Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
She had an urge to cross the room and lick the candle.
Augustine tapped his laptop. Her phone chimed. She checked the new contract. Adequate.
“Would an electronic signature suffice?”
“Of course.”
She signed. He countersigned and sent the executed copy back to her. She opened her banking app to wire the retainer. MII was not cheap, even with their preferred friend status.
“Let’s wait on the payment,” he said. “There will always be time for that later, and I have no doubt that House Harrison pays their debts.”
She wondered why but decided not to ask.
“How did Kitty disappear?”
Diana flicked her fingers across her tablet. “I have a video.”
He pushed a card toward her with a password. She paired her tablet to the system and tapped play. The screen on the wall came to life, and the recording played across it, the sky awash with pink and lavender and a dense forest blanketing the ground, filmed from above. The familiar pines, mixed with occasional oaks and maples.
“What is this?”
“The Den. Our private lands near Sam Houston National Forest.”
The woods parted, flowing around a circular clearing with a large stone building in its center.
The screen blinked and switched to a stationary security camera mounted in a tree, with the back of the structure firmly in focus, showing a reinforced gate in the center of the rear wall and a steel door next to it. The time stamp said 19:34. Dusk, just before the sun set.
The door swung open, and two people emerged.
“Aleah and Kayson,” Diana said. “Our best guards.”
Both of her people carried Ruger semi-auto rifles. They looked around. Aleah punched a code into the lock on the wall. Kayson took a key from his pocket, inserted it into the center bar of the gate, and turned.
“Double lock?” Augustine said. “One guard has the combination, and the other carries the key?”
She nodded.
Metal clanged. The gate swung open, and Celeste emerged onto the grass. The tigrionex moved like water. She raised her gorgeous head, her periwinkle fur rippling, and inhaled, tasting the dusk air.
The guards stood still.
The muscles of Celeste’s frame contracted. She ran into the woods, bounding through the undergrowth like a teenage kitten. A moment and she vanished into the gloom pooling between the tree trunks.
“If you keep a tiger in an enclosure and feed her meat, the tiger will survive,” Diana said. “She will not be happy. She may suffer from boredom and develop unchecked aggression. She could become restless and irritable. But she will live. If you confine a tigrionex and feed her the best meat in the world, she will die.”
“Why?” Augustine asked.
“They must hunt. I suspect that it has to do with their digestive systems. Certain enzymes that only activate after a chase or perhaps after the hormonal burst that precedes the kill. We do not fully understand it. We supplement their diet, but primary nutrition must come from hunting. We maintain both deer and buffalo herds on our land for that purpose.”
“What if she stumbles across a person?” Augustine asked.
“The property is fenced in and well protected. Cameras, alarms, guard towers. Besides, Celeste is very intelligent. She is aware of what her prey is. If a child were to blunder into her path as she is charging after a deer, she would jump over them and stay locked on her dinner.”
The camera zoomed in on the two guards. They waited. Moments ticked by.
Kayson checked his watch and went back to the metal door, opened it, went inside, and reappeared with a black janitorial cart, a platform on wheels with a large metal cabinet and a trash bin attached to it. He wheeled it through the gates. Aleah looked at the woods one last time and followed him.
The view switched to the interior camera. A cozy habitat occupied a room the size of a small warehouse, grass, moss, big rocks, and fallen tree trunks under a large skylight. Two oaks spread their branches over the grass. They had built the habitat around the trees. A stream ran into a shallow pond, kept at barely a third full. Kitty could swim, enjoyed it even, and yet Diana couldn’t help but worry about an accidental drowning. A shallow man-made cave rose in the corner, layered with straw. On it, a soft blue clump curled, about the size of an adult female beagle.
Kayson wheeled the cart forward and pulled a pitchfork from the rack by the wall. Aleah walked up behind him. Her arm snapped up.
Diana had watched the recording over and over. She’d nearly memorized it by now, but even so, she could barely make out the outline of the knife in the woman’s hand. The blade was so small. Three inches, if that.
Aleah clamped one hand over Kayson’s mouth and slit his throat. He thrashed in her grip. She let him go. Kayson stumbled forward, careened to the side, and collapsed.