Call of the Cougar (Heart of the Cougar Book 2) (30 page)

She thought it was bad news, but once they had Ricky situated in the same room with Kolby, and she and Hal walked outside the clinic, he said, “We’ve got to meet my parents—Roger and Milly Haverton. They’re upset that we're getting married, and I haven't even taken you over to meet them. Would you mind seeing them now for dinner?”

“I’d love to.” Even though she knew she wasn't marrying Hal's family, she did want to be friends with them, and so she had every intention of putting on her best face.

That evening, Tracey met Hal’s parents. Roger began with questioning her all about herself, and she felt she was talking to a law enforcement officer. Then she remembered he was a newspaper reporter.

So she began to question him all about himself—as though she was conducting a Special Agent mission.

From the dining room where Hal and his mother were setting the table, they surreptitiously watched his father and Tracey talking in the living room.

“She’s perfect for you,” his mother said. She hadn’t liked one woman he’d ever brought home for his parents to meet. He thought the world of Tracey, so he worried she wouldn’t measure up to their high expectations either. Not that it would make any difference as far as his marrying her.

“She is.”

“When are we going to expect grandkids?”

“We have work to do for now. Getting to know each other time. We’ll have kids later.”

His mother smiled. It was the expression that said that they’d have kids sooner than later.

“I’ve never seen anyone question your dad like that. It’s great. He’ll be talking about how she turned the tables on him forever. Are you sure you want to become a Special Agent like she is though? I thought you loved the ranch.” His mother held up her hand. “No. Don’t answer that. I know you want to work with her, and I want the best for you. I heard her say her sister is a professional photographer and writing a book. If she ever wants to be featured in the paper, we’d love to do a special interest story on her. I’d offer to do one on Tracey, but she’s in the paper quite a lot already.”

“Hopefully, future assignments won’t be so harrowing.”

His mother waved her hand in dismissal. “The two of you can handle it. I hear you’re getting a couple of puppies. That’s good. It’s a great way to learn how to be parents before the babies come.”

Hal smiled. He hadn’t realized his mom wanted grandbabies so much.

Hal’s dad announced, “It’s time to eat.” He and Tracey joined Hal and his mother and he said, “You’ve got a damn fine she-cat, Son. If she ever wants to be a reporter, I’m sure your mom would give her a job in a heartbeat.”

Tracey smiled and Hal put his arm over her shoulders.

“That’s good to know.” But Hal figured Tracey’s calling was saving and protecting wildlife, and he loved her just the way she was.

***

Later that evening, Dan had assigned other men to watch over Ricky and his brother, though they put Ricky in Kolby's room so they could stay together.
Ricky was glad to be in the room with Kolby, talking with him about what had happened with regard to Benny when his brother wasn't sleeping, ready for him in case he shifted into a cougar and got shook up, like Ricky had been when it had first happened to him.

Even though Ricky thought he was prepared to see his brother shift, he wasn't. For one thing, Kolby suddenly transformed in his sleep and it took a minute for both Ricky and Kolby to register that he'd shifted. Kolby panicked and got tangled up in his hospital gown and sheets, pulled out his I.V. accidentally, and knocked over stuff on the tray next to his bed. It crashed on the floor before Ricky could get out of bed to help him.

A nurse poked her head into the room. "What in the world are you doing?"

Ricky stared at her for a moment, afraid the nurse would run out of their screaming. He still couldn't believe that a lot of the people living in the town were cougar shifters.

"He shifted while he was sleeping."

"I'll go get something for him to help him sleep. He doesn’t need to be shifting right now. He needs rest." She closed the door and Ricky untied Kolby's hospital gown, then helped him out of it. Then he smiled. "I'm shifting, too." Mainly, because he wanted to get used to shifting so he wouldn't do it by accident. As soon as he was in his cougar form, he jumped from his bed to Kolby's. Kolby snarled at him.
Ricky snarled right back. He had no idea what they had just said to each other, but he had tried to say how cool this was.

Kolby leapt for Ricky's bed. That was one of the things Ricky loved—was the ability to leap such long distances. When Tracey and Hal had left him alone, he had shifted and jumped from his bed to Tracey's, practicing how far the jump would take him.

Maybe because of his injury, Kolby didn't quite make it and with claws extended, he tore Ricky's hospital sheets and blanket as he slipped off the bed. Uh-oh.

The nurse came in the room and started screaming at them. "The two of you, get back into bed at once!"

Kolby and Ricky exchanges glances, showed off their big teeth in a wicked grin, and chased the nurse out of the room, only they quickly stopped when they saw Sheriff Dan and the doctor headed for the room. They were in trouble now.

***

"You would have done the same if you'd had a brother and you were close to him," Tracey said, as she and Ted and Hal sat down to eat dinner outside on the deck that night at the ranch. “How does Kolby feel about Ricky turning him? If he was turned?”

“He was fine with it, I guess. I didn’t ask.”

Despite that Ted would be the main person who would have to deal with it, he was smiling when he shook his head. "I thought I was going to be ranching, not taking care of two brand new cougar shifters to boot."

"Can you manage? I'm certain someone else will offer to take Kolby in. Even the owner of the grocery store," Hal said, “since he was stocking shelves at another.”

"Nah. I'll keep the two of them busy. And we'll have fun too." Ted smiled at Tracey. "I hear we're getting some puppies we’ll be raising on account of you."

She looked at Hal. "Does Stryker know?"

Hal chuckled, took a swig of beer, and smiled. "Yeah. He gave me hell for having a foal and buying not only one puppy, but two. Well, three, but one's for Stryker. I haven't let him in on the secret yet."

She smiled. "Are you sure he really wants one?"

"Sure. The puppy will make him even more popular with the she-cats."

"I can't wait to bring them home."

"Two more weeks. We can go see them tomorrow, if you'd like."

"I'd love to. If you all don't mind, I'm going to call my sister. I had a thought about the mines."

"I'm coming with you." Hal said good night to Ted, left his dish in the kitchen with hers, and walked with her into the living room.

She took a seat on the couch and called her sister. "Jessie, were you ever in the silver mines in Anderson?"

"Sure, the one directly across from the schoolhouse. Have you got a computer handy so you can blow these pictures up and see them more clearly?"

"Do you have a computer I can use?" Tracey asked Hal.

"Yeah. In my office."

She followed him in there and he turned it on.

"Okay, send the pictures to my email," she told her sister and sat down at the desk to access her email.

After Tracey downloaded them, she opened them up in a photo enhancement program Hal had and lightened them up a bit.

"Was this silver mine boarded up?"

"Yeah, but we got permission to go down into the one to take pictures for the book. Of course, we had to at our own risk."

"No one bothered you? And Mrs. Blasdell didn't call the cops on you?"

"She wasn't home. Just from habit, I always look to see if her car is sitting in front of the garage or if she's peeking out her window. But her car was gone and there was no sign of her. I figured she had gone into town for groceries."

"But the mine was safe?"

'"Of course not. It was downright scary down there. But that one didn't collapse. The cave-in was at the other mine. Did they ever find ivory in the one where you found the fragment and the cave-in had occurred?"

"They're still working on it. It's dangerous work. But it's not just ivory that they're looking for but bodies if anyone got caught down there during the cave-in."

"So are you looking through the photos? Do you see anything?"

"Rock walls, rock ceilings, rock floors."

"If they know you're on to them, why would they continue to store the ivory there?"

"Maybe they have them there and haven't been able to get it out without us catching them at it. And investigators have kept them from getting to it. We thought they might be bringing it out somewhere else because otherwise they'd have to get it past Mrs. Blasdell and she'd report them."

"Yeah. No one gets anything by her unless she's not there."

"Okay, thanks, Jessie. Everything all right with you and mom and dad?"

"Yeah, but you be careful."

"I will."

"And congratulations, sis. You couldn't have picked out a hotter cat than Hal."

Tracey smiled, said good night, and turned to Hal. "We need to go spelunking. We could call Mick up, but no way is anyone going to send a team to check out the mine unless we find some evidence. And I don't see any in this mine in the pictures. But what if it's a different mine?"

"They're dangerous."

"Have you been in them?"

"Yeah. We were reckless teens in our youth."

"All of them?"

"A few. We used to look for nuggets of silver. Took pickaxes and chopped away at the rock."

"Are you game? If we can find the evidence to put these men away, when we capture them, that will be the end of this."

"Until the next case." He wrapped his arms around her. "You don't really want to wait to check them out, do you?"

"Nope."

"All right. Get changed into what you want to wear. Contact your boss to let him know you're going to try and find some silver in the mines in Anderson so you can retire from this dangerous job. I'll let Dan know what we're up to. Not sure we'll get any backup at this time of night."

"What are the odds we'd have any trouble with anyone—“ She didn't finish what she was saying as Hal raised his brows, shook his head, and stalked off for his bedroom.

Chapter 19

Hal approached the wagon trail leading to Anderson, but to Tracey's surprise, he parked off the road between some trees at another spot. "Why are you parking here instead of on the wagon trail?" It would have been a lot faster, and this way necessitated climbing the rock face.

"Just in case Mooney or Benny or someone else is watching the trail, I figured we'd slip in through the woods. We can see with our cat's sight, so we should be good."

“Great idea.” Why hadn’t she thought of it?

They climbed out of Hal's truck and started to hike through the woods as quietly as they could as crickets chirped away and the wind shook the tree branches, the cool night air surrounding them with the scent of pine.

Hal touched her arm when they neared the base of the cliffs and motioned to go up, rather than around them and into the town. She would have much preferred leaping around on the cliffs as a cougar rather than managing as a human. Then she frowned at the cliffs, thinking she’d heard some movement in the rocks up above and said in a hushed voice, "Did you see or hear something?"

"No. I want to take a look around from that vantage point."

She nodded and followed him up. He was as surefooted as when he was climbing around as a cougar. So was she. He was making good time when he suddenly stopped, crouched low against the cliff face, and she nearly ran into him. She waited, listening like he was, and then she heard someone talking in a hushed voice down below, more in the direction of a mine shaft. Up above, someone was smoking a cigarette. She smelled the smoke as it curled about her, and saw the light from the sparks flicked against the darkness. Ass. He could start a fire in the dry brush up there.

Someone began ripping a board off one of the mines below, tossing the boards to the ground, and banging some tool against the next one.

"Hurry it up, damn it. We don't have all night," Mooney growled.

Her heartbeat quickened as she realized he was in on the job. They’d finally catch him in the act of handling the illegally gotten ivory—if that’s what they had stored in the mine.

She was both delighted that they’d catch these men red-handed and apprehensive that something bad would go down. They could wait for Dan and the men he was gathering to watch their backs, or chance losing the whole thing if the men moved the goods now, and they weren't able to stop them. She heard three distinct male voices and saw four lights, looked to be headlamps, casting some illumination about down below.

The man on the cliff was still smoking up on the cliff. How many of these men were cougars though?

Hal motioned that he was going after the lookout and for her to stay put.

She did and watched as he began to crawl up the cliff really slow, trying to keep from making a sound, or from sending any loose rocks tumbling, and alerting the man above or the ones below. She had enough of a rock shelf to balance on that she was able to pull out her gun and ready it for a firefight—just in case.

Then disaster struck. The men were still making a racket with the boards, but Hal slammed into the man above, and he cried out. Not loud or long, but enough that it made the guys down below stop what they were doing. One of them called out, "Jessup?"

No response.

She couldn't see Hal or Jessup from her vantage point now. They both had to be lying down on the rock shelf.

"Go check it out. And you, hurry with the damn boards!" Mooney said.

The one man began ripping at the boards again while another headed up the cliff with his headlamp on so he could see where he was going. Not good. As soon as he reached a certain vantage point, he was sure to see Hal and Jessup. And then the shooting would begin.

"See anything?" the man called out from down below.

"No. He must have taken a stroll. No sign of him."