by Megan Hart
It didn’t, though it did stir another, baser emotion in his lower gut. Jordan shrugged again. Monica sighed.
“Do you know there are thousands of new species of animals and insects discovered every year? The rain forest—”
“This isn’t the rain forest,” Jordan pointed out. “This is Louisiana.”
“And every inch of it’s been explored, huh?” she challenged, moving a step closer. “There are thousands of acres of land, all charted. Nothing could possibly be hiding away from the rest of the world, could it?”
“Nothing like what you’re talking about. Something big and predatory would’ve been discovered before now, that’s all I’m saying.”
Monica frowned. “My grandparents live in New Jersey. Not Jersey Shore, but up north, close to New York. They have a postage-stamp lot backed up to another postage-stamp lot, with neighbors all around them. You could spit and hit two different highways. And guess what they have in their backyard every night.”
“A lot of noise?”
“Smart-ass,” she said but didn’t seem angry. If anything, he’d made her smile. She shook her head. “Deer. They eat my grandma’s garden and make her crazy. It’s not a place where you’d think you’d see deer, but there they are, and why? Because they’ve been driven there. They don’t have another place to go.”
“You’re saying whatever’s attacking the menagerie has been driven here?”
“Could be. Land development, taking away territory. Chemicals in the water, changing the food supply. Something we don’t even know about, like down in Florida, where those people are dropping off their ball pythons and anacondas that got too big to be pets, and now they’re breeding and fighting with the alligators for dominance on the food chain.”
“That’s not happening here,” Jordan said.
Monica gave him a solemn look. “Could be something else, then. Too many gators being taken, maybe this thing normally eats them, and now it’s hungry. Whatever it is, it’s discovered the menagerie, and it’s not going to stop coming back unless we stop it.” She paused. “Why is it so hard for you to believe?”
“I don’t believe in monsters,” he said flatly.
Monica laughed. “You’re lucky, then. Because trust me, they exist. Or they did and have gone extinct. Or, like in this case, haven’t been discovered.”
“Maybe it’s zombies,” he said, deadpan. Scoffing.
She narrowed her eyes. “You mean like voodoo?”
“I mean like ‘They’re coming to get you, Barbara,’” Jordan said. “Voodoo is a religion.”
She frowned again. “I wasn’t trying to be offensive. Zombies like in Night of the Living Dead definitely are not real, I can tell you that much.”
“No? But Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster are, huh?”
She turned on him, finally, with a scowl. “I’m a cryptozoologist, Jordan. That means I search for the existence of animals whose existence has not been proven. Or things outside their natural realm. Do you know that just last year a half-sized cougar was discovered rummaging in the Dumpsters of restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen? A cougar in New York City.”
“That’s not surprising, I bet there are lots of cougars in the city,” Jordan said.
Monica laughed, and he discovered how much he liked the sound of it. “Not that kind of cougar. My point is, it might’ve been someone’s pet that got too big or some kind of inbred cougar that managed to thrive in the urban environment. People had been reporting sightings of it for months before the Crew came in and was able to trap it. But first we had to prove it existed.”
“A cougar is still a real animal.”
“Yes. But there are things in the world we don’t know or understand, whether you want to believe it or not. And they’re animals, too. People can’t turn into something else. No vampires, no zombies, no werewolves. There are monsters, but they’re not human.”
Not human.
Monica drew herself up and visibly shook herself. “Look, I’m here to do a job, so let me get on with it, okay? What’s on the other side of this wall?”
“Bayou.”
“I guess that goes without saying,” she said. “Dumb question, sorry.”
“DiNero put a lot of money into draining his land. Lots of money into landscaping. You wouldn’t know there’s anything out there besides more grass, I guess.” Jordan tried to shrug off her words, but they clung to him, making his skin itch.
“I’ve never been to Louisiana before, if you can believe it.” She gave him a small smile and another of those neutral but somehow assessing looks. She turned back to the wall, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “Can you take me over the wall? I want to see the other side.”
Jordan paused. “Yeah. I guess so.”
They spent the rest of the day that way. He took her outside the gates and showed her the places that had been compromised. She collected scrapings of the bricks. The soil. The water. She didn’t tell him what she was looking for, and Jordan didn’t ask. When finally she was satisfied, he brought her back inside. They’d shared scarcely more than a few words, which normally would’ve been perfect, except that the longer she went without paying attention to him, the more disconcerting he found it. They’d been driving in one of the estate’s golf carts, so he pulled up into the small space between their bungalows and waited for her to get out.
What the hell kind of woman seduced a man and then proceeded to ignore him as if they’d never been naked and sweating and...
“Thanks,” Monica said.
Jordan shrugged, stone-faced. “It’s my job.”
“Not everything you did was part of your job,” she said. When he didn’t answer her, she gave him another enigmatic smile and got out of the golf cart. “See you later.”
He watched her go, waiting to see if she’d turn back. She didn’t. But he was suddenly so damned hard it hurt to move. It made his hands shake, so he clenched them into fists on his thighs, but the hunger didn’t abate. It rose within him, something fierce and unyielding, until all he could think about, all he could do, was get out of the golf cart and force himself to put on a pair of running shorts and go for a run.
Run. And run. And run.
By the time he got back, night had fallen. Golden light welcomed him from the windows of her bungalow, while his were cold and dark. Breathing hard, the coiled snake of hunger still hissing in his belly but low and quieter, Jordan paused to bend over and spit into the grass.
Her door opened. Her silhouette made him groan. She took a step onto the patio and was followed by the waft of something warm and delicious. His stomach growled.
Not human, he thought.
“I made dinner,” Monica said. “Come inside.”
CHAPTER 7
She’d begged supplies from the main house, despite the cook’s assurances she didn’t need to make her own dinner. But Monica liked to cook. It helped her think. While chopping and slicing and sautéing, she could let her mind wander over all the possibilities.
Too bad most of the possibilities had involved going another round with the taciturn and delicious Jordan Leone instead of figuring out what exactly was attacking the menagerie.
There was a science to what she did, though you couldn’t get most people to believe it. Tracking prints in the dirt or analyzing blood samples or simply calculating what sort of musculature would be needed for something to be able to jump over a wall. What sort of claws could dig through brick, what kind of hide was thick enough to fend off the bite of barbed wire. The Crew kept files. Made reports. She and her peers compared notes. But still, so much of what they did had to be based on speculation. When you couldn’t prove something, that was all you could go on.
Vadim had sent her down here thinking she might be looking for a chupacabra. Never mind it wasn’t killing goats and
it was out of the normal territory associated with that beast—there weren’t many things that could do whatever this thing was doing. Yet after looking over the pictures of the slaughter and having Jordan take her around the estate, Monica wasn’t convinced. She’d been on a couple cases hunting chupacabras before, and while they could certainly cause a lot of damage, there’d never been one she’d seen or heard of that could drag away a full-grown tiger or even a half-sized mountain lion, for that matter.
Which meant this was probably something different. Something they didn’t know about, hadn’t ever seen. The tingle of anticipation had been with her all day long, and being so close to Jordan all afternoon hadn’t helped much.
So, she cooked.
She’d never had jambalaya and wouldn’t have dared to try it here in the land where it was considered comfort food, so she’d settled on something she knew without a doubt she could pull off. Nothing fancy, just pasta with a fresh tomato sauce and lots of onions, peppers and garlic. Fresh-grated parmesan. The cook had given her a loaf of sourdough bread, which she’d cut into splits and baked with some more parmesan and olive oil. Adding a salad of mixed greens and lots of extra veggies, she had a complete meal. Enough for two, as a matter of fact, which had been her plan all along.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Jordan said from her doorway.
“I wanted to.” She waved him into the small dining area. A table set for two. The plates were white ceramic, heavy and serviceable and far from romantic...but romance wasn’t what she really wanted. Was it?
For a half a minute, she was sure he was going to refuse her, but then he shook his head and moved toward the table. He took a seat. Then he looked at her.
“I should... I was running.”
“I saw you.” She’d watched him head off and return hours later. Sweating. Panting.
“I should shower first.”
“Sure,” she said. “If you want to.”
He didn’t move. Monica smiled and set the bowl of pasta in front of him. Jordan fell on it like a starving beast, scooping a huge portion and digging in without so much as a second look. She served herself, eyeing him casually, though in reality she was taking in his every move.
“Good,” he grunted around a mouthful of bread.
“You were hungry, huh?”
Jordan paused. Chewed. Swallowed. He reached for the glass of red wine she’d set out and drained half the glass before answering her. “Yes.”
“Good,” Monica echoed him and set to eating her own portion. She hadn’t been exercising as he had, but she managed to put away a decent amount of pasta before she sat back in her chair to rub her belly.
Jordan had cleared his plate, plus the salad and most of the bread, and was looking hopefully toward the kitchen. “Is there more?”
“Yes. Plenty. Help yourself.” Monica watched him get up. The view from the back was as nice as the one from the front.
He caught her looking when he came back. She didn’t pretend to be embarrassed. He frowned, settling into his chair.
“I’m not on the menu,” he said. “In case you were hoping for dessert.”
Monica burst into laughter. “Oh. Was I that obvious?”
“No, actually, you’re not obvious at all.” He sat back in his chair and gave her a look so stern it made her sit back, too.
“Erm,” she said finally when it was clear that was all he was going to say. “Sorry?”
Jordan swiped at his mouth with a paper napkin and flung it down, then got up to pace a little bit. “I mean, what the hell was last night?”
Before she could answer, not that she had any clue what to say, he’d turned on his heel and stalked over to her. He should’ve been intimidating—and he was, or he would be if she hadn’t faced actual monsters, not just some guy with his boxers in a twist. When he leaned to get in her face, though, she did pull back a little.
“I thought you were in trouble,” he snapped.
“So you figured you’d save me?” Monica snapped back. “Well, that’s noble and all, but I promise you, I can take care of myself.”
“I’ve seen what that thing can do. You haven’t, not firsthand.”
She put a hand on his bare chest, no longer sweaty. He’d taste like salt, she thought. And fuck, that made her want to lick him.
“I’ve seen other things, Jordan. I’m not a shrinking flower—”
His hands gripped her upper arms, tight. She was up and out of the chair before she knew it. She thought he meant to kiss her, and she was already opening her mouth for it, but instead, he shook his head. His dark hair had fallen over his eyes.
“The next thing I know, you’ve got me fucking you,” he said in a low, rumbling voice. “And that’s it. Nothing after that. Not a damned word about it, all day long.”
“I made you dinner,” Monica whispered, torn between being flattered he was so upset and apologetic for so unexpectedly hurting his feelings.
Jordan let her go and stepped back. He was still breathing hard. Light flashed in his eyes. He turned away from her, shoulders hunched. Fists clenched.
“Why are you even here?” he muttered. “It’s ridiculous. DiNero has too much fucking money.”
That stung. Monica rubbed at her arms where his fingers had left marks. “Look, I know what I do must seem crazy. But really, there are things out there that people refuse to see.”
He swung around to look at her, brows furrowed, mouth curled into a sneer. “Sure. Like a goat sucker?”
“Among others. Yes. You work with animals—is it so hard for you to imagine that there are creatures we don’t know about?” She put her hands on her hips. “Something came through that wall. Multiple times. Something killed those animals. And something, if we don’t figure out what the hell it is, will come back again and again and continue until everything in this zoo is dead, probably including the people. Because it can, Jordan. It simply fucking can.”
“Keeping the animals safe is my job. Not yours.”
“Yeah, well, DiNero hired me to figure out what it is, okay? So once I do that, I can tell you what to do to keep them safe. My crew can come in and hunt it down, and if DiNero wants it alive, maybe we can even figure out how to tell you to take care of it. I’m sorry I stepped on your toes, if I did. And I’m sorry about last night... No, fuck that,” she amended. “I’m not sorry about last night. I needed you, and you were there. I’m glad you were. Believe it or not, I appreciated it.”
“Great. So I did you a favor?” Jordan’s scowl twisted further.
She stepped closer to him. He backed up. She took another. This time, he stayed. She’d seen a look like that before. It turned out she’d been developing a habit of wounding men’s pride, and that broke her more than anything else had.
Monica closed her eyes for a second. Thinking of Carl. How much she’d loved him and how long it had been since she’d felt that way about anyone. Maybe she never would again.
“I had a nightmare. I was attacked some time ago, and sometimes I dream about it,” she said in a low voice.
“Okay.” He eyed her warily. “And that’s my problem?”
Oh, he was going to make this difficult. “In the dreams, I relive the attack. When I wake up, I can’t get out from under it. The only thing that really helps me is to...fuck.”
“What kind of attack?”
“I was hiking with my husband,” Monica said flatly. “We’d gone into some unknown trails, stupid, I guess, but we thought it would be fun. Isn’t that how horror stories always start? We thought it would be fun at the time?”
“I don’t like horror stories.”
Monica laughed bitterly, then shrugged. “Something came out of the woods. Slashed at him. Knocked me out next, so I didn’t see what happened. It dragged him into a cave, where it killed him. It took
me next. I woke up next to his body. When it came back, I fought it and killed it.”
She said it matter-of-factly, not because the story didn’t move her emotionally, but because it was the story she’d told the police and the wildlife officers and everyone else, the same story so many times the words themselves came by rote. It was the only way she could tell that story without breaking down.
Monica rubbed her arms again, this time against the chill of gooseflesh that had risen there. The food in her belly shifted uncomfortably. She couldn’t look at him anymore.
“What was it?” Jordan asked.
She shook her head. “They said it was a bear.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
She did look at him then. Her chin went up. “I don’t know what it was. I never figured it out. But I knew it was something, not a bear. It had scales. It could see in the dark. It had claws...”
She shuddered and went silent.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Jordan said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“I’d been studying to become a vet. I decided to focus on figuring out exactly what sorts of thing could have done that to my husband. I’m going to figure out what did this to your animals, too.”
“But you still dream about it at night.”
She nodded.
Jordan took a step closer. He pulled her into his arms again, this time more gently. Her face pressed against his hot bare skin, and though he might’ve grumbled about needing a shower earlier, all Monica breathed in was warm male. She closed her eyes. His hand stroked over her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Jordan, typically, didn’t say anything. The steady thump of his heart beneath her cheek skipped a beat or so, though. His arms tightened around her.
After a minute, Monica pushed away. She cleared her throat. Jordan stepped back. They stared at each other.
“I need a shower,” he said finally. “But after that, if you want to come over so we can talk about what you think this thing out there is...”
