Connor didn’t know what to think. Did the locals feel responsible for telling Manuel about the jaguar god and had come to help him and Maya and Kat if they needed it? They had seen them on occasion, the hunter-gatherers living off the land. But they were almost as mysterious as the jaguars.
Connor looped a curl dangling against Kat’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Maya was right that they needed to get rid of the bodies quickly. “I’ll take care of the men. You stay here with Kat.”
Maya looked as though she wanted to object, like she wanted to help him dispose of the bodies, but then she observed Kat’s pale face and nodded. “I’ll stay with Kat, but don’t take long or we’ll both be roaming the jungle to look for you.”
He gave her a stern look. “You stay here. I don’t want to have to try to rescue you both later.” Then he gave Kat a warm embrace and kissed her forehead. “Keep my sister here.”
She smiled up at him, but her eyes were still a bit glazed over, and her smile had only a fraction of the brilliance it usually had. He hated to leave her, to leave either of them behind. But this business had to be taken care of.
Connor left the hut and crossed the bridge to the lookout post, meaning to shift there before he took care of the men. He looked down at the leader’s body, but it was gone. He stared at the location, but no matter how hard he looked, he just didn’t see the body. Where the hell was it? He knew scavengers would come for it, but not this quickly.
Maybe from this vantage point, he was off in his calculations as to where the body rested. He climbed down the steps and began searching for the man and his companion. Neither were there, nor was Manuel. But they had died. He knew they were dead.
He looked up at the forest. The hunters had to have hauled them off. He smelled other men, seven or eight of them. They had moved as silently as he and Maya did.
Connor returned to the hut, and both his sister and Kat stared at him in surprise. Their expressions quickly turned to alarm.
“The hunters removed the bodies. I’ve got to see to the other one I left on the path. I’ll be back soon,” he said quickly, wanting them to know what had happened before he left.
He returned to the lookout post, stripped off his clothes, and shifted into his jaguar form. He leaped from one tree to another, then jumped to the ground and moved swiftly through the jungle to locate the last of the dead men. When he reached the area where he had left the man floating on the water-covered path, he found that man’s body had also been removed. He sniffed the air. Several men had been here.
Connor tracked the hunters’ scents until he reached the river. Hidden in the foliage, he watched the hunters depositing the bodies in the river and chanting over them, condemning them for attempting to kill the jaguar god and his mates. They made it sound like Connor had a royal concubine.
He smiled at the notion. He imagined Maya and Kat wouldn’t.
For now, the natives appeared to be on their side. Maybe they had been angry that one of them had told Manuel about seeing the jaguar god and his woman, and that Manuel had promptly led his thugs to take Connor and the women hostage.
But no matter what, he and Kat and his sister needed to leave. For now. Life was getting too complicated for safety’s sake. Although they would return. This was their second home, and the jungle drew them back as if it were a homing device genetically engineered into their blood.
He wished they could travel as jaguars, but that wouldn’t be a viable option since they needed to get out of the country in their human forms. As jaguars, they wouldn’t have clothes, money, or passports once they reached the States. He loped back toward the hut, and when he arrived, he found Kat sleeping in his bed. He was grateful she hadn’t been wounded or, worse, killed.
After shifting, he took Maya aside. “Are you sure she’s all right?”
“Yes. The fall did her in. She’s also upset about killing Manuel, but she’ll be fine, Connor.”
“Yeah, but can she travel like we need to do to get out of here?”
“She can. What about the men?” Maya asked, changing the subject.
“The hunters took them to the river and dumped them, and now the dead men are feeding the piranhas and a caiman or two. The hunters seem to be on our side for now, thinking I’m the local jaguar god.”
“Jaguar god.” Maya snorted. “If you’re a jaguar god, we’re jaguar goddesses.”
He chuckled. “They believe you’re part of my harem.”
She laughed at that but quickly turned to make sure she hadn’t disturbed Kat’s sleep. She whispered, “I’ll have to pick up my own cache of jaguar men.”
He was glad he knew Maya better than that. He could just imagine her clawing or biting a bunch of Texans and turning them. But she wasn’t that kind of woman.
That night, he had meant to sleep on the porch and make Maya stay in her own bed so that he would be their first line of defense if anyone had a notion to attack. When his sister wouldn’t cooperate, he cuddled with Kat in his bed so that Maya would remain in the hut with them, sleeping on her own cot.
He wanted to keep his “harem” close, in case they had any more trouble.
Chapter 17
Relieved that they had had no more difficulties during the night, they planned to leave early the next morning after they packed their backpacks and dressed for the long trek. Kat was quiet, subdued, and Connor wasn’t sure what was bothering her. Well, besides the fact that Maya had turned her into a jaguar-shifter, men had tried to take her hostage, she’d had to kill one of them, and they still faced the difficult task of getting her back to the States without any further difficulties.
“Anything wrong?” Connor asked for the third time that morning.
She shook her head, but he knew better. He still assumed her concerns had something to do with the man she had killed. The man she had thought highly of. But probably she was also worried about the trek ahead of them. Would she make it to the States before she had the urge to shift again?
Or maybe she was worried about another hostage-taking situation.
He ran his hand reassuringly over her arm. “We’ll be all right.” He meant it, although he wasn’t sure how much trouble they would get into before they truly were all right. But together, the three of them would make the best of their situation. “He would have taken you hostage, Kat. You had no choice.”
Maya had been quietly listening to them. He had hoped maybe she would speak to Kat and see what the problem was, but although they were both women, they weren’t alike. Not when Maya and he had been born shifters. He figured Maya didn’t know what to say to Kat to ease her mind, any more than he did.
“We’ll make it, Kat.” He pulled her into his embrace, but gently, worried she might still be a little sore from her fall the day before, although she had seemed fine when they made love last night.
She squeezed him hard and looked up at him with the determination to see this through. “I’m no longer sore. I won’t break.”
But she seemed fragile to him, despite her strong words.
“You’re just worried about what will happen.”
“What if I shift? I can just envision being the Incredible Hulk, tearing out of my clothes to change, but instead of bright green skin, I’d have gold fur with black spots and very big teeth.”
“And you’d be beautiful.”
She snorted.
“You would be. You were.”
She sighed. “But what if it happens?”
“If we’re in the jungle, no problem. We’ll hide our packs in the trees and join you up there to sleep a while until you shift back.”
“And if I do it at a border crossing?”
“You won’t. Think positively.” He wanted to tell her to think like a human, but he had no idea what had triggered the shift in her the first time around.