by Terry Spear
Wade had left her without a word. She told herself he had to go before her brother discovered him here with her and that his own brother was waiting for him. That he had a job to do. But the gnawing at her gut that he’d left her without saying good-bye wouldn’t quit.
Before she could yank off her covers and head for the bathroom and a thorough shower, a knock at her door and her brother’s voice shook her from her thoughts, startling her. Connor.
“Maya, are you okay? Breakfast is served.”
She groaned. If her brother smelled Wade on her—and he would if she didn’t shower—he’d have a fit.
“Sorry. Overslept. Be right down.”
“Hurry. They won’t serve breakfast for very much longer.”
She jumped into the shower, scrubbed her skin and hair good, then dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and a pair of boots and hurried down to the lodge’s dining room. This time the room was filled with guests, all mostly having finished their meals.
Kat smiled brightly at her and stood to hug her. Connor was glowering at her. Maya wanted to ask if he’d slept on the wrong side of the bed. But she knew he figured something was up with her since he had reminded her last night when he dropped her off at her cottage that they would share breakfast this morning and had specifically given her the time.
“I ordered you the tortilla stuffed with egg and cheese, skipping the onions,” Connor said as they all took their seats.
“Thanks, Connor. I appreciate it.”
Waffles smothered with coconut and fruit rested on Connor and Kat’s plates already.
“Sorry I was late.” Maya tucked the napkin onto her lap.
“Bad night’s sleep?” Kat asked, seemingly oblivious to the storm building between Maya and Connor. Or maybe she was trying to defuse the situation.
One heck of a great sleep! Sex could do that for a body. Cuddling against Wade for most of the night had been wonderful. “I guess I just needed more sleep this morning.” Maya avoided looking at Connor. She knew he was watching her, judging her reactions, questioning what she’d been up to.
“We saw that jaguar in the jungle again,” a woman said at another table. “We were so excited, but by the time we got our camera out, he was gone.”
Maya’s heart did a flip. She couldn’t help but look in Connor’s direction. He was observing her.
Had it been Wade, leaving too late from her cottage? Or David?
Her face burned with mortification. Knowing her brother the way she did, she was certain he’d investigate around her place right after breakfast, smell that Wade and David had been there, and learn the truth.
“Are you ready to explore the jungle a bit?” Connor asked.
“Like we are now?” Maya asked. She suspected Connor meant to take them much farther away before they shifted. “I’m ready, but I need to talk to you both.”
“We’ll meet you at your place after breakfast,” Connor said.
“I’ll meet you at your place,” Maya said.
This time Kat and Connor exchanged looks.
Okay, maybe they both already knew about her and Wade, but Kat was trying to be gracious and pretend she was clueless. Maya should have known better.
* * *
Wade and David loped in their jaguar forms through the rainforest as they made their way back to their cabana. They could have stayed in the jungle all day, searching for the smugglers and their guides, but Wade wanted to go to the main lodge and send a message to Martin about the latest news and ship off the dagger and T-shirt wrapped around it that had been in Mylar Cranston’s room.
When they reached their cabana, David went in first, shifted, and threw on a pair of boxers as Wade headed for his bedroom.
“I thought you were only going to warn her about Bettinger and Lion Mane,” David said, humor lacing his words.
“Don’t start with me.”
“Hell, Wade, I knew you were going to get caught.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” David headed into the bathroom and shut the door. “What I mean is that the day was breaking, and you still hadn’t left Maya’s cottage. Does that mean she’s given up on spending time with other shifters?”
“How would I know?”
“Not a certainty, eh? Maybe you should have stayed longer.”
“What did you do?” Wade asked, taking a seat on one of the floral couches. “Sleep all night?”
“Are you kidding? I went looking for that female jaguar that had been hanging around the treetop cottages. I found her and discovered she was all jaguar and not one iota of a shifter. You know how my luck has been of late. She batted me a couple of times in playful interest and was definitely in heat. She rolled over on her back, displaying her chin and her throat, showing submission and that she was totally receptive to breeding.”
Wade gave a gut-wrenching laugh.
“Yeah, laugh about it, will you? I’m trying to fight off a willing jaguaress, and you’ve got the real thing in a nice soft bed.” The shower came on and the shower curtain rings slid across the rod as David pulled the curtain closed.
“Sorry,” Wade said, still laughing.
“Yeah, sure you are.”
“I’m going to run to the main lodge and tell Martin what we’ve learned. I’ll pick us up something to eat,” Wade said.
When he reached the lodge, he called Martin. “It’s Wade. Any word about who the buyer is?” Wade asked, his voice dark and dangerous. He was ready to kill a couple of shifters and the buyer, too.
The market for rare animals was similar to the drug market—if people didn’t buy them, the market wouldn’t exist. Unfortunately, the exotic animals market was just as profitable as selling drugs. The difference? Smuggling the animals out of their countries was illegal. Selling them was not, with the right permits. And some sellers just didn’t care about the illegality as long as they were paid.
Some of the animals were near extinction. What a screwed-up world they lived in.
“No word here about the buyer. You’ll need to see if you can get the information out of the men down there. Once you discover the buyer’s name, we’ll take it from there. And Wade?”
“Yeah?” He knew what Martin Sullivan, the director of the special elite force, was going to say even before he said it.
“Try not to kill the smugglers this time before we learn who they work for. Okay?”
Try was the operable word.
“Okay.” But his boss knew the score. If the men started shooting, all bets were off.
* * *
“Maya,” Connor said, opening the door to his cottage as she joined him and Kat.
She held up her hand to silence her brother. “I told you Wade and David are nearby, searching for the smugglers hunting a jaguar.”
“Closer than nearby,” Connor said, nearly growling as he stood next to the couch where Kat had taken a seat.
“You’re right. Wade came to see me last night. Both brothers came, but only Wade spoke to me.”
“I suspect more than talking was going on.”
She gave him her crossest look. “He told me about two of the men we met at the club, who are at the resort where David and Wade are staying now.”
Connor’s frown deepened. Now she’d gotten his attention.
“The men are in on this whole operation of trying to capture a jaguar.”
“Shifters are involved?” Connor said, coming away from the couch.
“Yeah. But Wade and his brother still don’t know who the buyer is.”
Connor paced, then turned to face her. “Do they know you?” Connor sounded both angry and worried now.
“Yeah. I danced with one of them.”
Connor let out his breath in exasperation.
She frowned at him. “The other also wanted to dance with me. I didn’t know they were wild jaguars.”
“Wild?” her brother asked.
“That’s what Wade said we’re called because we return t
o the wild on a regular basis. It means they know how to get around the jungle, understand the dangers, and can skirt them. It also means they can help the hunters locate jaguars more easily because they can smell their trails.” Then Maya had a brilliant notion. “Actually, shifters tracking the jaguars works well for all of us. Not for the jaguars, of course. But the shifters hunting them will know we’re shifters, too. As soon as they smell our scent, they’ll leave us alone.”
Connor frowned at her. “Except that you said the one was interested in you.”
Two, but she wasn’t mentioning that again.
Connor walked over to the patio door and stared out at the shadowed jungle, which sported every shade of green—from emerald to olive to sage.
“I think Maya’s right. Once they smell we’re shifters, they’ll leave us alone. No way would they want to try to hunt us and take us hostage,” Kat said. “I’ve been too sick since we arrived to do much exploring as jaguars, but I’m feeling so much better now.”
“David and Wade are searching for the men as we speak. So really there are five of us against the four men involved in trying to grab a jaguar,” Maya said.
“We’ll go. During the night, we can stick close to the cottages when hunters won’t be about, looking for jaguars. Or at any time of day, we can head deep enough into the jungle until we can detect no human scents, and then we’ll shift,” Connor said.
Connor packed a backpack with bottles of water and sunscreen and insect repellent. Once they were ready, they took off into the jungle as humans, following a path for about an hour, and then headed into the dense foliage away from any human smells.
Much later, they reached their destination—dense jungle untouched by mankind. The three of them took in the beauty of the green foliage, the colorful tropical birds, and a waterfall cascading over a velvety moss-covered rock wall surrounded by green vines and giant leaves.
Maya breathed in the orchid-scented air, stretched, and wanted to lie down and roll around on the jungle floor, gathering up the scents on her skin to relish being back in a rainforest atmosphere, to listen to the jungle sounds, and to feel one with nature, even in her human form.
Connor had been like a worried nursemaid, constantly asking if Kat was okay, but Maya was glad to see him smiling at Kat’s reaction to being at home in the jaguar environment. He’d made the right decision to take Kat to the resort before she was too far along with the pregnancy. They meant to take videos of the place while they were here to enjoy later when Kat had the urge to return to the jungle and they couldn’t go there. Except they couldn’t capture the scents so unique to the jungle.
They climbed into a tree and began to strip, placing their clothes in the single backpack.
Maya and Kat shifted, then jumped to the ground. Connor stored the bag, tying it firmly to a branch, and then shifted and joined them.
For three nights, they returned to this spot of paradise, soaking in the sights and jungle sounds, the waterfall, the river, and stretching their legs as jaguars.
They didn’t see any sign of Bettinger or Lion Mane while they stayed away from any areas where they sensed humans had been. They slept as humans half of the day in their treetop cottages. At least, Maya slept half of the day. She didn’t think Kat and Connor were doing much sleeping. She hadn’t seen Wade or David since she’d encountered Wade in the deck shower, but she’d felt as though the brothers were watching them sometimes from the trees, hidden, quiet, protective. Maybe it was only wishful thinking on her part. Wade had to be busy with his work, not idly watching her while she played.
Every night after they returned from their trek, Maya silently prayed Wade would show up again at her cottage, but she was giving up hope. She couldn’t quit worrying that he or David might have gotten into some kind of trouble with the hunters, though she reminded herself how vast the jungle was and how Wade and the hunters could be anywhere. And that both of the Pattersons were well trained for this kind of job.
For two nights in a row after supper when Kat and Connor were at it again in their cottage (Maya was certain the jungle did something to their libido), she went on a run as a jaguar by herself just a short distance from the cottages. The overwhelming need to see if Wade had been anywhere nearby was making her crazy. The longer she didn’t see him, the more anxious she was becoming. Besides, Connor had agreed that the hunters wouldn’t be out hunting at night. It would be dark soon.
She was only about two miles from the resort, not having meant to wander that far, when she heard a man shout, “The jaguar’s down! We got her! Whoa, watch out for those claws! She’s not out!”
Maya’s heart jumped.
She… female… the jaguar that had been seen around the cottages? Maya glanced behind her. It couldn’t be Kat. Unless the ones who grabbed the cat weren’t shifters and didn’t realize Kat was a shifter. But Kat and Connor couldn’t have come looking for her yet. And Connor would have been with Kat. It had to be the non-shifting female jaguar.
Maya was afraid to go to her brother for help. What if the men took off with the jaguar, and she and her brother were too late in returning to rescue her?
Her heart drumming, all Maya could think of doing was rescuing the jaguar herself. She’d get close, then wing it.
“Holy shit! Where’d he come from?”
A roar met her ears. She paused. It wasn’t her brother’s roar. Was it David or Wade trying to rescue the female cat?
She wasn’t in the Service or elite forces Golden Claw, but she damned well wasn’t going to let the men take the cat from her environment. She’d kill them first.
She moved silently through the jungle, her spots rippling across her muscles and making her golden skin appear to mix and meld with the dappled leaves of the rainforest. Lifting her nose, she paused to smell the air. There was no breeze, the air perfectly still.
Dogs began to bark some distance away.
“Shoot him!” one man said.
“I don’t have any more tranq darts!”
“Kill him, damn it!”
She ran full out, no longer using caution.
“Wait, got one!”
A dog yelped. The cat roared again.
A pop sounded. The cat screamed.
A chill raced along her spine. Then she got a whiff of wet smelly dog, and her hackles rose. She could easily kill a dog, though she preferred not to. They could smell her scent, and they’d probably give chase if they weren’t being confined. No matter what, she had to get to the cats.
After climbing onto a branch, she leaped from one tree to another, then jumped to the ground again and ran through the dense foliage until she was close to where the men were speaking and stopped dead in her tracks. Hidden by leaves and vines and two fallen trees, she quickly scanned the area.
Beyond her hiding spot, she saw two jaguars down.
Wade Patterson. She barely breathed. He was lying on his side in his jaguar form, breathing in and out, his heart rate slow.
Anger welled up inside her, and she fought the idea of attacking the men that instant and risking all the jaguars’ lives.
A female was down also, not a shifter. Not Kat. Both were drugged, their tails twitching slightly. Thank God. Not dead.
And the men—there were two of them. One she didn’t know. The other—she clenched her teeth together. Bill Bettinger, the bastard. Dressed in camo clothes as if he was in the U.S. Army, in combat boots with a billed cap tugged tightly over red curls, he was staring at Wade as if he was trying to figure out what to do with him. He couldn’t take a shifter back to the States, pretending he was a jaguar. He couldn’t leave him here and remove the female from the jungle, knowing Wade had his number.
But if Bettinger killed Wade now, the other man would see Wade turn from a jaguar to a human. Dark hair fell to the hunter’s shoulders, his eyes gray-blue, his clothes a more worn version of what Bettinger was wearing. He looked like bad news.
“The buyer is going to love this,” the human said. “We coul
d sell him both cats. If he kept them for a while at his ranch, the male might breed with the female and then if she had cubs, he could have some more to hunt later. I don’t blame him for feeling there’s more sport in hunting a wild beast of prey rather than a deer.”
Bettinger snorted with disdain. “How are the hunters going to kill the jaguars? Riding ATVs? Or are they going on foot with a bow and arrow? Not much sport if they’re going to gun it down from a protected vehicle.”
She was surprised to hear the pride in Bettinger’s voice when he spoke about jaguars, considering he was selling them out.
The human shrugged. “They see themselves as big-game hunters. Who knows how they take down their prey? As long as the buyer pays us, that’s all that matters. If he doesn’t want them, we’ll just sell off the cats to the highest bidder at any of the dozens of auctions across the U.S. What do I care as long as we get the money for them?”
Bettinger smiled. “To think we could still be in the drug trade, risking our necks.” Then he turned icy-blue eyes from the cats to the man and said, “Mylar, I need you to leave, now. Go see to the dogs.”
“But…”
“Now, damn it. Go!”
The man looked at Bettinger like he was crazy. “What are you going to do?”
“Kill the male. And you if you don’t get your ass out of here.”
“What? You’re only going to take one of them? We could sell both. We could get twice the money.”
Bettinger turned the rifle on Mylar. “He’s rabid. We can’t take him with us. I’m… not… going… to… tell… you… again. Go. Now.”
“How do you know he’s rabid? He looks fine to me.”
Bettinger settled his finger on the rifle trigger, and Mylar looked back at him, his eyes rounded. Then he let out a grunt, turned, and headed in Maya’s direction. She quickly crouched behind the trees, listening to his heavy footfalls as he walked past her fallen tree barrier, headed in the direction of the barking dogs.
Wade’s eyes opened for a fraction of an instant, widening when he saw her through the fallen trees. He looked groggy. His eyelids dropped into narrow slits. He was too tired to be of any help in this mission. She was on her own.
