“Illegal?”
“Where’d you take her? To the ranch? To be hunted?”
“Hunted?” George shook his head.
“Were you involved in crashing the truck Maya was riding in?”
“No, I never saw any truck. Bettinger handled the whole thing and had me pick the cat up from him at an abandoned building. I delivered her across town to another location where a waiting vehicle was parked. Bettinger was really paranoid that someone would come looking for the cat.” George’s jaw dropped open, and then he let out his breath. “Hell, no wonder he was worried someone could find the trail. He’d stolen the cat from two shifters.”
“Where is she?” Wade growled.
“I don’t know. I was supposed to transfer her to the trunk of another vehicle parked in a vacant lot.”
“Okay, let’s go. Don’t try to cause any trouble for us,” Wade said, “or you’ll damn well regret it. Get some pants on first.”
“They’re in there,” George said, motioning to the bedroom.
David waved for him to get his clothes. “Nice and easy,” David warned.
“You realize we’re with the Service, right?” Wade said.
George swallowed hard. “I kind of suspected that when you barged in the way you did. I didn’t know anything about jaguars being hunted. I swear it. It was just some quick, easy money. I should have known it was too good to be true.” He slipped into the bedroom, quiet as a cat in the rainforest, and grabbed his clothes, then hurried out of the bedroom. David and Wade waited while George fumbled with his clothes in getting dressed.
“What… what are you going to do with me?” George asked, looking like his legs were barely holding him up.
“Just keep talking about what happened while you dress,” Wade said.
“Okay, I assume that whoever was picking her up was watching because I had to leave the keys on the driver’s seat and anyone could have stolen the car. I was told in pretty harsh terms not to wait around.”
George yanked on his sneakers without bothering with socks. “If someone got to the car and stole it, the thieves would have a real shock. They’d have found a jaguar in the trunk. Once she awakened, they’d have regretted stealing the car, but it would have served them right.”
“Name and make of the car? Color? License tags?”
George gave Wade the information in a hurry. “You can’t kill me. I haven’t done anything wrong, according to our laws.” He tugged on a T-shirt.
David quickly texted the information to Martin.
“You conspired to supply a jaguar as prey for an illegal hunt.” Wade said, raising a brow. “Grab Candy. We’ll take her with us. If we left her and she woke, she could warn her brother we’re out to get Maya back.”
The man’s eyes grew round as he stared mutely at Wade. He suspected the man really hadn’t known that’s why Bettinger was buying the cat. “I can’t believe they’re going to hunt her. I… I thought Bettinger just wanted his shifter girlfriend back and was plenty pissed about her being with the other guy. You know how we are. Possessive. Territorial.”
David grabbed Candy off the floor and cradled her in his arms, since George seemed too shocked to react quickly.
Wade continued to tick off the charges as he shoved George toward the door. “Taking a shifter hostage.”
All the color drained from George’s face. “I… I didn’t think of it as taking her hostage. She was just… asleep. I was just returning her to Bettinger.”
“…To use in a hunt where hunters have paid to kill said shifter. Do you know what would happen if word got out that a hunter had killed a shifter and that shifter turned from cat to human when she died? All caught on videotape?”
“My God,” George said, shaking. “I… I didn’t know that’s what he wanted her for. I would never have agreed to anything like that. I thought he just wanted her back.”
“And she happens to be my woman,” Wade growled, hand clenched around George’s arm as he guided him out of the suite.
“Your woman?” George looked like he was ready to pass out. “I swear I don’t know where they took her. I’ll drive you to the place where I transferred her to the other vehicle, but that’s all I know. What are you going to do with me?”
Wade and David flanked him as they hurried him out of the hotel. “We’ll turn you and Candy over to our boss. He’ll hand her over to the police once we’re finished mopping things up,” Wade said.
“Which group are you in? The Enforcers?” George sounded hopeful. No one who knew about their organization wanted a visit from the Avengers, who terminated shifters who were this much in violation of their shifter laws.
“Golden Claws.” Which meant they did everything.
George stumbled. Wade tightened his hold on George’s arm to steady him. “Easy, man.”
“I… I heard Bettinger’s brother and a couple of human smugglers were in Belize and didn’t make it out of the jungle alive,” George said.
Wade gave him a small smile. “You heard right.”
“I don’t… haven’t ever done any of that kind of work.”
“Our boss will investigate your claims,” Wade said.
“Whose car do we take, or should we take both?” David asked Wade.
“These people trust George more than they do us. We’ll take his car.”
They all piled into George’s car, David driving while Candy slept in the front seat and Wade sat in the backseat with George, who gave directions while Wade read his text messages. He saw George watching him. “What?” Wade asked, his tone harsh. He was ready to kill George for handing Maya over to Bettinger.
“I’ll help you get her back. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. Anything.”
“Anything?” Wade asked, his voice softly dangerous.
“Yeah. Anything. I didn’t know she was someone else’s woman, damn it. Or that they planned to hunt her. Hell, I’ll kill Bettinger myself.”
“That’s my job,” Wade said, noticing how late it was getting. He hoped the bastards weren’t mistreating Maya. Just confining her in a pen would be bad enough.
“I don’t know if it’ll help any, but Candy said something about the big party being moved up to this morning.”
His heart thundering, Wade stared at George in disbelief.
“Storms are predicted for the area all day.”
“This morning,” Wade said, the pit of his stomach dropping like a lead weight in the dark Amazon River. “We’re running out of time.”
He was with Maya now, loving her, kissing her, hugging her, warming her. She couldn’t seem to raise her arms to hug him back. She tried, but she felt… lost. He didn’t seem to mind, his whispered breath against her cheek, letting her know he was here for her. She wasn’t alone.
Thunder boomed in the distance as the air crackled with the approaching storm, waking Maya from a sound sleep. The damn drug!
The weekend was only two days away and no sign of any sort of rescue. She knew Wade and everyone else would be looking for her. But would they be too late?
Last night, she’d intended to attempt an escape, but that bastard Bettinger had shot her with another tranquilizer dart after he’d eaten dinner with Gunther. After that, she’d been out for the rest of the night.
She’d only just managed to get to her feet and stood staring at the sheets of lightning flashing across the black sky in the distance, highlighting massive blue-black thunderheads that towered in the early dawn. Forks of lightning zigzagged to the earth, an explosive boom of thunder rippling into rumbling overhead afterward.
She was swaying on her feet, unable to keep her balance as the wind picked up. Twisting her ears, she heard what sounded like a truck approaching. Breakfast? At this hour?