Savage Hunger

Chapter 6

Kat was still pale and alternating between chills and sweating for another day. The incessant drums were beating night and day, never letting up. Maya imagined that the hunter-gatherers, led by their shaman in the jungle, were offering healing powers to make Kat well. At least that’s what Maya envisioned, hoping some of the shaman’s magic would suffuse the rain forest and aid with Kat’s recovery.

Connor was driving her nuts as he either paced or hovered over Kat. This morning, he had seemed different somehow, as if something had passed between him and Kat the day before, but he wouldn’t tell her what had happened.

He had barely spoken to Maya, and she was glad that he had never moved Kat around so he could see the backs of her legs. Whenever he took off into the jungle to hunt for their meals, Maya applied more ointment to the angry-looking scratch marks on the back of Kat’s leg.

Maya hadn’t had a chance yet to check on the scratches today. She had been busy building a fire in their cookstove, then washing Kat’s shirt and bra and panties in the rain, and finally drying them over the stove. She had to smile at Kat’s choice of undergarments—leopard print. Jaguar was better, of course, but leopard was similar and acceptable.

She scooped the dry clothes up and was getting ready to take them to Connor’s bed to help Kat into them when she heard Kat whisper, “Maya?”

Startled, Maya dropped the shirt, bra, and panties on a chair and rushed over to Kat. “What’s wrong, Kat?”

“I’m ready to rejoin the living.” Kat was clutching the bedcover to her naked body, her skin glistening with perspiration, her green eyes clear for the first time since she’d gotten sick.

With joy and relief, Maya smiled at the woman whose face appeared tired and gaunt, her eyes huge, her hair damp and stringy. “I have a spare toothbrush and mint-flavored toothpaste that you can use to brush your teeth. And as soon as you’re well enough, we’ll take you to the falls, and you can wash.”

Kat’s eyes widened a little, and then she gave a small smile. “I’d like that. But I do have my own toothbrush and paste.”

“The falls,” Connor said darkly, stalking into the hut carrying a string of fish. He eyed Kat warily, then appeared to relax marginally. “Are you feeling better?”

“I think my knee is all healed up.”

Maya caught her brother’s concerned look. The knee hadn’t been the problem. The high fevers and the wound on the back of her leg had been the major concerns, although Connor had never managed to see the scratches, thank God. Or if he had, he’d never let on.

“She’s doing much better, Connor. If she can manage to make it to the falls in a day or so, I’ll take her.”

“She’s too weak,” he said, expressing what Maya knew would be the case.

“Then you can carry her.” Maya smiled brightly.

She knew that Kat would feel better if she could just have a clean shower. Maybe she could even swim in the river with the pink dolphins one day. Maya was dying to show Kat everything wondrous about the jungle.

He grunted, then handed the fish to Maya. “Here, make yourself useful.”

That was his not-so-subtle cue for Maya to butt out.

She smiled again and tossed him Kat’s shirt, bra, and panties. “Sure, if you’ll make yourself useful.”

Then movement in the jungle alerted them of possible trouble—men. Monkeys howled and were noisy; the birds squawked and sang and chirped, too. But the monkeys and birds lived among the trees, one with nature and its environment. Men slashed and hacked and destroyed wherever they went.

Worried, Maya looked to Connor.

“Stay,” he warned. Then he pulled a high-powered rifle out from under his bed and crossed the fallen tree that they used as a natural bridge to their lookout post.

Kat tried to get dressed, but she was weak from not having taken much more than sips of whatever soup Maya had managed to prepare for her.

“Here, I’ll help you,” Maya said in a hushed voice, joining Kat and helping her fasten her bra.

“Who are they?”

“Maybe natives, who usually are no problem. They’ll be hunting, that’s all. But maybe not.” Actually, probably not. Maya noticed that the drums had ceased to beat. And the hunter-gatherers were usually like the jaguars, moving about just as quietly and elusively. “Sometimes the cartels use the locals to transport drugs through the Amazon jungle.”

To get her mind off the men and wanting desperately to learn if Kat was experiencing any shifting urges or changes in her hearing, smelling, or sight at night, Maya asked, “Do you feel all right? Feel any… differently?”

“I just feel incredibly tired and weak. I’m sure it’s because I haven’t eaten enough.”

“Yes, you’ll also need to get some exercise when you’re feeling stronger. But you don’t feel any… differently otherwise?” Maya had to be careful she didn’t overtly say anything she shouldn’t, but she was dying to know if she had turned Kat.

Kat shook her head. “My knee feels nearly back to normal. The bruise is fading but doesn’t hurt, and the stiffness in the joint is gone.”

Maya sighed and buttoned Kat’s shirt. She was glad Kat’s knee wasn’t hurting, but that wasn’t the issue. “I like your leopard panties and bra.”

Kat smiled. “It was a joke from a girlfriend because I kept talking about the spotted cats and how much I loved them. They’ve had five jaguars born at the Palm Beach Zoo. And I was always going to the zoo to visit them. Then I wrote a couple of articles on them.”

That was a good sign. “Palm Beach, as in Florida?” Maya asked, hoping to finally learn more about Kat.

“Yes.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“Yeah.”

“So, have you got family there?” Maya asked cautiously, praying that Kat didn’t have.

“No. I was raised in foster homes, which is a subject better left alone.” She gave a small shrug.

The family situation couldn’t be better. Maya was already feeling overprotective toward Kat, and she wanted Kat to feel as though she could talk about anything with her.

But still, important issues needed to be discussed that had to do with Connor right now. “No boyfriend?”

Kat smiled at her, as if she could read her thoughts. Yeah, she was trying to matchmake Kat with her brother.

“Connor’s shy with women, if you didn’t notice. And he doesn’t have a girlfriend.” Not that he was the least bit shy, only reluctant to really get to know a woman for fear of losing his heart to her. And then where would he be?

“Probably hard to find one who likes to vacation in the Amazon jungle on occasion,” Kat said with a small smile.

“Yeah, exactly.” Maya wanted to say that Kat seemed to like the jungle, but she figured that would be too blatant.

When Kat tried to stand, she wavered, nearly falling back on the bed. Maya grabbed Kat’s arm to steady her, then helped her into her panties. Maya’s skin prickled with fresh concern at seeing Kat still so unsteady on her feet, and she grabbed Kat’s arms to steady her again. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes. Thanks, Maya. I’m just a little dizzy.”

A lot dizzy, Maya thought. Not feeling totally reassured, she managed to get a good look at Kat’s scratches, or where they had been. They were all healed up with not even a scar. Maya let out a relieved breath.

But did that mean Kat had the shifter genes now or not? If she didn’t, wouldn’t a small scar still be visible?

The battle scars. Maya said, “Gonzales’s men shot you?”

“Um, yeah,” Kat said, her expression turning dark all at once.

Maya worried that maybe it wasn’t a good subject to bring up yet, at least not so soon after Kat was starting to feel better.

Kat took a deep breath. “It’s classified.”

Maya stared at her in disbelief. “Classified?” Omigod, she hadn’t thought of it, but what if Kat was still in the military? If she had an obligation, a contract, or whatever they called it, she couldn’t just quit her job with the Army, could she?

Connor would kill Maya when he learned what she’d done. What if Kat didn’t show up for whatever job she had or missed her next mission and they came looking for her? Maya could just envision a SWAT team swarming the Amazon looking for whoever was detaining their fellow operative.

Kat didn’t say anything further, but Maya’s heart was pounding with fresh anxiety. This changed everything. Maya ground her teeth. Okay, so they could deal with this new issue somehow. They would have to. Kat couldn’t belong to the military any longer. She might have to keep her other missions secret from Connor and Maya, but Kat definitely would have to keep her new condition—if she had been turned—top secret from everyone else.

Maya suddenly smelled something burning.

“The fish,” Maya squeaked as they started to crackle and smoke in the skillet. She helped Kat sit safely on the bed, then hurried to scrape the fish off the pan and flip them over. She sighed. “Cajun style. Blackened.”

Kat chuckled. “I’ll have to remember that the next time I cook a blackened meal.”

Maya smiled at her, loving that her new sister had a sense of humor. She would be her new sister, whether Kat was turned already or not. “Connor and I have a nursery in eastern Texas. It’s really beautiful. It’s surrounded by forests, and we have a huge tropical greenhouse. And a small lake is located on the property. We’d love for you to come and stay with us for a while if you’d like.”

“Stay permanently” was what Maya was dying to say. The truth of the matter was that if Maya had managed to turn Kat, she couldn’t go anywhere but with them, permanently. She wouldn’t be safe as a shifter on her own.

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

Maya relaxed. Good. Everything was falling into place. Now if only Connor didn’t throw a fit…

Looking tired, Kat reclined on the bed and watched Maya cook. “Where are the cats?”

“During the day? Probably sleeping somewhere in the canopy. They’ll stay out of sight. When it gets dark and again at dawn, they’ll be on the prowl.”

“Oh. Somehow I figured they were like big cat companions that went with you everywhere you went in the jungle. I guess I thought that because when Connor came to rescue me the first time, one of the jaguars was with him.”

“One was?” Maya asked incredulously. She hadn’t been with Connor when he’d exposed himself to danger that time. Although she had been angry with him for doing so without letting her know, she had been glad he saved Kat’s life.

“Yes.”

“You… saw him?”

“No. I was tied up. But I heard one of Gonzales’s men shout something about a jaguar. I thought I was hearing things.”

“Oh, so you didn’t see the jaguar.”

“No. Later, I heard rumors that Connor was seen with a jaguar, vacationing in these parts. And he told me himself when he came to my rescue that he was vacationing here.”

“Ah.” So Connor had arrived as a jaguar, then shifted before Kat had seen him. Now some of it made sense.

“So what do you do when you return to Texas? Leave the cats here?”

“Um, no, they stay with us always. It’s safer for them.” Maya hoped Kat wouldn’t ask how they crossed the border with the jaguars. They wouldn’t have been allowed to. Maybe she could say they had a special permit, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to explain and lie any further to Kat.

“Wow. So do you have special pens for them back home?”

“No,” Connor said, stalking back into the hut. “Maya, if the men had been trouble, they would have heard you talking.” He sniffed at the fish, his narrowed gaze flitting to hers. “You burned them.”

She knew he wasn’t angry with her, just teasing her in his superior way.

Still resting on Connor’s bed, Kat quickly spoke in Maya’s defense, as if she was afraid he was truly angered. “It was my fault. She was helping me dress.”

He glanced at Kat’s bare legs and raised a brow.

“We didn’t get that far,” Kat said, making a disgruntled face.

But he looked concerned. He had to realize that Kat was still too weak to dress herself.

“Not that you have never burned our food,” Maya said, a hint of challenge in her words. She loved how Kat had come to her rescue.

He glanced at Kat who wore a barely constrained smile, her eyes sparkling with humor.

“Why did you come here, Kat? To the Amazon?” he asked, leaning against the door frame, arms folded across his chest and looking imperious.

Her eyes widened a bit, making her appear surprised at the change in conversation, but Maya wondered if something he’d overheard spoken between Kat and herself had gotten his attention. Like the fact she might still be in the military.

“I wanted to find you, to thank you for saving my life. The doctor said if you hadn’t stemmed the bleeding when you did, I wouldn’t have had enough in me to make it.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her hand to stop him, and one of his eyebrows lifted. No one ever stopped her brother from having his say, and Maya was more than amused to see the effect Kat had on him.

“I tried to locate you in the States. But I didn’t know where you were from, and tons of Connor Andersons are listed. I posted on Facebook, Twitter, on my blog, trying to locate the man who saved my life. And was rewarded.”

This time both of Connor’s brows shot up. “Who would have known we come here? We don’t do Facebook or any of those other networking sites. We do have a Web presence because of our garden shop, but that’s it.”

She sighed. “A man said he visits here and knew of you. He said he could lead me to where he thought you stayed. But he didn’t meet me, and I paid for a guide who said he knew of you also.”

Connor looked at Maya, who was just as astonished. “Who is the man you missed seeing?” Connor asked.

“Wade Patterson. Do you know him?”

“No,” both Maya and Connor said at once. Maya had an uneasy feeling about this, but their food was getting cold. “Let’s eat.”

Maya served up some of the fish, bananas, plantain, and pineapple—all harvested from the jungle—on reusable plastic plates. She hadn’t had a girlfriend in years. Bonding was too difficult when Maya was a shifter and the potential girlfriend wasn’t. But she wondered who this man was who knew about Connor and herself. “The men who were scouting around the area were all right, weren’t they, Connor?”

“They had gone way around where we live. But I don’t know if they were safe or not. Thankfully, the noise of the jungle and the vegetation would have helped to muffle your voices.”

The men probably couldn’t have heard them because they didn’t have jaguar hearing, Maya figured.

“What about this Wade Patterson?” Connor said, helping Kat to the chair.

“I met him on Facebook,” Kat said. “He got interested in my articles about jaguars, then saw my queries concerning a Connor Anderson and his pet jaguar in the Amazon. I didn’t tell him how you saved me or anything about the mission. Just that you had saved my life, and I wished to find you to thank you. He didn’t know where you lived in the States, either, but he said he’d heard from the locals that you visited here twice a year. Wade also vacations in the area.”

“But you didn’t know the man before this?” Connor asked, poking at his blackened fish, his gaze still zeroed in on Kat.

Maya knew what he was inferring. How could Kat have trusted a virtual stranger with her life? But Maya also read between the lines. As determined as Kat had been to find Connor, Maya knew more was going on between them than Connor was willing to admit.

“I investigated Wade as thoroughly as I could. I discovered that when he wasn’t in the Amazon searching for lost treasure, he was a respectable businessman in Pensacola, Florida—a computer programmer during the day and a game-design hobbyist at night. He was on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter, and a number of other networking sites.”

Connor was frowning.

Kat ignored his obvious annoyance. “I had posted about doing a feature on the new jaguar cubs at my local zoo and was searching for any information about a Connor Anderson and his jaguar who vacationed in the Amazon when Wade told me he knew of you—not personally, but he had seen you around.”

“Around,” Connor said skeptically.

Kat folded her arms and said to Connor, “Wade asked if I wanted to meet up with him when he visited the rain forest and said he would take me to where you stayed. I did check him out. I found a number of pictures of him—some when he was wearing a suit, some in his jungle khaki attire. They all revealed a friendly sort who liked adventure. I admit I admired his enthusiasm for the unusual and the way he seemed grounded in a real job, too.”

“Like you?” Connor asked.

“Yeah. But everything began to unravel when he didn’t meet me at the café at the appointed time.”

Connor shook his head. “I don’t know this Wade Patterson.”

Maya could tell her brother didn’t like that Patterson had known anything about them or their connection to jaguars. But the inflection in Connor’s voice and his expression revealed more. He didn’t like that Kat had been meeting with this man alone.

“Are you finished eating?” Connor asked, sounding annoyed.

Kat nodded.

“Was there any other reason you came here?” Connor pried.

“What do you mean?” Kat responded, sounding defensive.

Connor rose from his chair, looking more like a grizzly than a jaguar, and closed in on Kat like the predator he was. He lifted her into his arms, pressing her close to his body in a posture that was all too telling that she was his and no one else’s, and carried her back to his bed.

“Wait,” she said, clinging to him, “I want to brush my teeth.”

He turned around, headed for the washbasin, and set her on her feet. Then she retrieved a toothbrush and toothpaste from her backpack. After she brushed and brushed and brushed, she finally relinquished the toothbrush and toothpaste, and he carried her back to the bed.

“I believe,” he said quietly to Kat, although Maya could hear because of their highly attuned cat hearing, “there’s more to your coming here than you’re letting on.”

Maya could have kicked him when he acted so intimidating toward Kat, but to Kat’s credit, she didn’t back down from him. Once he set Kat on the bed, their gazes collided and locked as if ready for battle. Maya heard their accelerated heartbeats and hoped this was only a bit of getting to know you better and not that they really didn’t like each other at all.

“Like you were nearly killed here a year ago. Like you were having nightmares. Like you might still be on a mission,” Connor accused.

Maya wanted her brother to back off, but she wanted to know Kat’s motives, too. With her back stiff, her nerves on edge, and her lips clamped tight, Maya cleared the dishes and listened.

Kat lifted her chin and looked Connor straight in the eye. “My mission was to personally thank you for saving my life.”

“And?” he pressured.

She pressed her lips together, then took a deep breath and said, “Yes, I have nightmares still. Sometimes facing your fear can help to put it in proper perspective.”

“You’re not on a military mission, then?”

“No,” she said, sounding irritated, but whether with Connor or the Army, or both, Maya couldn’t tell.

“She’s too weak to move anywhere,” Maya warned, trying to get them off this other business. She wanted them to get along, not be annoyed with each other. But most of all, she didn’t want her brother thinking it was okay now to dump Kat off at a resort.

Both Kat and Connor glanced at her as if they’d forgotten she was there.

“A couple of days, Maya,” he said, giving her a dark look. “Then we’ll see.”

Maya could tell her brother didn’t trust her where Kat was concerned. Maya prayed that she had already done the deed of turning Kat and that Connor wouldn’t be able to stop the process. And that he wouldn’t be too angry with her.

She glanced at Kat. And that she wouldn’t be, either.