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finish this. Alive. I had to ready my knife but needed both hands to hold Beulah back. Without taking my eyes off the cat, I edged closer to the nearest tree and struggled to tie Beulah to it.
    I pulled my knife from the sheath and eased closer to Beulah. I spotted a broken tree branch big enough to whack the cat and inched in thatdirection. Just as I eased into a squat to pick up the branch, Beulah’s lead loosened and she bounded toward the tree where the cat crouched.
    “No!” I yelled, snatching the branch and posturing myself in a menacing stance. “Beulah, here!”
    The cat leapt from the tree.
    Beulah had reared up, her front paws against the tree to get her nose as close as she could to the mark, not quite seeing what she had treed or knowing the danger we were in, driven only by animal instinct.
    For a moment, I couldn’t move.
    I know now everything happens in slow motion in a crisis like this, just as people claim. Every instant was in freeze-frame, not unlike my whole body during this split second of tragedy. The horror of imagining that cat flying through the air and landing on Beulah’s back was too much for me. My shock was only intensified when I saw the cat land on the ground behind Beulah, not on her.
    That’s when I realized I’d had it all wrong. The cat was coming for me.
    With the mountain lion between me and Beulah, sprinting toward me with tremendous speed and intent, I did what any sane person would do at that moment. I dropped the branch and the knife.
    And ran like hell.

CHAPTER 3
     
    FEAR TASTES FUNNY .
    The bile that rose in my throat as I turned to run burned in my mouth with the taste of iron. That knife and tree branch sure would have come in handy right about now. And what the hell was I thinking with the running? Sure as shit I was looking like prey to the cat. My legs were racing faster than I thought possible. I didn’t get very far before I felt the expected push from behind as the cat’s huge paws hammered against my shoulder blades.
    This was it.
    I heard Beulah’s growling howl and a loud crack. Run Beulah, was my last thought as my body slammed to the forest floor for the second time today. The whoosh of air from my body sounded unnatural. My world went dark for a moment, which I could only assume was from losing all my breath; oxygen rushed out of me as I struck frozen ground. I felt the weight of something rolling up the back of my legs and across my back as if I were laundry in a washerwoman’s ringer.
    I assumed the lion was simply toying with me, claiming me as its spoils, until I felt its hot breath against the back of my neck. Any minute its teeth would sink into the base of my skull and sever my spine. I must have beenhaving another one of those slow-motion moments, which really didn’t sit well with me considering my predicament. I wanted this moment to be quick. And over. But it wasn’t. I lay there waiting for the moment to pass, waiting for the cat’s teeth to sink into the soft skin behind my neck, crunching through bone to leave me paralyzed. And dead. All I felt was its weight and movement.
    “Liv?” The voice, breathless but familiar, pierced the gray that crowded my senses. “You okay?”
    It sounded like Michael.
    What in God’s name made him ask such a stupid question when clearly I was not okay? I had a huge mountain lion on my back about to eat me. Definitely not okay.
    I tried to speak and realized I hadn’t recovered my breath yet. I started to cough and felt movement on my back. Am I supposed to fight mountain lions? Play dead? Or is that bears? The weight on my back shifted, moved off. Something was trying to reach beneath me—the cat’s paw!—to flip me over. I knew what would come next. It would slice me up the middle and eat my insides, leaving my carcass for later. I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to be dead, just as the cat flipped me over onto my back.
    Then I punched, clawed, and jabbed my thumbs toward its eyes, letting out a