“Aha. I knew it. And that’s why you’re the only member of the senior staff out and about?”

“Naturally. Everyone else is nursing hangovers.” She laughed and gave Lil another squeeze. “Okay, truth. Matt is in Medical. Bill tried to eat a towel.”

Bill, a young bobcat, was renowned for his eclectic appetite.

Lil glanced back at the pair of cabins, one housing her quarters, the other offices and Medical. “Did he get much?”

“No, but Matt wants to check him out. Lucius is chained to his computer, and Mary’s at the dentist. Or going to. Hey, Eric, come take the horses, will you? Eric’s one of our winter-term interns. We’ll make the introductions later. Let’s-” She broke off at the harsh, bright call of a cougar. “Somebody smells Mama,” Tansy said. “Go ahead. We’ll meet you in Medical when you’re done.”

Lil wound her way, following the trail formed by feet trampling through the snow.

He was waiting for her, pacing, watching, calling. At her approach, the cat rubbed its body against the fencing, then stood, bracing his fore-paws against it. And purred.

Six months since he’d seen her-scented her, Lil thought. But he hadn’t forgotten her. “Hello, Baby.”

She reached through to stroke the tawny fur, and he bumped his head affectionately to hers.

“I missed you, too.”

He was four now, full-grown, lithe and magnificent. He hadn’t been fully weaned when she’d found him, and his two littermates, orphaned and half starved. She’d hand-fed them, tended them, guarded them. And when they’d been old enough, strong enough, had reintroduced them to the wild.

But he’d kept coming back.

She’d named him Ramses, for power and dignity, but he was Baby.

And her one true love.

“Have you been good? Of course, you have. You’re the best. Keeping everybody in line? I knew I could count on you.”

As she spoke and stroked, Baby purred, hummed in his throat, and looked at her with golden eyes full of love.

She heard movement behind her, glanced back. The one Tansy had called Eric stood staring. “They said he was like that with you, but… I didn’t believe it.”

“You’re new?”

“Um, yeah. I’m interning. Eric. I’m Eric Silverstone, Dr. Chance.”

“Lil. What are you looking to do?”

“Wildlife management.”

“Learning anything here?”

“A lot.”

“Let me give you another quick lesson. This adult male cougar, Felis concolor, is approximately eight feet long from nose to tail and weighs about one-fifty. He can outjump a lion, a tiger, a leopard, both vertically and horizontally. Despite that, he’s not considered a ‘big cat.’ ”

“He lacks the specialized larynx and hyoid apparatus. He can’t roar.”

“Correct. He’ll purr like your aunt Edith’s tabby. But he’s not tame. You can’t tame the wild, can you, Baby?” He chirped at her as if in agreement. “He loves me. He imprinted on me as a kitten-about four months of age-and he’s been in the refuge, among people, since. Learned behavior, not tame. We’re not prey. But if you made some move he sensed as attack, he’d respond. They’re beautiful, and they’re fascinating, but they’re not pets. Not even this one.”

Still, to please herself and Baby, she pressed her lips in one of the small openings of the fence, and he butted his mouth to hers. “See you later.”

She turned and walked with Eric toward the cabin. “Tansy said you found him and two other orphans.”

“Their mother got into it with a lone wolf-at least that’s how it looked to me. She killed it, must have or it would have taken the litter. But she didn’t survive. I found the corpses, and the litter. They were the first cougar kittens we had here.”

And she had a scar near her right elbow from the other male in that litter. “We fed them, sheltered them for about six weeks, until they were old enough to hunt on their own. Limited human contact as much as possible. We tagged them and released them and we’ve been tracking them ever since. But Baby? He wanted to stay.”

She glanced back to where he’d joined his companions in his habitat. “His littermates reacclimated, but he kept coming back here.” To me, she thought. “They’re solitary and secretive and cover a vast range, but he chose to come back. That’s the thing. You can study and learn the patterns, the biology, the taxonomy, the behavior. But you’ll never know everything.”

She looked back as Baby leaped on one of his boulders and let out a long, triumphant scream.

Inside, she shed her outer gear. She could hear her father talking to Matt through the open door of Medical. In the offices, a man with Coke-bottle glasses and an infectious grin hammered away at a keyboard.

Lucius Gamble looked up, said, “Yeah!” and tossed his hands in the air. “Back from the trenches.” He jumped up to give her a hug, and she smelled the red licorice he was addicted to on his breath.

“How’s it going, Lucius?”

“Good. Just updating the Web page. We’ve got some new pictures. We had an injured wolf brought in a couple weeks ago. Clipped by a car. Matt saved it. We’ve gotten a lot of hits on the pictures there, and the column Tansy wrote for it.”

“Were we able to release it?”

“It’s still gimpy. Matt doesn’t think it’ll make it out there in the world. She’s an old girl. We’re calling her Xena, because she looks like a warrior.”

“I’ll take a look at her. I haven’t done the tour yet.”

“I put your shots from the trip on here.” Lucius tapped his computer monitor. He wore ancient high-tops rather than the boots most of the staff favored, and jeans that bagged over his flat ass. “Dr. Lillian’s Excellent Adventure. We’ve been getting beaucoup hits.”

As he spoke, Lil glanced around the familiar space. The exposed log walls, the posters of wildlife, the cheap, plastic visitors’ chairs, the stacks of colorful brochures. The second desk-Mary’s-stood like a trim, organized island in the chaos Lucius generated.

“Any of the hits come with…” She lifted her hand, rubbed her thumb and fingers together.

“We’ve been going pretty steady there. We added a new webcam, like you wanted, and Mary’s been working on an updated brochure. She had a dentist deal this morning, but she’s going to try to make it in this afternoon.”