Part 2
Warren photographed the unit from three angles before cutting it down. He kept his gloves on and handled it by the edges, careful of the battery compartment and controls. A scraped rectangle on the back was all that remained of its identifying label.
He sealed it in a fresh evidence bag.
When he reached the patch of radio reception above the shelter, dispatch began giving him an update. Another voice broke in before the dispatcher finished.
“Warren, leave the cable exactly as it is.”
His daughter had not spoken to him that quickly in months.
“I haven’t laid a finger on it, Elise.”
“Keep it that way. I need a breathing count. Watch her chest for half a minute.”
He went down, counted from behind the rock, and returned to the radio. Elise asked about the female’s posture and awareness, the amount of visible blood, the condition of the paw, and whether movement drew the restraint tighter.
He supplied what he could see and said when he couldn’t.
“She’s probably in shock,” Elise told him. “Cold, exhausted, and losing circulation to that limb. Releasing it could give us bleeding or a sudden deterioration we aren’t equipped to manage yet.”
“I wasn’t about to cut her loose and hope.”
A short silence answered him.
Then she said, “I need you observing, not improvising. Shelter them from the wind if you can do it quietly. No food, and don’t attempt to catch the youngster.”
“The jacket’s already up. How far out are you?”
“They’re loading the tracked carrier in Velora. We have a county deputy and a rescue crew coming with us. Allow eighty minutes from now. That’s if the upper road is passable.”
He looked at the sun through the branches. The canyon would lose its remaining light long before the ridge did.
“You’re leading?”
“Yes. My supervisor authorized it.”
Eight months earlier, that sentence would not have required the last four words.
Warren could still see the folded report on his kitchen table, although he had been the one who wrote it. Elise had brought it to his house after her supervisor restricted her field duties. She hadn’t known there was a recommendation concerning her until the restriction arrived.
On a mountain lion capture, the sedated animal had stopped breathing. Elise had stepped across the marked safety boundary to clear its airway. Tessa Grady, the technician following with equipment, had fallen and broken her wrist. The animal had survived.
Warren’s report described those events accurately. Then he had gone beyond them. In the final paragraph, he recommended that Elise be removed from backcountry command until her judgment about risk improved.
He had called it a professional assessment. Elise had asked why a professional assessment needed to be delivered behind her back.
Their argument had carried from the kitchen to the front porch. He had insisted that someone in charge was responsible for the people who followed. She had told him he didn’t get to protect her by reaching into her career and moving things around without her knowledge.
The returned copy had stayed in the map compartment of his pack ever since. Neither of them had found much to say outside necessary work messages.
Now Warren pressed the radio button.
“The lower slope is worse than it looks. Bring extra oxygen. It won’t be a quick carry.”
“We have it.” She paused. “And whoever put that camera there may come looking. Don’t make your stand beside the animals.”
He glanced down toward the shelter.
“I heard you.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
The channel clicked off before he found an answer.
He added his emergency blanket to the windbreak, folding the bright surface inward. The female watched without raising her lips. The cub had curled along the jacket sleeve. At intervals, it rose enough to touch its mother’s face and then sank down again.
Warren chose a position behind a broad rock where he could see the female’s chest without remaining directly in front of her. He set his pack between his boots and kept the radio in his hand.
The engine came from the wrong direction.
He had been watching for a little over half an hour when the sound reached him through the trees east of the ledge. A small motor climbed the old road, stopped, and started again. Warren got to his feet and cleared the clothing from his holster. With his thumb, he activated the silent emergency signal on his radio.
The cub was up too. It pushed beneath its mother’s chin as a utility vehicle emerged among the oaks.
Chains gripped its tires. A metal animal box filled most of the cargo bed. There was a winch on the front.
Boyd Voss climbed out.
Warren had once recommended Boyd to people who needed someone found in rough country. He could follow a lost rider across ground where Warren could barely distinguish a hoofprint. He had patience with frightened horses and almost none with people who exaggerated their outdoor skills.
Then investigators began finding animals killed without tags. A client gave a statement. Payments turned up outside the guiding accounts. Warren supplied a map connecting several unlawful kills to Boyd’s camp, and the state took his guide’s license.
Boyd had blamed just about everybody except himself.
Today he wore new gloves. Warren noticed because the man had always preferred bare hands, even when the work cut them.
“Stay by your door,” Warren said.
Boyd was staring past him.
His face changed when he saw the female. He took a sharp breath, and for an instant the expression was naked alarm.
“That wasn’t where the loop was meant to catch her.”
Warren moved so Boyd could see his hands and his badge.
“You’ve just told me it’s yours. Keep your hands up.”
Boyd lifted them slowly.
“It was supposed to hold her alive. I didn’t come to kill anything.”
“There’s another one up by the gate.”
“Nothing in that one.”
“You don’t get credit for that.”
The cub shifted in the shadow. Afternoon light touched its side, and Boyd’s eyes fixed on it.
“I wondered where he’d gone.”
Warren put himself between Boyd and the shelter.
“How long have you known about him?”
“Since October. I had pictures.” Boyd swallowed. “You know what somebody would pay for a live one like that?”
“I know why you’ve got a box in the back.”
“The bank’s taking my place. My sister has water coming through her ceiling every summer storm. One animal could fix both.”
He lowered his hands a few inches. Warren gestured, and they came back up.
Boyd looked toward the ridge. “Your agencies will spend a fortune putting a transmitter on him. Then he’ll be on a fundraising page while somebody approves another road through the country he needs. I’m the only one here who’s supposed to be ashamed of wanting money.”
Warren had spent enough afternoons in planning meetings to recognize the parts Boyd hadn’t invented. He kept his eyes on the man’s hands.
“You had choices before you put that cable out.”
“And you have a coat and a radio. I brought a transport box, blankets, equipment.”
“A medical team’s coming.”
Boyd glanced north again, measuring the light.
Under the overhang, the female attempted to shift. The cable tightened. Her trapped paw moved sharply, and Boyd’s shoulders jerked as though he had felt it himself.
“I can run the winch up to a litter,” he said. “That grade will eat your crew alive.”
“You won’t be working on this rescue.”
“Then your daughter gets a corpse.”
Warren let the deliberate word pass without answering it. He pointed to a boulder well away from the vehicle.
“Sit there. Put both hands on your knees.”
Boyd stared at him, then walked to the rock and sat.
Warren did not cross the icy space between them to attempt a handcuffing alone. Backup was on the way. He could hold the distance and keep the animals out of it.
The cub crept across its mother’s forequarters and stopped above the injured limb. It arched its back at Boyd, showing teeth far too small for what it was defending.
Boyd watched it without speaking.
The cold deepened as the sun left the canyon. Warren changed his stance whenever his feet began to numb. He watched the female’s breathing, then Boyd, then the northern approach, keeping the circuit until an engine finally answered from above.
Lights appeared through the trees.
Boyd rose.
“Stay down,” Warren told him.
“They won’t leave them together.” Boyd took a step toward the shelter. “You know what happens once they get hold of him.”
He took another step…
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