Cougar's Mate (2 page)

She didn’t know exactly where she was and wouldn’t have even known this was Colorado if she hadn’t crossed a road where a sign marked the border between Oklahoma and Colorado a couple of weeks back. At least she thought it had been a couple of weeks ago. Lately, she’d been losing track of time. She had no idea if this was a Monday or a Sunday, or any day in between. She was certain it had to be November by now though.

Did they hunt cougars in this area?
Crap
. What if they did? What if the hunting season had already started? That meant she could be one of the ones hunted—not just by the police and the puma shifters, but by hunters looking to take down the big cats for trophies or the thrill of the hunt. Many areas
did
have legalized hunting seasons for cougars.

She studied the cave further, her ears perked, listening intently, her whiskers testing the cold night breeze, her nose twitching as she smelled for any sign of an inhabitant. Nothing. The cave was empty, thank God.

She still couldn’t believe it had come to this.

She had the propensity for dating the wrong guys. That’s how this had happened. She liked the cads. The bad boys. All because of her brother’s influence. And from associating with his wild friends. When her brother and two of her boyfriends had died on her—due to one fatal mistake or another—she’d changed her whole way of life.

So what did she do? Dated a cop! And now she was on the run.

How long before her luck would run out? They wouldn’t let her go. They’d keep tracking her. They needed her.
Dead.
If someone else didn’t shoot her first.

Unfortunately, pumas or mountain lions or cougars or catamounts, whatever people wanted to call them, had a bad reputation. The more people there were, the more they encroached on the cougars’ territory, the more incidents there would be. What did people expect?

She feared she couldn’t win. She couldn’t shift without clothes and she had no ID. If anyone learned who she was, the police would be all over her. Running as a cougar for the rest of her life wasn’t an option, either. She needed her humanity, just as much as she needed her wild cat side.

And she needed food, her rumbling stomach reminded her. That was one of the problems she’d had to deal with on this journey, the inability to take down four-footed prey. The instinct existed, but the human part of her saw Bambi, not a meal on hoofs. Or Thumper, not a bunny that would ease the ache in her belly. She’d been living off fish, a rattlesnake, and a few prairie chickens when she could catch them.

Satisfied the cave would provide her a safe resting spot for the night, she jumped down to the next rock ledge to check out the pool of water down below to see if she could catch dinner. She leapt onto another outcropping further down when a child's terrified scream and then a loud splash below the waterfall sent chills up her spine.

The only way she could reach the child quickly enough from this height was to run to him in her puma form—but if anyone with a rifle saw her…

Listening, she waited a heartbeat to hear if anyone was coming to the child's aid. Shannon couldn’t wait any longer. The child’s terror overrode her fear for her own safety.

The child screamed again and Shannon leapt onto a ledge below the one she’d been on and then another and another. When she reached more of a slope, she raced down toward the waterfalls where she'd heard the screams, her heart beating hard, her temple pounding furiously.

The whole time all she could think of was rescuing the child and how difficult that would be. If anyone saw her, they'd think she had every intention of eating him instead. And the child itself would most likely think the same.

She dove through underbrush and a grove of trees, her paws sliding on the fallen leaves and loose rocks, and reached a rocky ledge.

The child was a boy of maybe six or seven—his forehead bloodied as he clung to a rock in the frothing, icy cold water. She wanted to shout to him that she was coming, but her shout would be a mountain lion's snarl, terrifying, when she wanted to reassure him in the worst way.

When he saw her, his eyes widened. He shook so violently, she was afraid he'd lose his grip on the rocks and drown if she didn't reach him quickly enough. As it was, he could still die of hypothermia. Cougars didn't care for the water like jaguars and tigers did, but they did swim well in the water. She quickly looked around and saw and heard no sign of any help coming for him.

She jumped up and into the air and down into the water, hoping she wouldn't break a leg on the rocks. That would be the end of her running from the law. And the end of her life. She sank deep into the water, no impact with rocks, but it was too deep to stand up in, even if she’d been in her human form. As far as she'd gone under when she jumped in and had to swim to the surface, she guessed it was around ten feet.

The water was cold, but it didn't bother her while she wore her cougar's coat. She dogpaddled toward the boy, who looked like he wanted to let go of the rock and get away from her, but he was too scared to release his hold either.

The boy's eyes couldn't have grown any bigger. She wished she could shift and tell him she intended to save him. She imagined that would likely cause him to go into a worse shock.

She finally reached him and licked his cheek with her sandpapery, warm, wet tongue, trying to show him she was not going to bite him. That probably didn't help, either. He might think she just wanted a taste before she bit him. There wasn't any other way to do this. She reached down and bit into his jacket. He screamed and flailed his arms and legs.

So not good. But she had no alternative. She pulled him from the rock and paddled with him to the base of the opposite cliffs and the small rocky beach, her teeth holding on for dear life as she didn’t want him to wriggle free. Halfway there, he stopped fighting her, for which she was extremely grateful.

When they reached the beach, he shook violently from the cold, his lips blue, and he didn't move away from her or try to get free. She pulled him up to the rock wall and under the overhang for a bit of shelter. No one seemed to be coming to his aid. She assumed a family was camping nearby, but in her puma form, she had no way to let them know the boy was in trouble.

Again, she did the only thing she could, knowing that if the family saw her, they'd think for certain she'd claimed the boy for her meal but wasn’t hungry enough to eat him yet. She began to lick the water off his face in an effort to dry him a little and to help the circulation in his skin. He was so cold, terrified, looking up at her with huge, haunted brown eyes and didn't utter another sound. Then she cuddled against him, trying to share the heat of her body, as if he was her overgrown cub.

When he fell asleep, she moved more of her body over his, trying to warm him. The temperatures dropped as the night progressed and he continued to shiver, but not as violently with her helping to warm him some. She remembered reading about an autistic boy who had wandered off in the middle of the night from his tent, and the family dog had found him, curled up with him, and kept him warm during the drop in temperature that night. When they’d located him, the dog was praised for saving the boy’s life.

With her? They’d shoot her.

By morning's first ribbon of pink light, she heard people shouting in panic. "Mikey! Mikey, where are you!"

Shannon licked the boy's face, trying to wake him so he could call out to his family. She couldn't leave him until she was certain they'd find him and carry him to safety.

She licked him again and purred. His eyes opened, and he looked even more terrified in the early dawn light.

"Mikey!" a man hollered in the woods still too far away.

She was afraid Mikey thought she would bite him if he tried to warn his family he was here. Despite not wanting to leave him until his family located him, she leapt into the water and swam away from the rocky beach.

As soon as she did, he began to yell, "I'm here! Over here! By the waterfall!" But his words were weak, and she wasn't sure his family would hear him.

She leapt onto a rock, then looked back at him. The voices grew closer.

Men yelled again.

"Here!" the boy said and started to cry. "Here!"

She swallowed a lump in her throat.

Three men broke out of the woods and spied her across the water, standing on the rock ledge. One of the men was armed with a rifle.

"Here," the boy cried and they looked over the overhang to see him.

Two of the men scrambled down the rocky cliff to reach him, the one remaining behind pulling the rifle to his shoulder.

She leapt onto the next ledge and disappeared into the brush and prayed the boy would recover from his injuries.

She knew she couldn't stay here now.

***

Glad the last of the campers staying at his rustic cabins in the Rockies had packed up and left, Chase Buchanan liked it just like this—no humans talking and shouting and laughing. Just the breeze fluttering through the leaves, the birds singing, and the water lapping at the lake's beach nearby.

After cutting up vegetables and adding water, stew meat, and spices in the crockpot, Chase started cooking the Irish stew on low. He had his day planned out for him. He was about to begin work on one of the cabin roofs when he got a call from his US Army Special Forces buddy and now sheriff of Yuma Town, Colorado. Trouble, Chase imagined. So much for his plans.

He lifted the phone to his ear. "Yeah, Dan?"

"If you can put on your deputy's badge, I need some help."

"What's up?"

"We have a big cat near Carver's Falls that dragged a six-year-old boy from the pool after he'd left his tent in the middle of the night and wandered off. He must have fallen off the cliff. His mom said he regularly sleepwalks when he's overly tired. Now we've got to hunt down the cougar."

"Did the cat hurt the boy?" Chase was certain Dan would have told him right off if the cougar had killed the child.

"No. Just licked him and dragged him to shore, then stayed with him."

Which meant the cat must have fed recently. "Are we using tranquilizer darts?"

"Yeah, we'll turn it over to the local big cat reserve or to a zoo if we can take him in all right. But I don't want anyone hunting for cougars in the area this early. Our people are doing their last minute runs in the wilderness before cougar hunting season begins in two weeks. A couple of other men—strictly non-shifters—are still at the campsite at Lake Buchanan. They helped track down the boy and witnessed the cougar. The family has packed up and gone home."

Sheriff Dan Steinacker and Chase had seen a lot of missions together while they served in the army, and Dan knew he could count on Chase for anything.

"I hear you." Chase had planned to run tonight himself after dusk, just like most of his shifter kind did once many of the tourists went home after summer break and before cougar hunting season began. "Where do you want me to head?"

"Southside. I'll take the north. That's the way the cat went, according to the family."

"Not one of ours, is he?"

"I had my dispatcher call the alert roster, but everyone is accounted for."

Chase sighed. "All right. I'm on my way there now." His cabins were about a mile from the location and the town, seven. He'd make it to Carver's Falls before Dan arrived to check out the area. "Call you with an update later," Chase promised, grabbed his rifle and darts, and headed outside to his vehicle.

So much for reroofing a couple of the cabins he owned in the next couple of days. This time of year when the tourists were gone, he repaired the two-hundred-year-old log cabins before winter arrived. He was thinking seriously about what his grandmother had said concerning the Buchanan of old. How they'd been castle builders in Scotland, replacing the wooden Roman fortresses with stone keeps and curtain walls that could keep out the invaders.

Not that he needed stone fortifications for the security. All he wanted was something that wouldn't need constant repairs.

When Chase finally reached Lake Buchanan, he saw just three tents in one of the camping areas. Wearing parkas, three men were fishing at the edge of the lake, the chilly breeze whipping about them.

"Howdy, folks," Chase said, stalking through the woods to reach the rocky beach.

A black-bearded man nodded in greeting. A younger redheaded man, looked to be his son, maybe in his early thirties, stood next to him. Another man, blond, same approximate age as the black-bearded man, watched Chase approach, looking a little wary.

"I’m Chase Buchanan with the sheriff's department," Chase said, having been deputized by Dan when he first arrived in town four years ago, but he wasn't on the regular payroll and didn't want to be. He liked managing his cabin resort just fine. Because of that, he wasn't dressed like the sheriff and his full-time deputy—instead wearing his western boots, blue jeans, western shirt, sweater, and parka coat—not at all the look of someone serving on a police force, though he flashed a badge. "Were you with the family whose boy was injured on the cliffs?"

"Not exactly with them, but camping nearby. My son and I went with the boy's dad to search for him when they discovered the boy was missing. I have to say I've never heard of anything like it. The cat pulling the kid out of the water and then sleeping with him. He said he woke a couple of times and the cat was covering him with his body. We figure it had recently eaten and was saving him for later."

"Yeah," the son said. "We had a housecat that brought a mouse in from outside. A live mouse and put it in her dish. She planned to eat it later. Of course, as soon as she let go of it, it ran off."

"Right, gentlemen. Thanks," Chase said. He didn’t like having to take down cougars, but he didn’t have much of a choice in a case like this. Word would spread, and gun-toting hunters were sure to take down the kid-eating cougar. That meant any cougar they spotted would be a target. Forget licensing or limits.

"Are you going to kill it?" the first man said.

"Tranquilize it if we can locate it. He might have moved on." But Chase doubted it. Cougars were territorial and if he found this to be a good hunting ground, he'd stay nearby. Wanting the men to be safe, Chase said, "You know the rules at these campsites."