Panther On The Prowl

Rennie drew in a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, John. You have no idea what this means to me.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” he warned. “It can get pretty lonely out here. In a few days you just might change your mind and run screaming back to civilization.”

It wasn’t civilization she needed right now. It was peace and quiet and a safe place in which to heal not only her sightless eyes but her bruised emotions as well. It wasn’t easy finding things out about yourself that you didn’t like, and Rennie was no exception. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she said. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”

“I have my work to do. I’ll be gone most of the day…” There was a pause, almost imperceptible except to someone whose hearing was already sharper to compensate for what her eyes could not see, and then he added “…and the night.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a biologist with the Everglades Research Center.”

“What do you research?” She was desperately tired and struggling to stay awake, but a part of her wanted to know…needed to know…more about the man in whose care she was entrusting herself. He could have been an ax murderer, for all she knew. But there was nothing sinister in the air around him, no hint of danger or violence. And except for that unsettling scent that hovered about him, of something wild and unforgiving, she felt no menace from him.

“I study the ecosystem of the swamp and monitor the animal population.”

“At night?” she questioned.

“There are creatures that live in the swamp that come out only at night.”

“Creatures?”

“Don’t worry. They won’t bother you here.”

Rennie didn’t share his confidence. “Are we near anything? A town or a village?”

“There’s nothing for miles.”

That would account for the acute loneliness that seemed to pervade every corner of the room. The secluded place, made even more secret by her sightlessness, made Rennie feel lost.

“You live here all by yourself?”

“Yes.”

The deep, single-word reply made her shiver. What kind of man shunned the company of others, preferring to live among the creatures of the swamp? What caused that alienating tone in his voice? Why did she sense that, despite the invitation, she was not welcome?

A part of her didn’t want to know. And maybe none of that mattered. She was safe, for the time being at least, and that’s what was important to her. Later, when she could think more clearly, she would decide what to do. Later, when her sight was restored and she could see the face of the man whose very essence was in the air she breathed.

Her exhausted mind battled to stay awake as her head grew heavy. “What if—” The words, almost too unbearable to utter, emerged as a choked whisper. “What if my sight doesn’t return?”

The wooden planks beneath his feet squeaked when he stood up and walked away. “There are no guarantees in life.”

There was no harshness in his voice, only a ring of hopeless resignation, as if he knew firsthand about there being no guarantees in life, and Rennie could not help but wonder what it was that had wrung all the hope out of him.

She felt herself growing drowsy. Her own voice sounded far off, her words as if she’d had too much to drink. “What did you put in that tea?”

“Something to make you sleep.”

She smiled weakly. “An old Indian remedy?”

“Nothing you can’t buy at a health food store.”

He was annoyed, but she was neither worried nor frightened. For one thing she was feeling far too light-headed to entertain any dangerous notions about him. For another, even in her muddled state something told her that beneath the annoyance and unfriendly tone beat the heart of a kind man. Why would he bother to help her if he were not good-hearted? The undercurrent of wildness she had initially perceived about him must have been the workings of a weak and vulnerable imagination.

The protective arms of sleep wrapped around her, drawing her to its breast as it whispered words of gentle comfort into her ear. She tried hard to concentrate on what it was saying and was surprised to find that it wasn’t words at all. It was a sound, an easy shhh somewhere beyond these walls.

In a small voice that hovered midway between conscious thought and dream, she breathed, “That sound. What’s that sound?”

“That’s the saw grass,” he said. “A river of grass swaying in the breeze.” His voice was low with reflection from across the room. “Sometimes I can sit and listen to it for hours. If you wade into it and look down, you can see the water moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, past your feet. So gradually it makes you wonder whether we move through life or life moves past us.”

But Rennie wasn’t listening. She was asleep, lulled into slumber by the effect of the tea, the shhh of the saw grass, and John Panther’s hypnotic, regretful voice.

Chapter 2

With a weary gesture John Panther swept back an unruly lock of black hair that fell from his forehead as he gazed out the small-paned window into the fading light of dusk.

The air outside was filled with familiar sounds. Alligators prowling among the aquatic plants. A mad flapping of wings as a flock of great blue herons took to flight. The croakings of the frogs. The coocooings of the doves. All were as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice.

A mosquito buzzed maddeningly at his ear. He swatted it away. Beneath his breath he grumbled at the persistence of the pesky insect, yet he accepted its right to be there just as he accepted everything else about the Everglades, as natural, necessary ingredients.

He loved this place like no other. The soft, squishy land, the creatures that lived in the mangrove forests and swam in the still, shallow water, the grass, as sharp as saw blades, swaying hypnotically in the breeze, the sky, so endless and unfettered there was room for a whole month of sunsets in a single evening such as this.

If the mosquitoes had not been so thick and the land so soggy, the white men who came here would have split the mahogany hammocks for lumber and turned the mangrove forests into fertilizer and cattle feed long ago. Resort hotels would now stud the wild beaches. The land he loved would have been drained and subdivided and carved into lots, and he would not be standing here now looking out at its ferocious beauty with as much awe as if he were seeing it for the very first time.

The land itself was as flat as a Kansas wheatfield, but what to some was monotonous, John found hypnotic. It was what drew him to the window at just about this time each day, when it was neither light nor dark, when the world seemed to hover in a sort of limbo where there was no past to haunt him and no future to look forward to, when the sky was ablaze with color and all that mattered was the moment and the land. This was country that had to be understood. It was a wild, unforgiving place inhabited by dangerous, venomous creatures. And the most dangerous of all was the one that looked back at him in the clear glass.

With unerring predictability his thoughts drifted back to the past. It was crazy, he knew. After all, he wasn’t responsible for Maggie’s death. At least not in any court of law, tribal or otherwise. Nevertheless, he had tried, convicted and sentenced himself in his own heart.

He heaved a ragged sigh at the cruel irony. Whoever would have guessed how things would turn out? How, in a heartbeat, something could go so terribly wrong and change your life forever?

Sometimes, when the night was still and he lay awake on his bed of moss, he could still hear her laughter…and her screams.

Seminole women were encouraged from birth to be independent because the culture demanded survival skills, and Maggie certainly was that. Over her parents’ objections she spent two years at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe studying painting and sculpture. She returned to the Big Cypress Reservation to wait tables in order to earn enough money to enroll in an art school in San Francisco. She was working in a little luncheonette off State Road 7 when he walked in one day.

Maybe it was because she was Seminole that made the difference for him. She had no notion of him slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her off, the way the white women he had dated typically did. He was no savage. At least not in the way they thought he was, because he was Indian. If anything, being Indian only tempered his spirit and gave him a sense of his own place in the world and an acceptance of and reverence for the things around him. Being a loner at heart only added to the stereotyping and had made not dating easy. Until Maggie.

Maggie laughed at the white world’s idea of what it was to be Indian. She knew there was nothing savage about him. These days, whatever fierceness he possessed was born out of tragedy, the kind that wounds so deeply it turns a soft heart into a hard one. He wondered if Maggie would even recognize him now.

He never asked her to give up her dream of going to San Francisco. She did so willingly. And together they planned a new dream for the future. She continued to wait tables while he studied for his master’s degree. When he landed a job with the Everglades Research Center, she quit her job at the luncheonette to concentrate on painting and sculpting.

Having been born in a chickee made of cypress wood and palmetto leaves, like most of his people, John didn’t expect much from a world that was decidedly white and hostile. But a hundred years of white influence could not eradicate the one thing he was above all else. Seminole. In his Indian soul he had no wish to be any different or better than he was. He merely wished to be. Working in his own backyard among the creatures and cattails of the swamp, returning home to the reservation each night to be with his wife, was more than he could ever have hoped for. But happiness, like hope, was shortlived, and all because he killed a panther and was unable to come to terms with it.

He’d been tracking the big male cat for weeks, hoping to collar it and monitor its movements through the swamp to determine what was causing a decline in the population of the Florida panther. But the cat only came out at night, seeming to disappear into thin air during the day, the morning rains that were so common in the Everglades washing away its tracks.

One night, camped in a cypress hammock, he heard a rustling in the tall grass. In the next moment the panther was on him, claws ripping through his jeans and leaving a ridge of scars on his thigh. He managed to grab his knife and kill the panther, only to discover later that he’d killed a female.

Sick with guilt, he returned home, only to awaken later that night to Maggie’s screams. A male panther had tracked him to the reservation, and with almost human vengeance, killed his mate just as John had killed the panther’s mate.

Outsiders might have questioned the existence of a creature as smart and vindictive as a human, but in the Seminole world in which he was raised, he learned about the legend of the panther that the old ones told, and he knew how such a thing could be.

There was, they said, a long time ago, a proud and vain Seminole warrior who killed a panther while hunting in the swamp. In his arrogance, the warrior didn’t say a prayer to the Spirit Being for taking the life of one of its children. Angered, the Spirit Being condemned the warrior to wander the earth for all time by day as a man, by night as a panther.

The legend struck a particularly painful chord inside of John. Could it be that the panther he’d been hunting was the one the old ones spoke of? That would explain the clever way the beast eluded him. Some would say he was crazy to even think it, but deep in his Seminole heart, John wasn’t so sure. His curiosity was almost as great as his thirst for vengeance. But if myths and legends were supposed to teach us about ourselves, what was it teaching him about himself? Could it be that he was doomed by fate to follow the same crazy path as the legend, wandering around by day emotionally cut off from the rest of the world, at night adrift in his grief and alone? If there was any lesson to be learned from it all, it had to do with the part he played in a cycle of vengeance begun by some ancient warrior and which lived on inside of him.

Why couldn’t he have left the panther alone instead of tracking it relentlessly? Was it the panther that caused Maggie’s death, or was it really he himself for tampering with a greater plan and not leaving well enough alone? A year and a half later the questions remained unanswered. All that was left was the guilt, and an overriding vengeance for the panther. Yet as much as he hated the panther, that was as much as he blamed himself. For him, the only way to get past the sickening guilt was to kill the panther. It didn’t matter if it made any sense. It was just the way it was.

In the distance through a break in the trees the sun was slowly sinking into the gulf. Fiery patches of orange and purple burst across the sky as if shot from cannons. It was the most beautiful and terrible time of the day, for soon it would be dark and the memories would come flooding back as they did every night. Sometimes just the sheer anticipation of it was more than he could bear.

Tonight, however, in addition to the dark glimpses into the past, there was something else John was remembering, something he wished he could forget. He turned his head away from the spectacle of the setting sun and his own image in the windows that filled him with disgust, and looked at the woman sleeping in his bed.

For three days she lay unconscious, like a beautiful star that literally fell from the sky, while he stared at her and remembered, to his intense dismay, what it was like to want a woman.

Why did the frog hunter have to bring her here to him? Why did he have to feel things just from looking at her that he thought were dead inside of him?

Even with bandages wrapped around her eyes, she was beautiful. Her tawny hair sparkled in the buttery light that penetrated the thick cypress branches. Her skin, paled by her ordeal, glowed iridescently. Her sightless blue eyes had beamed out blinding quantities of light when he had applied fresh bandages, taking his breath away unexpectedly.

Her clothes were torn and scorched, but obviously expensive. Her hands were smooth-skinned and soft, bearing none of the calluses that scarred the palms of hardworking Seminole women. Her voice, weakened by the trauma and lulled by the infusion he’d given her, sounded different from any voice he’d ever heard. In it he could hear the culture and refinement that told him she was from a world very different from his.

She was running away from something, of that he was certain. But he wouldn’t press her to reveal what it was. Who knew better than he did what it was like to run from something? He could not help but wonder as he watched her sleep how safe she would feel in his care if she knew that he had not been able to keep Maggie safe and the awful shame he carried over it.

Growing up in the company of alligators and os-preys did little to prepare John for the unexpected and unwelcome company of a pampered socialite, which seemed to be what she was. Hell, he didn’t know anyone who flew their own plane. Again he reproached himself for the weakness in him that had him agreeing to let her stay. He hadn’t known he possessed such weakness, having worked so hard to harden his heart, until she’d asked, and he’d looked at her beautiful, pale face and heard her quivering voice and found himself acquiescing.

Maggie’s death had driven him behind a defensive wall that showed dangerous signs of cracking with Rennie’s intrusion in his life. His all-too-human heart longed for a woman’s love, but a deeper, more primal part of him knew how dangerous it would be for him to love any woman. Look at what had happened to the last woman he loved.

Well, he’d made the offer, now he would have to live with it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. He would be gone most of the day. He’d ask Willie Cypress to look in on her. Willie didn’t hunt frogs until night, and it was the least the old man could do to make up for dumping this trouble in his lap. At night he’d be gone, too, roaming beneath the stars as he did every night, following a primal instinct for revenge deep into the swamp and into the depths of his own soul.

He wondered if someone like Rennie could ever understand the obsession he had to wander the swamp at night in search of some peace for his battered soul. Being a woman, would she see it as some irrational male thing?

He told himself that his attraction to her was hormonal. Beauty and vulnerability. What man could resist such a lethal combination? It brought out a crazy notion to protect her, although the only thing to protect her from out here was himself. And the best way to protect her from himself was to not get involved, which was really a laugh considering that he was in it up to his eyeballs.

John left his place by the window and crossed the room, his feet brushing the cypress planks with a noiselessness that came from years of tracking animals through the swamp. For many long moments he stared down at her. The brew he had given her would make her sleep through the night. Beyond the window some voiceless thing beckoned to him. Come. Hurry. The moon rises and it’s time to go hunting. If he left now, he would be back by sunrise and she would never know the difference.

But he didn’t move, not while there was still a sliver of daylight left and it fell so bewitchingly upon her face. Not while he was caught up in remembering what it was like to hold a woman’s soft body in his arms and feel her breath against his neck.

For just that moment the memory did not hurt. Instead, it gave him a feeling of undisciplined delight just to feel it again and to realize that he was human after all.

Chapter 3

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t suspect a thing. The wedding is in two months. If she finds out after that, I’ll handle it, but for now there’s too much riding on this marriage for anything to go wrong. That piece of prime coastal real estate is worth marrying a woman I don’t love.”

The words haunted Rennie even now as she tossed and turned in a sleep from which there was no waking.

She would never forget the look on Craig’s face as he talked on the telephone. She’d seen that look before—cold, inscrutable, wickedly determined—the night they met at a fund-raiser for the senator, when he asked her out and she declined, explaining that she had a faculty meeting to attend. His eyes had gone all cold and distant, and it was impossible to tell what he’d been thinking. In the next moment the chilling expression was gone, replaced by a smile friendly enough to charm a cobra. He’d asked her out for another night, making it clear that he would not take no for an answer.

She should have gotten an idea then of the lengths he would go to, to get what he wanted. A successful land developer like Craig Wolfson didn’t get where he was by letting opportunities slip by. At the time she was flattered to think that what he wanted was her.

He liked to boast that one of the advantages of being rich was possessing things that most people could not, like the expensive and illegal Cuban cigar he extracted from a silver-inlaid case and placed between his lips as he spoke. Even now, as she lay upon John Panther’s bed in the middle of the Everglades, her nose wrinkled at the awful smell of the cigar, and she shivered at the words that had been delivered like a slap across her face.

But as she had stood in the doorway, her shock turned slowly to outrage, and then to anger, raw and hot. She stormed into the room, her face white with fury, and broke off the engagement. She had no memory of taking the private elevator downstairs to the lobby, or of the doorman who held the door for her and wished her a good evening. All she could think about was the cold certainty with which he had assured her that the wedding would take place as she fled in tears.

Why hadn’t she noticed his condescending attitude before? Or that little smirk that she mistook for a smile? She had such little experience with love, how was she to know that she had been fooled by a clever manipulator?

The senator would be furious, of course, when he learned of the broken engagement. He’d been eager for the opportunity to combine his interests with those of Wolfson Industries. Hopefully, he would see things differently when he found out what a scoundrel Craig really was. She had to get word to him that she was all right without arousing his suspicions. She shuddered to think that Craig probably already had manpower at work to find her. Oh, God, what a mess.

She lay there, not daring to move, as if the slightest movement would signal her presence to the outside world. She could tell by the warm breeze that wafted through the air that it was light outside. Daylight had always brought a sense of reassurance. When she’d been a little girl afraid of the dark, her father’s soothing voice had calmed her fears. Then one day it was gone, the voice, the stroke of his finger across her cheek, the tender kiss on her forehead. After that, the only thing that made her feel safe was daybreak, telling her that she had made it through another dark and lonely night.

It was easier to face things in the light of day, but for Rennie there was no light beyond the swath of bandages. Locked in her blindness, the awful memories seemed only that much more real.

The powerful effect of the infusion that John gave her last night had worn off sometime before daybreak. But now, no longer lulled into a state of painlessness, she was acutely aware of every ache in every muscle. Even the mere act of breathing hurt.

“Can I get you more tea?”

She didn’t know he was there until he spoke in that deep, regretful voice. The air in the room was suddenly filled with him. How long had he been there, waiting in silence for her to surface? Could he read her thoughts as easily as he read her pain?

She turned her head toward him. In a ragged, untested voice, she said, “Maybe later. What time is it?”

“A little past three. Are you hungry?”

“I’d forgotten there was any such thing as food.”

“You should eat something if you want more tea later. That infusion can be rough on an empty stomach. Yesterday you were too out of it to notice.”

Rennie struggled to recall yesterday. God only knew how utterly pitiful she must have seemed to him. Too embarrassed to ask what she might have done or said, she stammered, “Was I— Did I—”

“You didn’t reveal anything I shouldn’t know. So…do you want some soup? I have chicken noodle, tomato and minestrone.”

“I thought you said we were out in the middle of nowhere.”

“We are. Why?”

“I guess I’m just surprised that you can cook.”

“Because I’m a man or because I’m an Indian?”

“Neither. I just didn’t think there was any electricity.”

The edge in his voice softened. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat like that. You learn pretty fast about preconceived notions when you’re Indian.”

Rennie sat up in bed, wincing from the pain. “It must be like growing up wealthy. You never know who loves you for yourself or for your money.” She realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud and glanced away, muttering, “Or so I’ve heard.”

The examples were different but the underlying emotions were the same, and it made John uncomfortable to think that there existed something like that in common between them.

“There’s a generator out back,” he said.

“In that case, I’ll have the chicken noodle. It’s my favorite.”

He frowned as he walked to the kitchen. It was another thing they had in common, not that there weren’t a million other people with the same taste in canned soup. Still, it made not liking her that much harder.

From the other room Rennie ventured, “You asked if there was anyone I want to contact.”

He forced the cylinder of soup from the can into a saucepan. “Is there?”

“Yes. But I’m afraid my cell phone is buried beneath the wreckage. Do you have a telephone I can use?”