That was what they were eager to learn.
Chapter 17
Huntley was afraid Avery would kill Pierre before they got anything useful out of him, so he was the good cop in this scenario, giving Avery a warning look to release the man and back off. Melissa and Everett let Huntley handle it.
Avery gave Huntley the darkest, most dangerous smile he had ever seen on a man who was on his side.
“You had a female jaguar here. Where is she now?” Huntley asked, forcing Pierre to sit on a chair, then towering over him.
The man looked at Melissa and said, “You! You were at the café. You followed me here.” His gaze focused again on Huntley. “What do you want with me? I don’t know anything about a stolen Jaguar. Look around here.” He waved his hand at the rundown place. “Would…would I have a car like that and be able to sell it?”
Huntley almost smiled. But he didn’t and instead said, “Let me try this one more time. You bought a female jaguar from Timothy Jackson. She was here. DNA evidence proves it.” He lied, but Pierre would never know that. “Now, we can do this the easy way and you tell us where she’s gone, or we can do it the hard way. Believe me, you don’t want to do this the hard way.”
The man swallowed visibly. “How…how did you get my name? Phil Gorsman…that’s who told you? He’s…he’s dead. You guys… Oh God.”
“Easy or hard,” Huntley said.
“You’re not going to let me live, are you? If I tell you anything, that’s it.”
Avery yanked off his shirt. “The hard way it is.”
“You had your chance,” Huntley said.
The man’s eyes couldn’t have gotten any rounder. “Wait, okay. I…I sold her to Carlos Ranchero.”
“Where is he?” Huntley asked.
“I don’t know where he lives or—”
“How do you get in touch with him?”
“His phone number. I…I have it on my cell phone.”
“Get it.”
Pierre fumbled in his pocket, then finally pulled the phone out and nearly dropped it because his hands were shaking so badly.
Huntley scowled at him. “Call him.”
“What?”
“Tell him you want to see him right away. You’ve got a deal for him. A cat or something that you might sell him that would be so incredible he can’t resist,” Huntley said. “Your life hangs in the balance here, Pierre. You either get him to come here pronto, or well, let’s just say you won’t like the alternative.”
“What if he gets suspicious? What if he thinks something’s wrong? I just met him for lunch and didn’t say a thing about this.”
“You make him believe that nothing is wrong. That you just got a sweet deal that you hadn’t expected. Make it real, something the man can’t resist. A couple of mating jaguars.”
“All right, all right.” Pierre licked his lips, then took a deep breath and called Carlos. “Hey, man, I got to unload a couple of cats real quick. They’re a mating pair of jaguars. Yeah, no shit. Why didn’t I mention it earlier? The guys just dropped them off. Said they were in a rush to get some quick cash. But you know that trouble I got into with Merco, the loan shark, a month ago? Yeah, yeah, I know, but I need some quick cash again. The cats are really healthy. Can you drop by my place? You want a picture of them?” He glanced up at Huntley, looking panicked.
Huntley nodded.
“Okay, I’ll get back to you in a couple of minutes and send it to you.” Pierre ended the call. “How the hell am I going to get a picture that doesn’t look like I took it off a website?”
“You watch him,” Avery said, “and I’ll do this.”
“No, wait. You watch him,” Huntley said. “Everett?”
“Got your back,” Everett said.
Then Huntley and Melissa headed for one of the bedrooms.
“What…what are they doing?” Pierre asked Avery.
In the privacy of the guy’s bedroom, Melissa and Huntley stripped out of their clothes.
“Getting a couple of jaguars so you can take your damned picture,” Avery said.
As jaguars, Melissa loped into the living room and Huntley followed right afterward. All the color blanched out of Pierre’s face. “What…what’s going on?”
“Take the picture,” Avery said.
“In…in the house?”
“Will he recognize your backyard?”
“Yeah. I have a tiled bird fountain he’s often remarked he likes. It has a tile mosaic of a jaguar eyeing the birds.”
“Okay, let’s do this. And don’t pull anything stupid because they’re friends of mine,” Avery said, motioning with his thumb to Melissa and Huntley. “And if I say so, they’ll rip you to shreds.”
The man was so shaky that Everett finally grabbed hold of his arm and helped him out of the house, while Huntley and Melissa followed them outside.
“He won’t believe it if the cats aren’t in a cage,” Pierre said, eyeing Huntley and Melissa with trepidation.
“Skip the cages,” Everett said. “Take the picture and call him back.”
Huntley nuzzled Melissa as she stared at the camera in front of the bird fountain. He thought it was a nice salable shot. He was glad his brother said no more cages because he really didn’t want either Melissa or himself to have to get into another one anytime soon.
Pierre called Carlos back. “Hey, Carlos, I took a couple shots of them. Here they are.” Pierre paused, then said, “Yeah, um, the black one is even rarer.” He looked up at Avery and Everett eyeing him, both wearing scowls. “The jaguars are really…agreeable. The tranquilizer hasn’t worn off yet. I’ll have them back in the cages before you get here. Okay, see you in half an hour.”
Pierre ended the call and looked like he was about to fall down. “Where the hell did they come from?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.” Everett guided him back into the house and Melissa and Huntley followed behind Avery, joining the others inside.
Pierre glanced again at the cats and then back at Everett. “You were already at the house, weren’t you? I thought things were out of order in the living room. So you left the cats in my bedroom before? What if they’d killed me?”
“Sit,” Everett told him, directing him to the same wooden chair.
“So what do we do now? I did all that you asked,” Pierre said, starting to whine.
“We wait nice and quiet-like. When Carlos gets here, we’ll see what he has to say about the female jaguar. If he tells us he doesn’t know anything about it…we start over from the beginning. Only we’re doing it my way this time,” Avery said.
They waited for well past the half hour. Huntley worried that Avery would lose his cool. Melissa began to pace. Huntley lay down on the floor next to Pierre and rested his head on Pierre’s boot. The man didn’t dare move. Everett was observing Pierre, his arms folded across his chest.
Avery watched out the window. “Forty-five minutes and he’s a no-show.”
“Maybe he’s…he’s spooked. You know, we got the word that some of Jackson’s men were taken down,” Pierre said, grasping at any reason the buyer might not show up.
Avery sliced him a glower.
“I don’t know! Maybe he was suspicious that the cats were out of the cages. I would be. Or maybe he had to get some men to help him load the cats into his truck. Just the two of us couldn’t do it.”
Avery tensed. “A truck is pulling up. What do you usually do? Greet him? Wait for him to knock?”
“He’ll call to let me know he’s arrived. You got your car blocking my truck. It might make him wary.” Pierre’s phone rang. He glanced at it, then uneasily at Avery. “It’s him.”
“Answer it and watch what you say.”
Pierre nodded. Then he said, “Yeah, Carlos. I’m here. The car? It belongs to the two guys that had the cats deliv
ered. They’re still here. I couldn’t pay them off until you paid me. The cats are too valuable to just… I know, I know. We don’t usually do it this way. But I told you I’m in a financial bind. I can’t pay them. So they’re hanging around until they get paid. Okay. I’m coming out.” Pierre ended the call. “He wants me to come out. Alone. He sounds like he suspects something.”
Avery smiled, but the look wasn’t at all pleasant. “Do you think I was born yesterday?”
“No…no, man. I promise,” Pierre said, spreading his hands out wide. “No tricks.”
Avery’s phone rang, and he lifted it to his ear and smiled a genuine smile this time. “Good to hear from you. Perfect timing. The truck parked in front of you belongs to the next middleman. Make sure Carlos and whoever else is with him join us inside.” Avery turned to Pierre. “No problem. Carlos and his cohorts are being escorted inside as we speak.”
Huntley could just imagine what Luke and Jason, as that’s who they had to be, thought of the situation when they walked into the house with Carlos and two other men and saw him and Melissa in their jaguar coats.
Carlos tried to back out of the house as soon as he saw the uncaged cats. Luke knocked one of the men out cold as soon as he fought to leave. The other wet his pants.
“Not so tough when the cats are out of their cages, eh?” Avery asked, his voice hard.
Luke and Jason smiled.
Everett said to Carlos and his henchman, “Take a seat, Carlos, and you too.”
“Where is the female jaguar this piece of shit sold to you?” Avery asked as soon as the two men were seated.
Carlos looked at Pierre as if he wanted to kill him. Probably would if he lived through this.
Melissa grew closer to Carlos and snarled, baring her teeth.
“She hasn’t eaten lately,” Everett said. “Give us the answers we want and we’ll be on our way.”
“If we tell you—” Carlos said, his voice shaking.
This time Huntley roared and displayed his very sharp, very long teeth.
“Yasmine Baker,” Carlos spit out.
“A woman?” Everett asked, sounding as though he couldn’t believe it.
“I don’t ask. Some woman, or anyone for that matter, asks for something, I check with Pierre and he gets with his source and gets it for me, and I give it to the buyer.”
“How do we get in touch with her?” Avery asked.
“You think you’re going straight to the buyer with a couple of…” Carlos looked at the jaguars as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “She already bought a female. She wanted a male, but the one we had was acting so vicious that she wouldn’t have wanted him. So I sold her the female. But if you think I’m going to tell her where…”
Patience gone, Huntley bit into his thigh.
Carlos cried out in pain and agony, and the other man tried to scramble off the couch, but Everett grabbed his shoulder and made him stay put. Pierre’s face drained of color.
“Where can I get hold of this Yasmine Baker?” Avery asked again.
Huntley had only given Carlos a minor taste of what he could give him if he didn’t cooperate, but the way the man’s face was sweating and his heart was racing, Huntley didn’t want to give him a premature heart attack. Carlos was clutching his leg, applying pressure to the wound.
Carlos struggled to get his cell phone off his belt, then found Yasmine Baker’s contact information and gave it to Avery. Then clasped his hand over his bloody wound again.
“You come with us,” Avery said. “Who’s staying with Pierre?”
Huntley nudged at Melissa and she grunted at him, then they returned to the bedroom, shifted, and dressed. “We go with Avery,” Melissa said, rejoining the men.
Carlos and the other man just stared at them.
“We’ll leave the jaguars here in case you have any trouble with Pierre,” Huntley said to Luke and Jason. “If we track down the woman and the jaguar, we’ll give you a call. Do you want to stay with the three of these men?” he asked his brother.
“Sure.”
“Good luck,” Luke said.
Jason nodded at them.
“Let’s go.” Avery grabbed Carlos’s arm, but the man had nearly passed out from the pain. “He didn’t bite you that hard. Hell, if he’d wanted to, he would have crushed the bone. All he did was sink his teeth in a little. Enough to let you know we mean business.”
He hauled Carlos out to Luke’s rented car, and then they were off. Huntley hoped they wouldn’t get stopped and have the police want to see the car rental papers.
“Had the woman wanted a mating pair of jaguars?” Huntley asked, sitting in the backseat with Carlos while Avery drove and Melissa was the passenger up front.
“Yes. She said she wanted…cubs. Once she had them, she wanted to know if I’d buy the pair of adult jaguars back from her. I told her if they were in good shape and the deal was right, I would consider it. As long as I made the money off the sale to her and then got to sell them again, I’d do so. I wouldn’t have to pay the poacher any money this time. But then she didn’t want the male because he was too aggressive, and she wanted me to get her another male.”
“But she lives here in Costa Rica?” Melissa asked, sounding like she couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah. Well, for a few months of the year. She’s American. So she returns after she gets what she wants. She’ll be hanging around for a couple more months. Then I heard some poachers were killed and…” His eyes widened.
“Call her and tell her you have a male jaguar for her,” Melissa said.
“I always send her a picture first.”
“Okay, then tell her you have a mated pair, but they’re inseparable. Show her the picture that Pierre sent you,” Melissa said.
“Then what? If she wants them, I deliver them. She’s not going to believe I’m delivering them in the trunk of your car. And, hell, I’m injured!” Carlos said.
“He’s got a point.” Avery turned the car around.
“What are you doing?” Melissa asked, upset.
“Getting his truck. The buyer will believe Carlos has the cats in the back of the truck,” Avery said.
They were only a short way away when Avery had turned around and drove back to Pierre’s house. They switched vehicles, Huntley waving at Luke who was watching out the window, and then they piled into Carlos’s truck and took off again.
“So what are you going to do? Threaten the woman to give up the cat? Did the man who sold it to Pierre steal it from you? Or promise to sell her to someone else?” Carlos asked. “What’s so special about this cat?”
“You know what you’re doing is illegal, right?” Melissa asked, as if the bastard didn’t have a clue.
“So what? You’re some animal activists and you intend to release her back to the wild? How the hell did you ever train those cats to act the way they did? When I saw the picture Pierre sent to me, I thought for sure that he had Photoshopped them. If he even knew how to do such a thing. But when I examined it closely, I knew it hadn’t been. When those other guys strong-armed us into Pierre’s house, I was certain that the cats weren’t really there. But then there they were. Are they…highly trained guard cats or something? Wait, the one I sold wasn’t a guard cat, too, was she? Ah hell, sure. Somehow Pierre bought a cat that you guys already owned and…you probably paid a fortune to train her.”
Huntley wanted to tell the guy to shut up, but instead he said, “Call her. Tell her you’ve picked up a mating pair, but you have to deliver them quickly or you’ll have to sell them to another interested buyer.”
Carlos nodded and made the call. “Ms. Baker, I’ve got just the cats you want for your collection. They’re a mated pair.” He frowned. “Good natured.” He glanced down at his bloody leg. “Yeah, the female might be carrying cubs already. I’ll send you some pictures.” He put
his hand over the phone. “She said I can come over tomorrow.”
“Now,” Avery growled, “or the deal is off.”
“I’ve got another buyer I’m supposed to take them to this evening to let him look at them. If you want to wait until tomorrow, that’s fine by me. But if you want to see them now, you can get a jump on the other buyer.” Carlos took a deep breath. “I understand. I’ll let you know if the other deal falls through, and then I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eight.” He ended the call. “I can’t force her to see me,” he said to Avery, who jerked the truck into the ditch.
“Okay,” Huntley said. “We scope out the place, Avery. And we’ll take it from there.”
“She has a nice place,” Carlos warned.
“Drug money?” Huntley asked, getting suspicious.
Carlos shrugged. “Hell if I know where she’s getting her money from. It’s near the beaches and rainforest, and has a walled-in backyard and a swimming pool.”
“And a cat run?” Avery growled.
“Large, partly landscaped. Trees inside, but the fencing stretches across the top. She spared no expense on it. Even a small pool for the cat. So it’s a nice deal, really.”
Melissa sighed. Huntley felt some relief too.
“Just the woman lives there? Any man around?” Huntley asked.
“A couple of men. I think they are her bodyguards or security. The place is safe, but you know how it is.”
“Yeah, lots of characters like you doing illegal stuff,” Melissa said.
“So what do you think you’re doing?” Carlos asked. “Keeping exotic cats as guard animals? Hell, that’s worse than anything I’ve ever done.”
“Did she have plans to be out tonight or something?” Huntley asked. “And that’s why she can’t meet with you? Or is she really not interested?”
“She said she had a prior social engagement that she couldn’t break.”
“Calling this in,” Melissa said, and Huntley thought she sounded frustrated.