Open Your Heart (Kings Grove #4) - Delancey Stewart Page 0,73

There was too much I wanted here that I couldn’t have. “Right now,” I confirmed.

Tuck pulled me into a hug tight enough to force tears from my eyes—or maybe they would have come anyway. “Gonna miss you, roomie,” he whispered. “So will Cam.”

“Take care of him, okay?” I managed, though my voice cracked.

“He’s a fool,” Tuck told me, letting me go.

“Or maybe I am,” I said. “Bye Tuck.”

I slipped away then, back to the house to change. The sun was just beginning to slip through the tops of the tall trees, and with every minute I got closer to leaving, the more resolute I felt that it was what I needed to do. I just needed to go get the dog I’d chosen—I’d decided to call her Sequoia—and then I’d be on my way.

I crossed the space between the houses, trying not to look at the fire pit or allow myself any nostalgia about the times I’d sat there with Cam, oblivious to the way things would turn out between us. Just as I pushed open the door to his house, the terrifying yowl of the mountain lion came screeching through the trees, chilling my blood and sending the hair on my neck standing on end. I’d just pushed the door open, and the eerie scream had distracted me long enough to let the dogs out without meaning to.

“Oh crap!” I came back to my senses, but it was too late. Though I pulled the door quickly shut again, three puppies and Matilda had all squirmed out and were now running in opposite directions, away from me. Matilda was following one pup out to the driveway, and one remained on the deck. I scooped him up and deposited him into the closed pen where he whined his disapproval at me and jumped up against the fence. The third pup was tearing across the lot behind the big house, heading for the ravine that separated the village from the wild hillside that climbed into the forest behind us. The hillside where the big cat seemed to have taken up residence despite months of efforts to trap it.

The rangers believed the mountain lion must have been trapped before, and was too smart to fall for the same trick twice, a thought that was not a consolation as I ran after the puppy that I was ninety-nine percent sure was my Sequoia, based on the little black butt and brown markings on her backside as she tore away from me.

I’d changed out of my wedding clothes, but I was dressed to drive to Austin, not for a hike. My sandals slowed me as I picked my way through the bushes along the ravine and down the pine needle covered slope littered with branches and pine cones. The dog was already crossing the little creek at the bottom, and I heard a loud wet “plonk” as she slipped in and out of the water, scrambling up the other side.

“Sequoia,” I called, my voice filled with a panic that was rising as she began to climb up the hill on the other side. “Come back, girl. Please!” I found a rock to step on and crossed the little creek, looking up as I began to climb the slope. Sequoia had managed to get far enough ahead of me that I couldn’t see her now, she must’ve wandered behind bushes or rocks up the hillside. Fear bubbled in my chest as I went after her, the eerie scream we’d just heard still ringing through my head.

This wasn’t safe. I knew it, but I couldn’t let the puppy just wander away.

Ten minutes of slipping and scrabbling through the dirt and littered branches later, I found her. She stood frozen near a small rock formation, staring upwards with wide eyes at a huge mountain lion crouched on top of a rock, poised to spring.

I sucked in a sharp breath, fear hammering in my blood. As my feet slid on the needle covered ground, I sent a pine cone flying down the slope with a crash, and the huge cat snapped it’s head around to train the big yellow predatory eyes on me.

What had I been taught about mountain lions? What had Cam told me? My mind was frozen with terror, but I forced myself to think. Big. I was supposed to be big. And noisy. That part was easy.

I opened my mouth and let out a scream that was a sound like nothing I’d ever made before. It