Jaguar Fever

Chapter 9

Wade had already decided that after they investigated the cabana where the two hunters were staying, he would check on Maya.

The smugglers had used a credit card at one of the resorts in the jungle town, and Wade’s boss had informed him that the two men were named Mylar Cranston and Tierney Smith.

They had rap sheets with crimes ranging from carjacking and jewelry-store theft to attempted murder over the past twenty years, as well as drug deals in Central and South America, which was where they undoubtedly got their connections to chase down jaguars.

Nice guys. The latest message from his boss was that the men were armed and considered extremely dangerous. No surprise there.

Martin had reserved a cabana for Wade and David at the same resort. The thatched roofs gave the buildings a rounded appearance and fit in with the jungle theme. Each of the cabanas was backed up against the jungle, with trees screening one from another. Inside, the two bedrooms were of simple fare, three twin beds and a queen. A blue tile floor matched the floral bedspreads, and a blue tablecloth over a table seated between two rattan chairs was also covered in floral print. Hanging on one wall, a large print of a jaguar reclining in a tree made Wade smile. He could have posed for that picture himself.

“Looks like you,” David remarked, glancing at the print.

“He’s not as handsome.”

David chuckled.

“Ready to take a look at their cabana?” Wade asked.

David dropped his bag in the other room and returned. “Ready if you are.”

They made their way through the jungle behind the cabanas, silent and cautious, working around toward the back side of the rental unit where they would be hidden from view. Several keel-billed toucans were sitting in a tree watching them, their necks and chests covered in brilliant yellow feathers, the rest of their plumage black. Looking like the Fruit Loops toucan, they had large rainbow-colored beaks in bright green, orange, blue, and red that made them stand out. They were sociable creatures and the national bird of Belize. A couple of them were making a croaking sound while insects whirred and buzzed and clicked and chirped in the dense jungle foliage.

Brushing against the leaves of a tree, Wade felt his long cotton sleeves gather rain droplets collected on the broad surfaces. He could smell that it had recently rained here, making the atmosphere steamy and heavy with moisture.

They drew closer to the back side of the building and listened for sounds within the structure—trying to hear voices or showering or anything that would indicate someone was inside.

Wade heard nothing. “They’re gone,” he whispered to his brother. Peering through the window in the bathroom, he observed two shaving kits, toothbrushes, and toothpaste sitting on the bathroom counter.

He pried open the window, climbed in, and took a deep breath, smelling the scents of the men so he’d recognize them in the jungle. The pungent odor of the lemon-scented insect repellent the men had used still hung heavy in the air.

David slipped in through the window after Wade, observing everything for himself, two pairs of eyes being better than one.

Wade looked around the bathroom where muddied white towels lay scattered on the floor. The towels were no longer wet, and there were no droplets of water in the tub. Dirt had collected near the drain of the tub and dried. Toothpaste spittle was dried on the sink. The men hadn’t been here for a couple of days. From the disarray, he figured they must have told the staff they didn’t want maid service.

He moved into the room where the beds sat. The top sheets were rumpled on the queen bed as if it had been slept in. Discarded dirty briefs, socks, muddy jeans, and a T-shirt lay on the floor beside the bed. In the other bedroom, he found the queen comforter hanging half off the bed. Various articles of clothing smelling of sweat and heavily splattered with mud were scattered on the floor.

In the living area, he smelled the odor of two other men who had stood in the front entryway—a fainter scent as if they’d walked in and left right away. Jaguar shifters. They were two of the men he’d seen at the shifter club in Houston, he thought darkly.

Bill Bettinger, the one who’d struck David in the head with the bottle, and the other who had shoulder-length blond hair—the one Maya called Lion Mane and thought she’d seen at the airport. Hell. Their own kind was selling out non-shifter jaguars?

He growled low. Bastards.

David joined him, sniffed the air, and swore under his breath when he smelled the men’s scents. “Do you think they’re wild?”

“Might be, and they may be serving as the guides rather than hiring someone they didn’t know.”

When humans hunted jaguars, it was bad enough. He couldn’t understand why his kind would harm the jaguars when they had a kinship to them and the jaguars’ only predator was man. Then again, some would sell their own family if meant they’d get money for it.

Wade glanced around the living room. “If Bettinger and the other shifter return to the cabana, they’ll know you and I have been here snooping around. They’d most likely assume we’re with the Service. And we’re after them. Since the smugglers are human, if they return here before we find them, they won’t know we’ve been here.”

“Hell,” David said. “You’re right.”

“I hope the shifters won’t revisit the cabana so we have a better chance at reporting the information to the boss and keeping our business here secret until we can learn who the buyer is. Too bad Internet service is only available at the main lodge and not in the cabanas. We’ll have to let Martin know what we learn later.”

David walked toward one of the bedrooms. “I’ll search this one.”

Wade opened each of the drawers in a couple of dressers in the other bedroom, finding them empty. A bag sat on the floor next to the dresser. Inside the bag, the man had left behind civilian clothes—jeans, T-shirts. He must have planned to return and wear these when not in the jungle, or he would have taken them with him. Wade found the man’s airline ticket itinerary, showing he had already been here two days.

“The hunters came early,” Wade called out to his brother. “I wonder why Bettinger and the blond guy were at the club and not down here?”

He found no return flight information and assumed that was because they’d be here until they located the jaguar and took the cat out of the country via some means other than by plane. He noted a tag on the man’s bags. Address and phone number. “Mylar Cranston’s name is on the bag in here.” Now he knew his scent from the other by name.

Mentally, Wade filed the information away.

“This one belongs to Tierney Smith, according to the luggage tag. They apparently aren’t worried about anyone checking up on them,” David said from the other room.

Wade searched underneath the mattresses for anything of importance that might have been tucked away. His hand touched something metal beneath the mattress, and he lifted it to see what he’d found. A wicked-looking dagger. Wade smelled blood on it, though the weapon had been wiped clean.

“Looks like I might have found a murder weapon,” Wade said, grabbing a T-shirt from Mylar Cranston’s bag. “He probably kept it under his mattress, being paranoid that someone might break in and attempt to kill him.”

David joined him in the bedroom and studied the dagger. “Smells like old blood. Maybe a murder committed?”

“Yeah. It’ll undoubtedly have Cranston’s fingerprints on it, and the T-shirt has some of his beard trimmings. We should send these to Martin first chance we get. Did you find anything in the other room?”

“No. It was clean.”

“Let’s take a run through the jungle and see where they headed.”

David nodded. “Think Lion Mane and Bettinger will be with them?”

“Yeah. That means we’ll be dealing with at least four of them.”

David and Wade returned to their cabana and stripped. Wade opened the window in the bathroom, easy enough for them to get in and out of as cats, and with no lights in the jungle beyond. Perfect for a nighttime run.

He didn’t know if the two men were using their cabana as their place of operation while looking for the cats, or if they had set up tents in the rainforest and searched for the elusive jaguar from there.

They wouldn’t have to get a guide if Bettinger and Lion Mane knew their way around the jungle. They might have to pay a couple of men to help them carry the big cat to a waiting vehicle, then take off for Mexico and the States. Wade’s mission for now was to try to locate them and then take it from there.

Two miles from the resort, in the thick of the jungle, he smelled Connor and Kat’s scent. All he could think of was Maya and her safety, and his mission flew straight out the window.

David looked in the direction Wade did, and then Wade took off in the direction of her treetop cottage.

David bolted after him.