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.
He moved to the edge so he could peer over it before he began the climb down. All that was there now was his parka coat lying on the rock slab. The woman had vanished.
The blood pulsing in his ears, his heart thundered. She couldn't have fallen, could she have? He felt sick to his stomach and scrambled to his feet.
Then something moved up above him. He turned and looked up just as the cat leapt from the rock ledge, slammed into him, and knocked him down. The back of his head hit the granite hard. A sprinkling of stars appeared against an ebony night. Before he could clear his vision and move, the cat turned into two cougars and stood watching him.
He sat up, grew dizzy, couldn't tell if two cats stood there, or he was just seeing double. Then the cat leapt off the ledge.
"No!" he shouted. Damn it to hell. She couldn’t run half-drugged and if hunters had received word a cougar had dragged the boy out of the waterfall pool, they could be out to get her.
His head throbbing with pain and his vision still fuzzy, he fumbled to get his cell out of his pouch. "Dan, damn it to hell."
"What's going on?" Dan asked, sounding relieved to hear from Chase, but apprehensive that he wasn't going to hear any good news.
"She about cracked my skull in two and took off."
"The woman? When she was drugged?"
"Hell, yeah. Well, she shifted first. But she's in no condition to be on the run."
"Okay, I'll be there in thirty-five minutes."
"I'm tracking her."
Dan didn’t say anything.
Chase was untying his boots. "I've got to watch her back. Talk to you later." He hung up on his buddy, needing to get out of his clothes ASAP, and shift. He couldn't track her half as fast as a human.
But it was a lot harder than he thought it would be. His head was splitting in two, he was still seeing double, and he had a devil of a time untying his boots and unbuttoning his shirt. If he felt this bad, how did the half-groggy she-cat feel?
Somehow, he managed to strip off the rest of his clothes, then at least had the presence of mind to shift and the ability to do so. He studied where the next ledge was that he could jump down to. The whole thing was wavering. He took a chance and leapt as close to the cliff face as he could. He did the same on the next two ledges, but overshot the last one and ended up landing on his feet on the grass below, thankful that he hadn't injured or killed himself in the process.
Then he chased after the she-cat's scent trail, determined to stop her in her flight.
***
How come some deputy sheriff had come after her? Hennessey Kelly had to have learned Shannon was here and notified the local authorities. They'd take her back to town, thinking everything was as he said it was and turn her over to him. And then? She was a dead woman.
She should have known she hadn't run far enough. Not knowing the area that well, she had no idea how far Yuma Town was from Canyon, Texas. But not far enough. Apparently.
She'd been running for a month, was exhausted, worn out, and barely able to keep going as a cougar. Except for doing so on a
jaunt in the wilderness sometimes, she'd never had to live as a cougar 24-7 like this and couldn't believe how tough it was.
Now she was running again. Only this time, half-doped up. She'd stumbled so many times, her mind drifting, that she wanted to sink down into a bed of flowers. Except there were no flowers and the night air was getting colder as she felt her step growing ever slower.
She hoped she hadn't hurt the deputy sheriff too badly, or he would think everything Hennessey told him was the absolute truth. She was a deranged killer.
When she finally reached a river, she wanted desperately to swim across it to disguise where she was going. Not that she had any idea where she was headed. But she couldn't do it. Not with as groggy as she felt. She would surely drown. She growled, not believing the deputy had gotten the upper hand and drugged her so easily.
She stumbled again and felt as though she was the lion in The Wizard of Oz, ready to lie down in that field of magical flowers and sleep the rest of her life away.
***
Frantic to reach the she-cat, Chase felt like his head would crack open from the pain any minute. He kept searching the ground and the air, smelling the panicked cougar, trying to catch up to her. His legs were longer, his stride lengthier, but his vision was damned blurry. He'd run into three different trees, thinking that they were farther over than they were, scraping one shoulder one time, the other another, and then his right, a second time.
He felt like he'd been binge drinking, when he'd only gotten plastered on special occasions—like when his team members had died, and when his wife and child were murdered.
He wondered what had spooked the woman so. She had to have smelled his scent on his coat, indicating he was both a human and cougar. So she had to know he knew she was one, too, and had only her best interests at heart. That drugging her had been an honest mistake on his part.
Worse, she was in no condition to run. Just like he was in no condition to run.
He shook his head, trying to clear it, then saw her, or double of her. He wasn't sure what he was going to do now. She stood next to the river, contemplating crossing it. She couldn't. Not as deep and swiftly flowing as it was here. He didn't bother to try and sneak up on her. Though their cougar kind were normally ambush predators and didn't stalk their prey, he had no choice. He raced after her in a sprint, attempting to reach her before she could bolt and particularly before she could dash into the water, if she thought to.
He leapt, a perfect leap that would have brought her down, only, he leapt at the double vision and missed her completely. Not to be thwarted, he tried again. She'd been so shocked to see him come out of nowhere that she hadn't escaped yet. This time, he leapt on her and pinned her down against the ground.
He'd never tangled with a she-cat before like this. She immediately rolled over on her back, kicking with both feet and bared her teeth at him. She was as feral as a wild cougar and he couldn't understand why she was so afraid of him. She hissed, growled, and screamed at him. Humans rarely realized the screams they heard out in the wild were a cougar's vocalization, but hers were wild and angry enough to make his cougar hair stand up on end.
Her lips curled back, she bared her pearly whites at him, her nose wrinkled, eyes narrowed, and her ears were back. She was spitting mad.
And scared. He wanted to tell her he wasn't going to hurt her, but he knew there was no convincing her of it.
He wanted to earn her trust in the worst way. He wanted to talk to her, persuade her he didn't mean to hurt her in any way.
The only way he could do that was to shift. Damn it. His head throbbed as he got off her, then stood his ground. She jumped to her feet, crouched, and was steeled to leap, to kill him. Hating to do it with the chilly breeze whipping around them, afraid that she would run off again, he called on the urge to shift into his human form to show he wasn’t going to harm her.
His head splintered with pain and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, face planted in the tall grasses, the sound of the river rushing by.
Chapter 3
Barely able to stay awake, Shannon stared at Deputy Sheriff Chase Buchanan lying on the ground in a dead faint. Why in the world did the deputy sheriff shift? And then, pass out?
Shannon thought at first that he was just faking it. But she'd gotten close enough to his face to lick his ear and he didn't stir.
Now what? Shannon couldn't just leave him here like this. As cold as it was, he'd end up with hypothermia. She nudged at him to wake him up. Was she crazy? She was liable to pass out right next to him. She should just leave. Now, before she fell asleep. She was fighting the drug slipping through her blood stream, but barely.
She had to get away. She couldn't stay. What if the sheriff wasn’t the only one coming after her? Up until now, she'd only worried about this cougar trying to chase her down. She hadn't thought she'd have a whole slew of trackers on her back. She suspected the sheriff and others were shifters, just like she'd smelled in the area—lots of cougars. Cougars that were not shifters would probably be thoroughly confused if they came into the territory.
Maybe other trackers would stay with Chase Buchanan, take care of him, and she'd be long gone by then. She looked back the way they'd come and saw no one. Heard no one.
What if a predator came upon him and thought he was… wounded prey?
She glanced back at the river. She should run. She had the opportunity. What if she never had the chance again?
Annoyed with the deputy—first for shooting her with a tranquilizer dart, and then for passing out on her and forcing her to protect him, Shannon lay down nearby to watch over him. She was starving and she had to get out of the area. She would leave just as soon as she heard someone who was human who could take care of the deputy—hopefully another shifter and not a plain human who would think the deputy had been mugged or something. Well, and worse, that she was watching over him because she’d claimed him for her next meal. She would really be gaining a reputation then. First, the boy, now, a grown man.
Shannon watched for any sign of anyone coming, listened hard, intent on bolting as soon as she knew the deputy would be taken care of. She glanced again at the naked man, handsome, light brown hair, a five-o’clock shadow, and when they’d been staring up at her right before he shot her, the prettiest green eyes. He had well-toned muscles, was in great shape, tanned, and hot. Not that she should think of him in that way, not when he would see her as the enemy, and certainly not after he had shot her.
She let out her breath in exasperation. She should run. What was she waiting for? She had to be crazy!
***
Chase didn't remember passing out, and when he had come to, he had wanted to jump up and hunt the cougar down again, until he heard the she-cat approach. He'd smelled her concern and played dead. With a real cougar, that was not a good idea. Running either, or they would chase and pounce. Playing dead meant a perfectly docile meal. But she wasn't a full cougar, and she was concerned about him, as evidenced by the way she had licked him, and then he heard her settle down on the grass nearby. To watch over him?
Or had she fallen asleep from the tranquilizer slipping through her system. He couldn’t believe she’d fought it this long.
With his enhanced cat hearing, Chase heard the she-cat's stomach grumbling. If she'd stayed with the boy all night to keep him warm, as he suspected now, she probably never had a chance to hunt for a meal. He risked opening his eyes to see what she was doing, hoping that she wouldn't realize he'd come to, become alarmed, and take off again. She was watching for Dan or anyone else who might be headed their way, her head resting on her paws, but her eyes were half open and her ears twitched back and forth. She was vigilant and wary, albeit fighting sleep. He realized the she-cat looked hungry, thin, and malnourished, like she'd been on the run and living in the wilderness for some time. Not like she’d been camping nearby and was just taking a run on the wild side.
He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, not wanting her to
know he was awake. It was times like this that made him miss his wife and baby all over again. Though for the past four years, he only dated a couple of times and that was enough to make him realize he wasn’t ready for it. Yet with this woman, his protective instincts came into play. She was scared of something. No way should she be out here trying to take care of herself as a cougar on her own. Not alone as a shifter. Cougar shifters could manage when they had no other avenue available to them, but they were too human to be completely wild.
He wanted to take her home and feed her some of his beef stew, the recipe passed down for generations on his Irish side of the family. He was definitely a meat and potatoes man. But he knew someone else in town would take her in. Someone more suitable to watch over her. Unless they were afraid she'd run off, or that someone was after her. And then, she'd need someone's protection. Like the sheriff's.
He smiled at the thought that Dan might get that role. Wouldn't he be surprised?
When Chase smiled, the she-cat lifted her head and stared at him. She had caught him in the act. He was freezing and shivering, his body trying to warm him. He had to shift soon. Still, he didn't want to if it alarmed her.
Silently suffering from the cold, he stayed where he was instead and said, "Miss, no one is going to hurt you." Though he had no intention of telling her anything about himself or his past, he thought it might help to ease her worry. "I lost my wife and baby five years ago and that's one of the hardest things I've ever had to live with. I swear to you, no one wants to hurt you. You need food and shelter. If you'll permit me, I'll escort you back to where I left my clothes. I'll dress and try to make it down the rocks without killing myself…"
He paused when she appeared to smile a little. At least her teeth showed a little.
"Then I'll take you back to my vehicle. It's parked at the lake. I'll drive you to my rental cottages if you like, and warm up a batch of to-die-for Irish stew, homemade, and already made up. You can stay in one of the cabins I own and manage. Can you nod your head in agreement, and then I can shift so I'm wearing my cougar coat? I'm freezing."