Publisher's Synopsis
Zoology student Xenia Sweet believes her trip camera photographs captured the images of a jaguar in an Arizona National Forest. And she believes it is a rare black, or melanistic, jaguar, commonly known as a black panther. Jaguars, of normal color or black, occasionally cross over into the United States, although they are no longer native to the Southwest of North America. Xenia manages to convince a park ranger, Dale Marquez, to help her find the elusive creature. Dale thinks he has found his remote, bone-littered, den under an abandoned railway boxcar that is now headed to a railroad museum near Chicago. Is the jaguar in the boxcar? Xenia, plagued by a failed romance and past family problems, decides to go to Alton, Illinois, to make peace with her estranged sister, Pamela.
Hundreds of miles away in the Chicago area, Sara Williams, orphaned from an auto accident in Alton, continues to scheme to get Mike Kellogg, a Cryptozoologist, to adopt her. If he does, she can remain close to Emily Peters and Krystal Rogers, her best friends in Chicago, rather than return to southern Illinois and live with relations.
Mike's planned research trip to Tasmania, with fellow Cryptozoologist, Liz Newcastle, is sidelined when the Cryptozoology Museum decides to do an exhibit on Melanism - Why some animals, such as the jaguar and leopard, are born black.
At the advanced preview for Mike's guests, which includes Sisters Pamela and Xenia, two lion-sized cats suddenly appear in the museum on Chicago's downtown lakefront. Xenia thinks they are the jaguars from Arizona or possibly an extinct American lion species called the Atrox. One of the lions resembles the fabled spotted Marozi lion from the Aberdare Mountains of Africa, thought to be extinct if it even existed at all. Mike thinks they are simply some type of hybrids. When the cryptids escape the museum and roam Chicago's lakefront parks, Mike, along with Pamela, Xenia and Liz, join the Chicago Police in an effort to keep the creatures out of an outdoor concert in Millennium Park. Despite orders from the police to stay safe, and in the midst of a thunderstorm, Sara, Emily, and Krystal are joined by new found friend, Shannon, as Sara leads them around the park in an effort to help Mike.
