“Douglas might have hidden it there and purposefully stayed in another room, figuring if the other rooms were empty, no one would think he would have anything in them.” Though if Jillian had wanted to hide a large sum of money and an important journal, she would have put it somewhere near her so she could safeguard it better. Otherwise, she could imagine constantly worrying that someone else would find it, and she’d never get any sleep. She stared at the bed. It looked like it hadn’t been moved.
“I crawled underneath to look. So yeah, you’ll smell my scent underneath the bed, and on the boards where I pulled one up, but I didn’t touch the journal. I had to know it was there before I could call you, then I didn’t know who had arrived so closed it back up. No jaguar scent is under the bed, so they didn’t find it. I smelled the money, but I hadn’t been able to feel inside to see if it was there. Wait. Is your head all right?” Miles asked Jillian. “Vaughn and I can move the bed.”
“Vaughn’s shoulder is probably worse off than my head,” Jillian said.
“I can do it by myself.” Miles sounded proud that he was completely fit.
They all helped him move the bed anyway.
All three crouched over the spot and smelled for scents. Miles was right. All Jillian smelled were Douglas’s and Miles’s scents.
“Go ahead,” Vaughn said to Miles, giving him the honor of lifting the boards.
Miles smiled at him and looked to Jillian. She nodded. She decided right then and there that Vaughn was an all-right alpha wolf. Hot too.
Vaughn put his hand on her brother’s arm before he lifted the first board to stop him. “Wait. I heard something.” Vaughn checked around the boards. “Let me do it.” But he again paused. “What kind of a shot are you, Jillian?”
“Sharpshooter. What are you thinking?”
“I swore I heard the faintest sound of a rattle.”
“Hell, I’m glad you drove up when you did, or I would have just stuck my hand in there and seized the journal. I guess moving the bed disturbed the snake. I got this.” Miles grabbed a pillow from the bed and pulled off the pillowcase. Then he readied the pillowcase and nodded at Vaughn.
“Are you sure?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah. I used to help with rattlesnake roundups. We milked the venom to create antivenom. Douglas has done those too. I’m not surprised he might have used a snake to deter would-be thieves.”
Jillian let out her breath and shook her head.
Vaughn just smiled at the two of them. She didn’t. She wondered what else her brother had been doing that was that dangerous that she hadn’t known about.
Vaughn began to lift a board. Jillian readied her gun. If the snake struck at them, she was taking it out. She just hoped her brother didn’t get in the way.
Nothing happened. No snake coiling up and striking out. But she heard the faint rattle this time.
Vaughn gingerly moved the board aside and started on another.
Jillian’s heart was pounding, and she could hear her brother’s accelerated heartbeat too. But Vaughn’s was nice and steady.
He moved the next board and set it aside. They had a clear view of the rattlesnake right before it lunged at Jillian. Miles jerked the pillowcase over its head and grabbed the body. Vaughn helped him shove the rest of the snake inside the pillowcase, then Miles knotted it.
Jillian was shaking from the effort. She could handle about anything. But she hated rattlesnakes and copperheads. She was glad her brother could take care of it. She wasn’t sure she could have. Now she could smell the snake.
“Thanks for not shooting me, Sis.” Miles set the bag aside.
“It’s a good thing you reacted so quickly. I don’t think I would have had a chance to shoot it. So thanks.”
Vaughn shook his hand. “Good work. You’d come in real handy on a wilderness survival mission.”
Grinning, Miles looked perfectly pleased with himself, but waited to see what Vaughn told them to do next.
“Why in the world would he have put a rattlesnake down there? I mean, I suppose to protect the money and the journal, but how would he have done so without getting bitten? And how would he have gotten the money and journal back out again without risking the rattlesnake biting him that time either?” Jillian asked.
“I told you. He knew how to handle snakes,” Miles said. “We found a den of them in a bunch of rocks near here. He must have gotten one that was hibernating and slipped it in there.”
“Now you tell me!”
Vaughn and Jillian leaned down to smell the hole, but the only one who had left a scent was Douglas. And they could smell the ink on the journal and the money that had been there. “Just Douglas has been in here,” Vaughn confirmed. “Okay, go ahead, take out the journal.”
Miles showed them the old journal. “Thankfully, they didn’t find this. He keeps all his notes and hand-drawn maps. So he has several journals. I was afraid whoever attacked him might have found this one somewhere else in the cabin if Douglas had it out at the time. He doesn’t always bring one with him, so I wasn’t sure he would this time. We’ve had to go out and pick up a notebook before when he’s forgotten to bring one. He’s too meticulous not to journal about all of it.” Miles gently removed the journal as if it would break and handed it to Jillian.
Jillian was busy looking through the journal, admiring the well-drawn maps, many of them even colored with colored pencils—which made her think of the coloring book she and Vaughn were playing with. Beautiful.
Everett called Vaughn, who put the cell on speaker. “Yeah, Everett? I have you on speaker.”
“We’re coming in. Only two jaguars were in the area recently.”
“We found a journal Douglas used to document their treasure hunts,” Vaughn said.
“Okay, be at the cabin in a couple of minutes.”
“All right.”
They heard someone coming in the front door, but before he and Jillian could check it out, Everett called, “Just us!”
Chapter 13
Miles grabbed the rattlesnake in the pillowcase and headed out of the bedroom.
Vaughn called his pack leaders to confirm the situation about the money. When he ended the call, Jillian said, “Thank you.”
Vaughn shrugged. “Miles was a great help. I couldn’t have done a better job.”
“Miles took off to return the rattlesnake to its den. I’m glad they’re in hibernation when we come here. We’ll find out who injured Douglas and why this happened,” Jillian said.
“You think you know someone, and then something like this happens. Let’s head back to the ranch.”
“Okay.” She looked up at him. “Vaughn?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the way you handled things with my brother.”
“He was good with the snake. I’ll give him that. He was a real help with locating the journal and helping us to secure it until Douglas recovers.” But Vaughn couldn’t say with a clear conscience that he totally trusted her brother. It seemed too convenient that Miles had known where to look. Who was to say that Miles had really planned to call his sister? He could just as easily have pulled his phone out and had it in his hand when they entered the cabin to give a cover story. He probably assumed he had to come up with a really good reason to be here, if he wasn’t trying to hide evidence of his own complicity or take the money for his own personal use. He hadn’t known the money wasn’t where he smelled it. At that point, maybe Miles felt it was just better to give up the money.
“I want to check something out first.” Vaughn headed into Douglas’s room.
“What are you looking for?” Jillian asked.
“What if Douglas hid something else, only this time under his bed? It would be bad if he had hidden more money and someone else came along and stole it. Better to keep it safe for him until he recovers.” Vaughn wasn’t really looking under the bed for that reason, because he didn’t think Douglas had had secret hidey-holes all over the cabin. Vaughn wanted to see if Miles
had searched under all the beds, or just the one because he already knew Douglas hadn’t been hiding anything under his own bed or anywhere else.
“Do you want to get the cats’ help to move the bed?” she asked.
“No. This will only take a second.” Vaughn began to slide the bed over with Jillian’s aid, but Howard and Everett quickly joined them and helped.
No secret hideaway here.
“Looking for more cash hidden away here?” Howard sounded surprised.
Vaughn smelled Miles’s scent, indicating he’d been checking under the bed. “Yeah, just in case.”
“Good idea.”
Miles joined them, stood in the doorway, and folded his arms across his chest. “That was the first place I looked.”
Or had he left his scent there on purpose to throw them off? Then again, if Miles had known where the money was, why wouldn’t he have just grabbed it and run? It would have taken time to leave his scent under the other beds.
“You can check the bed in the last bedroom too. I didn’t find any hidden compartment there either. You know how it always goes. Last place you look, there it is.”
“Since we’re here, we might as well check it out too just in case you missed anything,” Vaughn said while Howard and Everett moved the other bed back.
“We’ll move the bed this time,” Howard said, his voice stern. “If you don’t give your shoulder a break, you’ll never heal.”
They moved the bed in the spare room, and while Vaughn crouched low and felt for loose boards, he breathed in the scents again. Miles’s scent was there too. Now Vaughn was satisfied.
They moved the bed back, then headed into the living room.
“Now that we have the DNA sample for the bite wound,” Vaughn said, “all we need is a swab of the cats’ mouths. That could confirm whether one of them is innocent or guilty.”
“Yeah. We already took a bunch of jaguar hairs to the doctor to see if he could get a match. Problem was that some of them were ours,” Everett said. “And without an actual hair root, he can’t make a positive match either.”
“You don’t happen to have a glass that Kira used that hasn’t been washed, have you, Miles?” Jillian asked.
“No. We weren’t doing any eating or drinking,” Miles said.
“I turned her panties over to the doc,” Howard said, “in case he could get anything from them. But he said no. You were asleep when we returned to the guest house, and it slipped my mind.”
“I’ll see if Leidolf can put me up at another house so Miles can stay at the one we are at for now,” Howard said.
“I can do that. No sense in having you move,” Miles said.
“We’ll decide when we get there then,” Howard said.
Then Vaughn and Jillian headed to the guest house, where they met up with the rest of the gang. They all had ice-cream bars, and Jillian downloaded the pictures from Douglas’s phone to her laptop so they could be brightened and seen in a larger view.
While she did that, Miles flipped through the coloring book. “So this is what Howard was talking about. Who would have thought a bunch of combat-trained jaguars and wolves would be coloring pages in their spare time.”
“Pick a page,” Everett said. “This is how we de-stress.”
Miles smiled and found a giraffe.
“Okay, I’ve downloaded all the pictures. While I’m brightening the dark ones, why don’t you look at the pictures on Douglas’s phone, Miles, and see what you think of them. See if there’s anyone you suspect could have hurt Douglas.”
“Will do.” Miles took the phone and began to go through them.
Howard watched over his shoulder. Vaughn sat next to Jillian and watched her lighten the ones at the Kitty Cat Club and others that were too dark to see well. That meant they were grainier, the color not as true, but at least they could make out the people in the photo.
“Okay, so that’s you and your date,” Jillian said to Vaughn.
“Yeah. And that’s Douglas’s with Brock and his date. We all went out the one time, and that was it.”
“Did you return to the club the next day or any other?” Jillian asked.
“We did for about an hour. I’d ditched my date.”
She looked up at Vaughn. “Really?”
“Hell yeah.”
“You…were alone?”
“Just in case I got damn lucky.”
She smiled, thinking he meant he would have liked to have danced with her. But maybe he hadn’t meant that at all. “I wasn’t able to go the next day. Had an important case that came up.”
“That’s why I was only there for an hour. Nobody who interested me was there the next night.”
“You mean me?” Jillian asked.
“Hell yeah, you.”
Howard laughed and shook his head.
“Okay, here’s a photo of…?” Jillian asked.
“Douglas’s date, my brother, and his date.”
“Okay, here’s the one of me with Kira when we were in Belize,” Miles said, bringing the phone over to show them.
Vaughn frowned. “She’s the one who danced with me at the club. No last name, just Kira. She smelled of cat… Well, all the women I danced with did. Once I saved the dancer, I swear every woman in the club wanted to dance with me to show their appreciation.”
“Because the dancer was a jaguar and so were they. Probably friends of hers,” Jillian said. “Here is Kira’s picture. Douglas took one with you up close and personal with her on the dance floor.”
“And she danced with Douglas too,” Vaughn said.
Jillian continued to brighten up the photos, sharpening them.
Miles started to look over her shoulder. “Wait! Increase the size of that photo Douglas took of me with my date at the club.”
Jillian did.
“Crop us out, and focus on the two men and the woman slightly behind us.”
Jillian cropped the three people so they took center stage.
They all looked them over. “That’s Kira in the red dress,” Demetria said.
“And the two guys with her?” Miles showed them the picture of him in Belize with the others on the scuba-diving trip on the phone. “That one with the blond hair is her brother, Brutus, and the one with black hair is their friend Wayne.”
“They were all at the club at the same time,” Everett said. “And you and Douglas mentioned going to Belize while you were there.”
“Yeah. We were talking about the trip. I didn’t want Jillian to know about it, so Douglas and I were off by ourselves. It was noisy in there. We had to practically shout about our trip plans.”
“So there was a good chance Kira, her brother, and their friend scheduled to be there at the same time because they’d overheard you talking. Or at least one of them,” Vaughn said.
“Yeah, but why?” Miles asked.
“Like you said, all they had to do was do a search for your names. They could have easily found Douglas’s and information about his treasure-hunting experience and successes. They figured on cashing in on his success by stealing his secrets. The money for the expedition would have been a boon too. But they had to get rid of Douglas,” Howard said.
“Could be,” Jillian said, “but what if there’s more to this? That they’d hoped to hook up with the guys like they did in Belize. If Douglas is the golden goose, wouldn’t it be more prudent to solicit his friendship like they seem to have done and help him and Miles find treasure, sharing in it even?”
“So you think something changed? Maybe that’s why Douglas was upset about something and wanted to talk to me about it,” Miles asked.
“Maybe he learned you were seeing Kira, and he was concerned she was a gold digger,” Howard said. “Excuse the pun.”
“Or maybe one of them approached Douglas about having a partnership with the two of you and he said no, and the one jaguar nearly killed him.” Jillian continued to lighten up the club photos while Demetria straightened up the kitchen.
?
??Wait,” Miles said, looking at another picture Jillian had just brightened up. “Well, hell.”
Everyone came over to look at the photo. They all gaped at the shot. “Is that who I think it is doing what I think they’re doing?” Howard said.
“Kira kissing Brutus in a totally sexual way while he’s got his hand firmly planted on her butt,” Miles said. “Yeah.”
In that instant, Jillian felt sorry for her brother. Nothing worse than being lied to by a person he’d been intimate with.
“You don’t think they have an incestuous relationship, do you?” Miles asked, sounding revolted.
“I suspect they’re lovers, and he’s no relation to her whatsoever,” Jillian said. “They don’t look alike at all, if they’re jaguars and twins. Not that all twins look alike, but after seeing them in this pose, I’d say they’re not brother and sister or anything else that makes them relations.” Jillian turned to her brother. “So tell us more about the treasure hunts you’ve been on.”
“I’ve gone on treasure hunts with Douglas a number of times. Once, I was supposed to find a lost treasure in a lake. He gave me the coordinates, and I located it. We split the profits fifty-fifty because he needed a dive-certified wolf.”
“I dive, and I’m in his pack,” Vaughn said.
“Yeah, I know, because you’re a SEAL. He said a SEAL was in his pack, but you were out of the country on a mission.”
“What was the treasure that time?” Jillian asked.
“Gold Confederate coins. He’d found the whereabouts of the ship, and he knew I was a diver. So he contacted me. He was excited about it, and I was out of work at the moment, so it sounded like a great deal to me. Even if we didn’t find any gold on board, I still loved the idea of searching for it. The ship had sunk in Lake Michigan and the temperature was thirty-seven degrees when I went diving. I found a safe, and we hauled it up. Three hundred and fifty thousand in gold coins were in the safe. I got half.”
“You never told me about that,” Jillian said. “I thought you were always broke.”
“I spent most of it when I first got it. Replaced my old car. Got more high-tech dive equipment. Before long, I was broke again. When Douglas said he’d located a shipwreck off the Florida Keys, I flew out to help him with that one too. We made only about twenty thousand in salvage that time, but I loved it. We work really well together. He did all the research about sunken ships carrying treasure and located the area where he thought they’d be. Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren’t. When he said he had a job that would be worth ten thousand, I said sure. We’d had other jobs that didn’t pan out, of course, but I didn’t have anything to lose. I trusted him completely, both with the money and the jobs. Why wouldn’t I have?”