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offshore into the river as if running on the surface, her paws weightless, her flight graceful and undisturbed.
    “Good God!”
    Danny heard the charge behind him. It sounded like a bull elephant.
    In desperation, he glanced over his shoulder, turning slightly upstream. With this motion, his rod moved like a whip. With the cougar one pounce away from striking, the graphite tip of the nine-foot rod sharply struck the cat on the nose.
    The animal dropped its head and went head over heels—a half flip that threw a shower of water at Danny and knocked him down into the river.
    The cougar took off in the opposite direction without an ounce of lost momentum. It hit the shore in full stride, blurred into the tawny grasses, and vanished, living up to its nickname: ghost of the Rockies.
    Cutter lost his rod as his waders filled. Fishermen drowned in less water, unable to regain balance, victimized by the panic and the weight of water-filled waders. Danny aimed his feet and legs downstream. He used the current to help him stand. Chilled to shivering, he staggered toward the river’s edge and collapsed onto terra firma, winded and dazed.
    Somehow—miraculously—he’d escaped a cougar attack. He was alive. Unhurt. He took it as an omen, an arbitrary warning of the preciousness of life. And he swore to God it would not go unheeded.

Nine
    W alt’s office door swung open, followed by a strong wind that turned out to be his sister-in-law, Myra. She, of the nervous constitution and skeletal frame.
    Her voice could crack glass. “What if you showed Kevin one of those horrible shots of a car all smashed up by a drunken teenager? Maybe that would shock him into thinking straight. Maybe he’d forget about those canyon parties. Or maybe you could lock him up for an afternoon, you know, right here in your jail, and show him what that’s like if you’re busted for drugs. He’s your nephew after all.”
    “I’ll take care of it, Myra, I’ll speak to him,” Walt said without turning from his computer. “You can go now.”
    “Am I interrupting?”
    He knew that voice. He angled to see Fiona just behind Myra, who blocked the door. Fiona wore the small tight T-shirt and hiking shorts he’d seen her in earlier, though her hair looked worse for wear and her face was shiny with sunscreen.
    “I called you,” Walt reminded. “How could you be interrupting? Myra? Anything else? Good. Then get out of the doorway and let her in.”
    Myra was none too subtle about looking Fiona up and down and then glancing back to Walt judgmentally.
    “Myra!” Walt chastised.
    But Myra couldn’t help herself. “I like what you’ve done with the uniforms,” she told him. Then she added, “You’d better call Kevin.”
    “Out!”
    She huffed off.
    Fiona entered, slack-jawed.
    “My brother’s widow,” Walt explained, “has installed me as a surrogate father—sometimes an awkward fit.”
    “I had a stepmother I hated,” she said, sliding into a captain’s chair that faced his desk in the impossibly small office. She kept her legs extended. Long legs, made longer by the shorts, but cut off by the desk, which was something Walt regretted.
    “Thanks for saving me,” he said.
    “Anytime.”
    “I called because—”
    “You need help with some photos. You explained over the phone.”
    “It’s been a long day.”
    “Danny Cutter was nearly killed by a cougar.”
    “You want to run that by me again?”
    She explained her witnessing the attack from thirty yards downriver.
    “We packed up and came back early, and Danny headed off to lunch with his brother. Men. You can’t really just pick back up like that, can you? Let me tell you something; if that had happened to me, the first thing I’d have done is spend half the day on the phone telling anyone who’d listen. Then I’d have a long hot bath, or two. And then a bottle of wine. Or two. Business as usual? Forget it!”
    “That’s two attacks in ten days. The yellow Lab…”
    “I shot