sound.
She saw nothing.
Then, panning left, the light caught a flash of…fur!
Whatever-it-was had outrun her beam, and she whipped the shaft of light in pursuit, catching a glimpse of a furry form, going past it, then coming back to settle on the cold brown beautiful eyes of a big cat.
Not a house cat: a bobcat or a lynx.
Poised to leap, the beast bared its teeth and snarled-the sound was brittle in the night, yet it echoed. With each fang as long as one of Sara's fingers, the cat seemed torn between its desire to get at the corpse and being almost as afraid of Sara as she was of it.
Trying to raise the rifle with one hand, in a steady motion-not wanting to make a swift move that might inspire an attack-and yet keeping the beam on the growling animal, Sara knew that the cat could cover the ground between them in mere seconds. Carefully she traded hands, shifting the flashlight to her left, the rifle to her right, propping the rifle against her shoulder-all with no sudden moves. Once she had the rifle more or less in place, her right index finger settled on the trigger….
Sighting down the barrel as she'd been taught, she kept the light trained on the growling cat, muscles rippling under its fur, and exerted pressure on the trigger. Don't jerk it, she thought, just squeeze…nice and easy…. When the trigger was about halfway down, she heard a loud pop!
But she had not fired.
A bullet thwacked into a tree behind the cat, and the animal jumped to one side-beautiful, graceful-and sprinted off, a brownish blur dissolving into the night.
Sara swiveled toward where the shot had originated-just behind her, and to her left, her ears still ringing from the rifle report-and captured Maher and Cormier in the MagLite's beam.
The Canadian handed a rifle over to the hotel owner. Both men looked like Eskimos, wrapped up in those parkas, hoods up, only the centers of their faces truly visible in the beam of the flashlight, perhaps ten yards from her.
'You scared the shit out of me!' Sara screamed, the adrenaline of the moment somehow combining to ratchet the volume of her voice in these woods, where the only other sound was the dying echo of Maher's gunshot.
Maher looked stunned for a moment, then smiled and said, 'You're welcome.'
'I mean…thank you…. But I did have the situation in hand.'
'I know you had that cat in your sights, and I know I missed. I wasn't trying to save you.'
'What?'
'I was saving the cat.'
'…The cat?'
Walking toward her, Cormier at his side, Maher said, 'The cat's a North American lynx. Endangered species.'
'Lynx?'
Cormier butted in. 'Not unheard of either. Seen my share of 'em in my day. You can get in trouble shootin' 'em, Ms. Sidle.'
Sara swung the MagLite to Cormier and said, 'Maybe I should've let him chow down on our corpse-or offer him one of my legs to chew on.'
'I just wanted to scare it off before anything happened,' Maher said, squinting at the light.
Finally realizing she was blinding the men, she pointed the flash at a more downward angle. 'Sorry, guys… didn't mean to lose it.'
'No problem, eh?' Maher said.
'If I'd been any more scared,' she admitted, 'I don't mind telling you, I'da wet myself.'
'Wouldn't worry none,' Cormier said. 'It woulda froze up right quick.'
Sara arched a half-frozen eyebrow at the hotel manager. 'You know, if you get any folksier, the next time I aim, it might not be at a lynx.'
Cormier grinned, and so did Maher. 'Let's get you back down to the hotel, little lady.'
She looked at Maher. 'Did he just call me 'little lady'?'
'I believe he did,' an amused Maher said.
'Herm,' she said to the hotel man, 'I'm taller than you are, okay?'
'You are at that…but you don't mind if I lead the way?'
Every bone in her body felt leaden and every muscle ached, even burned, and now that the adrenaline rush had subsided, she thought her legs might betray her. Taking a deep breath, she moved around a little, hoping to encourage some blood flow to her extremities.
'Ready?' Cormier asked.
'Ready,' she said. Then turning to Maher, she asked, 'Anything I can do down at the hotel? It's only what… ten-thirty?'
Maher shook his head. 'Just get some rest, 'cause we'll be keeping up the rotation. Snow seems to be letting up, some. Maybe by first light we'll finally be able to go to work.'
Sara exhaled breath that hung there like a small cloud. 'I am ready to do more than sit.'
'Just sit and scare off bobcats, you mean?'
Sara grinned. 'Constable, that was a lynx. I thought you knew your stuff out here, in the woods.'
With tight smiles and nods, they bid their goodbyes. Maher returned to the cubbyhole he'd dug, thermos of coffee and Remington rifle both handy, while Sara took off after Cormier. The movement, rather than wake her up, only made clear to Sara just how exhausted she was, and any thought of interviewing Amy Barlow, or anyone else for that matter, evaporated from her mind. Making their way slowly down the rocky slope in the darkness, aided by flashlight beams, they trudged down toward civilization.
Which right now Sara Sidle defined as a warm bed.
The rest of the night passed uneventfully.
On that cloud of a bed, Sara fell deeply asleep, and when the wake-up call came, she arose groggy, really dragging; she had slept in her clothes and bundled into her coat, stocking cap, muffler and all, she sleepwalked down to the lobby and fell in with Herm Cormier.
Once outside, the cold air snapped her back to bitter reality. And at the crime scene, she never once drifted off to sleep-it was if anything colder than before, though the snow was half-hearted and, by the end of her watch, all but stopped.
She returned to the hotel for three hours of deep, blissful sleep; this time she beat her wake-up call. She felt refreshed, and-after a shower-invigorated, ready to make her way up that mountain and relieve Grissom.
Just after seven-thirty, she stepped off the elevator into a lobby deserted but for Mrs. Cormier behind the front desk. The older woman gave her a wave and Sara waved back, and was about to ask where Pearl's husband was when Herm Cormier materialized at her side.
'Rarin' to get at it?' he asked.
'Actually, yes. Last night was so odd, it's almost like looking back on a dream, or maybe a nightmare.'
Cormier pointed a mildly scolding finger. 'I wish you folks woulda let me take a turn or two out there.'
She shook her head. 'Really needed to be one of us, at all times. That'll be much better when this case eventually gets to court.'
He grunted a laugh. 'No bad guy yet, and already you're thinking about court?'
She nodded, grinned. 'That's really where all of the work we do ends up. Where is everybody?'
'Things usually are a little livelier around here,' he said, glancing around. 'We're a big haunted house this weekend-they say Stephen King wrote that book about this place.'
'I guess,' he said, with a shrug. 'What guests we have are probably takin' breakfast. Amy, Tony, Mrs. Duncan and Bobby Chester are working the kitchen, naturally.'
'Where's Constable Maher?'
'He's in the dining room, too. That's why I was out here, on the lookout for you. Mr. Maher asked, when you
