He shook her. "It's just a ruin. Let's get our stuff and get out of here, like the man said."
But she couldn't do that. No way. Her mind raced. How could she— Oh, hell. "I need to talk to JT," she blurted.
She would do anything she could to save the sacred chamber where she had found the crystal skull. Even grovel to the one man she had ever come close to falling for . . . and who had dumped her flat when she'd told him so.
Chapter Three
JT's bungalow, which was a cross between a bunker and the jungle version of a bachelor pad, was surrounded by a twenty-foot-high stone wall topped with wickedly pointed chunks of jade and obsidian. The stones sparkled in the fading sunlight that glinted down through the gap that the walled compound made in the rain-forest canopy.
When the gates were closed, there was no getting inside.
They were closed.
Natalie's heart sank as she let the Jeep roll to a stop. She was going to have to get out and use the intercom panel. Let the groveling begin.
She hated this. But the villagers had agreed to give her an hour, and the clock was ticking.
A quick look assured her that the fireproof lockbox under the driver's seat was secure. After the run-in with the locals, she had locked the crystal skull away. She was dying to carry it with her, but she'd be devastated if she lost it. What was more, she didn't trust JT not to hand it over to the villagers if he thought that would settle things down. He had made it brutally clear that he had his life exactly the way he wanted it and didn't intend to do—or let her do—anything to upset that balance.
Well, what do you expect from a guy who's got FREEDOM inked in big letters on his forearm?
Her exes would probably appreciate the irony of her being on the receiving end of the "it's not you; it's me" letdown.
Embarrassment—it wasn't heartbreak despite what Javier thought—churned in her stomach as she headed for the touchpad next to the gate. Mildly resenting the fact that he'd never given her the code, she leaned on the buzzer, then stared up into the security camera, trying to fake a pleasant "let's just be friends" smile.
There was no response.
She didn't know which was worse, the thought that he wasn't home . . . or that he was.
After buzzing a second time, she hit the intercom. "JT? It's Natalie. This is business, okay? Not personal. Let me in."
Still nothing.
"Shit." Now what? She couldn't call him with the satellite transmissions on the fritz, which left . . . nothing. A chill skimmed through her at the knowledge that she was forty minutes away from losing the biggest find of her career, along with the first tangible link she had managed to uncover in nearly a decade of searching for something—anything—connected to the locket she had been found with as a baby. Frustration slapped through her, making her skin itch, but she reminded herself that she still had the skull. That was something, right? But the itches didn't subside.
She turned and headed back to the Jeep. She had made it halfway there when the background forest noise went silent. And she realized with sudden sickening clarity that the itch wasn't frustration after all. It was a warning!
The instincts she had been ignoring suddenly lashed at her, through her, bringing images of jaguars and the recent livestock kills in the area. She was a woman walking out alone, unarmed.
Stupid move, Nat. Her heart leaped into her throat as she lunged for the Jeep, and the weapon within it.
She was a few paces short of the vehicle when a dark blur erupted from the greenery and slammed into her, sending her crashing into the side of the Jeep and then down. High-pitched squeals battered her eardrums, making her head ring, and she screamed as a dark-furred, red-eyed creature leaned over her, its batlike face splitting into a three-cornered leer of moist, inhuman hunger that she had seen before, carved in stone.
Camazotz!
Instead of arms, it had elongated wings with tattered sails and wickedly barbed claws at the ends of the bony struts. Its dark brown, almost black skin was covered with patches of mismatching fur, and it smelled terrible, like a rotting animal carcass. The miasma brought tears, though not before she saw up close and personal that it was male, its long penis tipped with a leaflike flattening.
Panicked, she tried to worm her way under the Jeep, screaming, "Help me!"
A pair of claws hooked her arm, dragged her out. Pain slashed through her. Terror. Sobbing, she kicked at the creature, but caught only air as it hauled her upright, screeching almost above the level of her hearing.
Its mouth split wide, revealing a black cavern of a throat framed by long, curved teeth.
"Help!" Natalie thrashed against the creature's hold. She was all alone, in the middle of nowhere, JT wasn't home, and—
Automatic gunfire slammed out of the nearby forest and into the bat creature.
The bullets ripped into the thing's upper body, blowing back a spray of blackish blood and chunks. The creature reeled and dropped her. But incredibly, horribly, it spun toward the new threat as black ichor rained down from its wounds.
Seeing the flash of a weapon and the curve of a man's shoulder in the forest, Natalie scrambled up and screamed, "Kill it!"
"Get down!"
She flung herself flat as a heavy thump split the air and a fist-size missile caught the creature in the midsection and then detonated. Hot, oily black sprayed and the thing flew backward and went down in a limp mass.
"Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." Natalie lurched to her feet as her rescuer emerged from the rain forest, cradling a big double-barrell across his body.
On one level she recognized JT; she knew his voice, knew the way he moved. On another level, though, the man who stepped out of the shadows and into the fading sunlight was a stranger.
The JT she knew was clean shaven, well dressed, a strangely urbane oasis in the middle of the tropical wilderness. The JT who faced her now shared the same powerful five-ten frame, skull trim, and cool gray eyes. But he wore several days' worth of scruff and hard-used bush clothes, and his body was strung bandolier-style with an arsenal of weapons and ammo. He carried himself with the tough purpose of a soldier, moving on the soundless feet of a hunter. And he had just saved her ass.
He once told her the guns in his foyer were for hunting the occasional man-eater among the big cats in the area. Now she knew different.
"Chan camazotz," she whispered, the nickname the villagers used for him. Death-bat killer. She had thought it was a metaphor.
Apparently not.
His eyes were hard and hot, almost feral. "Did he get you?"
A harsh, ugly sob ripped itself from her chest. "That was . . . It was . . . Oh, JT!" She flung herself at him.