COUGAR

Power. Wealth. Beauty. Predators.

For three decades, Catherine Negron built Cali' Coffee Imports into one of the most successful coffee empires in the world. The Colombian heiress is admired by investors, feared by competitors, and adored by the media. At sixty, she remains as commanding and captivating as ever-a woman accustomed to getting exactly what she wants.

And what she wants is loyalty.

Every young executive fortunate enough to catch Catherine's eye is welcomed into her inner circle. The rules are simple: discretion is mandatory, silence is rewarded, and betrayal is unforgivable.

Behind the walls of her sprawling California estate lies a secret sanctuary filled with rescued exotic animals, including the massive cougars that roam its rugged hills. To the outside world, it is a conservation success story. To Catherine's enemies, it is something far more terrifying.

When her sophisticated surveillance network catches former lovers boasting about their conquests, they vanish. When employees violate her strict prohibition against office romances, careers end, lives unravel, and accidents happen. The company buries the scandals. The authorities find no evidence. Catherine remains untouchable.

Until Carl Rowe.

The brilliant security specialist who designed her surveillance empire commits the one offense Catherine cannot tolerate: he falls in love with one of her newest executives. When the woman turns up dead, Carl finally sees the monster he helped create.

Consumed by grief and vengeance, he sets a trap of his own.

Locked inside her isolated compound with no guards, no allies, and no way out except a desperate mile-long journey through the wilderness of her own animal sanctuary, Catherine becomes the prey. Somewhere in the darkness, hungry predators wait. And for the first time in her life, the woman who hunted everyone else must fight to survive.

In the end, every predator meets something higher on the food chain.