Page 35 of Final Approach

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.

The jaguar was a better opponent than a man.

A jaguar was honest in its purpose, pushed only to eat, to kill, and survive. Man was different. He took pleasure in another’s pain and wielded his lust for more as a weapon. Man was weak. Uncontrolled and inconsistent with his desires.

This cat was born to control its jungle, as I had been born to control mine. It gave me no pleasure to capture her.

She flexed her muscular body against me, sinewy muscle trapped between my biceps. The coarse fur scratched my skin as I looped my arms around her torso and pulled her off Ambrose, but not before four razor-sharp claws sliced through his chest.

Ambrose's eyes widened in horror, and the roar of his pain was more deafening than the jaguar’s ferocious howl, before he collapsed to the ground with his chest facing the sky, thick ribbons of red soaking through his T-shirt.

I’d seen that look on many men. Their acceptance of death just before it happened, leaning into its call instead of fighting it like a warrior. With the fight I’d seen in this man against the crooked detective, it was clear he was in shock.

“Ambrose!” My ángel screamed his name, the terror on her lips as bitter as the night air.

The jaguar’s writhing form forced my grip to loosen. Her clawed paws, thick with strands of pink ripped fabric, scratched through the air, and I barely evaded a butchering by shrinking my body outward. She craned her neck at impossible angles to snap at my head, her jaw unnaturally wide with each attempt. The hot, copper-scented breath coated my face with its stench.