Jaguar Hunt

by Terry Spear

  “No. They would have smelled which side of the bed we each slept on.”

  “So now they’re our luggage valets?” She was more confused about the boys’ intentions now than ever. “I don’t understand them.”

  “I don’t know. It seems to me they’re trying to make amends or something.”

  “Sure seems an odd way to go about it.” Though she did appreciate the fact that the teens seemed to be trying hard to win their favor, even if not in an acceptable manner. After the run through the jungle and being stuck in the harness on the zip line for what seemed like forever, she added, “I’m taking a shower before we have lunch.”

  David opened the door on the opposite side of the bedroom. “Here’s the shower.”

  “What? I thought this bungalow had an indoor shower.” She hurried to peer outside.

  This one was lovely, surrounded by high stucco walls with a tall, cypress locking gate on one side and featuring more of the terra-cotta tile floors. Potted plants hung on the walls, and at the far side, a chrome showerhead arched overhead. Jungle trees stretched toward the heavens, but they were too far from the walled-in outdoor shower for anyone to see in—if any jaguar happened to be lounging in a tree overhead.

  Now this, she could handle. She loved it.

  “There’s another inside also,” he said. “But this one is plenty private, too. You can have the indoor one. I’ll take this one.”

  “Super.” She went back inside to check out the other bathroom. This one was just as lovely with its tiled-in shower and marble sink, great for at night, but…the larger outdoor shower appealed for this afternoon. She grabbed a towel and walked into the bedroom where David was unpacking his suitcase. She fished around in her bag, seized her shampoo, and headed for the outdoor shower.

  He paused to look at Tammy, her towel draped over her arm, soap in hand. She was sure she’d rendered him speechless as she continued on her way outside and closed the bedroom door.

  She set her towel on a wooden bench near the shower and turned the water on. As soon as she began to strip out of her clothes—boots, jeans, shirt—the door opened. Not turning to look, she ditched her black bikini and bra.

  With her back still to David, she said, “You can use the other shower.”

  “I specifically got this place so you could have the indoor one,” he said, his voice growing closer, huskier, interested.

  In a hurry, she ducked under the water and soaped herself up. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

  “You don’t want to share? We’re sharing the bed already. You liked the way I washed you. And we need to hurry if we’re going to make it in time for lunch.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, the warm water sluicing down her skin. “If you share a shower with me, you might forget what we need to do next, and we wouldn’t make it in time for lunch anyway.”

  He began to strip off his clothes. “I’d never be that distracted.”

  “Oh yeah?” She didn’t believe it for a minute. If she hadn’t been dying to eat, she might even be tempted to prove it to him.

  But she could take a really quick shower, too. Before he could join her, she moved out of the warm spray of water, grabbed her towel, and covered herself, smiling.

  His mouth curved up in a devilish way. “Hell, we aren’t in that much of a hurry. You had to have missed cleaning a lot of places.”

  “Got to dry my hair.” She gave him a quick once-over—he was a god in the flesh, all tanned, glistening muscle, and way too sexy for her own good—grabbed her clothes, and headed inside.

  But not before she heard him say, “Tease.”

  Chapter 11

  As soon as Tammy walked into the bedroom, David’s cell began ringing. She hurried to get it, dumping her clothes on the bed before she grabbed his phone off the bedside table. Martin, David’s boss.

  She answered it right away. “David’s in the shower. What’s up?”

  “Oh, Tammy. Your boss relayed to me that he couldn’t get hold of you.”

  Probably when she was running as a cat. She was glad he hadn’t tried to get hold of her when she was in the middle of her zip-line adventure.

  “I was trying to reach David. We still haven’t located the other two boys, but we found out that they are close friends with the two you’re after, the Taylors, and they all live in Texas,” Martin said over the phone.

  Tammy’s hair was dripping wet, the towel wrapped securely around her. Her skin prickled with chill bumps, courtesy of the air conditioner running full blast. With the phone to her ear, she hurried through the bungalow, looking for the controller for the air conditioner. “Okay, so did the teens steal the missing zoo cat?”

  “We’ve checked a variety of sources, but it looks like all four teens have alibis at the time that the zoo cat went missing.”

  “Okay.” She’d need to let Henry Thompson from the Oregon Zoo know that looking through the video footage wouldn’t help.

  “The boys wouldn’t have had an easy time of getting to Oregon and stealing a cat from a zoo without someone noticing they were missing from home and leaving a trail to that location. What I can’t figure out is if they just wanted to steal a cat, why not from one of the local zoos in Texas instead?”

  “There must be something special about this cat,” she said.

  “That’s what we’re figuring. We’re trying to determine if any of the boys have any connection to someone in Portland. So far, we haven’t found any.”

  Tammy found the AC controller and turned it off. David walked into the sitting area dressed, his hair wet.

  “Your boss,” she said to David.

  He nodded, but he didn’t make a move to take the phone from her. She explained to Martin what had happened to them today—the boys not showing up for the zip-line excursion, the accident, seeing the jaguar in the tree and how he acted like he wanted to help Tammy, and the boys giving them a peace offering of fruit and moving their luggage to the bungalow. At first she was worried Martin would overreact to the zip-line fiasco, but all he said was, “Wait, go back to the zip-line incident.”

  She let out a breath and started over again. The first time she’d washed over the details, just giving the mere facts—the cable broke, but she made it to the other side safely.

  Martin hesitated way too long to respond, and she was certain he was going to have some investigators of his own look into the matter. “Sounds to me like you’re making inroads with the boys. Good work.”

  “What about the other kids?” Tammy asked.

  “Vanished. They didn’t go home. But we couldn’t find any record that they’ve flown to Belize to join the Taylor boys, either. We’re still looking for them.”

  “Okay, so is that what you called about, or…?” she asked, not wanting to give up the phone to David and have to hear other news secondhand.

  David smiled at her, appearing to know just what she was thinking. His gaze drifted over her towel, the terry cloth clinging to her wet curves. She might have the phone, but she couldn’t get dressed until she gave it up, and that meant David was making the most of her undressed state in an appreciative way.

  “No, that’s it for now,” Martin said.

  “Thanks. I’ll let you talk to David.” She turned off speakerphone, handed the cell to him, and returned to the bedroom to dress.

  ***

  “Yeah, boss?” David said, watching Tammy enter the bedroom with the towel wrapped around her provocative, wet body. She shut the door.

  “Watch out for her, all right?” Martin said over the phone.

  “You got that.”

  “Something’s really wrong here. The kids haven’t done anything quite like this before. Something’s up. And the zip-line incident? It might be just a faulty cable like Tammy said, but you know me—I don’t like that one of our people could have been killed. I�
��ll send some men to check it out further.”

  “I agree. We’ll keep you informed if we learn anything more.”

  He ended the call and turned to see Tammy leaving the bedroom. “Are you ready for lunch?” she asked, her gaze shifting from him to her phone as she busily tapped in something on the cell.

  “Yeah.” He eyed the sundress covered in purple flowers and green leaves—nice and short, displaying her long, tan legs—and her sparkly sandals. The dress had spaghetti-thin straps, and no bra that he could detect. Somehow, he’d envisioned she’d be wearing more camo pants, heavy boots for hiking in the jungle, and a long-sleeved shirt, like she’d been wearing when she went on the zip line. Not looking like she was a spring flower ready to be plucked.

  That made him realize how much she was distracting him. She sure had his attention.

  He pocketed his phone and glanced at the couple of bruises on her arms, reminding him she could have been killed when the cable snapped. He took a deep, settling breath and escorted her to the dining hall. “Are you texting your boss about all that’s happened?”

  “Yeah, I told my boss. He must have called when we were exploring in our cat forms.” She frowned, so busy concentrating on reading that David took her arm to guide her so she didn’t stumble over anything on the uneven stone path.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Something’s wrong. I had an idea while you were talking to your boss. I wondered if the boys had shared anything on Facebook. Sure enough, the brothers and the other two boys, Hans and Peter, posted a cryptic message on Hans’s Facebook page saying that the jaguar was going to catch and eat the dirty, little mole burrowing into the Yard. I think they’re trying to tell someone something.” She handed him her phone so that David could read it for himself. “Since ‘Yard’ is capitalized, like Scotland Yard, don’t you think that could refer to our policing force?”

  “Hell.”

  “Agreed. What if ‘dirty mole’ refers to a corrupt agent, possibly leaking particulars about the jaguar investigation to whoever else is involved? What if in the beginning, the boys were looking for evidence that either of us was the bad guy. Then believing we weren’t, they tried to make up to us in their misguided way. Breaking into our cabana was not the way to go about it.”

  “I agree. So they made this cryptic enough to protect themselves in the event that anyone who might be involved reads their pages. Damn it to hell. We’ve got to call our bosses and let them know about this new development. They’ll need to investigate this now to learn if one or more agents could be taking bribes from other jaguar shifters or humans who are involved in criminal activities. No one likes to think that our own policing force would have some bad cats, but it does happen sometimes.”

  “I think that’s why the teens aren’t coming forth and speaking with us. Maybe they’re even afraid that if we are okay, others could be watching us.”

  “All right.” He handed her phone back to her and pulled out his own. They stepped into a little alcove surrounded by vegetation with a stone bench sitting on one edge of the circular stone pavement and a water fountain in the center, the water running out of a bronze girl’s pitcher.

  Tammy paced as she spoke to her boss, while she vaguely heard David talking to Martin farther away, his brow furrowed, his stance tense.

  “We think the boys believe there’s a mole in our organization,” she explained to Sylvan.

  “Hold on.” Sylvan was off the line for a minute or so and then said, “Okay, got it.”

  “Have we had anything like this in our branch?” she asked her boss.

  “We’ve had a few in each of the branches over the years. When we catch them, it’s kept hush-hush. The fewer who know, the better.”

  She was certain Sylvan wouldn’t know, but she had to ask. “Any idea who the corrupt agent or agents might be?”

  “None offhand. We have agents on assignment all over the place at any given time. Just a minute.”

  She knew her boss was having an analyst search records in a hurry.

  “Tammy, none of them seemed to be in Oregon at the time the cat went missing. It could mean one of our agents coordinated the theft of the big cat with someone else who isn’t an agent in one of our branches.” He paused. “Anything else?”

  “That’s all I have for now.”

  “These kids could be playing with fire. If what they say is what we think it is, we’re talking maybe one guy who’s rotten in one of the branches, probably more. They’re making significant money on the side, or they wouldn’t be risking their necks. They’re not going to like getting caught. And they’ll take down anyone who can expose them.”

  She didn’t want to think what would happen to the rogue shifters when the JAG caught up to them. She didn’t believe the JAG would give the traitors a second chance if what they were involved in had cost shifter lives, and she hoped for the boys’ sakes that they weren’t involved.

  “All right. I’ll have men on it at once.”

  “Yes, sir.” She pocketed her phone and saw that David had already ended his call. He was frowning. “Something more is the matter?” she asked.

  “Martin’s worried that this could get a lot more treacherous than he first suspected. And who knows what that zip-line business was all about.”

  “I already suspected there was more trouble than we first thought because of the way the boys didn’t want to just meet with us and tell us what’s going on. As for the snapped cable, that likely has nothing to do with us or the boys.”

  “Did you also deduce that, due to the circumstances changing, it bothers me that you’re here?” he asked, a brow raised.

  Tammy actually smiled at David. And not in a heartwarming fashion. More wickedly evil. He wasn’t sure what that meant.

  He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as they headed out of the alcove and was glad she didn’t resist the intimacy. “What?”

  “This is a real change for me, I have to admit. I usually ditch my partners.”

  “I’m serious about this,” he said, but he wasn’t really. Sure, he didn’t want her in further danger, but if he had to have a partner to rely on, he wanted it to be her. It was her case and he believed that she was making progress in winning the boys’ trust.

  David opened the door to the dining hall. The aroma of marinated beef kabobs saturated the air as tourists filled the seats nearly to capacity.

  “So, what else did your boss say?”

  “He said you’ll have better luck with the kids. So you’re staying and I have to be extra protective.”

  “I like your boss. He thinks the way I do.” She gave David another sexy smile, and he was glad they’d have air-conditioning tonight.

  “But,” he added, “if we learn someone sabotaged the cable, we might have to rethink this whole business.”

  “Right. It might be too dangerous for you to be here. After all, you might have been on the zip line instead of me.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” David said.

  “Since neither of us is going anywhere for the time being, how do you want to proceed this afternoon?” Tammy asked, sounding serious now. “I think we should still try to find the boys and learn what they know about the missing zoo cat and this mole in the agency.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Well, almost exactly,” David said, having a really far-out notion. It might not work, and he hated to offer the suggestion, which might seem degrading since she was a highly trained Enforcer.

  “What?” Tammy asked.

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath.

  She frowned at him. “I’m not going to like this plan of yours, am I? What? I have to stay home while you do something dangerous? I’ve been through that with the other JAG agents I worked with. I thought you and I had a partnership of sorts.”

  “Uh, yeah, we do. But we haven�
��t been able to catch up to the kids, so what if we do something to get their attention? If they sit still enough, I can chase them down. Maybe talk to them.”

  She folded her arms. “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about how I regard you on the mission.”

  “For heaven’s sake, David. Just say it.”

  “What if you had a tanning session in your string bikini?”

  Her mouthed gaped. “What?”

  “Hell, Tammy, unless the teenagers aren’t in the area, I doubt they could resist taking a gander. I might be able to catch them gawking and speak with them.”

  “Can’t we come up with something better than that?”

  “We can chase after them all we want, but I was thinking maybe we could draw them to us somehow. Not sure what else we could do.”

  “Okay, so you could prowl around the jungle, looking for them in the event they’re in the area.”

  “Sure. I’ll help you with the suntan lotion first.”

  “No, that’ll be part of the show,” Tammy said, catching on to the idea. “I’ll lather it on slowly while you’re out looking for them. Maybe they’ll get careless and you can catch up to one of them and explain we only have their best interests in mind.”

  Inexplicably, David felt jealousy flare up inside him. Maybe this wasn’t such a great plan after all. He was still fairly sure it would work—but he didn’t want anyone to see her in that bikini but him.

  “On second thought, I don’t know if I like leaving you alone.”

  “I think the kids are in more danger than I am—since they seem to know something about the cat and a bad agent—or they will be, if the bad agent learns we’re trying to catch the kids and find out what they know.”

  “I have to agree, but I still don’t like leaving you alone.”

  “I’ll be okay, David, as long as I’m not sliding along any more cables.”

  After they finished lunch, they headed back to the bungalow. She couldn’t help thinking that if they weren’t on assignment, she’d totally enjoy being with David like this. Nice meals and some medium-energy tropical adventures, if she didn’t count the zip-line fiasco. She had high-energy adventures when she was running as a jaguar with him, and she liked those too. Even the sleeping arrangement wasn’t altogether bad now that they had air-conditioning.