Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“We can’t,” Leonora said when Temple came around to jerk the passenger car door open, eyeing her fashionably clad feet in dismay.

“Heck, we can navigate on these pitons better than anybody. Haven’t you waltzed down the flight of stairs from the art museum at the Bellagio a few dozen times, with not one misstep? What’s a little desert?”

Leonora allowed herself to be coaxed out. “Doing PR for the Crystal Phoenix makes you very pushy.”

“Doing PR makes anyone very pushy. You can’t afford to be a fading violet.”

“I’ve never been out here,” Leonora said, gazing around as nervously as the vanished eland. “I have no idea where they might be.”

“We’ll have a better idea when we look. Come on! We’ve got to try.”

Temple didn’t mention that Max was counting on her.

Together they minced over the sand and gravel and into the shade of the palo verdes.

“Isn’t this area pretty bushy for desert?” Temple commented.

“We’re still fairly close to the ranch house compound. It was planted with more tree-type growth so that the hunting would be more like…hunting. There are underground sprinklers to keep the trees growing.”

“No expense spared,” Temple muttered.

“I get the impression you disapprove of our hunt ranch.”

“Me? Oh, no, I’m just a crass PR flack looking for a hot attraction for my client. Why should I care if a bunch of confused, helpless animals are slowly slaughtered in the name of macho decorating schemes?”

Leonora stopped. “You loathe it. You loathe me.”

“Does it matter?”

Leonora couldn’t make up her mind, but stood there teetering, her remade face bluntly ugly in the broad daylight.

“Look.” Temple stepped closer. “I think you loathe it too, only you’ve never had the luxury of thinking about anything beside your own situation. Let’s worry about all that later. Right now, let’s just find and save one panther. Okay?”

Leonora nodded and started forward, toward the break in the bushes where the eland had peered through.

A voice put a period to her progress. A deep, annoyed, authoritative male voice.

“Just where the hell do you ladies think you’re going?”

They spun to face the man who had come up behind them as silent as a cat.

He wore the short-sleeved safari-shorts uniform of the security force, mirror shades, and the usual bush hat. A rifle lay in the crook of one swarthy arm like a big stick, pointed at the ground. Despite the uniform, Temple recognized him right away: the man who had lifted her out of the Jeep just a couple days ago. Who had put a flash of fear into Max’s eyes.

“It’s all right, Raf,” Leonora was saying with some of her old, synthetic confidence. “We just want to go to the hunt area. This lady has offered to pay a prince’s ransom for the panther. We can’t let it be killed.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head, but he didn’t look or sound sorry. “I can’t let you go any farther for anything. They’re stalking the cat just beyond those bushes. You could get killed, and I’d be held responsible.”

“We’re responsible for ourselves,” Temple said. “And Mrs. Van Burkleo is in full authority here.”

His shook his head. Temple wished she could have seen—read—his eyes. He sounded as hard-nosed as a highway patrolman who had caught you doing eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile zone.

“Sorry, ma’am. No can do. Now you two ladies just get back in that car and turn around and go wait at the ranch house until it’s over.”

“But when it’s over the panther will be dead! ” Temple exploded.

“Better it than you, ma’am.”

Chapter 47

Dead Ahead

“Good,” I say, ducking back under some sagebrush.

“It is good that the great white hunter has your roommate and her companion at rifle point?”

“That is the only thing that will keep them safe. This is called a paradox. I will explain it to you later, when the worst is over instead of yet to come.”

I turn to continue my trot toward the danger ahead.

Miss Midnight Louise does not move a muscle. Not even a whisker. “You mean you are going to walk away and leave your significant other in that appalling situation?”

Ah. Little Miss Midnight has just shown me how to kill two birds with one very sneaky stone.

“Of course not,” I say indignantly. “I am going to leave you here to deal with the armed man. Obviously, my Miss Temple, competent as she is, has her hands tied at the moment. Not only does she have that extremely large and heavy tote bag to lug around but she must also consider the safety of the, uh”—I look carefully at Miss Temple’s companion, and then look again—“catwoman. It is up to you, Miss Louise, to watch the situation and take action if required to save the ladies’ lives. I imagine that you can handle one mighty hunter with a rifle?”

“Of course,” she spits back without thinking.

By then I have turned tail and am running through the brush before she can gather her wits and argue with me, or worse, follow me. I have neatly put her between the devil and the deep blue sea, as they say. The man with the gun is the devil, and if she leaves her post to follow me, she will feel guilty. The deep blue sea is me; if she follows her instinct to interfere with my plans for the sake of it, she risks harm to the helpless humans.

I am practically chuckling at the fiendish cleverness of my move as I run, except that I cannot chuckle. But I can think about it.

For the presence of the rifle-toting guard makes one thing clear: If they have posted a guard here, the real action must be pretty near.

Dead ahead, in fact.

Chapter 48

Men in Beige

Max watched the hunt breakers edge closer like animated mushrooms.

Their clothing and movements were properly stealthy, but they were pushing nearer their human prey. Too close for Max’s comfort.

He eyed the two huntsmen in beige below, who faced a sand-scoured shack open to the sky and wind about twenty-five yards in front of them.

The client carried a rifle. But so did the Rancho Exotica guide/security man.

The desert wind skittered across the sand, creating a constant microdermabrasion tattoo on any exposed skin surfaces. Max had been suffering that soft scouring for over an hour now, and it was getting on his nerves.

No, that wasn’t what was getting on his nerves. It was the sleek 9-mm gun on the rock beside him.

Max hated guns. He hated bombs even more, but he hated guns too. He’d taken perverse pride in rarely carrying them during a decade-plus of serious undercover work, and never using them.

Now he might have no choice. He would never have suggested that Temple come to this scene without having the backup of a loaded gun in his pocket. The Colt he had offered her weighed down his jacket pocket, but it was superfluous, not suitable to this distance and this situation.

Against rifles, of course, either weapon was useless, the movies aside. Amazing how many film heroes held off whole armies of heavy artillery with endlessly firing pistols.

Max was a fine magician, but he wasn’t that good.

A basso growl gritted across the sands with the wind.

The guide pointed with his left arm, the rifle still cradled in his right.

The client was a taller man, wearing the same style khaki clothing, except his shirtsleeves and pants were full-length. Despite his amateur status—and he certainly seemed awkward holding the rifle—he was the more sinister figure. The security boyos in Bermuda shorts always struck Max, like Las Vegas’s similarly attired bicycle police, as overgrown Boy Scouts.