James Rollins - Altar Of Eden

“Who? Where?”

“A kid in a boat. He took potshots at one of our search helicopters to get its attention.”

“Are you sure it’s our target?”

“Oh yeah. Described a big white cat with big teeth. Says the cat killed his father. We’ve got a search team looking for the body.”

Jack’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Did the boy see where the target was headed?”

“North, he thinks. Toward the Mississippi.”

“Where exactly was the boy found?”

“You got a map?”

“I can get one.”

Scott passed him the coordinates. After a few more instructions, Jack hung up and hurried over to where his brother stored a set of nautical charts in a cupboard near the back door. It was crammed full of fishing gear, tackle boxes, and all manner of hand-tied lures. He stabbed his thumb on a stray hook as he dug out a map of the delta.

With chart in hand, he pinched away the stubborn lure and wiped the blood on his shirt. He crossed to a table, unfolded the map, and used a pencil to mark the location where the boy in the boat was rescued-or as best he could with the old chart. A couple years of shifting sands and repeated flooding blurred the details of even the region’s best maps. Still he was also able to pick out the island where the trawler had gone aground. He drew a straight line between the shipwreck and where the boy was found.

The path aimed due north. The same direction the cat had been headed. Jack extended a dashed line north from the boy’s location. He ran it all the way until he reached the Mississippi. The line ended at the small river town named Port Sulphur. He marked an X on the map. He knew the town. It’d been almost entirely wiped out by Katrina. Some homes had been washed a hundred feet off their foundations.

Leaning back, Jack studied the map.

Randy pushed through the back door and joined him. “T-Bob and Peeyot just got here in their canoe.” He pointed to the X drawn on the map. “That where we’re going?”

“That’s where we’re starting. We’ll gather everyone in Port Sulphur and head south into the bayou.” He stared at the dotted line. The saber-toothed cat had to be hiding somewhere along that path.

“So what’s holding us up?” his brother asked and clapped him on the shoulder. “Laissez les bons temps router!”

Jack folded the map. Before he could follow his brother’s advice and “let the good times roll,” he had one more thing to do, to honor a grudging promise.

“I have someone to pick up first.”

Lorna never got back to raking her yard after the storm.

By the time she climbed the stone steps to her home in the Garden District, it was late. The sun hovered near the horizon, casting heavy shadows off the magnolias and towering oaks. Storm-swept leaves and crinkled blossoms formed a Jackson Pollock painting across her overgrown lawn, along with a few broken tiles blown from the roof. A dry stone fountain topped by a moss-frosted angel stood in the center of the yard.

She sighed at the sorry state of the family mansion.

Paint bubbled and peeled across the porch. Its Italianate columns were chipped. Even the carved mahogany front door took an extra hard tug to pull it open, its frame warped from a century of passing seasons.

She struggled with the door now and fought it open. The house was dark. Her brother was troubleshooting a problem at an offshore oil platform in the Gulf. He wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

Just as well.

She flipped on the entryway light. A wooden staircase rose on the right side and climbed to a second-story landing and from there up to the third-story level. Overhead, a massive chandelier imported from an eighteenth-century French chateau hung down through the stairwell. Half the bulbs were dark. It took a feat of engineering to change the bulbs and polish the crystals.

She dropped the heavy case she was carrying by the door, wondering if she had time to draw a hot bath. Back at ACRES, she had changed out of her scrubs and back into her worn jeans and shirt. She longed to shed the soiled clothes and run the hottest bath the old water heater could manage. Maybe with bubbles and a single glass of Chardonnay. A girl could dream.

It would be a long night, and tomorrow would be a busy day at ACRES. She had done all she could there for now. Critical tests were still processing and wouldn’t be finished until the morning. She was especially interested in the DNA analysis of the extra pair of chromosomes shared by all the recovered animals. Who had been performing these experiments and why? Answers could lie in the genetic codes of those strange chromosomes.

Before she could reach the stairs a phone jangled from deeper in the house. She hurried across the entryway to a hall table. It must be Jack, though she was surprised he wasn’t calling her cell phone. Her heart beat faster, anxious to hear about the plans for tonight’s hunt. But as she lifted the phone her heart sank-more than it should have-when she heard her younger brother’s voice. It was Kyle, calling from the oil platform.

“Lorna, just checkin’ in. Making sure the house is still standing.”

“At the moment it is. Can’t promise anything beyond that.”

Her brother chuckled. He must be bored. As usual, they spoke more on the phone than at the house. When together, they tried to maintain a measure of privacy for each other, which wasn’t hard in a home with seven bedrooms and five baths.

“I left a message earlier,” Kyle said. “Figured you must’ve been called into work. Didn’t want to bother you there.”

“You could’ve called. Though it’s been a crazy day.” She gave him a thumbnail version of what had happened.

“Christ, that’s really odd.”

“I know. We’re still doing some lab tests-”

“No, I meant that Jack Menard called you into the investigation. That must have been uncomfortable.”

She took a moment to respond. Uncomfortable was a pale description of the storm of emotions that had run through her: guilt, sorrow, shame, anger, and something deeper, something hidden but shared between them. She pictured Jack’s storm-gray eyes, the way his stare seemed to strip her to the bone. Not even her little brother knew the truth about that bloody night.

“At least you’re done with him now,” Kyle said.

She found her voice again, but only a shadow of it. “That’s not exactly true. I’m going to help him search for the escaped jaguar.”

“What do you mean by help? To offer professional advice?”

“That, and I’m going with him on the hunt tonight.”

Stunned silence followed, then a hard outburst. “Are you plumb nuts? Why?”

She glanced back at the black case by the door. It held a disassembled tranquilizer rifle. “I want to make sure we capture the cat alive.”

“Screw the cat. You’re going into the swamp with a member of a family that would just as soon feed you to a gator.”

She couldn’t explain why she had nothing to fear from Jack. “I’ll be fine. It 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.