“Any trouble?” he asked the three men as they broke through the vegetation and reached the beach.
“Carlton got careless, and the cat scratched him bad,” one of the men said, two of them carrying a burlap sack between them with what was likely their live bounty inside.
Cats. Which kind?
A third man was carrying another burlap sack, while the last man was holding on to his shoulder as if his injuries were severe, his shirt and fingers bloodied. He groaned in pain.
All of them had rifles slung over their shoulders and sheathed machetes hanging from their belts.
“Whatcha get?” the lookout asked.
“Puma and two cubs.”
Melissa ground her teeth, thinking at once of the puma and her cubs that she and Huntley had spied earlier.
“Hot damn.”
“Help Carlton into the boat, will ya? Where’s Jackson?”
Jackson. The man—and his cohorts—that they’d come for. And he wasn’t here? Great.
“Taking a dump. Something didn’t agree with him, and he’s about an eighth of a mile back there.”
“And you left him alone?”
“Hell, he told us to get going. If you want to watch him doing his thing, you go back and do so.”
Melissa had no intention of letting these men remove the pumas from the park. But both she and Huntley hesitated to make a move. If they attacked now, Jackson could all of a sudden show up and shoot them both.
Then, figuring they had to chance it before the men got the cats in the boat, Huntley growled low, Melissa’s cue to attack.
They had one attempt to get this right while the men still had their hands full with carrying the sacks and the lookout was trying to help the injured man to the boat. They had so many rifles and machetes between them, it was a dangerous move on the jaguars’ part.
Huntley went after the two men holding the bigger cat. Melissa lunged after the lone man holding on to the sack with the cubs. The JAG agents wouldn’t kill the poachers if they didn’t have to. But the agents had to use an economy of movements and quick action to do this right.
Huntley struck the first man that he could reach in the head with a swipe of his paw, his claws extended, knocking him out cold. Melissa used a similar tactic with the other man. Thankfully, a jaguar’s sweep of a paw could stun its prey, knock it out, or kill it. They were trying hard not to kill the men, as much as she regretted her orders.
She immediately went after the lookout, who was panicking, struggling to get his rifle off his shoulder. The injured man looked dazed and didn’t react. She coldcocked the lookout, then went after the injured man. Even if he couldn’t fight well, she didn’t want to chance it. Once she slugged him hard, and he’d joined the lookout lying unconscious on the beach, she turned to take care of anyone else.
Huntley was checking on all of the men to ensure they were really out and not playing dead.
She tore open the first of the burlap sacks with her teeth. Two sleeping spotted cubs. One of them she recognized as the same cub she had seen earlier. Melissa tore the other sack open and found the mother, tranquilized like her babies. She felt badly for them for having experienced this, but glad they would have a good outcome—this time.
Huntley had shifted into his attractive human form—that she was trying hard not to look at too much—as he examined each of the men’s IDs, verifying the poachers’ names before he called the park ranger. They had to move quickly before Jackson arrived on the scene.
“Wish we’d gotten Jackson, but we might still be able to. At least we got the rest of his men, for now,” Huntley said, pulling a cell phone out of one of the men’s pockets. Huntley’s dark blond hair was dripping wet, his blue-green eyes studying her as he called the authorities.
She grunted her approval, then dragged the momma cat in her burlap sack into the rainforest to hide her. By the time she had returned to seize the sack containing the cubs, Huntley was speaking on a cell phone in Spanish, relaying to the ranger station that some very bad hombres had been caught attempting to poach a puma and her two cubs. He read the men’s names off their IDs, then tucked their IDs back into their pockets. “The puma and her cubs are sleeping in burlap sacks in the vegetation nearby to keep them safe, but you can find the men and their boat at the following coordinates.” He proceeded to tell the ranger the location of the cove. “One other man, the leader in charge of the poachers, is named Timothy Jackson, and according to his men, he’s still in the rainforest.”
Huntley ended the call and disabled the boat by pulling the control box apart, removing a few things, and tossed them into the ocean, just in case.
She was supposed to watch Huntley’s back, and that meant any other delectable part he showed off. All his parts were remarkable, as toned as his muscles were, and though she didn’t want to admit looking, he was very well endowed. She felt a little bit guilty, especially since he had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend. Still, she was only human—well, and jaguar—so she blamed the interest on both. Besides, looking but not touching was acceptable, right?
She swore he was fighting a smile, probably flattered just a little that she was interested.
“I’d prefer to sink the boat with them on it,” Huntley said gruffly as he joined her.
She roared in agreement. A sunken boat would make a great coral reef structure for fish in the future.
“It will take hours before anyone can arrive, unless they send a boat, and even that will take some time,” Huntley said. “Maybe we can still get Jackson.”
Huntley shifted back into his jaguar form—though some would call him a black panther, that wasn’t correct and he preferred being referred to as a black jaguar—and quickly joined her. She led him to the mother and cubs and stayed there, watching over them, protecting them. The mother and the cubs would probably sleep through the night, long enough for the park rangers and police to reach this location. Melissa and Huntley climbed high into a tree, not wanting to face a very hostile mother puma that would be dangerous while she protected her young once she woke.
They listened for any sign of Jackson approaching. They couldn’t see the boat or his men from there, which was why it was a safe place to leave the drugged cats. Either Huntley or Melissa could have gone searching in the rainforest for the bastard, but their training had taught them to stick together as much as possible while they conducted a mission in the wild.
They would stay hidden unless they heard Jackson reach his men—then they’d pay him a visit and knock him out, too. Otherwise, they’d wait until the rangers and police arrived and ensure the mother and her cubs remained safe, just in case any other poachers happened onto them. Not likely, but she and Huntley couldn’t leave their safety to chance.
A short while later, they heard some kind of movement near the cove. Melissa hated leaving the mother and the cubs alone. Huntley indicated with his head that she should stay with the pumas, but she couldn’t let him risk his life in case Jackson saw Huntley and fired a shot to kill.
She and Huntley leaped down from the tree, then stealthily made their way to the cove. A couple of tapirs were rooting around. No sign of Jackson. Disappointed, she and Huntley returned to the pumas and jumped back in the tree to wait.
The problem with the rainforest and all the creatures that lived within was that everything made a noise, and because of the cats’ enhanced hearing, they heard everything. So they investigated the cove five more times before they figured that Jackson had to have discovered what had happened to his men, found he couldn’t start the boat, and took off on foot. According to the mission briefing, he had lived in jungles for much of his life, so she could see him being nearly as stealthy as them.
Three hours later, they heard men speaking in Spanish—police, two rangers—all surveying the area for any sign of the cats. When they searched the rainforest and found the sleeping cats, they took pictures and checked them over, never looking up to see the jaguars in the tree above them. In the dark,
they wouldn’t see them anyway unless they flashed their lights in that direction, but who would ever believe a couple of jaguars would be watching them?
Ensuring the three pumas were well, the men returned to the beach.
In the boat, they’d found the cages, weapons, and tranquilizers—enough evidence to put the five men in jail. “The caller said there were six men,” one of the police officers said. He read the names of the poachers that she and Huntley had taken down. “But the ringleader? Jackson? He’s not here.”
Letting her breath out in annoyance, Melissa hated that they hadn’t caught Jackson too. She glanced at Huntley, his eyes narrowed and he looked just as pissed as she felt.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Loretta Melvin for her invaluable research, keeping me straight on names and such, and to Loretta, Donna Fournier, Dottie Jones, and Bonnie Gill for critiquing the book. Thanks to Deb Werksman for helping to make the books even better, and Danielle Jackson for all her help with guest blog tours and tons of other promotions. And thanks to the art department and models that make such beautiful covers.
About the Author
Bestselling and award-winning author Terry Spear has written more than fifty paranormal romance novels and four medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered high praise and hit the USA Today bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in Crawford, Texas, where she is working on her next werewolf romance and continuing her new series about shape-shifting jaguars. For more information, please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TerrySpearParanormalRomantics.
Terry Spear, A Highland Wolf Christmas
(Series: Heart of the Wolf # 15)
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