Claw Back (Louis Kincaid) (16 page)

             
“Freeze!”
Louis shouted, leveling the
Glock
at him.

             
“No. No, you don’t understand,” Keno said.

             
“Drop the damn gun!”

             
“I need to do this,” Keno said. “I need to save her. I need to save her now.”

             
“Drop the fucking gun!”

             
“Louis!” Katy
said. “Don’t shoot him. He’s -
”

             
Keno got the dart chambered.

Damn it!
He didn’t want to shoot this guy, not in front of Katy but the bastard wasn’t leaving him any choice.

             
“Louis, he’s trying to save Aunt Betty!” Katy cried. “He thought the panthers would -”

             
Keno started to raise the rifle.

             
Louis fired.

             
The bullet caught Keno in the shoulder and spun him around. Keno dropped the rifle and fell, landing half outside the door.

             
Katy let out a strangled cry. Louis went to Keno
and
snatched u
p the rifle.
He
had aimed only to wound
, hitting Keno in the
shoulder. It was enough to bring him down but he wasn’t going to die.

             
A
howl
.
Deep and pained, coming from
Grace.

             
“Louis! Untie me! Quick!” Katy yelled.

             
He started back to Katy but saw the belt hanging on the wall and grabbed one of the knives. He had barely sliced through the fishing line before Katy yanked away and ran to the cage.

             
Louis used a piece of the fishing line to tie Keno to the door latch. Keno looked up at him then hung his head.

             
“Louis!”

             
He turned to Katy. She was crouched next to the cage, holding the flashlight on Grace. He got his first good look at the panther.

She was sprawled on her side in the small cage, all four legs out, her body heaving with labored breaths. The cage was littered with feces, small bones and uneaten food of some kind. Grace’s coat was matted with brown mud.

He went to Katy’s side.
             

“How did you find me?” Katy asked.

“I got worried and hunted down Gary,’ Louis said. “We checked all the abandoned camps.”

She looked at him, her face half-lit in the light. “Gary? Where is he?”

“Keno got him with the dart,” Louis said. “He’s outside, twenty
,
thirty feet from the shack.”

Katy
nodded,
her face slick with sweat. “Get me Keno’s rifle.”

“What?”

“Just get it!”

Louis got the rifle and brought it to Katy. When she stood up, she wavered. Louis held out a hand but she brushed it away and took the rifle.

Grace let out a bellow filled with pain.

“Take this and hold it so I can see her,” she said. Her hand was shaking as she gave him the flashlight.

Louis took the flashlight and trained it on the panther. Katy took two steps back. Her eyes were filled with tears. She raised the rifle.

“Katy, wait! Don’t! We can take her
- ”

“She’s in pain, damn it!”

Grace raised her head, her eyes coming up to Katy.

Katy fired.

A sharp pop!

Grace’s head fell hard and her yellow eyes went blank.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Louis st
ared
at the motionless panther. He didn’t even realize Katy had moved away until he felt something brush his shoulder. She
was holding a
blanket.

“I need your help,” she said.

“What?”

“There’s a Coleman lantern in here somewhere. Find it and bring it over to the cage.”

“Katy
–
”

“Just do it, please!”

             
She knelt and untied the wire on the cage door. Louis swung the flashlight around the room until he found the lantern and some matches. He lit the lantern and brought it to Katy.

             
In the hard light of the lantern he got a better look at Grace. What he had thought was brown mud was dried blood, concentrated around her haunches.
There was
a small pool of fresh pink blood near her tail.

             
Katy swung the cage door open and ducked inside, grabbing Grace’s front legs.

             
“Help me get her out onto the blanket,” Katy said. “Take her back legs but be gentle.”

             
“Katy, what are you doing?”
             

             
“We have to get her out
of the cage
so we have room to work.”

             
“Work?”

             
Katy looked up at Louis, her eyes bright with a mixture of fear
and
-
good god
-
excitement.

“Grace is in labor,” she said.

             
Louis glanced back at Grace. Now he could see the bulge in her belly. And labor explained the
fresh
blood.

Katy was examining the panther, pressing on her abdomen. “She’s too weak to
do
this herself,” she said. “We need to help her. There’s only one kitten.”

             
Louis’s mind started spinning with options
. M
ove the truck up closer and load Grace in, use the CB to call for a chopper or something.

             
“Katy, we can get someone here in an hour,” he said.

Her head shot up. “No!” she said. “We can’t wait. I don’t know what the tranquilizer will do
to
the fetus. Grace
and th
e kitten
could be dead in an hour.”

             
Katy looked back to the panther. “The amniotic sac is visible but Grace can’t push it out.” She shook her head. “Damn, I don’t have gloves or antiseptic, I don’t have any oxytocin.
damn
it
...”

             
Louis knelt, setting the lantern on the wood floor. “All right,” he said. “What do you need me to do?”

             
Katy gave him a wavering smile. “Bring me the knife and see if you can find a clean towel or something. And I need a piece of that fishing line.”

             
Louis rose and used the flashlight to do a quick scan of the shack. The place was decrepit and filthy, with nothing but some fast food wrappers and some jugs of bottled water. He finally found
Keno’s
knapsack. It held some toiletries and some men’s underwear.

             
He cut off some fishing line and took it and a pair of blue boxer shorts to Katy. She didn’t
even look up as she took them
.

             
“Hang on, Grace,” Katy whispered.

             
Louis could see a small greenish sac protruding from beneath Grace’s tail. He shut his eyes. A weird memory flashed to his brain, that day back in the police academy when they had breezed through the part in the textbook about delivering babies.

             
When he opened his eyes, Katy was carefully pulling out the sac. He watched, fascinated, as she wrapped the kitten in the blue shorts and broke the sac. She severed the cord with the knife and used an edge of the shorts to clean the fluid and tissue from the kitten’s mouth and nose.

             
“You need to tie the cord,” she said, nodding to the piece of fishing line.

             
“What?”

             
“Cut off a small piece of the line and tie it, close to the kitten’s belly.”

             
Louis knelt, sliced off a piece of line and carefully tied the umbilical cord. He sat back on his haunches, watching the kitten.

             
“It’s not breathing,” he said.

“I know,” Katy said. She began to rub the kitten briskly with the shorts. She rose suddenly, still cradling it. “There’s water somewhere in here. Where it is?”

             
“Over there,” Louis said, pointing.

             
Katy disappeared. Louis stayed crouched by the Grace, watching her closely. She was still out, but her lower abdomen was moving.

             
Suddenly, a second green blob appeared.

             
“Katy!”

             
“What?”

             
“There’s another one coming.”

             
“What? I only felt one!”

             
Louis could see the kitten’s head protruding now. But nothing else was happening.

             
“It’s stuck,” he yelled.

             
“You’ll have to pull it out.”

             
He yanked off his polo shirt and scooted closer to Grace. He wrapped the edge of the shirt over the kitten’s head and pulled downward gently but firmly.

             
Come on...

             
Slowly, the slimy little creature emerged. He grabbed the knife from the floor, carefully cut through the umbilical cord and tied it off.

             
Then he let out a breath, sat back on his haunches and looked down at the kitten cradled in his
shirt
. It was wiggling but its face was covered with tissue.

             
Gently, he rubbed the kitten’s nose and mouth like he had seen Katy do. At first the kitten didn’t respond then it opened its tiny mouth and let out a noise like a rusty hinge.   

             
Yes. Breathe. That’s right. Breathe.

             
Another weak mew and the kitten settled in the
folds of the shirt in
Louis’s hands. He supposed he should set it down next to Grace but he wanted to hold it just a moment longer. 

             
“Congratulations, dad
.
”

             
Louis looked up over his shoulder at Katy. Her face was slick with sweat and dirt. She looked exhausted but she was smiling.

             
“I’m glad you find this funny,” he said. He looked at the blood on her hands.

             
“Did the other one make it?” he asked.

             
She nodded.

             
Louis looked at Grace. The panther’s head was still down but her eyes were open now and her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm.

             
“Is Grace going to be okay?” Louis asked.

             
“Yes, she’ll be fine,” Katy said. She looked toward Keno, slumped near the door.

             
“What about
Hachi
?

             
“He’ll make it,” Louis said.

             
There was a sudden shuffling sound outside. Louis tensed and started to look for a spot to set his kitten down but then a bulky familiar frame filled the doorway.

             
Gary stood there, hands braced on the frame, wavering. His eyes went from Keno lying at his feet to Grace and finally back to Louis.

“What the fuck happened?” he asked.

Louis held up the kitten. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re an uncle.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What the fuck happened here?”

The man standing in front of Louis -- Hendry County sheriff Amos
Zeedler
-- was sweaty, sleepy and confused. It was dawn and he had just arrived at the shack in a muddy white SUV, trailed by two detectives in a county swamp buggy. One of the detectives stood in the open-air buggy holding his rifle and looking like an anxious Secret Service agent on a rooftop. The other was hovering around Gary’s SUV, making small talk.