A man climbs out then, and his image makes me suck in air so I don’t faint.
“You recognize him? Willow?” Grady asks, his gaze wild with concern.
“That’s...that’s the conservation officer. Wayne Bordell.”
Crap.
There’s no mistaking that face, his block of a head, or his boxy build.
Starting near the truck, he places lights in the poles along the airstrip, illuminating the entire length of it.
“They can’t leave them out there,” Grady explains with a sense that’s better than mine for this sort of nightmare. “Lights would get picked up by other airplanes, sooner or later, causing someone to grow suspicious and come check it out. So they have to put them up and take them down every trip. Every transfer.”
We both continue watching while I try to remember how to breathe.
Sometime in the next ten minutes, a plane lands. It taxies to the end of the single runway and turns around, stopping next to the truck.
A man climbs out of the plane, and though it’s definitely a smaller civilian jet, it has a back hatch in the underbelly, completely in view of one camera. When the door slides open like a gaping mouth, it shows an empty cargo hold.
Empty except for a dolly that the man retrieves, rolling it down the short ramp onto the paved airstrip.
Another man climbs out of the plane. He’s short, wearing a black jumpsuit. The camera doesn’t show his face close up, but I can tell he has a faint pencil mustache.
“Do you recognize him?” Grady asks.
“No,” I whisper, half afraid the people on the screen will hear us. “But I definitely recognize her.”
I point at the woman climbing out of the box truck. Even doing a dirty deal in the middle of the night on a secret runway doesn’t faze her.
She’s wearing one of her signature outfits, a tight skirt and leopard print short jacket, along with zebra-striped heels. Every bit the money addicted junkie looking for another hit to fuel her bad habit for chic designer fashion and comfort bought in blood.
“That’s Priscilla Foss from the rescue,” I tell him, wishing I didn’t have to say those words.
She saunters over and meets the man with the mustache on the airstrip in one fluid devil walk.
We can’t hear them from this distance, but I can tell by her movements—mainly her hands as she talks—that she’s trying to smooth something over.
The evil witch always presses a hand to her heart like she’s oh-so-wounded whenever anyone doubts her.
Guess how many times she did it when she wanted me to shut up, stop asking questions, and believe her.
Now guess what she’s doing right now.
Mr. Mustache shakes his head, his face a scowl. He points at her—or is it something behind her?
She folds her hands across her chest with a haughty eye roll, talks some more, and then gestures for Bordell. He stomps over to the box truck to retrieve something while Priscilla waves her hand at the man with the dolly, as if it won’t be needed.
Wayne returns carrying what looks like a large blue storage tub.
Are those...holes poked in the top?
Sweet Jesus.
I know what’s coming before the nausea washes over me.
There’s an animal inside, and these horrible pukes don’t even have the decency or intelligence to transport it in a proper cage. But a second later, I realize there’s no need to.
Not when Wayne sets it on the ground next to Priscilla, undoes a makeshift wrap of bungee cords holding the lid on, and peels off the cover.
Priscilla reaches in with a sour expression and comes back with a small tan-brown lump, squirming in her hands.
A lion cub.
“No!” I hiss, gasping, stumbling onto my feet.
There’s nothing I can do from here, but my fight-or-flight outrage doesn’t want to accept it.
I wish for its sake the baby lion was sedated, but it’s movements tell me otherwise.
It’s still very much alive, but if Grady and Faulk are right about that other time stamp, that vicious, final one...maybe not for long.
My soul rips in two.
The Queen Bitch holds it up by the scuff of its neck, as if the poor thing is just one more baggy purse.
“Willow? If it’s too much, say the word...” Grady’s right behind me, laying those big hands on my shoulders like a comfort blanket.
God.
“No, no, I have to keep watching. I have to know.”
I think his huge, powerful hands are the only thing that keeps me from breaking apart.
“That’s one of Tilda’s cubs,” I whisper, my voice shaken and beat. “A perfectly healthy baby lion cub, born just weeks ago.”
“They must be trying to placate whoever wanted Bruce,” Grady says. “These cubs must be awful valuable, even if it’s less than a full-grown tiger.”
“Yes,” I whimper, entirely sick to my stomach.
The man examines the cub like a butcher inspecting a cut of meat, and I wish to Lord Almighty I could hear what’s being said.