Chapter 7

A week later, Alton climbed into a beat-up Ford pickup he bought with the pelt money. He drove out of town to secure his commercial trucking license.

Tammy-Lynn watched from the tree line. The moment his taillights vanished, she dialed her phone.

Ten minutes later, Brenda and Darlene arrived. The three overweight, heavily perfumed women crept through the weeds toward Alton's fortress. They carried binoculars and a cheap digital camera.

Brenda looked at the humming electric wire and swallowed hard. "I don't know, Tammy. What if he electrocutes us?"

"Shut up, Brenda," Tammy-Lynn hissed. "He's definitely growing weed or cooking meth in there. If we get a picture, the sheriff will throw him out of town."

They circled the perimeter until Tammy-Lynn found a small gap at the bottom of the wooden fence, washed out by the rain.

She dropped to her knees in the mud, sticking her rear end in the air, and pressed her eye against the gap.

At first, the yard was quiet. Then, she saw a clothesline. Tiny, pink baby onesies fluttered in the wind.

Tammy-Lynn froze. A baby? Why would a serial killer have baby clothes?

Suddenly, a baby girl wearing a pink outfit crawled off the porch and onto the grass. It was Eden.

Tammy-Lynn gasped. She opened her mouth to tell the others.

Before she could speak, a massive shadow detached itself from the porch.

A fully grown mountain lion-the mate of the one Alton had killed-stepped into the sunlight. It was the size of a small cow.

Tammy-Lynn's lungs stopped working. Her brain short-circuited. She waited for the beast to rip the baby to shreds.

Instead, the cougar laid down on the grass. Eden giggled and grabbed a handful of the deadly predator's whiskers, pulling hard. The cougar just purred.

Then, the horror escalated. Eden reached under the cougar's belly and pulled out a thick, six-foot-long Western Diamondback rattlesnake.

The snake didn't strike. It wrapped itself affectionately around Eden's chubby arm while she laughed.

Tammy-Lynn's mind shattered. The sheer, unnatural terror of the scene broke her sanity. She let out a blood-curdling shriek, threw herself backward, and slammed her head hard against a rock. She passed out cold.

Brenda and Darlene jumped at the scream. They shoved Tammy-Lynn aside and peeked through the gap.

The cougar heard the noise. Its golden eyes snapped toward the fence.

It bared its massive fangs and let out a bone-shaking, deafening roar that vibrated the ground. The rattlesnake reared its head, its tail shaking violently in a chorus of death.

Brenda and Darlene stared straight into the jaws of hell.

Darlene's eyes rolled back. A warm puddle spread down her jeans as she wet herself, collapsing into the mud, twitching.

Brenda screamed, trying to run. Her foot caught a tree root. She face-planted into the dirt, her fake teeth flying out of her mouth.

Inside the fence, the chaos beyond the wire might as well have been in another world. Eden sat in her patch of dirt, clapping her small hands together at the muffled roars and shrieks that drifted through the trees-funny sounds, she thought, like the big kitty playing.

The sun had begun its slow descent, stretching shadows across the yard, when the low rumble of Alton's truck finally broke the stillness. He was home.

He stepped out and looked at the three women sprawled in the mud outside his fence.

He walked over to Brenda, who was groaning. He nudged her ribs with the steel toe of his boot.

Brenda opened her eyes. She saw Alton's cold, scarred face staring down at her. Thinking the devil himself had come for her soul, she let out a squeak and fainted again.

Alton sneered. He unlocked his gate and walked inside.

Eden immediately crawled toward him, babbling happily. The massive cougar rubbed its head against Alton's leg like a house cat. Alton picked his daughter up, completely ignoring the trash outside his walls.