Page 22 of Red Boar's Baby

“So he might have had a heart attack.”

“That’s possible,” she agreed. “Or a stroke, or he might have a medical condition like epilepsy.”

“Or he might have been poisoned, or had a fight with someone else on the plane.”

“You do have a suspicious mind.”

Before Caine could respond, Fifi’s high, cheerful voice came out of the bushes. “Hey, Diana—Ms. Reid! Agent Caine!” Her head poked up above a dense cluster of brush. From her bare shoulders and strategic glimpses of pale skin through the shrub’s spring leaves, it was evident that she was still naked aside from the pink bow which was now once again atop her blonde floof of curls. “Ouch! I wanted to let you know that Jessie and I found something. Just a minute, let me get my pants on.”

She vanished from view again. There were some more rustlings and a muffled “Ow!”

“Careful of thorns,” Diana called to her. “You don’t want to get a cholla spine in you.”

“And watch out for snakes,” Caine said. Diana cast a glance at him. His face was perfectly solemn, but she had a feeling he was making a very deadpan joke—aimed at the interns or her, she wasn’t sure.

“Next time—ow!—I’m wearing a one-piece jumpsuit,” Fifi complained. She emerged from the bushes, slightly scuffed up, leaving some pink thread on the branches and carrying her hat. “There’s a path over here, and Jessie’s at the top of it.”

“What have you found?” Diana asked as she and Caine fell in behind the intern.

“We both smelled some sort of animal,” Fifi explained. “We disagreed on what it was, but the smell was all around the crash site and went off this way. We think it might be a shifter, because it—it’s hard to say, but it doesn’t smell like it’s from around here, if that makes any sense?”

From behind Diana, Caine murmured, “I’ll join you in a minute.”

She looked back sharply, but he had already retreated and was just vanishing around the end of the plane.

I trust Quinn’s judgment, but that guy is WEIRD.

She followed Fifi up the ridge, where a lovely bay-and-white horse was waiting for them, mane ruffled in the wind. Framed against the sky, Jessie looked like she was posing for a glamor shot in an equine magazine.

“How do you mean, not from around here?” Diana asked. She felt slightly out of her depth and wished Caine had stuck around instead of going off to do whatever the heck he was doing. “And what do you and Jessie think it is?”

Jessie tossed her head and stamped her hoof.

“Well, Jessie says she thinks it smells like a big predator. Whatever it is, she says it sends her prey instincts into overdrive.”

Jessie flattened her ears.

“What about you?” Diana asked.

Fifi hesitated, as if she wasn’t used to people asking her opinion. “Well ... I don’t know. There’s this kind of musky smell that predators often have? And I don’t smell that. It’s just different. I don’t know.”

“They’re right,” said Caine, appearing out of apparent nowhere with his usual suddenness. Fifi yelped, and Jessie reared a little. “There’s definitely been some kind of animal around. And I don’t know what it is either.”

“Recent?” Diana asked.

Fifi looked at Caine, who, to Diana’s surprise, didn’t answer immediately, merely raised his eyebrows at Fifi. After a moment, Fifi said, “I think—kind of ... both? Recent and not. Many overlapping traces. Like it’s come around more than once, or there are more than one of them.”

“I concur,” Caine said. “Although I don’t think it’s more than one creature. The scent is the same.”

This was the first hint she’d had about Caine’s shift shape—that it had a good sense of smell—and she looked at him curiously.What does he turn into?she wondered. It was easiest to imagine him as some kind of big cat, perhaps—a panther, a jaguar. Something stealthy and aloof.

“How recently was it here the last time?” she asked, addressing the question to the group at large. “Do you think you could put a number on it, or at least a range of numbers? Could it still be around?”

“Pretty recent,” Caine said.

Fifi nodded, emboldened. “I think maybe an hour or two?” She looked at Caine, who tilted his head in a way that seemed affirmative.

“I suggest we go back to the helicopter,” Diana said.

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