Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 46

Stalemate

“We’ll have to hoof it from here,” Temple said, eyeing desert and brush untracked by tires.

Speaking of hoofing it, a doe-eyed eland gazed at her through the palo verde thicket before vanishing. Not only hunters might cross their paths out here, she realized, but prey. Some of it pretty big prey.

“We can’t,” Leonora said when Temple came around to jerk the passenger car door open, eyeing her fashionably clad feet in dismay.

“Heck, we can navigate on these pitons better than anybody. Haven’t you waltzed down the flight of stairs from the art museum at the Bellagio a few dozen times, with not one misstep? What’s a little desert?”

Leonora allowed herself to be coaxed out. “Doing PR for the Crystal Phoenix makes you very pushy.”

“Doing PR makes anyone very pushy. You can’t afford to be a fading violet.”

“I’ve never been out here,” Leonora said, gazing around as nervously as the vanished eland. “I have no idea where they might be.”

“We’ll have a better idea when we look. Come on! We’ve got to try.”

Temple didn’t mention that Max was counting on her.

Together they minced over the sand and gravel and into the shade of the palo verdes.

“Isn’t this area pretty bushy for desert?” Temple commented.

“We’re still fairly close to the ranch house compound. It was planted with more tree-type growth so that the hunting would be more like…hunting. There are underground sprinklers to keep the trees growing.”

“No expense spared,” Temple muttered.

“I get the impression you disapprove of our hunt ranch.”

“Me? Oh, no, I’m just a crass PR flack looking for a hot attraction for my client. Why should I care if a bunch of confused, helpless animals are slowly slaughtered in the name of macho decorating schemes?”

Leonora stopped. “You loathe it. You loathe me.”

“Does it matter?”

Leonora couldn’t make up her mind, but stood there teetering, her remade face bluntly ugly in the broad daylight.

“Look.” Temple stepped closer. “I think you loathe it too, only you’ve never had the luxury of thinking about anything beside your own situation. Let’s worry about all that later. Right now, let’s just find and save one panther. Okay?”

Leonora nodded and started forward, toward the break in the bushes where the eland had peered through.

A voice put a period to her progress. A deep, annoyed, authoritative male voice.

“Just where the hell do you ladies think you’re going?”

They spun to face the man who had come up behind them as silent as a cat.

He wore the short-sleeved safari-shorts uniform of the security force, mirror shades, and the usual bush hat. A rifle lay in the crook of one swarthy arm like a big stick, pointed at the ground. Despite the uniform, Temple recognized him right away: the man who had lifted her out of the Jeep just a couple days ago. Who had put a flash of fear into Max’s eyes.

“It’s all right, Raf,” Leonora was saying with some of her old, synthetic confidence. “We just want to go to the hunt area. This lady has offered to pay a prince’s ransom for the panther. We can’t let it be killed.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head, but he didn’t look or sound sorry. “I can’t let you go any farther for anything. They’re stalking the cat just beyond those bushes. You could get killed, and I’d be held responsible.”

“We’re responsible for ourselves,” Temple said. “And Mrs. Van Burkleo is in full authority here.”

His shook his head. Temple wished she could have seen—read—his eyes. He sounded as hard-nosed as a highway patrolman who had caught you doing eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile zone.

“Sorry, ma’am. No can do. Now you two ladies just get back in that car and turn around and go wait at the ranch house until it’s over.”

“But when it’s over the panther will be dead!” Temple exploded.

“Better it than you, ma’am.”