Night Hunter

by Vonna Harper

  Trees. Dense and lush. Full of life. Nothing to need to escape. Nothing dangerous.

  Encouraged by that bit of logic, he pushed through the fog in his mind. There’d been a woman on the highway with him. She had long hair, straight and dark and soft around her angled features. Big eyes that found and locked with his. He’d read unfulfilled sexual need in those eyes and had taken advantage of it. With nothing more than the energy that had been part of him since becoming a man, he’d spoken to her need. She’d responded. If things hadn’t changed, he would have bedded her. It was as simple as that.

  Where was she?

  Where was he?

  The question brought with it a spasm of emotion. The sounds were of the jungle, without beginning or end, beyond his comprehension and yet—

  “Thunder.”

  Shaken by something that felt as if it existed inside him, he forced himself into a sitting position. A sharp sting along his right palm alerted him to the fact that he’d cut himself. The injury might have happened while he was being catapulted into the swamp, but perhaps the saw grass was responsible, not that it mattered.

  “Thunder.”

  “What?” He forced the word. “Is there someone here?”

  Even as the impenetrable foliage absorbed his question, he regretted speaking. He hadn’t heard anyone call out. The sound was nothing more than system overload. He glared at a ten-foot-high wall of greenery. He’d always felt imprisoned by enclosures, and if he didn’t keep up his guard, that emotion might rule him now. He became aware of just how spongy the ground under him was. Although he was the furthest thing from being squeamish, he didn’t want to go on sitting. His legs felt less dependable than he needed them to be, his head both light and heavy.

  There was no way out.

  Moving deliberately, he looked around slowly. Began wrestling understanding from insanity.

  He had to have made some kind of an impression on the jungle-growth, tire tracks, grasses flattened, something, but he couldn’t determine where he’d come from, or where his motorcycle had gone. His helmet had been torn from him. What drew his hand to his back pocket where he kept his wallet, he couldn’t say. He didn’t encounter the familiar lump.

  No identification. No mode of transportation. Minus the head protection he’d strapped himself into.

  “Thunder.”

  He breathed through his mouth to lessen the impact of the swamp’s stench and fight a touch of panic, then gave himself the task, not of determining where the “sound” had come from, but of finding his way out. He couldn’t have gone very far. Shouldn’t he hear highway sounds, glimpse open space beyond the living fence that held him prisoner? He wanted to be back on his motorcycle and changing leads with the woman.

  Something warm and wet slid between his toes. He wore no boots. Like the helmet and wallet, they’d been stolen from him.

  A wistful whisper distracted him from unanswerable questions. It seemed to be human.

  The woman in the car? The one he’d known would spread her legs and beg him to spear her.

  “Where are you?” he bellowed. The cry had nothing to do with the need for sex and everything to do with survival.

  “Thunder.”

  Steeling himself against the whisper, he commanded himself to focus on the woman who represented a sane and orderly world. He’d long had a certain power over the female sex—animal magnetism his brother had called it—but until now he’d only used that indefinable something to get them into his bed. Now mentally reaching her might save his life. He had no choice but to try.

  “I’m here. Waiting for you. You can’t fight it. Don’t even try.”

  Barely daring to breathe, he waited a moment. He had no idea whether his thoughts had reached her, but if they had, he needed to give her more.

  “Become animal—an animal in need.

  “Find me. Let me satisfy that need.

  “Find me!”

  Trying to project his thoughts over God knew how many miles exhausted him. Either she heard his plea and command or she didn’t. Right now he had to make order out of insanity.

  Somehow.

  Mala held her breath and willed what had caught her attention to repeat itself, but it didn’t. She was forced to admit she must have imagined she’d heard a human voice. She could wait for him to reappear, at which time she’d offer him the shelter of her car and maybe a hell of a lot more. What made more sense was to go after help. That option would hold more water—an unfunny cliché given the weather and circumstances—if she hadn’t been halfway between two very distant points of civilization. The final alternative was to take courage in hand and plunge in after a man who might be injured and at the mercy of both the elements and his injuries.

  Hurt? She hated the thought, and yet if he was, she could minister to him. She again tried to leave the manmade footing. As before, she immediately bogged down. Even if she managed to make her way into the growth, she couldn’t cover more than a few hard-won inches at a time. As she extracted her sandal from the muck, another unsettling thought occurred to her. The motorcycle’s forward motion had taken the man into the jungle, but he wouldn’t have gone very far before the jungle stopped the machine. Still, she couldn’t see or hear him. If she took off after him, how long would it take for her to become lost?

  She didn’t want to think about that happening to the man, but the image of him wandering aimlessly among endless trees and moss and swamps and grasses with the rain a waterfall took hold. Was it possible for a person to become so disoriented within a stone’s throw of a highway that he’d never find his way out?

  Of course not!

  Probably not.

  “Can you hear me? Answer me! Damn it, answer me!”

  Nothing.

  It wasn’t until she’d traveled close to twenty miles that Mala spotted a highway patrol vehicle pulling away from a viewpoint. By then, the rain had slackened enough that her wipers were equal to their task. As she jumped out of her car, she gave a quick thought to how bedraggled she must look, but it didn’t matter. Only rescuing the man who’d turned her world and body on end did.

  “Where did you say he left the road?” the too-young officer asked in response to her garbled explanation. “Can you take me there?”

  She nodded. She wondered if he’d tell her to lead the way and asked herself if she could concentrate on driving well enough to pull it off. Fortunately, after telling his dispatcher or sergeant or whoever he was talking to what had happened, he indicated he wanted her to sit beside him in his vehicle.

  Although she was relieved to have found someone who’d know what to do, she swore he was barely going fast enough to justify having started the engine. She wanted to pound her fist against him and scream at him to hurry. Realizing she’d started shivering, she tried to determine whether he’d turned on the air conditioning, but her eyes refused to focus. Maybe the truth was that she couldn’t take her attention off what lurked at the edge of the highway long enough to concentrate on anything else.

  More likely the truth was that she still felt sexually stimulated.

  A man was out in that tangled vastness. Alone. Lost. Dependent on her when, damn it, she had no idea what to do.

  “There.” She pointed. “I hope—oh no. He’s not… He’s still in there, isn’t he?”

  The patrolman—he’d said his name was Todd something—pulled over to the side of the road. She was out of the car before he’d unstrapped his seat belt. Belatedly, she remembered to look down to where the motorcycle tire tracks should be. The sky had lost its deep plum hue, and the sun was regaining control, but despite the improved conditions, she saw nothing, heard nothing except what lived and breathed deep in the wilderness. She fought the stupid impulse to yank off her clothes and plunge into that wilderness.

  “You’re sure this is where it happened?” Todd asked.

  “I’m sure,” she said, irritated. Her nerve endings, the tips of her fingers and base of her throat and pit of her stomach told her
that this was the spot where she’d stood not so long ago.

  She had to give Todd and the highway department their due. Todd called for backup, and two other patrol vehicles soon arrived. All told, five uniformed officers scoured the side of the highway for a half mile in either direction. When they wandered afield of where he’d disappeared, she couldn’t blame them. After all, the ground bore no signs to indicate a man on an out-of-control piece of machinery had been here.

  Still, she was so sure that when Todd pointed out that, given the lack of evidence, they’d concluded there’d been no accident, she practically had to be dragged away. She climbed into the patrol car, but kept her eyes fixed on where he’d disappeared until she could no longer see the forlorn spot.

  When Todd deposited her back at her vehicle, he assured her a tracking dog would be brought in for one final search. Then he suggested that because of the heavy downpour, she might have imagined what she’d seen. She nearly yelled at him that a man’s life was at stake here, but he and four other trained men had spent two hours trying to find some sign of her elusive rider.

  After giving Todd her home phone number, she got into her car, but instead of heading toward Fort Lauderdale where she was expected, she pulled a U-turn.

  “I know I saw you. You’re real! Damn it, I know you exist.”

  A large truck and trailer barreled past, the blast of air swirling her limp hair about her face. Mala grabbed the dark length with one hand and held it against the nape of her neck. Fighting a deep sense of failure, she tried to reassure herself that someone would report the man as missing, and she’d be vindicated. But the only thing that mattered was that a man—strong and young with a lifetime ahead of him—was out there somewhere.

  Trapped.

  Trapped? She recoiled from the thought, but couldn’t argue it away. Logic said he must be injured or dead. Otherwise, why hadn’t he stumbled out?

  However, something she couldn’t put a name to told her that neither of those things was true. Like a caged animal, she paced the narrow shoulder. The sun had returned, but it had done nothing to make her footing less treacherous. If that dog didn’t find anything, no further search would be made. Her man would remain lost.

  Her man?

  No. Hardly that.

  More like the other way around.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Stay.

  Whimpering, Mala backed away until she collided with her car. She couldn’t have heard anything! She couldn’t!

  And yet—

  “Are you there? Why don’t you show yourself?”

  I can’t.

  She was losing her mind. “Why not? This—this is—why not?”

  I don’t know.

  “Don’t—know?” She tried to go on, but her throat dried up. There were more vehicles on the highway now. The people in those cars and trucks might be taking note of the crazy lady standing dangerously close to the wilderness, talking to it, pacing. Her body on fire.

  “What’s your name?” Please fuck me! Please! “Who are you?”

  Laird Jaeger.

  His throat was dry, but he didn’t dare dip his hands into the stagnant pond. He’d been on the move for hours. His jeans were ruined, his feet raw. When the heat and humidity had become too much, he’d taken off his shirt. He swore he’d tied it around his waist, but it was gone now, lost in the nothingness that had claimed him. His pockets were empty, his mind void of everything except the need for survival.

  That and the connection he’d made with the woman.

  She was gone now, and although he understood she wouldn’t wait forever for his return, he was angry that she had so little faith in him. Yet why should he expect anything else? He’d had hours in which to make sense of what had happened and get back to the world he knew, but he hadn’t been able to accomplish that pig-simple task.

  Instead, there’d been endless bugs and frogs, grass-choked swamp, dark pools and barely moving canals. Had he been going in circles, traveling deeper and deeper into nothing?

  Panting against the heat, he waited for fear to envelop him, but it still didn’t. It was almost as if he belonged here. As if he accepted he would die here.

  What made him think that? Dying wasn’t even on his radar, and how could he think he belonged someplace when he didn’t know where it was?

  He heard a limpkin’s wailing cry. A distant alligator bellowed. The call seemed right, proud and defiant. When the roaring, buzzing, hissing, screaming noises circled him, he kept himself from becoming lost in the music by concentrating on another sound—a woman’s cry. He “spoke” to her, again told her his name, demanded she not forget him.

  Hour upon hour, he sensed nothing except harsh, ancient smells and that unholy din, thirst and hunger and the unending question of why he’d been brought here. Someone, or something, had taken hold of him, stripped him of who and what he’d always been, thrust him into this uncivilized place. Was here with him.

  “I will not go through this alone,” he told the woman. “You will come to me. You will.”

  Chapter Three

  The air conditioning wasn’t working in the Fort Lauderdale motel room, but Mala was barely aware of the sticky heat. After placing the case containing her jewelry on the small table, she kicked off her sandals and collapsed on the bed.

  She lay staring at the speckled ceiling, her thoughts going places her tired body couldn’t. She’d spent what was left of daylight prowling Alligator Alley. Hugging the side of the road had done nothing to sway her conviction that she had been right about where she’d directed Todd and his fellow patrolmen to look.

  Not that being sure had changed anything, she admitted as she became aware of the blinking telephone light. Because she’d told Sandy where she’d be staying, it had to be her friend trying to get in touch with her. The past five years had been a journey to where she was tonight career-wise, and yet it no longer mattered because a stranger on a motorcycle had become more important. Had penetrated her in frightening, exciting ways.

  Still—

  On the tail of a sigh, she sat up and dialed the motel operator who informed her that Sandy had left three messages asking—insisting—she get in touch with her immediately.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Sandy demanded before Mala had time to do more than say hello.

  “It’s a long story. I’m sorry. I know you were worried.”

  “Yeah, I was, old kid. But that isn’t the half of it. Ralph called asking if the three of us could get together for dinner tonight instead of waiting to meet in his office tomorrow. Naturally I said yes, and then when I couldn’t get hold of you, I had to cancel. I don’t know what he’s going to think. Hopefully chalk it up to artistic temperament. I just hope he won’t decide you’re undependable.”

  Ralph Korn of Southeast Jewelry Unlimited had long dealt with independent crafts people. He wouldn’t be successful if he hadn’t developed an instinct about those who could be depended on. Sandy would have done her best to make things right, but they deserved an explanation. The apology she could handle. As for the explanation—

  “Where were you?” Sandy demanded.

  “What?” she asked, then struggled to correct herself. “You don’t have time for the whole story. Besides, if I get going, I’ll sound like an idiot.” Or sex-starved, which I am. “I’ll try to make sense of it in the morning. The meeting’s still set for then, right?”

  “Yes. You’re not going to blow it. You’ve worked too damn hard, and you’re incredibly talented. You deserve this break. All right. Enough of the morale booster and lecture. I’m serious, though. The competition’s intense. I’m thinking we need to get together before early tomorrow. What if…”

  Mala tuned her friend out, paying just enough attention that if Sandy asked another question, hopefully she’d be able to field it, but knowing Sandy, it would be a long time before she ran down. Her friend was right. Tomorrow could be a major turning point in her life, and she should be wired. She h
ad been until the storm and the man.

  Laird Jaeger.

  What had it been, mind control? More like body control along with something that stirred her as she’d never been before.

  Still holding on to the receiver, she turned on the lamp, then reached for her case and opened it. Light spilled over compartments filled with necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, all created from her trademark abalone and silver. She’d been making jewelry inspired by sunsets and sunrises, dew on leaves, pristine beaches and white-flecked waves since she was in high school, experimenting and refining until these pieces and hundreds of others like them became an extension of herself. Now, in part because of Sandy’s connections, she had the opportunity to become a full-time jewelry maker.

  “Sandy,” she said finally. “I’ll be there. I promise.”

  After hanging up, she stared at the samples of her work Ralph Korn would be looking at tomorrow, but then her vision blurred, and she lay back down on the thin coverlet. Sandy had called her dependable, but she wasn’t. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have left Laird Jaeger alone.

  Laird Jaeger.

  She felt, not exactly a presence, but something settle beside her. Whatever it was felt like pinpricks along the length of her backbone, heightened awareness at the base of her spine most of all, growing warmth in her pelvic region. With her eyes resolutely closed, she surrendered to whatever it was.

  “You’re mine. You have to be.”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Whatever is happening, I will not go through it alone.”

  “What can I do? I failed to—”

  “This was meant to be.”

  “The accident?”

  “No accident. Fate.”

  Fate. The warmth in her belly and beyond increased, demanded attention. Moaning, she turned onto her side and pressed her hand hard against her stomach. Already her breasts felt too swollen for her bra.