Wild Cat

CHAPTER FOUR

Outside, Eric leaned against Diego’s black T-Bird, waiting. To most observers he’d look relaxed, but Diego sensed the tension in him, a cat ready to spring.

As Diego made for the car, another Shifter came out of the house next door. This one was damn tall and hugely muscled, with a big, granitelike face. He wore a biker vest, which showed off tatts that ran down his arms. He was much bigger than Eric, much bigger than any human Diego had ever seen. Bear Shifter, maybe?

On the porch behind him stood a woman almost as tall as the man. They both wore Collars, which glinted in the late afternoon light. “Everything all right, Eric?” the woman called. “Who’s the human?”

The bear man gave Diego a toothy smile. “Mama don’t like humans. They worry her.”

Dios mio, that woman was his mother?

“Everything’s fine, Shane,” Eric said. “This is Diego. I’m taking him to Cassidy.”

Shane’s smile faded. “What happened? Did Brody call? You need me?”

“No.” Eric’s voice was calm, even casual. Diego realized he was deliberately downplaying his anger, perhaps so the bear wouldn’t react to it. “Nothing’s going on. I’m just going to round up Cass and bring her home.”

Shane laughed suddenly, a loud, booming sound that reminded Diego of Jobe. “Round up Cass. Right. Call me if you need backup.”

“You’ll be the first.” Eric opened the door of Diego’s car and got inside.

Diego found himself once again the object of Shane’s stare, plus mama bear’s from the porch. A big male bear and his pissed-off mother, eyeing the pesky human in their midst. It might be funny if not for their uncanny resemblance to grizzlies.

Diego deliberately turned away from Shane and got into the driver’s seat. Without looking at the bears, he started the car and pulled onto the street.

He saw Eric watching him.

“What?” Diego asked in irritation.

“Shane and Nell are some of the highest-ranking bears around,” Eric said. “Nell is head of their clan. And you just turned your back on them like you didn’t care.”

“I’m armed,” Diego said. “And they’re Collared.”

“Doesn’t matter. You did the equivalent of flipping them off, or if you were a Shifter, spraying.”

“Yeah, that’s what I need. A pissing contest with bears.” Diego knew though, from his childhood, how important pissing contests could be.

Eric leaned back in the seat and put his booted foot on the dashboard as Diego drove down the narrow street to the entrance of Shiftertown and out through the gates.

“You’re right that I shouldn’t have let Cass go out,” Eric said as the dilapidated streets outside Shiftertown flowed by. “That’s why I sent so many guards with her, including Shane’s brother, Brody. One mean bear.”

Diego glanced at him, but Eric was looking out the window. It must have cost Eric, leader of all Shiftertown, to admit he was wrong.

“Why did you?” Diego asked.

“Because it’s the one-year anniversary of her mate’s death. There are rituals we do for that. Cassidy will do one in the place her mate died, and then we’ll have a family memorial, which these days includes everyone in our Shiftertown. Rituals are important for us, damned important. Important enough to risk danger for. Stay for the memorial-you’ll understand.”

Eric issued the invitation offhandedly, but Diego sensed that it was significant. First, though, they had to find Cassidy.

Shiftertown stood on the northern edge of North Las Vegas. As always, Diego marveled at how quickly city turned to open desert, developments and convenience stores soon falling behind. The street became a two-lane highway, running north.

Eric told Diego to take a turnoff to a smaller highway that went due west into the foothills of mountains north of Mount Charleston. After a few miles, the road started climbing, the dry, treeless landscape giving way to pines and scrub. The world was completely different up here, a damp and cool contrast to the desert floor. Pines soared, the clean smell of woods was in every breath, and the air became cold, even frigid.

Eric rode in silence, folding his arms with eyes closed, as though taking the opportunity for a nap. Just when Diego thought the man asleep, Eric opened his eyes, alert as anything, and told Diego to turn on the next dirt road to the right.

It was nearly dark now, and Diego had to look hard for the road. He found it after passing it once and having to back up to it, a faint strip winding into darkening woods.

The sun dove behind the trees and things got black fast. Diego drove slowly, taking care of his car on the washboard road. There was nothing out here, no cabins or ranger stations-just trees and sky, and a large Shifter saying nothing in his passenger seat.

Eric went from lounging to straight-up alert in a split second. “Stop. Here.”

Diego stood on the breaks. The car slid sideways, catching on the soft, slippery dirt, then stopped. Diego could see nothing in his headlights but the bank of a hill and the trunks of aspens, leading off into darkness.

Eric opened his door and slid out into the night. Diego quickly got himself out, his gun comfortingly at his side.

Eric hadn’t run off. He waited while Diego opened the trunk, got rid of his suit coat and tie, and pulled on a padded jacket against the cold. Diego lifted out a tranquilizer rifle he’d checked out from Shifter Division-just in case-loading a dart into it. He tucked a box of more darts into his pockets, plus extra ammo for the Sig in his shoulder holster.

When he looked up, Eric was giving the rifle a hard look. “You won’t need that.”

Diego slammed the trunk. “I’m out here, alone, with a Shifter who claims he’s got other Shifter guards around. Yeah, I need it.”

Eric growled in his throat again, a long, low sound. Which was exactly why Diego had brought the gun. He’d learned, in his ten years on the force, that while you didn’t use firepower recklessly, you didn’t hesitate to use it when the danger was real. Jobe had hesitated, and now he was dead.

“This won’t kill her,” Diego said. “Tranqs are strong enough to knock out a Shifter in its animal form but they don’t do any permanent damage.”

“I know,” Eric said. “Who do you think they experimented on to find the right mix?”

Shifters themselves, Diego had learned. And not always willing volunteers.

Diego hadn’t realized the extent of the research performed on Shifters until last night when he’d stayed up late to sift through files from Shifter Division. Some of the things he’d found out made him sick. “I’m sorry about that. Seriously. Experiments on Shifters are restricted now.”

“Shifters died in those experiments.” Eric’s eyes were sharp. “Males, females, cubs. I know this, because I was one of the ones they experimented on.”

Diego slung the rifle over one shoulder, his survival pack over the other. Eric was angry, and Diego didn’t blame him, but he wasn’t about to let Eric take out his rage at all humans on him.

“I’m sorry it happened,” Diego said. “I didn’t know about it until yesterday. I was only a kid at the time.”

“So was my son. When they wanted to poke and jab him, I told them I’d go in his place.”

Diego couldn’t think of an answer to that. Would Diego have volunteered to let people stick chemicals in him or perform weird experiments on him in order to save Xavier? Or his mother? Or Jobe?

Hell, yes.

Eric seemed to sense Diego’s understanding. He gave Diego a little nod, then turned around and started pulling off his shirt and boots.

“Whoa,” Diego said as Eric unbuckled his jeans. “What are you doing?”

“I can move around better out here if I shift. Plus Cassidy and the other Shifters will scent me faster and won’t attack.”

Good to know. Diego looked away as Eric slid off his pants.

When he glanced back, Eric was stark naked, moonlight shining on a honed body and the tattoo that spread from his right shoulder down his arm and across his upper back. Diego looked quickly away again, and Eric huffed a laugh.

“Humans. Terrified of nudity.”

“Not terror. Respecting space and privacy.”

“Right. Humans are all about their space,” Eric said, then he shifted.

He didn’t roar or howl or make strange noises like werewolves did in movies. The change was smooth, practiced, and fast.

Eric’s face distorted first, his nose and mouth elongating, his slit-pupiled eyes going from deep jade to light green. His chest became the thick chest of a big cat, his legs bent into powerful back limbs, and his feet and hands sprouted claws and fur.

The whole process took about thirty seconds, but it was a very long thirty seconds. At the end of it, Diego found himself facing a huge, exotic wildcat.

Shifter cats were a combination of all the big cats, the files said, bred together long ago-by fairies, according to the Shifters, though Diego wasn’t sure he believed that.

Shifter cats had different characteristics from family to family, clan to clan. Eric and Cassidy resembled snow leopards, but Eric was a hell of lot bigger than a usual snow leopard. He had black spots on a thick white coat, tufted ears, and a well-muscled chest, but he also had the powerhouse limbs of a lion.

Eric’s family had lived in the ragged wilds of Scotland, Diego had learned, until the family turned themselves in as part of the Shifters coming out. How snow leopards had bred in the Highlands, Diego didn’t know. But there was a lot about Shifters no one understood yet, and the Shifters didn’t exactly volunteer information about themselves.

Eric studied Diego with an almost amused look on his cat face before he turned and loped off into the darkness.

Diego switched on a lantern flashlight and hiked after him. They were far from paved roads and civilization out here on the edge of the Sierras. Towns and farms were nonexistent, and the mountains were vast.

Eric could be leading Diego anywhere-into an ambush with other Shifters maybe-but Diego wasn’t afraid. He was armed, he had his cell phone and radio, and he knew how to fight. Hand-to-hand combat was his specialty, and he was a more than decent marksman.

No, the only thing that terrified Diego Escobar was being held upside down off a balcony thirty stories up. If those drug runners had met Diego in the middle of a flat field, he’d have won the day. They’d be incarcerated now instead of running loose somewhere south of the border.

The leopard trotted along the cut of a dry wash and up a ridge on the other side of it. Eric was at least nice enough to let Diego keep him in sight.

At the top of the ridge, Eric stopped and sniffed the wind. To Diego, the chill breeze smelled like pine and dust, but Eric made a sudden, fierce growl and loped away, disappearing quickly beneath the trees.

Diego swore under his breath as he picked his way along the steep-sided hill after him. There was no path the way Eric had gone, and Diego’s feet slipped and slid in the soft dirt and pine needles. The rifle and pack unbalanced him, but no way was he going to drop them and leave them behind.

Eric was nowhere in sight by the time Diego reached a clearing in the trees. Annoying, but Diego wasn’t worried about getting lost. He had a powerful flashlight and a GPS device, and he’d noted the exact position in which he’d left the car.

No, getting back to civilization wasn’t the problem. Falling, breaking a bone, being bitten by a snake or a rabid coyote-any of those could shut him down fast. People still died out here, and quickly. The Wild West wasn’t so long ago.

Knowing Cassidy was in this wilderness somewhere kept Diego from walking to the car and leaving Eric to make his own way back. A Shifter had the advantage out here, not a human. But Cassidy…

In spite of Eric’s reassurance about guards, Cassidy’s story about being chased into the construction site by the hunter, not to mention the same hunter trying to take out Diego, worried him. A lot.

A couple of the more aggressive hunting groups had, a few of years ago, gotten the government to lift the ban on hunting un-Collared Shifters. The ban had been in place for a decade, but the hunters argued that Shifters who’d refused to take the Collar were still out there, still very dangerous.

Those Shifters could kill livestock, and worse, they said. Maybe even kidnap human women or children to do unspeakable things to them. Not that anything like this had ever been documented, but the hunters claimed anecdotal evidence.

Their arguments had finally been acknowledged, and the hunting of un-Collared Shifters again had become legal.

Cassidy was out here in the pitch dark. Would a hunter see-or care-that she wore a Collar?

Diego scanned for signs to tell him which way Eric had gone. The earth didn’t show any paw prints, but a bush had been recently broken, a larger rock moved to expose its clean underside and the bugs hiding there.

Diego climbed around a stand of trees and started over another arm of hill. To his right, the ground sloped downward into darkness; to his left and ahead of him, the earth folded into treacherous grooves, deep washes that would flood during snowmelt later this spring.

About half a mile on, Diego was rewarded with a paw print in his beam of light, unmistakable in the mud. A wildcat, but a big one, much bigger than the elusive mountain lions that lived out here.

Diego followed the direction of the print, finding another in the drier dirt. He hiked on through the wash, eyes stinging with the dust he kicked up. He came out of the trees and found himself on a wide ridge, under an outcropping of black rock.

He heard a snarl-harsh, breathy, animal-like. He raised his flashlight and saw a mountain lion standing in the shadows of the rock. A real wildcat, not Eric, and this mountain lion was seriously pissed off.

The cat was so close that Diego could feel the hot whuff of its breath. Its ears were flat against its head, and it bared its teeth in a red-lipped snarl. Diego knew he’d never get the tranq rifle around in time or his pistol from its holster. Sometime tomorrow, rangers would find shredded Latino cop all over the bottom of the hill.

He heard a second snarl, this one louder. Another wildcat leapt down from the rocks above, a snow leopard, complete with Collar. Not Eric-this one was a smaller than Eric, and its eyes were a more vibrant green.

The leopard growled, long and low, throat vibrating with menace. The mountain lion’s hackles rose, and it backed away. The snow leopard gave it a narrow-eyed stare, then jumped straight at it. The mountain lion let out one high-pitched yowl and took off up the hill, scattering dirt and gravel behind it.

The snow leopard landed and stopped, watching the mountain lion go with what Diego swore was a satisfied expression. The big cat then turned and looked at Diego with almost glowing green eyes, assessing him.

Diego put his hands around his rifle. If this wasn’t Cassidy Warden, rangers still might find shredded Latino cop all over the hill.

“Cassidy?” he asked.

The wildcat gave him one slow blink, then moved toward him on graceful feet, step by step. Diego watched it come, tensing, but not raising the rifle. The leopard huffed a little, a more friendly sound than the mountain lion had made, then it butted Diego solidly in the stomach.

The push was hard but playful, almost affectionate. The leopard walked around Diego, twining close to his legs like a house cat before it bumped him in the backside.

“That is you, Cassidy, right?”

The wildcat rose, planted large front paws on Diego’s shoulders. Diego overbalanced and went down on his ass, two hundred pounds of wildcat on top of him.

Reflexes made Diego toss aside his rifle and pack before he fell on them, then the leopard settled on his chest, nuzzling him with a soft, whiskered nose.

The wildcat was heavy, but in a warm-blanket way, not a crush-the-prey way. Diego’s rifle had landed just out of reach, and he noticed she’d pinned him so that he couldn’t go for his pistol.

“Good kitty.” Diego put a hand on her shoulder. The cat’s fur was incredibly soft. “What are you doing to me, mi ja?”

The leopard licked across his chin, tongue like very rough sandpaper. Diego couldn’t help grinning. “You know this might be considered soliciting a police officer, don’t you?”

She gave a grunt, heaved herself off Diego’s chest, and started to walk off. Diego rolled and got the tranq rifle cocked and aimed so fast he should win a prize for it.

“Stop.”

The leopard looked back at him with green cat’s eyes. It snarled, then it shifted.

Limbs elongated, and the wildcat rose to the cross between cat and human that had saved Diego up in the construction site. The body continued to change and finally settled into the leggy, lush female who’d faced him right before he’d arrested her. Cassidy was as naked as she’d been then, her blond hair as unkempt and as lusciously beautiful.

Cassidy folded her arms, which lifted her breasts under the bright moonlight. The areolas were large and dusky, and Diego imagined how they’d feel filling his mouth, velvet against his tongue.

In the interrogation room, when Cassidy had wrapped her arms around him, it had been all Diego could do to remain immobile. The feel of her body bare through the coverall had made him want to rip open that ugly blue jail suit and have her right there, damn who might be watching. Now there was nothing between him and her but the darkness.

“Where are your bodyguards?” Diego managed to ask.

Cassidy gestured. “Out there.”

Diego scanned the moonlit woods but could see nothing, hear no one. If the trackers were nearby, they were masters of stealth. But they would be, wouldn’t they? Shifters were animals with human intelligence. Incredibly dangerous-hence the Collars.

“Eric called them his trackers,” Diego said. “What does he mean by that?”

Cassidy shrugged, which did nice things to her body. “All clan leaders have Shifters that help guard the clan, keep tabs on any problems that might come up, alert the clan leader to danger. Eric’s Shiftertown leader now, so his trackers help him guard all Shiftertown.”

Diego lowered the rifle but held on to it. “He’s not supposed to have people working for him.”

Cassidy gave him a half smile, which made her even more dangerously beautiful. “Eric doesn’t care, Diego Escobar.”

“So Eric sent the trackers to keep you safe? He shouldn’t have let you come at all.”

“I know. Don’t blame my brother. He knew why I needed to come, and now I’ve finished my ritual. I can be very persuasive.”

Diego just bet she could be. She’d look at a man with those green eyes, dark now in the moonlight, and he’d do anything for her. “Last time you came here, someone started hunting you. What makes you think it’s safe here now?”

“I don’t.” Cassidy gave him a stubborn stare worthy of her brother. “But I refused to let him keep me from honoring Donovan. If I do that, the hunters will have won, won’t they?”

Her words made Diego pause. He’d felt the same after Jobe died, when everyone had told him to take leave, transfer out of vice, and other such asinine suggestions. No. If Diego stopped hunting drug dealers-who caused a hell of a lot more damage to the world than people wanted to believe-the bad guys would have their victory. He couldn’t let them stop him.

“I get that,” Diego said. “But I’m still going to take you home to keep you safe.”

“You’re being protective of a Shifter?”

“You saved my life. That’s nothing I take lightly, querida.”

Cassidy took one more step toward Diego until she stood right inside his personal space. There must be half an inch between her breasts and his chest, but Diego couldn’t trust himself to look down and check.

“What does that word mean?” Cassidy asked. Her voice was soft, sexy. Mind-blowing. “Querida, or whatever you said? I don’t speak Spanish.”

“It’s a term of endearment. An Anglo might say darling or honey.”

“What was that other one you used? Me ha?”

“Mi ja. Short for mi hija. It’s what you say to someone you care about.”

She smiled. “When you say that you sound-I don’t know-affectionate.”

“Maybe I like cats,” Diego said.

Cassidy rested her hand on his chest, and her smile widened. “Meow.”

Diego couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was right there, red and moist, and he wanted to kiss her so much. He wanted to lock his arms around her, lift her against him, slide his hands down to her beautiful backside.

He wanted her. Right here, right now. Too damn bad about whoever was in the darkness watching.

Diego had rarely had to worry about female company in his lifetime, but this wasn’t the same. This was Cassidy-exotic, beautiful, and brave. Anything he started with her would mean something.

That realization surprised him. Diego wanted to pause, to touch the feeling, to explore it. He’d been a walking mass of anger since Jobe’s death, keeping others, including his own family, at arm’s length.

This woman he definitely wanted inside his arms.

But Diego couldn’t have her right now. She was in his custody, and violating that would break every rule he knew, not to mention his own principles. Custody meant taking care of someone as much as being in charge of them.

Even knowing all that, it was all he could do to take Cassidy’s hand and lift it from his chest.

“Cass,” he said with difficulty. “We need to go.”

He didn’t imagine her look of disappointment. Shifters weren’t ones to hide their emotions. But Diego would be back to see her-often-and he hoped she never looked at him with that kind of disappointment again.

Cassidy kept hold of his hand, her fingers warm and strong. “I’ll let you take me home,” she said. “But can I show you something first?”

Diego’s heart beat faster. He wanted to see anything she had to show him, though he knew he shouldn’t let her lead him anywhere.

But what the hell? He’d already left procedure way behind. He might as well go for it.

“Show me,” he said.

Cassidy released Diego’s hand, stepped away, and shifted back to her snow leopard form.

She was beautiful, even as a wildcat. Cassidy stretched-front legs first, then back-and shook out each foot as she straightened up. She looked back at Diego with light jade eyes, then trotted away into the darkness.