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After that emotional exchange, it was a relief to sit in the sun at the edge of a lush and verdant jungle with an idyllic lily pond, glinting in the bright light, the sound of howler monkeys in the trees and eating the delicious basket of goodies she’d packed: orange and mango agua fresca with blueberries, jamon serrano and manchego sandwiches with arugula, a cheese platter with queso manchego, cabrales, guava and quince paste, spicy citrus marinated olives, chipotle maple roasted nuts and grapes, watermelon queso fresco salad, black bean and chipotle hummus, and mango coconut arroz con leche.
Buck loved everything, especially the coffee. It made her giddy that something that had been grown here, something she’d nurtured, then prepared for him, made him hum in appreciation.
She tried not to stare at the way his braced arms pulled the fabric of his T-shirt tight over his biceps. Or the way it made his shoulders look wider. The wind picked up and tumbled her hair around, sending his into a wild mess. She pushed it off his forehead.
Buck’s cell rang and he answered it, walking a few steps away from her.
She spied a beautiful Resplendent Quetzal, an amazing bird species known for its vibrant iridescent teal plumage, and hot pink feathered belly. She rose to get a better look, creeping carefully so as not to scare it off.
As Buck finished his call, Mari went to turn toward him to call out but then froze as she saw feral amber eyes in the shadowed darkness. Suddenly, Carmen was there, waving and calling out her name. Her sister’s movement was mirrored in that predator’s eyes. Everything slid into slow motion as the puma broke from the trees, bounding across the open space, a tawny, powerful beauty gathering speed. She heard Buck call out frantically as she backed up toward the jungle.
“Carmen, run!” Mari shouted. Her sister froze in horror, rooted in place.
Buck moved, cutting across the cat’s line of attack toward Carmen and Mari. The puma homed in on his action, angling its haunches to make the turn—Buck backed up and accelerated sideways to draw the animal to him. In three bounds the puma was there, launching into a flying strike, pure force in every flexing feline muscle. Buck went into a roll. One claw caught his T-shirt and ripped it as the cat somersaulted over his shoulder. She stepped back at the magnificent show of courage, with no regard for himself.
As the cat splashed into the pond and displaced the lily pads, Mari felt the earth disappear from beneath her feet, and she slid uncontrollably down an incline, slipping on slick leaves and dead vegetation, twisting and flipping, until she hit the bottom in a tangle of arms and legs. Her scream echoed in her ears.
The impact of hitting the ground knocked the wind right out of her, and she lay on her back for a moment, trying to catch her breath, taking inventory on how badly she was injured.
When she turned her head, a grisly, dead face filled all her vision. She screamed again in abject horror, the sound muffled in the dense vegetation.
11
Buck came out of the roll at the same time he heard Mari scream and the splash and splatter of water on his pants leg. He shouted Mari’s name.
D-Day came out of the jungle, running full out with his weapon at the ready, trained on the cat. His teammate had been tasked with shadowing them all afternoon. He placed himself between Carmen and the cat.
Buck looked to the greatest threat, the big cat. The puma’s head emerged from the rippling surface of the pond, blinking. He paddled, transformed abruptly from a snarling menace to a wet and bewildered animal with ears and fur pasted down to his skull. The cat climbed out of the pond and slinked away. D-Day shouted, “She fell! Over there! Go!” D-Day raced to Carmen, giving her instructions and getting her moving back toward home. She ran like that puma was chasing her.
Since D-Day took care of Mari’s sister and had his back, Buck was up and running toward the place where he’d last seen Mari, every molecule of his body trembling. His ears still vibrated with Mari’s scream, and fear clenched like a fist in his gut. He slipped silently into the jungle and saw the place where the ground sloped away. She had to be down there below him where brush and debris had been displaced. He forced his breathing to slow, gaining enough control to think. He had no idea where she’d landed.
He heard footsteps and glanced to his right to see D-Day moving next to him. “The cat is gone,” he said. He looked down the slope. “She must have fallen down here. This is where she was standing.” D-Day’s expression was etched with concern.
Buck nodded, pushing his own concern for Mari to the back of his mind. “Fan out, we’ll have a better chance of finding?—”
The quiet of the forest was broken by Mari’s second scream. Adrenaline drop-loaded into his system. But this scream was different. It was filled with horror and fear. Both of them moved at once, sliding down the embankment on the sides of their boots, displacing dead leaves, rocks, and plants. Taking on the incline like he was going into battle, Buck used trees and larger rocks to slow his descent, the cat scratch stinging now.
Toward the bottom, he saw her braced against a tree, all the blood drained from her face, her stricken eyes frantic and shocked. He looked around for danger but couldn’t see anything that was threatening her. He motioned for D-Day to cover his six. He was so relieved to find her alive.
He hated feeling fear for her. Detested the sick feeling he got when it welled up. It challenged his strength and he’d been hiding his weakness since he was five years old. Hiding it because his grandfather detested it, because to be a man was to be strong, because to be a wrangler, a cowboy who handled big animals, he could show no fear. Even when that wasn’t true. He was deathly afraid of horses after his uncle had been kicked. He’d had nightmares about being dragged, of being kicked, and bitten, of being trampled. He kept them all to himself, so as not to disappoint his father, or send his grandfather into a rage. Even now, in the heat of this country, he shivered with the memory of his fear of his grandfather finding out about that terrible humiliation. That he was defined by his heritage, and that what he feared were the tools he needed to carry on the family legacy was humiliating. His grandfather had expected him to act fearless, unflappable, and invulnerable, and he always thought that to live up to his expectations, he had to be fearless, unflappable, and invulnerable.
He’d hid that shame, learned to hide so much that it became second nature. No woman had touched him so deeply, all the way to that well of emotions. He clenched his jaw, thinking they were more like weaknesses.
Until now.
And he was at a complete loss on how he could let her see all that and still be who he was, knowing with a twisted sense that all those things he despised were him. All facets of the boy he had been, transforming him into the man he was now. There was that fucking fear again, but a completely different kind of fear. The kind that made his heart falter and his mind explode. If he didn’t share his deepest self, then what was the point with Mari? He already knew that fucking her wasn’t enough, not the act alone. She made him want to engage his heart, to surrender to all those weak emotions, to give into vulnerability.
Buck rushed forward, wrapping his arm around her. She blinked several times, then focused on his face. She was trembling, and now that the initial rush of adrenaline had receded, his biggest concern was that she might go into shock.
“Buck…” she whispered, her eyes welling with moisture. He wondered about the funny inflection in her voice, the tension in her, overlaid with fear and revulsion. She looked so damn vulnerable, and so shaken. “He-he’s dead.” She raised her arm, pointing to a pile of rotting leaves, and Buck could make out decomposing facial features. He got so angry he shook with it.
Violence in her backyard…again. A man lay murdered not more than a few feet from her, and that pissed him off. He could still feel the earth she’d put in his hands and curled his fingers around. She and her family had poured their heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into this land, but now his world was colliding with hers, and she was powerless to stop it. He wasn’t.
He was goddamned capable, a juggernaut of force, violence of action. He would eliminate this threat that was building behind all this dark, lush paradise. He felt the coiled tension of it in his bones, in his blood, in his tissues. This dead man was just the tip of the iceberg.
He cupped her chin, angling her face away from the corpse, so she would focus on him. She had small cuts, some bruises, her hair a tangle with leaves, and grass, all through it. Dirt smudged her cheeks and chin, embedded in her wounds.
He smoothed her disheveled hair away from her face. That bit of tenderness weaving through his system was new to him. Wrapping his arms around her, he pressed her head against his shoulder. She closed her eyes, and he heard her swallow.
