Looking forlornly at the coastline, she wondered if she should swim for it. With a life vest on, she should be able to make it to the shore. But there was her bag to consider. It was water resistant, but she wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it would keep the water out all the way to shore. It wouldn’t have mattered, except that Andrew had let her keep the laptop to use as a satellite uplink so she could access the internet, and he had also given her a brand new laptop that was still in the box and factory sealed from the GRE building supply room. When she got to the village, she was to download the encryption software off the secure server, and then she was free to use it to keep records of everything she learned over the next week.
The box was sitting there on the other chair, much too big to put in her backpack anyway. She was feeling lost, wondering if she should call for help or just let the current bring her into shore.
She had cut the engine, thinking it was going to blow up. She went to the ignition again, turning the key against her better judgement, hoping that it would start and everything would be fine again. Just like her computer needed to be rebooted to work right, maybe the boat needed a reboot.
Tara laughed at herself. That wasn’t it at all, and she knew it. It was just wishful thinking on her part. No, there was another explanation, and she needed to find it or she was going to be floating out in the Pacific and at the mercy of the ocean.
She heard the other boat before she saw it, and she had a moment of panic, wondering if all of the employees of GRE were accounted for. That panic grew when she saw the boat, aimed directly for her and coming from the same direction that she had come.
She gauged the distance from the boat to the shore, but she knew it was pointless. She could jump in the water and get run over by the other boat, or she could stand her ground and hope that whoever it was would be dumb enough to board her boat and get close enough for her to take him out. Or her.
She watched, heart in her throat, as the boat got closer and closer. When she could finally make out the captain, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief and had to fight back tears.
It was Luis.
And he was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” she yelled when he got close and cut the engine so that the boat slid across the distance between them until it gently bumped her boat and stopped, leaving them side by side, bow to stern.
“I told you not to take this one.”
“Did you sabotage it so that you could come rescue me?”
“No. I didn’t anticipate you suddenly turning stubborn. If I had, then yes, I would have. But no, this is all you.”
“What do you mean? I just drove it, and it quit.”
Luis was carefully moving along the edge of his boat, retrieving a large, heavy line and checking the line for any issues before tossing one end in Tara’s boat. He took the lines that he used for docking and tied the boats together before stepping onto Tara’s boat and going to the bow.
“What are you doing?” she asked, watching him run the line through a large ring on the bow, then go back to the stern of his boat and tie each end to a separate ring.
“I’m towing you in. Unless you want to drift further out to sea.”
“What if I do?”
“You might not have enough food and water to make it to New Zealand, but if you want to give it a shot, I’m not going to stand in your way.”
“What? No. No, I don’t want to go to New Zealand. So, how are we going to do this?”
“I’m going to tow you to the village.”
“That sounds good. Do I turn on the engine or…?”
“I’ll adjust the controls with the engine off so that all you have to do is steer.”
She stepped back out of his way, but he shook his head.
“Not yet. First, we need to talk.”
Tara looked at his face, surprised to see that he was serious. They weren’t going anywhere until they talked about whatever was on his mind, and Tara wasn’t so sure that she was up for it.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“That’s fine. I hear New Zealand is nice this time of year.”
“You wouldn’t let me drift away.”
“Are you sure?”
“What is there to talk about? You’re moving on with your life, and I’m moving on with mine. We had fun. I enjoyed your company. And someday, the right woman will show up, and you’ll pair up or whatever it is called, and you’ll live happily ever after.”
“What is going on with you? Why the complete one-eighty?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you. You were happy, and you came alive in my arms, but now you’re acting like I threw you away or something.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Because I’m not understanding what’s going on here. The minute you went into agent mode, did you just stop loving me?”
She looked up, startled by his words. “What did you say?”
“I said, it’s like you went into agent mode and just stopped loving me. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I don’t like it. I thought we had something special, but I get the distinct impression that you just want to run away and never look back.” He reached out, his hand cupping her cheek tenderly, his eyes sad and his expression sincere. “Tara, if I did something to hurt you, believe me it was not intentional, and I’m so sorry.”
Her eyebrows furrowed and she looked into his eyes, searching for what, she didn’t know.
“Did you think I loved you?” she asked, a little breathless and still unable to believe that he’d said the words.
It was Luis’s turn to be confused. “Of course I thought you did. Why wouldn’t I? Don’t you love me?”
“How could I love someone I’ve only just met?”
“I don’t know, probably the same way that I fell in love with you so quickly. Sometimes, two people are just right.”
“Like a Fated Mate?”
“Like two people in love. It’s not always about divine intervention.”
Tara smiled. He sounded exactly like Andrew.
“Unless you consider that the shifter who saved my life ten years ago is the man that we saved today. And the man that you saved more than ten years ago is my superior officer and brought me here because he somehow thought that I would be perfect for a job that was way outside of my scope.”
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe Fate did everything in her power to make sure we met, and left the rest to us.”
“So why the change in you today? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m guarding my heart. I can see the way you talk about this place. These islands are your home, and I know you don’t want to leave. But I can’t live here. This isn’t my home, and I have a new job starting in DC in a month. No matter how well we work together, I can’t have a relationship that’s an entire continent away. That won’t work for me, and it’s not fair for either of us.”
“Who says I’m staying here?”
“Didn’t you? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying the entire time? You’ve been talking about how nice it is to be free to roam around on four paws, not having to worry about scaring humans. All you’ve talked about is how beautiful the jungle is, so I just thought that you wouldn’t want to leave.”
He took her hands in his, looking deep into her eyes and smiling.
“The jungle is beautiful, and there’s a certain freedom in being able to shift when you feel like it and just be a panther for a week. But that doesn’t mean that the jungle and its beauty can even hold a candle to you. What good is being free if my heart is gone?”
“I can’t ask you to leave this place. It would be no different than you asking me to sacrifice my career and stay here with you.”
“I would never ask you to do that, and you don’t have to ask me to leave the island. Now that we’re free to come and go as we please, my perspective has shifted somewhat.”
“No pun intended, right?�
� she said, laughing through the single tear that had escaped unnoticed.
“Right,” he said, brushing the tear aside with the back of his finger. “Making the best of my lot in life is one thing, but I don’t have to live here. I can live anywhere,” he bent down and kissed her tenderly, “as long as you are there, too.”
“So, just like that, you’ll leave? And leave everyone here without a leader?”
“Who says that they’re without a leader? Martin is here.”
“I thought he was going to move back home.”
“I think that he thought so as well, but it doesn’t look like it’s shaping up that way.”
“What did he take you aside for, then? It thought he was talking to you about leadership and I don’t know what else, but I thought-”
Luis chuckled. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
Luis looked suddenly uncomfortable. “We should talk about this later. We need to tow in while the weather is good, and the conditions right now are perfect. You’re going to have to steer the boat. I’m going to go slow, and when we get close to the dock, I’m going to slow to a crawl. The rope is one hundred and twenty feet, which is perfect for towing a boat as small as this one, so this should be a piece of cake.”
“It’s a good thing that the boat you picked had a rope on board that could tow.”
“No,” he laughed, his eyes twinkling. “It’s a good thing that I saw the fuel gauge before you took off, and I knew to grab a suitable tow rope.”
She rolled her eyes. “Or you could have told me.”
“I tried. You were being stubborn. I decided that it would be good for you to realize that you can count on me, even when you can’t save yourself.”
“That doesn’t sound prophetic or anything.”
“Don’t worry, I think we’ve saved each other enough to last the rest of the year. We should be good to go.”
He kissed her again, passionately, deeply, and then let her go. “Keep it steady, and don’t touch anything but the steering wheel.”
“Got it,” she said in mock salute.
“I can’t decide whether that’s adorable or annoying.”
“I’d go with both,” she said, laughing and taking her place at the helm. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Then let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 14
Tara was white knuckled when they finally reached the dock, but the last minutes of being towed to shore were the worst. Luis had slowed his boat to a crawl little by little to keep the rope from going slack. They were almost to the dock—well, Luis was almost to the dock. Once he docked, he was going to jump out and tie his boat up, then pull her boat the rest of the way in.
Luis finally made it to the dock, and Tara watched in awe at how fast he worked. Before the tow rope had much slack in it, he already had his boat tied to the cleats and had grabbed the heavy rope and started pulling it in, hand over hand. Tara guided the boat carefully, relieved to see that the dock featured plenty of bumpers to protect the boat from slamming into the dock and taking it out.
Tara was tense, trying her best to keep the boat on the right path without swinging too far to the right or left and causing it to swing out. When the boat finally made contact with the bumpers, she was able to throw Luis the line to hitch to the cleats. He quickly tied the boat up, then pulled the last of the tow line out of the water and stretched it out to dry on the dock in the midday sun.
“That was intense,” she said, still shaking a little bit when he helped her out of the boat.
“It was, but you did it.”
His arm was around her waist, holding her steady while she found her footing, then stepping into her boat to grab her things for her. She took her backpack, but he carried the rest for her, including the box that held her new laptop.
“This is fancy,” he said, turning the box over in his hands.
“It’s more than the Bureau would give me, but I do need a real laptop. I have a lot of information to gather and so much to do to make sure that I do the shifters of this island and their families justice.”
“So, you’re going to be in charge of heading that task force up?”
“The investigation side of it. In the not so recent past, shifters were wrongly convicted of things that they didn’t do because people were afraid. They even outlawed breeding between the two species because they were afraid that there would be disastrous results. Humans don’t have a history of treating shifters fairly, and basically, my job is going to be to oversee any case that involves a shifter in the States. But until that task force is up and running, and the shifters that want to come back to the States are ready to be integrated, I’ll be setting up resources for the islands.”
Luis walked beside her, up a long path and toward the village. Tara walked quietly with him, wondering what the next week would hold. He had thrown her for a loop when he had started talking about love. She had thought that she was the only one falling, and finding out that he felt the same was jarring. She still didn’t know what to think. She wanted their relationship to work out and turn into something much more, but a big part of her was worried that it wouldn’t last. Tara had never had much luck with long-term relationships.
“Okay, I have to ask because you make the cutest faces when you’re thinking. What in the world are you thinking about right now?”
“Why?”
“You curled your lip in disgust.”
Tara shook her head, then shrugged. She might as well be honest; what did she have to lose?
“I was thinking about my track record with long-term relationships and wondering if whatever this thing is between us would survive me.”
Luis burst out laughing. “Are you serious? You’re so easy to love.”
“It’s not that. Most men can’t seem to handle a woman in the FBI.”
He nodded. “They let it emasculate them,” he said. “It’s as if your strength and your success is a comment on their worth.”
“Exactly! It’s like they take me being me personally.”
“Good thing they turned tail and left. You deserve a man who can handle you at your best.”
“What about my worst?”
“Your worst isn’t intimidating. And you definitely don’t make me question my manhood just by being you. The other men were fools. You are an amazing woman, and any man worth your time will never question that.”
“A man like you?” she teased, elbowing him softly in the ribs.
“Definitely a man exactly like me.”
They were almost to the village, and Tara could see the houses in the distance.
“Good to know,” she said, teasing him. “I’ll keep that in mind this week. Speaking of this week, where am I going to stay? I can see houses, and I’m a little surprised that they aren’t huts like the resort.”
“The villagers live in actual houses. GRE built them after the first human woman who paired with a shifter wouldn’t leave. It was then that they realized what an opportunity they would have if they made this place more livable for people who were used to a little bit more as far as creature comforts go.”
“Sadly, that makes sense. No wonder it was so easy for them to come in with the blessing of the government. For all intents and purposes, it looked like they were here to do good.”
“Sometimes I wonder if they were here to do good at one point, but greed got in the way. It’s hard to know what’s going on in people’s heads, though. You really can’t know who has good intentions and who doesn’t. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell until it’s too late.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
They stopped at the edge of the houses, surprised to see a group of villagers coming their way.
“What are they doing?” she asked, reaching out to grab his free hand. “I hope they know that I’m not the enemy.”
“Today has been a rough day for everyone on the island; I’m pretty sure that they are just being cautio
us.”
Luis and Tara waited while the group came toward them, Luis standing calmly while Tara struggled to stay calm. There were more than ten of them, and she had nothing to protect herself with.
The man in the front was large, his body showing signs of a recent battle. He stood tall and proud, leveling an unwavering stare on Tara. He spoke to Luis, but he never took his eyes off the newcomer.
“Is she a friend?” he asked Luis.
“She is.”
“Why is she here?”
“She is my mate, but that’s not why she’s here.”
The man addressed Tara this time. “Why are you here?”
“I’m with the FBI,” she started, clearing her throat when her voice came out weak and raspy and repeating herself with calm assurance that she didn’t necessarily feel. Yet. “I’m with the FBI. We have arrested Ian Cross and shut GRE down. They won’t bother you again, and it’s my job to see that nothing like this happens in the future.”
“Where are our missing, if you shut GRE down like you said?”
“Many of your loved ones who were captured were in desperate need of medical care. They have been taken to the mainland hospitals, and they will be returned to you when they are better. Or you can go see them.”
“Shifters can’t leave the islands,” he said, barely containing the anger and indignation that fact brought him.
“That’s no longer true. This island belongs to shifters and their families, and no one can come to this island without your permission. But you are all free to leave whenever you want, and come and go as you please.”
She put her backpack on the ground and went to unzip it. When the man before her tensed, she stopped.
“What is your name?” Tara asked, her hand on her backpack but not moving to open it.
“Diego. What are you doing?”
“I have a document I want you to see. My boss gave it to me so I could show you that the exile is lifted, effective immediately.”
“You can get the paper out,” he said.
The rest of the villagers that had gathered were standing several yards behind Diego, except for one woman, who stood almost at his side but just a little behind.
Her Undercover Panther : A Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance Page 14