18. Chapter 15 – Ambrose
Holy shit. Holy mother fucking shit.
The jungle cat was beautiful. The predator stared at us through serene intelligent eyes, with a body designed for maximum speed and agility. Awe took the place of fear for a fraction of a second before my actual survival instincts kicked in.
Fuck me, if I had to die in this godforsaken jungle, it would not be as a jaguar’s lunch. For once, I felt the tiniest bit competent in this hellhole. My survival skills repertoire was shit, but I knew cats.
Drawing in a quick breath—the only way I could breathe without pain in my ribs—I held it to suppress the shudder trying to force its way through me. I would not be her dessert.
“Do not make eye contact,” I commanded slowly from my position behind Nikki. “She’ll see it as a challenge. On my count, everyone back away slowly, one foot at a time.”
Micro-movements of acknowledgment came from all of them. Good.
“Three,” I murmured, keeping my gaze on the silhouette of the plane beyond her body to keep track of her positioning. “Two. One.”
We shuffled in tandem, and I hoped like hell they’d listen to me and keep their eyes averted. No eye contact was the number one rule with predator cats. I didn’t really like any of these people, but I didn’t want them dead.
I didn’t anymore, anyway. Our situation was fucked, and I didn’t know what to make of Marley’s story. If she was telling the truth, and the other captain had bailed on a plane full of drugs, she could be just as much of a victim as me. We all were.
It was easier to think of her as the enemy.
“Stop.” The order was so low the crackle of the fire masked it, but everyone immediately halted in their tracks.
“What now?” Madman asked out of the side of his mouth. His tone was lazy, almost curious. Did anything faze this fucker?
“We wait,” I said simply. “We turn and run, we’re fair game. She needs to decide if we are more interesting than the food on the plane.”
Marley visibly blanched and her spine straightened, no doubt at the reality that the jaguar had been inside the plane, feeding on the dead.
Right. This woman apparently really cared about the passengers on our plane.
You could fake a lot of emotions and get away with it, but empathy was one of those “have it or you don’t” traits.
Marley was full of it, along with a freight train full of self-loathing.
Self-loathing, I could identify with. Empathy? That took a lot of work with very little payback.
I reached for her behind Nikki and Madman frames, and rubbed a calming hand down the length of her back. Her shoulder blades jerked in surprise, but she didn’t shrink away.
The heat of her skin in the cotton T-shirt tore through me like a shot. What was I doing? I quickly pulled my hand back and fisted it by my side.
The jaguar stood stock still, taking us in. Her long, ink-dipped tail flicked back and forth behind her like an eager weapon. That … wasn’t good. She was too interested. Was someone making eye-contact? Fuckers, look at the ground.
“If she comes forward, you need to make yourselves big.”
Nikki mimicked a steel pole, but I continued through gritted teeth. “Wave your arms, widen your legs, be loud—you need to appear threatening. If that doesn’t work, scatter. Opposite directions, and cover your skull. Jaguars bite through the head, not the neck. Let’s shuffle again, on three.”
I took a tiny step back. “Three, two, one.”
Another shuffle put an extra three feet between us and her. Another interested flick of the tail. Fuck.
“How do you know this?” Nikki’s question held a high-pitched note of terror. I fought the urge to run a soothing hand down his back, too. Something was definitely wrong with me, and the jaguar was just the tip of the iceberg. I answered, to avoid diving into that line of thought.
“Childhood interests.”
The apex predator shifted forward on her paws, and in that moment, I knew she would pounce.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Be loud!” I shouted in the same moment the jungle cat leaped forward.
Marley screamed a husky, animalistic roar, and widened her arms and legs like a football lineman.
It was fearlessly impressive. The madman stood taller and bellowed into the night, and Nikki jumped up and down like a basketball player ready for a jump shot.
While they distracted the jaguar, I reached for the torch still stuck in the ground.
It had been the only speck of light to go by when I’d followed them into the night.
I honed in on it like a laser, and barely blinked to make sure I didn’t lose them, needing answers more than my safety.
My pettiness outweighed my fear, but since that was the mantra of my life, it wasn’t surprising it led me here.
I was having serious regrets.
Gripping the torch tightly in my hand, I gauged the jaguar’s interest as the three made themselves even bigger and louder. She wasn’t backing down, but she had paused just long enough to give us a second to regroup. When her hind paws lowered to the ground in preparation to pounce, I knew.
“Scatter!” I hollered, sweeping the torch up in front of me as the three of them ran in opposite directions.
Still holding the torch, I remained still, assessing our next steps while everything around me moved in slow motion.
Jaguars could run fifty miles per hour. There was no way to outrun her.
I was hoping to confuse her enough to coordinate some sort of attack.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but I wouldn’t be donating my life today.
She scanned the running group of prey before her gaze zoned in on Marley, who couldn’t run fast enough in those stupid heels on uneven ground. She’d get to her within seconds, and whether she snacked on her or just killed her for sport, the result would be the same.
Marley. Our captain and the only person who apparently knew how the hell to survive in a jungle. Dead.
Blood pounded in my ears and the stench of fear sweat soaked through my already disgusting shirt. I’d wanted to change, but I wouldn’t put my dirty body back into clean clothes. It was a stupid thought to have when facing down an animal that could kill me faster than I could blink.
Horror flooded my limbs with concrete when Marley fell to the ground on her knees, but she rolled over quickly to face the jaguar head-on.
“Try to punch it,” I yelled, running toward her and waving the torch around like a lightsaber. “Aim for the head, the eye—stun it, Marley!”
The jaguar was roaring on top of her. The deafening sound smacked of triumph, the most chilling sound I’d ever heard. Marley punched upward with a right hook and a left jab in forceful motions, enough to keep the cat from biting her, but not enough to get it off her body.
Within seconds, I was there, sliding in toward her like she was home base, wielding the torch through the air like an actual madman. The fire hit the side of the cat’s beautiful coat and singed the fur. She turned her attention to me.
She gracefully jumped from Marley’s fighting frame to try and top me. Holding the torch above my head. I rolled away, but not before the excruciating pain of several knives shredded into my chest. Dropping the torch in shock, I hit the earth with a jarring thump to my spine.
Four deep scratches cut into my dirty T-shirt, the burning pain its own brand of agony. Thick, red liquid oozed from the ripped fabric as a heavy, hot weight of muscle and fur landed on top of me, pinning my arms at my sides.
The jaguar’s breath was tangy and musty against my skin. This was it. My insistence on following these two out of anger and indignation had led me to my death. There was a great Grecian quote about hubris I was forgetting as I stared into the animal that would end my sorry life.
Unbidden, salty tears leaked from the corners of my eyes when she opened her jaw to smash my skull in.
I hadn’t allowed myself to cry since Theresa left, but facing death seemed to be as appropriate a time as the death of my marriage.
I had come to South America feeling a shred of hope for the first time in years, looking at the deal with Ravi as my last chance at redemption.
But none of it mattered, because someone was determined to take me to the afterlife and seemed to be making a point with how badly I was wanted there.
One moment, I was smelling her putrid pants.
The next, the fierce predator was being pulled off me by a savage man who clearly belonged among them.
The pain in my chest was as hot as the flames in our fire and I couldn’t raise my head to see Madman, but I heard his feral grunts along with the furious roars of the jungle cat, as they scuffled somewhere in front of my bleeding body.
A lightness filled my limbs, and my head swam with visions of shadows dancing with swords. Someone lifted my head into a warm lap of thick thighs and the disorienting scent of caramelized sugar and human skin. “Ambrose,” the voice called, light and airy through a distorted tunnel. “Ambrose!”
The last thing I heard was the crack of a whip before everything went dark.