ranch.'
'So what should I do, rub up against one of Bobby's cows every morning before breakfast just to keep her happy?'
'I couldn't even begin to advise you on that subject,' the sensuous woman replied cryptically.
Interesting answer, Lightstone thought uneasily.
But before he could follow up on that curious remark, Karla suddenly responded to the young cook's appearance at the doorway to the dining room.
'Say, speaking of eating,' she changed the subject completely. 'Want to give it one more try? I forgot to warn you that Sasha considers Danny's scrambled eggs with onions and China peas one of her favorite snacks. But from the looks of things' — she glanced down at the loudly snoring animal — 'I'd say she's sacked out, and I know Danny's got more.'
The event so captivated him, he'd completely forgotten he hadn't eaten.
'That sounds real good to me,' he gratefully accepted Karla's offer.
She relayed the order to the young cook, who smiled and returned to his kitchen.
'So what…?' Lightstone started to ask, when the exterior door to the enclosed porch suddenly opened behind them.
'Uh-oh, time to work,' Karla automatically reacted to the familiar sound. She started to get up, but hesitated when she remembered the blissfully sleeping panther.
'That's okay, leave her,' Lightstone assured her, 'she'll be fine.'
'I don't know…'
'I won't move. Just don't go too far way, in case she wakes up and decides she wants another snack.'
It was obvious that Karla still felt uncertain, but Lightstone's relaxed smile reassured her. Then she glanced back over her shoulder and saw who had entered the restaurant.
'All right, you stay here. I'll be right back,' she agreed with a subtle but distinct edge to her voice.
'May I help you?' Karla asked as she approached the two men — Wintersole, whose eyes had given her cold chills, and another, younger one she'd never seen before. She noticed Wintersole still wore the bear-claw necklace.
'I was expecting a letter this morning, but it's not in my box.' Wintersole's eyes flickered toward the lone diner sitting at the nearby table.
'I'm sorry, but all the mail is in the boxes. Next delivery will be in late this afternoon.'
'This would have been a personal delivery to the post office,' Wintersole persisted. 'Sometime yesterday morning.'
Karla shook her head. 'I'm sorry, but everything's in the boxes, and no one dropped off anything this morning.'
'Would you mind checking, just to be sure?'
He probably intended it as a question, but it came out as a direct order.
'We don't get that much mail here.' The young woman forced herself to control her irritation and stare directly into those disconcerting gray eyes. 'You have box fourteen, correct?'
The hunter-killer team leader hesitated a split second, then nodded.
'Then there's no need to check. I'm absolutely certain there's no mail for you.'
She started to turn away, but a strong, restraining hand suddenly grabbed her arm.
'The sergeant asked you to check.' Wintersole's younger companion glared at her. 'I suggest you do that. Now.'
'Take your hand off…!' Karla started to exclaim, when the younger soldier let out a startled yelp and went down on his knees, hard.
'I believe I heard her say you don't have any mail in this post office. Perhaps you misunderstood that?' Henry Lightstone held the young soldier down on his knees with the painful, single-handed wristlock, but his eyes transfixed Wintersole's.
'Hey, knock it off, you two, I don't want…!' Karla stepped in fast, but not fast enough.
The young well-trained soldier relaxed, seemingly giving in to the wristlock. Then, when he sensed the opportunity, he dipped his shoulder, brought his feet around, and started to come up with a knuckle strike to Lightstone's exposed groin.
But the martial-arts-trained ex-cop had anticipated the move.
A high-pitched scream immediately masked the sound of crunching wrist bones.
'Oh, shit!' This time Karla made no effort to disguise her true feelings as she quickly reached into her apron pocket.
Responding instantly to the enraged look in Wintersole's eyes, Henry Lightstone released the young man's broken wrist and was shifting into a defensive stance when the enclosed room suddenly reverberated with a spine- chilling feral scream.
Wintersole, already in motion with his hand clenched for a crippling strike, and Lightstone, instinctively set for the block and counterstrike, both turned.
'SASHA! NO! TO ME, NOW!'
The cat was already in mid-lunge, her hind legs driving her claw-extended forepaws within striking range of the two blurry targets, when the familiar, reassuring, and commanding tones of the woman's voice caused her to abort her lethal charge. She twisted midair, sprang in the direction of the woman's voice, and then — once she made physical contact with her queen — spun toward the others with bared teeth and let out a defiant, rafter- shaking roar.
'Don't move, any of you!' the woman spit out angrily.
She needn't have bothered. All three men were frozen in place.
'Just stay where you are, all of you,' the woman ordered again, her eyes blazed with fury as she slowly dropped her right hand — the one clutching the small transmitter — to her side. 'I'm taking her out of here.'
The young soldier, shaken by his eye-level view of imminent and savage death, remained on his knees while the woman and the cat disappeared into the inn. But Lightstone and Wintersole automatically moved apart, even though both of them still mentally reeled from the shock.
Lightstone recovered first.
'I'm terribly sorry,' he apologized, turning to face the man he immediately — and instinctively — recognized as a trained and experienced killer. 'I had no business interfering. I thought — '
The sound of Henry Lightstone's voice appeared to snap Wintersole out of his trance. He looked down and saw that his left hand tightly clenched the bear-claw necklace. He smiled when he looked at Lightstone with his strange pale eyes.
'No, it was our fault, entirely our fault.' Wintersole briefly glanced down at the injured soldier. 'We were expecting a very important letter that involved… a great deal of money. It wasn't her fault — or yours — that it didn't arrive. We were out of line, and I apologize,' he added, as he extended his hand.
Lightstone accepted the peace offering, immediately aware of the extraordinary, controlled strength in the man's handshake as he did so. Then he looked down at the still-sprawled younger man.
'I'm really sorry about his wrist.' Lightstone shook his head regretfully. 'I'll be happy to pay for his medical treatment.'
'That won't be necessary.' Wintersole reached down and brought the younger man to his feet. 'You're not hurt bad, are you, David?'
'No sir,' the pale-faced young man spoke with surprising calmness under the circumstances.
Another one just like him. Muscular, trim, short-haired, and intense, but younger and nowhere near as cold… or dangerous, Lightstone decided, surprised to see disciplined obedience in the young man's face rather than anger. Who the hell are these guys? Cops?
To Lightstone's absolute amazement, the young man extended his uninjured right hand. 'My sincere apologies, sir. It was my fault for grabbing the woman. That was inexcusable. You had every right to come to her defense, and I had no call to go at you like that.'
'To tell the truth,' Lightstone chuckled as he accepted the young man's hand, 'I'm not sure she needed defending… at least not from me.'
'Man, that's sure the truth.'
