Night Hunter Read Free Page A

the head protection he’d strapped himself into.
    “Thunder.”
    He breathed through his mouth to lessen the impact of the swamp’s stench and fight a touch of panic, then gave himself the task, not of determining where the “sound” had come from, but of finding his way out. He couldn’t have gone very far. Shouldn’t he hear highway sounds, glimpse open space beyond the living fence that held him prisoner? He wanted to be back on his motorcycle and changing leads with the woman.
    Something warm and wet slid between his toes. He wore no boots. Like the helmet and wallet, they’d been stolen from him.
    A wistful whisper distracted him from unanswerable questions. It seemed to be human.
    The woman in the car? The one he’d known would spread her legs and beg him to spear her.
    “Where are you?” he bellowed. The cry had nothing to do with the need for sex and everything to do with survival.
    “Thunder.”
    Steeling himself against the whisper, he commanded himself to focus on the woman who represented a sane and orderly world. He’d long had a certain power over the female sex—animal magnetism his brother had called it—but until now he’d only used that indefinable something to get them into his bed. Now mentally reaching her might save his life. He had no choice but to try.
    “I’m here. Waiting for you. You can’t fight it. Don’t even try.”
    Barely daring to breathe, he waited a moment. He had no idea whether his thoughts had reached her, but if they had, he needed to give her more.
    “Become animal—an animal in need.
    “Find me. Let me satisfy that need.
    “Find me!”
    Trying to project his thoughts over God knew how many miles exhausted him. Either she heard his plea and command or she didn’t. Right now he had to make order out of insanity.
    Somehow.
     
    Mala held her breath and willed what had caught her attention to repeat itself, but it didn’t. She was forced to admit she must have imagined she’d heard a human voice. She could wait for him to reappear, at which time she’d offer him the shelter of her car and maybe a hell of a lot more. What made more sense was to go after help. That option would hold more water—an unfunny cliché given the weather and circumstances—if she hadn’t been halfway between two very distant points of civilization. The final alternative was to take courage in hand and plunge in after a man who might be injured and at the mercy of both the elements and his injuries.
    Hurt? She hated the thought, and yet if he was, she could minister to him. She again tried to leave the manmade footing. As before, she immediately bogged down. Even if she managed to make her way into the growth, she couldn’t cover more than a few hard-won inches at a time. As she extracted her sandal from the muck, another unsettling thought occurred to her. The motorcycle’s forward motion had taken the man into the jungle, but he wouldn’t have gone very far before the jungle stopped the machine. Still, she couldn’t see or hear him. If she took off after him, how long would it take for her to become lost?
    She didn’t want to think about that happening to the man, but the image of him wandering aimlessly among endless trees and moss and swamps and grasses with the rain a waterfall took hold. Was it possible for a person to become so disoriented within a stone’s throw of a highway that he’d never find his way out?
    Of course not!
    Probably not.
    “Can you hear me? Answer me! Damn it, answer me!”
    Nothing.
     
    It wasn’t until she’d traveled close to twenty miles that Mala spotted a highway patrol vehicle pulling away from a viewpoint. By then, the rain had slackened enough that her wipers were equal to their task. As she jumped out of her car, she gave a quick thought to how bedraggled she must look, but it didn’t matter. Only rescuing the man who’d turned her world and body on end did.
    “Where did you say he left the road?” the too-young officer asked in