Jaguar Fever

Chapter 3

“Make it brief,” Wade said, as he moved outside the club with Everett and Huntley. He knew Maya would dance with the other shifters, as much of a free spirit as she was. He didn’t like it, even though he knew he had no claim on her. He didn’t like that she was more vulnerable without her brother—or him—to watch over her.

He walked with her cousins into an alley between the buildings for privacy. “David can’t hold them all off for long.”

Everett folded his arms and scowled at Wade. “I thought you were going to talk her out of going to Belize, Patterson. Until the hunters are dead, our kind aren’t safe down there.”

“I can’t. She was right. Anytime we go south of the border, we’re at risk.”

Huntley growled, “Okay, so she said you’re going there. Are you planning to protect her?”

“I can’t stay with her. I have my orders. If I can take the hunters down, that’ll be the end of the problem.”

“So your orders were to go to Belize,” Everett said. “Not to stay here and dance with our cousin.”

Wade tried to keep his temper. He understood her cousins were concerned for her safety. “We had word that the buyer was meeting here with the hunters commissioned to locate and smuggle a cat out of Belize. We had no idea that Maya would be here, or that her brother and sister-in-law and she were going to be in Belize.”

“All right,” Huntley said. “We’ve got a job here, but if we can finish it and get there in time to help out, where would we meet you?”

“Our source there said the hunters are headed to the area between the Macal and Mopan rivers in one of the rainforest preserves in Central Belize. We’ll check on the resort where Maya and her family are staying once we get in. No flights are available until tomorrow.”

Everett glanced back at the club. “I take it you don’t know who the buyer is. We could at least take him down.”

“No. That’s why we’re here. To learn what we can about the deal going down before we target the men who are going after a big cat. We’ve been here for three hours already. Haven’t seen anyone who appeared to be making a deal with hunters.”

“One or more of the shifters here are sure to follow her back to her place,” Huntley said. “At least three damn male shifters in the club are interested in her. Hell, if she wasn’t my cousin, I would be, too.”

“What are your plans with her?” Everett asked, as if he was playing the role of her brother while Connor was away.

Wade would have told him to take a flying leap, which for jaguars was an easy task, but because he might work with these men on an assignment in the future, and because he was interested in dating Maya and these men were family, he said, “I want to get to know her better. I was able to help protect her, Connor, and his wife in the Amazon jungle in an ugly situation five months ago. I only have her best interests at heart.”

Everett studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, and you’re one of us.” He sounded as though he approved.

“Our mission is in Brazil tomorrow or we’d go with her to see to her safety,” Huntley said.

“I understand,” Wade said.

Something crashed inside the club, and shouts could be heard over the music. A brawl, Wade thought, just what they all needed now—not.

Maya and David could be in the middle of it.

Wade and her cousins hurried back to the club. As soon as they got inside, they saw several humans heading for the exit as one male cat slammed another into a table, knocking it over and shattering the glasses on the terra-cotta tile floor.

“Hell,” Wade said, hoping Maya was safe and trying to make it through the fighting cats to reach her and his brother.

Maya wasn’t sure what happened next. One minute she was finishing a dance with Thompson and skirting around the issue of the jaguar on her website. The next minute, Lion Mane, the man with the curly hair, and three other male cats got into a fight just as the music ended.

Thompson used his body as a shield to move her away from the conflict as David came rushing to her rescue.

As a jaguar, she could let the men know with a roar and a bite just how much their fighting over nothing irritated her, but as a human, the best way to handle it? Leave.

Her heart was thundering as she, David, and Thompson headed for the door. Her cat shifter and human bodyguards were protecting her from the fighting when she saw Wade and her cousins barreling through the brawlers to get to her.

She was glad to see they weren’t involved in the clash. She hoped they’d all make it out without injury or being arrested and avoid most of the skirmish.

Thompson had one hand on her arm as he shielded her from the blows and punches and crashing furniture as some of the cats used chairs to make their point with less damage to their knuckles. Glancing down at her, he said, “I haven’t seen a brawl like this in years.” He shook his head, but he was smiling.

Men.

David had hold of her other arm and was moving as fast as possible with her. She was wearing high heels, not running shoes, so she knew she was slowing them down.

David was using his free arm as a battering ram to shove fighters out of their way when he was struck in the head by a flying bottle.

“David,” she said, worried, concerned, and trying to stop to take a look at the cut on his forehead.

“I’m all right,” he growled, sounding like he would have made the bottle-tossing brute pay if he hadn’t been watching out for her. He wasn’t stopping as he hurried her to the exit.

Maya had wanted to meet shifters, but not like this. Why couldn’t she just make eye contact with someone who seemed nice, get together, dance, have a little conversation, and move on—or not. If the man really appealed.

The problem was… Wade really appealed.

She couldn’t see Wade or her cousins for all the fighting in front of them. Then suddenly, as if a wrecking ball had swung into them, the fighters scattered. Wade and her cousins were headed straight for her, looking like a force to be reckoned with. She wondered if that had something to do with the Service they were in.

His hard, black gaze only on her, Wade seemed concerned that she was all right. She barely paid any attention to her cousins clearing the way on either side of him like a bulldozer force of jaguars. Then Wade turned his attention to his brother, his eyes widening a little, then narrowing. His jaw tightened and he socked the next man he threw a punch at so hard that the man went flying into two others who were fighting.

Wade turned his scowl on Thompson as if to say: Relinquish the woman now, human.

Thompson gave an almost imperceptible smile. He handed Maya over to Wade but continued to help her cousins and the Patterson brothers kick chairs and debris and knock scrapping men out of the way as they escorted her out of the club.

“What the hell happened to you?” Wade asked his brother. He was ready to bash out the lights of the guy who’d hurt David.

“It’s just a scratch,” David said.

It was not just a scratch! Maya slipped on broken glass, nearly taking a spill. Wade swept her up in his arms, and she gave a little gasp of surprise.

He looked ferocious as he took a deep breath, inhaling her scent, and growled. “You danced with that blond guy.”

She couldn’t believe it. No one had ever acted jealous about her dancing with someone else before. “I wanted a closer look at his hair, to see if maybe his shampoo was what gave it so much pizzazz.”

Wade scowled down at her.

She sighed. “He wasn’t half as sexy as you…” She knew as soon as she said the words and his eyes widened that she’d made a mistake. “If you must know, I didn’t kiss him.” She heard the low, rumbly growl in Wade’s throat before he spoke again.

“He tried to kiss you?”

“I didn’t let him.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t interested.”

“You sure know how to add excitement to a club night.” He didn’t sound irritated this time, but she had the distinct feeling that if she said she wanted to return tomorrow, he’d say no way in hell.

As he carried her out to an unfamiliar car, she squirmed to get loose. “I have my own car here.”

Wade set her on her feet.

Her cousins were acting as bodyguards, hovering over her, when Huntley said, “We really need to talk and tell you what we do. David needs looking after. Maybe we could go to your place, if you don’t object?”

“You’re afraid someone from the club might follow me home?” She could see they were from their concerned expressions. “Okay.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll drive your car home for you,” Huntley said. “Someone needs to take care of David’s gash.”

She suspected they wanted her to ride with David and Wade so she would have protection. What did they think? That someone would run her off the road and try to kidnap her? But she didn’t mind having some protection, once she thought about it. Having the company would be nice, too. She’d believed having a couple of days away from her brother and Kat would be nice, but in reality, she’d been lonely. And she would love to get to know her cousins better.

Wade and his brother, too.

She nodded. Her cousins left to get their car and hers.

“Do either of you have anything to stop David’s bleeding?” she asked the Pattersons.

Wade looked down at her dress as if considering that she might be wearing something else she could use. She raised her brows, and he gave her the wickedest grin. Her minidress didn’t have an ounce of extra hem that she could rip off—like the damsels did in the movies.

Wade began to unbutton his shirt. She stared at his fingers moving from one button to the next, waiting to see him open his shirt.

As soon as he tugged his shirt off, she took her fill of his chest—bronzed, nipples puckered, muscles ribbed, and stroke-able, and she promptly forgot why he’d removed his shirt in the first place.

“Bandage for my head,” David said, his tone damned amused as Wade gave her a smug smile and David mirrored his brother’s expression.

“Uh, yeah.” Trying to ignore the way her skin felt flushed with embarrassment, not to mention interest, she took the soft and heated shirt that smelled of Wade, cat, man, and delicious. She wanted to get a closer feel and press it against her nose to take a deeper whiff of its unbidden scent as David got into the backseat of the car. But Wade was watching her. She quickly dismissed that notion.

That was the problem with their wild side as jaguar shifters. Their heightened senses amplified intriguing smells… and bad.

Once she joined David in the backseat, she pressed the shirt against his forehead. Wade closed the door for her, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

David glanced at his brother. “I should have known that before I could remove my shirt, you’d bare your chest to the lady.”

Wade chuckled.

She loved the teasing between the brothers.

“I haven’t been in a good catfight in years.” Wade glanced in the rearview mirror at Maya. “But the prize this time was definitely worth fighting for.”

She snorted and he chuckled, as if he knew what she was thinking.

“Not a prize,” she said.

“For some, no,” he answered. “They don’t know what they’d get with a woman like you.”

She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Maya, if some of the city cats had seen you in action in the Amazon, they’d know you were one hellcat. I mean that in a good way. But some would be afraid to mince words with you. As to another matter, all of us are leaving on flights tomorrow. Your cousins are going to Brazil. David and I are going to Belize. Would you mind if someone stayed with you tonight and took you to the airport in the morning?”

“Me,” David said. “I volunteer to stay and watch over Maya.”

She let out her breath on a sigh. “You’re injured.”

“How about if we both stay with you, Maya?” Wade asked.

She didn’t think he was really asking. No way did he want to leave her alone with his brother. Little did he know that he had no worries there. If she wanted anyone to stay and watch her back, it would be Wade. But she had no intention of feeding into his ego.

She studied Wade. “Don’t like your hotel accommodations?”

“They’re fine. It’s you that I’m worried about,” Wade said.

And this time she heard something different in his voice. Real concern. After he had helped them in the Amazon, she’d assumed he was the kind of guy who would go out on a limb for those in need. But she really didn’t think she needed any jaguar shifter to protect her. She had canines and claws enough for the job if anyone hassled her.

“I… don’t think it’s really necessary,” she said, wanting to see how hard he was going to try to get her

to concede.

“You know what happened last time,” Wade said.

“We were in the jungle. And the men were after Kat.”

Wade glanced in the rearview mirror. “Yeah. And she had you and your brother to protect her. But that hadn’t been enough. You, on the other hand, are alone.”

She still didn’t think anyone was going to follow them home from the club.

“Maybe your cousins could stay also, if they want to. It’s a long drive back to Houston from your place,” Wade said.

She shook her head. How had she gone from planning a night alone before she left on her trip to having a houseful of male guests? She did rather like the idea. She could get to know her cousins a little better.

And having them there would make her feel less self-conscious about having two males staying with her who were not related and who she didn’t know

very well.

“Slumber party,” she said. “Okay. I can fix us something to eat after I bandage up David. What happened to you exactly? All I saw was the bottle hitting and you ducking too late.”

“The guy wielding it was that redheaded guy.”

She stiffened. She hadn’t liked Bill Bettinger from the beginning.

“He didn’t like that my brother was protecting my interests,” Wade added.

She harrumphed. “If only he knew the real situation. We’ve only just met. Now that I know that there are others of our kind nearby, I can make some more shifter friends.”

David winced as she applied more pressure to

his wound.

“Here I thought we were nearly old friends, me watching your back in the Amazon…” Wade reminded her.

“Just my back,” she said.

He cast a wicked smile over the backseat that

said otherwise.

“So what’s going on in Belize, and how do you know my cousins?” she asked.

Wade turned onto another road. “The reason I know your cousins is that we belong to the Service.”

She considered David’s jagged wound and was relieved to see his healing genetics were beginning to take hold. The bleeding had nearly stopped. “You mean you work for one of the branches of the military, like Candy said?”

“Not exactly. We’ve done a number of extractions over the years, but we’re not part of the government.”

“Extractions of what?”

“People. Shifters like ourselves who get into trouble. City cats who aren’t prepared to face the dangers in the jungle. The Service is more like our own special government, a body that was started years ago to police jaguar shifters and attempt to protect our jaguar cousins who don’t shape-shift. We’re in service to the organization, so cryptically we’re in the Service.”

“Jaguar police force,” she said. No wonder Wade had been so good at tracking Kat and her brother when they were in the rainforest—he was a first-class act.

Then what about Wade was true? Maya frowned. “You aren’t a respectable businessman in Pensacola, Florida—a computer programmer during the day and a game-design hobbyist at night?”

He shook his head.

“Your cover?”

“I would have told Kat eventually, but not in an email. We were supposed to hook up.”

“But you really do live in Pensacola?”

“Yes.”

“You had pictures of yourself on Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other networking sites. That’s how I recognized you. So that was all you.”

“Yeah.”

She asked David, “What do you do for a living? Are you with this agency, too?”

“Yeah. But it’s not called the Agency.”

“Four main branches exist,” Wade explained. “The Enforcers, who police shifters, ensuring everyone abides by some rules. The Guardians, who protect our people, secrets, and real jaguars. The Avengers, who take out the trash. They go after the hard-core criminals that we have no hope of rehabilitating. Then there’s the Special Forces unit that David and I belong to. Your cousins, also. I saw them on a mission in South America. Another extraction.”

“How come Connor and I never knew about any

of this?”

“Your parents—”

“Mother,” Maya corrected. Except for donating the sperm, her father hadn’t taken part in their lives.

“Your mother, then, must have kept you isolated from our kind and stuck to the old ways. My father was like that, too. Not until David and I began raising hell on our own did we learn about the Service.”

“What about your mom?”

He shook his head. “She died when my brother and I were sixteen. A man involved in the exotic-animals markets trade killed her. She’d fought him tooth and claw, attempting to free herself. We guessed he thought she wasn’t worth the battle and terminated her.”

“I’m so sorry, Wade.”

“Yeah, well, Dad was in his own world then. Without his heavy hand, David and I cut loose. We got into trouble and learned all about the Service. We were lucky that one of the Enforcers thought we

were salvageable.”

She shook her head. “I can’t imagine you did anything that bad.”

“Don’t tell her all the stuff we did, and I won’t, either,” David said.

She smiled, intending to learn what she could later. “So you guys are…?”

“Part of a Special Forces unit called the Golden Claw JAG Elite Force. We do a little of everything.”

She thought the organization sounded like an admirable cause and important for their kind.

“It sounded too dangerous for me to join. But… we weren’t given much of a choice.” David was smiling when he said it.

She shook her head and wondered how often Wade and his brother had faced danger on their jobs. And off their jobs. She and her brother had certainly encountered trouble from time to time while visiting the rainforest over the years.

“What about the man who murdered your mother? Did they ever catch him?”

“No.” Wade glanced out the window, and she suspected that wasn’t the end of it.

“Are you searching for him?”

Wade’s gaze swung around to meet hers. His eyes were dark and feral—a hunter’s eyes. “Yeah.”

She swallowed hard. No wonder Wade was in the business he was in. “Every time you look for a hunter, do you suspect it might be the man who murdered

your mother?”

“Yeah. But he might have given up hunting after that. We’re still looking for him.”

She bit her lip. “But if she was killed as a jaguar, she would have turned into a human. Wouldn’t he have reported it?”

“You’d think so.”

Realization dawning, she gaped at him. “You think he knows? About our kind?”

“Yeah, like he’s one of us.”

That sent a chill racing up her spine. “Why would he have hunted her?”

“We don’t know. Speculation? To give her to someone who wanted a female jaguar shifter.”

“Slave trade—only not in humans.”

“That’s what we believe, but we haven’t been able to uncover such a market. So we really don’t know. Unless he’s just human, was scared out of his wits to see her shift, and took off. What could he say? ‘I killed a jaguar that turned into a human?’ And all he has left to show for it is a murdered woman. So yeah, we’re still looking.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What about Belize? What’s going on there exactly?”

“A team of hunters has gone down to Belize to capture a jaguar, and they’re staying at another resort only a few miles from yours.”

Maya stared at Wade, then slumped against the car seat. “You hadn’t told me that. I’ve got to get word to Connor and Kat as soon as I can. They’ll have been running in the jungle as jaguars from the time they arrived.”

“We have another problem.” David leaned back against the car seat, looking wiped out.

Wade looked at Maya as if she was the source of it. “What’s the problem?” Wade asked.

“The human, Thompson, looks to be real trouble,” David said.