Serengeti Sunrise - By Vivi Andrews Page 0,19
protested.
“Are we sure about that?” Zoe countered. “I would have been to town and back again without anyone the wiser if the jeep hadn’t broken down.”
Ava shook her head. “We knew you’d gone,” she said, her soft voice a contrast to the tense tone around the table.
“And you’re positive no one else has?” Zoe asked, not wanting to voice the other possibility—that someone outside the pride had stepped in to cover their tracks. That an outsider knew enough to know how to cover their tracks.
Landon was obviously thinking along the same lines. He met her eyes and then his gaze slid away. “Caleb, Tyler. Can you find out if there were any other unauthorized trips?”
Without a word, Caleb and Tyler moved toward the door, purpose in every step.
Zoe kept her eyes straight ahead, refusing to watch Tyler leave, but she felt every step he took away from her. The two of them had unfinished business, but the pride came first. If there was one thing she knew about Tyler, it was that family duty trumped everything.
“Zoe?” Landon said and she refocused on him.
Reading the question in his eyes, she shook her head. “I don’t think just one of us sneaking into town could explain it, Landon. If someone covered for us, they were thorough. These people, they looked at us like every question they’d ever had about us had already been answered.”
“But not with the truth?”
“No pitchforks and lynch mobs, so I’m guessing whoever is covering our tracks can lie like the devil himself.”
“Why would they do that?” Ava asked.
Landon looked away from his mate. It was clear he didn’t want to say it, so Zoe did. “They can’t use our secret to control us if everyone knows.”
The Alpha shook his head sharply, the picture of denial. “We don’t know that—”
“Is this about that cougar in Colorado?”
All eyes flew to Shana. Zoe’s mouth went dry to have her fears voiced. “How did you hear about that?”
“What cougar in Colorado?” Ava reached blindly for Landon’s hand, not even seeming to realize she was doing it. The Alpha’s larger hand engulfed hers completely.
“It’s an urban legend,” Landon said. “A shifter boogeyman.”
Shana snorted. “It’s a rural legend, but it’s more than just myth.”
Zoe took pity on Ava and explained. “Cougars are solitary. They don’t have the protection and resources of a pride or a pack. Without anyone watching your back, it can be a lot harder to stay hidden. There’s a story of a mountain lion living in a small town in Colorado a few years back. The locals started to suspect things and he thought he was going to have to move on, but then suddenly it was like all their suspicions had been wiped away. He decided to stay, but three weeks later he vanished, never to be heard from again.”
“He could have just gone into the wild.”
“There was no scent trail.” Shana took up the tale. “He’d been writing letters to his sister, explaining about his fears of discovery and subsequent relief at having been concerned for nothing. He’d invited her to visit and disappeared the night before her arrival. It hadn’t rained. If he’d gone wild, there should have been some scent trail for her to follow after less than twenty-four hours, but there was nothing. He’d just disappeared. Everything in his cabin was as he left it. His car parked in the driveway.”
“So who’s the boogeyman? Who took him?”
“They say a group had arrived in town just before the suspicions around him were cleared. And they left within a day of his disappearance. I guess they were there to survey the mountain pass, but their equipment was all wrong. The townspeople just called them the scientists.”
“So the scientists took the cougar?”
“His sister thinks so. She’s been trying to find him for years. Trying to rally the other cougars to help her, but that breed is so independent, she hasn’t had much luck.”
“But even if they did take him, what makes you think this is the same group? We haven’t heard about any surveyors in town, have we?”
“No. But we haven’t exactly been in town a lot to hear. And someone is covering our tracks. Someone who has a vested interest in making sure no one is looking too hard at this ranch.”
“We have the pride. They can’t make all of us disappear.”
Landon held his mate’s hand between his own, but he was the one who gave her the harsh truth. “Until we know who they are and what