Stars & Stripes (Cut & Run 6)

He blinked, barely able to force his eyes open again.

From somewhere, a horse neighed, and hope rose in his chest. Perhaps Annie had seen the poachers retreat and had come back for him.

A blur of color entered his field of vision. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating, but then the figure made another chuffing sound, mimicking the neigh of a horse almost perfectly. Ty realized that he wasn’t hallucinating, and he wasn’t alone. He was merely staring into the black and orange face of a Bengal tiger with one floppy ear.

Zane was surprised when the trail they were following made an almost 180-degree turn. The truck had circled around, heading farther into the ranch and not off it, picking its way through the nearly flat gullies between the hills. The longer they tracked it, the more they began to realize that the truck hadn’t fled the scene, but rather had gone off searching for a passable route into the hills to follow the escaped tiger.

“Jesus, Ty and Annie are out there,” Mark said as they passed over one of the horse trails that crisscrossed the ranch. “Three to six men. How much ammo has he got?”

“As far as I know, just a knife, his service weapon, and an extra clip. It’s what he carries standard. Then they each have a rifle on their saddle and that dart gun.”

Mark wiped at his forehead, unable to sit still in his saddle as he grumbled and worried about his wife. Zane was worried too. But he had more faith in Ty than Mark did.

They kept following the tire tracks until Harrison paused, quieting the clopping of the horses’ hooves to listen. From the distance came an echo of gunfire and, not long after, the distinct roar of a tiger. The sound registered low, and the hairs on Zane’s arms rose with a prehistoric fear.

“Jesus.”

They waited, tense and on edge, but there was nothing more. Mark was growing restless and Zane desperately wanted to head off over the hills in search of the source of the gunfire, but the desert made it impossible to locate. They could do nothing but keep to the trail they were following.

Zane soon realized he could hear a buzzing sound over the clopping of the horses, and he hissed for everyone to halt again. It swelled until they all heard it: the distant growling of a car engine far to the east. Soon, it grew fainter.

“Shit.” Harrison stood in his stirrups and tried to peer off into the distance with his binoculars. “Sounds like they got what they came for.”

“Or they got run off,” Jamie added.

“We have to find Annie,” Mark said, growing more and more agitated.

They continued on, still following the tire tracks for lack of anything better to guide them. It wasn’t long before they heard the unmistakable sound of a galloping horse.

Annie topped a knoll and called out to them, her voice a panicked shout across the dancing heat waves. She urged her horse down the ridge toward them. Mark headed off after her, and he dismounted when he got close, pulling her off the horse to hug her.

Zane watched the ridge, his heart in his throat. A moment later, Ty’s horse topped the hill and picked its way down. It was riderless.

“Where’s Ty?” Zane demanded as soon as he came up on them.

Annie shook her head. Tears streaked her dirty face. “They shot him with a dart. He shielded me from it and told me to run.” She gasped out a sob. “I left him there.”

“Shot him?” Zane asked. His entire body had gone cold.

“It was a tranquilizer,” Jamie said. “Means he could still be alive.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Annie had told them that animal tranquilizers weren’t meant for humans, and some could kill in minutes. And then . . . this was Ty they were talking about. “He’s allergic to all kinds of medication, there’s no telling how he’ll react to animal tranquilizers. We have to find him.”

Annie gulped in air and shook her head. “The tranqs won’t matter, Zane. The tiger . . .”

“What?”

“We found the tiger right before they attacked us. They shot Ty, and I think he drove them away with his handgun. But . . . I left him out there with the tiger.”

They backtracked Annie’s trail, Harrison in the lead. Zane’s mind would not stop spitting out all sorts of scenarios, every one of which ended with Ty dying alone in the desert—the desert he dreamed about, the desert he screamed about in his sleep. Reacting to the tranquilizers and suffocating or having a heart attack or a seizure. Mauled by an angry tiger, shot by exotic animal smugglers as he tried to save Zane’s sister.

Several times, Zane almost had to stop to throw up, but he kept himself together. He could lose his mind after they’d found Ty, if he needed to.

Harrison halted on top of a high knoll and pulled his binoculars out again, scanning the land. He stopped and tensed, sitting up straighter. “Found him.”

Zane urged his horse forward. “Where? Is he okay? Let me see.”

Harrison lowered the binoculars and shook his head, giving Zane a look that made Zane’s heart leap into his throat. “I can’t let you see, son.”

“Why not?”

Harrison hesitated, glancing at the others before he choked out, “The tiger found him too.”

Zane’s stomach turned and his vision started to narrow. “No. Let me see.”

“No, son.”

Zane spurred his horse up the hill, reaching across the horn of his father’s saddle to snatch the binoculars from him. He aimed them in the direction Harrison had been looking. It took his trembling hand a moment to find the splash of color, but when he did, the bile rose in his throat.

The tiger lay recumbent in the middle of an arroyo, protected on all sides by low hills. He could see Ty lying nearly under the big cat. The red buff on his head was hard to miss, as was the lime green cast on his arm. The tiger was licking and gnawing on his hand like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. Zane could see no blood, though. No carnage. He focused in closer, desperate to spot a sign of life from his lover.

The tiger rolled onto his back, powerful legs stretching out to the side. Ty’s cast was in his mouth between gleaming white teeth. He rested his head on Ty’s outstretched arm as he chewed.

Zane frowned. Then he caught it, the barest of movement from Ty. The fingers of his right hand curled in a come-hither motion.

“He’s moving.”

“Probably muscle spasms, Zane,” Mark said, voice gentle and careful. “I’m sorry, but . . . that’s a goddamn tiger down there.”

“He’s alive. He’s . . .” Zane held his breath, hardly daring to hope. “I think he’s rubbing the tiger’s nose.”