Leopard 04 - Wild Fire

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    WILD FIRE
    A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author PRINTING HISTORY
    Jove mass-market edition / May 2010
    Copyright © 2010 by Christine Feehan.
    Excerpt from Water Bound copyright © by Christine Feehan.
    Civer handlettering by Ron Zinn.
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    eISBN : 978-1-101-18710-4
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    For Jennifer Wade, with love . . .
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    Acknowledgments
    As always, there are people to thank for all of their help. Domini, you’re absolutely invaluable to me.
    Brian, you always say the right thing to get my mind working. Thank you both for your unfailing patience.
    And Denise, whatever would I do without you?
    1

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    HE heard the birds first. Thousands of them. All varieties, all singing a different song. To an untrained ear the sound would have been deafening, but it was music to him. Deep inside, his leopard leapt and roared, grateful to inhale the scent of the rain forest. He stepped off the boat and onto the rickety pier, his eyes on the canopy rising like green towers in every direction. His heart shifted. It didn’t matter what country he was in—the rain forest was home. Any rain forest; but it was here, in the wilds of Panama, where he had been born. As an adult he’d chosen to make his home in the Borneo rain forest, but his roots were here. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Panama.
    He turned his head, looking around, savoring the mingled scents and noises of the jungle. Each sound, from the cacophony of the birds to the shrieks of the howler monkeys to the hum of the insects, contained a wealth of information if one knew how to read it. He was a master. Conner Vega flexed his muscles, a small shrug only, but his body moved with life, every muscle, every cell, reacting to the forest.
    He wanted to tear his clothes from his body and run free and wild as his nature demanded. He looked civilized in his jeans and simple T-shirt, but there wasn’t a civilized bone in his body.
    “It’s calling to you,” Rio Santano said, glancing around at the few people along the riverbank. “Hang on.
    We have to get out of sight. We’ve got an audience.”
    Conner didn’t look at him or the others maneuvering small boats up the river. His heart pounded so the blood thundered through his veins, ebbing and flowing like the sap in the trees, like the moving carpet of