Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty
Kate made it no farther than five feet into the underbrush before she realized what a terrible idea it had been to go after Marla. She had no way to defend herself, no flashlight to cut through the rapidly descending darkness; she didn’t even have a pair of sturdy boots or jeans to protect her from the scrubby brush. Jake would know what to do, what tools to bring, probably which plants were safe to eat, where to step and what to avoid.
If she survived this cougar encounter—which was, let’s admit it, extremely doubtful at this point—she swore she would tell him the truth. About her feelings, what she wanted, what she hoped for. She couldn’t expect him to meet her there, but she could trust herself enough to say them. To want for things, even if they felt dangerous and scary.
“Speaking of dangerous and scary,” she muttered, squinting to see through the heavy tree cover. The light had grown distressingly thin, nearly nonexistent, and she could see only the tree trunks closest to her. She wasn’t sure of the exact protocols when there was a cougar on the loose, but she figured shouting Marla’s name and drawing attention to herself wasn’t it.
So, Kate pushed on. The less light she had to work with, the slower her progress. The rain had mostly abated by then, but the trees were still heavy with rainfall that chose the creepiest moments to crash over Kate’s head. Several times she yelped, swiping at pine needles and twigs that sluiced down her neck.
“Okay, I change my mind,” she said after what felt like hours, her hair an absolute wreck and her teeth chattering. “Marla, if you’re out here, I’m leaving you to the wilderness. You like to write about haunted forests and stuff, you’ll fit right in.”
Kate paused, looking around, trying to tell one tree from another, or remember which direction she came from. She was quickly devolving into a panic over how to get back to the house when a twig snapped to her left, followed by the rustle of leaves. Kate made a strangled sound, going rigid, hoping the fear sweat prickling her underarms made her smell less appealing to any predators that might be nearby.
“Marla?” she called out, her voice tight and high. Her only answer was another twig snapping, and something in her snapped in response. “Fluffy?”
“Shut up!” came a hissing voice, before Marla stumbled out of the brush, her dress tattered along the hem, her boots caked in mud. “There’s a motherfucking cougar out here!”
“I know,” Kate hissed back. “That’s why I’m here, to rescue you.”
“With what?” Marla looked at her with wild eyes, red scratches across her cheeks from what Kate hoped were the tree branches. “Do you have a gun?”
“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 with you .”
“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, an awful writer,” 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 fucking dare you,” Marla said.
“How fucking dare you ,” 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.