But a flight of macaws took off, and the observant person would have heard them take wing, looked up, and realized why. A jaguar had been spotted.
Or the splash in the water might have been noted, and if the man had been all that concerned, he would have gone back to find a female jaguar hauling his friend off to be dinner for a bunch of hungry piranha. Just where this man was bound to end up.
The tattoos on the man’s arms indicated that he was part of a gang, and he was armed as if ready to fight in a war, not just take a woman hostage. A shrunken head dangled from a chain at his left pocket, and smears of blood mottled his shirtsleeves.
The man had serious issues. But before long, he wouldn’t have them anymore.
He began singing the Spanish words to the song and nodding his head to the beat while trudging through the water at a slower pace. His eyes were on his boots when Connor took him out.
The man would never know what hit him as he went from walking along with a tune in his head to being buried in water with a 250-pound cat pressing his body into the mud. He choked on the water and mud, writhing to get free, but he would never be able to budge the jaguar.
Connor was too heavy, too muscled, too powerful, too determined—a jaguar god. He shook his head at the notion, which was bound to get them into trouble if the villagers shared what they thought they had seen with the rest of the world. Yet he hated to give up his and Maya’s jaguar retreat in the Amazon.
He left the dead man floating in the muddy water, eager to stalk the next man before the last three reached Kat. This one would stay put until Maya could return for him and dispose of him in the same manner as the first. Even though he and Maya could use their powerful bite to eliminate the threat at once, it was better if they could terminate the men in a way that didn’t make the local populace believe that jaguars were responsible for the men’s deaths.
What would happen then? Possibly hunters would descend on the area and attempt to destroy the jaguars that had a taste for human blood. Even if the jaguars didn’t eat the men, they would most likely be considered man-eaters. He and Maya, and now Kat, couldn’t afford that kind of trouble.
He hadn’t moved very far when he heard muffled shots ring out from the direction of the hut.
Kathleen.
His blood on fire, Connor bolted in her direction.
Chapter 16
The waiting was killing her as Kat watched from the lookout post. Every movement—a butterfly settling on a leaf nearby, a monkey scrambling through a tree, a lizard raising its nose in the air—caught her attention, though she attempted to remain rigidly focused on the path that led to the hut.
She heard the men slogging through muddy water, figured they must be on a path she hadn’t walked before, and listened to see if she could hear any sound that would indicate Connor or Maya was near. That was why every little thing in the trees distracted her. She kept thinking she might see either of them appear as a jaguar, watching her from a tree branch and protecting her, as she was ready to protect them, just as if they were members of her special Army team.
She couldn’t make out how many men there were, other than the one who had been talking and Manuel. She still couldn’t believe Manuel had planned to hand her over to men who would ransom her, or worse. But she was American, a woman, and had been all alone. He had asked her a million questions while they hiked through the jungle, and she had thought that in his smiling, friendly way, he had just been interested in her Florida roots. But it hadn’t been that at all. He had been trying to learn just how valuable she might be.
How well connected.
She had money, sure. Or she wouldn’t be down here in the first place. But she certainly hadn’t said anything to him about her finances or that she knew how to use a gun. Or that she had been in the military.
But she didn’t have anyone back home who would pay her ransom. She was the only one who could pay it!
“Where’s Miguel?” the leader of the group suddenly asked. “And José?”
Kat’s heart hitched to hear them speaking again. They were way too close to her location.
“Waiting for us to do all their dirty work, Carlos,” said the other man, who she hadn’t heard speak before. He was gruff and annoyed, but he was sticking close to Manuel and the leader. “I told you before, this is how they always act on a job. They wait for us to take all the risks. You wait and see. We’ll get the man and woman all bound up, and then here they’ll be, as if they’d been with us all along.”
Kat strained to see any sign of the men. Had Maya and Connor eliminated the other two? She wanted to pace, wanted to shift—no, she didn’t want to do that. As a jaguar, she wasn’t sure what she could really do. She knew how to shoot a weapon. Knew how to pursue an enemy with deadly intent. Knew how to wound a man to ensure she could take him prisoner. She just wasn’t sure if she could face an enemy if she was in her jaguar form.
Carlos snorted. “The two of them are easy to replace.” He sounded like a cold-blooded killer, which she was certain he was.
The problem was that there were three men. If she shot one, the others would shoot a barrage of bullets in her direction, and she wasn’t sure she could manage to shoot anyone else if she was under fire. Actually, she was sure she couldn’t. If Maya and Connor were too far away, she would be on her own. Even so, she didn’t want them running as jaguars into a gun battle. They wouldn’t survive, either.
She had to play it cool, keep her head, and not fire any shots unless it became absolutely necessary.
More thunder rumbled overhead. Glints of lightning flashed through the intermittent spots in the canopy where light filtered through. It was nearly afternoon and very dark with the black clouds hovering overhead. Soon, the rain would fall.
Then the men appeared in her sights. Three of them, Manuel being the shortest of the three—wiry, lean, and much meaner looking than she remembered him. He had put on a facade of sweet South American charm with her, had cleaned up and was shaven and quite handsome in fact. But now he looked hard, his face covered in a mottled dark beard, his dark brown eyes narrowed, his clothes soggy and dirty and… she stared hard. Bloodstained?
Had he been injured? Or had he injured someone else? How could she have been so naive?
Because he had charmed her into believing he was who he said he was, a native from the area who knew passable English and who guided tourists into the rain forest for an interesting and informative visit. Only in his case, he had never planned to guide her back out.
When he had taken her on her trip, he had worn the minimum of weaponry—a machete for chopping at the vegetation to clear their path, a gun in case of venomous snakes, a knife for survival. But now belts of ammo crisscrossed his chest as if he was a wild bandito from the Old West, while double pistols sat at his hips and a rifle rested on his shoulder. His face was streaked in mud, his long hair matted and grungy. His eyes were the scariest, though. They showed no remorse, no pity, no heart.
The others looked just like him, dressed in light-colored clothes that were filthy, their faces bearded, their dark skin speckled with mud. They smelled of sweat and blood and…
She wrinkled her nose. Marijuana, she thought.
They suddenly stopped and all smiled in a menacing way as they looked at the hut high above on stilts. Then Carlos motioned toward the hut, signaling to Manuel to take the stairs and the other man to go underneath the hut. Carlos stayed in place, rifle ready.