“I don’t understand. So you’re saying you bought them? Don’t you have to have a license to have them in Texas? Facilities to house them? They can’t be running loose like I saw.”
She danced with Thompson, her attention drifting to three men lurking at the edge of the dance floor, shifters. “Yeah, I agree. We don’t have any jaguars. Despite what you think you saw.” Before the dance ended, she said to Thompson, “We better go before there’s another fight.”
Thompson looked at the men who were lined up, eyeing her. “You’re still popular, I see.”
“I’m a wild cat. Didn’t you know?”
He smiled down at her. “As in shifter. Like you told me before.”
“Sure.” She took his hand and skirted around the men, trying to avoid them. Without David and Wade or her cousins to run interference, the shifters zeroed in on her.
“Wanna dance?” one of the men asked, trying to block Thompson from moving Maya out of the club.
“No, thank you.”
The man grabbed her arm. “Just one dance.”
“Let her go,” Thompson said, his words dark with threat.
The shifter released her. Thompson moved Maya quickly through the club. “They’re following us,” he said under his breath to her.
Not liking this, Maya picked up her pace. Thompson swiftly escorted her to her car. She stared at the tires, punctured, as if the rubber had melted against the hot pavement. Her blood iced with anger.
She glanced back at the club and saw the shifters hesitating at the doorway.
“Come on. I’ll take you in my truck, and your cousins or your boyfriend and his brother can take care of your car,” Thompson said.
She hated leaving her car, but she figured they could be in more of a mess if the shifters decided to play hardball with the human.
Thompson’s truck was black and featured a pack of beautiful gray wolves howling against the backdrop of a snow-covered mountain in a custom airbrushed paint job. He really was a wolf person. It amused her to think that he’d tangled with a bunch of big cats. She was never so glad to be inside a vehicle as when she climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, and he jumped into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine, and gunned the gas.
“Okay, tell me what this is all about,” he said.
She chewed on her lower lip.
Thompson glanced at her.
She folded her arms. “I’ve already explained.”
“That you’re a cat shifter and so are your brother and sister-in-law. So what about the rest of the cats I saw? Your cousins? Wade and his brother?”
“You really don’t believe that, do you?”
“No. I think you’re involved in something. But damned if I know what. I mean, jaguars aren’t trainable like that. Not so that they can serve as obedient guard cats.”
She frowned as Thompson took an exit she hadn’t expected. “This isn’t the fastest way out of Houston to catch the highway we need.”
“We’re being followed.” Before she could ask him anything further, he added, “I’m a hunter. I know.”
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.