Dr. Dev McCaw could hear the mewling. Based on how it echoed off the surrounding rocks, he suspected the big cat was no more than a few hundred yards away. Determining which direction was the problem. The sound echoing through the mountain pass was one of pain, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint its location.
The puma’s screech echoed again, and he moved to the south. He’d go a thousand yards and if there were no indicators of the cat, he’d try north. Trial and error…the scientific way.
Dev pulled out his phone, opened an app he’d designed to track wilderness hikes, set a timer to vibrate when he’d reached a thousand yards and started walking.
He didn’t need it to buzz to know he’d chosen wrong. There were no signs of cat activity. No footprints or broken branches on the short bushes dotting the landscape. Most importantly…he saw a porcupine and several rabbits dart away from him. Those animals would keep their distance from a predator even when it was injured.
Turning around, he closed his eyes, listening to cries. He looked at the tracker app, a quick thing he’d developed a few years ago and sold to an outdoor company while in vet school. He’d started coding in elementary school and sold three apps before he’d graduated high school.
Everyone had expected him to get a degree in computer science. Profits and riches were what his parents wanted him to seek. A goal that was admirable when the electric company was shutting off the power every few months. But he had more money now than he could spend in a lifetime. What was the point of adding to it endlessly?
So he’d followed another fancy—biology. From there vet school…and finally an internship in wildlife medicine with a focus on using technology to track endangered and at-risk species.
He moved past a large rock and the puma’s cries became louder. “Found you.”
The black cat’s hind leg was caught in a snare that tightened as it tried to pull away. The cat would keep trying, though. Eventually, it would wear itself out or amputate the leg. Either way, the poacher’s trap would kill the beauty.
Fury pulsed through Dev’s veins, but it wouldn’t do him any good. Mentally, he ran over the supplies he had in his pack. Enough to keep him in the Arizona hills for two weeks, but not for rescue work.
“Step away from the cat.” The woman’s voice was at his back, but it was the click of a gun’s safety loosening that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
Dev blew out a breath, then raised his hands and turned. The woman wore hiking gear, her curly blond hair pulled into a ponytail. With the sunlight behind her, she looked like an avenging angel.
He saw the gun and smiled. “We both know you aren’t going to shoot me.”
“You think poachers care?”
“A poacher would be pointing a shotgun at me.” They probably would have just pulled the trigger, but he didn’t need to think about that. “That’s a tranquilizer gun, which means we are both here to help the cat, so we should work together.”
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