This woman’s case wasn’t as obvious, but it came close. Eyebrows plucked to a thin blond line were barely there. Her supplemented cheekbones jutted out so far they made her eyes look smaller and forced them into an unnatural tilt. Collagen-thickened lips went beyond starlet-swollen to misshapen, blending with her snubbed nose until together they made a…muzzle.
Worst of all, when she reached the desk, Temple saw she was wearing those patterned contact lenses. This amber-colored pair gave her pupils vertical slits, like a cat’s eyes.
Add all that to the fact that everything she wore was bronze or hide patterned, and that costly gold charms shaped into the heads and bodies of big cats dangled from her neck, ears, and wrists, all winking with tasteless constellations of diamonds…Temple was speechless.
“Leonora,” the woman said in a husky purr, extending a hand with nails so long they curved into claws. They were enameled a pale ocher color, which made them even creepier than if they’d been lacquered an obvious Carnivore Red. It was as if they were lying in wait for the real thing, like blood.
Temple had stood without thinking why. Maybe to be polite and shake hands. Maybe to be readier to run.
Leonora kept coming closer. She was wearing chamois suede capri pants, a tiger-striped silk-and-spandex top, cork-soled espadrilles.
One clawed hand, tanned pale mocha, reached for Temple.
Temple wasn’t sure if her hand lifted to meet it, or to paw it aside.
Smooth, cool flesh grasped hers. The curved nails brushed the thin skin on the top of Temple’s hand.
“Leonora Van Burkleo,” the woman emphasized.
Temple glanced at Cyrus in dazed comprehension. This was his wife. From the marked age difference, his trophy wife. From Leonora’s bizarre and deliberate resemblance to a beast, his literal trophy wife.
Leonora’s smile revealed Hollywood-white teeth, quite emphatically pointed. Temple had met people with markedly pointed teeth before. But these were unnatural. They had been filed, just as Leonora’s face had been reshaped.
Temple realized then that she had quite literally walked into the lion’s den.
Max wasn’t aware of being stalked until he was almost back to the drop-off point where he was to meet Temple.
He had sighted some of the ranch’s security forces early during his ramble. These were camouflage-attired men with rifles, the kind of professionals that turned his blood cold: hirelings, not true believers. Hard men who were used to doing unspeakable things. It was kill or be killed with their sort, and Max had always tried to stay well away from either role.
He flattened himself among some scattered rocks, a shadow among shadows, and waited until they were utterly gone before moving on.
And then he came on the trail.
He was an urban animal. Wilderness tracking wasn’t his particular skill, but even a city slicker could see the random impress of a sneaker tread on the softer areas of sand.
Several sneaker treads.
The security forces wore desert boots. His own shoes always had smooth-soled leather. He had never left easily traceable tracks, like a tire, on carpeting or anywhere else.
Sagebrush was the only cover out here, but the three-foot-high growths pockmarked the flat desert floor as regularly as dotted Swiss. Max moved from bush to bush like a cartoon character, trying to figure out whether the sneaker set had been coming or going.
He had gotten close enough to the compound to not like what he’d found. Close enough to worry about Temple still inside. Now other trespassers were adding to the likelihood that either Temple or he might get into trouble.
Max checked his watch. Only an hour and forty minutes since he’d left Temple. Knowing her fondness for thorough jobs and her gift for talking her way into, and often out of, anything, she was probably still happily poking her nose into her host’s business.
He glimpsed movement to his right, sensed a buzz on the air, possibly a distant Jeep.
He dove for the best cover, a small outcropping of rock thirty feet away, hitting the sand and rolling the last few feet. Before he could roll upright, a heavy weight jumped him from above.
Lord, one of the lions is loose, was his first thought. The weight squeezed the wind out of him, flailing buff-colored limbs blurred his vision.
A blow to the head reassured him. It was hard, but not clawed. A human pride had him in their grip.
Max promptly feigned unconsciousness to avoid any more cracks in the skull. No one could go as convincingly limp as a magician.
“Not a guard,” someone whispered harshly.
“Then what?” demanded another whisperer.
“Shhh! The Jeep’s coming this way.”
The grips on Max tightened as the vehicle’s motor and wheels ground, coughed, and spit sand through the sere desert air. It sounded like an eggbeater on the run.
The noise grew, hovered like a swarm of huge bees, then faded into a distant drone.
“Thank God.” This whisper was raspy, but it was a woman’s voice. “I hope we didn’t kill him.”
Max found that hope encouraging. Ranch security would have had no such scruples.
He played possum while they turned him over and poked at him like curious chimps.
“Black?”
Max, sweating, agreed. It was crazy to have gone a-hunting in city black out here, but he hadn’t become really suspicious until he and Temple had arrived, and by then it was too late to send out for a safari suit.
Hands pawed at him. “He’s not armed.”
Not with obvious weapons anyway.
“What’s a Joe Blow doing out here?”
Max stirred slightly, not wanting to start a ruckus. There were at least three of them, and while the odds didn’t concern him, keeping the peace did. Guards with powerful binoculars would catch any dust-up in this terrain.
“What—?” he groaned, trying to sound like an innocent, head-whacked schmuck.
He blinked the sand out of his eyes, finally focusing on tanned, seamed faces. Two men and a woman. She was the party’s senior member, a lean sixty-something with wiry strands of silver hair escaping a beige bandanna.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
The men, a twenty-something and a forty-something with outdoor faces, kept what they thought was a good grip on him.
“Exploring,” he answered.
“Alone? On foot? Dressed like that?”
“A friend dropped me off by car. I’d heard about this place. Wanted to look it over.”
“Didn’t you see the guards?” one of the guys asked.
“Yes. But they didn’t see me.” Max risked a grin. You don’t want to be seen by guards, he implied. I don’t either. Maybe we’re allies.
The woman snorted contemptuously. “In that outfit, and they missed you?”
“I headed for shadow when I saw or heard them. Unfortunately, you were part of the shadow I was heading for here.”
The woman’s burnt sienna fingers curled into the fabric of Max’s black turtleneck sweater. “Silk blend.” Her eyes, so light a gray they seemed as silver as her hair, hardened. “What the hell is someone like you doing out here on foot?”
“I’m looking for a big cat.”
“Going to take it down with your teeth, right?” asked one of the youngsters.
“Not going to take it down at all. Going to get it out of here.”
That made them sit up and take notice. Literally. The hands loosened on his limbs.
“What is your scam?” asked a thin-faced man with a sand-grayed ponytail down his back.
“No scam. What I said. I’m looking for a stolen leopard.”
The woman was unimpressed. “Alone. On foot. Out here. Unarmed. Dressed like that.”
“My partner is inside, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d quit playing twenty questions and let me start worrying about when she’s coming out, or if she’s coming out.”