Cougar's Mate (3 page)

"Yeah. Don't leave any food out that'll attract wild animals," the younger man said, the other men nodding.

"If you've got guns, no shooting the cat," Chase said. “We’ll take care of it.”

"Unless he attacks us without provocation," the younger man said.

"Right." Chase had to agree that if they were attacked, they had every right to protect themselves.

He said goodbye to the men, then headed for his vehicle. He drove around the lake to the south side and parked, then grabbed his rifle filled with tranquilizer darts, a canteen of water, and binoculars. He could see well with his cat's vision, especially when something moved. But he wanted to catch sight of the cat well before the cougar caught sight of him.

Cougars were solitary animals, normally yielding to other large predators like bear and wolves in a pack. So he really didn’t believe he’d have much trouble with it. But if he tracked it down too far away, he would have a time carrying him back to his vehicle so he could take him to a cat reserve that was nearby until they could find the cat a more permanent home. Most zoos raised their own cats from cubs and didn’t take in wild ones. But sometimes they did. He even knew of a wild male cougar that had mated with a cougar raised by the zoo, which brought some much needed new genes into the gene pool and she had three healthy cubs as a result. So it could happen.

He trudged through the woods, the stands of golden aspens' quaking leaves turning, some already a blazing yellow, others still a summer green, and others turning golden orange, shimmering in the fading sunlight. Cottonwoods along Cougar Creek were fading into gold, and scrub oak sported its fall finery from rusty to pinkish red, oranges, and yellows, the evergreen pines mixed among them. At the highest elevations, a fresh blanket of snow covered the upper peaks of the mountains.

He sniffed the brisk, cool air. And then he caught the big cat’s scent. The cougar had come this way. Only
he
was a
she
.

Chase just hoped he could capture her and that someone would want to take her in without causing her too much trauma. If she was young, even better. Sometimes an older cat that was used to hunting might have to be dropped off in the wilderness somewhere else to fend for herself, or be put down.

Hating this part of the job, Chase continued to track the she-cat up into the rocks.

Chapter 2

Shannon Rafferty's schedule was all screwed up. She hadn't eaten for two days now, when she'd had every intention of finding a cave to sleep in, and then hunting for some dinner. Instead, she’d had to rescue the boy. She hoped Mikey's head injury wasn't too bad and that he hadn't suffered too gravely from the effects of hypothermia. Or that her rescuing him hadn’t given him nightmares. But she was afraid it would.

She had slept most of the day in another cave farther away from the first and then when it was dusk, she would have to risk hunting.

The sky grew darker as Shannon stared out the entrance of the cave, watching for any sign of danger. She hadn't seen any hikers or hunters. Yes, she'd noticed the tents at the campsite near the lake. She'd even considered that after the men retired to their tents and their sleeping bags tonight, she could go there and catch a fish in the lake. The campers wouldn’t be able to see her at night. Then she'd have it made. But once she’d rescued the boy, she nixed that idea. If they somehow did catch sight of her, they would know she was a dangerous predator, looking for a new source of meat. Maybe even them.

It didn't matter. She couldn't have let the boy drown. Several times she'd woken during the day, thinking she'd heard a child screaming. Forget
his
having nightmares about last night.
She
was having them!

The moonlight softly illuminated the golden aspen, the leaves fluttering in the chilly breeze. She closed her eyes briefly.

She had enough nightmares to deal with without piling up any more on top of those. She had intended to stay here in the area because she hadn't located any sign of wolves or black bears. If she ran into a black bear or wolf pack? Both predators would push a cougar out of their territory or kill him.

She hadn't smelled either in the vicinity. Only cougars. And a lot of them. Cougars didn't run in packs. Which was why a cougar would be at risk when encountering a wolf pack. A lone wolf was no match for a cougar's claws and teeth. But with a lot of cougars congregating together? It had to mean they were shifters. And they kept the other big predators away. So she thought she had half a chance at surviving here. Bears and wolves would find some other place to hunt.

She'd never smelled so many cougars in one area before though and it did worry her that they’d locate her and then what? Interrogate her. Why would a female shifter run in the wilderness by herself with no camping equipment anywhere?

Even if they didn’t learn who she was, she couldn't go to any of them and ask for help. Not in her cougar form. Without clothes, she couldn’t just walk into town naked, either. Besides, she was a wanted woman, and she was certain no one would believe her word over the rest of her boyfriend’s family. Not when Hennessey Kelly was a cop, which meant she was on her own.

The crimson sky turned to blackness and all that was left was the moon and a sprinkling of stars. Shannon rose, listened, her ears perked, trying to hear anything other than the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves down below. She heard no sign of humans and leapt down to the next ledge. Thankfully, her kind could leap eighteen feet in one bound, up or down. And horizontally? As much as forty to forty-five feet. At a sprint, she could run full out for short distances at forty to fifty miles per hour, which was what she had planned—to race back to the lake, despite discounting the idea earlier, and then take however long it took to catch her meal.

She'd made it to the second rock ledge when she saw something move in her peripheral vision. A man standing on a lower ledge off to her right, his hands reaching for his rifle, slung over his shoulder. How could he see her at dusk?

He moved quickly as if he was a military man and not just a hunter. Before she could leap at him, he fired a shot, the sound ringing in her ears, echoing across the rocks. The last thought she had as she collapsed on the rock ledge above him was that she had lived a month longer than she thought she would have ever managed.

***

As soon as the she-cat landed on the stone, asleep, hopefully, Chase struggled to reach the ledge she was lying on. If he’d been in his cougar form, no problem. But to reach her as a human, he could have used climbing gear.

He hated having to shoot her as much as it felt as if he were shooting one of his own people. But he wasn't. He had just knocked out a wild cat protecting herself that might have killed him, based on survival instinct alone.

He grasped the top of the ledge, got a couple of toe holds with his boots, and pulled himself halfway up the rock face when he saw a naked woman lying on the granite, her back to him, and his tranquilizer dart in her shoulder. Shocking him to the core, he gaped at her.
Holy shit.

Silky, dark brown, nearly black hair draped around her neck, the rest of her tan skin covered in chill bumps from the cold. Before he could climb on top of the ledge to reach her, and while he was still processing that the cougar was a shifter, and not a full she-cat, his cell phone rang.

His nerves, normally made of steel, shattered into a million fragments. He climbed up onto the ledge and hurried to pull the dart out of the woman's shoulder, then jerked off his parka. After rushing to lay it on the ledge and then lifting her onto it, he pulled her arms into the sleeves and then buttoned it up to her throat. The parka only came to high thigh, but he couldn't do anything about that for now. He glanced up at the cave above them, assuming she must have been staying there.

His breath coming out in a misty fog and his heart pounding hard, he made the rest of the arduous climb to reach the cave to grab her clothes and ID. He stalked inside, used his cell phone to provide some extra light as pitch black as it was in there, and found—nothing. Not a backpack, not a stitch of clothes. Certainly no ID. And she wasn't anyone he remembered ever having seen before.

He hadn’t thought he could be shocked any further.

"God, what a nightmare." He had to get the nearly naked, sleeping woman down the cliffs somehow. And he had to keep her warm until then.

He called Dan to give him an update. "Dan.”

“Yeah, I tried calling you to let you know the cougar headed in this direction at some point, but I haven’t found any sign of him. Have you discovered anything your way?”

“Yeah. I sure as hell did. I'm in one hell of a mess. I need your help… pronto."

***

Dan immediately headed back south. In all the years he'd known Chase, he'd only heard him sound this frantic about anything twice in his life. The first time was when three of their team members had died in a mine blast during a combat mission and neither could save any of them. The second time was when Chase's family had been murdered.

"Okay, slow down and say everything after: you have a naked woman in your custody."

The last Dan had recalled, he'd sent Chase to track a cougar and…
Ah, hell.

Sounding startled, Chase said, "Just a minute."

But Dan couldn't wait to hear what was going on. "Don't tell me she's the cougar we were trying to track down. The one who saved the boy."

No answer.

"Chase?"

No answer.

"Chase!" He had to get coordinates from him if nothing else. And he damn well wanted to know what he was up against, so he knew how to get Chase out of the mess he was in, whatever it was.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Chase said, sounding totally rattled. He quickly spouted off coordinates. "I'm in a cave above where the woman is. No ID, no clothes, nothing, but she's been sleeping here. I need to get back down to her."

"She's sleeping, naked, in this cold weather on a rock ledge below a cave," Dan said, still not believing it as he strode through the woods, figuring it would take him an hour to reach the location.

"I tranquilized her before she leapt at me. I didn’t know she was a shifter."

“One of our kind.” Dan didn't say anything for a moment. He couldn't imagine shooting one of their own people like that. But at least some of it made sense now. "No one we know, I take it."

"No. We've got to get her down from here. I'm afraid if we allow her to come to, she'll shift and run off. We’re going to have a hell of a time getting her down from here safely."

"Run off… because she wouldn't come into town initially."

"I didn't find any sign of hiking gear or anything else. So it looks like she arrived here as a cougar from somewhere else. She might have a tent somewhere and just went for a run as a cougar. This is one hell of a mess."

"All right. All right. We’re fine. We’ll take care of her and then we’ll find her stuff and marry them up. If you’ve knocked her out, it might be awhile before we can locate anything for her."

"True. Are you on your way?"

"An hour to your location. What are you going to do for now?"

"Get back down to the woman, pronto. She's wearing my parka for now, but it's not near long enough. I don't know how we're going to get her down these steep rocks. I barely made it coming up here myself. Without climbing gear, I'm not sure how we're going to carry her down."

"Okay, I'll have to detour and get climbing gear and a blanket out of my vehicle. Be there closer to an hour and a half. Sooner, if I can."

"You didn't know anything about this, did you?" Chase asked, frazzled.

Dan laughed. "No, but I can't think of a better man to handle the job." He paused. "What does she look like?"

"In her cat form, narrowed golden honey-colored eyes, reddish-gold fur. In her human form, dark brown hair, in good shape, but a little thin, maybe twenty-five or so? Not sure."

"No sign of a male, or any other cougars in the area?" Dan was moving as fast as he could over the uneven terrain as he headed for his vehicle.

"No male scents up here. Just hers. None of our people around here. No other predators scented."

"So you're good for the time being," Dan said, relieved.

"Hell, no… we're not good. We're in a hell of a fix," Chase growled.

Dan smiled a little. "All right, but you don't have anything trying to eat you or chase you off or—"

"Ah, hell," Chase said.

"What now?" Dan asked, his heart pounding, the adrenaline rushing through his blood. He hadn't even reached the lake where his vehicle was parked and from there, he'd have to hike through the woods to the mountain like Chase had done. Except at least he had the coordinates to their location, whereas Chase had been combing the area, searching for the cougar, so he hadn't known exactly where she was.

No answer. Damn. "Chase? What's going on?"

The line clicked dead.

***

As soon as the woman moaned down below, Chase feared she'd be so disoriented, she might roll off the ledge and kill herself. Or attempt to shift and kill him. But he thought he’d knocked her out well enough that
that
wouldn’t be an issue.

Yeah, he was grasping at worst-case scenarios, but he couldn't help being worried about what she might do. The chance of her rolling and falling off the ledge was his greatest concern. He ended the call to Dan and concentrated on the woman.

He couldn’t see her the way the ledge to the cave jutted out. He called out to her just in case she stirred even more from her drugged state. "Miss, I'm a deputy with the local sheriff's department—situated in Yuma Town, Colorado." She most likely knew she was in Colorado, but just in case… "My name is Chase Buchanan. I've called the sheriff, and we're going to help get you down to the town and look after you. I've given the sheriff the coordinates, and he should be here within the hour." Hopefully.

"Miss, can you hear me? I'm coming down."

She didn't answer, and he suspected she'd gone back to sleep. He hoped she had. The only way he could ensure she was still in the same place was if he stretched out over the edge to see the ledge directly below.