Leonora went white, her bizarre feline face a ghost of itself, like the white lions that Siegfried and Roy trained. “You…you—”
“I’m out of this.” Courtney turned on her Anne Klein heels and stamped away.
Leonora’s narrow catlike nostrils flared as her breath huffed out of her body like a noxious exhalation. “What do you know? What do you want?”
“I want that panther. Alive. Let’s hope he still is. Take me there.”
“You’re crazy. It’s out on the desert. We can’t walk there.” She looked down at their strappy, high-heeled sandals.
By some bizarre stroke of fate, Temple realized, they were both wearing the same model of Onyx sandals. Talk about walking in someone else’s shoes…The realization almost knocked her off her feet, which the desert would do later if shock failed now.
Max was counting on her to improvise.
“Then we’ll drive.” Temple grabbed Leonora’s stringy arm and shoved her into the passenger side of the Storm. It was like maneuvering a puppet.
Luckily, she had left her keys in the ignition, so was saved the time of dredging her tote bag for them. “Which way?”
“Left at the fork.” Leonora pointed, her taloned hand shaking. She glanced at Temple quickly, aslant, like a feral animal. “What do you know?”
Temple jerked the steering wheel and set the Storm rocking down a rutted trail made for four-wheel-drive vehicles painted desert-ratchic camouflage.
“I know why you’ve had your face remade. It had to be, to hide the damage. Not hide, camouflage. You don’t have to buy into Cyrus’s violence and obsessions anymore. He’s gone. You can start doing things your way now.”
“I have no way,” Leonora said bitterly. “No way but his.”
“You have the money.”
She shook her mane as if dislodging flies. “Money. I suppose so, but I don’t care. Isn’t it odd that a leopard named Osiris did Cyrus in?” she asked dreamily. “Maybe it was karma.”
“It was coincidence,” Temple said. “And maybe the leopard is innocent.”
Leonora was suddenly quiet.
“I just don’t get why you stayed, put up with it.” Temple had to watch the—“road” was too good a term—ruts. “How far do we go? Is the panther still alive?”
“I haven’t heard shots,” Leonora said in a monotonous voice. “You usually hear shots. Unless the client is a bow hunter.”
Temple gunned the motor, making the Storm buck like a turquoise-painted pony. “Just get me to where it’s happening. That’s all I ask.”
“I don’t know. This is a big place. It may be fenced, but the animals have room to roam. I don’t know where they’re doing it this time. Besides, what can you do about it?”
“Something. Buy the panther back from the hunter.”
Leonora’s slitted amber eyes slid Temple’s way again, wary, challenging. “You don’t know hunters, or you wouldn’t say that. You wouldn’t ask why I stayed.”
“So why?”
“Because he would have tracked me down if I left. Hunters never stop hunting. And it’s a rule of the chase. If you wound something, you follow it until you can finally kill it.”
Her toneless words made Temple shiver despite the heat. She had never heard such an apt description of domestic abuse in her life. The analogy of the hunter and prey fit the situation like a throttling glove. About now she was ready to kill Cyrus Van Burkleo.
“There.” Leonora was pointing to a line of squat, scraggly trees.
One of the dusty little Jeep Laredos the security staff drove was parked nose-first in the shade the brush provided.
Parked and empty. It meant the riders were on foot, and had become stalkers.
Chapter 45
The Most Dangerous Dame
I sit down in the dust.
“Now I wish I had those two little beetle-noses.”
“Beetle-noses?” Midnight Louise inquires.
“They are shiny and black, are they not? The Yorkies’ noses.”
“Ours are shiny and black as well,” she says.
“Ours are matte and black. Much more elegant. But ours do not smell as well.”
“What kind of smelling do you require?”
“The Gees and I trailed our way all night, for miles and miles, all the way to the Animal Oasis, where I then interviewed the suspect in the Van Burkleo murder, Osiris the leopard.”
“And while you were off doing that, someone absconded with your secret witness. Now that the witness is missing, perhaps you will tell me what or who it is.”
I paw disconsolately at a cage bar. “It is Butch.”
“Butch? I am glad you are on a first-name basis with one and all, and thankful that you are not so with me. But who the Devon Rex is Butch?”
“Your lunch pal.”
This gives the kit pause. She frowns prettily, but I dare not tell her so.
“My lunch pal…oh, you mean the panther from between whose paws I nipped the treat for Osiris.”
I nod, not enthusiastically. I am not about to tell her of the high regard in which she is held by both victim and beneficiary of her meal-exchange scheme. Nor am I about to tell her about a new worry of mine: I have spotted my Miss Temple’s small aqua car in the driveway as we were working our way to the compound. Apparently she arrived here after us. Why, I cannot imagine.
“Well, if we cannot track him like the Yorkies,” she says briskly, “we will have to use our superior feline brains and deduce where he has gone. Do you notice a significant absence around this cage area, Pops?”
“Besides the Yorkie noses?” I snap.
She dodges my flashing teeth, and my sarcasm. “People. I do not see one keeper or guard. Which tells me they are off doing something else. Something more important than watching the stock.”
“And I know better than you on how many thousand acres they might be off doing that more important something.”
She has already turned and started trotting around the sprawling ranch house. “We will start with the nearest acres, then.”
I do not like following Miss Midnight Louise, so I manage to catch up and sprint past her by the time she reaches the front of the house.
But I stop cold, frozen by another inexplicable absence.
“My Miss Temple’s Storm,” I squall, dismayed. “It is gone! This was supposed to be a simple deposition mission. Now I have her to look after too.”
Miss Louise’s eyes narrow to mean-business dimensions. “I presume that ‘too’ means that you feel obligated to ‘look after’ me as well.”
“Not at all. I would not look after you if you came by carrying the queen of England’s train in your teeth.”
“Good,” she says. “What is that vehicle still squatting on the driveway?”
“Big?” I suggest.
A withering glance. Dames have no sense of humor.
“It is an in-town off-road model of SUV, which I suppose means Suburban Uppity Vehicle.”
“Hmmm.” Miss Louise goes to sniff the giant tires, doing a pretty good imitation of a scent hound. Her matte-black beetle-nose wrinkles. “Creosote bushes, sagebrush, and prickly pear. I suspect that there is where we will have to head.”
“The bush, you mean.” I am ahead of her. I am already heading that way.
She scampers to catch up.
“It is a hunt,” she suggests a bit breathlessly.
I enjoy making the kit hustle to keep up with the mature operative, and pedal faster.
“Yes, it is a hunt. But I suspect that there is more dangerous game and more hunters out there than the driver of that Suburban Uppity Vehicle has dreamed of.” Why else were Mr. Max Kinsella and my Miss Temple conspiring at the Crystal Phoenix not four hours ago?
Now I know what must be done, and I am just the dude for the job…once I have managed to stow Miss Temple Barr and Miss Midnight Louise out of harm’s way.
That is the real most dangerous game.
Chapter 46
>
Stalemate
“We’ll have to hoof it from here,” Temple said, eyeing desert and brush untracked by tires.
Speaking of hoofing it, a doe-eyed eland gazed at her through the palo verde thicket before vanishing. Not only hunters might cross their paths out here, she realized, but prey. Some of it pretty big prey.
“We can’t,” Leonora said when Temple came around to jerk the passenger car door open, eyeing her fashionably clad feet in dismay.
“Heck, we can navigate on these pitons better than anybody. Haven’t you waltzed down the flight of stairs from the art museum at the Bellagio a few dozen times, with not one misstep? What’s a little desert?”
Leonora allowed herself to be coaxed out. “Doing PR for the Crystal Phoenix makes you very pushy.”
“Doing PR makes anyone very pushy. You can’t afford to be a fading violet.”
“I’ve never been out here,” Leonora said, gazing around as nervously as the vanished eland. “I have no idea where they might be.”
“We’ll have a better idea when we look. Come on! We’ve got to try.”
Temple didn’t mention that Max was counting on her.
Together they minced over the sand and gravel and into the shade of the palo verdes.
“Isn’t this area pretty bushy for desert?” Temple commented.
“We’re still fairly close to the ranch house compound. It was planted with more tree-type growth so that the hunting would be more like…hunting. There are underground sprinklers to keep the trees growing.”
“No expense spared,” Temple muttered.
“I get the impression you disapprove of our hunt ranch.”
“Me? Oh, no, I’m just a crass PR flack looking for a hot attraction for my client. Why should I care if a bunch of confused, helpless animals are slowly slaughtered in the name of macho decorating schemes?”
Leonora stopped. “You loathe it. You loathe me.”
“Does it matter?”
Leonora couldn’t make up her mind, but stood there teetering, her remade face bluntly ugly in the broad daylight.
“Look.” Temple stepped closer. “I think you loathe it too, only you’ve never had the luxury of thinking about anything beside your own situation. Let’s worry about all that later. Right now, let’s just find and save one panther. Okay?”
Leonora nodded and started forward, toward the break in the bushes where the eland had peered through.
A voice put a period to her progress. A deep, annoyed, authoritative male voice.
“Just where the hell do you ladies think you’re going?”
They spun to face the man who had come up behind them as silent as a cat.
He wore the short-sleeved safari-shorts uniform of the security force, mirror shades, and the usual bush hat. A rifle lay in the crook of one swarthy arm like a big stick, pointed at the ground. Despite the uniform, Temple recognized him right away: the man who had lifted her out of the Jeep just a couple days ago. Who had put a flash of fear into Max’s eyes.
“It’s all right, Raf,” Leonora was saying with some of her old, synthetic confidence. “We just want to go to the hunt area. This lady has offered to pay a prince’s ransom for the panther. We can’t let it be killed.”
“Sorry.” He shook his head, but he didn’t look or sound sorry. “I can’t let you go any farther for anything. They’re stalking the cat just beyond those bushes. You could get killed, and I’d be held responsible.”
“We’re responsible for ourselves,” Temple said. “And Mrs. Van Burkleo is in full authority here.”
His shook his head. Temple wished she could have seen—read—his eyes. He sounded as hard-nosed as a highway patrolman who had caught you doing eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile zone.
“Sorry, ma’am. No can do. Now you two ladies just get back in that car and turn around and go wait at the ranch house until it’s over.”
“But when it’s over the panther will be dead!” Temple exploded.
“Better it than you, ma’am.”
Chapter 47
Dead Ahead
“Good,” I say, ducking back under some sagebrush.
“It is good that the great white hunter has your roommate and her companion at rifle point?”
“That is the only thing that will keep them safe. This is called a paradox. I will explain it to you later, when the worst is over instead of yet to come.”
I turn to continue my trot toward the danger ahead.
Miss Midnight Louise does not move a muscle. Not even a whisker. “You mean you are going to walk away and leave your significant other in that appalling situation?”
Ah. Little Miss Midnight has just shown me how to kill two birds with one very sneaky stone.
“Of course not,” I say indignantly. “I am going to leave you here to deal with the armed man. Obviously, my Miss Temple, competent as she is, has her hands tied at the moment. Not only does she have that extremely large and heavy tote bag to lug around but she must also consider the safety of the, uh”—I look carefully at Miss Temple’s companion, and then look again—“catwoman. It is up to you, Miss Louise, to watch the situation and take action if required to save the ladies’ lives. I imagine that you can handle one mighty hunter with a rifle?”
“Of course,” she spits back without thinking.
By then I have turned tail and am running through the brush before she can gather her wits and argue with me, or worse, follow me. I have neatly put her between the devil and the deep blue sea, as they say. The man with the gun is the devil, and if she leaves her post to follow me, she will feel guilty. The deep blue sea is me; if she follows her instinct to interfere with my plans for the sake of it, she risks harm to the helpless humans.
I am practically chuckling at the fiendish cleverness of my move as I run, except that I cannot chuckle. But I can think about it.
For the presence of the rifle-toting guard makes one thing clear: If they have posted a guard here, the real action must be pretty near.
Dead ahead, in fact.
Chapter 48
Men in Beige
Max watched the hunt breakers edge closer like animated mushrooms.
Their clothing and movements were properly stealthy, but they were pushing nearer their human prey. Too close for Max’s comfort.
He eyed the two huntsmen in beige below, who faced a sand-scoured shack open to the sky and wind about twenty-five yards in front of them.
The client carried a rifle. But so did the Rancho Exotica guide/security man.
The desert wind skittered across the sand, creating a constant microdermabrasion tattoo on any exposed skin surfaces. Max had been suffering that soft scouring for over an hour now, and it was getting on his nerves.
No, that wasn’t what was getting on his nerves. It was the sleek 9-mm gun on the rock beside him.
Max hated guns. He hated bombs even more, but he hated guns too. He’d taken perverse pride in rarely carrying them during a decade-plus of serious undercover work, and never using them.
Now he might have no choice. He would never have suggested that Temple come to this scene without having the backup of a loaded gun in his pocket. The Colt he had offered her weighed down his jacket pocket, but it was superfluous, not suitable to this distance and this situation.
Against rifles, of course, either weapon was useless, the movies aside. Amazing how many film heroes held off whole armies of heavy artillery with endlessly firing pistols.
Max was a fine magician, but he wasn’t that good.
A basso growl gritted across the sands with the wind.
The guide pointed with his left arm, the rifle still cradled in his right.
The client was a taller man, wearing the same style khaki clothing, except his shirtsleeves and pants were full-length. Despite his amateur status—and he certainly seemed awkward holding the rifle—he was the more sinister figure. The security boyos in Bermuda shorts always struck Max, like Las Vegas’s similarly attired bicycle poli
ce, as overgrown Boy Scouts.
Both men wore short boots and new bush hats, the guide’s rakishly snapped up on the right. The client’s hat still shaded his face all around, as did a pair of wraparound sunglasses. The guide scorned sunglasses, and squinted professionally at the shack.
Suddenly he lifted his rifle and shot to the right of the structure. The sharp report, the shooter’s body jerking at the recoil, the ping of a bullet hitting stone, startled Max despite himself.
It also startled something hiding inside the shack. A low black form streaked out of the shade and the shelter.
Max felt his gut tighten as he saw it: a panther, black as midnight, but its coat shining slightly rusty in the glaring sunlight. It could be Kahlúa, the panther he had borrowed once for a stunt. This was a beautiful, bright animal, sculpted like an art deco onyx, crouched and vigilant, knowing something was wrong. But also knowing only rewards and kindness from the hand of mankind so far. Until today.
Max scowled at the “client.” At least the bastard wasn’t a bow hunter. Not that a “hunter” who needed fenced and tamed prey could be expected to kill with one well-placed shot.
Max filmed the cat, still crouching, but now exposed. Filmed the two men conferring, moving closer.
The client lifted the rifle, placed it awkwardly against his right shoulder.
Max found his hand on the 9-mm Glock on the stone beside him, itching to touch the trigger. Shoot into the air, scare the panther off. And give away his own position.
He looked for the protesters. They were belly-crawling along a wash behind the fence, nearing the shack and the panther, inching into the rifleman’s shaky range.
And Temple?
His binoculars found no flash of red. Good. Something had delayed her, thank God. At least she was safe.
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