The bobcat hit the door before the latch caught. The impact bumped Heather back and opened the door a crack. The bobcat pushed its muzzle and right forefoot through the opening before Heather could close it. Releasing the dog, she threw both hands and her full weight against the door. Growling and turning her head this way and that, the spaniel tried to bite the bobcat.

"No, Ruthie!" Heather cried.

The door jumped and shuddered as the cat clawed at the spaniel. Heather kicked awkwardly at Ruthie, who continued to snap at the attacker.

"Ruthie, go away! Now! "

Suddenly, the bobcat's leg and muzzle pulled back so quickly they seemed to vanish. The door slammed shut and Heather stumbled against it. The latch clicked. Acting quickly, the young woman threw the deadbolt, pushed herself off the door, and stood back. She was panting, her heart slapping against her ribs.

"We did it," she muttered breathlessly.

Ruthie continued to bark.

"It's okay, Roo," Heather said, only half believing it.

Ruthie stopped barking and Heather listened. The silence seemed thicker than before, perhaps because of all the snarling and hissing that had just gone on. Heather didn't know and she didn't care. She stepped over to the window on the side of the foyer, looked out, saw nothing.

As soon as Heather calmed down a little she'd call the Santa Barbara sheriff's department, ask someone to come up and have a look around. Heather had never even seen a bobcat in the hills and was afraid that this one might be rabid. She had visions of being told that she'd have to ring her mountain retreat with leghold traps, poisoned meat, and barbed wire.

End of fairy tale. Next stop: Brentwood.

Heather walked over to where Ruthie was standing, sniffing the air. The dog's tail had drooped and she was shaking. The young woman picked Ruthie up and kissed her nose.

"You can stop now," Heather said. "You won. The cat's gone. Let's just call the sheriff and go to bed."

Cradling the dog under her chin, Heather shut the outside light and headed up the dark staircase to the bedroom. She put the dog on the bed while she went to the phone on the nightstand.

Ruthie hopped off the covers and slid beneath the bed.

She was still trembling.

It was as though the fast-moving clouds had snagged and torn on the sharp mountaintops. Thick beads of rain fell suddenly, pelting the sandstone crags and beating down the wildflowers and ferns that covered the higher slopes. Rushing water cut deeper into the gullies, washing dirt from the underlying shale and spilling it onto the ridges below.

The rain also pounded the homes scattered through the high foothills. It drummed on rooftops, windows, and decks. It flooded storm drains and garages and uprooted plants.

At one house the rain slashed through the low hedges and dissolved a small, discarded cardboard box that lay beside them. The downpour ate away dog biscuits that were inside the box and washed them toward the house. There, the crumbs mixed with ruddy streams that were swirling off the stone walk, running down the front door, and dripping from the windowsill.

Streams of blood, all that remained of a bobcat on its final hunt.

Chapter Two

Jim Grand was having trouble sleeping. Again. Wearing white boxer shorts and lying on a twin bed tucked in a corner of the bedroom, Grand stared up with his arm thrown behind his head. Rain pelted the roof and a streetlight threw gray, watery shadows on the ceiling.

Grand's black Labrador retriever, Fluffy-Rebecca's joke name for the sleek-haired monster-was flopped across the foot of the bed. The dog's legs were pointed toward Grand, his head half off the far corner of the bed. The Chumash had always said that animals were better suited to this world than we were. Fluffy was certainly evidence of that. He was breathing easily, occasionally woofing softly from somewhere in dog dreamland.

As Grand watched patterns on the ceiling melt one into the other, he couldn't help but think of happier shadows. The ones he lost when Rebecca died nine months before. Those were the reason he was still awake. He thought of Rebecca at their small home, where they hardly ever were because they were always doing things and going places. On her boat, in their plane, across a restaurant table at the god-awful Chris's Crinkles-she loved the fries, the more burnt the better-at the movies, or beside him in the car on a long weekend, a map in her lap and no destination in mind. Whatever they were doing she was as curious and outgoing and fun as the day he met her.

This isn't good, he told himself. Grand's eyes grew damp. He had to stop this and get to sleep.

The ancient Thules of Alaska believed that spirits existed by feeding on belief and that turning away made them go away. Grand forced himself to think about something else. Like the newly uncovered cave he was going to explore above Arrowhead Springs. Or a student he hadn't thought of in years.

Anything.

But it was night, and because it was dark and quiet his mind went where it wanted to go. Whichever way Grand tried to go his thoughts always cycled back to Rebecca. How the hell could he not? The first time Grand spoke to her, that cold day on the beach near Stearns Wharf-when he was gathering shells to make prehistoric utensils and she was bagging kelp for research-he knew they'd be together forever. She was just so happy, bright, and self-effacing.

Except when someone screwed with her fish, he thought with a smile.

Like the evening she confronted the oceanographer whose deep-sea research with bright lights was blinding shrimp. She threatened to burn his house down if she found one more shrimp with chalky-white eyes and degraded photopigments. Grand was the one with the massive rock-climbing biceps and chest but Rebecca was the scary one when enraged.

And then the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and the emptiness and tears returned.

Grand turned to his left and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was nearly one-thirty. He had spent over two hours jumping from one thought to the next. This was going nowhere.

Throwing off the top sheet, the thirty-five-year-old paleoanthropologist sat on the edge of the bed and stared at nothing. Fluffy lifted his large head and looked back.

"It's okay," Grand said softly.

Fluffy continued to look at him.

"Go back to sleep."

At the word "sleep," Fluffy put his head down. He knew the drill.

Grand had hoped that things would start changing when he bought this house on Kent Place nearly six months before. A quiet, dead-end street in Goleta, west of Santa Barbara. A different environment. That should have created new dynamics, helped keep Rebecca in his heart and memory.

He was wrong. Grand desperately missed the house on Shoreline Drive, a sunny Mediterranean his wife had picked out for them and decorated. He'd never had trouble sleeping with her beside him. Though he and Rebecca had a king-size bed, they always ended up in a less-than-twin-size space somewhere around the middle. She loved being rocked by him and lullabied by the nearby sound of the surf. If anything, moving here had left him feeling another degree removed from her and he missed her even more strongly. He could still feel her nakedness and warmth in his empty arms-

Stop it.

He put his strong, calloused hands on his scarred knees. He needed to be rested and clearheaded when he went back into the cave, and sitting here thinking wasn't going to help. Maybe if he weren't in bed where Rebecca's absence was so keenly felt. Maybe then he could sleep.

You weren't there for her-

Grand pushed himself up and walked into the short corridor with its framed degrees and photographs on the wall, all of them crooked and dusty. The hall ended in a small living room where there were three walls of bookcases, their shelves overstuffed with books, research videos, and artifacts from thirteen years of digs. The front door and windows were behind two of the bookcases. Against the fourth wall was a gunmetal desk he'd taken from the university, a stationary bicycle, a brass floor lamp, a nineteen-inch television, and a secondhand sofa. Everything but the bicycle and lamp was stacked with folders and cardboard boxes. Between the desk and the TV was the door to the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was the bathroom and his den workshop.