Part 5
Ethan was off the porch before the echo faded.
Ruth grabbed her coat from the hook. “Wait.”
“No,” he said, already moving toward his truck. “You stay inside.”
“That shot came from the ridge road.”
“Which is exactly why you’re staying inside.”
Ruth stepped into the snow. “I know where he’ll go if he’s hurt.”
Ethan stopped with one hand on the truck door. “Who?”
Ruth did not answer quickly enough.
His eyes narrowed. “You have seen that lion.”
She looked toward the timber. The raven circled above the trees, black against the pale sky. Another shot did not come, which was almost worse. One shot could mean a warning. One shot could mean a miss. One shot could mean something lying in the snow.
“Devil’s Notch,” Ruth said. “If he’s scared, he’ll go high.”
Ethan stared at her for one second, then opened the passenger door. “Get in. And if you slow me down, I’m bringing you straight back.”
Ruth got in.
They followed the ridge road until the snow became too deep for the truck. Ethan parked crooked under a stand of firs, radioed their location, and took a rifle from the locked rack. Ruth looked at it, and he caught the look.
“It’s for people, too,” he said.
That answer worried her more than the gun.
They climbed on foot. Ethan moved quickly but not recklessly, checking the snow, the tree line, the broken places where brush had been disturbed. Ruth followed his tracks, her bad knee protesting every rise. Twice he slowed without comment so she could catch up.
Half a mile above the road, they found blood.
Not much. A scatter of red droplets across the snow, already darkening at the edges. Ethan crouched and touched the crust beside them. “Fresh.”
Ruth swallowed. “Lion?”
“Maybe.” He followed the line of prints several yards. “He’s favoring that front leg.”
Ghost.
The name came to her so sharply she almost said it aloud.
They found the first dog near a thicket of willow. It was alive, trembling and wild-eyed, with a cut along its shoulder. A hunting dog, orange collar, expensive GPS unit blinking under its jaw. Ethan checked it quickly, then looked toward the slope above them.
“Wade said two dogs were killed.”
“This one’s breathing.”
“This one also wasn’t killed by a lion,” Ethan said. He pointed to the snow around the animal. “No drag. No bite to the neck. Looks cut. Maybe caught on wire.”
Ruth met his eyes.
He saw the same thought.
They moved on.
The second dog’s collar lay twenty yards uphill, empty and unclipped. No body. No blood trail. Just the collar in the snow and a set of boot prints leading away from it. Square heel. Heavy tread.
Ethan took pictures with his phone, his mouth set hard.
“Still think Sam saw patterns?” Ruth asked.
He didn’t answer.
Voices rose ahead.
They came through the trees at the edge of a clearing below Devil’s Notch. Three snowmobiles stood in a ragged line. Wade Coyle was there with two men Ruth recognized from the feed store and a teenager who looked too young to be holding the leash of an excited hound. Sheriff Dana Brooks had just arrived from the lower trail, her face red from cold and irritation.
Wade saw Ethan first. “About time.”
Ethan stepped into the clearing. “Put the rifles down.”
“We’ve got a wounded lion in these rocks,” Wade snapped. “My dogs found him. One’s dead.”
“One dog is alive below the trail,” Ethan said. “The other collar was unclipped.”
Wade’s eyes flicked toward Ruth. “You brought her?”
“She showed me the way.”
“She’s the reason that cat’s still around.” Wade raised his voice so everyone could hear. “Ask her what she’s been doing up here at night.”
The men turned.
Ruth felt the weight of their suspicion. She had known most of them for decades. She had baked pies for church suppers, mailed Christmas cards to their mothers, sat beside their wives at fundraisers after fires and funerals. But fear could make a stranger out of anyone, and Wade knew how to feed fear until it wore a neighbor’s face.
Sheriff Brooks looked tired. “Ruth, have you been feeding a mountain lion?”
“No.”
Wade barked a laugh.
Ruth looked at the sheriff. “I found a snare at Devil’s Notch.”
The clearing went still in a different way.
“A snare,” Sheriff Brooks repeated.
“Cable. Anchored to a lodgepole. Orange tape marking it.” Ruth’s gaze moved to Wade. “The cat was caught in it.”
Wade shook his head. “She’s lying to protect an animal that’ll kill somebody’s kid if we let it.”
Ethan said, “I need everyone to step back until we secure the area.”
“You secure it,” Wade said. “I’m ending it.”
He lifted his rifle toward the rocks.
Ruth saw Ghost then.
He stood on a ledge above the clearing, half hidden by scrub pine, one front leg held slightly off the stone. His ears were flat. His mouth was open, breath showing white in the cold. He looked cornered, not vicious. Cornered things became vicious because the world gave them no other road.
The teenager with the hound cried, “There!”
The hound lunged. Men shouted. Sheriff Brooks reached for Wade’s arm. Ethan yelled his name. Wade shouldered the rifle. Ruth moved before anyone could stop her. She crossed the clearing and stepped directly into Wade’s line of fire…
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