Noah's Rainy Day

by Sandra Brannan

  The child saw the bright yellow bag and a dimpled grin spread across his smooth, white cheeks. After cutting a quick glance in his escort’s direction, the boy tiptoed toward the man with the bag of candy.

  “What Child Is This?” was playing on the PA overhead, and he scanned the airport before he ducked, unseen, into the bathroom with the bag of M&M’s.

  The boy followed.

  CHAPTER 2

  SPECIAL AGENT LIV BERGEN, my ass.

  As I was yanked off my feet and my teeth were sinking into Rocky Mountain turf, I wasn’t looking very agent-like and I certainly wasn’t feeling very special despite my new credentials from Quantico.

  I might be new at all of this—formally trained as an FBI agent, specifically assigned to be the handler for this tracking hound—but I wasn’t born yesterday. In fact, I am quite confident in my abilities as one of the youngest managers ever promoted in the mining and mineral processing industry. And soon turning thirty, I can confidently say I know what I’m doing. An expert. In mining. Not as a first office agent with the Bureau.

  That’s my problem.

  Having given up my quarrying experience and knowledge to work closely as an investigator with Special Agent Streeter Pierce, a legend at the Bureau, I am hell-bent on proving to him that his confidence in me at replacing my friend Lisa Henry—God rest her soul—in her official capacity as Beulah’s handler was not in vain. So I’ve spent every waking hour of my personal time since returning to Colorado from Quantico out training with this bloodhound, relying on the help of my brother-in-law Michael or one of many family members to be “lost” so I could track them.

  I had expected more from my Christmas Eve than this.

  I spat out the pine needles and attempted to free my hands from underneath me. The same hands that by sheer instinct should have reached out to break my fall but didn’t. I just could not make myself let go of the lead, afraid Beulah might get away from me. I wriggled my body off my hands and let the lead pull my arms above my head. Rocks, sticks, icy snow, and mossy dirt scraped into my jeans as my belly dragged across the forest floor.

  The taut lead between us held snug against a pine tree as she bolted in a different direction. She hesitated for an instant and I jumped on the opportunity of the angled lead. Scrambling to my knees and scampering around the tree, I levered myself against Beulah’s mighty force so I could regain my footing, my composure, and my dignity.

  I muttered, “What’s gotten into you?”

  She ignored me, baying at something up the hill, pulling hard against her harness. In all my training with her, I hadn’t seen her behave like this. I wondered where my brother-in-law Michael was, hoping it was he that Beulah was marking. But something about her behavior made me think not. So what had Beulah winded? And why was she off Michael’s scent?

  I had intentionally interrupted Beulah’s momentum by tying her leash to a tree while I caught my breath. That would make this particular search inadmissible in court if we were tracking a criminal for real, but I was getting better. And the true benefit of spending my free time like today in the field with Beulah was so that she could train me to better understand her signals for when it really counted.

  We’d both been working so hard every day since I’d been home that I felt like the two of us—dog and handler—were becoming one. We were thinking alike, moving together, and honing our skills as a specialized trailing team. And thanks to Michael, who was willing to get lost every time I asked, we were getting better.

  I was so grateful to my brother-in-law. Especially on Christmas Eve. I knew he and my sister Elizabeth had better things to do, considering they weren’t home in Louisville, Colorado, much these days, spending every moment possible building the future facilities for the Lost Boys, an outdoor campus for at-risk youth, in Rochford, South Dakota. I didn’t want Michael to think he’d wasted his holiday break on me if I’d missed Beulah’s signals. So to say I was frustrated would be a gross understatement. How could I ever impress Streeter with my newly acquired skills if I didn’t have a clue about what was setting Beulah off?

  As I brushed off my clothes and scooped the mossy decay out of my waistband, my eyes looked ahead to see if I could see what Beulah was howling at.

  And I saw it.

  In a tree less than ten yards ahead of my bloodhound, fifteen yards from where I stood, were two remarkably green eyes peering down at me. Beulah was bobbing stiff-legged and baying so loudly my ears were pounding. I debated whether my head hurt from her baying or from crashing to the ground when I was trying to keep up with Beulah’s sudden and mighty sprint up this hill. I was thinking back, wondering if maybe I’d hit my head on something. After all, this was the Rocky Mountains and there was nothing but trees and rocks and mountain lions out here.

  A mountain lion.

  I suppose that’s where my wonderment should have been focused. Not on whether or not I had hit my head on a rock a minute ago. But it was all so surreal to me. I blinked and rubbed my eyes with my free fist.

  About twelve feet from the ground in the crook of a heavy branch, the cat was crouched. Its eyes shifted from me to Beulah, it laid its ears back, and it hissed, baring its teeth. Beulah kept bobbing and baying, excited by the strange creature she had marked. The cat crouched lower, lifting its hind end higher in the tree. It was positioning itself to pounce. I had never seen a mountain lion, even though I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I don’t know what I expected in a face-to-face encounter, but this wasn’t it. I didn’t think I would find the animal so beautiful, so mesmerizing. So scary.

  I had read somewhere, or Michael had told me, that over the past few decades, the mountain lions had evolved to be fearless of dogs and would eventually be fearless of humans. With the expansion of the suburbs into the pristine areas west of Denver and along the Rocky Mountains, the cats had been pushed out of their natural habitat. With the ban on mountain lion hunting, the roaming acreage available to the cat population had plummeted, leaving the young male cats no other option but to double back into the populated areas. At least, this is how the experts justified the increase in kills attributed to mountain lions over the past five years. Humans, flipped over, filleted, entrails eaten, and discarded for other predators or later eating if times got tough. We had come to expect at least one death a year of a hiker or runner in the foothills.

  We were nothing but lunch for this cat, if I didn’t do something.

  Fast.

  The cat could have gone further up the tree or outrun us. But instead, it crouched and readied itself for Beulah. My hand slipped to my waist, searching for my six-inch hunting knife. My breath caught when I realized it was gone. As if the cat could read my mind, its gaze slid back to me, ignoring Beulah for the moment. I did not want to take my eyes off the cat for fear I’d miss something. Our eyes locked, and I let the lead ease through my fingers, giving myself just enough slack so that I could back up but not enough to let Beulah lurch forward. I reached the end of the lead, took a cleansing breath, and waited.

  The cat grew tired of my stillness and directed its gaze back to Beulah. I took advantage of the moment, searching around my feet for the knife. Nothing. I must have lost it farther back. I looked up at the cat and it was still studying Beulah, but it had shifted its weight. The cat’s back was swayed, and its tail twitched back and forth. I had to find that knife. Or something.

  My eyes scanned the forest floor, looking for anything I could use as a weapon. Just behind me and off to the right, I saw a small bit of brown that did not blend with the other drab browns and grays in the shadows and snow. It was the leather sheath with my knife. I eased down to a squatting position, hoping beyond hope that the cat wouldn’t see my vulnerability. Clutching the lead with one hand, I reached behind me with the other, my fingers searching the pine needles and rocks for the knife.

  Just as my fingers touched the cold handle, the cat’s deep green eyes shifted to me, and it stopped moving its tail. I snatched the knife and bo
lted upright, making myself look as big as I could by holding my arms above my head, tugging the lead accidentally as I did. Beulah’s head jerked back and the cat’s attention returned to her, sensing her momentary weakness. My only thought was I had to get Beulah closer to me, away from the tree. I clipped my knife back onto my pants and clasped the lead with every ounce of strength I had. I circled the tree that I’d used as a pulley device, unwinding Beulah. I tightened the lead and pulled harder against Beulah’s weight, coaxing her to be calm.

  “Good girl, Beulah. You found your mark. Super. Come here now, Beulah. Come to me, baby.”

  Beulah stood still, no longer howling.

  “That’s it, Beulah,” I said, tugging on her lead.

  Beulah backed up several steps, her nose still pointed up at the tree. The cat stared at Beulah, crouching lower on its haunches, twitching its tail in stuttered movements. What had I done? This wasn’t working right. Or I hadn’t thought this through carefully enough. Mountain lions hated the sound of dogs baying and howling. Evidently, it was one of the last introductions of civilization that mountain lions feared. And I had stopped Beulah from howling.

  I had to get training kicked back into gear, hers and mine.

  Gripping the lead, I wrapped it around my hips and yelled, “Find!”

  Beulah stiffened and lunged forward, closing the distance to the cat by a few feet. I leaned back. Beulah strained on the lead, bobbing up and down on stiffened legs, sounding again. It worked. The cat cowered into the crook of the tree. I inched along the lead for what seemed like hours. The cat was intimidated by Beulah’s howl but looked a bit more perturbed by my closeness. It was studying me now. The only thing that stood between it and me was Beulah’s howling. And I wanted to keep it that way.

  I resisted the urge to touch Beulah. That was our signal that training was over and Beulah could stand down. I thought about trying to back out of here but that would require Beulah to stay on her mark and howl, me to be strong enough to pull her back the entire time, and both of us to be far enough away to outrun the mountain lion. We needed to stand our ground and somehow finish this. Alive. I had to ready my knife but needed both hands to hold Beulah back. Without taking my eyes off the cat, I edged closer to the nearest tree and struggled to tie Beulah to it.

  I pulled my knife from the sheath and eased closer to Beulah. I spotted a broken tree branch big enough to whack the cat and inched in that direction. Just as I eased into a squat to pick up the branch, Beulah’s lead loosened and she bounded toward the tree where the cat crouched.

  “No!” I yelled, snatching the branch and posturing myself in a menacing stance. “Beulah, here!”

  The cat leapt from the tree.

  Beulah had reared up, her front paws against the tree to get her nose as close as she could to the mark, not quite seeing what she had treed or knowing the danger we were in, driven only by animal instinct.

  For a moment, I couldn’t move.

  I know now everything happens in slow motion in a crisis like this, just as people claim. Every instant was in freeze-frame, not unlike my whole body during this split second of tragedy. The horror of imagining that cat flying through the air and landing on Beulah’s back was too much for me. My shock was only intensified when I saw the cat land on the ground behind Beulah, not on her.

  That’s when I realized I’d had it all wrong. The cat was coming for me.

  With the mountain lion between me and Beulah, sprinting toward me with tremendous speed and intent, I did what any sane person would do at that moment. I dropped the branch and the knife.

  And ran like hell.

  CHAPTER 3

  FEAR TASTES FUNNY.

  The bile that rose in my throat as I turned to run burned in my mouth with the taste of iron. That knife and tree branch sure would have come in handy right about now. And what the hell was I thinking with the running? Sure as shit I was looking like prey to the cat. My legs were racing faster than I thought possible. I didn’t get very far before I felt the expected push from behind as the cat’s huge paws hammered against my shoulder blades.

  This was it.

  I heard Beulah’s growling howl and a loud crack. Run Beulah, was my last thought as my body slammed to the forest floor for the second time today. The whoosh of air from my body sounded unnatural. My world went dark for a moment, which I could only assume was from losing all my breath; oxygen rushed out of me as I struck frozen ground. I felt the weight of something rolling up the back of my legs and across my back as if I were laundry in a washerwoman’s ringer.

  I assumed the lion was simply toying with me, claiming me as its spoils, until I felt its hot breath against the back of my neck. Any minute its teeth would sink into the base of my skull and sever my spine. I must have been having another one of those slow-motion moments, which really didn’t sit well with me considering my predicament. I wanted this moment to be quick. And over. But it wasn’t. I lay there waiting for the moment to pass, waiting for the cat’s teeth to sink into the soft skin behind my neck, crunching through bone to leave me paralyzed. And dead. All I felt was its weight and movement.

  “Liv?” The voice, breathless but familiar, pierced the gray that crowded my senses. “You okay?”

  It sounded like Michael.

  What in God’s name made him ask such a stupid question when clearly I was not okay? I had a huge mountain lion on my back about to eat me. Definitely not okay.

  I tried to speak and realized I hadn’t recovered my breath yet. I started to cough and felt movement on my back. Am I supposed to fight mountain lions? Play dead? Or is that bears? The weight on my back shifted, moved off. Something was trying to reach beneath me—the cat’s paw!—to flip me over. I knew what would come next. It would slice me up the middle and eat my insides, leaving my carcass for later. I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to be dead, just as the cat flipped me over onto my back.

  Then I punched, clawed, and jabbed my thumbs toward its eyes, letting out a cry that echoed off the mountains around me.

  “Liv! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  I felt a warm tongue lick my cheek. I opened my eyes. Beulah was standing over me and Michael was kneeling by my side, holding the side of his face. There was no mountain lion. Just Michael nearby and Beulah sitting beside me.

  “Geez, that hurt,” Michael was saying, his hand pressed to his cheek.

  He pulled his hand away from his face and I saw the scratches I had made, thinking he was the cat.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. My breath recovered.

  Beulah wagged her tail and licked my face again. I coughed.

  “Way to go, pooch,” Michael said to the dog. He stood up and tucked his pistol back into his holster. I followed his gaze off into the woods. “Come on. Before that mountain lion comes back.”

  “So there was a cat.”

  I remembered the loud crack, wondering if what I had heard was a gunshot. But I didn’t see any blood, other than from the scratch I’d made to Michael’s cheek. I assumed his shooting would have at least injured the mountain lion. I wondered if Michael had missed completely.

  Looking a lot like a young, thin Wilford Brimley in an old cowboy flick, Michael stood over me, petting Beulah’s knobby head. Glancing at his pistol, he said, “Just scared him off. My granddaddy told me that when he was a boy, he used to walk to and from school five miles each way in the woods. His daddy gave him a small pistol. Not big enough to shoot at the mountain lions, but loud enough that when he shot into the air, the report would scare off any big cats that might be preying on him. He said it always worked.”

  I stared at him, incredulously. My mouth dropped open. “And what if it hadn’t?”

  Michael shrugged, a rascally grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Then I realized he’d been messing with me. Michael knew what he was doing. In that split second when the cat had pounced, he had made a decision about leveling his sights on the beast. First, the large, young male likely outsized Michael’
s ammunition. Second, the cat was moving, and so was I, which meant Michael would either miss altogether or possibly hit me or Beulah with the bullet.

  I realized Michael had decided to aim his pistol in the air intentionally to scare off the cat, rather than taking aim at him. And I realized the mountain lion had probably changed its mind when it bowled me over and decided to run right past me when I hit the ground hard enough to lose my breath and injure my ribs. Beulah must have lunged for the cat and landed on top of me, her massive weight crushing my back. It hadn’t been the lion’s hot breath I had felt against my neck, but Beulah’s.

  I suppose Beulah thought she was standing guard over me, protecting her master. But I could barely breathe with her eighty-five pound mass sitting on my back. She stuck so close to me, I could actually tell what flavor Dog Chow she’d had for breakfast.

  “You saved my life.”

  I sat dazed, assessing the damage. My palms stung and I felt a sharp pain in my lower chest.

  Michael shrugged. “You saved mine.”

  I plunged my hands in the snow for relief and wished Mom were here to lift me up onto the washing machine, spray my skinned palms with Bactine, and blow on them to take out the sting.

  Michael was stroking the bloodhound’s ears. “Well, maybe not you. More like Beulah saved my life. That mountain lion was stalking me. In broad daylight.”

  “I think I broke a rib.”

  “Good girl.”

  “How sensitive of you,” I said, shifting my weight to lessen the pain.

  “I meant Beulah, not you. Don’t be stingy with those dog treats.”

  As I offered Beulah a fistful, Michael spread his fingers over Beulah’s knobby skull again and added, “Don’t tell me—now that you have a taste for cats, you’re spoiled on humans?”

  Beulah panted, enjoying his attention.