Free Altar of Eden by James Rollins Page B

won’t be just the two of us. There’ll be a whole search team. There’s nothing to worry about.”
    “Don’t go, Lorna. Or at least wait until I’m back tomorrow. I can come with you then.”
    “No. Jaguars are nocturnal. She’ll be hunting tonight. It’s our best chance to catch her before anyone else is killed.”
    “Lorna—”
    Her phone chimed in her pocket. “I’ve got another call.”
    “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