Kat’s eyes drifted shut.
If she had thought how miserable she would be on a second trip to the jungle… the first fighting the bad guys, the second… the second… What was she doing here again?
She wasn’t fighting the bad guys this time, was she?
She should never have come here. The Army… they wouldn’t let her go on another mission. The doctor said she was… was not right yet.
Tears blurred her eyes. She swallowed hard, trying to recall why she was here again in the jungle.
The doctor.
He said if she could… if she could what?
Her thoughts drifted again.
The jaguar rested his head in her lap, and she sighed, comforted by his presence. She had never visited anywhere that was as primitive and teeming with life as the Amazon. And she had found just what she had wanted to see—a jaguar, well, two of them, running in the wild—and felt the peace of the jungle when before it had just been a mission. A mission gone bad. And Connor, he had come for her before and he had come for her now.
She let out her breath hard and sucked in more soggy air.
The jaguars had even protected her in the tree. Now how astonishing was that?
But then someone was trying to cut through the ropes binding her wrists, and she screamed. Or tried to scream. Maybe the howler monkeys were screaming. Maybe it wasn’t her at all.
“Kat, it’s all right,” the man said, his voice soothing as he held her hand and ran a cool cloth over her cheek. “It’s all right. You’re having a nightmare. You’re safe.”
Her thoughts were so random as they shifted from one to another that she could barely catch hold of one before another intruded. She thought of Manuel and losing him in the jungle. How his friendly, South American charm had won her over. He was smiling at her. Talking with her in his broken English. Giving her a great guided tour, pointing out a howler monkey watching them from a tree overhead, showing her a yellow-and-black poisonous dart frog and a strawberry dart frog on a fig leaf nearby. An anaconda was coiled around the base of a tree, nearly invisible to her until Manuel showed it to her.
She moaned and someone brushed her hair away from her cheek.
She thought of sitting in the early-morning hours at the Spanish café where she was to meet Wade Patterson, who was supposed to lead her to where Connor Anderson was staying. What had become of Wade? How had she missed meeting him in the café? She thought she’d gotten the time wrong. The place wrong. But she hadn’t.
And then the sunny café faded and she was once again in the lush, green jungle, the jaguar again looming before her on a branch as if he was trying to distract her, comfort her. He nudged her with his broad head, then rested it in her lap. Immediately feeling protected in the dark jungle, she reached out to pet him.
She found her hand wrapped in larger hands.
“You’ll be all right, Kat,” the man said, his voice dark and low and comforting.
The chills receded, but the suffocating heat took hold again. She was in a sauna, sweating every ounce of water out of every cell in her body as she faded off into the humid, hot ozone.
Chapter 5
The rain had stopped some hours earlier, but the drums had been pounding since then. Connor was certain the local natives were having one of their celebrations deep in the rain forest, but the beating made his head throb, as sick as he was with worry that Kat would die. She had come to the jungle, gotten lost, and contracted a fever —and none of that was his fault. But he couldn’t shake the concern that it would be his fault if she died on him. The immediacy of the situation—her being near death and under his care again—was like déjà vu.
He didn’t want to take her to the resort any longer. He wanted to take her back to the States where she could have competent care until she was well again. But transporting her there quickly wasn’t possible.
She watched him through blurry eyes set in a face that was very pale except for her red cheeks. But she wasn’t really watching. She was staring through him into a world of her own once more, semilucid and then confused and incoherent again.
“Kat?”
She hadn’t once spoken in coherent words since the fever had struck. Just moans and groans and a frustrated “no” when he had tried to keep her covered when she was too hot again after shivering with chills. Several times she had reached for something. What was she trying to get to? At times she seemed comforted by something and at other times, terrified.
Connor heard rustling at the table and glanced in that direction to see what Maya was doing. She was searching through Kat’s backpack.
“Anything in there that will tell us more about her?” he asked quietly.
Maya pulled out a passport. “She’s an Aquarius, born the first of February, and she’s four years younger than us. Hmm… Mom was an Aquarius, and she said that was why she was honest and loyal…”
“Not about staying with us,” Connor grumbled.
“And independent like Kat is, having come to the jungle alone. And she’s friendly, too.”
“The downside?” Not that Connor ever put much stock in Zodiac signs or their supposed meanings.
“Contrary, unpredictable, detached, unemotional. I think she’d fit right in with a couple of Aries like us.”
He grunted.
“Sure. You and I are both adventurous and impulsive, courageous and confident—she can’t help but be swept up in our enthusiasm for life.”
“Maya,” he warned, not wanting her to think they were taking the woman home with them like she was some kind of pet they could nurture and make their own.
“She was born in Merritt Island, Florida,” she said, ignoring him. “So she’s a Florida girl.”
The dark side of being an Aries, if any of it was true, was that Maya was definitely impulsive. A lot more so than he was, and he knew she was trying to get him to accept taking Kat into their family.
“The injuries she suffered on her Army mission here don’t seem to have caused any serious permanent damage,” he said, changing the subject to one that was more important.
“You said she was the only one who was still living when her people came to rescue her. You saved her life, Connor. She’s grateful.” Maya rummaged around some more in the pack. “There’s nothing else in here except survival stuff and more clothes and a credit card.” She zipped up the bag, then joined Connor at the bed where Kat was still tossing and turning.
Maya put her hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you hunt supper for us? I’ll spell you for a while.”
He didn’t want to leave Kat for a minute, worried she might slip into a coma and die. But another worry consumed him. What if his sister bit Kat, trying to turn her?
But he didn’t think she would. Not as sick as Kat was. Unless she thought that by turning her, Kat would get well more quickly.
He cast his sister a warning look. She regarded him as if she didn’t know what he was inferring, all innocence. Maybe she was totally innocent at the moment. Maybe deep down, he wanted Kat turned so she could be his.