Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
First Day
Los Coyotes Preserve
As if jabbed with a long needle, BenjaminJepson jerked awake to screams of peacocks. Heart slamming for a few seconds, he sat bolt upright, looking outside toward the abrasive, metallic sounds.
Who's out them? What's bothering them? he thought as the high-pitched screaming continued.
Trying to collect his senses, Ben scrambled out of bed, remembering his dads warning never to turn on room lights when alarms rang. Any alarms, including the stupid peacocks. Night vision might well be needed out in those deep shadows around the trees and bushes and in the sandy paths along the animal compounds.
His dad, Dr. Peter Jepson, was director of Los Coyotes Preserve, their private zoological resource specializing in big cat study. They had both the Panthera, large roaring cats such as lions and tigers, and the Felis, smaller purring cats such as cougars.
Ben, you just never know what the danger may be till you're facing it. Sometimes too close, much too close.
Alwayssleeping naked,winter or summer, Ben groped around for his clothes — Levi's and a wash-whitened denim shirt; cowboy-styled boots, scuffed and dusty; his Zacatecas straw hat, Nelson sometimes wore, treasured gift of chief handler Alfredo Garcia. Straw hat over straw hair, shading an ordinary freckled face, the feather-banded hat was as much a part of Ben as the dusty boots. He wore it constantly.
The din kept up, and he could feel the presence of Rachel, their large house cheetah,but couldn't see her. Just the same, he was certain that she was sitting up, also hearing the raucous shrilling, amber eyes searching the darkness.
Four of the gaudy birds paraded around outside during the day, common males with long green and gold erectile tails. None too bright, frequently noisy and aggressive, they rested peacefully most nights in the lower branches of the tall cottonwoods.
The silly peacocks were sometimes the best alarm, witless as they were about most other things. Often better than the electronic system on the two main gates, or the sensitized, barbed strand at the top of the perimeter fencing.
They were certainly better alerts than any of the unreliable compound animals. When intruders came around, the sly, suspicious tigers usually stayed dead silent, waiting, in the murk for a victim. So did the leopards and jaguars. But the more excitable lions would sometimes roar at nocturnal invasions of either humans or hapless small animals.
Sometimes crazies, total wackos, total loonies, traveling gong the lonely Orange County road, would decide to pay a visit, climb the fourteen-foot-high chain-link perimeter fence, then scale the individual compound fences to drop down into the cat pens like fat geese, playing with death.
Wackos! Loonies!
Two years ago, a drug-blitzed girl of fifteen had jumped down on two lionesses on an incredibly dumb dare. Sobering up instantly, she climbed an oak. Ben's mother, a light sleeper heard the screams. Had the pink-haired girl chosen the next compound over, Dmitri, the huge Siberian tiger, would have been waiting.
Good-bye, punk rocker from El Toro.
Another stupid, wacko crazy out there, Ben thought, wide awake now and angry at the intruder, pulling up his pants, letting his shirt fall free. He didn't need a jacket. June in the southern California back country was always warm enough for shirt sleeves, even at night.
just what made people do it? Some insane challenge to the cats? He couldn't imagine any more painful, traumatic way to die. Lacerated by three-inch teeth. Eaten alive. The cats didn't know any better. They were absolutely innocent. Meat was meat, animal or human, and there was no remorse, his father said.
Ben saw a shadowy Rachel go over to the window, looking out.
"Who's there, RacheI?" he asked, hooking his belt, hearing his own voice wound up tight, feeling a ticking in his throat, speeding of pulse, dryness of mouth.
He glanced over at the blue face of the nearby clock. Four-fifteen, Tuesday morning. Ten days since they had gone.
He now wished they, illustrious globe-hopping father and mother, were home in Los Coyotes, especially his dad. He didn't take guff from anyone, wackos or not. Neither did his mother, in fact. But it was a totally useless wish. They were in Africa, somewhere deep in the Serengeti, that vast wildlife park in Tanzania, doing a magazine piece on poaching.
They'd left Alfredo Garcia to run the preserve. But two days ago a truck crashed head-on into Alfredo's old Buick on El Toro Road, and the chunky Latino was now in, intensive care, expected to live but badly injured. Fracuturedskull, left leg broken, some internal injuries.
Like it or not, Ben Jepson was suddenly in charge of Los Coyotes. In three weeks he'd be fifteen.
There had been only a small piece of fading moon earlier that night when Ben had walked the pathways along the compounds with his girlfriend, Sandy Gilmore. Now it was black as the inside of a burial vault out there. Darker the night, quieter the animals, always. Spooky, sometimes.
The cats didn't need light, 'and bright illumination only drew road attention to the preserve. Besides, it was too expensive, his dadad said. But Ben at this moment was wishing also useless that the place could be lit up like a baseball park, erasing all shadows. Out there were shadows upon shadows, all in evil shapes, threatening webs and patches and blurs.
Pulling his boots on, Ben realized he was delaying going out. I should be moving faster! No guts.
"Why did it have to happen now?" he said to Rachel. "Why? And why did Alfredo have to wreck?"
