Saving the White Cougar by Terry Spear

Chapter 8

When Stella went to work on Tuesday morning, she hadn’t wanted to say anything about what had happened to her and hoped no one else would bring it up.

"Did you have a nice three-day weekend?" Tori asked as if she really didn’t believe Stella had been shot.

"Right." Getting shot twice didn't count as a fun three-day weekend, but Stella couldn't be gladder that she'd found so many new friends, cougar friends, to party with.

"So tell us what happened," Tori said.

Stella knew they didn't believe she'd been shot and bitten by a rattlesnake. How could she have been back to work this quickly? It was a good thing she still had the wounds to prove that she had, though they had healed up to some degree, much faster than if she'd been human. She pulled off her suit jacket and showed them her arm where she’d been shot twice. Even the lawyers came out of their offices to see her wounds. Then she sat down and lifted her pant leg to show them her snakebite.

"That's awful," Tori said, the others echoing her statement. "I can't believe you're back to work so soon."

"I'm just lucky I heal pretty quickly, or I wouldn't be."

One of the lawyers said to her, "Have the men responsible been charged for a crime against you?"

"Yes. They were shooting at the building I was in and they could have hit others at the ranch. They were hunters and guess who the one man was?" She told them about Jeffrey Sims. "The man you represented in court for illegal trespass and hunting."

The lawyer's face fell a little. Stella and the other paralegals loved their work when they were helping a lawyer protect someone who was being railroaded into pleading guilty of a crime. But in a case like Sims, they knew he would be the kind of man that would continue to do illegal hunting, figuring he could get away with it over and over again, as long as he always had a high-paid lawyer who was good at his job to represent him.

This time, she hoped the lawyers in the agency wouldn't represent him.

"If he gets away with shooting you, I'll represent you in a civil case," Kristy Brown said. "I won't be representing Sims or his buddies this time. I'm sorry to hear it. Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, but it was frightening, and the men had shot up the place when there were four four-year olds in the yard. What kind of men do something like that? It's just a good thing that the walls of the barn helped to slow down the bullets so when they impacted with me"—which wasn't true at all—"they didn't do as much damage."

“Well, they’ll have to seek someone else’s representation this time.”

That made Stella feel better. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

Then the lawyers and she got back to work, but during lunch break, Tori asked her, "So what were you doing in a barn at a horse ranch?"

"I had taken a horse ride earlier."

"Oh, no, were any of the horses injured?"

"No, thankfully." She'd never really thought out the consequences of her actions—of endangering the livestock, or people at the ranch when she headed for that barn. To her, that was her place of escape and she hadn't been able to think of anything else. Of course, she hadn’t thought the men would shoot at anything other than her either.

"Oh, good. Because I know the prosecutor would prosecute this case, but if the ranch owners need civil representation also, our lawyers would certainly represent them."

"Thanks. I'm sure they would."

"Are you having nightmares about it?"

"Yeah. It's hard not to as the men riddled the barn with bullets. Thankfully, one of the men visiting the ranch happened to be an FBI agent. He was armed and shouting to them to drop their weapons and get on the ground."

"Oh, how awful."

No matter how bad the situation had been, life threatening for several of them, especially herself, at least she'd had a great story to tell about why she had taken a sick leave day for Monday.

"Wait, so why did they shoot up the barn? Were they pissed off at the rancher for some reason?"

This was the problem with telling the staff the real reason she had missed work yesterday. But she hadn't wanted to pretend she was just sick and couldn't make it in and then seemed perfectly healthy. She never did that in her life, and she wasn't going to now. But she knew, if they followed the news when they went to trial, the men would say they were shooting at a white cougar—which seemed ridiculous enough that maybe no one would believe them anyway. But it would come out—at least from their testimony, or their lawyers, if the men didn't take the stand and tell their own story in their defense.

"They said they'd shot a white cougar and they believed it had gone into the barn."

The other paralegals stopped their work to listen to her. One said, "No way. Were they drinking?"

"I don't know. All I know is that the ranch foreman who came to see to my injuries—to save my life—was yelling at them to throw down their weapons too. He had a rifle on him when he came into the barn to check on me."

"They knew you'd been shot already?"

"No, but Ted was afraid I might have been as many bullets as the hunters had fired at the building and through the open doors."

"Oh, I bet you were scared."

"Yeah, I managed to make it up a ladder into a hayloft. Truly, I don't even remember it. I just remember Ted coming to see me there."

"And the rattlesnake bite?" Tori asked.

"I don't remember exactly. I think it was in the barn when I went inside. I heard a rattle, and I knew there was a rattlesnake, but the men were shooting, and I was just trying to find cover."

"There isn't such a thing as a white cougar," one of the women said. "I mean, it says here on this website they're so rare, that I doubt that's what they saw."

"They claim they shot it. But there was no cougar in the barn and no wounded cougar anywhere on the acreage. The ranch hands and several people went out and looked. They intended to take care of it and put it in a cat reserve near there." She had to fabricate that part, but she knew of the cat reserve. She'd gone there a few times, hoping that if there ever was a cougar locked up in there who was truly a shifter, she could figure out a way to free him or her. She'd never had any indication one was, but it was just something she felt she needed to do because she'd hoped that if she had ever ended up in one, someone would do that for her.

"Could it have run off?" Tori asked.

"If it had been shot twice and bleeding the whole way that they said it had, probably not. He would have bled to death. Vultures would have circled the area if the cat had died or was near death somewhere. The ranch hands watched for any signs of it, but they didn't find a trail of blood, and no sign of vultures circling, indicating something had died."

"So the men had lied,” Tori said.

"Or they were drunk. Who knows?"

"Oh, did they get a picture of it?" Tori asked.

"No. See, if I had seen a rare white cougar, I would have gotten a picture of it. Instead, what do they want to do?" Stella asked.

"Shoot it."

"Right. Then if they truly had seen a white cougar and killed it, they'd take pictures of the dead animal and share it all over," Stella said.

"Morbid."

"Exactly." If nothing else, maybe Stella could impress upon the ladies that the cougar could be a thing of beauty, not just a predator to kill.

"Did they kill the rattlesnake? The ranch hands?" Tori asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I never asked." Nope, the rattlesnake had only been protecting himself, and there wasn't any reason to kill it. "They might have rehomed it."

One of the women shivered. "Hate snakes."

"Think of it this way, if someone can capture it, they can have antivenom for someone who might need it later."

"True," Tori said.

Stella couldn't quit thinking of Ted though, and taking her for a fun horseback ride, playing with the kids, and she couldn't wait to go to the party.

"Hey, so some of us are going to a Halloween party on Friday night. Did you want to go to it?" Tori asked, changing the subject.

"I've got one to go to."

"Oh, who's hosting it? Maybe it would be more fun than the one I'm going to. Or I could go to both."

Stella shouldn't have mentioned it. "It's a by-invitation only."

"You leave for three days, get shot up, and come back with an invitation to a special event. So where is it being held?"

"Yuma Town."

"It's been a while since I drove through there. Who's giving the party?"

"The Havertons." Stella hoped Tori wouldn't ask her any more questions about it. It was an all-cougar event, and she was thrilled to be going to it, and it really was a private event, by-invitation only. Then she had a notification on her phone showing that she had a package.

She glanced at the email.

"What's that?" Tori asked.

Stella showed her the email that had a picture of the item she had ordered. The beautiful gown for the western-themed Halloween party.

"Ohmigod, that's beautiful. Not a vampire and witch affair, then."

"No, it's my favorite party theme too."

"Oh, yeah, I know. You want to watch westerns mostly. That's okay, I'm going as a witch to the Halloween party I've been invited to. You can still come if you want. And be the belle of the party." Tori smiled, then answered the phone for work.

By lunchtime, Stella had received ten messages from Ted, all photos of the activities they'd participated in that she hadn't realized anyone was taking pictures of—her riding Celestina, the beautiful appaloosa with the white bottom and chestnut colored body and spots all over her backside. She was such a sweet horse and Stella loved that Ted had picked her out of the stable of horses to ride for the very first time.

Then he'd taken a picture of her watching the waterfall, and she hadn't realized he'd taken that either. One of the nurses had snapped a shot of them leaving the clinic as if to commemorate their time together, which Stella thought was sweet.

She noticed no one had taken a picture of her as a wounded white cougar, and she was glad for that.

* * *

When Stella wenthome that night, all she could think of was Ted grilling steaks for them, roasting marshmallows at sunset, and hearing the owls hoot off in the woods and how much she missed being with him. And being shot at by hunters while running as a cougar!

Ted sent another text as she was getting ready to make herself a grilled chicken sandwich for dinner: Missing you terribly. I didn't realize we were being documented together, except for the one photo I took of you at the waterfalls. But I wanted to share them with you.

She texted back: I'm missing you too. It's not the same being here at my apartment now that I'm all alone. I had such a wonderful time with you at the bunkhouse and everything we did together. I can't believe I forgot to say goodbye to Celestina when I left.

Ted: I'll give her an apple and say it's from you. I wish you were here too.

She smiled and texted: It's a deal.

He texted: How did things go at work for you today?

Stella: Oh, no one believed I had been shot. I mean, it wasn't that they thought I out and out lied about it, but there was nothing in any news reports about it—everyone had looked when I called in sick—and of course they were curious how bad the injuries were. So that meant I had to show them off to satisfy their curiosity.

Ted: And they finally believed you.

Stella: Yeah. And I'm sure they felt guilty if they had some notion I had just made up a wallop of a story to have a three-day vacation.

Ted: We decided not to put the news in the local paper because we don’t want to have droves of people coming here, looking for a dead white cougar. We’ll try to keep the lid on the story about the white cougar and just say the men were shooting at a cougar.

Stella: Okay, good. How are things going on the Halloween party preparations?

Ted: Good. It's a lot of work but I'm sure you'll really enjoy it. Let me know if you want me to pick you up and take you there. How are you feeling? I should have asked that of you first thing.

Stella: Good. A little sore. I won't be running as a cougar for the rest of the week, though maybe by Friday I could do it.

Ted: Only if you're here with us.

Stella: Yes! I'm not going to look for a new place to run for now.

Ted: Kolby's made us dinner, so I'm going to go eat with him. But I just wanted to check on you, send the pictures, and make sure everything's okay at work.

She smiled and texted: Thanks. It is. And thanks for the pictures. Night, Ted. See you soon.