The Ridge

sister, who’d awoken at three in the morning from a terrible nightmare, one that was hard to recall in detail but somehow left the overwhelming sense that it was time for Audrey to give up the preserve.

This wasn’t a new sentiment, but it was a new delivery, and one that incensed Audrey. Her older sister had been campaigning for her to abandon the rescue center from nearly the moment the minister had finished David’s eulogy. While Audrey understood and appreciated her concern, she didn’t need any hysterical talk of prophetic nightmares. Not now, not the way things had been going the past few days. It was too much, and she told Ellen that in no uncertain terms. She was committed to the preserve, and if Ellen would shut the hell up about it and support her instead of arguing with her, it would be great.

Afterward, standing in the shower trying to purge the argument with hot water and deep breaths, she felt bad in the way you could only when you understood the place someone was coming from. Ellen had always had a bossy streak, yes, but being in charge wasn’t the issue here. Loving her sister was. Audrey leaned her head against the cool tile of the shower as the room filled with steam and thought of her family, all of them living their practical, ordered lives in Louisville while their once most practical and ordered member, Audrey, drove to the middle of nowhere each morning to feed chunks of bloody meat to cats with paws the size of her head.

Maybe they were entitled to their concern.

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body, which was so thin, too thin. For a time after David’s death she’d been able to con herself into the idea that losing a few pounds was never a bad thing. No creature alive was more predisposed to fall for that con than a woman, after all. It was when five pounds turned to fifteen and then to twenty that she knew it needed to be dealt with. She’d used fatigue as an excuse for a lack of appetite, but fatigue didn’t keep you from avoiding the dinner table. Memories of sharing that table with your late husband did.

She’d been doing better lately, though. Five pounds back in the last month. All you needed to know about appetite you could learn from a lion.

She was thinking that, and smiling, when the phone rang again. She almost ignored it, certain that it would be Ellen again, perhaps calling to apologize, perhaps not. Then she gave in just enough to check the caller ID and saw that it wasn’t Ellen but Dustin Hall.

She picked up, and thirty seconds later, that snapping dismissal of her sister’s nightmare seemed a dangerous thing.

Wesley Harrington was dead.

Wes had been killed by one of the cats.

She made the drive to the preserve in a horrible deja vu daze. Back to Blade Ridge Road, back to a place where a good man lay dead in his own blood.

The police were there when she arrived. Two cars, an ambulance, and somebody’s pickup truck. She asked to see Wesley, demanded it, but they said nobody but police and his family could see him.

“I am his family!”

It wasn’t true, though. The cats were his family.

There were three deputies standing around watching her, and two of them were the pair who’d been on hand yesterday. Kimble and Shipley. Shipley, who’d been so nervous around the cats, who’d worried about being out in the woods when the sun went down, seemed calmer today, his blue eyes meeting her gaze without difficulty. The new one was a balding guy with sharp eyes who looked as if he wanted to arrest everyone now and sort it out later. Or not. He introduced himself as Pete Wolverton.

“What happened?” she said. “What happened?”

“One of the cats got him.”

“Ira,” she said.

“Is Ira the name of a tiger?” Wolverton asked.

She blinked, refocused. “No. Wait, what? He was killed by a tiger?”

“It was Kino,” Dustin called, face pale, eyes ringed by dark, puffy bags. “It was Kino, Audrey.”

“He went in the cage with Kino in the middle of the night?” she said.

Kimble stepped forward then, took her gently by the arm, and guided her from the others. They walked along until they came to Jafar’s cage. The leopard rose at the sight of her and jogged over, just as he always did. Waited with his face close to the fence, wanting her to reach in and scratch his ears, just as she always did. This time she hesitated.

“Seems like something happened in the middle of the night,” Kimble was saying in a gentle voice. “He went into the cage with a syringe.”

Jafar growled, and Kimble pivoted away from the cage and moved his hand toward his gun.

“He just wants attention,” Audrey said, and then she reached in and scratched Jafar’s head, the big cat preening, delighted. Kimble watched apprehensively, and she had a feeling he was thinking about what he’d just seen in Kino’s cage. She was imagining it herself.

“He went in the cage barefoot,” Kimble said. “Seems to imply there was some sort of chaos or problem.”

Audrey slipped her hand back through the fencing, remembering the way Wes had talked about the place being different at night, remembering the way she’d chastised him for his dire warnings. She leaned against the fence, feeling sick, and Jafar reached up and braced his front legs on the fence so that he was standing with his head close to hers. He licked her ear.

“He was barefoot?” Audrey said. Wes always had his boots on. She would have sworn he slept in boots.

“Yes. And he entered the cage with a rifle and some sort of a pole with a needle on it. A syringe.”

Something had gone wrong. The cat had been sick, or injured. That would have explained the rush into the night. If something had been wrong with Kino, that would explain everything.

“Was the tiger hurt?”

“Beyond the gunshot wound?”

She closed her eyes, and he said, “Sorry. I know they’re very important to you. Beyond the gunshot wound, I see no sign of injury. Now, I’m not a vet. Obviously, the syringe suggests something was wrong with the cat. What it was, I can’t say. There’s no obvious injury, though. Could he have wanted to sedate the animal just from a behavioral standpoint?”

“Behavioral?” Audrey felt Jafar’s rough tongue on her neck, then opened her eyes and moved away from the fence.

“Yeah. If it was, you know, acting up. Really going wild, for whatever reason. Might he have tried to sedate it then?”

“Wes hated to sedate cats except under extraordinary circumstances.”

“Well,” Kimble said, “it seems there must have been something extraordinary going on last night. I’ve got to warn you, Mrs. Clark—I think you’re likely to have some trouble over this.”

“Trouble?”

His face was grave, but he nodded. “It’s an accidental death. We’ll be clear on that. I’m in charge of the report, and I promise you that we will be clear on that. But you have to take the long view—you’ve got a man dead on this property, killed by one of your cats, and you’ve got another cat missing. People are going to react to that situation. You’re going to need to be ready.”

She stared at him, hearing the words and processing them but unable to attach any real meaning. All she could think of was Wes, running barefoot into the night with a rifle and a pole syringe. What had gone wrong?

“When I say be ready,” Kimble continued, “I mean not just for the public reaction, but for a lot of tough questions. One of the toughest: will you be able to deal with the missing cougar?”

“That will be a tough question,” she agreed, her voice numb and distant. Kimble looked at her and shook his head, unhappy.

“Is there someone you can go to for help? Do you know anyone who specializes in this sort of animal?”

“Yes,” she said. “Wesley Harrington.”

Kimble didn’t say anything. She looked away from him and up at the mountains and felt her mouth go dry and chalky. She tried to remember the trick she’d devised for herself to get through the hardest days: imagining her emotions being carefully folded and placed into a tight box and tucked away in some never-opened closet, the way she’d handled all of David’s clothes after the funeral.