Hot Blooded

could she be so careless? She pulled the T-shirt over her head
quickly. "Nothing—it's just a scratch. I brushed up against a thorn tree."
    "Did you, now?" The woman eyed the blouse that was lying on the floor beside
the bed—white fabric with a few tears and some dried blood. She took a single
step toward it, and Jenny rushed forward, getting there first and snatching it
off the floor and wadding it up.
    "Somethin' there you don't want me to see, child?"
    "I'm not used to being waited on, Mamma Louisa. It makes me uncomfortable to
have someone picking up after me."
    "You prefer to tend your own bedroom from now on, then?"
    "Yes. Yes, actually, I do."
    Mamma shrugged. "Well, I be paid good money to keep the house and do the
cookin' for the guests here, Miss Jenny. But if it makes you uneasy, I stay
clear of your room… and your secrets."
    "I have no secrets."
    She nodded. "I'll let Eva Lynn know, so she'll stay out of your rooms as
well." She started for the door, leaving the bed half-made, but when she reached
the door, she paused.
    "There be things out there,
chère
. Things you would never believe.
Things that ought to be left alone."
    Blinking out of the shock those words caused, Jenny raced forward after Mamma
Louisa left the room and closed the door behind her.
    She yanked the door open and lunged into the long corridor. "Wait. What do
you know about this?"
    But Mamma Louisa was nowhere in sight.

----
Chapter 3
    Â« ^ »
    JENNY knelt on the spongelike ground and forcibly resisted the urge to
release a shriek of joy. In front of her, clear as day, was a footprint sunken
into the moist earth. It was too large and too oblong to belong to an animal,
she thought. The creature hadn't been a wolf when it had left this track, but it
hadn't been a man, either. She supposed the print might belong to a bear, though
that would be more rounded. Perhaps a gorilla, but there were no gorillas
running wild in the bayou. None she knew of, at least. She would run it through
the computer to make sure, and she was trying hard not to jump to conclusions in
the meantime. It was tough, though, to maintain her scientific skepticism in the
face of such a discovery.
    This could be major.
    She shrugged off her backpack, unzipped it and removed supplies. She mixed
the powdered plaster with bottled water until it was just the right consistency,
then carefully she brushed loose bits of grass and dirt from the print. Finally,
she poured the plaster into it and stood back to wait for it to harden.
    As she waited, she looked around. She stood in a wooded area several yards
from the road. She'd started off in the direction she thought the creature had
come from last night, then moved in a half-circle around the spot where she'd
first seen it, increasing the size of her search area, inspecting the ground and
trees for any sign at all of wildlife. And she'd found it, too. A raven feather.
The tracks of a wild pig, probably the one she'd encountered last night. A few
bristly hairs stuck in the bark of a tree, probably where that same pig had
scratched a pesky itch. And near the place where the swamp met the dry land, a
long, smooth patch of mud that was probably a gator slide.
    And then, the footprint.
    Kneeling, she checked the plaster. Still wet.
    The sound of a vehicle's motor brought her head up again, and as she searched
for the source, she frowned. It wasn't coming from the road, which was behind
her, but from somewhere ahead. Was there another road skirting this patch of
swamp and woods?
    As she strained to listen, the motor cut off, then a door slammed.
    Someone was out there. She gathered a few large, leafy plants and laid them
over her plaster cast to keep it out of sight, then shouldered her pack and
started forward, deeper into the woods. Fifty yards, then sixty, and just when
she thought was going to find nothing, she saw it. A square shape within the
trees, almost perfectly camouflaged—a log cabin.
    Frowning, she moved closer, peering through the trees until she had a clear
view of the little house. It was charming, with a cobblestone chimney and green
painted window shutters, with moon-shaped cutouts in each of them. The door was
green, too, a deep, piney color that blended well with the surrounding foliage.
    The car in the driveway was a familiar one—the same dark-brown jeep she'd
seen when she'd left the doctor's office this morning. Frowning, she