prudent—like his old man used to say—it’d be prudent to put some miles between himself and the hunting ground.
He could come back for Lil, for their contest, a month from now, six months if the heat stayed on. Leave those cops and rangers chasing their tails.
The trouble was, he wouldn’t be around to see it. No fun in that, no kick, no punch.
No point.
If he stayed, he’d feel them hunting him. Maybe he’d hunt them, too. Take a couple out along the way. Now, that would be worth the risk. And it was the risk that got the blood moving, wasn’t it?
It was the risk that proved you weren’t a baby, you weren’t a girl. You weren’t afraid of any goddamn thing. The risk, the hunt, the kill, they proved you were a man.
He didn’t want to wait six months for Lil. He’d waited so long already.
He’d stay. This was his land now, as it was the land of his ancestors. No one would run him off it. He’d take his stand here. If he couldn’t beat a bunch of uniforms, he wasn’t worthy of the contest.
Here was his destiny, and whether she knew it or not, he was Lil’s.
WORK IN THE compound moved efficiently, even more so to Lil’s eye when Brad Dromburg arrived. He cracked no whips, pointed no fingers, but everything seemed to move faster when he was on-site.
Lil’s only problem with the nearly completed system was the learning curve.
“You’ll have some false alarms,” Brad told her as he walked the paths with her. “My advice would be to limit access to the controls to your head staff, at least for now. The fewer people have your codes, know the routine, the less margin for error.”
“We’ll be fully operational by the end of the day?”
“Should be.”
“That’s fast work. Faster, I know, than usual—and smoother because you came out to oversee. It’s a lot, Brad. I’m grateful.”
“All part of the service. Plus I’ve had a few days of what we’ll call a working vacation, a little time to catch up with a friend, and the best damn chicken and dumplings this side of heaven.”
“Lucy’s masterpiece.” She stopped to stroke the sweet-eyed donkey who called to her before moving on again. “I have to say I was surprised you stayed at Coop’s instead of a hotel.”
“I can stay in a hotel anytime. Too many times. But how often does a city boy get to stay in a refitted bunkhouse on a horse farm?”
She glanced at him and laughed because he sounded very much like a kid who’d been given an unexpected holiday. “I guess not often.”
“And it’s given me some insight on why my friend and fellow urbanite traded the concrete canyons for the Black Hills. It’s just like he always described,” Brad added, looking off to the hills, green with the burgeoning spring.
“So he talked about it, about coming out here as a boy?”
“About how it looked, felt, smelled. What it was like to work with horses, fish with your father. It was clear that while he lived in New York, he considered this his home.”
“Odd. I always thought he considered New York home.”
“My take? New York was something Coop had to conquer. This was where he always felt . . . well, at peace. That sounds a little strong. The way he talked about out here, I thought he was romanticizing, putting the pretty touches on it the way you do when you remember something from childhood. I have to say I thought he was doing the same when he talked about you. I was wrong, in both cases.”
“That’s a nice compliment, but I imagine everyone romanticizes or demonizes their childhood to some extent. I can’t imagine Coop had that much to say about me. And, wow, that was such obvious fishing,” she added quickly. “Picture me packing up my rod and reel.”
“He had plenty to say about you, when you were kids—when you weren’t exactly kids anymore. He’d show me articles you’d written.”
“Well.” Baffled, Lil simply stared. “That must’ve been fascinating for the layman.”
“Actually, they were. Into the Alaskan wilderness, deep in the Ever-glades, on the plains of Africa, the American West, the mysteries of Nepal. You’ve covered a lot of the world. And your articles on this place helped me with the security design.”
He walked another moment in silence. “It’s probably a violation of a buddy rule to tell you, but he carries a picture of you in his wallet.”
“He stayed away. That was his choice.”
“Can’t argue with that. You never met his father, did you?”
“No.”
“He’s a cold son of a bitch. Hard an
d cold. I had some issues with my father off and on. But under that? I always knew I mattered to him. Just as Coop always knew the only part of him that mattered to his father was the name. Takes a while to build up self-esteem when the person who should love you unconditionally continually chips away at it.”
Sad and mad, she thought. It would make you sad and mad. “I know it was hard for him. And hard for me, who has the best parents in the history of parents, to fully understand what it’s like to go through it.”
Still, she thought, damn it.
“But tell me, is it a guy thing? Separating yourself from people who love and value you, and fighting it out alone, continually butting head to head with those who don’t love and value you?”
“How do you know you deserve to be loved and valued if you don’t prove yourself?”
“A guy thing then.”
“Could be. Then again, I’m standing here talking to a woman who recently spent six months in the Andes, a long way from the home fires. Work, sure,” he said before she could respond. “Work you’re dedicated to. But you don’t travel with a safety net, do you? I imagine you’ve taken a lot of trips, spent a lot of time on your own because you needed to prove you’d earned your spot.”
“That’s annoyingly true.”
“After his partner was killed and he was shot, he made an effort to reconcile with his mother.”
Oh, she thought, then. Of course, then. It was perfectly Cooper Sullivan.
“It worked out pretty well,” Brad continued. “He tried to mend some fences with his father.”
“Did he?” she asked. “Yes, of course, he would have.”
“That didn’t work out. After, he built a very solid business for himself. It was a way to prove, if you ask me, that he didn’t need the money from the trust to make his way.”
“That would be something his father would say to him, I imagine. I’ve never met him, no, but I imagine him saying, when Coop tried to mend those fences, that he was nothing without the money. The family money. Money that had come from his father. Yes, I can hear him say that. Can imagine Cooper bound and determined to, again, prove him wrong.”
“He did prove him wrong. More than once. But I’d say that was the point where Coop stopped needing his father’s approval, on any level, in any way. He’s never said, and probably wouldn’t admit it, but I know him. And he’s never stopped needing yours.”
“He’s never asked me what I thought, if I approved.”
“Hasn’t he?” Brad said lightly.
“I don’t—” She turned at the shout, watched the van ease up in front of the first cabin. “That’s our tiger.”
“No shit, the strip-club tiger? Can I watch?”
“Sure, but she won’t do a lap dance. We’ll start her out in the enclosure,” Lil began as they walked toward the van. “On the other side of the fencing we put up in Boris’s. He’s old, but he’s feisty. She’s young, but she’s been declawed. And she’s been chained or caged, drugged most of her life. She hasn’t been around her own kind. We’ll watch how they react to each other. I don’t want either one of them hurt.”
She stopped to introduce herself and shake hands with the driver and the wrangler. “Our office manager, Mary Blunt. Mary will take the paperwork. I’d like to see her.”
Lil climbed into the cargo area, crouched so the dull eyes of the tiger met hers. Defeated, Lil thought, resigned. All the pride and ferocity sheared away by years of mistreatment.
“Hello, pretty girl,” she murmured. “Hello, Delilah. Welcome to a whole new world. Let’s take her home,” she called out. “I’ll ride back here with her.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor of the van, cautiously pressed her palm to the bars. Delilah barely moved. “No one’s ever going to hurt you again, or humiliate you. You have family now.”
As they had with the pampered Cleo, they set the cage, locked open the door to the opening of the enclosure. Unlike Cleo, the tiger made no attempt to leave the cage.
Boris, on the other hand, prowled back to the fenceline, scenting the air. He marked his line, preening, Lil noted, as he hadn’t done in a very long time. And puffing out his chest, he roared.
In her cage, Delilah’s muscles twitched.
“Let’s back off. She’s nervous. There’s food and water in the enclosure. And Boris is talking to her. She’ll go in, in her own good time.”
Lucius lowered his camera. “She looks kind of beaten down. You know, emotionally.”
“We’ll get Tansy to work with her. And if we need to, we’ll bring in the shrink.”
“You have a tiger shrink?” Brad asked, astonished.
“A behavioral psychologist. We’ve worked with him before, in extreme cases. I guess you could call him an exotic animal whisperer.” She smiled. “Check him out on Animal Planet. But I think we’ll be able to take care of her. She’s tired and . . . her self-esteem’s an issue. We’ll just make sure she knows she’s loved, valued, and safe here.”
“I think the big guy there is smitten,” Brad observed as Boris rubbed himself against the fence.
“He’s been lonely. A male tiger mingles well with females. They’re more chivalrous than lions.” She moved back, sat on a bench. “I’ll just keep an eye on them for a while.”
“I’ll go check on the progress on your gates. We should be able to test the system in another couple of hours.”
After about a half hour, Tansy came to join her, and offer one of the two bottles of Diet Pepsi she’d brought out.
“They used cattle prods and Tasers on her,” Tansy said.
“I know.” Still watching the motionless cat, Lil sipped her soft drink. “She expects to be punished if she steps out of the cage. Sooner or later, she’ll go after the food. If she doesn’t, by tomorrow, we’ll have to get her out. I’m hoping we won’t. She needs to leave the cage on her own, and not be punished.”
“Boris already has stars in his eyes.”
“Yeah. It’s sweet. She may respond to him, to the alpha, before she gives in to hunger. And she’ll need to void. She’s probably had to void in her cage before, but she won’t want to, since there’s a choice.”
“The vet working with animal abuse treated her for an infected bladder, and had to pull two of her teeth. Matt’s going over all the reports, and wants to examine her himself. But he feels, as you do, that she needs to be left alone for a while first. How are things between you and Coop?”
“We’re in a kind of moratorium, I guess. We need to get this security up and running. Plus I think he’s working with the police. He has files he doesn’t want me to see. I’m leaving it alone for now.”
“Like the tiger.”
“As a metaphor for my relationship with Coop, it’s not bad. It’s fairly shaky, with the potential for a feral strike. I found two clips for his handgun in my lingerie drawer. Why the hell would he put them there?”
“I guess it’s hard to forget where you put them. Your everyday stuff, or the fuck-me stuff?”
“The fuck-me stuff. It’s mortifying. I was going to get rid of most of it. It’s weird having it around. The Jean-Paul factor. He bought most of it, and enjoyed all of it.”
“Clean it out. Buy your own.”
“Yeah, I’m just not sure I want to invest in that area right now. It sends a signal.”
“It does. I bought two extreme rip-this-off-me-big-boy nighties the other day. Online shopping is my friend. I’m still wondering why I didn’t stop myself.”
“Farley’s going to swallow his tongue.”
“I keep telling myself I’m going to break this off before it gets any deeper. Then I’m scoping out the spring line from Victoria’s Secret. I am not well, Lil.”
“You’re in love, honey.”
“I think it’s just lust. Lust is good. No harm done. And it passes.”
“Uh-huh. Just lust. You bet.”
“All right, stop badgering me, you fiend. I know it’s more than lust. I just haven’t figured o
ut how to handle it. So stop your insidious torture.”
“All right, since you begged. Look. Look.” Lil clamped a hand on Tansy’s knee. “She’s moving.”
As they watched, Delilah bellied forward an inch, then another. Boris growled his encouragement. When she was halfway out, she went still as a statue again, and Lil feared she’d retreat. Then she quivered, bunched, and leaped on the whole chicken left on her concrete pad.
She gripped it in her paws, her head shifting as she scanned right, left, forward. Her eyes met Lil’s.
Go on and eat, Lil thought. Go on, now.
She cocked her head, and still watching, sank her teeth into the meat.
She ripped and bolted the food. Lil squeezed her hand on Tansy. “Waiting for someone to lay into her. God, I wish I could take a cattle prod to those bastards in Sioux City.”
“Right there with you. Poor girl. She could make herself sick.”
But she kept it down. Rather than clean her paws, she slunk over to the trough, drank and drank.
On the other side of the fence, Boris rose on his hind legs, called to her. She kept low, kept subservient, but approached the fence to sniff at him. When he lowered, she scurried back to stand at the entrance to her cage.
To what, Lil knew, she thought of as safety. He called her again, insistently, until she bellied over to the fence, quivering, trembling as he sniffed her nose, her front paws.
When he licked her, Lil smiled. “We should’ve called him Romeo. Let’s get the cage away, close her in. Boris will take it from here.”
She checked her watch as she rose. “Excellent timing. I need to run into town.”
“I thought we had our supply run.”
“I’ve got to do some errands. And I want to swing by and see my parents. I’ll be back before sundown.”
SHE DIDN’T INTEND to stop by the Wilkses’ stables, but she was early, and they were right there. In any case, it was irresistible when she spotted Coop leading a little girl around the paddock on a sturdy bay pony.
The kid looked as though she’d just been given the keys to the universe’s biggest toy store. She bounced in the saddle, obviously incapable of being still, and her face under her pink cowgirl hat glowed like the summer sun.