"Stop where you are, Harland," Anna ordered.

Harland Roberts stopped. If he was surprised, Anna couldn't see it. The moon was at his back.

"Anna!" he said in the tone of a man with his mistress on his arm, meeting his wife unexpectedly. "I'll be damned."

"That's the plan," she returned. "Drop what you are holding. Open your arms slowly and place them on top of your head. Do it now."

He did as he was told.

Anna stood, the.357 held shoulder-point. She began moving slowly around, sure of each step, getting the moon behind her. He echoed her movements and she let him. He was too far from the rifle crate to frighten her. When the moon was behind her left shoulder and Harland stood several feet from the unconscious panther, she said: "That's far enough."

"You liked me, Anna." Harland sounded genuinely hurt. The moon was shining in his face but all Anna could read there was disappointment.

"I liked you," she said. "But you keep killing my friends."

He smiled a boyish smile. "Anna, you wouldn't shoot me." Slowly he began to move his hands down from his head.

"Yes. I would," Anna said evenly. "It isn't a problem."

His hands stopped moving.

"I'm going to tell you what to do," she stated. "You won't move until I tell you. Is this clear?"

Harland nodded. For the first time Anna read something other than fine acting in his face. Not fear: an alertness, an aliveness, a moving of mental gears. It scared her. She wanted to shoot him and be done with cat and mouse, hunter and hunted. But training took over.

"Kneel down. Do it now."

Harland knelt.

"When I tell you, take your hands from your head, walk them out in front of you. Lay face down. Do it now."

Carefully, Harland moved his hands from the top of his head. "Anna, I don't want you to shoot me. I haven't got a gun or a weapon of any kind. Listen to me. This is important." The hands were moving slowly down, held well away from his body, every movement clear, innocent. He ducked his head, bending at the waist, arms out to the side as if he would let himself fall facedown onto stone and cactus rather than risk alarming her into pulling the trigger by moving too quickly.

One hand vanished behind the prone lion's head. "Listen, Anna. The lion is choking." The animal's breathing had changed, was more rasping than before. "The ketimine can cause them to swallow their tongues. When you moved it to cut the collar you didn't put its head back in a position where it could breathe."

Anna's eyes flicked to the lion. She knew there was nothing Harland could use as a weapon near or inside the crate. Not even the heavy radio collar. She'd thrown it a couple of yards off. "Move his head," she said.

Harland brought his other arm slowly around, careful to keep it always in her sight. Both hands buried in the thick fur around the lion's throat, he began lifting the big beast gently. With a liquid motion, so smooth as not to seem sudden or even startling, he yanked the lion onto his lap, held its torso against his chest, his face almost hidden behind the lolling head.

"You would shoot me, Anna. You might even enjoy it. Will you shoot your kitty cat? I'm betting not." Harland stood up, holding the hundred-pound lion down the length of his body. The cat's belly, white and fuzzy, covered him from shoulders to knees. Its legs and tail dangled in front of his.

Anna felt sick. She moved her sights to Harland's head but it was ducked peek-a-boo fashion behind the lion's. Shoot the damn cat, Anna said to herself. Maybe the hollow point shells she carried would penetrate the lion's body, kill Harland Roberts. The white tummy, looking so soft, so vulnerable stretched before her. A perfect target. Shoot the goddam cat, Anna's mind screamed to her soul. But her finger would not move on the trigger.

Harland began to sidle toward the boxes, toward the hunting rifles. Anna followed, the sight of her Smith & Wesson searching for a target, a three-by-three-inch square of Roberts left exposed.

The man was careful. Dancing his macabre dance, his partner a demon lover in lion form, Harland waltzed over the stony ground. He reached the crate. One hand slid out, ran along the carved stock of Paulsen's hunting rifle. Not once did a square big enough to fill with.357 cartridge show clear of the inert, living, lion-skin armor.

Anna squeezed off a shot. Not at Roberts, but at Paulsen's Sako. In the shadow of the crate lid, the rifle was little more than a narrow line a shade lighter than midnight. She missed.

Harland snatched up the Sako, held it shoulder high. Turning slightly, he pointed it at her. The shining barrel caught the night's silver sheen. Its tiny, deadly, black eye met Anna's.

"The cat is waking up, Harland," she tried and saw a spark of what might have been fear-or excitement-bloom and as quickly fade in his eyes. He didn't spare even a glance for the unconscious lion.

"Don't you fancy hand-to-hand combat anymore?" Anna asked. "Like the good old days 'wrasslin' gators' at the Deadly Poison Snakes show? Is that where you learned to milk snakes so you could pump Craig full of venom?"

He just smiled, slow and easy. Anna sensed more than saw it. His head was still shielded by the lion's. Harland was not going to be lulled or baited into exposing enough of himself to kill.

"You never know when a liberal education is going to come in handy," he said and: "Put down the gun, Anna."

"Fuck you," she replied, the.357 unwavering.

The glinting rifle barrel dropped, swung in an arc, ending beneath the lion's left ear. "Do it now," Harland mocked her.

Anna's brain screamed to her fingers: shoot the cat, please God damn it, shoot. But her hand opened and the revolver dropped to the ground.

Harland let go of the lion. Dead weight, the animal fell to the stones. The bones of its jaw or skull cracked audibly against the rock. Anna winced. "You son of a bitch," she whispered.

Harland laughed. "It's not nice to call an armed man a son of a bitch," he said.

"Fuck you."

"Anna, Anna, Anna, your vocabulary is disintegrating under pressure. Obscenity is the last resort of the ignorant. Didn't you learn that in Sunday school? I expected better from a woman willing to lay down her life that a lion might live a couple hours longer." Harland kicked the lion with an indifference more cruel than hatred. "That's what you've done, you know."

Anna had thought that one's mind would race at a time like this, that it would whirl and spin, dart at solutions probable and improbable. It didn't. It was as clear as the desert night, as still. "Well?" she said and smiled. She was not afraid. It wasn't that she was ready to die there among the Texas stars; she merely felt invulnerable, out of the normal realities of flesh that could rip, bones that could break.

Fleetingly, she wondered if she were going into shock. Or overdrive. How long would this detachment last before terrible fear, deep enough to be a bone sickness, would flood through her and she would understand that now, tonight, she was to die?

"Well? Are you going to shoot me or not?"

"Oh, I'm going to shoot you all right. Bury you here in the Pattersons under enough rock the coyotes won't drag you out at an embarrassing moment." Harland stepped over the lion and moved several steps closer. Not close enough she could grab the rifle; close enough he could see her face. "And damn you for making it necessary, Anna. You're more fun than I've had in years."

"More fun than big-game hunting?" Anna jerked her chin toward the crated rifles.

He didn't look away from her for an instant. "I told you, I don't hunt anymore. No challenge. I like my prey to have an IQ higher than your average two-year-old. Most of the elk these hotshots pay Paulsen to shoot I could club to death with a baseball bat."