This time he wanted to do it right, but not with his brother and hers standing in the next room listening to everything.
Chapter 17
Wade opened the bathroom door and smiled as Maya yanked the towel she’d been using to dry her hair around her sweet, naked body. He stepped inside and closed the door.
Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her soundly. “Stay with your brother and Kat until I return. No exceptions.” He didn’t want her searching for him again, should she think he was in trouble.
“Be careful,” she whispered, wrapping her hands around his neck and kissing him again.
He jerked her towel off her body, dropped it, and ran his hands over her breasts. She smelled like oranges, strawberries, and pineapple. “Hmm, Maya, about this exclusivity when it comes to seeing others…”
She smiled against his mouth, rubbing against his body and purring. “Return to me quickly.”
He groaned and tongued her mouth, then kissed her cheek, hating to leave her. “Stay safe.”
“And you.”
When he left her and shut the bathroom door, he found his brother had already piled his clothes on the coffee table and shifted. Connor was looking out the patio door at the jungle.
Wade said, “We’ll return.” He dropped the towel around his waist and shifted, then headed for the patio door.
Connor opened it for them. “See you in a while and we can firm up plans.”
Wade bowed his head in acknowledgment. Then he and his brother leaped from the deck into the brush below, blending into the dappled rainforest like two spotted shadows.
The two brothers continued back toward their cabana, searching the area as they went, looking for any sign that either man had been anywhere nearby recently. Wade and David swung around to the scene where Wade and the female jaguar had been drugged. They found the scent of the shifter from the previous night and the trail leading to the river where Lion Mane had stood on the bank, most likely searching for his dead companions.
There was no sign of any bodies in the daylight. The sun was beating down on the dark river, the trees stretching over the water, while a couple of dark grayish-brown crocodiles basked on the opposite shore. An egret spied the jaguar brothers and took flight.
Wade and his brother headed back toward their resort. It was daylight and not safe for them to run around in their jaguar forms. Anyone could be taking a day trip into the rainforest and catch sight of not one, but two big jaguar males.
Nudging at his brother to stay hidden in the relative safety of the rainforest, Wade loped out to the bathroom window of their cabana and leaped in through the frame. Fortunately, they’d left the bathroom door shut, because insects now filled the small room.
He shifted and opened the bathroom door, then closed it so he could check out the cabana. He heard a thump in the bathroom as David slammed against the toilet, making a splashing noise, and Wade chuckled.
He didn’t smell Lion Mane or Smith in the place. He suspected they were afraid to come near the cabana.
David soon joined him, one foot dripping wet. Wade said, “Didn’t miss the toilet, eh?”
“Damn thing moved since the last time I jumped through that window.”
Wade chuckled. “Yeah, it has a way of doing that. They haven’t been here. Let’s get dressed and check out Mylar and Smith’s place.”
“We should have looked for Bettinger and Lion Mane’s trail after they dropped in on Mylar and Smith and then left.” David was already sitting on his bed, the box springs squeaking as Wade was doing the same thing in his room, pulling on his boots. “I figured that the men had just arrived in the country like we had. When I thought it over, I assumed the shifters wouldn’t have stayed with the humans.”
“You’re right,” Wade said, heading out of his room. “So we check out their old place and then see if we can find a scent trail to another cabana.”
When they arrived at the backside of Mylar’s cabana, David provided security while Wade peered through the bathroom window before he entered the place. He shook his head. “They’ve left. Nothing’s on the counter. Place is clean, fresh towels on the towel rack. No toothbrushes, shaving kits, nothing. It looks as though Smith vacated the place after they discovered Bettinger and Mylar were dead, and he took Mylar’s stuff with him as a precaution, maybe dumping it somewhere along the way.”
A gnawing feeling of dread filled Wade. He’d rather they found the bastards and ended this right here and now.
Maya finally left the bathroom, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and dressed in hiking boots, jeans, and a cotton top. She frowned to see her brother still there and expected to get another lecture from him.
He was sitting on her couch, waiting. His gaze held hers. “Did you hear the plan?”
“I did. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good plan.”
Connor nodded. “Kat and I were talking about what we’d do with our remaining time here, since we can’t run as jaguars.”
Maya let out a heavy breath and joined Connor on the couch. “Is she disappointed?”
“A little. But she’ll be fine. She just wants to make sure she gets her fill of the jungle before we return. We won’t be coming back until after she’s had the twins, and not until they’re a little older. She’s been doing really well.”
“Yeah, when she’s a jaguar, you said.”
“The cave-tubing trip is a tour-guided activity that includes a seven-mile water ride. I think she’ll do fine on the water ride. It’s just the hiking through the jungle and the cave as a human that might be a little much. But she’s in excellent shape from being in the Army and running as a jaguar. She insists she can do it.”
Maya bit her lip. “Okay, let’s plan on her keeping to the jungle in her cat form. We’ll carry anything she needs for the cave tubing.”
Now they just had to wait for Wade and his brother to come back and hope that nothing bad happened to them while they searched for Lion Mane and the other smuggler.
Wade and David spent a couple of hours searching for the scent of Lion Mane and Smith, but they couldn’t locate either in the jungle or around the cabanas.
“They have to have taken a vehicle—a bus or rental car—out of here,” David finally said. “They might have packed up their bags and gone somewhere else. The Amazon, even.”
Wade didn’t feel right about it. He stared past Smith’s cabana at the jungle beyond. “Bettinger and Lion Mane were together at the club.”
“Yeah.”
“We were together. Maya’s cousins, Huntley and Everett, were with one another,” Wade reasoned.
“Yeah, so…?”
“You and I are brothers. So are Huntley and Everett. If Maya had been with anyone else when she went to the club, she would have been with her brother and sister-in-law, had they been home,” Wade said. His thoughts were headed down a dark path that he didn’t want to consider.
“I don’t follow you.”
“We’re thinking these guys, Bettinger and Lion Mane, were cohorts in a criminal act. They’re shifters. But what if they were
“Shit,” David said, turning pale. “If he was close to Bettinger…”
“Lion Mane might want revenge for his brother’s death. I was thinking he was just working with the guy, no great loss. They might have been friends, but not friends enough to get himself killed over. A brother? Possibly.” Wade would if someone killed
David stared at Wade, recognition in his eyes. “He might have left the area already. The evidence points in that direction. That he’s gone.”
