Her leopard pushed closer to the surface, not in the throes of passion, but with a female’s disdain of the male. She wasn’t in the mood and she didn’t want to be bothered. She leapt at the male, giving him a swipe of her own. As rebuffs went, it wasn’t very impressive, but it shocked the male cat almost as much as it did Isabeau.

“Whoops,” Isabeau withdrew her palm. It was stinging from the hard slap she’d delivered to the male’s snarling face. Sheesh! Are you out of your freaking mind? she demanded of her cat. Way to soothe him, smart one. “Sorry about that.”

The rage subsided a little in the burning eyes to be replaced by intelligence. She let her breath out, seeing that piercing, keen intellect was back. “Conner, there’s a sniper in the canopy. We have to get out of here. Now.”

He nudged her and she turned and ran, grateful for the covering fire Rio and Leonardo provided. She felt totally exposed with the leopard behind her and the sniper in the trees. She jumped into the SUV and scrambled all the way in to give the others as much room as possible. The leopard nearly crushed her, practically landing on top of her. He was already shifting, crawling into the third seat in the very back, where Elijah had Jeremiah stretched out, and was clearly breathing for him.

Leonardo entered and whipped around to help Marcos provide cover for Rio.

“Go!” Rio snapped as he slammed the door.

Before the word was out of his mouth, the SUV was fishtailing down the dirt road.

“How bad?” Grim- faced, Rio let himself look toward the very back. He couldn’t see Jeremiah, but Elijah and now Conner were working on him.

“He’ll need a doctor,” Conner called out. “There used to be a doctor, one of ours, my mother would take me to, but it’s been years. He lives about fifteen miles from the first cabin where we met.”

Rio glanced at his watch. “What do you think, Felipe?”

“I can make it in twenty minutes.”

“It will be close,” Conner said. “Your call, Rio.”

“He’d never be safe at a hospital. We know Imelda has too many people in her pocket. We just took out her number-one security. His partner is going to try to hunt us down. Jeremiah would be too vulnerable in a hospital. Do what you can to keep him alive.”

Isabeau pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from protesting. They knew more about Imelda’s operation than she did. They also knew the workings of a leopard’s mind. She curled into a ball and shook uncontrollably, unable to stop the waves of nausea that swept through her.

“What about the woman? Teresa?” she made herself ask.