It was a long, cool, very tense night in the foothills outside Santa Cmz. I couldn’t wait for it to be over, or maybe I couldn’t wait for it to start. We learned something interesting right away. The woman lawyer who had been murdered in Mill Valley had been involved in a lawsuit trying to get control of this property. It was probably why she and her husband had been hung.
I watched the ranch through binoculars from the surrounding trees and rock formations. I watched until my eyes ached. No one had left as of eleven. I didn’t see anyone standing lookout either. The people inside were either crazy or supremely confident. Or maybe they were innocent. Maybe this was another wrong turn.  I was trying not to worry too much about Jamilla, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t bear to think that she might already be dead. Was that what Kyle thought? Was that what he was keeping from me?  At midnight, two males walked outside leading a tiger. I watched them through the night-sight glasses. I was almost certain I had seen them in New Orleans. They’d been at the Fetish Ball, hadn’t they?  They loped off into the Hat, open fields behind the house.  One of the men got down on all fours, then rolled around in the tall grass with the cat. Jesus Christ, they were playing! How incredibly weird. I remembered that the tiger had been called off its prey in Golden Gate Park.
About twenty minutes later, the men brought the cat to a pen behind the main compound. They hugged the six-hundred-pound tiger as if it was a large dog. The lights in the main building and the bunkhouse burned brightly until past two. Loud rock-and-roll played. Then the lights were dimmed.
No one had left the house to hunt.
We still didn’t know if Jamilla was inside, or even if she was alive. I stayed awake and watched. I couldn’t sleep, not even for an hour or so. The FBI continued to collect information on the people inside the domain. What in God’s name were they doing down there?  There was no word on the identity of the Sire. We did learn about the two blond males with the po............