Endurance - Jack Kilborn [44]
Then she abruptly stopped when she heard something behind her in the corridor.
Is it JD? Please let it be my dog.
It wasn’t her dog.
“I told a lie,” Alice said, walking closer. “A bad lie.”
Kelly buried the scream, instead starting to cry. “You have to help me, Alice. My finger is stuck.”
“My name isn’t Alice,” the approaching figure said. “It’s Grover.”
“I don’t care what your name is,” Kelly said, anger joining up with her pain.
“Alice was Theodore Roosevelt’s first daughter,” Grover said. “She had pretty hair.”
Then Grover stepped into the faint light of the iPod. He stood over six feet tall, and was wearing stained overalls and a faded plaid shirt. His eyes were tiny, too close together. His jaw was big, and it stuck out like Popeye’s, but his head got thinner toward the forehead, almost like a Halloween gourd. Perched crookedly on his head was a curly, blonde wig.
“Do you think I have pretty hair?” the grown man said, still using the voice of a little girl. He touched one of the curls.
Then he yelped like a hurt dog.
Kelly began to scream, but Grover put a big, rough hand over her mouth and nose, holding it there and giggling hehehehe like a five-year old.
Kelly kicked and punched and struggled to take a breath.
But he wouldn’t let her.
Mal gripped Deb’s arm, first pushing her off balance, then steadying her. The darkness felt like a weight pressing down on Deb, threatening to push her into the earth.
“Where is it?” he whispered.
“Bushes,” Deb said.
She’d seen the deadly, gold eyes of the cougar a second ago, but they’d retreated into the black.
“You sure?” Mal asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“Smell that?”
Mal sniffed the air. “Rank.”
It was an odor Deb would never forget. “Big cat smell. Back up slowly. And let go of my arm—you’re gonna knock me over.”
Mal released her. Deb had no problem walking backwards in the Cheetah prosthetics on flat land, but the wooded terrain proved difficult. All she could think of was being batted around like a ball of yarn, each swipe of the cat’s hooked claws digging into her skin and sending her rolling across the ground. She had scars all over her body from such an experience. In a way, it was even worse than shattering her legs.
Deb was so worried about the mountain lion springing on her, she wasn’t paying close enough attention to her footing. Two steps later she was tipping backward, her arms pinwheeling to regain balance.
Mal caught her shoulders, held her steady until she could get her feet under her.
“Thanks,” she managed.
“You sure there’s a cougar?”
“I’m sure.”
“How sure?”
Deb didn’t like his doubt. She’d seen the lion’s eyes. Seen them as clearly as she was looking into Mal’s.
But then, Mal had been pretty sure their tire had been shot out, and he’d apparently been wrong there. So his questioning was no more than…
“You must be Deborah Novachek, and that reporter fellow.”
The voice came from the same bushes Deb had seen the cat. It was a female voice, friendly enough.
“You don’t happen to see a mountain lion around, do you?” Mal asked.
Deb frowned at him. Mal shrugged.
“A mountain lion?” the woman said. “Heavens, no. Though they are known to hunt in these parts. Y’all had better come inside. I’m Eleanor Roosevelt, the owner of the inn.”
Eleanor stepped through the bushes, and Deb played the pen light across her. She was a large woman, and carried herself in a strong, sturdy way that belied her advanced age.
“Nice to meet you, Eleanor,” Deb began. “Are you sure you—”
“My goodness, young lady. What happened to your legs?”
Mal squeezed her shoulders a bit tighter, as if in reassurance. Deb shrugged him off.
“I lost them in a climbing accident,” Deb said. “And I saw a mountain lion just a—”
“Are you sick?” Eleanor interrupted. “We can’t allow you inside the Inn if you’re diseased.”
“Rude much?” Mal asked.
Being impolite didn’t matter to Deb, especially with a cougar nearby. But now she began to question if she