Soul of the Wildcat (3 page)

A snarl immediately rolled past Dakoda's lips. “Leave him alone!” The command escaped before she had time to consider the consequences. At this point, she didn't care. She already knew she wouldn't be going anywhere. No way they'd let her walk away now.

Skeeter looked unrepentant. “He needed killin',” he spat, glowering darkly at the downed ranger.

“Now what the hell are we going to do with her?” Willie Barnett demanded.

Waylon's deluded gaze cut toward the caged cougar. “Didn't we promise those Asians we'd bring them two pets for their zoo?”

A nod. “Yeah.”

Waylon Barnett snorted a giggle. “Then this is our lucky day, boys.” Delighted with his brainstorm, he grinned like a shit-eating hound. “Looks like we've just made our sale.”

A cold, damp sweat rose on Dakoda's skin. She trembled before she could stop the reaction. Whatever the outlaw was raving about, she was sure it wouldn't be pleasant.

D
akoda had assumed Waylon Barnett was joking when he'd proposed caging her with the cougar.

He hadn't been joking.

Assume makes an ass out of me
.

Crouched in a corner of the pen, Dakoda warily eyed the huge animal lounging barely five feet away. To her relief, the big cat remained still. Eyes half closed as it dozed, the cougar lay on its side. Stretched out, the cougar was almost as large and heavy as a grown man.

Dakoda swallowed thickly. “Good kitty. You stay there and I'll stay right here.”

Barely daring to turn her head, she peered through a crack in the thick log slabs. The compound the outlaws called home stretched out around her. In the cul-de-sac of an obscure valley, a series of overhanging cliffs provided natural shelter for the small settlement that had taken root. Most everything was constructed from logs: cabins, sheds, and a small corral for keeping the horses penned.

Still, not every item smacked of pioneer living.

The outlaws had more than a passing acquaintance with the outside world. A series of beat-up F-150 pickups and a couple of ATVs were an indication trails passable by more than foot or hoof existed.

“Slick operation,” she muttered.

More than anything there were cages. Lots of cages. All shapes, all sizes. All clearly meant to keep animals penned and controlled.

Including the two-legged ones.

Gregory Zerbe was right, of course. These people had lived in the mountains all their lives. And they'd burrowed in permanently. There was no way to measure how far they'd traveled since her capture. Just as she had no idea where this place might be on a map.

Memory of her late partner brought a hitch to Dakoda's throat, a thickening that presaged blurred vision and lots of tears. She hated the idea he'd lay cold and alone in an unmarked grave. He deserved better.

So did she.

Dakoda swallowed hard, desperately struggling not to remember his grisly death. She'd deliberately tried to blank Greg's murder from her mind, refusing to let her memory push rewind, then play. It was no use. Every moment was irrevocably etched inside her skull.

She cast another wary glance toward the cougar, listless save for an occasional flick of its tail. Its amber eyes were narrow, not directly focused on her, but aware of her presence nevertheless. A low rumble emanated from its throat.

A warning.

You keep your place and I'll keep mine.

Dakoda gulped.
My very last breath might be arriving sooner, rather than later
. Her thought was a grim one, and not very pleasant to contemplate.

Reaching up, Dakoda fingered the thick metal band around her neck. After the indignity of wearing her own handcuffs, she'd hoped to be rid of her shackles. Not so. Like the cougar, she'd been fitted with a collar. Since her capture the animal had been unnaturally docile, as though the sight of seeing another taken and chained had temporarily robbed it of the will to be defiant.

Had she not known better, Dakoda would have sworn the beast was showing an intelligent response to their mutual plight of captivity.

Their coop looked more like a cell a human being would be confined in. The floor was plain dirt, packed hard and swept clean. A bunk was built into one wall. A crude table and chairs occupied another corner. A chamber pot and basin for water shoved under the bunk served as personal facilities. Altogether the space probably measured twelve by twelve feet, if that much. Between the cougar and herself, there wasn't much free room to move.

The rock and the hard place.

These two forces threatened to grind her to dust. Bitterness took root, but she wouldn't let it beat her down. Life had handed her more than one raw deal, and she'd managed to survive. Fresh determination kicked in. She'd hold on to the memories, hoping to someday use them to punish the men who'd killed Greg in cold blood. She wouldn't give up until her very last breath.

Cradling her arms around her knees, Dakoda gave the cougar another wary glance. “Looks like it's just you and me, kitty.” The rumble of an empty stomach reminded her just how near danger lurked. That cougar was probably just as hungry.

She winced. It vaguely occurred to her the outlaws had locked her up with the cougar as a method of torture. The big cats were carnivores and could easily take down a grown man.

The way it looked, she probably wouldn't live through the night. The sun was beginning to arc into the west, on its way toward setting. The temperature would soon begin to drop, drastically. Days in the mountains might be warm, but nights bordered on uncomfortably cool.

Tightening her grip on her legs, Dakoda propped her chin on her knees. She knew a search-and-rescue team would be sent out once she and Gregory failed to turn up, but the chance of rescue was probably slim to none. The outlaws knew how to survive, how to hide, in these mountains; they'd been doing it for generations uncounted.

There would be more than one anxious person awaiting news. Gregory Zerbe had a wife and kids at home, people who would want to know what had happened to him.

Dakoda frowned. She had…nobody. Not one person on the face of this earth cared if she lived or died.

Somehow she'd gotten through a childhood that could be described as pure hell. Her mother was a druggie, an itinerant wanderer who'd dragged her daughter throughout the state. With little education and few morals, they survived by hook or by crook. Time after time, Dakoda found herself waiting out long months with one caregiver or another as Jenna Lee served time in jail for petty larceny. Her father was unknown, one of the many rabbits running through her mother's briar patch.

Most of Dakoda's sitters were men, most of whom hooked up with her mother to party. Some would stay a few days, some a few months. The rare ones hung on a few years, maybe because they felt sorry for her. As she'd gotten older, their care and concern had turned carnal. By the time she turned fourteen, Dakoda wasn't a virgin anymore. She was also beginning to experiment with drugs and alcohol.

By all expectations, Dakoda was pretty much assured of walking straight down her mother's well-worn path. No one expected anything out of a juvenile delinquent, nothing more than trash from the wrong side of the tracks.

Salvation arrived in the form of her mother's last hookup, a man named Ashton Jenkins. Unlike the rest of the men who'd passed in and out of their lives, Ash was a good man, a responsible man. A cop, he'd spent his life enforcing the law, not breaking it. For once good luck had been on Jenna Lee's side when she'd gotten picked up for shoplifting.

Dakoda had to smile when she remembered Ash Jenkins. Though he was a big brawny man who took no shit, he was surprisingly gentle with women. Ash really loved Jenna Lee and tried to do right by her and by her teenaged daughter. For the first time in their lives, they had a home. Stability. A responsible man who brought in a paycheck instead of a six-pack and a crack pipe.

It didn't last.

Jenna Lee wasn't the kind of woman who could easily settle down into domestic tranquility. She craved her parties, the booze and drugs that made her small, dead-end life just a little less boring. Less than a year after marrying Ash, her mother packed up and moved out in the middle of the night. Disappearing yet again with another man.

Normally, that meant the man would pack up and leave, too.

Not Ash Jenkins. Instead of cutting and running, he'd stayed on, applying to the court to become Dakoda's legal father so he could finish raising her. Her days of running wild and running with the wrong crowd were over. Despite the fact she'd hated every minute of it, Ash Jenkins had taken her ass and whipped it into shape. By time she graduated from high school, Dakoda was a straight-A student.

Though he'd seen her into college, Ash Jenkins hadn't lived to see her graduate. A punk with a gun shot him down during a convenience-store robbery gone bad.

To honor his memory, Dakoda had chosen law enforcement as her own career. She already knew she wouldn't be staying in the city, though. Born and raised in North Carolina, she'd always lived in the shadows of the mountains. Something in their tranquility beckoned to her spirit. They represented a stability she'd rarely known throughout her life. Simply, they reminded her of her stepfather.

Though Ash Jenkins's killer was never caught, Dakoda knew exactly who'd killed Gregory Zerbe. The first time, the crime had gone unpunished. If she had her way, it wouldn't happen a second time.

All she had to do was figure out how to get out of this place alive. Given that her roommate was a wild-ass cougar, that possibility was a very slim one, indeed.

Tired of sitting in her cramped position on the hard ground, Dakoda eyed the cougar for any sign of aggression. The cell was darker now, everything around her turning murky and indistinct as night stretched over the mountains.

The big cat didn't move.

Taking a deep breath, she stretched out one leg, then the other. The ache in her knees eased a little. No telling how long she'd been sitting, letting her mind roam. At the moment, remembering the past was slightly more pleasant than contemplating her future.

Sensing her movements, the cougar's amber eyes snapped open. Its ears flicked and its gaze brightened, wary and alert.

Realizing her movements had disturbed the animal, Dakoda flashed a wavering smile. “Nice kitty,” she soothed. “You just lay right there and be still.” She fought against the instinct to curl back up into a little ball, make herself as small as humanly possible. As a ranger cadet, she'd taken classes on wild animal encounters. Staying calm was the first key. Not agitating the animal was the second. Most wild animals normally avoided human contact, becoming aggressive only when they sensed danger.

Dakoda's empty stomach rumbled again. She swallowed thickly, though her mouth was too dry to offer much liquid. Hunger was another factor that drove a wild animal to attack.

Just as soon as the cougar got a little rest, it was going to get antsy. A twinge deep in her bladder warned that her own discomfort would soon be increasing tenfold.

Inching around the cougar to use the chamber pot wasn't the most appealing notion she'd entertained lately. The idea of her pants around her ankles and her bare ass hanging out damn near sent her into a spasm. That cougar would probably love to take a nice bite out of her tender rear.

Dakoda might have laughed if the situation hadn't been so damn serious. The cell wasn't going to be big enough for both of them much longer.

A sudden commotion of voices and movement outside the cell caught her attention. Heavy steps were punctuated by a series of guffaws. The grating of a lock and fall of a heavy chain allowed the cell door to open.

The cougar immediately leapt to its feet. It coiled into a defensive crouch; a low growl emanated from its throat.

Dakoda quickly pulled her legs back up toward her chest. “Oh shit…” she muttered. Now wasn't the time to piss that big cat off.

A flash of light hit Dakoda in the eyes. Shielding her face with a hand, she watched two of the outlaws step inside. The one she recognized as Willie Barnett carried a battery-powered lantern. He also carried a small cooler, the kind used for storing food and drinks.

Dakoda welcomed the light; nobody wanted to be trapped in the dark with a cougar. She eyed the cooler.
Food, I hope
.

The redheaded man who'd ambushed them followed a close step behind. Rifle in hand, he pointed it at the cougar. “Keep your place,” he warned. “Or I'll blow you to kingdom come.”

Dakoda froze. “Okay,” she said slowly, voice wavering more than a little.

Willie Barnett laughed. “Not you, little girl. Rusty's talking to Jesse there, reminding that mangy Indian to mind his manners.”

Dakoda's gaze swiveled to the cougar.
Mangy Indian?
She didn't get it. Whatever the meaning was, it flew right over her head.

Though the cougar couldn't possibly understand human words, it must have recognized and comprehended the danger the men represented. Backing up a little, it settled down on its haunches. Its eyes narrowed into slits, and a low growl emanated from its throat. Bowed, but not yet broken.

Willie Barnett walked over to the table. Setting down the lantern and cooler, he tugged out a chair. “Come here.”

Dakoda assumed he was speaking to her. She shook her head. “I think I'll stay right here.” No reason to trust these men. They hadn't shown anything but their bad sides.

The man called Rusty made a motion with his rifle. “The cougar won't bother you.” He thumbed back the hammer on his rifle. “Guaranteed. Ol' Jesse may be cursing himself for wanderin' off his own land, but he ain't entirely stupid. He knows them claws and teeth ain't no match for my friends Smith and Wesson.”

Must be the moonshine
, Dakoda decided. The men must have gotten hold of a bad batch of rotgut. Talking to the cougar like it was human—like it understood—was the work of a seriously deranged mind.