by Terry Spear
***
Once inside the park, Melissa and Huntley trekked for miles, not seeing much of anyone or anything, not with the way the rains were coming down in torrents in the steamy rainforest. They hadn’t found any sign of Jackson. Just a few hikers, hardier than most, who endured the rains and mud to see glimpses of wildlife here and there. When Melissa and Huntley finally set up camp for the night, she felt wet and miserable. And she couldn’t believe how Huntley looked like he could go on for several more hours when she was totally beat.
She should have regretted not sleeping more last night. But making love to him was what she’d needed. Not that she thought anything permanent was likely to come out of the relationship.
Just the same, she’d needed to feel sexy and wanted and loved. Huntley gave that to her and more. So when he’d wanted more, she just couldn’t say no, despite knowing that she needed a good seven hours of sleep to feel normal the next day.
She was thinking of Jackson and how he had slipped away from them the first time. She hoped they’d find him soon. Then gunshots fired off in the distance.
Her heart skipped a couple of beats.
“We don’t have time to take down the tent. Do we go as humans or jaguars?” Huntley quickly asked her.
She loved that about him—how he always included her in the decision making. “If they’re rangers or police, I want to go as humans. Even if they’re poachers, I think we’ll be safer if we look like we are ‘tourists.’ We can always shift when we get there if we need to.”
“Sounds good.”
At least they were armed with tranquilizer guns this time. They headed into the rainforest with their machetes. Many locals carried them around for all kinds of uses—from cutting down vegetation to cutting a piece of tape. So it wasn’t unusual to see people armed with them.
They moved deeper into the rainforest as quickly as they could, traveling off any beaten human path. Though they were quieter than most humans tromping through the underbrush, they still made more noise than if they were in their jaguar forms. And the going was rough. They had to be careful they didn’t hurry too quickly and step on a poisonous snake or twist an ankle in the dark.
Melissa’s heart was beating hard as she and Huntley made their way through the rainforest, trying to reach the area where they had heard the shots fired before the men and their prey were gone, if that was the correct assumption. And at dusk? She assumed that a poaching attempt was the only thing it could be.
She thought they were close to the river, but she couldn’t be certain because of how hard it was raining. Had the poachers beached a boat on the riverbank instead of planning to trek to one of the ocean beaches? Then she saw headlamps moving through the rainforest. The men were moving as fast as they could, carrying a heavy burlap sack between them.
Instantly, her heart went out for the animal. A male jaguar. But something way worse. A shifter. She smelled a light cologne and his jaguar scent. Though he appeared to still be in his jaguar form, from the looks of the shape of the body in the bag. She and Huntley had to rescue him before the men got him on a boat.
Then something else happened. She heard another report from a rifle. More men. Shooting at something else about a quarter mile away. She looked at Huntley. “I’ll go after them,” she mouthed.
He didn’t look like he wanted her to. But there were only two men here and they were busy carrying the jaguar. If Melissa and Huntley waited until all the men gathered together and dropped their loads into a boat, he and Melissa would lose the advantage of a surprise attack. Besides, it was way too dangerous for their kind in captivity and they had to do something now.
He nodded to her, then went after the two men while she tore off in the direction where she’d heard the other shot fired.
She wanted desperately to strip and shift. She was in such a rush that she nearly stepped on a fer-de-lance, a large, poisonous viper that caused more snakebite deaths in Costa Rica than anything else. Like so many of the creatures of the rainforest, he was looking for something to eat at night. His tail began vibrating. Large, long fangs filled with highly toxic venom quickly struck at her.
She leaped out of the snake’s path, managing to get around a tree. Other vipers would leave in the face of danger. Not this kind. They had an edgy disposition and would strike first. Out of his path, she raced off again, breathing hard, her heart still pounding because of concern for another animal the men were shooting at, the snake that had nearly bitten her, and the toil the hot and steamy rainforest took on a body running through it.
Not to mention that she’d stumbled so many times, she’d lost count.
She was still rushing when she came upon fifteen to twenty white-lipped peccaries foraging for roots, palm nuts, and grasses. She came to an abrupt stop. The wild pigs were the most dangerous kind and would charge any enemy in their midst. She didn’t want to tangle with them. She tried to move out of their sight and circle way around them. She prayed she’d reach the man who had fired the weapon quickly and not have any more obstacles in her path. And that Huntley was all right.
Then she heard another shot fired, this one in the vicinity of where Huntley was.
For a second, her heart nearly stopped. Again, she didn’t move, just listened. She was torn between returning to him and going forward. Hoping she was making the right decision, she had to go after the other poachers that she had headed for initially. She was closer to them now.
And the shot fired in Huntley’s area could very well be Huntley taking one of the two men down.
The sound of the waves crashing along the beach maybe an eighth of a mile ahead of her warned her that she didn’t have any more time to lose. As soon as she reached the trees at the edge of the beach, she heard the sound of a motor taking off.
No!
She bolted out of the trees and saw the boat crashing through the waves as the men made their escape with their bounty. She could have screamed she was so angry.
There had been four men, and she could identify each of them by scent now, if she could locate them again. She had to. Now her main concern was Huntley. Her heart beating triple time, she ran back toward the place she had left him, hoping to avoid any more encounters with peccaries or vipers.
She didn’t find him. She knew he had to be here. Right here. She was not going to panic. He hadn’t followed the men to the beach. She sniffed the ground and smelled blood. Huntley’s?
Trying not to be alarmed, though she couldn’t help the dread that pooled in her belly, she attempted to locate his scent. All she could sense was the one trail, the one that they had created in getting here. She stared in the direction of the path that would lead her back to the campsite and sprinted for their tent, hoping that Huntley was all right. That the blood wasn’t his.
She whipped out her cell phone and called him. His phone would be on vibrate—so she wouldn’t be able to hear it ringing if he was close by, but if he was all right, he’d answer her. When the call went to voice mail, she continued to follow the path, calling him and hoping he’d answer. She heard and felt the vibration of Huntley’s phone when she was nearly standing on top of it. She found it buried in leaves and searched around for any sign of Huntley, her worry level escalating.
His scent had stayed near the path so she hurried along it, praying he was all right and had returned to their camp to wait for her. Though she couldn’t imagine him doing so unless he was badly injured. Otherwise, he would have come looking for her.
She kept recalling the second shot that had been fired at his location, worried he was injured terribly. Yet she hadn’t found a lot of blood. And he hadn’t collapsed anywhere around there. Plus, he’d had enough presence of mind to continue toward their camp.
She seemed to take forever to reach their tent, where she heard two cubs snarling and crying inside. She stared at the tent for a moment, knowing what she was hearing, but not
believing it. She was so worried Huntley could be dying and…
This didn’t make any sense.
She approached the tent with her tranquilizer gun drawn. She slowly lifted the tent flap and found Huntley passed out on his sleeping bag, his forehead bleeding, and a couple of two- to three-month-old spotted cubs sitting on his stomach, blue-gray eyes staring back at her, wide-eyed and curious.
Chapter 8
Huntley felt like shit. His head was burning where the bullet had grazed his forehead, and his skull was pounding like someone was trying to get out. Worst of all, he had lost the men who had taken a jaguar shifter. The pain was so great that he couldn’t open his eyes. He wasn’t sure how he had managed to get back to the campsite.
He cracked open one eyelid, only to find two cubs on his sleeping bag that were now kneading their small fishhook claws into his belly, their nails digging straight through his T-shirt as they cried for their mother.
And hell, they were shifter cubs! He could smell a faint hint of baby powder on them. He’d tried to call Melissa on his way back to the tent, but he’d lost his phone in the rainforest and hadn’t been able to find it.
He hoped like hell Melissa was all right. If he had been trying to rescue these cubs’ father while the other men were after the mother, he prayed that Melissa had managed to free her.
Then he smelled Melissa and turned to see a very shocked-looking Golden Claw agent, her mouth agape as she stared at him and then at the cubs.
“They’re not mine,” he managed to say, and then the lights went out…again.
***
Holy hell! Melissa had never had a mission that had turned her world as upside down as this one had. She always had a plan. Maybe not a great one, but she always had some notion of what she was going to do next. This. Was. A. Disaster!
Not only was she feeling highly agitated and concerned about the jaguars the poachers had taken off with, but she was also worried how they’d care for a couple of baby jaguars. Their parents had to be the ones taken. She didn’t think there could be many shifters in the park at one time.
And Huntley. What an all-around catastrophe, though she was thanking God that the cubs were all right and that she and Huntley had been here to take care of them in the interim. And that Huntley would be fine. She hoped.
The mother had to have smelled that jaguars had slept here, known they were shifters, and hoped they’d take care of her cubs. The problem was that the babies would be nursing, and jaguar cubs weren’t fully weaned until around four to six months of age. She and Huntley had to get the babies back to their lodge. Then Melissa had to get milk for them pronto, even though mother’s milk would have been much preferred. Shifter babies could handle any kind of milk, thank God. But she was certain that finding formula nearby would be a real challenge.
Melissa was so rattled that she had begun to take care of Huntley’s head wound out of instinct. Having cleaned it, she administered an antibiotic and bandaged his head before she even knew it. She called her boss right after that.
“Martin, we’ve got a terrible problem.” She explained everything that had happened, and as worried as she was about Huntley, the cubs, and the parents, she felt chilled to the core.
What if any park rangers came across them and found them with the cubs? The rangers would take the cubs away from her and Huntley and then take them to a facility. And she and Huntley could be arrested for trying to poach the jaguar cubs. What if the mother shifted, which would cause the cubs to shift, and they were suddenly two human babies? No matter where their mother was in the world, the cubs were tied to her shifting, a way for the mother to control their actions until they were old enough to know when to shift and when not to. Melissa could just imagine Mom in the grocery store with her twin human babies, and all of a sudden they turned into jaguar cubs. Total catastrophe.
Their kind needed to be able to shift when little though, so they could learn to vocalize like other jaguars, just as human babies had to learn human speech from early on. The same went for hunting and playing as cubs or learning to socialize as human babies. It was a necessary part of their lives. But if their mom died, she would change back into her human form, and the babies would also remain in theirs until they were older. When they could shift on their own was different for each child. Just as some matured quicker and could walk or talk faster, the same was true for shifter children who could turn on their own at an earlier age.
This was a real nightmare of epic proportions.
“Okay, Melissa,” Martin said, and she didn’t realize he’d been speaking to her for some time when he said, “Melissa?”
Breaking through the fog in her brain, he repeated her name and this time she said, “Yes?”
“Listen to me. I’ll have a team there within thirty-six hours to track down the mother and father, if the ones taken are the mother and father.”
What if they weren’t? What if the mother and father were somewhere else? No, they couldn’t be.
“Your mission, and Huntley’s, is to get the cubs to your cabana. Keep them hidden and safe. Feed them. Nurture them. Protect them at all costs. Watch Huntley. Make sure he’s all right. If his condition deteriorates—”
“He’s unconscious!”
Silence. Then the cubs began to snarl again as if she could feed them!
She felt Huntley’s cheek, but his temperature was fine and his breathing normal.
“Yes, but we heal quickly. If that changes—if he begins to get feverish or shows any other sign of infection—let me know at once. You should pack your gear and move to the cabana tonight.”
“Huntley’s unconscious!”
A pause.
“Yes. Melissa, listen. You need to move the cubs under the cover of night. You’ve got to get them out of the park before anyone sees you with them. You’ve got to get them to your cabana before morning. I hear them in the background. They’re hungry. They’re going to give you away if anyone’s about. I also hear it raining. Good cover. For now. It won’t last, though.”
She stared at Huntley, who was still dead to the world, and the cubs looking up at her as if waiting for her to take care of them.
“Melissa? You can do this. You have to do this. I’ve got eight people dropping their missions immediately to track down the parents. All right? Concentrate on the cubs.”
“It was Jackson,” she said, feeling numb as she wiped some dribbles of blood off Huntley’s neck. “He had black hair—dyed, but I smelled his scent. He was responsible for this.”
“We’ll get them. You take care of the cubs.”
“All right. I’ve got to go. I need to revive Huntley and pack the gear.”
“Okay, call me when you can.”
“Will do.”
She tucked her phone back in her pocket and began to pack their bags. This was going to be some job. She rolled up her sleeping bag. She could fit one of the cubs in her backpack—at this age, they were about thirteen pounds—and Huntley could carry the other. She was trying to think positively, but it was a stretch. Carrying their regular gear was a hardship in the rain, heat, and humidity, but adding another thirteen pounds to each of their packs when Huntley was also injured?
“Huntley, wake up. We need to leave.”
He opened his eyes and she frowned at him.
“Can you see me?”
“Two.”
Great. He was having double vision.
“All right. I called Martin. He’s ordered us to return to our cabana.”
She moved the cubs off Huntley and then offered her hand to him. He was like deadweight. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he was out like the proverbial light. Again.
“Huntley,” she tried again, “Martin said we have to go.” She figured if anything would sink into Huntley’s semiconscious brain, it would be the director’s order to conduct a mission in a certa
in way. “You need to wake up.” She was firm but gentle. She thought of being rough and tough with him, anything to get him to wake, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t be that way with her. He’d probably try to carry her out of here with the cubs and leave the gear behind.
“Huntley,” she said in a sultry voice.
He opened his eyes.
She smiled brightly at him. Although she wasn’t feeling the urge, she was trying to convey something that would get him in the mood. “Will you take me to bed?”
“Will you think less of me if I tell you I have the worst headache?”
She chuckled, loving his sense of humor no matter the dire circumstances. “Okay, I’ll take a rain check. Let’s just get you up and on your feet. We may have to leave some of our gear behind if we can’t carry all of it in addition to the cubs.”
“The cubs,” he said, and she knew he still wasn’t all right.
“Yeah, one for each of us. Two little females.” She helped Huntley to stand, felt him sway a bit, and held on to him tight. “Are you going to be all right? I guess I could take the cubs with me, barricade them in the small kitchen of our cabana, and come back for you and the rest of our gear. But I really don’t want to leave you alone.”
As it was, they’d take several hours to reach their cabana, and the day would be dawning. Luckily, as before, the day would be gray and the resort was mostly empty, with each of the cabanas shielded from the others by thick vegetation. The problem was getting past the ranger’s station without the ranger suspecting something if the cubs started to squirm or cry.
“No,” Huntley said. He sounded so weak that she felt bad for him. “We stick together. Safer that way.”
“Good. I’d prefer it that way. So here’s the deal. If you start feeling really woozy, we’ll stop, and you can rest. If you can’t make it, I’ll erect the tent for you, continue on with both cubs, and come back for you. At least we’ll be closer to home. All right?”
He grunted.
She smiled. “You can be all tough JAG material another day. I just want us all to get out of here without getting caught.”