Page 85 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“I thought you were against animal cruelty,” Kate said.
“Not when I’m on the dinner menu,” Marla snapped. “So, what’s the plan here, I just need to run faster than you?”
Kate was about to protest that she didn’t intend to be anyone’s bait when she looked up and caught the gleam of a pair of greenish-yellow eyes in a tree overhead, too far apart to be an owl, too steady to be fireflies. She swallowed a scream, her heart squeezing so hard in her chest she could barely breathe.
“It’s in the tree,” she said through the coffee straw–size opening in her throat.
“Oh god, this is how I die,” Marla moaned. “Mauled by a cougar withyou.”
“You don’t have to say it that way,” Kate said. The eyes were still there, yellow and gleaming, and Kate could just spot the flash of long white teeth as she took a tentative step backward. “Oooooh my god, it’s so big. Are they always that big?”
“Why do you think they’re called big cats?” Marla snapped.
“I guess I thought they were, like, I don’t know, fat house cats,” Kate said, nearly shrieking as she bumped into a tree. The eyes drew closer as the cougar followed their movements, climbing down a large branch of the tree. “It’s following us!”
“No shit it’s following us,” Marla hissed, shoving past Kate. “It’s a fucking predator.”
“You know what, if I’m going to die by big cat, I will at least die with my last words being you’re a terrible friend, a terrible person, and frankly, anawfulwriter,” Kate said.
“Excuse me?” Marla said in a loud voice, whipping her head toward Kate. “I wouldn’t expect a schlocky writer like you to understand what I was doing with my books.”
“First of all, I knew exactly what you were doing,” Kate said, doing her best not to stumble over tree roots as she blindly walked backward. “Your themes were as subtle as a high school sophomore discovering gothic poetry for the first time. Second of all, I’m not a schlocky writer. I’m a damn good writer. Mysteries are incredibly hard to craft, which you wouldn’t know, because your books have never seen a plot to save their lives.”
“How fuckingdareyou,” Marla said.
“How fucking dareyou,” Kate snapped back. “How fucking dare you pretend to be my friend while manipulating me. I’ve spent so long feeling bad about losing touch with you, but now I realize I was actually protecting myself. You were always so envious and bitter about my success, and I convinced myself that it was somehow my fault. That I was the bad friend and the sellout. But if I’m going down by cougar, you’re going down with me, and you’ll deserve it.”
“Like hell I am,” Marla said, as a steady rumble rolled down from the trees.
At first Kate thought it was the distant warnings of thunder, another band of the storm that had upended the last twenty-four hours of their lives, but then it hit a high note and Kate realized it was coming from the cougar. She grabbed Marla on instinct.
“Let me go,” Marla said, scratching at Kate’s exposed wrist.
“Hey!” Kate said, letting go in surprise. Marla took the advantage and booked it for the trees in the opposite direction.
The cougar leapt from the tree branch and landed directly in front of her, and Kate realized she’d somehow still underestimated its size. Its head was as big as hers, the body at least four or five feet long, the tail swinging along behind it. Its paws were huge, claws gleaming as it flicked them out and retracted them. It lowered its head to the ground, hind quarters swinging high, muscles bunching as it prepared to leap.
Chapter Forty-One
“Jake!” Kate screamed, because it seemed the thing to say when one was about to get shredded like a smoked pork butt at a family barbeque.
“Kate!” someone yelled back, and for a moment she thought she might have imagined it. But then Jake was there, crashing through the trees, shouting at the cougar and holding up a canister that released a pepper-scented mist. The cougar let loose a roar so close to Kate that its hot breath blasted in her face. It twisted away from them, landing in the underbrush and curling around with its paws swiping at its face.
“Kate, come on!” Jake yelled as he grabbed her and dragged her in the same direction where Marla had disappeared.
“You came for me!” Kate called out like an idiot, as the cat roared again with a grating howl that sounded straight out of a movie soundtrack.
“Of course I came for you,” Jake said, looking at her like she was crazy. “Spencer told me you went after Marla into a cougar’s hunting territory. Why wouldn’t I come for you?”
“I just thought…” Kate’s throat was thick, possibly with emotion, possibly an aftereffect of whatever Jake had sprayed at the cougar. Hereyes prickled and teared, her skin tingling with an odd sensation. “What was that?”
“Bear spray,” Jake said. “Next time you go into the wilderness after a murderer, at least change your shoes, would you?”
“I’m not planning on making this a next-time type of thing,” Kate said, blinking back tears. “Jake, I’m so sorry. I was an idiot. A jerk. Whatever other insults you want to call me. I was scared that you would leave again, and I would be left behind.”
Here it was, her chance to be brave. She took a deep breath, ready to spill all her various feelings, when Jake nearly tripped over Marla, whose boot had gotten so firmly wedged under an uprooted tree root that she couldn’t pull it loose. The cougar roared behind them.
“It’s coming after us!” Kate said, her heartrate spiking. “Marla, leave the boot!”