Читать книгу Bound By The Night - Меган Харт - Страница 15

Chapter 6

As much as Jordan might have loved to take care of everything all by himself simply so he didn’t have to deal with other people, there was no way he could possibly manage to feed and clean the habitats of every animal in DiNero’s menagerie. Not even if he worked twenty-four hours a day. That was why he had a small rotating staff of three workers who took care of the daily care under his charge, while he spent his days visiting each habitat to be sure the animals were safe, healthy and as happy as they could be in captivity.

The woman was supposed to be with him again today on his rounds. He didn’t need her advice on how to keep his animals safe, he thought sourly, just some thoughts on what the hell was continuing to break through and attack them. So far, all she’d done was toss a lot of stupid theories at him. Nothing he could actually work with. Besides that, she hadn’t shown up this morning, not a call, not a note, nothing.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the taste of her.

He was hard now, thinking of it, and that pissed him off, too. For Jordan, sex over the past few years had been relegated to an occasional one-night stand when he traveled into New Orleans. He favored tourists, women in sundresses and wedge sandals, drunk on hurricanes. The ones who were shy or claimed to be, at least until he cut them from the pack of their squealy girlfriends and took them back to the small, barely furnished flat he kept just off Bourbon Street. Anonymous, brief, nothing but two bodies—or three, and once four—writhing and grinding until there was nothing but pure mindless pleasure. It was something he did with strangers, some who never even thought to ask his name. It was not something he did with women he ever expected to see again.

But he’d had sex with Monica last night, and he wanted to see her again.

By the time lunch had come and gone, Jordan had made his rounds. He checked in on the staff congregating in the small common room outside his office but didn’t linger, even though today was Peter’s birthday and Karen had brought a cake. Instead, Jordan headed for the perimeter wall, intending to walk the entire length of it to look for any breaks or to repair any damage. Also to check for any signs that the thing attacking the animals had returned. He’d made it all the way beyond the empty tiger habitat when the light scent of feminine soap lilted to him along the breeze. His nostrils flared, but he didn’t turn. He could hear her and smell her. That didn’t mean he needed to acknowledge her.

“Hey,” Monica said from behind him. “Sorry I missed you this morning. I totally overslept. I never do that.”

Jordan had been looking carefully over one of the spots that had been damaged to make sure the repairs were holding. He glanced over his shoulder. “No problem.”

She stepped up closer, moving beside him. She pointed. “It came through here originally?”

“We found two holes in the outside wall after the first attack. Both broke all the way through, but this was the biggest, and neither one was big enough to get anything through. Even if it could squeeze, you can’t squeeze a tiger. The barbed wire—” he gestured along the top of the wall “—had been completely torn away. Whatever it was tried to make it through, and when it couldn’t, it went over the top.”

“Any signs of blood here? Like something had cut itself?”

He gave her a flat look. “There was blood everywhere. Whatever it was came in and dragged away a full-grown tiger.”

“There are a few things that could do that.” Without looking at him, Monica moved closer to the wall to run her fingers along the patched section, then took a step back to look upward. “The other hole was smaller than this one?”

“Yeah. I can show you.”

Wasn’t she going to mention anything about the night before? Was she not going to say a word? She’d come on to him like a freight train, and now she was going to pretend it had never happened?

Fine.

He took her there and watched as she studied the repaired spot. She pulled out her phone, took a few photos. Tapped some notes.

“So,” he said, unable to stop himself. “What do you think it is?”

Monica looked up. “I’m still not sure. I came here convinced I was looking for a new breed of chupacabra or something similar, but now I’m thinking this is something else entirely.”

Jordan snorted. Monica’s brows rose. He shrugged.

“Is it really so hard for you to believe in the unknown?” She put a hand on her hip and gave him a hard look he thought was meant to shame him.

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.”