Page 52 of The Lovely and the Lost

Bigger than Girl. Faster.

“Mountain lion,” Gabriel said. “They rarely attack humans.”

That was what he thought.

That was what the statistics said.

That wasn’t the message I received from the liquid grace with which the predator leapt down from the tree.

Food. Hungry.I remembered being hungry. I remembered hunting.

I remembered being prey.

The mountain lion stood between us and the others. Saskia was the first one to notice. I knew her. I knew what she looked like when she was on the verge of a lunge.

“Stay.” The word burst out of me. Saskia growled, and the mountain lion’s head swiveled from me to her.

No.

I took a step forward. Gabriel caught my arm, but I shook him off. Another step, and the animal’s gaze was right back on me. I knew better than to corner a predator. I also knew that Saskia’s control was even more tenuous than mine.

“Don’t turn around,” I told Gabriel, fighting the instinct to lower my voice. “Raise your hands. Make noise.”

The way to fight a predator was to convince it you were the bigger threat.

“Don’t look away,” I continued, my eyes on the cat’s as I felt a scream bubbling up in my own throat.Not terror. Not fear. Ragewas a human word. The yell I let out when the cat took a languid step toward us was anything but.

Beside me Gabriel added his own voice to the chaos, stomping, taking up space, staring the mountain lion straight in the eye. The animal eyed us for a moment, then made a chuffing sound, deep in its throat.

But it didn’t come any closer.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over, the mountain lion melting back into the wilderness—all 130 pounds of it.

Sharp teeth. Strong jaw. Claws. Lethal.The drumbeat of warnings thrumming in my brain persisted long after the threat was gone.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked me.

“I’m fine.”

What I didn’t say was that there was a part of me—hidden and wild andfree—that was better than fine. There was a part of me that hadenjoyedit.

Saskia let out a sound—half growl, half whine—and I realized I hadn’t dropped the order to stay yet. When I did so, she bolted for me. The second she reached us, she turned around, snarling.

Another predator would approachherhuman over her dead and rotting corpse.

“Now was that so hard?” Jude called out to Gabriel. “See what I mean about letting go?”

“You get all the fun,” Free told me.

“I understand now,” Gabriel said thoughtfully. “The three of you share a single iota of common sense. I’m just a little unclear on which one of you has custody of it now.”

“I’m not positive,” Jude told Free. “But Ithinkthat’s a compliment.”

“No,” Gabriel replied. “No, it is not.”

A sound from the truck reminded me of why I’d followed Gabriel off the ledge in the first place. “Gabriel was just about to get over himself and tell us why he has a police scanner.”

“Gabriel,” Jude declared, “is myfavorite.”