take the place of the shock that had kept her frozen and numb. She took her son by his shoulders—small shoulders, a child’s shoulders, too small to bear such a burden—and held him tightly and with a terrible urgency so that he had to look at her. “Daniel, quick, before they get here, tell me what happened. How did this happen? How did he—”
“I don’t know, Mom.” His eyes grew bright, almost glassy, whether with shock or more tears, Brooke didn’t know. “I got home from school and you weren’t here, so I came in the house and got an ice-cream sandwich out of the freezer, because I was hungry. And then I heard Hilda barking. And she kept barking and barking. And I thought maybe something was wrong, and you weren’t here, so I went out to see, and I brought the cell phone, like you told me.”
The sirens were louder now, coming along the road, almost to the driveway. She gave Daniel’s shoulders another shake. “Yes, yes, and…”
“And I saw Dad lying there, inside Lady’s pen. I don’t know how he got in there, Mom, I swear. I didn’t leave the gate unlocked.”
“Never mind that now. And Lady?”
“She was there, too, sort of crouched down beside %h; him. She had blood on her—you know, on her paws and stuff. When she saw me, she started snarling and screaming. I never saw her like that before, Mom. I didn’t know what to do, so I called nine-one-one. Then I thought maybe he was—maybe Dad was…you know, still alive. So that’s when I got the rake and started making her get away from him. She didn’t try to attack me or anything, Mom, I swear. It was like she was just really upset. I know she didn’t mean to hurt Dad. She wouldn’t.”
The last words were shouted above the noise of the sirens, which had risen to a deafening crescendo before dying away to a series of wails as the emergency vehicles—several, by the sound of them—pulled one after another into the yard.
Brooke gripped Daniel’s shoulders harder. “Listen, don’t say anything. I’ll handle this. Let me handle it, okay?”
Daniel sniffed and nodded, but his eyes were filled with fear, probably the same fear that was in Brooke’s heart. He put both their fears into words, in a very small voice. “They aren’t going to kill her, are they? You won’t let them kill her.” They both knew what happened to animals who turned on their human keepers.
She shook her head and clamped her teeth together, tightening her jaws as she turned to face the fire department paramedics who were just coming through the barn, coming at a rapid jog-trot.
“In here! He’s in here.”
She opened the gate and held it as the EMTs—a young man she didn’t know and a woman she knew from church, a heavyset Hispanic girl named Rosie—brushed past her. As she watched them kneel beside the body and immediately check for a pulse, Brooke reached for Daniel and pulled him against her, held him snug against her front, with her arms crisscrossing his chest. She could feel him trembling and realized she was, too.
Then time seemed to slow, and it seemed a very long time passed while she watched the two EMTs bending over the body of the man she’d once loved, once shared a bed with, still shared a child with…watched them calmly and methodically going about their business, all of them knowing it was pointless but going through with it, anyway. That strange and dreamlike feeling persisted until she heard heavy footsteps and half-turned and took a step back to make room for the sheriff’s deputies who were just arriving, and her heart sank when she saw one of them was Duncan’s partner, Lonnie Doyle.
Of course, it would be Lonnie. This was going to hit him hard.
“Dunk? Ah, no—ah, jeez! Ah, hell—”
Lonnie had barreled past her and gotten close enough to what was lying on the ground being worked on by the EMTs to see who it was, and that whatever the medics were doing, it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d unconsciously braced herself but winced anyway when he jerked to a halt, then whirled on her, his fleshy face red with rage.
“What the hell did you do? How did this happen? It was that damned cat, wasn’t it? That cat killed him—killed my partner!” His hand was at his waist, gripping the handle of his weapon. “Hell, I’m gonna take care of this right now! Right here!”
“No—it wasn’t—” Brooke began in a desperate gasp as Daniel uttered a wounded cry and tore himself away from her, hurled himself at the cougar’s cage and spread-eagled himself across the door.
“It wasn’t Lady’s fault! It was mine. I did something to make her mad. She didn’t mean—”
“No—it was an accident. Just an accident. That’s all.” Breathless with fear, Brooke planted herself between her son and the man bent on exacting his own version of frontier justice. Though what she hoped to accomplish by doing so, she didn’t know. As tall as she was, every bit as tall as Lonnie, she was no match for the man and knew it. He was bullnecked, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; even Duncan, half a head taller and in good shape himself, had always said he didn’t have a prayer of beating Lonnie Doyle in a fair fight. Plus, the man was armed. And in a rage.
“What are you doing, man?” Al Hernandez, the other deputy, jerked at Lonnie’s arm and half spun him around.
Lonnie shook off Al’s hand. “What I shoulda done years ago. What I told Dunk he shoulda done. Shoulda drowned that cat the day he brought it home. I told him he was crazy. And lookit what’s happened. Now I’m gonna kill that thing. I’m gonna shoot it right here and now!”
Al touched Lonnie’s arm again. “Come on, man—”
“Not without a warrant, you’re not.” Brooke spoke loudly and calmly, and both men jerked their heads to look at her the way they might if the cougar itself had spoken. “This animal belongs to me,” she went on, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “She is not an imminent threat to anybody now. You don’t know what happened, or how it happened. You have no cause to shoot her, and if you try, you’ll have to do it through me.”
She saw Lonnie’s small blue eyes glitter with a dangerous light, saw his jaw jut forward in a way she’d seen it do before, and wondered if she’d gone too far. She felt Daniel creep out from behind her to stand at her side. She felt his arm slip around her waist and wished, for his sake, she could stop shaking. She braced herself as Lonnie took a threatening step toward her.
But then Rosie came walking up, peeling off her gloves and shaking her head as she joined the two deputies. She spoke to them in a voice too low for Brooke to hear over the pounding in her head, and the two men turned and walked back to where the second EMT was packing up his gear. But not before Lonnie stabbed a finger at Brooke and said in a voice hoarse with fury, “This ain’t over, Brooke. Count on it.”
Rosie paused, looking uncertain, then came over to Brooke and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Brooke, Daniel—I’m so sorry. We did everything we could.”
“I know you did. It’s okay.” Brooke felt her head nodding up and down, like a mechanical toy.
“Is there anything I can do? You want me to call Pastor Farley?”
“Yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that,” Brooke murmured, although at that moment she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. All she wanted was to be alone with her son in her house, where she could fix him hot dogs for dinner and pretend the past thirty minutes or so hadn’t happened. That it had all been a dream—a nightmare. She wanted desperately for it to all be a dream,
