Panther on the Prowl

by Nancy Morse

  “He won’t announce himself with a roar,” said John. “He’ll sneak up real quiet-like.”

  Rennie shivered despite the heat. “Do you think he’ll attack?”

  “I don’t know. Now do you see why I didn’t want you to come?”

  She looked into his eyes and trembled again, this time from the sheer physical energy that radiated like a furnace burning inside of him. Some might have taken it for arrogance, but he wasn’t arrogant, just focused. There was an intensity about him that could have been frightening were it not for his gentle, caring nature.

  Whatever resolution John made to maintain his distance crumbled when her eyes were upon him, searching, beseeching, saying more than words could ever say. Desire shot through him, hot, electric desire that would not be denied. All thought of restraint fled, all reason vanished.

  His lips covered hers in a desperate and hungry kiss. He pressed his tongue into the warm, wet hollow of her mouth, increasing the urgency as need welled up within him to a terrible crescendo. In one swift move she was beneath him. The air filled with the fragrance of the soft green grass crushed at her back. His hands tore at the buttons of her shirt to expose her flesh to the warm summer night. Roughly he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and drew it into his mouth, sucking and nibbling and forcing little gasping moans from her. In the next dizzying moment he released it and brought his open mouth down again on hers, this time to draw the breath right out of her lungs and into his being.

  He was drowning, sinking deeper into an ocean of such longing and desire that the only thing keeping him alive at this moment was her sweet breath filling him.

  When he entered her, it was like coming home to the place where he belonged. In this sanctuary, for these precious few minutes, the perilous quest he had set for himself was all but forgotten.

  Chapter 14

  The silence was deafening.

  Rennie snuggled deeper into the crook of John’s arm like a sleepy, contented kitten. Gradually her breathing softened and steadied and her body cooled down from the steaming heat that had engulfed her. In the aftermath of their lovemaking all questions were erased, all doubt had evaporated along with the perspiration that dotted her skin. It was so quiet and peaceful in the warm embrace of the swamp that it was hard to imagine anything spoiling this one perfect moment.

  For John the silence was deafening. No crickets chirped in the tall grass. No little nocturnal feet scurried about the thickets. The water was eerily still. There was nothing to signify the existence of any life other than Rennie’s quiet breathing as she slept and his own, which stilled now as he listened to the static silence all around them.

  He glanced at the woman sleeping with her head against his shoulder, innocent of the danger that lurked in the darkness. Again he cursed his foolish decision to let her come along. Gently he slipped his arm from beneath her head. His hand slid slowly across the ground to the spot where he’d left his knife. His fingers searched for the weapon, made crucial contact, closed tightly around the hilt and drew it close.

  There was a presence in the still night air. Into John’s nostrils wafted a warm-blooded, musty smell. Without a sound he rose to his feet, relying on his intellect and his senses to tell him what he already knew.

  “Rennie, wake up.”

  It wasn’t so much his whisper as the urgency in it that awakened her. She opened her eyes to the sight of John towering over her. He was fully dressed. In his hand he clutched a knife.

  Sleep vanished instantly from Rennie’s eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but his hand shot up to silence her. Suddenly she was afraid.

  He motioned for her to get dressed. She obeyed, rising wordlessly and slipping back into her clothes with trembling hands, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears she was sure it could be heard into the deepest recesses of the swamp.

  For several tense minutes she stood there paralyzed with fear, while John’s dark eyes swept the area. Somewhere at the back of her throat she found her voice that emerged as a scratchy whisper. “What is it?”

  John worked swiftly to gather his things, shoving them into his pack with angry exigency. “He was here. But he’s gone, and I’m going after him.”

  Rennie gasped. “John, no!”

  “You knew what this was all about when you decided to come along,” he said harshly. “Don’t try and change the rules.”

  She rushed forward. Without thinking she grabbed his arm just as he turned away. His head whipped around and his hard, furious eyes bored into her. “Take your hand off me,” he warned.

  Her hand dropped to her side, and she drew back. “Please don’t do this,” she begged. “He’s the animal, not you.”

  “I am what he made me.”

  “You are what you made yourself,” she said with disgust. “And you’re too wrapped up in this stupid vendetta to see that.”

  Enraged, he echoed, “Stupid? If this is so stupid, then why are you here?”

  “I wanted to help you do this, but I can’t. I can’t let you run off after him as if it’s the only thing in the world that matters.”

  “It is the only thing that matters.”

  His words were delivered like a slap across the face, and Rennie winced from the pain of them as sharply as if he had struck her. Weakly she asked, “What about us?”

  What could he say? That there was no us while this thing loomed over him? Why was she making this harder than it had to be? “Why are you in my life. Why, dammit?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Love won’t help me catch that bastard.”

  He was trying to hurt her and succeeding. Tears streamed down Rennie’s cheeks. “No, it won’t. But love can mend a broken heart if only you’ll let it.”

  “You can’t mend something that broke into a million pieces a long time ago,” he said resolutely.

  She took a faltering step backward as his words hit home. She barely managed to choke out the words. “And what about me?”

  John drew the night air deeply into his lungs and let it out in a breath of self-disgust. “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”

  Inside, Rennie was dying. Everything she had feared the most was coming true. She felt suddenly foolish and naïve for having believed this dark and complex man capable of the simplest human emotion. She wished the ground would open and swallow her up and she wouldn’t have to see that look on his face that told her she didn’t matter.

  One more dream was shattered. But unlike the other times, when she had given in to the pain, this time something inside of her hardened like steel. She looked back at him across the darkened distance, and in a tightly controlled voice, said, “At least take pity on the panther for the poor, sad thing it is, part man, part animal. You of all people should know what it feels like to be emotionally cut off from the rest of the world. If you don’t put this thing behind you, you’ll never be whole again.”

  For several strained moments their gazes locked, neither wavering in intensity. At last he tore his away and said tersely, “Keep the fire going.”

  Rennie’s eyes widened with disbelief. “You’re leaving me here?”

  “I can move faster on my own. Don’t worry, he won’t be back. If he had wanted to attack you, he would have done it while you were sleeping. It’s me he wants. I know that now. Here, take this.” He slapped the cell phone into Rennie’s palm. “Do you remember Willie Cypress’s number?”

  She numbly, said, “Y-you made me memorize it when I couldn’t see.”

  “If I’m not back by daybreak, call him. He’ll come and get you.”

  Even if he didn’t love her, even if she never saw him again after tonight, she couldn’t let him destroy himself this way. She took a tentative step toward him, but his warning look stopped her from coming any closer. “John, please—”

  But her words were lost on him. In the next moment he was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the swamp, leaving her alone with a heartache so great that she sank to her knees in the gr
ass and wept from the pain of it.

  The cover of night proved no obstacle to John’s keen eyesight, and it wasn’t hard to pick up the panther’s tracks.

  The cat made its way across a grassy hammock, leaving prints in the softly tamped earth. It was hunting for a mole or a rabbit to satisfy its hunger, unaware of the man who followed relentlessly behind.

  John knelt on one knee to silently and deftly assemble his traps. He had hoped for a breeze so that he could position himself downwind and escape detection by the panther’s keen sense of smell. But the air was still and heavy, with not a leaf stirring. The cat was sure to catch his scent. He’d have to rely on the cat’s hunger.

  From his bag he produced a slice of leftover rabbit, which he cut into small pieces and placed around the perimeter of the area. Panthers, he knew, were opportunistic hunters and not about to pass up an easy meal.

  With his traps set and his knife in his hand, he crouched down among the scrub brush to wait. He was oblivious to the sweat that snaked down the sides of his face to dot his shoulders with wetness. Overhead the stars had disappeared and a funnel of clouds obscured the sky. It was going to rain, not just the patter of a spring shower, but a full-blown summer thunderstorm. Mosquitoes buzzed maddeningly about his head, but with rock-hard control he ignored them. Minutes ticked by in which the only sounds he heard were the buzzing of those infernal insects and the pounding of his own heart at his temples, signaling the approach of the inevitable confrontation for which he’d been preparing all these long months.

  But the panther did not come.

  Minutes stretched into hours. His muscles ached from their cramped position, but John dared not move. Lightning streaked the sky, followed by a resounding clap of thunder. He thought of Rennie, and even though he knew she had enough sense to find shelter, he felt the overwhelming guilt of having left her alone.

  The storm approached from the Gulf, but still the panther did not come.

  He sat there on the ground, peering out of his hiding place with predatory eyes, watching and waiting for the moment of truth that would change his life forever. But the change when it came, was not what John expected.

  His thoughts went to Maggie, for whose sake he had embarked on this quest for revenge. Maggie had given up her dream of going to art school to be with him. She had trusted him completely, and he had betrayed her by putting her in the worst possible danger. She knew him so well that even as she was screaming…dying…she had begged him not to seek revenge.

  He thought of his mother, who had raised him to be fiercely self-sufficient, not only in his environment, but in his thoughts. Despite her disapproval of the path of exile and retribution he had chosen for himself, she never ceased believing in the goodness that she claimed was still in him.

  He could not think of the women in his life without thinking of the one who had crash-landed in his heart.

  Only now, sitting in the dense stillness, with nothing around him except his thoughts and regrets, did he realize what Rennie had said. She had asked him to have pity on the panther because of the very thing it was. Part man, part animal, isn’t that what she’d said? In that simple, matter-of-fact statement was a belief that defied all logic. But what shocked him the most was that, unlike himself, born and raised with the Seminole myths and legends burned strongly into his spirit, Rennie chose consciously to believe in something another outsider would have thought unbelievable.

  She was an extraordinary woman, unwittingly courageous in ways he was not, touching something inside of him that went far beyond the physical. He had always assumed that with the capture and death of the panther the past would be behind him forever. But now he wasn’t so sure. Rennie had instilled a measure of doubt in him by giving him a glimpse of something far more fulfilling than the quenching of his thirst for revenge. With her acceptance of the legend, she had proved that through the power of love anything was possible.

  Even without her eyesight, she had seen what he’d been unable to see…until now. With a start he realized that it wasn’t the panther he’d been chasing all this time; it was himself. It wasn’t vengeance that drove him, but a burning compulsion to free himself from the past. That’s what she’d been trying to tell him.

  Unable to admit that the problem came from within, he had focused all the blame for his mistake on a creature that could do nothing except be what it was, and if it weren’t for Rennie, he never would have seen it.

  He thought then of the things he said to her, and he wondered fearfully if he’d lost her. Nothing in his life, not past mistakes or regrets, filled him with the unimaginable shame he felt when he told her that nothing mattered except the panther. That had been a lie so acrid its taste still burned on his tongue. But what else could he have done? If he told her the truth, that he loved her beyond all reason, she would have pinned her hopes on that, only to have them cruelly dashed if tonight proved a disaster and he didn’t come back alive.

  Was it true, he wondered? Could love mend his broken heart? As he sat there long into the night, with the rain pelting his face, he knew that the healing process had already begun when Rennie came into his life.

  When Maggie died, he thought all the love went out of him and would never return, but Rennie brought it back. The unconditional love she offered brought a sense of wholeness. And with that wholeness came freedom.

  Suddenly Rennie’s words echoed sharply through his mind. “What if you never catch him?” Only now, with hour stretching upon lonely hour, did he consider it for the very first time. And only now did he ask himself if it really mattered.

  For the warrior of the legend his fate was sealed because of a prayer not spoken. For John the answer to his unspoken prayer was Rennie. She came into his life at a time when he was ready to let go, only he hadn’t realized it. Her love showed him the way, and he swore now that he would find her, when his work here was finished, and tell her how much he loved her for it.

  The soft brush of something large moving through the undergrowth brought John’s thoughts screeching to a halt.

  With all his senses attuned, he tracked the movements of the panther until it came into view.

  It was a big mature male, an easy hundred pounds of pure stealth and muscle. Lured by the scent of food, unmindful of the pouring rain, he approached cautiously, picking his way through puddles of mud that formed in the grass.

  He had not fed in days. Unlike its human counterpart, whose skill at hunting by day was aided by weapons, not every attempt to feed at night resulted in a kill. Occasionally he crossed into the Big Cypress National Preserve to look for food. The mercury contamination there had long been a threat to the others of his kind, but the part of him that was not like the others knew the poison was there and avoided it.

  When the moon was high in the sky, he did not think, did not question, did not rationalize the circumstance of his being. Like any other four-legged creature, he simply was. It was only when daylight emerged on the horizon, when he walked on two legs, that he plotted and doubted and consciously damned his existence. He was the saddest of creatures, the last of his kind in this part of the Everglades, and the only one of his kind in the world.

  Despite the similarities between them that led each of them to wander alone, John knew there was one major difference between him and the panther. His own human cunning did not disappear with the fall of night across the Everglades. That was his advantage, and this was his moment of truth.

  His fingers twitched around the hilt of the knife as everything inside of him stilled with painful anticipation. The trap lay hidden beneath a cover of leaves. Beyond it lay the morsel of food. One more step. One more breath. One more movement and it would all be over.

  The rain stopped just before daybreak. Rennie crawled out from beneath the overhang of branches under which she had sought shelter during the night. The heat rose above the wet ground in steamy tatters, giving a hazy, unreal look to everything it touched. The air resonated with the sounds of bullfrogs, insects hum
ming, birds awakening to greet a new day.

  She loved this time of day, especially here in the Everglades. Above, traces of night still lingered in the sky that glowed sapphire in places. The air was hot, but it was clear and clean and carried the moist, green scent of the swamp.

  She was tired, her body aching from a sleepless night. But more than that, she felt alone. She had hoped the dawn would bring with it that same handsome face that stole her breath away, but when he failed to return by late morning, her hope began to dim. Where was he? Why wasn’t he back by now? Had something terrible happened?

  Rennie didn’t know if she should stay or go. Whatever happened to him out there, she couldn’t bear the thought of not being there when, and if, he returned. Victorious or not, she had to see his face.

  She was even willing to let herself believe that with the killing of the panther she had a chance to win his love. After all, there were no guarantees in life, and a man like John Panther was worth risking everything for. Before, she had dreaded the possibility of him catching the panther. Now she dreaded the possibility that he didn’t.

  She wondered if John realized how much alike they were, he and that cat, both wandering in exile. She didn’t feel foolish for having thought he was the warrior of the legend. She’d even been resigned to it and to the prospect of having him only part of the time. The truth was, she’d been ready to give up everything just to have the part of him that was human.

  Who would have thought just a few short weeks ago the odd and drastic turn her life would take when it led her to a place where she felt at home for the very first time—to a man in whose arms she learned about passion and love? Through that love she had made a startling discovery. It was the discovery of herself.

  How could she have guessed, when she started out to find a legend, that her path would take her to a man whose ebony eyes seared a path clear to her soul? It was the legend that brought her here, the legend that enabled her to believe in the future. But what kind of future could she have if he didn’t love her?