Markings (2 page)

“Oh! Yeah, Kat’s in the back. Jamie’s somewhere or other. But give me a second and I’ll go get Kat.” He pushed his stool back, jumping up and disappearing through an entranceway behind him.

I flopped down on one of the loveseats. A dark red stain hovered above my shoulder in the couch back. That wasn’t, like, animal blood or something was it? A closer look verified that it was thicker than blood, not totally soaked into the fabric. Hmm.
Ketchup
. Popular lunch spot perhaps?

High-pitched giggles echoed out of the hallway just before Kat came into the lobby. Her slim figure skipped towards me, corkscrew curls swirling around. Her green eyes looked brighter than usual today. I swear they changed shade with every mood swing. “Lina!”

“Katness,” I giggled, getting pulled into a hug.

“Ugh, I missed you, woman,” she exclaimed, rocking me side to side as if I were a child. “Mom’s in the back. She’ll be out in just a second.”

“Who’s the red-haired kid?” I whispered, peeking over her shoulder. He had returned to the desk, typing away at the computer. His eyes kept flicking in my direction.

Kat glanced at the desk then rolled her eyes. “Brendon. Don’t worry about Mr. Ogle Eyes. I’ll keep him off ya.”

“That’s reassuring,” I muttered then we started giggling again.

Footsteps moved down the hall. A lanky woman stepped out of the entranceway, flanked by a dark-skinned girl who I knew as Penny. The lanky woman had Snow White’s complexion, her hair not as curly as Kat’s, though she had Kat’s charming smile. Stashing her cell phone in her pocket, she said, “Hey there, Lina!”

“Hi, Jamie.” I opened my arms as she came to hug me, too.

“It’s good to see you, kiddo. I’m glad you could make it,” she said, smiling at me.

“Jamie,” Brendon called from the counter all of a sudden. He had a cell phone pressed to his ear. “Sorry to interrupt. It’s Aaron. He’s just coming back from patrol. Says there’s a pair of injured bobcats on the reserve about three miles straight out from here.”

Jamie cocked her head. “What? A
pair
?”

“Yeah.” He nodded.

“Hmm. That’s odd. They don’t usually travel in pairs.”

“Maybe it’s a mom and baby,” Kat mused.

“Maybe.” Turning her head to Penny, Jamie ordered, “Bring me the big cage from the storage room. All right girls,”—back to us—“time to get to work. Kat, run out to the car and make sure I’ve still got that roll of garbage bags in there. Pull down the back seats and cover everything in plastic.”

“Ay, yi.” Kat saluted her mother before grabbing my wrist, yanking me to the door. “You can help me.”

I pulled my wrist free, and we laughed as we jogged down the sidewalk. It felt good to be back at the shelter, working with animals with my best friend beside me. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. We rounded the side of the fountain, gossiping about school and homework and the test coming up in History. Kat had just set foot on the dirt parking lot, only to stop dead.

“Oof!” I grunted, running right into her. “Hey, what’s the hold up?”

No response. Her eyes were glued to something across the lot. Peering over her shoulder, I followed her gaze to a figure bent over the trunk of an old blue Mercury Cougar. The automobile hadn’t been here when I came in. Faded stripes zipped down the hood, and by the style of baggy Capri shorts and the flip-flops, I guessed its owner was only a teen. The boy shut the trunk and stood up, flipping a head full of dark hair from his face. My heart skipped a beat. His skin was the perfect shade—not too dark, not too light—and covered in freckles. I had the
worst
obsession with guys and freckles. Lean muscles wrapped his arms as he busily typed a text message.

I realized both mine and Kat’s mouths were hanging open. “T—that’s him!” she blubbered in my ear. “Lina, oh my gosh! That’s the hot new kid we just hired. That’s
Aaron
!”

My eyebrows skyrocketed. “No way.” He looked way too good to work at a shelter; he looked like he belonged in a high-class retail store . . . or on the walls of one. Seriously, someone needed to photograph this kid. He was totally model-worthy.

Kat covered her mouth, suppressing an excited giggle. “Dude, don’t your eyes just
burn
looking at him? He’s almost too hot to look at for long periods of time!”

“You’re funny, Kat.” I rested my chin on her shoulder, staring as he continued to mess around with the car. He moved so fluidly, and his shoulders did this flex thing when he put his cell phone to his ear. He was cute, but there was something . . . something tense. Maybe it was how tight he held his phone, or how fast the words were coming out of his mouth. It didn’t take me long to notice an aggressive aura, and he had it.

Suddenly he turned around and looked straight at us. Kat and I flinched, like we’d been slapped in the faces. We stumbled forward, tripping over each other like the uncoordinated teenagers we were, continuing towards the SUV. “Okay, that was embarrassing.” She blushed.

My face was hot, too. “No kidding.”

After helping Jamie load the cage and Penny with her veterinary supplies, we followed Aaron’s Cougar through the metal gates and out onto the reserve. I watched from the backseat as he sped ahead of us, not taking his time. He didn’t direct us very far, only about six minutes—a little over two miles—and turned off under some drooping trees into a pine forest. The SUV pulled in behind him and we all got out.

He wasted no time moving up an elevated dirt trail into the trees, Kat staring at his behind while I tried to read him better. Why was he so tense? I mean, we all worried when we got a call regarding injured animals, but he acted like it was personal.

The group stopped at the top of a sloping valley. Nestled together under a massive spiral fern, two bobcats hid near the bottom. Their grey, black-speckled coats were matted with blood, and one had a gouge over its eye. The other had two long swipes to the cheek and a battered back leg. Both looked like they’d been in some kind of battle.

Penny’s hand, the one that wasn’t holding the animal stretcher, covered her mouth as she saw. “Oh, goodness.”

“What happened to them?” Jamie wondered, somewhere between outrage and fear. “I haven’t seen anything like this before. Not with bobcats.”

Nobody answered Jamie’s question, not even Aaron. It was my turn to tense up as he leapt off the trail, right into the drop off. He landed directly beside the pair of cats, totally violating what I’d been taught in Girl Scouts: stay at least fifteen feet away from a wild animal and do not approach it. The four of us women inhaled sharply.

“Aaron, get out of there, you nut. It’s dangerous! You shouldn’t be so close,” Jamie snapped, starting down the foliaged hillside.

He ignored her, kneeling beside the one with the beat-up eye. It was weird; the bobcat looked at him but made no effort to growl or attack.

“They aren’t going to hurt anyone,” Aaron said. “They’re too injured.”

“I don’t care! Get back or I’ll have you behind a desk until summer time,” Jamie ordered as she made it to flat ground. “Here, give me the kit, Penny.”

Penny came down the hill, handing her partner the first-aid kit, which was probably more likely to have tranquilizers in it versus Band-Aids. “Whoa!” Penny’s foot slipped, her body swaying a second. “Careful, girls. It’s kind of slick here.”

Kat’s eye twitched. “Are
we
coming down?”

“Uh, yes! You think I can lift two grown bobcats alone?” Jamie wobbled through some ferns and undergrowth. She waited for Penny to wade her way through with the other stretcher.

I grabbed Kat’s hand. “You first, Kitty.”

She snorted. “Gee, thanks. Pick on the nature girl.”

“Only because I know your record of being a klutz isn’t as blackened as mine.” I grimaced. Hills plus my lack of coordination? Not a good mix. You throw nature in there and you’ve set up the perfect trap to bring me down.

She rolled her eyes, then, squeezing my hand, set foot on the shrubby incline. She braced her foot against a fern, and when she didn’t slip she made for step two. I started down after her third, encountering some paranoia.
Lord, please don’t let me fall in front of the hot guy
, I prayed silently as we weaved our way towards the bottom. So far, so good. No slip-and-slidage. I was just thinking things were going well and I would make it down the hill clean and alive and in one piece, when I hit a blind spot under a fern.

“
Whoa
!” My feet slid out. Kat squealed as I took her with me, and we hit the ground hard, expelling loud grunting noises. My glasses bounced back and hit me in the forehead.

Jamie cocked her head up. They’d just shot tranquilizers at the cats, neither of which had moved or even tried to move. Aaron had been shoved out of the way. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.” Kat lurched up and shook her head, leaves and twigs flying out of her curls. Throwing me a smirk, she said, “And I was worried
I
was going to be the one to pull us down.”

“Yeah. My luck,” I mumbled. With a sigh, I went to pull myself to an upright position, only to have my head yanked back to the ground. “
Ouch
!” I tried again. Oh no. The only thing more embarrassing than slipping is slipping and getting stuck in something. “Uh, Kat?”

“What?” She’d just stood up, brushing her jeans off.

“My hair!”

She tilted her head, puzzled. Suddenly her eyes widened. Her hands flew over her mouth, muffling a snort. Her petite fingers yanked at the wad. “The bush likes you. I can’t get it out!”

“Oh, please don’t say that,” I begged, holding the side of my head as she pulled. “Ow! Jeez, be careful!”

“Sorry,” she apologized, trying not to grin. “Man, this one just isn’t giving up. I think it wants to keep you, and make you its creepy bush bride.”

“You weirdo, please just fix it.” I made a pouty face.

“Here. Scoot over.”

Kat and I gave a start. “O—oh,” she stammered and shuffled sideways.

I stiffened up as Aaron bent down beside me. I refused to look at him directly, even though he had sunglasses on. It’d be the effect of Dracula: I’d go into a daze and never look away. Just because Kat couldn’t look at him for long periods of time didn’t mean I had the same problem. From the corner of my eye, I saw his brows narrow as he observed the knot.

“Wow,” he muttered, lifting his glasses off. “Good job.”

A tiny gasp escaped my throat, though he didn’t notice. His sea-foam eyes had rings of gold around the irises. They were surreal, glittery-like flecks of metal in the light, and so beautiful. How had I not noticed before?

“You’ll be lucky if we don’t have to cut you out of this one.” Aaron laughed humorlessly. I held my breath as his fingers seized my snarled locks. “I’m not sure I can help you either.”

Humiliation
, my brain scolded as he worked to free me. A loud snap echoed behind my head. The prickly pull of the brush disappeared.

“Am I loose?” I hoped.

“Yeah.” He ran his fingers through my strawberry threads, trying to flatten them out. Butterflies filled my stomach as he combed my hair. “You’d better use extra conditioner for a while though. Your hairs let go of the bush, but not each other.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I tried to straighten up and look a little more elegant in his presence. The wind came up, flopping more hair into my face.
Very elegant, Lina
. “Um, thanks.”

“You’re lucky. I thought we would have to—”

He cut off. I turned my head, curious as to why he’d stopped when I witnessed a very bizarre sight: he was
sniffing
my wad of hair. Actually, sniffing was an understatement. His nostrils were practically buried in it! My eyes widened as he pulled me closer, nose trailing nearer to my skull.

He must’ve caught my freaked out expression because he instantly let go. Jumping to his feet, this dazed look came over his face as he straightened up and went back to Jamie’s side.

Kat hadn’t been watching the weird little episode. Amazingly, she’d taken her eyes off us and had been watching her mother work. As the leaves around me rustled, I regained her attention.

“Oh, jeez!” She leapt forward. “Sorry, I was totally zoning. Here, give me your hand.” She helped me to my feet. I brushed off, giving Aaron another glance. He had his sunglasses back on, and the way he jiggled his leg, chewed his lip . . . was he nervous? No, not exactly. I couldn’t describe the look on his face, but gears were definitely turning in his head that hadn’t been before. That aggressive aura was decaying, too.

What the heck had just happened?

“Kat! Lina! Come help us!” Jamie demanded. She and Penny were struggling with the stretchers. We hustled forward, and I was forced to forget Aaron’s bizarre behavior.

Chapter 2: Stalker?

Y
ou are
never
going to guess who I saw this morning,” Kat exclaimed, ripping the lid off her Jell-O cup.

Swallowing my sandwich bite, I said, “I give up. I have no clue. Who?”

“
Aaron Jamison
!” She said it so loud the Goth kids at the table behind us turned and stared.

“Aaron?” I’d been thinking of him for the past week, ever since the bobcat rescue. I kept seeing him kneeling over me in the ferns, sniffing my hair.

Kat nodded. “Yeah! In the lobby by the main office. He was walking with the physical conditioning teacher, Mr. Hugh. He had a backpack over his shoulder and everything.”

I straightened up. “Holy cow, you don’t think—he doesn’t go to school here, does he?” I’d guessed him to be a college student, not a high-schooler. He looked just a hair too old. Maybe he was a senior . . . or a super senior.

Kat squealed, clapping her hands. “Such hotness might get to know me after all!”

“Wow,” I said. Goose bumps had climbed up my arms, and it wasn’t from the breeze. What would I say if I ran into him? Will we act like we don’t know each other, like he hadn’t, you know, had physical contact with me?

“Onto other news,” Kat said then flashed me a seductive smile. “What do you want for your sexy seventeen, babe?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know I’ll love whatever you get me. Just nothing too extravagant.” Honestly, I wasn’t in the mood to talk about my birthday coming up. Talk of Aaron had me in my own world now. Plus, I was a fan of quiet birthdays that didn’t need much planning.

•   •   •

Fate seemed to be up to something, because the following weekend Jamie called me from the shelter, asking for my help again. “With Kat gone at her new job and the other employees still out at the moment, I can’t seem to get Penny or me out of here before ten at night.”

“And you’re sure there’s no one else? I mean, it’s just that I have a lot of homework right now.” I leaned against the kitchen counter, rubbing my head. It was a lie, which made me feel bad. I didn’t have any homework. I was just too sheepish to tell Jamie that her boss’ new employee creeped me out and I didn’t feel like working with him.

“Oh, please? It’s only for a couple weeks starting Monday. Two to three hours after school would help a lot. There are just so many animals to take care of right now.”

I sighed. Curse my built-in need to please people. “All right. Yeah, I’ll be there.”

Jamie cheered. “You are a life-saver, Lina!”

“No problem, Jamie.”
Oh, what the heck
. I was probably overreacting about Aaron. More than likely he was just a normal guy who thought my hair smelled good.

•   •   •

Brendon wasn’t at the counter when I arrived at the shelter Monday afternoon. Instead, a woman in her early twenties wearing green scrubs sat behind it. Her orangey hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, earthy eyes focused on the note she was writing. She looked up as I shut the door.

“You must be Celina,” she greeted. “I’m Ellen, one of the clinic’s veterinarians.”

“Hey.” I smiled and shook her hand. “So, um, is Jamie here?”

“She’s out on a run. Don’t worry; all she wants you to do right now is feed the animals in—”

“Ellen!” someone yelled from the doors.

A pair of lean black boys pushed the shelter doors open. A dark-haired kid wearing eyeliner and a toned, blonde boy hauled in a stretcher. Sprawled on the cloth was an injured cougar—the biggest I’d ever seen. Bigger than the one on my lawn. One of his legs was torn open, a sizable gash oozing blood down his back paws. He lay lifeless on the stretcher, the team struggling to keep him up.

“Ellen, get the cart,” ordered the blonde kid.

Without a word, Ellen turned and dashed around the corner.

I stepped aside as the boys hauled the big cat around the desk. Ellen flew up the hall with a flat, metal cart. I watched from the entrance as they loaded and rolled the cougar down to emergency, disappearing behind two swinging doors.

Ellen, standing in the middle of the hall panting, raised her eyebrows at me. “Just another day on the job,” she said, waving her hands. “So. You know what you’re doing?”

I nodded, my heart still beating from the excitement. “Yeah, I think so.”

All the animal feed was kept in a storage room with cement floors and wooden shelves. Two monster refrigerators hummed against a wall, one for the employees and one for the carnivorous residents of the shelter (I’d never seen so much raw meat at one time in my life). Ellen came back to help feed while I was in the room with the small ground life. We were in the middle of dishing up for the squirrels when I said, “Hey, Ellen?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think that cougar is going to live?” Not that I was a fan of things that could eat me, but I hated seeing them suffer, seeing them
die
. And losing such a magnificent big cat like that . . . it would just be really sad.

Ellen sounded confident as she said, “He’ll be fine. It wasn’t as bad as it looked from what I saw up close. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

“What do you think attacked him? Do you think it was the same thing that attacked the bobcats?”

“Maybe. We were thinking wolf, but I’m not sure how that’s possible.”

“Huh.” She had a point. Wolves didn’t make their beds in Oregon very often. “Maybe it was a bear.”

She didn’t answer.

The afternoon progressed quietly. I finished feeding the birds and took a few distress calls while Ellen was on lunch. On the plus side, Aaron had yet to make an appearance. I kept giving myself a heart attack every time footsteps entered the hall, or a door opened, but it was never him. It was always Ellen, or Penny. The guys who’d brought in the cougar had disappeared, leaving Ellen and I alone until Brendon returned with Jamie. He carried a large cardboard box, the creature inside screeching through the air holes.

“Night hawk,” he smirked then took the box down the hall to the bird unit.

After sweeping the lobby, Jamie let me off early. I hung around for a few, not eager to return to my empty house. With Aaron gone, the place started to feel normal. Safe. I sucked down a protein shake while lounging on one of the loveseats in the lobby.

I came up the hallway, returning from a bathroom break when a large shape in Room 5 caught my eye. I stopped. Usually Room 5 remained empty, a spare room. Through the glass, I saw a single cage had been set up against the wall. I honed in on the long, tan body, the white muzzle, and the bandage around its haunches.

The cougar lay sprawled out on his blanket, his head cocked up in my direction. For just coming out of surgery, he seemed alert. His blue eyes watched me through the cage door, unblinking. Blue eyes with hints of gold on the sides.

That’s strange
. Usually wild animals don’t look you in the eye. It’s a threat. Maybe I was a sissy, but being stared at like a walking steak made me uneasy. That was a big cat. Big cats are pretty powerful, especially if they’re hungry.

I slinked out of view, picking up the pace.

•   •   •

“You know, I really don’t know why I read these,” Kat said, mouth half full. She was lying on the carpet with her legs kicked up on my bed, a celebrity magazine propped on her stomach.

“I don’t know either,” I said, bending down to steal an ice cream Popper from her box. Two bags of potato chips leaned against her other side, a box of all-natural donut holes leaning on those. There was enough junk food in my room to feed a teenage army.

She shrugged, flipping a page. “Jeez, check out the abs on Taylor Lautner! Dude, I would kill to make that man mine.”

“Oh, Kat,” I laughed, not even bothering to get off the bed and go look. “There’s more to a man than abs and good hair.”

“And a cute butt.”

“Ha, ha! Yeah.”

She scoffed. “I know, but still. I am a woman. A woman’s evaluation of a man is important, and I’m just appreciating God’s artwork.” Peeking over the magazine, she flicked her eyebrows at me. “As you are at the shelter.”

“What?”

“You know what! You have totally been eye-stalking Aaron.”

“Oh, shut up! If anyone’s getting eye-stalked it’s me. Besides, even if I wanted to eye-stalk him—and I don’t—it’s impossible to stalk someone who isn’t there.”

“What?” She dropped the magazine and sat up. “What do you mean he’s not there?”

“I mean, he’s skipped work all week.” It’d just been the usual: Brendon, Ellen, Jamie, Penny, and me. Occasionally someone else would pass through or come to pick up a check, but that person was never Aaron, and no one talked about him. He hadn’t been on school grounds either last I was aware.

Kat opened her mouth, about to spit out her two-cents, when my cell started vibrating. I snatched it off the nightstand, not recognizing the number. “Hello?”

“Lina?”

“It might be. Who is this?”

“It’s Ellen. Hey, my sister just went into labor early. I left the shelter lights on and didn’t lock anything up. Everyone’s fed but I don’t suppose you could run down and close up for me real quick, could you? Jamie said you live close.”

“Um.” I glanced at Kat, who was eavesdropping. She pulled her car keys out of her sweatshirt pocket and waved them at me. “Yeah. I’ll run down and close up. Do I need a key for anything?”

“Possibly. There’s a spare under the stone cat by the door.”

“Okay. I’m leaving now.”

“Thank you, Lina. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Good luck to your sister. Bye.” I went to the closet to grab my slippers and a sweater. “I’m sorry, Kat. This shouldn’t take us long.”

“Dude, it’s an adventure. Wait, no one’s there, right?” she replied, jumping up. She was decked out in her Victoria Secret PINK pants and an old sweatshirt that read:
Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is Robert Pattinson.

“No, we’re good.” I debated trading my cotton leggings for some actual jeans, just in case someone else showed up there, then decided against it. Leggings were just too comfy.

Kat ran to the door, shooting one finger in the air. “To the Kat-mobile!”

•   •   •

Even with the lights on, the shelter looked scary at night, the giant, dark gates of the reserve towering behind it.

“Spooky!” Kat whispered, clutching my arm as we hopped out of her Honda Civic.

“Yeah, I know.” I ducked under the covered walkway, listening to the coyotes in the distance.

Pulling the switch for the pond, I watched the waterfall stop flowing and the pond lights flick off. Ellen had left everything on, the hall lights, the office lights, everything. Snatching the spare key from under the ugly stone cat by the door, I led the way inside.

“Man,” Kat said, hands on her hips as she peered around. “It’s like déjà vu. Didn’t I work here once?”

I laughed then waved a hand towards the hall. “Come on. This shouldn’t take long.” All the room lights were probably on, too, and even when occupied with animals, they were required to be turned off when no one was here.

Kat skipped ahead of me. “I mean, it’s a good job but I just didn’t feel like I fit in, and I totally fit in with the girls at Anna’s and—”

“What?” I asked. She’d cut short.

Kat had stopped moving, eyes aimed down the hall with the animals’ doors. I followed her gaze, feeling frost in my veins. The door to Room 5, the cougar’s room, hung unevenly on its hinges. The glass had been busted out of the bottom, its remnants sparkling on the floor.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

The fear seeped through my skin. “Okay, don’t panic.”

“I’m not, but . . . should I ask what was in that room?”

“Um. No, probably not, but I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”

“Shoot then.”

“Cougar.”

Kat wasn’t one of those panicky people, but she stiffened up and her face went pale. For a long minute, neither of us moved nor spoke.

Suddenly she took my hand. “Come on. We can’t stand here forever. We need to know if it’s still in there. Oh, and if I die? You were really, really cool to know.”

I pulled my hand away. “Stop that! Let’s just go have a peek. He’s injured so he’s not going to be moving real fast. If he’s in there—”

“If he’s in there, we quickly back away.” Which she was already starting to do. I gave her a tiny push forward. “But no running. Predators follow those that run.”

“Agreed.”

We tip-toed across the floor. Staying to the opposite side of the wall, we hoped for a view of the damage from a distance—and hoped we weren’t out of our minds to check the room alone. I caught a glimpse of the cougar’s cage as we stood parallel to the door. I expected the cage to be mauled, destroyed, like the door to the room. Instead, it looked like the cage had merely swung open; the wire and bars were still fully intact.

“I don’t think he’s in there, Kat,” I whispered. Plus, I didn’t get big scary predator aura from the room. It felt about as empty as it looked.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Kat stepped for the door and entered the room first, clicking the second light on. As predicted: it was empty. “He’s gone.” Though this fact was terrifying—he could be anywhere in the building now—I could hear the relief in her voice.

I stood in the doorway, joining her in staring at the cage. “I don’t get it,” I said. “The cages are secure, hefty with good locks. How had he gotten out so easily?”

“Beats me. I’m going to call Mom.” Kat whipped her phone out of her jacket pocket. “Tell her what’s happened and ask what we should do for now—”

“No, wait.” I slammed her phone shut. She gave me a weird look. I stilled, feeling the slightest breeze on my skin. New goose bumps jumped up on my arm. I peered down the right side of the hall. You don’t get breeze in hallways, and I didn’t think anyone would leave windows open. We were pretty good about that kind of stuff—plus, we had great air conditioning.

“Okay, go ahead and call Jamie,” I said. “Just, stay here I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going? What is it?”

“Don’t worry. Just call your mom and keep an eye out.” I trailed down to the end of the hall, stepping lightly. If the cougar was in hearing distance, squeaky shoes would surely get his attention. Rounding the corner, I moved into a short hallway with no doors, just a window.

A window that was open.