Altar Of Eden

“Wait until I’m back,” he said in a rush before she could hang up.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning.” She clicked the receiver down and fished out her cell phone. “Dr. Polk here.”

“Are you ready?” It was Jack. His brusque manner instantly set her on edge. She heard the familiar whine of a helicopter in the background.

“Of course I am.”

“Can you meet us at the dock behind the Audubon Zoo?”

“I can be there in fifteen minutes. What’s the plan?”

“We’ll pick you up by chopper. I have everyone gathering at Port Sulphur.”

She heard the tension in his voice, sensing something left unsaid. “What’s wrong?”

“We’ve had a sighting. Your cat attacked someone earlier. Out in the middle of the bayou. We found the body a few minutes ago, up in a tree, wrapped in Spanish moss. Skull was crushed, an arm ripped off.”

Lorna felt the breath knocked out of her. They were already too late.

Jack pressed. “One last time. My team can handle this on our own. There’s no reason for you to go.”

She stared again at the gun case in the hall. Jack was wrong. She now had two reasons. She still wanted to capture the cat alive, but its behavior now worried her, made her even more anxious to track it. The jaguar hadn’t holed up as she’d hoped. It was on the move-but to where?

“Jack, I’m going. Arguing will only cost us time. The faster we track this cat the fewer lives will be in danger.”

He sighed heavily over the line. “Be at the dock in fifteen. Not a minute later. Like you said, we’ve no time to waste.”

He hung up.

Lorna hurried to the front door. There would be no hot bath. She snatched her case and tugged open the front door. Already the sun had sunk to the horizon. It would be dark soon.

As she rushed down the front steps a trickle of doubt ran through her.

What am I doing?

Her brother’s concern, Jack’s warning… she had pushed them both aside, but their worries had taken root in her, found fertile ground. She was a veterinarian, not a big-game hunter.

Still, she didn’t stop moving. She headed for her brother’s Bronco parked at the curb. She had hesitated once before, let fear intimidate her, and it had cost a boy his life.

Not this time… and not ever again.

Chapter 12

As the sun began to set, the marine helicopter banked away from the Mississippi River and out over the small town of Port Sulphur. From the air, there was not much to distract Lorna from her mode of transportation. If she kept this up, she might even get used to air travel, but her sweaty palms and shallow breathing defied any such accommodation now.

To offset her fright, she concentrated on the passing landscape below, marking landmarks, estimating how long she had to remain airborne.

Below, Port Sulphur was easy to miss, covering less than six square miles, protected by a weathered and battered levee system. It had once been a rugged company town serving Freeport Sulphur, but in the nineties, after drilling and refinery operations had shut down, the town had begun a slow decline, waiting only for Katrina to write its epitaph. A twenty-two-foot wall of water had swept through the town, all but wiping the place away. Of the three thousand or so residents, only a small fraction had returned to their flooded homes.

If Lorna hadn’t been studying the world below with such anxiety, she might have missed the place. They were past the town in seconds and over water again-a wide shallow lake called Bay Lanaux. They began a fast descent. It had been a short flight, covering the forty miles as a crow flies from New Orleans in less than fifteen minutes. Short as it was, Lorna was still ready to get out of this bird.

Tense, she jumped slightly when Jack’s amplified voice cut into her headphones. He sat up front with the pilot. She shared the back with two other CBP agents. They had told her their names, but she had already forgotten, her mind too occupied with keeping the helicopter flying by sheer willpower.

“We’ll be taking a CBP boat into the canals south of the lake,” Jack explained. “The boat will act as the base of operations for this mission. Two smaller airboats will flank our path, canvassing the smaller byways and channels to either side. And in case they’re needed, we have a pair of canoes for tighter places.”

Lorna stared out at the gathered maritime force as the helicopter settled to its floats in the water. A second, larger helicopter lifted off from the lake. It had carried in more of Jack’s team, along with some local talent. The CBP boat nearby looked to be the same one from earlier, an Interceptor-class craft made for inland or ocean travel. A pair of smaller airboats circled farther out, propelled by their giant fans, whisking swiftly over the water.

After they landed, chaos ruled as men and weapons were ferried from chopper to boats. Reaching the aft deck of the CBP boat, Lorna found herself mostly in the way, tussled by big, rugged men smelling of cheap aftershave, leather, and gun oil. Rough voices barked around her or burst with laughter.

She moved to a quiet corner, away from the tornado of testosterone.

Nearby, a half-dozen men in dark green shirts and trousers-Jack’s Special Response Team-bustled about securing weapons: sidearms, shotguns, assault rifles. Night-vision goggles sat atop their helmets. No one was taking any chances.

Three other men dressed in hunting vests and jeans shared the back of the boat, but they kept to the other side, sitting atop overturned canoes. Lorna recognized the flat-bottomed dugouts to be Cajun pirogue. All three men-two black, one white-definitely had the rangy look of backwater Cajuns. One vaguely resembled Jack, maybe a relative. While dating Tommy, she had never met all of the Menard clan.

The final member sharing the boat came waltzing up, tongue lolling, tail wagging. It was a purebred bloodhound, but even the dog’s manner was cocky with a happy-go-lucky glint in his eyes that was pure Cajun.

“Burt,” she whispered to herself as memories of happier times swelled through her. She might not have met Tommy’s older brother, but she had been introduced to the family’s best hunting dog.

Jack had mentioned bringing a scent hound along for the hunt, but she never thought it would be Burt.

Glad for some friendly greeting, she knelt to accept the dog’s attention. He ambled up, shaking a bit of drool. She reached out a hand to scratch behind one of his impossibly long ears-but a sudden sharp shout froze them both.

“Burt! Git your butt back over here! Leave that bonne à rien alone.”

The dog glanced over his shoulder and dropped his tail. With a reluctant, almost apologetic glance at Lorna, Burt turned and returned to the trio by the canoes.