Kathleen Creighton - Lady Killer

And what the hell was that?

He went outside, telling himself he was just going to get his laptop, that he wasn’t going to go looking for Brooke, who had her own business to attend to, after all, and didn’t need him tagging along, getting in her way. He’d gotten as far as unlocking the trunk when he looked up and saw three people walking up the lane. One of them was the horse trainer he’d been watching earlier, and he was accompanied by a Hispanic couple, who Tony assumed must be the nice neighbors, Rocky and Isabel.

Intrigued, especially after what Brooke had told him about the nature of the neighbors’ “cousins,” Tony looped the strap of his laptop carrier over his shoulder, closed the trunk and waited.

The trio had reached the yard when Hilda came bounding out of the barn to greet them, with her whole body wagging, along with her tail. Obviously, the neighbors were on her favorites list. Brooke followed a moment later, and she and the woman-pretty, and shorter and plumper than Brooke but probably about the same age-exchanged hugs. The woman’s husband spoke to Brooke, gesturing from time to time toward his “cousin,” who stood by with his hat in his hands, looking exceedingly uneasy. Tony had already started to amble toward them, in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner, when Brooke’s head jerked toward him, and the look on her face made him quicken his step and his pulse kick into high gear.

“What is it?” he asked in a low voice as he moved close beside her. “Something wrong?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Tony said, “Hi, I’m Tony,” nodded at the woman and leaned forward to offer his hand, first to her husband, then to his cousin. The cousin hesitated, then shook his hand, bobbed his head and mumbled something in Spanish, while Brooke made hurried introductions.

“Rocky and Isabel-my neighbors. This is Tony. He’s, uh…”

“You are her friend,” Rocky said. “We have seen you here. That is why when my cousin told me what he saw, I told him he should tell you.”

Tony nodded but didn’t prompt him. His senses felt honed, razor sharp, and he had in his mind an image of a cougar watching a fawn…eyes like lasers, body gone still and taut, only the tip of her tail twitching…

Beside him he felt a tremor run through Brooke, like a fine electrical current. He wanted to put his arm around her and nestle her against his side. Wanted to so badly, he folded his arms to keep himself from doing it.

“Tell him,” Brooke said in a rasping voice.

Rocky nodded and glanced at his cousin, who looked at the ground. “The day Duncan-Mr. Grant-was killed, my cousin, he was working there-” he made a sweeping gesture with his arm “-with the horses. He saw a sheriff’s car-one of the four-wheel-drive ones-drive out of the lane over there, the one nobody uses.”

“Where Duncan’s car was found.” Brooke’s voice was barely audible. She cleared her throat, and Rocky went on.

“Sí-yes. And that was also a sheriff’s SUV. But that is not the one that drove away.”

“You’re saying,” said Tony slowly, “there were two sheriff’s vehicles here that day?” His heart knocked hard against his breastbone.

Rocky nodded. “Sí-yes. That’s right. And one drove away. My cousin didn’t say anything at first, because he didn’t want any trouble with the police, you know?” He glanced at his cousin, who continued to stare steadfastly at the ground. “And when he told me, I didn’t want to say anything, because I was afraid for her.” He tipped his head toward Brooke, but he spoke to Tony, in a low and intense voice. “She was alone, you know? I didn’t know what they might do. But now that you are here…” It was his wife he looked at now, and she stepped up beside him and he slipped his arm around her waist.

“You can do something,” said Isabel fervently, and her dark eyes glistened with appeal. “Maybe?”

It was late that evening before Tony managed to pass the news along to Holt. He’d been leaving messages on the detective’s voice mail all day, and finally got a call back around ten, while he was in his room, folding his freshly washed underwear.

“Sorry-I’ve been in conference with members of various federal law-enforcement agencies all day. What’s up?”

Tony told him. “As far as I’m concerned,” he concluded, “this cinches it. One of Grant’s fellow deputies killed him. Most likely Lonnie.”

“Only one problem. A little thing called motive.”

Tony let out an explosive breath. “I was hoping you’d come up with something on your end.”

“Wish I could say I had. The feds are investigating the Colton County Sheriff’s Department, along with several others in reasonable proximity to the border, on suspicion of trafficking in drugs and illegals. All they’ll tell me is it’s an ongoing investigation, and they don’t want anybody coming in and messing up their case until they’re ready to make their move. They did say both Duncan Grant and Lonnie Doyle are-or in Grant’s case, were-quote, ‘persons of interest.’”

“Okay, so…a falling-out between partners in crime? That doesn’t seem much of a stretch, given these two were always going at each other anyway.”

“True. But why do it like that-with a tranquilizer gun and a mountain lion? At the guy’s ex-wife’s place? That’s what doesn’t make any sense.”

“And now Lonnie Doyle wants the lion dead. That doesn’t make sense, either. It’s not like she’s an eyewitness, not one that could testify against him, anyway.”

On the other end of the line, there was a soft hissing sound-an exhalation. “The key to this whole thing,” Holt said, “is that cat.”

After that conversation with Holt, Tony felt too wired to even think about sleep. The house was silent, and in the stillness, those words keep playing over and over in his head: the key is that cat.

He opened his door and stepped out into the hallway. Brooke’s door, across and a little way down from his, was closed. Daniel’s was open a couple of inches-for the light, Tony imagined, remembering how he’d liked to leave his door open when he was a kid, because there was just enough light from the one left burning on the front porch to dilute the darkness in his room to shadowy grays. Here the light was from the kitchen-Brooke had left one on above the stove. He moved through the kitchen and onto the back porch, treading lightly and opening and closing doors without sound.

Standing on the porch and looking out, he discovered the yard and the landscape beyond bathed in the pewter glow of a rising full moon. He paused there for a moment to appreciate the subtle variations of blue and silver and gray, wishing he’d thought to bring a camera with him, unwilling to make the trip back to his room lest he wake someone, knowing he didn’t really have the equipment with him to capture the magical quality of the light, anyway.

Opening the screen door-with only one squeak, though it seemed incredibly loud in the stillness of the night-he went outside and down the steps. And a magnificent beast with a silvery-white coat that seemed to lift and float around her like feathers came romping toward him from the direction of the barn.

“Hey, Hilda,” he whispered, offering his hand. “How you doin’, girl?”

The dog accepted his hug with a lick and a grin and went dancing back toward the barn, clearly delighted with the night, the moon and his company. Tony didn’t know whether he’d intended to go that way, but with the dog as his flagship, her tail floating behind her like a banner in a light wind, how could he not follow?

He went through the deeply shadowed barn, and when he stepped out into the moonlit lane that led down between the animal pens to the cougar’s enclosure, he wondered if it had been more than restlessness and the cougar’s haunting…more even than moonlight and the dog’s guidance…that had brought him to that place. He’d never thought of himself as a mystical soul, and no doubt the influence of the moonlight had something to do with it, but he found himself thinking of things like…fate. And whether there really might be something to the notion that some people…some souls…were simply destined to find each other, no matter the time or place or the odds against it.

Inside the cougar’s compound, blurred by the silvery netting of the chain-link fence, he could see the dark and slender form turn when she heard the dog come bounding up…turn, then stand, waiting, alert and still, with one hand resting on the head of the magnificent animal beside her.

His breath stopped; his heartbeat surged. He yearned…grieved…mourned for his cameras, the way only another photographer might understand.

It was, simply, the most breathtakingly beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The stuff of legend and fantasy, woman and lion, motionless in the moonlight, frozen in time and space. They stared at him and he stared back, while memory returned him to that moment on the trail in the High Sierras when he’d come face-to-face with a beast that could have killed him with one swipe of her paw. He’d been afraid then, of course, because he was old enough to know he should be afraid. But mostly what he’d felt was a profound sense of wonder. Of awe.

Now, gazing at the woman and the lion in the moonlight, his grown-up self felt the same wonder, the same awe…and the deepest fear, a kind of fear he’d never known before.

He felt stripped and vulnerable, naked and afraid. Because he knew…he knew in the depths of his being that his heart wasn’t his anymore. That somehow, when he wasn’t paying attention, he’d given it away. And in doing so, had given to another human being-to this woman-the power to hurt him as he’d never been hurt before.

All of this-the changing of his life forever-took place in the space of a moment, a few dozen heartbeats, no more. Then the cougar turned on herself in the fluid, boneless way of all felines and went streaking across the compound like a trick of the light, toward the rocky outcropping, flowed up and over it like quicksilver, and was gone.

Brooke came on, and he knew her eyes were locked with his, even though her expression was undecipherable to him, its subtle nuances lost to the moonlight shadows. He waited for her in silence, fingers of one hand woven through the chain-link fabric, those of the other through the silky fur of the dog panting happily beside him. And he understood now why Brooke so often did the same. He waited while she opened the gate and stepped through, then closed it carefully behind her and clicked the padlock into place.

She turned to him, and he would have spoken then. He drew breath to break the silence. And she reached up and touched his face…laid her hand along the side of his face while she looked into his eyes. He saw the moon reflected in the blackness of her eyes just for a moment. Then she swayed upward, just enough, and kissed him.

The kiss was light and soft and sweet. He held his breath and closed his eyes because it seemed not quite real, except for the heavy thumping of his heart.

A great stillness came over him. Later, when he thought about it-when he could think again-it seemed to him like the stillness he felt when waiting for an elusive subject to move into the perfect spot, waiting for the exact moment when he would finally capture it. His body was still…but inside, every nerve and sinew and sense vibrated with energy and excitement and that sense of awe and wonder that never seemed to diminish no matter how many times he experienced that moment.

But this was different, of course, and it ended just when he felt his hands begin to lift of their own accord, and he knew he was about to touch her-her arms, first, then…who knows?-against all good sense and his better judgment. It ended when she rocked back on her heels-although she let her hand linger a while longer on his face before it slid down to rest on his chest-and he let his breath go, carefully. She went on gazing at him then, with her head tilted slightly, and her hair, loose, for once, in a carefree fall of subtly curving layers, seemed to lift and float around her face like feathers.

“Are you absolutely sure you’re not gay?” Her voice was a rusty sound, and he responded with a feeble noise, which he, with his manly self-image, would not accept-could not possibly believe-was a whimper.

“Positive,” he managed, more croak than voice, and tried to laugh.

“Hmm…well.” Her hand moved slightly on his chest, drifting more than stroking, and where it paused again, he felt the heat of his body soak through his shirt and merge with hers. “Just so you know-” she hitched in a breath “-I only act like a brazen hussy during the full moon, so you’d better take advantage of the opportunity while you can.” And he heard a new note in her voice, one he had no trouble recognizing, though she’d tried her best to hide it under a camouflage of sultry laughter.