Jaguar Hunt (18 page)

David laughed, shaking his head. “If you say so. Love you, Dad. Got to run.”

“Okay, Son. Thanks for letting me know you're home safe and sound.”

Hoping his dad wouldn't get Tammy's phone number and call her with good intentions anyway, David headed home. He would wait for Tammy to get settled at her place. After that, he'd let her know the good news. The boss had ordered him to stick to her like honey on white bread.

But first he had to stop at his place, wash up, and be perfectly presentable—like he was on a date—not just an agent on assignment.

***

The hair on the nape of Tammy's neck rose as she smelled Quinn's scent in the airport parking-tower elevator. Fairly recent. He had to have come home on a different flight before theirs. The kids must have returned home. So Quinn had? Which meant he was after them? Why else would he have been in the jungle and returned when they left? What about Joe? Had he truly returned also? And Weaver and Krustan?

Okay, Quinn had undoubtedly left the parking area by now. A long time ago. He wouldn't be lurking here, waiting to pounce on her.

He wouldn't know when she was returning home. And he had to be a good guy if he'd saved her from Joe shooting at her. Right?

Since she had been in such a rush to catch the flight to Belize without running into David, she hadn't paid as much attention to where she'd parked as she normally would.

Every sound of tires rolling, of brakes being applied, of cars honking as people made sure they'd locked them, of footfalls off in the distance, even her own bag's wheels rolling on the floor caught her attention. Unfortunately, she didn't have a fancy key fob for her older model Jaguar, so she had no way of pushing a button and making her car honk for her.

She had to rely on her sense of smell. Forget her faulty memory.

Rubber tires, men's aftershaves and women's perfumes, oil, old chewed-to-death and run-over globs of bubble gum, concrete, and gas fumes all assaulted her, but she was too far from her car because she couldn't smell it. Not its new paint job or new canvas car top. Quinn had disappeared in a different direction than she was going now, which gave her some consolation. Unless her car was parked in the direction he had gone. The parking tower was breezeless, shaded from the hot sun but still warm. A fine sweat broke out all over her skin.

Then she smelled jaguars, males, two, neither of whom she recognized. She followed their scent, not being very unobtrusive as her sandals clicked on the concrete and the wheels of her bag rolled along.

She heard a trunk lid pop open and hurried toward the sound. Two boys—about the age of the Taylor twins, one a redhead and freckled, green-eyed, the other more blond, his eyes just as green—glanced in her direction. They both stared at her for a minute, resting their luggage in the trunk, mouths agape, eyes wide.

“You're
her
,” the redhead said. “Aren't you?”

“If you mean Tammy Anderson, yeah.”

They both looked around the lot as if they were expecting David to be with her.

“Are you Peter and Hans Fenton?”

They looked at each other as if they weren't sure if they should say.

She smiled. “It's okay. I guess everyone's come home. Um, you wouldn't mind telling me where the cat is, would you?”

The boys finished loading their bags, and then the redhead shut the lid. “Where's your partner?”

“Are you Peter or Hans?”

“Peter.”

“He's getting his car on the first floor. We're headed home.” She didn't ask where the boys were going, figuring they wouldn't want to tell her, and it was probably safer that way. “Did your friends get back all right?”

Hans smiled. “Yeah.”

What did
that
mean?

“You know Martin Sullivan also wants to work with both of you, right?” Tammy asked.

“Yeah, and it might not be too bad a deal if we get agents assigned to us who look like
you
do,” Peter said.

She smiled. She wondered if Alex and Nate had told these boys about her sunning on the chaise lounge.

“Did you need something?” Peter asked.

The cat. But they weren't sharing. As much as she hated mentioning it, she thought the boys would see her as being totally fallible if she did. “Um, yeah, my car.”

Both boys smiled.

They looked like they thought she lost her car all the time. “We were in a rush to make our flight. I normally always know where my car is.”

They both grinned like “Yeah, right.” They glanced at the keys in her hand. Looking to verify why she hadn't used them to find her car? Wondering if she was telling the truth? The kids were as clever as the other two.

“No key fob,” she explained.

“Oh, some old car,” Hans said with a slightly arrogant air. Like she couldn't afford anything newer on her Enforcer salary. “What does it look like?”

“Yellow, convertible roadster. Jaguar.”

***

Tammy shouldn't have given Hans and Peter Fenton a ride in her car. Not until they told her something she needed to know. Like where the cat was. But like when David had protected the other twins from Joe Storm in the shifter club, she thought she had won these over to an extent. Maybe they'd still come around.

Since she could take only one of the boys with her at a time in the car, Hans had ridden with her out of the Dallas airport. She had to pull over and let Peter switch cars with Hans so he could have a ride. She had been so amused when the boys saw her car. They were in awe. She figured if a she-cat teen had walked by, no matter how hot she was, the boys wouldn't have given her a second glance.

“Can't wait to tell Alex and Nate,” Peter said and thanked her.

“You sure you don't want to tell me about the cat?”

“She's safe,” Peter said. “You need to find who's rotten in one of the branches or more.”

“The cat really means something to each of you. More than just a mission to rescue her and send her back to where she belongs. You wouldn't have even met her before you saw the news announcing she had been stolen from the zoo. Yet, it seems more personal. Why?”

He just stared out the window and didn't say.

“Peter, had you seen her before? At the Oregon Zoo?”

“I gotta go.”

She suspected the boys had seen the cat in person before she was stolen, not just on the news. But when and where?

Once she arrived home, Tammy's first order of business was to call her boss before she settled in for the night.

“We're back in Dallas. Any word concerning what Weaver and Krustan were doing in Belize?” she asked Sylvan.

“I haven't been able to get hold of them. Either they're not answering their cells or they're out of range.”

“Okay. Well, I'm at home, and we'll be going to the circus tomorrow as soon as it's close to opening time.”

“All right. I'll let you know if I get word from either Weaver or Krustan.”

“Thanks.” She set her cell on the bathroom counter and looked longingly at the whirlpool tub, but duty called.

She started the wash first. Before throwing her jeans into the machine, she checked the pockets and felt a crinkly piece of paper. She pulled it out, wondering what it was. Krustan's and Weaver's phone numbers.

What if they just weren't answering their boss? What if she phoned them and they thought she had an emergency and would pick up when they saw it was her on the caller ID?

She returned to the bathroom and grabbed her cell phone and glanced at the numbers. The first was Krustan's. She hesitated. Which should she call?

Both, she decided.

She punched in Krustan's number, and after a few rings, someone picked up the phone.
Good.

“Hello?” a man said, sounding out of breath.

“Krustan?” She barely recognized his voice. Was he in trouble? Running from danger somewhere in Belize?

“Anderson?” He sounded shocked to hear from her.

“Yeah, are you okay?”

“Hell, Anderson. This is not the time to be calling me, unless… You're okay, right? Not in any life-threatening danger. Right?”

“We need to talk.” She didn't want to answer him for fear he'd think she was okay and cut her off before she asked him what he had been doing in Belize.

“Not right now. I'm kind of busy,” he said, his tone of voice short.

“Who's that?” a woman asked in the background, sounding miffed.

Tammy closed her eyes. That's why he was short of breath. She didn't want to visualize him naked, panting, on top of a woman, when he answered what he must have thought was Tammy's distress call. She did appreciate him for that.

“An agent I work with,” Krustan said to his female companion. Then he got back to Tammy. “Call me in the morning. Unless this is an emergency.”

“Someone cut the zip line I was traversing in Belize. And Joe Storm—you know him? He fired two rounds at me.” She waited.

“Honey?” the woman said.

Krustan swore softly. “I thought that JAG agent was supposed to be protecting you.”

“You said I could ask for your help if I needed it. You said Sylvan asked for you to check on me. He said he didn't know you were down there. That you were on leave. What is this all about? What do you and Weaver know that you're not telling me?”

“Ask David Patterson about Olivia Farmer. He dated her for a year.”

Tammy felt like the floor had disappeared beneath her.

“What has she got to do with any of this?”

“She may have everything to do with the case you're working on. Ask David.” Krustan hung up on her.

She stood frozen in place, stunned. Not knowing what to think.

She called Weaver. No answer. She tried again. This time he answered. She heard jungle noises in the background and lots of laughter and talking. The club. So she and the boys returned home and so did Weaver and Krustan? What was going on?

“What's wrong?” Weaver asked.

“You're at the club,” she said.

“Yeah. Did you want to join me?”

“What were you doing in Belize?”

Silence.

“I know the truth about you being on leave. Why were you in Belize?”

“Krustan already told you to talk to David Patterson.”

Pacing, she frowned at the tile floor in her bathroom. That meant Krustan must have called Weaver right away and given him a heads-up. “All right, I will. But why were you in Belize?”

“Tammy, call us back if you're in trouble.” He hung up on her.

Damn the both of them.

She would have called Sylvan back and told him where Weaver was, but she figured she'd already gotten Weaver into trouble once. If he truly did mean to help her out if she needed him, she wasn't going to ruin that chance.

She thought to call David, but she was afraid that if she did, he'd want to talk in person. She needed a night off. Tomorrow would be soon enough to learn what he knew about Olivia and how she might pertain to the case. She told herself it didn't matter that David had been dating Olivia. They must have ended their relationship because Olivia had started dating Joe, and he'd asked her to marry him.

Tammy sighed and walked into the bathroom. She considered all her bubble bath powders and oils sitting on the little glass shelf below her bathroom window: Blackberry Sweetness, Coconut Comfort, Mint Melody, Luscious Honeysuckle, and Sexy Vanilla. A bubble bath would feel wonderful.

Within minutes, Tammy was curled up in a warm, sudsy vanilla-scented bath, trying to forget about anything pertaining to the case. She needed to unwind and recharge her batteries for the next day. The silky water caressed her skin as she breathed in the sweet smell, reminding her of baking chocolate-chip cookies with her mother during the holidays. Yet another, more recent, more pressing memory came to the forefront—making love to one sexy jaguar in the warm pool beneath the waterfall.

She swore if he wasn't such a hot cat, he'd have looked like a sad little puppy dog when she'd left him standing there in the airport parking tower. But she knew this was the right thing to do. Tomorrow, they'd get back to business. How could either of them keep their minds on the case if they gave in to their jaguar hormones all the time?

Yeah, so why did she wish he was in her big whirlpool bathtub, sharing her bubble bath with her now?

The doorbell rang. Her heart skipped a beat. Her skin prickled. She frowned. The person standing on her front porch
better
not be the nosy neighbor across the street. She stopped by every time Tammy got home from a trip to tell her everything that had gone on in the neighborhood while Tammy was away. Gertie Jessup was great as a neighborhood watch of one, but usually she waited until the next day to apprise Tammy of everything that had gone on.

Tammy didn't want to hear all the neighborhood news. Not right now. She wanted to relax after her wild adventure in the rainforest. She'd make time for Gertie later—the widow was just lonely because her grown kids lived two states away with their own kids.

If she ignored her, Gertie would go away.

Tammy ground her teeth. She knew she was fooling herself. Gertie would keep trying until she got her attention.

The doorbell rang again, and then her phone played its new ringtone: “Rock and Roar (J-A-G-U-A-R).” The big cat roaring in between lyrics made her smile, despite the annoying interruption to her bath.

But then Tammy remembered that her neighbor didn't know her cell phone number. Letting out her breath in a huff, she got out of the water, grabbed a towel, and hastily dried off. Concerned it might be her boss with an update since she'd called him earlier, she seized her phone off the marble bathroom counter and looked at the caller ID.

David
Patterson?

It better
not
be him at the front door.