Jennifer Ashley - Wild Cat

Eric studied Diego with an almost amused look on his cat face before he turned and loped off into the darkness.

Diego switched on a lantern flashlight and hiked after him. They were far from paved roads and civilization out here on the edge of the Sierras. Towns and farms were nonexistent, and the mountains were vast.

Eric could be leading Diego anywhere-into an ambush with other Shifters maybe-but Diego wasn’t afraid. He was armed, he had his cell phone and radio, and he knew how to fight. Hand-to-hand combat was his specialty, and he was a more than decent marksman.

No, the only thing that terrified Diego Escobar was being held upside down off a balcony thirty stories up. If those drug runners had met Diego in the middle of a flat field, he’d have won the day. They’d be incarcerated now instead of running loose somewhere south of the border.

The leopard trotted along the cut of a dry wash and up a ridge on the other side of it. Eric was at least nice enough to let Diego keep him in sight.

At the top of the ridge, Eric stopped and sniffed the wind. To Diego, the chill breeze smelled like pine and dust, but Eric made a sudden, fierce growl and loped away, disappearing quickly beneath the trees.

Diego swore under his breath as he picked his way along the steep-sided hill after him. There was no path the way Eric had gone, and Diego’s feet slipped and slid in the soft dirt and pine needles. The rifle and pack unbalanced him, but no way was he going to drop them and leave them behind.

Eric was nowhere in sight by the time Diego reached a clearing in the trees. Annoying, but Diego wasn’t worried about getting lost. He had a powerful flashlight and a GPS device, and he’d noted the exact position in which he’d left the car.

No, getting back to civilization wasn’t the problem. Falling, breaking a bone, being bitten by a snake or a rabid coyote-any of those could shut him down fast. People still died out here, and quickly. The Wild West wasn’t so long ago.

Knowing Cassidy was in this wilderness somewhere kept Diego from walking to the car and leaving Eric to make his own way back. A Shifter had the advantage out here, not a human. But Cassidy…

In spite of Eric’s reassurance about guards, Cassidy’s story about being chased into the construction site by the hunter, not to mention the same hunter trying to take out Diego, worried him. A lot.

A couple of the more aggressive hunting groups had, a few of years ago, gotten the government to lift the ban on hunting un-Collared Shifters. The ban had been in place for a decade, but the hunters argued that Shifters who’d refused to take the Collar were still out there, still very dangerous.

Those Shifters could kill livestock, and worse, they said. Maybe even kidnap human women or children to do unspeakable things to them. Not that anything like this had ever been documented, but the hunters claimed anecdotal evidence.

Their arguments had finally been acknowledged, and the hunting of un-Collared Shifters again had become legal.

Cassidy was out here in the pitch dark. Would a hunter see-or care-that she wore a Collar?

Diego scanned for signs to tell him which way Eric had gone. The earth didn’t show any paw prints, but a bush had been recently broken, a larger rock moved to expose its clean underside and the bugs hiding there.

Diego climbed around a stand of trees and started over another arm of hill. To his right, the ground sloped downward into darkness; to his left and ahead of him, the earth folded into treacherous grooves, deep washes that would flood during snowmelt later this spring.

About half a mile on, Diego was rewarded with a paw print in his beam of light, unmistakable in the mud. A wildcat, but a big one, much bigger than the elusive mountain lions that lived out here.

Diego followed the direction of the print, finding another in the drier dirt. He hiked on through the wash, eyes stinging with the dust he kicked up. He came out of the trees and found himself on a wide ridge, under an outcropping of black rock.

He heard a snarl-harsh, breathy, animal-like. He raised his flashlight and saw a mountain lion standing in the shadows of the rock. A real wildcat, not Eric, and this mountain lion was seriously pissed off.

The cat was so close that Diego could feel the hot whuff of its breath. Its ears were flat against its head, and it bared its teeth in a red-lipped snarl. Diego knew he’d never get the tranq rifle around in time or his pistol from its holster. Sometime tomorrow, rangers would find shredded Latino cop all over the bottom of the hill.

He heard a second snarl, this one louder. Another wildcat leapt down from the rocks above, a snow leopard, complete with Collar. Not Eric-this one was a smaller than Eric, and its eyes were a more vibrant green.

The leopard growled, long and low, throat vibrating with menace. The mountain lion’s hackles rose, and it backed away. The snow leopard gave it a narrow-eyed stare, then jumped straight at it. The mountain lion let out one high-pitched yowl and took off up the hill, scattering dirt and gravel behind it.

The snow leopard landed and stopped, watching the mountain lion go with what Diego swore was a satisfied expression. The big cat then turned and looked at Diego with almost glowing green eyes, assessing him.

Diego put his hands around his rifle. If this wasn’t Cassidy Warden, rangers still might find shredded Latino cop all over the hill.

“Cassidy?” he asked.

The wildcat gave him one slow blink, then moved toward him on graceful feet, step by step. Diego watched it come, tensing, but not raising the rifle. The leopard huffed a little, a more friendly sound than the mountain lion had made, then it butted Diego solidly in the stomach.

The push was hard but playful, almost affectionate. The leopard walked around Diego, twining close to his legs like a house cat before it bumped him in the backside.

“That is you, Cassidy, right?”

The wildcat rose, planted large front paws on Diego’s shoulders. Diego overbalanced and went down on his ass, two hundred pounds of wildcat on top of him.

Reflexes made Diego toss aside his rifle and pack before he fell on them, then the leopard settled on his chest, nuzzling him with a soft, whiskered nose.

The wildcat was heavy, but in a warm-blanket way, not a crush-the-prey way. Diego’s rifle had landed just out of reach, and he noticed she’d pinned him so that he couldn’t go for his pistol.

“Good kitty.” Diego put a hand on her shoulder. The cat’s fur was incredibly soft. “What are you doing to me, mi ja ?”

The leopard licked across his chin, tongue like very rough sandpaper. Diego couldn’t help grinning. “You know this might be considered soliciting a police officer, don’t you?”

She gave a grunt, heaved herself off Diego’s chest, and started to walk off. Diego rolled and got the tranq rifle cocked and aimed so fast he should win a prize for it.

“Stop.”

The leopard looked back at him with green cat’s eyes. It snarled, then it shifted.

Limbs elongated, and the wildcat rose to the cross between cat and human that had saved Diego up in the construction site. The body continued to change and finally settled into the leggy, lush female who’d faced him right before he’d arrested her. Cassidy was as naked as she’d been then, her blond hair as unkempt and as lusciously beautiful.

Cassidy folded her arms, which lifted her breasts under the bright moonlight. The areolas were large and dusky, and Diego imagined how they’d feel filling his mouth, velvet against his tongue.

In the interrogation room, when Cassidy had wrapped her arms around him, it had been all Diego could do to remain immobile. The feel of her body bare through the coverall had made him want to rip open that ugly blue jail suit and have her right there, damn who might be watching. Now there was nothing between him and her but the darkness.