Hot Blooded

puts me in no danger. What you know—might.
He's a killer, a predator."
    "How do you know he's preyed on anyone?"
    Mamma Louisa shrugged. "It's as I said. It's the nature of the wolf to hunt,
to kill."
    "But that's not the nature of the man."
    The older woman arched her brow. "You wish to think of this thing as
harmless, then?"
    "I only want to know the truth before I judge a man a killer."
    "That kind of thinking will only make you his next victim,
chère
.
Take the 'gree-gree.'"
    "The what?"
    "The gris-gris bag, take it. Keep it tucked inside a pocket and take it out
only if your life is in danger."
    She nodded, getting to her feet and taking the bag. "I have to get to work,"
she said. "I've got a lot to do tonight." She rose and started for the door.
    "Take the other door,
chère
. It leads down to the main house." Mamma
Louisa pointed at a second door, on the opposite side of the room.
    Turning, Jenny paused. "I don't quite know how to thank you. If you hadn't
shown up when you had—I don't know what might have happened."
    "You do," she said. "You just wish you didn't."

----
Chapter 7
    Â« ^ »
    SHE entered every detail of her encounter—except for the name of the
shape-shifting doctor—in her computer's password-protected files, watching the
clock the entire time. Maybe, she thought, she ought to take the precaution of
telling someone what her passwords were, just in case anything happened to her.
Just in case Mamma Louisa was right, and Samuel was a killer.
    She closed her eyes, battling the shiver that chilled her marrow. In her
mind's eye she saw him, Samuel, the man, his eyes burning with passion, hunger,
longing—for her. And then she saw the wolf, with its teeth bared, and its eyes
gleaming with a far different sort of hunger.
    Which was real? Which was true? Could both of them truly live within one
being? One man? Was it a constant struggle—the animal against the human? Would
one eventually win out over the other? And if so, which would win? .
    She had to know. Not only because it was her job, her life's work, but
because—because she cared about Samuel. And maybe that made no sense, and maybe
she'd only just met him and all of this was based on nothing more than the most
intense chemistry she'd ever felt with any man in her life. Or maybe it was
something more. Samuel told her that there was something inside her that
recognized something inside him. It felt—it felt very much as if that were true.
    When she finished entering all the data, describing all she'd seen in as much
detail as she could, she changed her clothes, donning a comfy pair of jeans and
a ribbed baby-blue tank top. She pulled thick cushy socks and running shoes onto
her feet.
    Then she took out her trusty backpack and double-checked its contents. The
good camera, with high-speed, low-light film. The bottles of water, compass,
flashlight. The plaster-cast kit, plastic bags and test tubes for collecting
samples, tweezers, sticky-tape. And most important of all—the guns. One, the
tranquilizer gun, was already near at hand, but the other was locked away in her
briefcase, protected by a combination dial lock.
    She spun the lock open and retrieved the revolver. She flipped open the
cylinder and checked the six rounds she'd had specially made. While the bullet
casings looked perfectly ordinary, with their coppery hue, the tips of the
bullets—the parts that actually flew toward a target when the trigger was
pulled—were pure silver.
    Clapping the cylinder closed again, she tucked the gun into the most easily
accessible side pocket of her pack and yanked it up over her shoulders, but then
she paused. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up the red gris-gris bag, and
added that to the backpack as well. Finally, she headed out of the house.
    Long before dawn, Jenny had gained entry to Samuel La Roque's cabin. The door
had been locked, but she had no compunction about breaking in, especially after
knocking and making enough racket that he would have surely come to the door had
he been home. She entered through a side window, breaking the glass from a
single pane, and reaching through to free the latch to open it. Before climbing
inside, she whistled, called for Mojo, the doc's oversized wolf-dog, but there
was no sign of the animal around. Then and only then did she clamber through the
window, closing it behind her. She took a