Endangered (A Sam Westin Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Pricking her ears, Leto turned her head. Sam froze and held her breath. A second, smaller cougar emerged from the shadows onto the bridge. Judging by the size, it was Artemis, Leto’s female cub. Sam pressed the button and prayed the cats’ ears wouldn’t pick up the tiny ping of the shutter. The cub, now nearly as large as the adult cat, crouched low, hesitated a second, then pounced on her mother’s tail. Leto hissed and cuffed Artemis.

  Sam used the distraction to trot a few steps closer. She needed to put the sun behind her. As she passed beneath the bridge, the two mountain lions suddenly rose, their muscles rigid, their glowing eyes focused in Sam’s direction. Her heart skipped a beat; she was easily within their leaping range. She kept her gaze locked on them as she slowly walked backward up the canyon floor.

  On the other side of the bridge, with the sun at the proper angle, she paused and focused. The cats watched her silently, their amber eyes merely curious, not telegraphing the concentrated focus of hunters, at least not right now. Their calm was a little creepy. Was it possible they remembered her? Or were they so accustomed to people that they were unafraid? That didn’t bode well for human or beast.

  The white markings on the cats’ muzzles gleamed in the growing darkness. She snapped several more photos. The cougars tracked each movement she made. The intensity of the moment was almost painful.

  Awesome, in the true meaning of the word.

  The camera beeped to signal the memory card was filled. The cougars flinched at the noise but held their ground.

  The bottom pocket of her vest held two more memory cards. Moving slowly, she slid her hand down and pinched the zipper pull between her fingers. The hiss of the nylon teeth was barely audible. Then the zipper stuck. She glanced down at it, just for a second. When she looked up, the lions were gone.

  A quick perusal of the surrounding hillsides revealed no sign of the cats. Without a sound, they had vanished into the brush and rocks. It was a great magic trick, one she’d witnessed all too often. She let out her breath and, holding the camera in front of her, trudged back to her pack, checking the images on the camera’s tiny screen as she went.

  In the last picture she’d taken, everything was colored the same golden hue; the lions were nearly indistinguishable from the rock bridge. She sighed and pressed the Delete button. The next image was not much better.

  The third photo brought her to a dead stop. The shot captured the cougars just as they’d turned to look at her. Two pairs of mountain-lion eyes burned brightly, staring directly at the photographer. The burnished amber of the cats’ fur glowed against the cobalt of the darkening sky beyond.

  “Wowee! Yes!” she raised a fist in victory as she continued down the rocky wash.

  Twilight made the desert rodents bold. A kangaroo rat leapt across her path. As she hauled her pack up by a shoulder strap, a chipmunk burst from beneath the top flap, streaked up her arm and flung itself onto a nearby boulder.

  “Great.” Now she’d have to look for chew holes in her food packets, not to mention those disgusting black-rice droppings the little varmints always left behind.

  Before reshouldering her backpack, she dug out her halogen flashlight and moved the beam over the bridge and surrounding cliffs. Only the leathery flutter of a couple of bats moved within the circle of light.

  Twenty minutes later, she found the entrance to the tiny box canyon. Lowering herself to the first available rock, she unbuckled her pack. With all the electronic gear she carried, her load was at least seven pounds more than someone five foot one and 115 pounds should carry. After pulling a packet of ibuprofen from her pocket and a plastic bottle of Merlot from her provisions, she took a sip of wine to wash down the pills.

  She glanced at her watch. A few minutes after nine, Utah time; an hour earlier in Seattle. She’d have to hustle to make the nine o’clock deadline for SWF. She unpacked her laptop and, sitting cross-legged in front of it, powered it up. The screen readout told her that the laptop’s two batteries were strong. So far, so good. She switched off the flashlight. Using moonlight and the illumination from the computer screen, she opened the file containing the rough draft she’d begun earlier.

  Before leaving her office in Washington State, she’d written about Leto’s history, about how the female cougar had been found fourteen months earlier just inside the park boundary. She’d been crippled by a hunter’s bullet, her eight-week-old cubs trailing behind her, a feline trio nearly starved to death. Sam, Kent, and other volunteers had nursed the three cougars back to health. And although her seasonal ranger contract had been up, Sam had returned to Heritage in the autumn to release the cats. This was the backstory currently featured on SWF’s new website.

  She double-checked the article she’d started last night in the Idaho hotel, a story about coming to Heritage to search for the cougars. Her fingers flew over the keys as she added details of the sunset sighting, along with an emotional paragraph about how uplifting it was to see the lions now, when they were back in prime condition. She stuck in a couple of sentences about how cougars often cross paths with humans without being seen, using Kent’s information about Apollo’s prints on the riverbank as an example.

  Finally, she closed with the image of the bats circling in the dark over the bridge, emphasizing her feelings of loneliness and loss after the lions had vanished.

  Fifteen minutes to deadline. She downloaded three photos of cougars and the sunset from the camera to the computer. They looked even better on the larger screen.

  SWF had loaned her a lightweight portable wi-fi gizmo as well as the satellite phone. She pulled out the gizmo and extended the antenna. After a few seconds of searching for a satellite, presto—wi-fi in the wilderness! The wonders of technology. She emailed the text and photos to SWF and then watched the message area at the bottom of the screen. Finally, a response appeared: 1 txt, 3 jpgs recd. Thanks, Sam!

  She turned off the computer. She’d actually pulled it off. A day late, but if she’d come yesterday she might have missed Leto and Artemis and would have had to substitute God knows what, maybe a paw print or something lame like that. Looked like luck was on her side for once. She’d pulled off wowee.

  Which reminded her. She checked her watch; it was in between news broadcasts in Seattle. She punched a familiar Seattle number into her phone.

  He answered his cell on the fourth ring. “Adam Steele.”

  “Greetings from the Utah wilderness.”

  “Guess what? Tom broke his leg; I’m the anchor tomorrow: noon, six, and eleven.”

  “What a stroke of luck,” she said. “Except for Tom, of course.”

  “Yep, I’m on my way.”

  “Congratulations,” she said. “Did you by any chance promise SWF to put something about my cougar series on the news?”

  “I might have. We can always find space for interesting animal stories. But you had the job, anyway, babe. SWF was impressed by your pitch.”

  She wondered about that. Which was more persuasive, an “I can do it” from an Internet writer or a promise to get that Internet story on television?

  “You’ll knock their socks off,” he said.

  “I’ve already started.” She told him about the cougar photo.

  “All right! I knew you could do it. We’re a terrific team, Sam.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that, either, but it sounded good when he said it. “Good luck tomorrow, Adam. I know you’ll knock their socks off, too.”

  “Yes, I will. Dinner at DiAngelo’s when you get back.”

  He would pick the only restaurant in the whole Pacific Northwest with a dress code. “How about Hot Sauce John’s instead? Blake could come, too.”

  “No third wheels, babe; I want you all to myself. And who are you going to see in a barbecue joint? You want to reinvent yourself, you’ve got to meet the right people.”

  She suspected that DiAngelo’s would harbor more people who were “right” for him than for her, but who knew, his luck might rub off a little. And she
loved the looks from other women when she walked in on the arm of Adam Steele. “Good point,” she said. “DiAngelo’s it is. Now I’ve got to go. The raccoons are lining up for my autograph.”

  He laughed. “Good night, wild woman. Be careful out there.”

  “Good night, Mr. News Anchor.” She ended the call and sat rubbing her forehead for a while. She wasn’t trying to reinvent herself, was she? Since graduating from college with her wildlife biology degree, she’d been a zookeeper, an environmental consultant, a seasonal ranger with the National Park Service, and a freelance writer. This technoid wilderness writer Sam Westin was simply an amalgamation of all the preceding Sam Westins.

  She breathed in the blessed quiet of pure wilderness. Reclining against a boulder, she sipped from the plastic bottle, swirling the wine in her mouth. Instead of a pleasant cherry undertone, the bouquet of her Merlot held a hint of formaldehyde. That’s what you got when you stored alcohol in plastic bottles.

  Mediocre food and drink were irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Whether she owed this job to Adam or not, it was great to be back outdoors. If she’d spent one more day writing another insipid travel article in her office at home, she’d have been homicidal.

  This new cyber-reporting thing might pay off. It seemed like a crazy mix, Internet and outdoor adventure, but if that’s what it took to get people interested in nature these days, she’d pack a laptop along with her granola.

  The Merlot tasted better with each sip. The stars overhead were brilliant, even brighter than she remembered from the Kansas fields of her youth. A canopy of diamonds twinkling against black velvet. Galaxies, foreign worlds. Beautiful. So incredibly beautiful.

  Then her phone buzzed. She stared at it in annoyance for a second, then picked it up. Her home number was on the screen. “Blake?”

  “Hey, roomie, where are you?”

  “The middle of nowhere. It’s wonderful.”

  Blake’s sigh rasped against her ear. “Are you in some podunk town where every man has three wives?”

  She laughed. Blake’s vision of Utah hadn’t progressed into the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first.

  “I’m on top of a plateau in Heritage National Monument. You should see the stars; they’re unbelievable. And I saw the cougars, Blake! Almost close enough to touch.” She told him about the tremendous photo.

  “Fantastic. Your series is going to blow them away. Contributions will roll in so fast that SWF will pay you twice what they do now.”

  Blake fretted about her bank account nearly as much as she did. The guy made little more than minimum wage working in a greenhouse. The cabin they shared was hers; she cut him a deal on rent in exchange for his help with chores. He probably worried every day about the possibility of a rent raise, and truth be told, she’d been seriously considering one lately.

  “What’s up in Bellingham?” she asked.

  The rural area she’d settled in, just outside of a small college town eighty miles north of Seattle, was growing by leaps and bounds. The conflicts between the longtime residents and newcomers sometimes made for a volatile mix.

  “It’s raining, of course. And the Minestrones cut down another big alder.”

  Sam grimaced. “The Minesteros.”

  “You call ’em what you want. I told ’em they were ruining their property values. He just gave me one of those Ronald Reagan looks.”

  She chuckled. “I won’t even try to imagine what you mean by that. Any evening grosbeaks yet?” The migration of the black and yellow finches was an eagerly anticipated event each autumn.

  “Not even one. The Minestrones probably scared them off.”

  She hoped that wasn’t true. “Blake, I’m on battery power here . . .”

  “Oh yeah. I just wanted to tell you that Reverend Westin phoned. I told him you’d trooped off to Utah to save wild beasts from gun-toting good ol’ boys.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Blake’s voice slipped from his usual tenor to an imitation of her father’s baritone. “Good heavens! What has my Summer gotten herself into now?”

  A groan escaped her lips. “Did he want anything in particular?”

  “I don’t think so. We chatted. He asked if you were still dating Adam the Magnificent and if I thought you two would have any announcements soon. He—of course—mentioned yet again he wished you had a husband and children like normal women do. You know, a normal life. Then he remembered who he was talking to.”

  “Oops. Did you get the lecture?”

  “Not this time. Actually, he was quite restrained, considering I’m a pimple on God’s face.”

  “That isn’t right,” she said. “I think you’re an abomination against humanity—”

  “You do?” He sounded hurt.

  She snorted. “Of course not, Blake. I’m quoting Dad, or trying to quote him—”

  “I know, I know. He believes you’ll find your way back eventually.”

  She made a scoffing sound. “He would.”

  “Hey, he even has hopes for me.”

  “How kind of him.” She could hear her father now, cheerfully sharing with Blake what he thought were words of comfort.

  “Simon’s here beside me. Say hi, Si.” A startled meow filled the airwaves.

  “You twisted his tail!” Sam accused when Blake came back on the phone.

  “Did not. Anyhow, we’re baking cookies. Maple nut bars, to be specific.”

  Her mouth watered. “Save me some.”

  “I don’t know if they’ll last that long. Eric’s coming over tomorrow. Just for coffee, he says. But my maple nut bars will soften his heart, if anything can.”

  “Save me one!”

  “We’ll see.” A buzzer sounded in the background. “That’s the oven! Gotta go!”

  “Bye,” she murmured to dead air. She turned off the phone and the satellite hub and took another swig of wine to wash down the excess saliva in her mouth. Maple nut bars, indeed.

  A gentle breeze stirred, blowing a whisper of rapidly cooling air against her face. An owl hooted somewhere not far away.

  As she snapped together the short aluminum poles of the tent frame, a chorus of faint yips erupted in the distance. They started slowly, then transitioned into sharp barks, faster and faster. Sam clipped the yellow nylon tent to the frame and sat back on her heels, listening.

  Coyotes. The cries of a hunting pack always unnerved her, even though she knew it was natural group communication. It only sounded like cruel laughter to human ears. The mad cackles grew fewer, then stopped. Sam took another sip of Merlot, screwed the cap back on the bottle, pulled her sleeping bag out of its stuff sack and spread it on the floor of the tent.

  The howling began seconds later, a thin keening. Much better. A sound that seemed to fit with darkness. Other coyotes added ghostly voices to the mix, harmonizing. Then a lower-pitched wail joined in. Ah-roooooooooo.

  The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Sam crawled out of the tent. There it was again. Yip, yip, ah-ah-roooooooooo. That was no coyote. The pitch was wrong. A Mexican lobo? A few pairs of the endangered desert wolves had been released in the Southwest, but the papers kept reporting the discovery of yet another lobo’s body, riddled with bullets. Had any survived?

  She pressed a button to illuminate her watch. Not quite ten o’clock.

  For Kent, that was early. Pulling out her notepad, she looked up his cell number. Even if he was a ranger in a park with dilapidated equipment, her friend was part of the connected generation. He’d have his C-phone in a pocket. She picked up her phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Sam.”

  “Sam? I thought you were up on the plateau.”

  “I am.”

  “How come my cell phone doesn’t work worth a damn up there?”

  “I’m using SWF’s satellite phone. Say, are there lobos around here now? I heard this incredible howling.”

  “To your east, on Horsehip Mesa?”

  “Yeah.” She
looked in that direction, then felt foolish when her gaze met only the sandstone boulders surrounding her campsite.

  “It’s Coyote Charlie.”

  She’d forgotten about the park’s phantom. “Is that nutcase still wandering around here? It’s been—what, two years?”

  “Little over three. He’s persistent.”

  “Does he do this just at the full moon or—”

  He cut her off. “Can’t talk now, Sam. We’re looking for a missing kid. Could be pretty serious, because it’s only a two-year-old. Well, a two-and-a-half-year-old. Zachary Fischer.”

  Her stomach lurched. “Zack? It couldn’t be.”

  “You know him?”

  “I saw him. In Goodman Trail parking lot. This afternoon . . . evening, whatever—right after I talked to you.” She pictured the man at the end of the path. “He ran back to his father.”

  Silence stretched between them for a long moment.

  Kent finally said, “His mother and father told us he just disappeared.”

  Her chest constricted as though squeezed inside a giant fist. “I’m coming down.”

  “No way. We’re covered; the whole crew’s here. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s dark.”

  “You’re understaffed. And there’s moonlight.” She held out a hand, examined the shadow it cast onto the rock beneath it.

  “It’s not a full moon yet; not bright enough to hike through Sunset Canyon. You know how narrow that trail is along the cliff.”

  “Exactly. I know.”

  “We’ll probably find him before you could even get here. Don’t do it, Sam. Please. That summer you were a ranger, how many times did you tell visitors not to hike at night?”

  He had her there. After a day of driving and hiking, not to mention multiple swigs of Merlot, the idea was a little crazy.

  “If Zack turns up during the night, call me and leave voicemail, okay? Otherwise, I’ll be down first thing in the morning.” She gave him the number.

  She turned off her equipment, unzipped her vest, and massaged her stomach with her free hand, trying to smooth away the knot of anxiety that had settled there.