“Beautiful woman,” Smythe commented.
His head was turned, watching Lotus Blossom’s departure. Gedeon could tell by the direction of his voice. Forsome unexplained reason Gedeon didn’t want to explore, his impulse was to leap on the doctor and rip his heart out. The need to do so was so intense, he shook with it, adrenaline pouring into his body. He clenched his fist, thinking to smash into the wall to retrieve a weapon and do the job right. If the doctor thought he could get away with leering at his woman right in front of him, he had another think coming.
“I hope I reassured her enough,” Smythe murmured. He had turned his head back toward Gedeon. “She was hovering over you. I think she was afraid I was going to hurt you.” He laughed heartily. “I can’t imagine you have too many women fussing over a big man like you.”
Gedeon didn’t like Smythe at all, but he didn’t know how bad his eyes really were and he needed to find out. His first instinct had to be put aside, but his leopard wasn’t having any of it. The cat raged at him, fighting to be let out. Declaring that the man was deceitful and would get them killed.
I am well aware he is, but we need him at the moment. You didn’t act this way when the woman was here deceiving us.
His cat raged more, clawing at him, raking. Forcing him to lock the cat down with tremendous strength of will.
She was saving us.
Now you sound sulky, and that’s beneath your dignity. A woman is just as lethal as a man, especially if she can make you believe she’s all rounded edges and innocence. You fall for that shit and we’re both going to die.Gedeon warned his leopard not to trust their savior. No one did anything for free. He’d learned that lesson very young and he’d never forgotten it. His leopard should have learned it as well.
I learned it.The cat was pragmatic.But so far, she has proven worthy. This one has not told us anything of value. It is in his mind to sell both of you.
I am aware. But I need him to tell me what he can about my eyes.Aloud he instructed the doctor. “Get on with it. If Audrey says she’ll be back in half an hour, she will be. She’s very prompt. And I want to know first if it’s bad news before she gets here. I’ll need time to process and decide what to do.”
“What to do?” Smythe echoed.
“Yeah, Doc, what to do. A man like me doesn’t stick around long blind. You have to know that if you’re at all who I think you are.”
“Tip your head back.”
The light went on again. The glare hurt. Gedeon thought it was a good kind of hurt and he tolerated it even though his first instinct was to pull away.
“I’m going to put drops in your eyes.”
He’d always hated drops in his eyes. He thought as an adult he’d grow out of that particular idiosyncrasy, but he hadn’t. He figured it was because he needed his sight so much. His work depended on sight.
“Go for it, Doc. How did you get into your line of work?”
“Shouldn’t that be my question to you?”
“Just making conversation,” Gedeon lied. The more he knew about the doctor, the easier it would be to find him later.
The doctor put in the drops. They stung like hell. Gedeon’s cat roared, the sound reverberating like thunder cracking up close, shaking the thin walls of the apartment. Uneasy, not understanding where the sound came from, the doc jumped up and hastily inspected outside through the window.
“What’s wrong?” Gedeon did his best to sound nervous.
“They should have bars on these windows.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” Gedeon repeated the question.
“That sounded like a leopard. They can get into the city, and once they do, they find out they have a smorgasbord. It takes forever to catch them.” He returned to the side of Gedeon’s bed but didn’t sit down. He began to pace.“A couple of years ago, one got loose in the city and killed almost every night for nearly two months. It didn’t have to make so many kills, but the authorities said leave the body to act as bait. The leopard never returned to the same body. It always made a fresh kill. Twice it turned back on the hunters and killed one of them.”
Gedeon had heard of that leopard. It had terrorized the city for months. The city officials had hired several renowned hunters to track and kill it, but all attempts had failed. Gedeon knew eventually a man by the name of Drake Donovan had been contacted, which on the surface made no sense. He ran a security firm reputed to be the best. His men were investigators and bodyguards. They also hired on in just about any terrain to retrieve hostages or pay ransom. They brought the kidnap victim home or exacted revenge. He had a reputation for getting the job done. He had gotten the job done when the other hunters had failed—or at least the man he sent to do the job had gotten it done.
“I think we’re safe enough in here,” Gedeon assured the other man.
“These leopards can sneak right into a home and drag a full-sized man from his living room right out from under the noses of his family. I’m telling you, these leopards in that jungle are no joke. You’re a city man. You’ve never encountered them.”
This told Gedeon that Dr. Smythe hadn’t been born in a city. He’d dug his way out of a jungle village and never wanted to go back. It also told him the man, at some point in his life, had had an encounter with a leopard and it hadn’t gone well.
Eventually the doctor got down to business and he was thorough. He seemed to know what he was doing and talked to Gedeon the entire time. His eyes reacted to the light, a good sign. Nothing was torn, another good sign. In the end, it was a wait-and-see game. If his eyesight was to return, and the doctor thought there was an excellent chance, itwould return slowly over the next couple of weeks, and even then, he would need to rest his eyes, stay out of bright sunlight and wear dark glasses if he had to go out. The good news was he would have his beautiful companion at his side fussing over him.
Gedeon heard the door open and close and scented the woman. She was a few minutes early. He had an internal clock, and the passage of time was ingrained in him. She had said thirty minutes and he had been going to hold her to that. She was there. The sense of relief was overwhelming.
