Sergeant Stratton cleared his throat. “More bodies were found a few hours ago after transmission abruptly ended between Gonzales’s men and the team that had been sent in to retrieve you. We caught the part about them having lost you at a village but having found the man and woman you had been traveling with. They planned to take them hostage to learn where you’d gone.” He swallowed hard. “They said the couple was traveling with a jaguar.”
“The jaguar god, no doubt,” Kat said, folding her arms.
“Yeah, well, when we finally found the location and arrived on the scene, we thought we’d discover men with bite marks if the man and woman had trained the jaguar to kill people.”
“Get real. A trained jaguar killer?”
“Major Singleterry had talked to an animal behaviorist who said that wild cats could be trained to an extent, but they were unpredictable and could just as easily turn on their trainer.”
Good, so that ruled out the killer jaguar, hopefully. “And you discovered I was here, how?”
“Gonzales’s men have a tracking device on your rented car. So do we.” He looked at Connor, this time as if to ask why he wouldn’t have known that, since he was a special ops guy. “But we… ran into a bit of a detour and couldn’t get to you in time before you had the last run-in.”
“So when Gonzales arrives here to pick Kathleen up, you’re going to take him down, right, Sergeant?” Connor asked, his voice dark, his expression darker.
“Yes… yes, sir.”
“Good. Nice to know our tax dollars are at work. And next time, don’t even think of using Kat as bait.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.” The sergeant said, “About the jaguar…” He let his words trail off.
Kat gave him a shake of her head. “Amazing. What tales will people come up with next?”
Connor hauled Kat off toward the elevator before the sergeant could ask her another question. “Damn it to hell,” Connor grumbled under his breath as he led Kat back up to their room.
“Gonzales will know which rooms we’re staying in, won’t he?” she asked, concerned all over again.
“Most likely, and you better believe we’ll be saving our necks again all on our own,” Connor said as they rode the elevator up.
“Maya,” Kat said, fearing for her safety. She tugged Connor out of the elevator and down the hall toward their rooms.
They moved at a rush but as quietly as they could. When they reached Maya’s door, the first room before their own, they listened.
They heard nothing, and Kat thought Maya might be napping before their long night flight. But still they waited. What if Gonzales’s men were in the room? What if they were in Kat and Connor’s room? Waiting to ambush them?
Connor took Kat’s hand and walked her back to the emergency stairs. What was he up to? Kat didn’t want to leave Maya in the terrorists’ hands for even a second, if that was the case. She knew from personal experience what that could mean.
Connor pulled out his cell phone and punched a button. “Maya?”
“Yeah, Connor. I saw you and Kat checking out the Internet. Did you learn anything important about that Wade Patterson?” Kat could hear his sister say as she spoke loudly over the phone, with splashing and the sound of kids shouting in play in the background.
Ignoring his sister’s question, Connor said, “They’ve been tracking us. Gonzales’s men. Are you in your room?”
“No. I’m downstairs checking out the pool. I was thinking of going for a swim, but… are they here already?”
“The U.S. Army is. Or at least a sergeant. I don’t think he can protect us from the bad guys. Have you got your stuff?”
“You mean my important papers? Yeah, always with me.”
“We’re next to the stairwell by our rooms. They could be lying in wait in either of our rooms. Meet us in the lobby.”
Kat rubbed her arms as Connor ended the call.
“My wallet, passport, credit card, driver’s license, everything I need to travel is in my backpack in the room.”
Connor ran his hand over her back and kissed her cheek. “It’s all right, Kat. We didn’t hear anyone in the rooms. You stay here, and I’ll return to get your bag.”
No way was she going to let him walk into a possible ambush without helping him in some way. “We stay together.”
“Kat—”
“No, Connor. I got both you and Maya into this mess. We’re going together.”
She could tell Connor wasn’t taking her anywhere near the rooms as he steadily looked at her, not moving an inch.
“We’re civilians. Let the sergeant and whoever else is supposed to be here getting ready to take Gonzales down make sure that the rooms are clear. Come on,” he said.
He grabbed her arm and was heading for the elevator… when it dinged. For a moment, he stood frozen and glanced at the stairs. She knew he was thinking maybe they should go down that way instead. The elevator door slid open.
“Gonzales,” Kat said under her breath, seeing the man dressed in a suit, his dark brown beard shorn, his hair longer than she remembered it, his nearly black eyes taking her in… and then recognition dawned.
He didn’t have any of his guerillas with him, thank God, and she moved with jaguar swiftness before he or Connor could even react. Part of it was her Army training, to take him while he was off guard before he could pull out a weapon and have the advantage. Part of it had to be due to her jaguar senses—smelling the threat, having to respond to it, and not backing down.
Gonzales reached under his suit coat, but it was already too late. Kat grabbed his arms, kicked her leg behind his, and shoved him hard. He fell on his back, spewing a slew of curses.
Connor was on top of him after that, disarming him, flipping him over, and pinning his arm high enough that if he tried to move at all, Connor wouldn’t hesitate to break it.
Kat slipped Connor’s phone out of his pocket, found Maya’s name in the address book, and called her. “Find the sergeant in the lobby, Sergeant Stratton. Tell him we have the man he’s been after, but we have the elevator blocked so he’ll have to use the stairs. And hurry. Some of his thugs might be in our rooms waiting for him. And for us.”
The sergeant took forever to reach them, but he had called in backup before he arrived.
Kat felt a unique camaraderie with the Army soldiers who swarmed up the stairs. And felt relief that her and Connor and Maya’s part in this was over.
The U.S. soldiers were complemented by Colombian soldiers stationed near Bogotá who had been trained by the United States in pursuing and taking down men like Gonzales. Members of the Colombian National Police guerrilla unit, the Junglas, who are based in Bogotá, were also on hand.
The drug lord and some of his men who had been waiting in Maya and Connor and Kat’s rooms were quickly taken away by the Colombian officials while Kat and Connor retrieved their bags and promptly moved to another hotel.
Without further trouble and two hours before their midnight flight home, Kat and Connor and Maya sat waiting in the very high-tech and modern Bogotá airport after going through numerous checkpoints. As they watched passengers scurrying through the airport, Kat noted the high level of security and took a deep breath. Outside, tanks were lined up along the runway, since a military base was situated right there. She wondered what would happen if she shifted in the middle of all this scrutiny.
Disaster.
Each of them prayed that Kat didn’t get the urge to shift. Kat was feeling great, though. She felt some satisfaction in having taken Gonzales down after he had murdered her team. Although Connor said she had nearly given him a heart attack when she rushed to take the drug warlord down and she wasn’t ever to do anything that rash again. She had just given Connor a smile and a hug, and he’d nearly crushed the breath out of her.