This guy was annoying.
He was stumbling along with his words, choking up. He couldn't handle stress, that was for damn sure. Virginia couldn't gauge, yet, how dire his information was, because he seemed like the kind of guy who might have a panic attack from any sort of small thing.
Then again, maybe not.
The last few minutes, he'd been explaining his background and relation to her father. He was chief of staff for a fellow senator who served on the same committee as her father—one of the privileged committees. He wasn't supposed to be telling her any of this. He'd been in the business many years. Graduated with honors from a fancy college. Had an appetite for reality tv (she wasn't sure why he'd mentioned that).
He seemed to be trying to set up his case for her, as if he were going to launch into something conspiratorial.
The coffee finished percolating, and this guy was wasting her time, she felt.
She poured them each a cup.
She realized he had never given his name (just everything else).
Guess he figured it didn't matter.
"I believe you," Virginia said. "Just tell me what happened to my father."
"Calvert," the man responded.
Virginia's hand shook, the coffee spilling over its mug and burning her fingers. But she held the cup steady, and barely noticed the scalding coffee. Her mind was in another place, far from that room. And she realized, in that moment, that something terrible had happened to her father.
"Virginia," the man said after a minute went by of her being non-responsive. "Virginia."
"Yes," she said.
"Were you listening? I might have a lead."
*****
Jake saw Virginia's body go motionless in the water. She was floating with her face down. He swam harder to try to reach her. It was taking a good long time.
Damn. Damn. Dammit. Fuck.
"Faster, Jake," he told himself angrily.
The jaguar growled behind him.
Jake whipped his head around.
The jag was ten feet back.
He continued toward Virginia.
Crocodile snorted a few feet in front of him.
Jake didn't hesitate. He whipped out his gun and shot right through the crocodile's mouth as it opened. The bullet went through the top of the mouth, blood burst and scales flew. But all it did was put a hole through the roof of the croc's mouth—it didn't hit the thing's brain or anything vital.
It made a shrieking noise and disappeared under the water, angrier than ever.
Jake spun around, faced the jaguar.
He raised his arm with the gun and shot the jaguar—two bullets right into the face. It groaned in pain, blood bursting. Still, it pawed toward him a few moments longer until it lost energy and life.
It was actually a sad sight.
But Jake didn't have time to be sad.
He turned away from it and swam for Virginia, pulling in long strokes.
He couldn't tell if she was alive.
The loud gunshots hadn't roused her.
Furthermore, the gunshots would have attracted the attention of the bad guys who'd landed in the forest. They would be making their way to this location.