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 could 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.
Bettinger was watching the other man’s progress, waiting until he was out of earshot. She was getting ready to leap from her hiding place before he shot and killed Wade, but she hesitated when Bettinger said, “What the hell are you doing out here?”
Not that Wade could reply to him in his jaguar form.
He kicked Wade in the chest.
The jaguar growled, but he was so out of it that the sound was barely audible.
Maya bared her teeth in silent protest.
“This won’t do.” Bettinger raised his rifle to shoot Wade somewhere less vital, but he had to know that wouldn’t trigger the shift. Only a kill would. “Maybe if I shoot you somewhere that’ll hurt but won’t be fatal, you’ll want to talk? Tell me why you’re here? I don’t believe in coincidences. You must be in the Service. You and your brother. The other guys, too, that you were with at the club? Hell. Forget wounding you. Too bad for you that you weren’t better at your job. I thought the Service only hired the best.”
His finger moved to the trigger again as Maya roared and leaped for the kill.
Chapter 13
A shot rang out. A thunk sounded as the bullet hit something. Ignoring the gunshot, Maya didn’t take her focus off Bettinger. She slammed against him with her huge jaguar paws planted on his chest. He fell back with a strangled cry. Eyes wide, his expression was full of disbelief and fear. Jaguars in the wild didn’t stick together, unless they were a mother and her cubs. Then she’d protect them with her life. Full-grown jaguars? No way. So he hadn’t anticipated another jaguar’s attack.
Flat on his back, he smelled her and his lips parted in shock. He knew who she was.
“Let me shift,” he begged as she stood on top of him, pinning him down. “Give me a chance.”
A growl rumbled in her throat. Like he was going to give Wade a chance? And the female cat? The jaguar wasn’t going to be allowed to live, but hunted to the death on someone’s ranch.
And if Maya gave the bastard a chance, if she allowed him to shift to fight her that way, he’d be bigger and could easily kill her instead.
Bettinger knew Maya planned to eliminate him. She didn’t have any choice. If she let him up, he’d fatally shoot Wade and her. They knew he was involved now, and he couldn’t risk letting them live.
She growled softly, her face close to his, smelling his fear but unable to decide what to do with him. Killing humans who were out to murder them had to be done with finesse. If she terminated Bettinger in a jaguar way, crushing the head with her powerful jaws, investigators would know a jaguar had killed him. Then hunters would descend on the area to destroy the jaguar, which could mean any that they came across. They were all the same, after all.
“Hey!” a man shouted from behind her.
Her skin prickled with fear. Hell, the other man had come back.
“Shoot her!” Bettinger shouted, panic driving his words.
That’s when she felt Bettinger pull a gun from a holster at his side, realizing he’d only pretended to be panicked to distract her. She didn’t hesitate this time. It was kill or be killed.
And she had two killers to contend with now.
She swiped at Bettinger’s head with a powerful slash of her paw. He dropped the gun, his head turned hard to the right, his neck broken, his eyes staring but unseeing.
She whipped around to target the other man, the hunter who was ready with a rifle aimed at her. Wade growled softly, and Mylar turned as if afraid the other jaguar—the rabid one—was ready to eat him alive. He wasn’t. Poor Wade was struggling to lift his head off the leaf-littered ground.
But his action had given her the precious time she needed to take care of the other man.
She leaped, trying out Kat’s unusual way of landing on the prey’s head, and it worked. When her body slammed onto his head, he dropped like a rock and hit the ground hard. His neck was broken. She sniffed Mylar for any sign of a breath, listened for a heartbeat. Nothing.
Now what was she to do? Lion Mane was most likely still in the area, and maybe even more of the men who were working with these bastards were around.
Wade was too drugged to leave the area under his own speed, and she couldn’t move a cat as big as he was all on her own. The female couldn’t be left alone like this, either. Not in the lethargic condition she was in.