Part 4
Tom placed his hands where Leah showed him and locked his elbows.
There was no room in his mind for the fact that he was kneeling over a wild jaguar. Leah counted. Tasha ventilated through the secured airway and watched the monitor for evidence that Tom’s compressions were moving blood.
The cub’s crate rocked on the second sled. His cry rose through Leah’s count.
“Higher,” Leah said. “Move your hands an inch. There.”
Tom corrected his position. His shoulders burned, but he kept the rhythm she set. Tasha administered medication through the line already in place.
One narrow complex appeared on the screen.
Nothing followed.
“Keep going.”
Tom pressed again. A second complex appeared, then a third. Leah reached for the artery inside the jaguar’s thigh.
“I have a weak pulse. Stop compressions. Tasha, keep breathing for her.”
Tom lifted his hands. The jaguar’s chest rose beneath Tasha’s measured breaths.
Less than two minutes had passed. Snow had soaked through both knees of Tom’s pants, but he could not feel the cold. Leah’s face remained composed except for a tremor near her mouth.
She caught him looking.
“Stay on the animal,” she said, then turned back to the monitor.
The rhythm held for four minutes. They carried the litter the remaining distance while Tasha continued ventilation. At the tracked rig, the insulated treatment compartment had already been warmed. The litter locked into brackets on the floor, and every line remained accessible.
Before securing the cub’s crate in the adjacent bay, Tasha tried to pull Tom’s coat through a transfer slot with a pole. The cub had gathered the canvas beneath itself and wrapped both forelegs around one sleeve.
When the cloth moved, it flattened its ears and held on.
“Leave it,” Leah said.
“It has my scent,” Tom replied.
“Right now, it’s the only thing keeping him from throwing himself against the crate. We’ll remove it when we can do so safely.”
Tom released the sleeve.
The drive to Tucson took nearly three hours on winter roads. Tom rode in front while Leah and Tasha worked in the treatment compartment. He heard drawers opening and their low exchange of numbers. Once the equipment fell quiet long enough that he turned in his seat.
Through the narrow window, he saw Leah bent over the litter.
He faced forward again.
A surgical team met them at the Arizona Wildlife Care Center. The female disappeared through double doors beneath white lights. Staff transferred the cub without touching him into a dark quarantine stall beside the treatment room.
Tom completed his field statement in a molded plastic chair. He recorded the gate, the restraints, the camera, Miles’s words, and the reported timeline. He wrote only what he had observed or heard. The facts did not need his anger added to them.
Deputy Ruiz called after midnight. Investigators had obtained access to Miles’s remote camera account and secured the equipment in his vehicle. Images showed the restraint being placed and the female struggling. Messages suggested he had been seeking a buyer for a live melanistic cub.
Tom answered the deputy’s questions and ended the call. The evidence could carry its own weight from there.
Tasha came into the waiting area with her hair flattened on one side from a surgical cap. She took a bottle of water from the vending machine and sat across from him.
“How’s your wrist?” Tom asked.
“Useful.”
“I should have asked before.”
“You had eight months.”
Tom accepted that. “I’m sorry you were hurt.”
Tasha rolled the cold bottle beneath her palm. “Leah crossed the line. I followed when I should’ve waited for her instruction. Both things are true.”
“They are.”
“She should have owned her decision in the review. You made sure nobody had to ask her.”
Tom looked at her.
“You wrote about my injury as if I had asked you to remove her,” Tasha continued. “I didn’t. Don’t use an apology to me as a cleaner way to apologize to your daughter.”
“I won’t.”
Tasha stood. “Good. She needs you to stop deciding how everyone else gets protected.”
She returned through the double doors before he could answer.
Leah came out shortly after two. She had changed into blue scrubs. A pressure mark crossed the bridge of her nose, and dried mud remained in the seam of one boot.
Tom stood. “She’s alive?”
“For now.”
Imaging showed a fracture near the wrist, extensive soft-tissue damage, and prolonged compression of vessels and nerves. The surgical team had cleaned the wound, stabilized the fracture, and restored circulation. Infection, organ damage from the crushed muscle, and another cardiac event remained possible. They would not know for weeks whether useful movement or sensation could return.
“You kept the leg,” Tom said.
“We delayed losing it. That’s what we know tonight.”
Leah sat at the far end of the chairs. Tom chose a seat beside her but left one chair between them.
“The west route was right,” she said. “Elena photographed a fracture across the eastern shelf after sunrise.”
“You were right to stop me when I stepped out after the dart.”
“That isn’t why I mentioned the route.”
“I know.”
The heating system clicked on. Leah leaned back and closed her eyes.
“I’m filing a correction to the cougar report,” Tom said.
Leah opened her eyes.
“The description of the incident stays. You crossed the line, and Tasha was injured after following you. But I presented my recommendation as if it reflected an agreed safety conclusion. It didn’t. I also bypassed you and used my position to restrict yours.”
“Why now?”
“Because I should have done it eight months ago.”
“Tonight doesn’t prove I was right then.”
“No.”
“And if I cross another line?”
“I say it while you’re standing there to answer. Then I let the review belong to the people responsible for it.”
She studied him. Tom resisted the urge to offer more words simply because the silence made him uncomfortable.
At last, Leah nodded once.
Near dawn, the female began to wake. Staff dimmed the lights and withdrew from the treatment stall. On a monitor, she lifted her head, lost control of it, and tried again. Her injured leg lay inside a thick bandage.
When her breathing and awareness were steady, Leah opened the sliding mesh panel between the adjoining stalls.
The cub crossed before the gap was six inches high. He flattened himself beside his mother and pushed his black shoulder beneath her jaw. The female inhaled along his back. For several minutes, neither animal moved. Then she lifted her uninjured foreleg and placed it over the cub, holding him against the gold of her chest…
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