Heart pounding, Val entered her cabin quietly and quickly, intent on going after the prowler heading for Benny’s cabin and leaving her door slightly ajar. She didn’t turn on any lights and hurried to remove her clothes, then shifted. She wasn’t about to waste time and lose the opportunity to discover who was prowling around in the dark and stop him, if it meant he’d chase off her prey. As soon as she’d slipped out the door and leaped off the steps, she raced after the man. Wearing camo pants and a shirt, he was partly crouched like a hunter would be, still moving through the woods in the direction of Benny’s cabin. But he didn’t smell like Benny. And he was human.
She growled a little, afraid whoever it was would tip Benny off that someone was looking for him. As soon as the man moved closer to the light that was on in one of the bedrooms, she could make out his features better. It was Rowdy, the homicide detective from Montana. He wasn’t going to arrest her perp. She couldn’t let him.
Without giving her actions another thought, she pounced on him, knocking him out with a swipe of her paw, silencing him before he could cry out. She dragged him back to her cabin. A jaguar was capable of carrying a deer into a tree, so one human was no trouble at all. But man, was she pissed. Now she had to deal with him!
She dragged him up the steps—had to shift to open the door, then shift back to move him again—and pulled him into the living room. Then she ran to shut her door, shifted, and locked it. She turned around and thought she saw Rowdy’s eyes slam shut. Ohmigod, had he seen her shift? She studied him. She had to know: Did he now realize jaguar shifters existed along with wolves? She knew he did!
Her boss would be furious with her.
At least she had plastic ties so she could bind Rowdy and tape for his mouth to keep him quiet. What if he managed to get up and take off while she was getting the ties? She raced into her bedroom and grabbed a bag that had the essentials she needed. Then she ran back into the living room, watching him before she approached. He smelled of fear, and his heart was pounding. He wasn’t unconscious then, and he had to have seen her shift.
What the hell was she going to do with him for however long it took to deal with Benny? Then she realized she had another problem. If Howard or Jillian came to her place, they’d know she’d had a visitor. She needed to move him to the spare bedroom. She’d have to keep them away from here until she could figure out what to do with him.
Still lying on the floor, Rowdy suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight at her, though he appeared to be dazed. As soon as he saw the ties and tape, he tried to sit up. She quickly knocked him out with a well-placed kick with her bare foot to his head. Then she tied his hands behind his back and taped his mouth.
She shifted into her jaguar again and dragged Rowdy into the spare bedroom. His heart rate was racing, so he was okay, thank God, but he had to know he was in trouble, more so than if she was just human. A little harder swipe with her paw and she could have killed him. But if he had alerted Benny that people were after him and Benny had run off… She growled.
Val raced into the living room, shifted, and hurried to dress. Once she had her pants and shirt on, she returned to the spare room.
She hoped she didn’t get kicked off the force for this. What else could she have done though? She hadn’t killed him. She’d just tell him that Benny was a shifter, and they had to eliminate him. Would the detective go along with that? Maybe not. He was a homicide detective, working to put murderers behind bars. And if she eliminated Benny, Rowdy would probably feel justified in taking her in.
She could bite Rowdy. And then, as Howard had said, the real nightmare would begin. Returning Rowdy to the States so someone could watch over him until he got the shifting under control would be a real chore. Which would mean she would have to take care of him. No way did she want that.
She was dead tired, needing to sleep. She took a pillow off the guest bed and put it under his head. Then she sat on the bed and waited for him to stir.
She must have dozed off on the bed, because the next thing she heard was the faint sound of a car driving down the road and parking at Benny’s place. At the same time, she heard Rowdy struggling to get free of his wrist ties. Then her cell phone buzzed.
Her heartbeat quickened, and she yanked her phone out. Howard. Texting her that he’d heard Benny’s car arrive. At least he thought it was. Did she want to go with him to check it out? He’d meet her on her porch steps.
No! He’d smell that Rowdy had come up her steps.
She quickly texted Howard back.
Heading to your place. Wait for me there.
She flipped on the light in the guest bedroom, and Rowdy stared up at her from the floor, his blue eyes wide.
“Okay, listen, are you after Benny Canton for what he did to Lucy?”
Rowdy just gawked at her.
“Nod your head.”
He didn’t.
“All right, he’s a shifter. Got that? A shifter. And he can’t go to jail. We know you know about some of us. And we know you also understand we have to take care of our own. You need to leave this to us and return home. Okay?”
Rowdy nodded, but she didn’t trust him to go along with the plan. “Just…go to sleep, and when I return, we’ll talk some more.”
She hurried out of the bedroom and opened the door to her cabin just enough for her to squeeze through, then moved away from the door, stripped, and shifted. She was hoping Howard wouldn’t come to see what was taking her so long to join him.
She tore off to meet up with Howard, figuring she was in so much trouble, but she had no idea how to fix this.
* * *
Howard was afraid Val had taken off to check on Benny herself, but he thought she’d been sincere when she’d said she’d go with him to see if Benny was now home. Howard was watching Benny’s cabin in case he went for a jaguar run when he heard movement behind him. Val hurried to join him in her golden jaguar form. She wasn’t as stealthy as she usually was, so he figured she was in a rush to meet up with him. When she got close, he was surprised to smell the scent of a male on her. Someone he hadn’t smelled before. A human.
He frowned.
She nudged his face in greeting, then headed for Benny’s cabin as if nothing was amiss.
Who would she have been seeing at this time of night? Maybe some of the staff at the resort? That didn’t make any sense.
As he followed her, his mind was supposed to be on the case, but he couldn’t help glancing back at her place. Was that why she was so late to meet up with him? She’d met some man at her place?
Howard couldn’t figure it out. As soon as he could, he would check around her cabin to see if the guy had actually been at her place or if she had just run into him on the way back to her place after dinner.
His mind again on business, Howard watched for any signs of a jaguar running around the forest and listened to hear if anyone was speaking inside the cabin. The lights were out, and he heard a couple having sex in the room.
Not that he was surprised, if the woman was Benny’s new girlfriend. Would she still want to be with him if she learned he’d murdered his wife? Howard wished they could take Benny down, but Enforcers and USF agents were supposed to be careful about showing anyone what they were, if they could help it. And in a case like this, barging in as jaguars and killing him in front of his girlfriend wouldn’t work. They didn’t want to traumatize her any more than they had to. Nor did they want the police searching the area afterward for two man-killing jaguars they had to terminate. Any jaguar could become a prime suspect then.
Val and Howard sniffed around the car and the area to ensure the man inside was really Benny. He was. Then Howard smelled that the man who’d left his scent on Val had traveled in this direction too, a little farther from Benny’s cabin. Who the hell was he?
He wondered if it was the homicide detective. That was a complication they didn’t need.
Val paced for a few minutes in the woods, and he speculated on whether she was unsettled about Benny and not being able to do anything about him, or if it was more about who she’d seen.
She finally indicated she wanted to return to their cabins, but she went straight to Howard’s place when he tried to walk her to her own. She paused at his cabin, then shifted. “In the early morning hours, we can wait outside his cabin to see if he leaves for a run.”
Howard shifted. “Who is the man I smell on you?” He tried not to be all growly about it, but he wasn’t dismissing his concern.
Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer him.
Howard narrowed his eyes. “Rowdy? Did he show up?”
She shifted into her jaguar and ran off to her cabin. He shifted and chased after her.
Hell. Now what?
She ran inside while Howard paused at the entrance and smelled the same man all over her steps. He had a bad feeling about this. If she had tried to keep Rowdy from finding Benny…
She couldn’t have taken the homicide detective hostage. Or worse, killed him. But Howard didn’t smell blood.
He walked inside the cabin, smelling the guy’s scent. He followed it to one of the bedrooms and recognized Rowdy from the picture he’d seen, sitting on the floor, his hands restrained behind his back, his mouth taped. His eyes were wide as he stared at Howard in his jaguar form. He had to have seen Val run past the guest room door in her jaguar coat too.
Hell, Val.
Howard heard her in another room, and then she joined them, completely dressed and holding a white towel. “What was I supposed to do? He was prowling around Benny’s cabin. What if he had caused Benny to run? Or worse, Benny had killed him? We had to let Rowdy know that Benny is a shifter and can hear, see, or smell Rowdy, unlike a human.”
Howard shifted, took the towel Val handed him, and wrapped it around his waist. He should have known the homicide detective would learn where Benny was staying sooner or later. Howard couldn’t fault Val, except for not telling him what she’d done right away. They were in this together, whether she wanted to admit that or not.
Then again, she probably had wanted to go after Benny, and Rowdy had been her second priority.
“Rowdy Sanderson. What are we going to do with you?” Howard folded his arms across his chest.
“I told him he couldn’t take Benny down. That we have to,” Val said. “If it wouldn’t be such a pain to try to move him back to the States, and such a trial to teach him our ways until he could get the shifting under control, I’d say we should just turn him.”
As much as Howard hated the idea that she’d taken Rowdy hostage, he’d guessed this would be how things went down if the homicide detective began snooping around the place. Turning him would ensure his silence, but it was too risky to do it here. No way did Howard want to be responsible for the guy as a newly turned shifter, even if he was really good at his job and they could use him in their line of work—once he got the shifting under control.
Rowdy tried to talk. Val peeled the tape off his mouth as gently as she could.
“I get it, okay. Hell, jaguar shifters too? All I could think of was that she was going to return and kill me.” Rowdy sounded angry, but Howard thought some of his anger was to hide his fear.
Howard could smell it on him, and he wasn’t surprised. If he hadn’t known jaguar shifters existed and one had taken him hostage, Howard was sure he would have been afraid of the jaguar’s big teeth.
“We can’t let you take Benny in,” Howard said. “That’s what you have to realize. Our kind can’t be incarcerated for long periods of time. Not unless we’re born as shifters and have shifter roots going way back. We’re just like the wolves in that regard, the only difference being that our shifting isn’t tied to the phases of the moon. The wolves can have problems with being able to control their nature then. We have our human sides, sure, but we have the wild jaguar side too. Can you imagine if some guy tried to pick on a jaguar shifter? Do you think he’d take it? Most likely not. It would be a disaster for our kind. Though some jaguars prefer to be city cats and don’t ever come to the jungle, most of us do. I swear, someday the city cats will be like big domesticated cats, unable to fend for themselves in the wild. But in jail? We’d all have that fight-for-our-lives reaction.
“You can imagine what it would be like if Benny went to prison and he took off his clothes and shifted. End of our anonymity.” Howard paused. “I guess we should have introduced ourselves. I’m Howard Armstrong, and this is Valerie Chambers. I’m with the United Shifter Force. She’s with the Enforcer branch, both part of a jaguar-shifter police force.”
“A shifter police force.” Rowdy cleared his throat. “I’m Rowdy Sanderson, but I guess you already are well aware of who I am. Though how, I don’t know. I understand your point. This isn’t necessary. Val could have told me what Benny was, and I would have understood the need for handling this differently.”
She folded her arms. “I couldn’t be sure. You are a human homicide detective.”
“True, but I sympathize with the wolf shifters. Well, now with you too.”
“As far as Benny goes, there’s no going to prison, no going to our own jaguar prison either. For what he’s done, he earned the death sentence,” Howard explained. “I know you’re the law and you think in terms of arresting murderers so they’ll receive a fair trial. We don’t do that. We all know the rules. Murder innocents, either the shifter kind or humans, and you’re eliminated. It’s as simple as that. We can’t risk anyone discovering what we are. Many believe you’re a danger to us. We normally would turn you or eliminate the threat in a case like yours.”
“I’m innocent of killing anyone, except in self-defense,” Rowdy said, looking exasperated.
“If we let you go, what are you going to do?” Val asked.
“I want to see this finished.” Rowdy didn’t force the issue, but Howard was certain if they told him to go home, he wouldn’t.
“Why are you even here?” Howard asked. “You were her friend?”
“We dated on and off for two years. We were more than friends. But she didn’t like the long hours I worked, or that I was shot three times on the job. After I left the hospital, she called it quits and moved back home to San Antonio. This isn’t exactly your jurisdiction either.”
“Any place is our jurisdiction when the perp is a shifter. We’ll take Benny out as jaguars, if we can. The problem is he’s got a girlfriend with him,” Val said.
“He just murdered his wife, and he’s got a girlfriend… Wait, was Lucy a shifter? I dated a shifter? A jaguar?” Rowdy looked a little pale.
“No. She wasn’t. Not when you dated her. Benny married her and then turned her. The problem is that sometimes someone who is turned is so unmanageable that they have to be put down. We don’t want that to happen, which is why we generally don’t turn humans. There’s no personality test we can give that will determine how someone will react if they’re turned. Same with you. What if you were turned and you became a homicidal maniac?” Val asked.
“I wouldn’t. Unlike with Lucy, it would be my choice. I wouldn’t be turned against my will.”
Both Val and Howard raised their brows.
“I mean, I wouldn’t be in the dark about this like someone you might just turn who wouldn’t have a clue as to your existence. Though I didn’t realize there were other kinds of shifters out there. Listen, I helped an Arctic wolf couple prove an imposter was trying to take her inheritance. I was investigating the wolf pack in Montana when people started turning up murdered. Though they were wolves like, well, like them. I’m open-minded about…stuff like this. The wolves might change me, and I told them I’m okay with it. I’ll have your superpowers then.”
“Superpowers?” Val asked.
“Yeah, enhanced hearing, sense of smell, night vision. And the shifter always gets the girl. I’m sure I’d have a lot to learn and I’d have to deal with the issues, but I understand. I’ve read all kinds of were-books.”
“Were-books?” Val asked, frowning.
“Werewolves, were-tigers, were-bears. Nothing about were-jaguars though.”
Val rolled her eyes.
“There’s also the problem with finding a mate if you’re newly turned,” Howard warned him. “Val and I were born jaguar shifters. We have a long history of shifters in our roots. No strictly human genes for centuries. A woman who might be interested in you otherwise might not want the trouble of dealing with a shifter who can’t control his shifting.”
“Also, what about your job? You couldn’t go back to it,” Val said.
“I have to admit I didn’t think about possibly meeting someone. As to the job situation, I’ve considered I’d have to leave the force. You said you are with some kind of a police force?” Rowdy looked interested in that.
Howard would give him points for being determined when he wanted something.
“A jaguar police force.” Val pulled out her Enforcer badge. It looked like an FBI badge, only with a different symbol to indicate she was an Enforcer.
“I have one too, but not on me.” Howard patted the towel. “I work with the United Shifter Force, eliminating shifters—both wolves and jaguars—that hurt our kind or humans.”
“And I am with the Enforcer branch that takes down murdering scum permanently,” Val said.
“Generally, the wolves police their own, if they’re in the pack’s territory.” Howard folded his arms again. “But a couple of wolves are with our USF.”
Rowdy sat on the end of the bed as if this was all a little much to take in.
“In the meantime, what are we going to do with you?” Val asked. “You can’t go over to Benny’s place and spook him. We need to see if he runs as a jaguar in the morning and gives us the chance to take him down. We just need to get him away from his girlfriend. If you want, you can take care of her.”
“Take care of her?” Rowdy frowned deeply.
Val let out her breath in exasperation. “Drive her to the airport after her boyfriend disappears.”
“Oh. What do you mean, Benny would disappear?”
“He’ll become crocodile fodder,” Howard said.
“Oh.”
Howard was sure Rowdy still wasn’t getting the whole picture. “He can’t go to trial.”
Rowdy nodded.
“Where are you staying?” Val asked.
“I’ve got a cabin on the other side of the resort. Just let me know if you need my help, and I’ll do what I can. I want to know this is finished before I return home. I cared deeply for Lucy. She was really vivacious and the life of the party. I can’t believe anyone would kill her. But I have to admit seeing the two of you as jaguars, and knowing that Benny is one too, reminds me I might not have what it takes to handle a situation like this.”
“All right,” Howard said.
Val looked at him as if she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to release Rowdy, but they couldn’t keep him tied up in her spare bedroom for the entire time they were there.
“You can join us for meals if you’d like,” Howard said. “I’m fixing a barbecue tomorrow for lunch or dinner, depending on what we’re doing. But you can come over for breakfast in the morning. We’ll let you know when.”
“Sure thing. I’d like that.”
Val left the room and returned with a pair of scissors. She cut off the ties, and Rowdy rubbed his wrists, then stood.
“I mean what I say. Just like I did with the wolf shifters I’ve helped. I’m on your side. I’m not one of you, but I’m only after the bad guys too.” Rowdy seemed sincere.
Val gave him her, Howard’s, and Jillian’s cell numbers. “She’s a wolf, one of Howard’s USF partners, and staying at the cabin next door.”
“So the two of you are together,” Rowdy said, motioning to the two of them.
“It’s complicated,” Howard said, smiling.
“We’re not together,” Val quickly said. “He and Jillian are my backup, and he’s staying with his partner.”
“Marriage partner?” Rowdy raised his brows.
“USF partner,” Howard said, imagining what Rowdy was thinking. “She has a wolf mate.”
“Oh, okay, I wondered how that would work.” Rowdy gave Val his cell number. “Thanks for trusting in me.”
“Don’t let us believe it was a mistake,” Val said, her eyes narrowed.
Howard gave him just as dark a look to warn him it wasn’t a good idea to cross them.
“It isn’t a mistake. And…thanks for taking me into your confidence.” Rowdy said good night again and stalked out of the cabin, looking damned relieved to still be alive.
As soon as Rowdy shut the front door, Val turned her attention to Howard, folding her arms and looking as if she was getting ready to defend herself or tear into him.
Thinking of only one way to show Val he was behind her all the way, he closed the gap between them, took her into his arms, and kissed her. Hard, and deep, and long.