Jaguar Fever

Chapter 23

David drove the rental car with Candy in the front passenger seat and Wade in the backseat. Wade texted Martin about their whereabouts in Houston and asked for backup. He also texted Connor to let him know that Thompson was taking Maya home.

Martin responded that Maya’s cousins were the closest to them and on their way. But they were still about an hour and a half away in driving time.

“So how did you get involved in all this?” David asked Candy as she gave him the location to go to.

She shrugged. “I knew the guy who was looking to buy big cats. Then I met Bill and Jim Bettinger.”

Lion Mane was Bettinger’s brother. Wade’s blood chilled.

“Yeah. I met the brothers at the club. The buyer wanted me to check out the place. He said he’d heard rumors that hunters met there who liked to get money for hunting big cats and selling to any willing buyer. I just kept asking guys, like I did your brother, if they were hunters. When I got a yes, I’d ask if they ever hunted big cats. Since you were both headed to Belize, and that’s where some of the jaguars live, I figured you might be on a hunting expedition for someone else.”

“Jaguars are not on the list of legal hunting game in Belize,” Wade said. “Did anyone seem irritated that you were looking for big-cat hunters?”

“A few. One told me he’d kill any bastard who thought to hunt the beautiful creatures. I went along with it. Go with the flow, I always say. Just told him I agreed and moved on to the next table of guys.”

Wondering how long the buyer had been paying to have the cats brought here, Wade bristled. “I’ve heard that thousands of hunters flock to Texas ranches to hunt endangered exotic animals.”

“The animals here are not endangered,” Candy said, her voice taking on a defensive tone. She flipped her hair back off her shoulders. “Not in Texas. Besides, over a quarter million animals come from Asia, Europe, and Africa. Texas has more exotic animals than anyplace else in the world. And it’s perfectly legal to hunt them. So what’s the difference?”

“The difference is that they’re raising dama gazelles and cape buffalo and other exotics alongside the Texas longhorn, and then the ranchers offer hunting at a price to cull the stock of the gazelles and buffalo to raise money to provide for the rest of the animals. But the jaguars aren’t being raised here. They’re being brought in to slaughter. And shooting them isn’t legal. Isn’t that so? The buyer’s not just keeping the cats to breed, right?”

He was against what the ranchers were doing. Many people agreed with the ranchers—that by bringing the exotic animals here, they were maintaining stock so that these rare animals wouldn’t be exterminated completely. But many, like Wade, felt that the exotic animals shouldn’t be raised just so hunters could kill them.

Candy folded her arms. “I thought you said you hunted big cats. I thought that’s what you were doing in Belize.”

Wade ignored this. “I’ve heard that hunting a dama gazelle on some ranches that offer exotic animals for hunting can run $10,000. The cape buffalo costs hunters about $50,000 to hunt.” He was trying to show he knew something about how much the hunters were paying for a kill. And he wasn’t going to be cheated when selling a jaguar to her boss. “So what does a jaguar price out at on a hunt?”

She smiled at him. “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” She sighed. “Okay, here’s the deal. I overheard Jim and Bill talking about the jaguars Bill discovered on your girlfriend’s property. He was angry because one of the cats bit him. He couldn’t have been injured too badly because he didn’t go to the hospital, and he flew out to Belize the next day. But he swore he’d been at Maya’s garden nursery when it happened. Jim was really irate with him when he learned his brother had gone there without him. I figured that was because Jim had the hots for Maya, and he told his brother several times that it served him right that the cat bit him.

“I checked out Maya’s business and discovered she had a jaguar pictured in her greenhouse. I showed the website to the buyer, and he said it was a female. But Bill said he encountered three big males. One was a rarer black. I’m pretty sure Maya wasn’t the one who captured them and brought them to the States. Her brother and sister-in-law are too busy with running a garden to be bringing in jaguars. But your brother and you were there that same night, Bill said. You were in Belize after that. And in the Amazon five months earlier. So, my buyer believes you brought the cats here. If you have a jaguar or two to sell to my buyer, we could make a deal.”

“Who’s the buyer?” Wade asked.

Candy cast a quick smile over the seat back. “If you thought you could deal directly with him, you could cut me out of the market.”

“So you’re the middleman, and we’re really not meeting him.” Wade forced a smile. “Do you know what they do with the big cats after the hunters sell them to the buyer?”

“What do you care? You just hand over the jaguar and get paid for it. End of deal. When you want to sell him another, you can offer him that one, too. He pays $50,000 upon delivery.”

Wade shook his head. “That’s too small a payment for us to go to all that trouble. It costs a hell of a lot to transport them here. We have to pay a lot of money under the table to get them across two borders.”

“If you’ve got three males and a female, it seems to me it wasn’t all that difficult for you to get them here.”

“Looks can be deceiving. I never expected the middleman who arranged for the sale of jaguars to be a beautiful woman, either.”

She smiled at Wade’s compliment.

“So who actually gets to hunt the cat?” David asked.

“The buyer offers a drawing. Whoever wins the lottery gets to hunt the cat.”

“Does he use dogs?” Wade hoped not.

“No dogs. Hunting with dogs is illegal. And so is baiting the animals,” she said.

Like killing jaguars wasn’t.

“There are about three thousand acres, and about a third of them are covered in trees. Lots of woods like the big cat might be used to,” she continued.

“The hunter is on foot?” David asked.

He’d like to get the bastard on foot, Wade thought.

“Some hunt on foot. The ones who really want to live dangerously. Others drive an ATV. It costs more to use the vehicle. My buyer figures that if the hunter doesn’t want to put the real effort into hunting the beast, he can pay for the luxury. He doesn’t let the hunter take home the pelt. Too dangerous if someone should ask where he got the skin, and the hunter couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“So the buyer sells the cat’s pelt to someone else,” Wade said.

Candy smiled at Wade. “I like you. You’re smart.”

“Do you watch the hunt?” Wade wondered if she had the killer instinct like the hunters did, or if she was just in it for the money.

She hesitated to say and David and Wade glanced at her, reading her body language. She fidgeted in her seat, avoiding looking at them. “No,” she finally said, then changed the subject. “So why do you hunt?”

“For the money,” David said.

“For the kill,” Wade said, thinking of Lion Mane and just how he wanted to take the bastard down.

“Does he have a regular group of hunters that bring him cats?” David asked.

“Yeah, but Jim Bettinger came home and said he’d lost his brother and two of the men who help him hunt down the jaguars and then smuggle them into the States. He couldn’t do it alone.”

“Lost?” David asked.

“He wouldn’t say more. But he was really angry, and he didn’t bring back a cat, either.”

“Why don’t you care to watch the hunters kill the cats?” Wade asked.

David glanced in the rearview mirror, frowning at Wade.

“The buyer follows the hunt as much as possible, taking a video of it. The other hunters get to watch it for a nominal charge while the hunt is in progress, open bar at the same time. But it’s really a case of man against beast, so the only ones out there are the hunter and the buyer… and the cat, of course. I just arrange for the sale of the cat.”

“So what’s the time frame we’re talking about for capturing a jaguar and handing it over to him?” David asked.

“He really needs this cat soon. The buyer’s party is this weekend, two days from now. The hunters are in the area, but they’ll be leaving on international business trips and my buyer had to move the date up, promising he’d have the cats available by then. The Bettinger brothers pledged they would have the cat to him before then. When Jim Bettinger came home empty-handed, I had to go to the club last night and ask several guys if they hunted, but everyone said no. One guy said he’d heard of the trouble the other men had in Belize, and there was no way in hell he was going to take on a job like that. You had cats here, but you’d taken off for Belize.”

“What if the buyer can’t locate a jaguar in time for the scheduled cat hunt this weekend?” Wade asked.

“He’s got a backup plan.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s got a female cat, but she’s not all that big, and she’s not that aggressive. He wants one from the wild. He’s afraid the female he has won’t provide a real challenge to the hunter. He’d also have to cancel the other hunter’s chance at the hunt. He hates refunding money. Believe me, these hunts can backfire in a heartbeat. The news spreads by word of mouth and then there’s no more hunting here. Or the hunters will refuse to pay the higher fees even if they still want to hunt the cat.”

Thompson’s missing zoo cat? Wade texted Martin about the possibility of the zoo cat being offered for the hunt.

Martin texted back. If you’re thinking of “selling” a shifter to the buyer to learn who he is and where this business is taking place, I say no. Too dangerous. And as for the location she’s directing you to? There’s no such place.

“Stop the car,” Wade said to David, then turned to Candy. “What is it that you want us to do exactly?”

David immediately pulled up next to the curb and waited for further instructions.

“My buyer doesn’t believe Jim Bettinger can return to South or Central America and pick up another cat in time. He’d have to get some other help, since he’s lost his brother and the rest of his men. My buyer knows you have jaguars that attacked Bill. He must have tried to steal your cats and say they were his and then planned to sell them as his own to the buyer. You must intend to sell them to someone else, or you wouldn’t have them hidden away somewhere.”

“You know that for certain?” Wade asked.

“I went to the garden nursery while you were away to look around the place. So yeah, I know that.”

“You thought to steal them while we were gone? Cut out the hunter in the equation?” Wade growled, doing his best to sound angered.

“No, I just was to verify that you had the big cats before I told the buyer,” Candy quickly said.

“Get out, Candy. You might get hurt.” The threat in Wade’s voice was real.

“What… you can’t leave me out here.” She twisted around to scowl at Wade. “This is a really bad part of town.”

She was right. He couldn’t leave her here. “We weren’t really meeting the buyer, were we? You just wanted to confirm that we had the cats and were willing to sell them.” Wade was already punching in a message to Maya. Where are you?

David said, “You heard my brother. Hit the road.”

Candy didn’t move. “You need me to make the sale to the buyer.”

Wade’s phone rang, and he said, “Yeah, Maya, where are you?”

“All four of my car tires were slashed. I had to ride with Thompson. We’re being tailed. Thompson’s trying to lose them.”

Wade swore under his breath. “Divide and conquer” came rushing into his thoughts as the adrenaline surged through his blood. “Give me your coordinates. We’re coming to your rescue.”

“What about the buyer?” Maya asked Wade, her voice anxious.

He didn’t care about that as much as he was worried about Maya. “We’ll take care of it later,” he said harshly. “Got to take care of Candy, then get back to you.”

“Who’s after Maya, Candy?” Wade grabbed his door handle and shoved the door open, then jumped out of the backseat, ready to toss Candy to the curb.

“Lion Mane. Jim Bettinger.”

“Shit.”

“I don’t know why everyone’s interested in Maya. Must be good in bed,” Candy groused.

Wade yanked Candy’s door open. “Why the hell is he after Maya?” Wade was certain he knew. Maya had killed Jim’s brother.

“I don’t have any idea except that he wanted more of her than just to dance.” Candy wouldn’t budge from the seat.

Wade reached down to grab her arm. “You got a phone on you?”

She nodded.

“Then call a taxi. Or Bettinger can drop by and pick you up, but you’re not coming with us.”

She yanked a Taser gun out of her purse.

Narrowing his eyes, Wade tsked. “Give us the name of your buyer, and we won’t dump you here.”

“I’ll be out of a job.”

“Your choice.”

David wrenched the Taser gun out of her hand. She cried out as he twisted her wrist behind her with his quick action.

She rubbed her wrist. “Okay, okay.”

Wade got back in the car and gave Thompson’s coordinates to Martin. David pulled away from the curb and hightailed it in the direction Maya and Thompson were headed.

“The buyer’s name is?” Wade asked Candy.

“Gunther Smith.” The woman frowned at Wade.

“Your name?”

“Candy.”

Wade looked up from texting, and she shrugged. “It’s the name my mother gave me. So sue me.” She frowned at him. “What are you doing exactly? How are you learning all this stuff so quickly?” Her eyes widened. “Are you the feds?” She shook her head. “You can’t be. We already checked you out.”

“Your last name?”

She hesitated to answer, then asked, “Will you sell us one of the cats?”

“You’re not with the police, are you?” That’s all they’d need was for Candy to be an undercover cop, attempting a sting operation.

She laughed. “You think I’m going to say you’re both under arrest for attempting to smuggle exotic cats into the country for the purpose of selling them? Hardly.”

“We’ll have to think further about selling one of the cats to you.”

“If you say you definitely will, I’ll give you my full name. Oh, and what happened to the other men? Bill Bettinger and the two smugglers?” she asked, sounding a little unsure of herself as if it was a dangerous thing to ask.

“They didn’t make it back. The rainforest can be a deadly place if you don’t know what you’re doing.” He gave her a warning look not to press the issue or she might end up where the others had.

“So you eliminated some of your competition,” she said. “That’s what we suspected.”

Wade said to his brother, “Drive faster. We need to find Maya, now!”