The Ridge

the woods.

I want your eyes, she thought. Just for a minute. Let me see in the dark like you, just for long enough to know what’s out there.

But all she could see was the silhouetted trees and the glimmering blue flame.

“Who’s there?” she called, and then she began to walk toward it, her own flashlight now a moving glow. The blue light seemed to have stopped between the crest of the ridge and the edge of the preserve. She wouldn’t go far. Just out past the cages, far enough to see, far enough to be heard. It was Wolverton, had to be. He just couldn’t hear her. With those gusts of northern wind pushing the trees and the cats roaring, it would be hard to hear her.

And hard to see a flashlight, Audrey? He can’t see a flashlight?

Maybe he was being silent for a reason. Maybe he was pursuing the source of that blue light himself, and the last thing he wanted was for her to come bumbling along, shouting and shining a flashlight and—

When the cat growled on her left, she wasn’t immediately concerned. She was used to walking past growling animals, had just come out in the darkness to be greeted by a lion’s roar. It registered slowly—far too slowly—that she was past the enclosures, and no cats were on her left.

No cats should be on her left.

She stopped walking, a sense of inevitable disaster descending over her, a soldier hearing the click of a land mine at his feet.

Ira.

There was another growl, a deep, warning note, and it was very near. The blue light ahead of her was forgotten now, irrelevant. All that mattered was this sound at her side and how to respond.

Move slowly, she told herself. You have to move slowly. She swung the flashlight to her left, the beam gliding over the trees like headlights coming around a curve, and found the black cat no more than ten feet away.

She saw the sparkle of his eyes first. Emerald, like pieces of an old bottle made of green glass. Then the rest of him took shape—hunched shoulders, coiled muscles, stiff tail. She was trying to say his name when she saw something pale beneath his front paws, and then the breath went out of her.

He was standing on a body.

One limp white palm extended out into the leaves. That was what had caught her attention. The rest was nearly camouflage, the brown uniform of the sheriff’s department. He was facedown in the brush, and the blood that pooled around his throat looked so black that it seemed a part of the cougar, an extension of his fur.

Audrey screamed. Everything in her brain told her not to, told her that the cat would spring at the slightest provocation, but everything in your brain could fail you at the sight of something like this, and so she screamed despite herself.

The cat snarled, snapped forward, and lashed out with a paw. He didn’t leave, though. He was protecting the kill.

Audrey turned and ran into the night, ran gracelessly and pointlessly, knowing that he would bring her down from behind and end her out here in the cold woods.

He didn’t, though. He never moved, but even after Audrey fell onto her knees in the trailer, with the door closed behind her, she still had her hands up by her neck as if to protect her throat when he sprang.

27

WHEN THE PHONE RANG at three A.M., Kimble knew it would be bad in the way that you always knew a call at that hour would be bad, but he hadn’t imagined it could be like this. He hadn’t imagined that whatever had happened had happened out there.

His first, groggy thought upon hearing that one of his own was down at Blade Ridge was a perverse, horrible hopefulness.

Maybe it’s Shipley. Maybe whatever madness exists out there is feeding on its own.

It wasn’t Shipley, though. It was Pete Wolverton.

He hung up the phone, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and cursed himself. All he’d heard about that place tonight, and still he hadn’t called them off. He’d considered it, but then the thought of Audrey Clark had changed his mind. She wasn’t going to abandon her cats, and he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone out there.

“I’m sorry, Pete,” he whispered. “Damn it, I’m so sorry.”

Then he got up, dressed, put on his gun, and went to make amends.

The scene was bright when he arrived, four cars already there, three from his department and one from the state police, all with flashers going. Spotlights were shining in the woods where Pete Wolverton had died, brightening the night so that the evidence techs could take their photographs.

Kimble got out of his car, feeling wearier than he ever had in his life, and went to talk to Diane Mooney, who was in charge of the scene.

“Where’s Audrey Clark?” he said. Around them the cats milled, bothered by all the lights and activity.

“Inside. She’s shaken up pretty bad.”

“She saw it happen?”

“Essentially. She found Pete with that fucking cat still on top of him.”

The venom in Diane’s voice was something Kimble had never heard from her. She wasn’t facing him, was instead looking out at the preserve, where dozens of massive cats stared back at her.

“Be a pro,” Kimble said, gentle but firm.

“I’m trying, chief. But that was Pete out there. That was Pete.”

“I know it. You talked to Shipley?”

“No. Why?”

“He was here until midnight, when Pete relieved him. I want him…” He hesitated, about to say that he wanted Shipley out to tell them what he’d seen, but now thinking that he didn’t want Shipley out here at all. “We need to know if he saw or heard anything during his shift,” he said. “But I’ll run him down tomorrow. We don’t need him at the scene. We got enough people out here as it is, and since they were working together on this, it might hit him harder than any of us.”

“I don’t think there’s a sliding scale on the way this one hits.”

Kimble nodded. “Was it you who interviewed Audrey Clark?”

“Yes. We’ll need to take another run at her, though. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

“How so?”

“Well, she’s hysterical, for one thing. But when she does talk, she claims that all those damned cats were dancing around on their hind legs, that someone with a blue torch guided her to the body, that—”

“Hang on. Hang on. A blue torch?”

“Like I said, she’s hysterical. Talking nonsense.”

Kimble looked up at the lighthouse and wet his lips. “Right. You’ve seen the body? You’ve seen Pete?”

She nodded.

“Any chance he wasn’t killed by the cougar?”

“Sure,” Diane said. “If there’s a wolf on the loose.”

He followed Diane through the woods and out to the place where Pete Wolverton lay in the wet leaves. A ring of spotlights had been set up around him as if a film crew were readying for a shoot, and yellow tape was strung between the trees. Everyone was hushed. Death scenes were always grim places, but this was different. This was one of their own.

Kimble ducked under the tape, approached the body of his friend of fifteen years, and dropped into a crouch. He felt something thick in the back of his throat and tight behind the eyes, drew in air through clenched teeth and then let it out slowly.

“No sign of the cat?” he said.

“None,” Diane answered. “With all these people around, he won’t show himself again. But when it was just