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boy’s backpack.”
    I slung the backpack over my shoulder and decided I’d see if I could find the owner to return it. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d misplaced my school bag when I was a kid and wished an adult would’ve returned it to me. Maybe I’d get Noah to help me. He likes these types of games, solving puzzles. Like last year when we found a girl’s sandal near the swing set. We talked for hours—well, more like I asked questions and he answered yes or no—about what might have happened, creating all sorts of ideas about the lost sandal before turning it over to the lost and found.
    As we started heading toward the campground where we had parked, I imagined how Noah would smile when I told him about the mystery of the backpack when I got home. Beulah stayed close by my side. The exertion of the walk sent a searing pain through my rib cage, making my knees buckle. Michael steadied me. The situation hadn’t quite sunk in with either of us yet. We had both almost been killed by a mountain lion, a big, hungry male nearly as long as I was tall. After getting a good look at his paw prints in the snow, neither one of us wanted to talk about that yet.
    We just wanted to go home.
    Beulah licked my hand. “Come here and let me give you some loving, Beulah,” I said, realizing I hadn’t given her any praise for the expert way she’d handled the situation.
    “You okay?” Michael asked, peering over at me
    “I guess.”
    After walking in silence and in considerable pain for the next two miles toward the campground, Michael started fidgeting with his cowboy hat.
    “Can I ask what the hell you were thinking, trying to outrun a mountain lion?”
    I kept walking, ignoring him.
    “And where’s your Sig?”
    “In the fitted holster you made for me so I’d have no excuse not to have a gun with me at all times,” I answered. “Under the seat of my SUV.”
    He grinned.
    “What if that cat hadn’t been spooked off by your shot? He’d have bitten through my neck before you had a chance to realize what was happening.”
    “Probably,” he said.
    We walked the rest of the way without saying a word. Maybe Elizabeth was right. Shit does seem to happen when I’m around.
    No wonder she calls me Critical Mass.

CHAPTER 4
     
    “ANSWER THE PHONE,” MELISSA said as she turned her delicate wrist and noted the time on her watch, her irritation growing with every ring she counted. She stared at her reflection in the shiny gold placards that paneled the columns in the airport baggage claim area. Smoothing her skin-tight dress and primping her long, blond hair, she added, “Come on, Max.”
    “Hey, that’s Melissa Williams,” she heard someone holler. “Melissa! Can I take my picture with you?”
    Without ending her call or removing her sunglasses, she turned and smiled at the fan rushing up beside her as he shoved his cell phone toward a woman and hurriedly gave instructions on how to take their picture. Melissa’s smile never waned, even when the creep slipped his hand around her waist and let it linger near her butt. How she hated this part of fame. But how she loved the publicity on the social networks. This guy would brag for weeks about groping her, make up all sorts of lies about what they did together, and plaster the picture—this picture—of them all over the Internet.
    The more creeps like him, the more buzz for her.
    Besides, it was her choice to come in here. Melissa’s driver had offeredto collect little Max at the airport for her, but she missed the little guy, wanted to surprise him. Plus in the process, if the paparazzi happened to catch her in a loving embrace at LAX with her son on Christmas Eve, showcasing her rocking body and her practiced expression of alarm that her private moment had become suddenly public, then her holidays would be complete. She imagined herself flipping through the glossy pages of a tell-all magazine as she basked in the sun on the private beach that stretched