I almost have a cow right there when a sharp-featured appendage curls into my shoulder.
“Get behind the prime rib, Daddio. The meatheads are coming to see if the standing rack of lamb has the heebie-jeebies.”
I hunker down, toes curled against the cold, biting down hard to keep my fangs from chattering. If I had to claw my way out of here for some reason, my shivs would probably snap off like icicles.
We arrive at our desert destination during the apex of the day’s heat, but must wait many icy minutes while our chauffeurs wrestle frozen meat onto carts and out of our way.
Finally, sensing a lull in the action, I stumble to the open van door and drop down to blessed, and solar-heated, terra firma.
A moment later Louise lands beside me. We cold-foot it farther under the vehicle, obnoxious as the shade is to our chilled bodies.
“It was warmer when I was with the Yorkies,” I mention.
“Overheated, hyperactive canines.”
I roll…er, swagger to the raw edge where shadow and sunlight meet. As soon as my toes defrost, we can make a run for the big cat compound.
Meanwhile, Manny and Vinnie tramp back and forth, slinging hash, so to speak.
My stomach unfortunately objects audibly to the downloaded edibles disappearing from sight.
Manny’s engineer boots pause but a foot from my nose. “Vinnie, you will have to have that looked into.”
“Maybe one of the tires is losing air,” Vinnie says.
I hear knees creaking and scramble to hide behind an opposite wheel.
“Nope,” says Vinnie. “Tires are all pumped up.”
Midnight Louise lets out a hiss of exasperation as the boots thump away. “You and your Ghost of indigestion act. A plain old yowl would have been less intriguing to these mutton-heads. Okay. Tootsies toasty? Let us head for some cover that matches the air temperature.”
She is gone like an eightball caroming across a sand beige pool table. I streak after her, expecting toes to snap off, and am pleasantly surprised when they do not.
By an ever-handy Dumpster we catch our breaths.
“So where is this secret witness of yours?” Louise asks. “Are we heading for the house or the hills?”
It is so tempting to mislead the little snip, but my toes, frankly, are not up to laying false trails.
“The compound.”
Stalking like shadows on ice, we pad over the hot sandy dirt toward the now-familiar row of cages in the outbuilding.
“Looks like you have been busy,” Louise concedes. “You seem to know your way around this place.”
“I have hoofed this terrain from here to the Animal Oasis.”
“Animal Oasis. What is that?”
Before I can answer her, I stop to stare in shock.
It is the same old, same old, all right. Lions and tigers and…and bare cages.
Two of them.
Not just Osiris’s but the one that contained my secret witness.
Even Midnight Louise is frowning at the lineup, counting noses and coming up one too few.
“Looks like another Big Boy is AWOL,” she notes. Then she looks over and sees my expression. “Oh, no, Daddio Darnedest! Is the missing person your secret witness?”
I nod glumly.
The witness is definitely not here to see us.
I can only hope that is not a permanent condition.
Chapter 43
The Black and Blue Max
Four-thirty.
Max had been watching the world through the view screen of a video camera for so long that he felt like he was looking through the Cloaked Conjuror’s mask.
At the moment he was basking snakelike atop the artificial rocks forming the skeleton for a simulated waterfall, his black clothing so dust covered it had gone gray.
He had managed to procure a Jeep Laredo the color of mud. Driving a security-force vehicle look-alike got him fairly close to the compound. The Laredo was parked in a thicket of paloverde trees. His circuitous way to the ranch house area had been booby-trapped by so many fellow prowlers that it was almost laughable, like a scene in a Pink Panther film farce.
The three earnest hunt breakers were out there, armed with binoculars and flare guns. They too had managed to come very close, despite the patrolling security guards. That made Max more nervous than the pairs of guards that rode or walked both near and far from the ranch house. The protesters were as unpredictable as lizards, and in their safari khakis, as easy to overlook.
Once ensconced where he was least likely to be expected, on a perch well greased with bird droppings, he had recorded various wheeled arrivals. A white van proved to be a meat delivery truck and left after unloading. A bronze Ford Expedition, that held the title for biggest dinosaur in the outsize SUV world, was the second arrival. It had disgorged a man in an Aussie-style hat, not pinned up on one side, so that Max couldn’t see his face. Obviously the hunter. Shortly after that had come Temple’s aqua Storm, now parked by the house’s soaring entry door in front of the bulbous behemoth that was the Expedition, looking like a mislaid turquoise chip in this dun-colored setting.
Meanwhile…Max switched the camera for a pair of binoculars that were both surprisingly powerful and incredibly petite. Kind of like Temple.
His vulture’s-eye view of the scene showed the trio of hunt protesters hunkered down sixty yards away in the desert and creeping ever closer.
Not thirty yards away one of the rifle-bearing security guards scanned the terrain like a point man.
Max raked the magnifying lenses over the compound and spotted a cluster of feminine hair colors by the ranch’s soaring entrance doors: Temple’s cocklike comb of red, the tawny mane of the widow Van Burkleo, the assistant Courtney’s slick yellow poll.
He lowered the binocs, disturbed to see the guards stationed all around the area, like beaters. Now that he had inventoried the forces assembling, he was sorry he had asked Temple to be on hand. He was even sorrier that she didn’t have the Colt pocketlite he had offered her. Although in a crisis she was more likely to draw her cell phone than a gun.
He swooped the binocs back to the hunt breakers: more unarmed innocents in a nest of vipers.
A movement in the desert between the compound and the nothingness that stretched to the horizon caught his eye. Something black like him, but smaller.
Wait a minute. He swept the binocs over the empty horizon again. Not quite empty. Max saw something else he didn’t like. Something he never would have noticed had he not taken the high ground to look around. Odd how earthbound people thought, in terms of miles and roads and fences. Not as the crow flies, though…or the vulture. The vulture was a far more appropriate image for this situation, with so many human vultures gathering around for what human vultures crave…not dead flesh, but the material remains of the dead flesh.
His heartbeat accelerated. In disbelief? Or disappointment? Or did he just not want to tangle with this particular opponent? Damn! He was less interested in finding a murderer than a missing leopard, but now he’d managed to do both. Just this minute, just when he was trapped in this perch, watching and recording.
But was there any new danger? The worst was over, wasn’t it? Van Burkleo was dead. That’s what everyone had wanted, each in his own way. Van Burkleo dead. The hunts were over. The beatings ended. The ranch was about to be sold. The money made and taken away. The animals dead or dispersed…
Then why one last hunt?
Was there one last victim?