by Terry Spear
Chapter 24
As a jaguar and fully intending to take these men down, Connor skirted well around where the men were searching for them. He counted six men total, all armed to the teeth and all approaching the rental vehicle with caution. One of the heavier men said in Spanish, “No one here. They’ve scurried into the jungle like little mice. Shall we chase the little mice down?”
As if he had to ask the question.
Two of the men laughed, while two others were trying the door handles. Unlocked. No sense in locking the vehicle and having the men break the windows trying to get in. But they would find nothing inside the car.
After a minute, the two men shook their heads.
“Let’s play cat and mouse, then,” the big man said.
Smiling to himself, Connor was game. Only he would be the cat and they the mice.
“You stay,” the man said to one of his comrades. “Just in case they return before we locate them.”
The man nodded and leaned against the car, his rifle cradled diagonally across his chest. The others began to move, spreading out and quickly losing sight of each other in the dense jungle.
Maya moved closer to Connor and inclined her head toward the guard at the car. She had to wait, let him think he had nothing to worry about, and ensure the others were well away from the car before she took him down.
Connor nuzzled her, giving her the go-ahead. He would trail after the others, taking down as many as he could one at a time once they were far enough apart from each other. Because no one had mentioned Kat’s name, he thought either these men didn’t work for Gonzales, or if they did, they were clueless about her being out here. Either would be good news.
***
Kat heard the men all around her, joking noisily as though they thought that if they made enough racket, they could scare the tourists into panicking. Kat tightened her hands on the rifle. She wasn’t panicking. She was ready for them. One armed tourist.
The jungle vegetation was so thick that she couldn’t even see anyone yet. But she heard a couple of the men moving closer, their boots crunching on debris on the ground, their legs brushing foliage aside.
Then she swore she saw something move a little distance from the tree she was hiding in. Like a dark shadow of a cat, but only for a flash of a second. Had it been Connor? Or Maya? She thought the shadow was too big to have been Maya.
A thud sounded a little way off. She barely breathed, her gaze riveted to where the sound had occurred. Freckles of perspiration dotted her skin as she stared at the vegetation, trying to see any movement.
Again, she heard someone moving toward the tree. One of the brigands appeared beneath her. A camouflage cap was squashed on his head, the rest of him in camouflage, too. He could be one of Gonzales’s men.
She readied her rifle to shoot him, though she wouldn’t fire a shot unless it was absolutely imperative. He glanced up, looked around, but didn’t see her. He was looking in the direction of their backpacks, but she hoped he couldn’t spy them. Then he shouldered his rifle and grabbed a branch to begin hauling himself up.
Kat barely breathed. If only she had a silencer, she could shoot him before he got very far up the tree. But if she used the weapon without a silencer, the popping noise would alert everyone else to her location.
He still hadn’t seen her, she didn’t think. But something must have caught his attention and made him want to investigate further.
In the next instant, she felt a sudden overwhelming urge to remove her clothes. What the hell was wrong with her? Sure, if she stripped and the villain caught sight of her, he might be distracted momentarily, delaying his climb. But an exotic stripper she was not. And beyond holding his attention for a moment, what would she do after that?
She itched to tug her shirt over her head, the urge so great that she couldn’t stop herself. Then she realized what was wrong with her. The craving to shift was the problem.
She set the rifle in the crook of the tree before she panicked and tossed it aside where it would fall to the ground and possibly fire off a round. Despite not wanting to shift in the worst way, she had no control over the urge and began pulling her shirt over her head. The movement alone could spell her doom. She knew damn well that if she sat very still, he might not catch sight of her, but if she started tearing off her clothes, he was sure to see her.
No… no… no…
She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t stop the shift from occurring.
His head turned in her direction, and his black eyes widened and his mouth gaped wide.
He muttered something under his breath as she yanked off her bra. He didn’t move any closer, just held on to the branch above him as he stood on another below that and stared at her in wonder. To her relief, he didn’t call out for anyone to join him. No, he wanted her all to himself.
She was sitting bare-breasted on a tree branch, struggling to pull off a boot, when she lost hold of it and dropped it to the ground. Shit.
The man chuckled and spoke dirty to her in Spanish. She figured he thought she believed she could buy her way out of this nightmare by offering him sex. Fat chance of that, she wanted to tell him. She would just as soon as shove him off the tree branch he was standing on, hoping to break his damn neck. Instead, she’d show him her big menacing jaguar teeth and end his rampant leering that way.
She managed to get her other boot off without losing it. She tucked it with her other clothes against the massive tree trunk, glad she was getting better at this, then worked on her jeans while he watched as if she were a stripper there to entertain him.
“Juan!” a man yelled from down below, and she realized that because of being concerned about the man in the tree and struggling to get out of her clothes, she hadn’t even heard the other man arrive.
Great. Now she had two of them to deal with.
“I’m busy,” Juan said and began climbing higher, as if he wanted to ensure he claimed her before his friend could.
“Did you find one of the women?” the man asked from the ground, and she wondered if he had found her size-six boot.
She couldn’t see him from where he was standing at the base of the tree, but she was glad he wasn’t climbing after her also—at least for the moment. Maybe she could shift before both of the men saw her naked.
She pulled off her panties and secured them with the rest of her clothes against the trunk of the tree and was ready to shift.
“Hey, Juan, what are you doing up there?”
“Going to have some fun.”
“I’m coming up, too.”
Kat frowned at the man climbing toward her, wondering why she wasn’t shifting as she sat butt-naked on the tree branch high above Juan.
Now! Do it now! What were the magic words? How had she managed before?
She scowled at the man and at herself for her ineptitude. Maybe she hadn’t been getting ready to shift. She would never get used to this business. Mortified that she wasn’t going to change into a menacing-looking jaguar and was instead showing off her naked body to a drug dealer, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Get dressed? Or keep waiting for the shift to happen and hope to hell it occurred before Juan reached her?
She could just imagine getting halfway dressed when the shift hit her. She would be a jaguar with one leg in her leopard panties. That would make her a real cool cat. Not.
Then the second man, who had managed to make it a little way up the tree, swore and gave a muffled cry.
Kat and Juan looked down, but Kat couldn’t see anyone as high up in the tree as she was, as leafy as the branches were, and because of the location of the man when he cried out.
Sounding afraid of what had happened to his friend, Juan called out softly, “Ramirez?”
But the other man didn’t say anything in response. Chill bumps pricked Kat’s arms and legs as she peered down through the vegetation, trying to see what had happened to the man.
“Ramirez?” Juan said again, a little louder this time.
Still no answer.
Juan switched his attention back to Kat, apparently unable to decide whether he wanted more to reach the naked woman or to check out what had happened to his friend. He wasn’t given any time to decide, though. A large male jaguar leaped onto the branch below Juan, then grabbed the branch the terrorist was on and joined him.
Both Kat’s and Juan’s jaws dropped when they saw the male cat. For an instant, the jaguar’s golden eyes shifted from Juan to Kat. He lifted his head a bit as if he was greeting her, then he turned his attention back to Juan. With one quick swipe of his powerful paw, the jaguar sent the man flying to the ground before he could swing his rifle off his shoulder.
Juan never made a sound. Not when the big cat struck him or when he was falling or even when he hit the ground with a thud.
Kat was so shocked that she couldn’t move. The jaguar was more orange in color than golden like Maya and Connor, but he was just as big and menacing as Connor.
The jaguar looked up at her, his whiskers twitching, his nose sampling the air and her.
She was naked. And he wasn’t just a big cat, she was certain. He was just like Connor had been when she first saw him as a jaguar and thought he was just a cat. This one had to be a man beneath the jaguar’s spotted coat, too. He was seeing her as a man sees a woman, or as she supposed a male shifter saw a female, naked.
She was grateful that the cat had taken care of Juan and probably the man on the ground. Especially since her shifter genes were so unreliable that she hadn’t been able to turn into a jaguar. But she wanted him to leave, to quit smelling her scent, to vanish before Connor returned and tore into him.
She heard Connor roar, and then Maya followed suit. They were okay. Kat gave a tentative sigh of relief.
The jaguar took another deep breath, then leaped from the tree, and Kat grabbed her bra. What would Connor do if he discovered the shifter had been with her in the tree? She wouldn’t have to tell Connor. He would immediately smell the big cat, see the dead bodies, and, if she didn’t hurry, find a naked Kat in the tree.
She was still trying to fasten her damnable bra without falling off the branch when Connor leaped onto one of the lower branches. She about had a heart attack, having not even realized he was in the vicinity. He did not look happy.
But since he was here and Maya had also roared, letting them know she was fine, Kat assumed the men were no longer a problem. Getting dressed and undressed on a tree branch was much more of a trial than she had thought possible, though.
Connor climbed branch after branch until he reached her, and then he shifted. “Hell, Kat. I leave you alone for a few minutes, and another damn male shifter comes after you.” He helped her fasten her bra. “Are you all right?” he asked, cooling his temper and kissing her bare shoulder.
Frowning at Connor, she yanked her shirt from where she had stuck it in the crook of the tree branch. “Of course I’m not all right. I can’t shift, damn it. Even when I think that I desperately need to get out of my clothes because I need to shift, I can’t do it. Then when I’m sleeping, I manage just fine.”
He kissed her cheek, then pulled her shirt over her head. “That’s why you’re naked.”
She cast him the most disgruntled look she could give him. “Of course that’s why I’m naked. What did you think?”
“That you’d shifted and killed a man, and after the male cat left, you’d shifted back.”
Hell, now Connor knew that she hadn’t shifted and had given the other male shifter an eyeful of one naked woman.
Attempting to change the subject, she asked, “Are they all gone?”
“Yeah.” He helped her into her panties and jeans. “Hell, Kat. He was up here when you were naked?”
They were not going around and around about this. “I thought I was going to shift, Connor. And he did kill the men who were trying to get to me.”
Connor grunted, then left her to finish dressing while he grabbed his bag and pulled his clothes out.
“Is Maya all right?” she asked.
“She took care of the guard at the car.”
Thank God they were both okay.
Kat began climbing down the tree with one boot on, heading for the other one on the ground next to the base of the tree trunk.
In her jaguar form, Maya was down below, pacing. She quickly greeted Kat, rubbing her whole body against Kat’s legs and nearly knocking her over. Then Maya jumped into the tree. Connor tossed Kat’s bag to the ground and then his own. He hurried to climb down to join Kat while Maya shifted and got dressed.
“What the hell did he look like?” Connor asked Kat.
Kat was staring at the two dead men, trying to figure out how the jaguar had killed them. He hadn’t left any bite marks. And no sign of blood was on either of the men.
“He took a swipe at them with his paw. With our powerful strength, we can break a prey’s neck or stun it,” Connor said, guessing at her puzzlement. He pulled Kat into his arms and embraced her tightly, kissing her forehead. “He’s the same one who was following us before.”
“How could he have followed us this time? We’ve traveled for miles by car.”
“Apparently he has been, too.”
Connor lifted his nose and sniffed. “He killed three of the six men who were after us.”
“Three?”
“Another one in the jungle nearby.”
That was the other thud she had heard earlier.
Hating to touch either of the men but thinking the one looked familiar, Kat shoved him over with the toe of her boot. She took in her breath a little too quickly. “One of Gonzales’s men.”
“Hell.”
Maya’s backpack flew past them and hit the ground with a thud, and then she climbed out of the tree, dressed and ready to go. “The other jaguar saved you,” Maya said. “Maybe he can join our little party later.”
She looked at Kat. At first, Kat thought Maya was just hopeful that she would agree and maybe put in a good word for the guy. But then she realized Maya had known Connor was helping her to dress and that Kat had been naked when the big cat came to rescue her. Did the whole blasted world have to know? That one of the bad guys had seen her was bad enough, but at least he was dead. But no. The jaguar who was just as much a man had to see her also.
Sure, she knew it was an inevitable part of shifting, but hell, she hadn’t been shifting!
She sighed. She might as well let Maya know what a problem this was for her so she could be aware of it, too, for future reference.
“I thought I was going to shift when one of Gonzales’s men began climbing into the tree. I planned to take care of him as a jaguar. But I don’t know what happened. The urge to shift just sort of… evaporated.”
Connor and Maya exchanged glances.
Oh yeah, Kat could see it now. She would be in the middle of the flight to Houston and have a horrible urge to change into the cat. In a panic, she would remove all her clothes and get ready to turn, and then? Nothing would happen. Except that she would be sitting in a cold airplane in the raw.
How was she ever going to manage?
Chapter 25
Six hours after they had left Santa Marta, Connor filled the car with gas at one of the service stations along the way. Kat knew he wanted to stop for the night. He had speculated long before this about staying in a small village to the east of the road to Bogotá. But when he asked the gas station owner about accommodations in the village, Connor was warned that tourists should not stay there. Too dangerous.
The hour was late; he and Kat and his sister needed to rest; and the village was the closest place with accommodations. Kat didn’t like that it could be hazardous. But they were all tired, and driving any farther on the winding roads could be just as unsafe.
When they arrived at the village, they found quiet terra-cotta cottages for rent. The people were extremely friendly, piling out of homes to look the visitors over and glad to have them stay with them. The kids talked to Connor and M
aya, asking them where they were from, and Connor put on a Texas drawl that enchanted them.
Then the oddest thing happened. Several policemen appeared and hovered around the area, friendly, protective, as if wanting to ensure that tourists were not robbed or kidnapped while they stayed here. Kat wondered what the police would do if Gonzales’s men learned she was here. Would everyone look the other way?
Probably. But not because they wouldn’t want to help. Gonzales and his men were just too dangerous.
Then she wondered about the mystery jaguar. Was he still following them? She glanced around but didn’t see anyone sitting in a parked vehicle and watching them.
The man who had rented the cottages to them hesitated when referring to the ladies in the party. Was one married to Connor? At least, that’s what she assumed he was trying to determine.
“My sister,” Connor said, as if explaining why he was traveling with two women. “And my wife. We’re newlyweds.” He wrapped his arm around Kat’s shoulder and gave her an intimate squeeze.
When had that happened?
Maya smiled at her brother, pleased with his declaration. Kat scowled at him. He could at least have told her beforehand that he planned to pretend he was married to her so she wouldn’t have looked so shocked.
“Newlyweds?” Kat said as Connor led her into the cottage and shut the door.
Maya’s place was right next door, the only way he would allow her to sleep alone. But it would have appeared odd if Connor had slept with his sister and bride in the same cottage.
He began stripping out of his clothes, and Kat raised her brows, folding her arms across her chest at the same time.
He smiled, a predatory gleam in his eyes as he stalked toward her. He threw his shirt on a chair. “You don’t think I’m going to let you get away, do you, Kat?”
No, he couldn’t be thinking of marrying her. “You have no intention of me getting away? You make it sound like I’m a prisoner.”