Night of the Panther Read online

  She moved beneath him, her hips bumping the inside of his thighs. “Can I get up now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, but he didn’t move. He’d suddenly become aware of the shape of her body beneath his, the warmth. He could feel the deepening beat of her heart and the thrust of her breasts against his bare chest. As more and more signals began to fire in his brain, he realized the arm he was holding her down with was pressed against the side of her breast, nestled into its melting fullness. At that moment nothing on God’s earth could have induced him to move.

  He told himself to get up, to break the physical connection before it was too late. If he’d meant to scare her, he’d done it. If he’d meant to teach her an object lesson, he’d done that too. She would never creep up behind him again. There was no reason in hell for him to keep her pinned to the ground underneath him. No reason except that he wanted her that way.

  He wondered angrily how she could be so beautiful when she was such a mess. Twigs and leaves were caught in her hair, and soil smudged her face. But he was as drawn to her dishevelment now as he had been to her dreamy perfection years ago. His heart began to thud noticeably. He wanted to taste the sooty marks near her chin, the dirt on her lips. He wanted to kiss her until they both forgot who they were and where they were.

  “Johnny?” she said as he bent toward her.

  He caught himself a second before their lips met, caught himself like a drunk about to fall off the wagon. He cursed, his voice edged with disbelief. “This is no way to be climbing a mountain.”

  She flushed and moved beneath him again. “I’ve never had a conversation at knife-point either. Except with you.”

  He glanced at the weapon in his hand, heaved a sigh, and stuck the blade in the ground.

  “Are you going to let me up now?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered, quite truthfully.

  She smelled subtly of violets, moss, and river mists. He might have been picking up the scents around him and attributing them to her, except that he remembered those same scents from their youth. She had always smelled that way. And the river had always been her favorite place for secret meetings.

  Memories began to filter through his consciousness, glimmers of their walks by the water’s edge, the creaky wooden footbridge they’d once braved, the calico kitten they’d rescued from a sycamore tree. Honor had wanted to keep the kitten, but her father wouldn’t permit it.

  “You were a strange kid,” he said, knowing better that to open up their past to conversation. “You always insisted on taking off your shoes and wading in the river as if it were some kind of ritual. Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Probably the same reason you were always skipping stones across the water.”

  “But I had a good reason for skipping stones. I was into intellectual pursuits.”

  She began to laugh, and the sound of it was so infectious, he found himself smiling. She searched his face with her eyes, as if she were trying to remember what had gone wrong between them. “How I missed you after you left,” she said suddenly, her voice full of heartache. “I couldn’t talk to anyone but you. No one understood.”

  He felt as if she’d taken his own knife and pierced him through the heart with it. No one understood. She could have stolen those words from some dark, mangled place inside of him. As a kid, he’d fantasized that he and Honor were exactly alike except for the shade of their skin, that they shared the same pain and fears. Two misfits, two kindred souls. It was a simple thing, pure. They were friends. She understood him, and she was the only one who ever had. That was what made what she’d done so damn unbearable, so unforgivable.

  The pain inside him twisted like a serrated blade, turning in the most tender part of his heart. It was beyond his ability to control, or to endure. With a harsh sound he pushed away from her and sprang to his feet. He wrenched his knife from the ground, and not knowing what else to do, he fired it at the nearest tree, grimacing as it stuck fast.

  If she’d meant to give him an object lesson, she had. This was why he couldn’t dwell in the past, why he couldn’t let himself get close to her. Why he shouldn’t even be on the same mountain with her!

  “My test isn’t this mountain,” he said. “It’s you. Honor. My grandfather sent you because he knew if anything could defeat me, it would be you. Like some demented sorcerer, that old man reached into the darkest part of my soul and pulled out my worst nightmare.”

  He walked to the tree and freed the knife, sheathing it in the buckskin cuff of his moccasin. “Now I’m going to climb this mountain,” he said savagely. “And I don’t give a damn what you do, as long as you stay out of my way. If you cross my path again, you’ll be crying bitter tears.”

  Honor pushed to her elbow and watched him start up the forested incline. Bastard, she thought, choking off a throaty sob. Anger churned inside her, the heat of it overriding all her other emotions, even her fear of him. Every time their past came into the conversation, he turned into a snarling beast. But she hadn’t brought it up this time, he had!

  She struggled to her feet, dusted off the blue chintz camp dress she’d altered, and started up the same rise he’d taken. Her movements were stiff, her gait awkward from aching muscles and the sting of abrasions. She was bruised and scraped from being knocked to the ground, but she wasn’t going back to camp and lick her wounds like a whipped dog. That was an option she wouldn’t even consider.

  The outrage simmering inside her had been building for days. She was damn tired of being threatened with knives, insulted on a regular basis, and blamed for everything that had ever happened in Johnny’s miserable life. She was more than willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, but he couldn’t even discuss the situation rationally.

  She continued climbing, shoving away the branches that snagged at her clothing as she tried to find her way back to the creek. To hell with him, she thought. Despite what he might think, the mountain was plenty big enough for both of them, and she intended to climb it too. It wasn’t just about proving to him that she could do it, although she wanted that satisfaction badly. It was a personal thing, she realized, an inner call to arms, as if she were mobilizing to do battle with her own fears and insecurities.

  She didn’t question the wisdom of a woman in her unremarkable physical condition trying to make such a difficult climb. She had more immediate problems to worry about, such as not getting hopelessly lost in the woods and dying of exposure, as Johnny had predicted. Fortunately he’d left her a crude trail to follow with the broken branches and undergrowth he’d cut away. And when that trail led her back to the creek, she was greatly relieved. She even got a glimpse of him once, well ahead of her and moving nimbly alongside the rushing water, his powerful body gleaming in the sun, the red bandanna glowing against his black hair.

  The sight was enough to make her stop and watch silently until he’d disappeared from view. He’d looked like an incarnation of the warriors and prophets who had roamed the Arizona landscape a century ago, Cochise and his son Natchez, even the dreaded outlaw Geronimo.

  Johnny was as magnificent as they were in some physical way, and he was also as unpredictable and dangerous, she reminded herself, resuming her own assault on the mountain. As she followed the seemingly endless path of the creek, she began to appreciate the cool shade of the forest, especially as the air grew thinner and the sun hotter. Her breathing quickly became labored, and she had to stop frequently. The icy creek water she splashed on her flushed face cooled the heat temporarily, but the way the sun was bearing down, she knew it must be burning her to a crisp. Her calves and thighs ached with a fatigue that made her want to moan aloud.

  Eventually she was slowed to a halting pace, reduced to the concentrated mental effort of putting one foot in front of the other. As every fiber of her willpower was drawn into that painful process, she began to realize she wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t a trained climber, or even a hiker. She wasn’t used to the altitude.r />
  Somehow she kept going, one leaden step at a time, until finally the exaggerated slowness of her progress began to develop into a rhythm that was almost meditative. The screaming muscles in her legs went silent, numbed by overuse, yet lifting and falling as though on automatic pilot. Her respiration dropped to a level so instinctive she hardly seemed to be breathing at all, and still she kept on.

  Johnny splashed his face with cold water from the creek, then cupped another handful and drank deeply. He shook his hands, dried them on his bare legs, and rose, glancing down the clearing. There was no sign of her and hadn’t been for some time.

  He wasn’t surprised she hadn’t made it this far. White Mountain was a killer of men, not to mention foolhardy debutantes. When Johnny was living among the Apache, he could remember plenty of weekend warriors who’d thought to brave the mountain’s face and who’d been quickly brought to their knees. He’d been running several miles a week since his military service, but he had no altitude training, and he was feeling the effects of the climb himself.

  The last mountain he’d conquered had been one of the peaks of the Andes range in Peru over six years ago. He’d been on a recovery mission to liberate some Americans taken hostage by Peruvian guerrillas. During the mission one of his partners, Geoff Dias, was taken captive by the rebels, and it had fallen to Johnny to rescue Geoff. Fortunately he’d succeeded.

  The memory reminded him that Honor was supposed to have contacted Geoff about some surveillance work. Aware that he might be seeing his buddy again soon, he turned and gazed up, calculating the pitch of the steep rise ahead of him. It culminated in a very nearly vertical sheet of granite that would have to be scaled. Worse, a rock slide had all but obliterated the trail. Honor would never make it, he realized as he began to plan his own ascent up the cliff. She couldn’t possibly.

  He glanced back down the trail, torn. Should he head for the peak? Or play Saint Bernard to a debutante? God, how he wanted to forget she existed and finish his climb. He wanted to forget the woman’s existence, period. But he didn’t have it in him to leave anyone stranded on a mountainside with a hungry mountain lion on the loose. Damn her anyway. He was going to have to rescue her and take her back to camp.

  He hadn’t gone more than fifty feet down the trail when he spotted a blue speck coming up. He halted in disbelief, waiting until he could see the climber more clearly. He was looking for some evidence of long blond hair when he realized that it was Honor. She’d draped the blue chintz tier from her skirt over her head like a veil, and she was laboring badly, but she kept going, inching up the mountain. She looked like Mother Teresa! A very young and beautiful Mother Teresa, but the martyred saint aspect was definitely there.

  He ducked back into the cover of a pine tree when she glanced up. Just his luck to get caught playing the noble savage after having made an issue about her not crossing his path. The absurdity of the situation struck him as he brought his forearm to his temple and wiped the sweat from his brow. He seemed to have some inborn, obsessive need to protect her, when he was the one who needed protection. From her! He’d come to her rescue in high school and been tried, convicted, and crucified for his trouble. Maybe one day he would learn from his mistakes.

  Soundlessly he turned and began to climb again.

  Tears began to roll down Honor’s face as she stared at the rock slide that blocked the trail. Tears she didn’t even know she was crying until she reached up and touched her cheek. A hoarse sound that might have been a sob choked her throat.

  She had reached the point where pain was the sole focus of her awareness. It hurt her to move, to breathe. She couldn’t draw in the air she desperately needed to keep going without feeling as if she were scalding her throat and lungs. Her lips were cracked and her tongue swollen. She couldn’t even swallow without experiencing a raw, burning sensation.

  Whatever the limits of her endurance were, she’d pushed past them long ago. Never in her life had she been so beaten down by fatigue, so whipped by physical pain. Nausea roiled in the pit of her stomach, undoubtedly from the effects of too little oxygen. The cramps in her leg muscles had coiled into knots. She wanted to stop, to collapse into a heap and never move again. She had the most bizarre and satisfying fantasy of decomposing into the earth and coming back as a flower or a sprig of mountain laurel, but her body wouldn’t let her drop. It kept her upright; it drove her on.

  One last tear rolled down her cheek.

  She stared at the rocky ledge, having no idea how she was going to get up it except to do what she’d been doing, putting one foot in front of another. Gathering up her full cotton skirt, she tied it in a knot at her hip and began to work her way through the rubble of the rock slide. The boulders’ jagged edges cut into her rawhide moccasins, bruising the tender soles of her feet and throwing her off balance.

  As the hill steepened, she dropped to all fours, using her hands for balance and her feet for leverage. Her legs trembled with fatigue as she struggled to get a foothold on the steep ledge and then grabbed for a rock above her, dragging herself up. Exhaustion made her clumsy, but she found another chink and planted her foot again, heaving herself up to the next rock and the next. Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she forced herself to keep going, even when her leg muscles began to spasm and the jutting granite cut her pale flesh like knives.

  The pain was debilitating as she inched toward the top. She was shaking so violently, it was all she could do not to let go and drop to the ground, thirty feet below. She had a flash of broken bones and multiple contusions, but she couldn’t imagine hurting more than she hurt now. Sobbing out a curse word, she caught hold of a spindly pine branch and nearly snapped it in half as she hauled herself up. The next lunge brought her within a few feet of the top.

  Moments later, with a hoarse cry, she pulled herself onto the rocky plateau and crumpled to her knees, head bowed. Nausea swept her in waves. She was limp and quaking, unable to move, but somehow, despite the physical upheaval of her body, she knew she’d made it. She had climbed that damn ledge.

  She tried to get up, but the ground felt as though it were shifting beneath her, and she couldn’t stop the terrible roiling in her stomach. A shadow dropped in front of her, and when she looked up, Johnny was there, walking across the plateau toward her. He looked like one of the gaan, an angry god of the mountain with the sun at his back, haloing his shoulders and torso.

  She waved him away, turning her back to him as the nausea resurged. Perspiration filmed her face and neck, and a sickening rush of weakness overtook her. She swallowed in horror and bent double, dry-heaving several times before she finally retched up her breakfast of nuts and berries.

  It was a ghastly, humiliating experience. She felt like a trembling mess, a helpless child who couldn’t control her bodily functions. She didn’t want him, of all people, to see her this way. Afterward, purged of strength, soaked in sweat, she crawled to a nearby spot in the shade of a pine tree and curled up there, trying to recover.

  “You’re going back,” Johnny said.

  “Get away from me,” she pleaded.

  “I’m taking you back down, dammit.”

  She didn’t even bother to look at him. “I’m not going down,” she said.

  “You’re going, even if I have to carry you!”

  “No!” At the risk of being sick again, she raised her head defiantly. “I’m climbing to the top, and you’re not stopping me. Nothing can stop me.”

  She waited for him to invoke their bargain, but he didn’t. Instead he made a sound, like air hissing through his teeth, and Honor knew she’d surprised him. Somehow that pleased her. It almost gave her the energy to get up and continue.

  “You’re sick,” he said. “You’re bleeding, for God’s sake. Look at your arm.”

  Honor glanced at the oozing gash on her forearm, at the cuts and bruises on her legs, and wondered why she felt no pain. Yesterday she might have fainted at the sight. Today it gave her an odd sense of strength. “I’m going on,”
she said, pulling the cotton veil from her head and ripping a piece from it to bandage her arm.

  Moments later she was up on her feet, testing the shakiness of her legs and finding that she could actually walk. She would never have believed herself capable of such resilience. Was this what they called a second wind?

  “You’ve got to be crazy,” Johnny said harshly. “It’s several more miles. You’ll never make it.”

  Honor realized she had to get around him to get back to the trail, and for a moment she was afraid he might actually intend to stop her. Bowing her head, she began to walk in the painstakingly slow gait that had brought her this far. If the mountain couldn’t conquer her, then nothing could, including him. Especially him.

  “I’ll make it,” she said.

  He wouldn’t step aside as she tried to pass, and his angry stance forced her to brush up against him. His breath was hot, his body a solid wall of opposition. He felt like a force field draining off her trembling determination. She kept expecting him to do something, to grab her arm or order her to stop. When he didn’t, it confused and exhausted her even more.

  She managed to reach the trail, drained of energy and feeling as if she had nothing left. Somehow she kept going, but it was on nerves alone. She knew he was behind her, watching. I’ll make it, she thought repeating the words like a mantra. But in her heart she was terrified he was right. She never would.

  Some time later, still slogging up the steepening trail, she reached that point beyond exhaustion, beyond pain, when the mind detaches to protect itself. Fatigue had insulated her from the physical suffering, and yet on some level she knew that her lungs still caught fire with every breath she took, and her legs were so wobbly, she couldn’t take a step without staggering.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been climbing, or how far she’d gone, when she noticed the darkening sky. Clouds had blocked the sun, bringing blessed coolness, but the thought of a storm alarmed her. She was above the tree line now, with no protection from the elements.