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.”