“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!”
Chapter 24
Maya’s skin prickled with anxiety. She was certain that Thompson wasn’t going to lose the truck following them. The rig painted in camouflage had a Herd grill guard and bull bars in front, so if the driver chose to ram Thompson hard, he would lose control of his truck, guaranteed.
Maya pulled off her seat belt as Thompson made another turn downtown, trying to lose the tail. “What are you doing?” Thompson asked. “You should keep your seat belt on. It’s too dangerous not to.”
“Do you have a gun?”
He stared at her for a second, then watched his driving again. “Tranquilizer gun.”
“Good. But it might not be enough. I’m going to shift. You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? My brother would kill me if he knew. Maybe kill you, too. So we keep it a secret between ourselves, all right?”
“I don’t believe any of this,” Thompson muttered. “Who are those guys following us?”
“Taking a wild guess? Lion Mane and a buddy. Lion Mane was the guy I danced with at the club a week ago. You remember the guy with the blond hair?” Maya climbed over the seat, afraid she was flashing her thong, but hopefully Thompson was watching his driving.
Thompson snorted. “I never thought they’d go this far to get your interest.”
She yanked her dress over her head and tossed it on the seat, then ditched her shoes.
Thompson swung a wild right down another street.
Maya lost her balance and fell against the seat. She quickly righted herself and slid her thong off. Thompson glanced up at the rearview mirror.
“Watch your driving.” She unfastened her strapless bra and left it on the seat. “Don’t watch me.”
Thompson didn’t say anything, but he was grinding his back teeth. “I don’t believe any of this.” But he sounded like he wasn’t real sure of what he was saying.
“Believe what you will. We’ll need every weapon we can use. Oh and, Thompson? Lion Mane is a jaguar shifter, too. If they stop us and we’re out of options, open the door so I can get out of the truck and attempt to deal with them. Okay?”
Thompson stared at her. Thankfully, because of the seat, he couldn’t see her nude body, only the swell of her breasts and naked shoulders. “All right? If you keep me penned up in the truck and they begin shooting, I won’t have a chance to help us.”
“All right.” He sounded so unconvinced that she wanted to shift and give him a small nip to prove she wasn’t making this stuff up. “I’ll let you out if the time comes. And I’ll have my rifle ready.”
“I won’t bite you. No matter how scary I might look, I know what I’m doing. I might growl and sound vicious and deadly. But you’re one of the good guys. You love the jaguars as much as we do. You’re on our side. You just can’t let anyone, not anyone, know we exist.”
Then she called on the need to shift, and in that blur between human and jaguar, warmth seeped through her body, through every muscle, through every tissue, through every cell. She felt the change from being a much less flexible human to becoming a golden furred cat, stretching and purring until the vehicle crashed with a bang.
Wade was getting a really bad feeling. For the past ten minutes, he’d tried over and over to reach Maya without success. “I can’t get ahold of her,” Wade told his brother. He contacted Martin. “Any luck with locating her?”
“None,” Martin answered. “I’ve been in touch with her cousins. They’re on their way to your location.”
Wade was afraid they’d be too late. David drove around the area for another twenty minutes, until Wade was ready to shift and run through Houston searching for her.
His brother glanced at him. “You can’t.”
“Hell, I know I can’t. But sitting in a car and not being able to search for her by…” He stopped short of saying scent. He wished they’d dumped Candy’s butt at the convenience store.
“You wouldn’t be able to locate her while she’s riding in Thompson’s truck,” David said.
Wade knew that. He just hated feeling that the situation was so out of his control. They heard sirens, and David headed in that direction.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere. We haven’t had word, and until we do, I have no idea where to drive to.”
Wade watched for signs of emergency lights and finally saw the flashing, colorful lights partially hidden by a tall glass building. “Fire truck, police cars. Virtually no traffic down here.”
When they drew close, Wade took in the sight of the crumpled truck, wolves painted on the side. Thompson’s truck? Wade’s heart thundered in his ears. David had barely slowed down to see what was going on before Wade was opening the car door.
“Christ, Wade, let me stop before you kill yourself.” David jerked the car to the curb and let Wade out as a policeman hurried toward them to tell them to stay away from the scene of the accident.
“I know the driver and the woman who was with him, Thompson and Maya Anderson,” Wade said to the policeman, trying to draw closer. “What’s happened? Where are they?”