“I can’t see anything,” Juste reported. “We should get out of here.”
“They’re pinned down,” Jean snapped.
“They can get out the front of the house, and no doubt they’ve called in reinforcements. We’ll have helicopters looking for us,” Juste said, the voice of reason.
“I say we go to the house and put a bullet in their heads. I want to kill the whole damn family. Wipe them out. And then I’ll take my time with the women and beat them with my hands. It’s been too long since I’ve had that pleasure,” Jean said, and wiped his mouth as if the very thought made him drool in anticipation.
“You’re a sick son of a bitch,” Juste laughed, but his voice was strained. “Jean, we’ve got to go while we can. We’ll come back and kill them, but not now.”
The cat slipped through the brush until he was within striking distance. Smoldering intelligence shined in the focused stare. Remy’s leopard had marked his target. He would take the one in the tree, and Gage’s leopard, already moving into position, would go after the man already on the ground.
It was impossible to see either leopard. Gage’s spots helped him to blend into the vegetation easily, and Remy’s leopard had sunk so low to the ground and moved with astonishing nearly frozen, almost imperceptible increments that he blended even when he was slightly exposed. The leopards had great patience, waiting motionless, eyes and minds completely focused on their unsuspecting prey.
Inch by inch they crawled forward and then froze, belly to ground, stalking the hunters. Gage was so close to Juste he could have reached out and touched him. He waited for Remy to get into position. Jean was in the tree, lying in the crook of a branch, sniper rifle at the ready, aimed at the Inn. Remy would have to leap, using his superior weight and the force of his strike to knock Jean out of the tree and away from his rifle.
Jean glanced down at his brother, reluctance on his face. “This is such bullshit, Juste, they just got lucky.” He began to pull his rifle from where he had it steadied on the tree branch.
The leopard hit him with the force of a freight train right in the chest, knocking him backward out of the tree, breaking bones, the hot breath of death in his face as the cat followed him to the ground and landed on him, teeth sinking deep in his throat.
They stared at one another. Pitiless, golden-green eyes focused solely on Jean’s terrified, shocked brown ones. The leopard’s suffocating bite went deep as the cat clamped down relentlessly. Jean thrashed, hitting helplessly at the creature that held him so easily with teeth and claws.
Behind him and just in the corner of his vision, the spotted leopard had hit Juste from the side with the same ferocious and calculated intensity as the black leopard had Jean. He held Juste in the same suffocating bite. Jean had his head turned toward Juste, but already the light faded from his eyes.
The two leopards held their prey in unbreakable grips, waiting for the life force to leave the bodies. The moment the brothers were dead, the humans took back control, forcing their cats away from their prey. As they did, Lojos and Drake broke through the brush in human form. Both of them carried weapons.
Remy shifted, catching the pair of jeans Drake tossed him. Gage shifted and pulled on a pair of jeans his brother Lojos provided.
“We have to get rid of the bodies quickly, before anyone comes along,” Remy said. “Take them to that monster of an alligator’s hole. No one ever disturbs him and he’ll hide the evidence of leopard’s bites better than anything else. Break the gun down and toss it in his hole as well. If we’re very lucky, no one in our lifetime will find it.”
“Consider it done,” Lojos said. “We’ll take care of it.”
“We didn’t find the brothers, obviously,” Drake added. “But we did find another body.” He paused with a small sigh. “Unfortunately, both you and Bijou know him.”
18
REMY crouched down as close as he could to the bloody mess that was Bob Carson and looked him over carefully, pushing aside the fact that the body, stripped of life and dignity, so brutally tortured, had once been a man. He was nothing more than a carcass hung in the tree, like a deer carved for its meat. Only Carson had been carved for his bones.
Remy didn’t like the man. Carson had stalked Bijou for years—had probably entertained the idea of getting rid of her when she was an eight-year-old child so that he had a chance of inheriting Bodrie Breaux’s fortune. He’d tormented Bijou by keeping her in the tabloids, by feeding them so many misleading stories and headlines to photographs he manipulated into the worst possible lies in order to get money—and embarrass her.