Savage Hunger (7 page)

“What’s wrong?” a woman’s voice asked, soft and worried as she drew close.

“She’s burning up with fever.”

The woman sucked in her breath. The sound of rain pouring down on the roof overhead should have drowned out any other sound, Kat thought, as hard as it was coming down. But she heard the woman’s audible gasp and wondered who she was. Wondered who he was. And where she was right now.

Her eyes burned and she couldn’t focus, couldn’t see much more than a blur. The hut was too dark to make out anything more than that.

The boards creaked as someone moved across them. Then her cover was pulled away and a wet cloth placed on her forehead.

Neither the man nor the woman spoke again, but Kat was drifting in and out of her world, thinking of all the fevers she could have contracted in the jungle—malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever—and believing she had every one of them at the same time.

“She should have had the vaccination for yellow fever before she entered the jungle,” the woman said.

“She should have,” he agreed.

But had she? Kat couldn’t remember.

“But if she traveled into the jungle too soon after getting the vaccination…” the woman said, her words trailing off.

“Hopefully she was vaccinated early enough before she entered the Amazon. We’ve still got a supply of medicine for malaria, but there’s nothing we can do for dengue fever, if that’s what she has,” he said.

Everything grew silent except for the sounds of the jungle. The doves cooing somewhere nearby. Frogs croaking. Cicadas chirping.

Kat
heard
men’s screams, bullets showering the jungle, and felt her wrists burning where the rope tied them tightly together to the metal pole. The damnable metal pole secured deep in the hard-packed earth so there was no way for her to pull free. If she could have gotten a knife to cut through the ropes… Then she thought about the bleeding… her leg, her arm… she was going to bleed to death first. She had to stop the bleeding. She could see her Army buddies scattered around the large tent, dead and covered in blood, could smell the stench… heard Roger…

No, he wasn’t here. He couldn’t be here. Not on this mission.

The
rain
forest. She was in the rain forest. But not there. Not in the tent with the dead men. Somewhere else.

Her wet shirt lifted, and Kat felt exposed and cold. She began shivering violently.

“No rash. Probably not dengue fever. Get a fresh cloth, Maya.”

Maya. Who was Maya?

“And bring me the medicine for malaria. We’ll try to get her to drink some water.”

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.

He shook his head at the notion and left the hut, climbed down the stairs, removed his clothes, and tucked them on a shelf below the floor of the house on stilts, and then shifted. He ran as a jaguar, smelling the air, searching for dinner, and wishing he had some way to get Kat to a hospital and well again.

***