“Hey,” Shipley said, bringing her out of her angry fog. “Why don’t we go right, not left?”
She’d instinctively started to follow the tracks to the left.
“More open view at the river,” he continued. “We’ll go have a look and then come on back. Like Kimble said, no need to get too far into these woods.”
“Fine.” She had a tranquilizer gun in her hands, and now she looked into the trees and refocused on Ira. Was he still out there? Had he hung close by, as she predicted, or had he simply fled? And which option was preferable?
They turned around and headed toward the river, stepping over jutting timbers and stretches of iron that had once brought trains to these hills in search of fortune. With fortune never found, all that remained were the scraps of what had been laid in its pursuit, covered now by dead grass and brush and, in some cases, even trees. The legacy of the Whitman Company’s efforts at Blade Ridge was becoming obscured by the very nature that it had tried to conquer. Audrey held the air rifle in her hands and swiveled her head left to right, left to right, but something deep within her whispered that it wasn’t worth the effort—Ira was gone, and would not return.
The deputy, Shipley, had gone on ahead of her, expanding his lead with long-legged strides. She saw that the young man was tapping his gun with his fingers. Every second step, there he went—tap, tap, tap. He seemed to be humming softly, too, the sound trapped in his throat. It was the sort of thing people did to convince themselves they weren’t scared when in fact they were terrified. After David’s death, Audrey had found herself doing the same sort of thing: I’m scared of what my future holds, alone in this house, so I’ll hum a song and that casualness will somehow prove my confidence.
Shipley was scared, she realized, and then, recalling the moment of Ira’s escape, she didn’t blame him, not one bit. Many visitors—most visitors, maybe—were scared of the cats at first, no matter how indifferent they tried to seem. The animals were incredible predators; there was no denying that. When people came out to see them for the first time, they were dazzled, impressed, and often afraid. Because no human stood a chance against those cats. Not without a gun in hand, at least.
Tap, tap, tap, went Shipley’s fingers against his weapon.
He had seen a cat in pure, wild aggression, too. In a way Audrey herself had never seen one before. The tigers had fights, the lions would roar with killer’s rage, but never in her time on the preserve had she seen anything like that. And the leap that he’d made… it was impossible to believe, even after watching it happen. He hadn’t laid his paws on the fence and scrambled to get over, he’d just cleared it with room to spare. Fourteen feet high, and he’d not even required a running start.
“He’s never been aggressive before,” she said. “What you saw back there… I don’t know how to explain it, but it was an anomaly.”
“I’m sure that it was,” Shipley said, and his voice was steady, but his head was shifting rapidly from side to side, tracking every shadow, his hand never drifting from his gun. She had the sudden, perverse urge to tell him that Ira could climb trees, could be poised on a branch right now, ready to spring down from above. She could tell him that the cat’s field of vision overlapped like a pair of binoculars, and that he could see six times better in the dark than a human could. David had named him well—Ira was Hebrew for watcher, and the black cat was the definitive watcher, the perfect predator. Fast and strong and blessed with extraordinary vision and sense of smell.
“This is what you do?” the deputy said.
She looked up. “Huh?”
“This is… your life. This is what you do.” He waved a hand back at the tall fences, from which the occasional roar echoed through the trees.
“That’s right.”
“Why?” he said, and he sounded genuinely curious. “Why those cats?”
“Because I love them,” she said, but she suspected she knew what he was thinking about—the way she’d reacted when Ira jumped versus the way Wes had reacted. Wes had been poised; Audrey had been terrified. So was she lying right now? She cared for the cats, certainly, believed in the importance of the rescue center’s mission, but did she love them? Could you possibly have love in a relationship before you had trust? She didn’t think so. Then different words—infatuation, obsession, enchantment—might apply, but without trust? No, love was a long step to take ahead of faith.
“They’re good with people,” she said hollowly. “Really.”