on something just beneath the frozen surface. It was hard and irregular and it shifted under his foot.
He bent down and pushed away the snow.
What first appeared was a pallid slickness. He kept brushing. Something just below it, hard tufts of material. Frozen hair, he thought. So this was a kill and that was why the puma had menaced him. It had been worried about having its food stolen.
It took all of his training not to cry out when he found the staring eyes and gaping mouth of Louis Hancock looking back at him. The eyes flashed with moonlight when there were rips in the clouds.
The guy had been taken down by the mountain lion, which was about the damnedest thing Flynn could imagine happening. As he pushed more snow away, he discovered that Louie had been hit from behind and thrown forward, then—incredibly—ripped in half.
The legs and abdomen were nearby, a knee and booted foot jutting up from the snow. So the lion must be big. Huge.
This stakeout was over. He reached up and pressed the call button on his radio. “There’s been an accident. Detective Hancock is dead. Come in, please.”
Silence.
“I repeat, Louis Hancock has been killed, apparently by a mountain lion. We need to close this thing down, we have a dead officer here.”
Silence.
He was coming to really not like these people. “You can’t continue the stakeout, you have a dead officer! I repeat, dead officer !”
The hell with it, he’d go in himself. He’d been on his way anyway, interrupted by this horror show. He went plunging toward the house.
The going was extremely hard, and he had to fight his way through some flurries so high that he was forced to lie forward and push himself ahead.
Every time he was forced to do this, he was very, very aware that he was entirely helpless.
He moved slowly, guided by the music. There were no lights showing in the house. When he finally stumbled out into the road, the going was a little easier, but not much. The house loomed ahead of him, tall and completely dark except for a single strip of light leaking from around the curtains of the room where Gail Hoffman was playing.
He was going up the snow-choked front walk when he saw the lion again. It was standing on the porch, back around the far edge, where it curved around under the living room windows. It was absolutely still, and it was watching him.
Once again, it had maneuvered brilliantly. He thought to back off, but any movement whatsoever was going to be a major risk. The animal could react a whole lot faster than he could. Certainly, trying to turn around and run would get it on him in an instant.
The puma was not protecting its kill. It was still hunting, and he was its quarry.
He calculated its distance from him at fifteen feet.
Its eyes were as still as glass. If the nostrils hadn’t dilated slightly as it breathed, it would have appeared frozen. The jaw hung slightly open, the enormous incisors visible.
Was that the face of a mountain lion? He didn’t know enough about big cats to tell, but it seemed somewhat longer and narrower. He decided that his best move was to edge in close enough to guarantee a fatal head shot. With luck, it wouldn’t react in time.
Another step, then another, as he slowly came up out of the snow and into the compact front garden. Gail played on. The lion watched him.
He saw its eyes close for a moment, then come open again. The message conveyed was clear and it was shocking: the animal was so sure of itself that it was bored .
Again he stopped, because he had understood why. The game was already over. It had been since before he’d started his maneuver. The animal was waiting for him to realize that he was caught. No matter what he did, it was going to make its move while he was still too far away for a reliable shot.
Bored did not mean careless. The face remained a picture of attentive patience.
He noticed a flickering light in the sky. Lightning, he thought, which would mean that the blizzard was
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