Cole moved in beside her to examine the shoulder. “How long can we count on it with a cat?”
“You can never count on it, but if we stay quiet and avoid stimulation, we might get up to four hours.” Glenna opened her pack and took out a long strip of torn cloth, which she started wrapping around the tiger’s eyes.
Reducing visual stimulation. That’s a good idea, Cole thought. Blood oozed from the wound on the tiger’s shoulder. “Trying for a heart shot and missed. Looks like it missed major arteries, which is lucky as hell. But no telling what that bullet did to this shoulder.”
Cole palpated the shoulder gently, feeling a huge amount of abnormal play from destroyed soft tissue as well as the crackling of shattered bone.
He had to consider euthanasia, because he never wanted an animal to suffer unnecessarily. He rocked back on his heels to lock eyes with Glenna. “This is bad. Without an X-ray, I don’t even know if it can be repaired, but I do know that I’m not the vet who should tackle it. We need a wildlife specialist, and we’re certainly not in a situation where we can do anything for it out here.”
“Ever since we determined this was a tiger, I’ve been thinking. Under the circumstances, this cat is never going to be released back into the wild anyway. It’s headed for a zoo. I’ve talked to the folks at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs already, and they’ll take it. I’ll have a team meet me down at my truck, and we can transport it from there. Maybe only have to sedate it one or two more times.”
The job would be hard to carry out, but a zoo tiger that was fed and cared for could survive with a bum leg. He decided this cat deserved the opportunity. “I’ll stabilize the shoulder and stop the bleeding, and we’ll give it a try.”
He reached into his pack for gauze and bandages and got to work.
“I’ll go look for some limbs that are strong enough to build a damn travois,” Brody muttered, slinging his rifle strap over his shoulder as he turned to hurry away.
TWENTY-SIX
Mattie kept one eye on Flint while she watched the others work feverishly to save the beautiful cat. She admired Glenna’s dedication to the wild creature as well as the quiet and gentle skill Cole used when he handled injured animals. Or injured people, too, for that matter. He must have a large capacity for love in that heart of his.
Flint looked like a whipped puppy.
“Get down from the horse and sit on this log,” Mattie told him as she pointed to a fallen tree trunk.
With his hands still cuffed in front, Flint swung down nimbly from the saddle, both hands on the horn. He sat where she’d told him to, looking down at the ground.
Mattie figured the tiger hunt was not this hired man’s brainchild. She hadn’t been able to spend enough time to break him down earlier and make him talk, but they would all be better off if she could bring him over to their side. She felt the pressure of passing time, expecting the hunters to reach the clearing at any minute. If they saw what was happening here, they would scatter and the person responsible for a double homicide might avoid capture. She suspected Zach. He best matched their evidence, and he had connections with both Nate and Tyler.
She wanted to work on Flint some more. The hard line hadn’t done it, so she decided to try the soft touch.
“Did you see that tiger up on that rock fighting for its life?” she murmured as if to herself. “What a shame.”
Flint’s Adam’s apple rose and lowered as he swallowed.
“It’s a gorgeous creature. Now it will probably be maimed for the rest of its life. If it lives.”
She could have been mistaken, but she thought she saw him wince.
“I wonder what Nate Fletcher was thinking. This had to be all his idea, didn’t it?”
Flint gave an almost imperceptible headshake, as if he wanted to say no but just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Mattie had been thinking of the information shared by Nate’s parents—the part about how Kasey was asking him to do things he didn’t want to. In light of what she knew now, she was certain these alleged “things” hadn’t involved Nate and Kasey’s private life, as his mother suspected. It must have involved this tiger hunt.
“Flint, did you have an ax to grind with Nate?”
His eyes widened, startled. “No, ma’am. I worked for Nate the past couple years, and I learned a lot from him. I have nothing but respect for him.”
“All right. But the way I figure it, someone tied up with this tiger hunt must have killed Nate.” She figured a bit of deception might help in this instance. “I still wonder if it could’ve been you.”
A look of pain that had to have also been physical consumed Flint’s face. “I didn’t kill Nate. I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Not even Wilson? I think he got wrapped up in this fiasco somehow and suffered the consequences for it. What do you think?”
Flint was wagging his head as he avoided eye contact and studied the ground.
“Flint, I’m gonna be honest with you. I believe you’re not the ringleader of this circus, but you’re the one I have sitting here in cuffs. Now, I plan to go after the other players in a few minutes, so I don’t have much time to sit and chat. But you’ve got to realize that when it comes to the law, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We’ve definitely got you for the wildlife charges, and we’ll be looking at you hard for the murder of two men. Is that the way you want this to go down?”
Flint raised his face and stared at her with haunted eyes.
“If you truly respect Nate, you’ll help us catch his killer.” As Flint continued to stare at her, Mattie sensed he was on the edge of spilling something. Cole had mentioned his father before, and she decided to play that card again. “If you help us out here, I’ll make sure your dad knows you did the right thing.”
His eyes welled. “I was just trying to help Miss Lillian and Mr. Doyle.”
Help Lillian and Doyle? What did he mean? How were Lillian and Doyle involved? “How would this tiger hunt help the Redmans?”
“It’s not right, them losing their home. The bank shouldn’t have the right to take it from them.” He shrugged and lowered his face, as if embarrassed about his tears, or perhaps about sharing what he knew.
“What’s this about a bank?”
“The Redman Ranch is in foreclosure.”
They’d known about Nate and Kasey’s debt, and the strain on Lillian and Doyle, but this was the first they’d heard of foreclosure. No one had mentioned it before, not even Kasey. And of course she would know about it.
Mattie began putting the pieces together. Nate and Kasey had borrowed money from Lillian and Doyle to set up Nate’s outfitting business, and according to Tom and Helen Fletcher, Nate needed to pay that back now. Kasey seemed eager to collect Nate’s insurance money, even though she denied being pressured by her parents. Her deceptiveness during that part of the interview made sense now.
Nate’s death benefit would probably save the Redman Ranch and more. Was Kasey responsible for his murder instead of Zach? Or did this new piece to the puzzle give Lillian a motive for killing her son-in-law?
Mattie had figured the killer was on the loose here in the mountains. But maybe that person was waiting back home on the Redman Ranch. “Tell me what you know about how Nate was killed. Quick. We don’t have much time.”
Flint raised his head to look her in the eye. “I don’t know anything about Nate’s death or who killed him. And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“How about Wilson Nichol?”
“Same. I was setting up supplies for this trip when Wilson was killed. I don’t know anything.”