Savage Nature - Christine Feehan [34]
A single sound escaped. Penetrated his layer of sleep. Not her answering moan, not even a whimper of desire, but a soft whisper of movement. His eyes snapped open and he lay silent, with the taste of her in his mouth and his cat roaring. Something moved out on the lawn. He eased to his feet, conscious that other leopards heard as well as he did. Very carefully, he padded to the French doors on his balcony and opened them enough to allow his body to slip through.
Below him, the yard was mostly shadows, but with his night vision, he could easily make out Pauline Lafont moving around the yard in her bathrobe. She held a shotgun in one hand and a large trash bag in the other.he meticulously picked up every scrap of cloth from Drake’s shredded clothes as well as his shoes and socks. She took her time, making certain to remove every tiny string and thread.
He stayed motionless, knowing she couldn’t see him. She wasn’t leopard, he knew that, he would have scented her leopard. She’d been forthcoming with information about the seven families that leased lands in the swamp and he hadn’t scented one lie, but clearly, she was aware of the leopard fight. She must have heard the horrendous noise. Leopards in a fury weren’t quiet about their rage. She had a shotgun for protection, but she didn’t seem too frightened. A woman alone out in the middle of nowhere, far from help, with leopards fighting on her front lawn should have been terrified. Yet Pauline Lafont walked slowly around her property, meticulously removing all evidence of the battle.
She had to know about the shifters. Her family had lived in the area for a hundred years and obviously had lived beside the shifter families. They’d intermingled. She’d said her sister had married into one of the families—the Merciers. Was it possible her brother-in-law or a nephew had been present and she was destroying the evidence to cover up for them? It made sense. Family was family and no doubt they’d been protecting their own for hundreds of years—just as the lairs in the rain forest did.
Pauline shined her flashlight down in the trees where the fight had taken place. Two alligators, no doubt drawn by the scent of blood, slithered back into the water as the light hit them. She studied the splashes of blood before going back up to the house and retrieving a long hose. Again, she took her time, the shotgun in her fist as she sprayed down the areas where the battle had taken place. She was very thorough about it, obviously determined to remove all traces.
She methodically wound up the hose, picked up the garbage sack containing Drake’s clothes before she took one last look around, nodded her head in satisfaction and went back into the house. Drake nearly turned away to go back inside, but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone else had been observing Pauline. The shadowy figure was in the trees and the wind was blowing away from Drake so he couldn’t pick up a scent. His cat raised no alarm either, but there was no doubt something—someone—was in the tree just down at the water’s edge, closest to the dock.
Drake eased his muscles into a slow, loose stretch. Every wound pulled, reminding him stitches didn’t work well if he had to shift again. He kept his gaze riveted to the branch that had barely moved. It had gone quiet again. An alligator bellowed somewhere across the lake. The reeds shimmered like a wave. The leaves in the tree did the same. Whoever it was, he moved with the wind, inching his way down the tree to the ground.
The shadowy figure was smaller than he expected, crouching low, holding a rifle in one hand and a small case in the other. He reached under the balcony railing for the gun he’d taped there earlier. He was betting he was a better shot, but still, arrogance could get one killed. Had Robert Lanoux come back to finish the job? Robert was a large man with plenty of muscle. The figure crouching