Nischal [leopard spots 9] (4 page)

And everything came screeching back to him. “Get away!” Preston tried to shout as he frantically struggled to sit up. His legs were bound—

“Calm down, Mr Hardy, or I’ll have to sedate you and you’re only just coming out of…”

His legs weren’t restrained. They were tangled in a sheet. “What?” he croaked, getting a foot out from under the material. “Where am I?” The woman wasn’t Yangani. She looked nothing like that twisted nut.

“You’re at the Tri-Counties Medical Center.” She looked down at him. “Are you going to continue attempting to murder the sheets, or are you nearing rational thought yet?”

Preston stopped fighting the sheet. He was losing that battle anyway. His left ankle was hopelessly tangled up in that mess. “I just—what happened?” His throat ached and burned. Speaking hurt like a bitch, and he was so thirsty.

“First off, I’m Dr Glaston, and it’s my understanding you were choked then shot with a tranquiliser dart, the contents of which could have killed you if you’d been hit twice.” She took a penlight from her pocket. “I don’t know the story behind what happened. There was a SWAT team, or so the rumour goes, and an escaped leopard. One caught, too, but it’ll probably get shipped back to wherever it came from. It’s too hot in South Texas for anything like that to survive.”

“The one that escaped, have they found it?” The words rubbed his throat like sandpaper over a wound, but he needed to know.

“Not last I heard, and my husband is on the search team. Now, let me check your pupils.”

Which leopard was on the loose? Did it matter? For some reason, it did. Preston wanted to know if the one that had licked him had escaped. It was weird, but it sure seemed like, in his memories at least, the leopards had tried to help him.

“I think you’ll be fine in a few days, though your throat may hurt longer than that. Warm teas, if you can stand them in the heat, and soft food. Ibuprofen if you need it.” She gestured at the door. “Now, there’s some folks who need to talk to you. Part of that rumoured SWAT team, I’d guess.”

“You don’t know?” Fear clenched his gut.

Dr Glaston shrugged. “They showed everyone badges. I was too busy trying to do my job.”

“Oh, did—”

“Mr Hardy.”

Preston turned his head—and fuck, did
that
hurt his neck! Two women in dark pantsuits stopped beside his bed. They looked like extras out of a
Men In Black
movie with their sunglasses and stiff expressions in place.

The one with the pitch-black hair held a badge out to him at the same time she removed her glasses. “I’m FBI Agent De la Garza, and this is my partner, Agent Jackson. We’ve got some questions for you about your brother Paul and the human trafficking ring you almost became a victim of.”

“What?” Preston croaked. He didn’t care how much it hurt to talk, he was pissed off and trying his best to yell. “Human trafficking? Are you telling me Paul might be alive, that you people have known all along—”

Agent De la Garza held up her hand and Preston stopped his accusations to let her speak. “We’ve been investigating Suraj and Yangani for months. When you reported your brother missing, yes, we believed initially that he had been murdered, although as you know, we never found his remains. A second complaint was filed a few months later—another man reported missing after venturing off to see the snow leopards being displayed in a small southern town. That set off alarms, and honestly, we’ve no idea if more men are missing. Suraj was sloppy the last few months, but we do know that he and his girlfriend—not his sister, as they claimed—had been in the United States for almost two years. How many gay men who had been disowned by their families might have been their victims?”

“Aren’t you people supposed to figure that out?” he snapped, although it sounded more like a whine.
How embarrassing.

De la Garza had the decency to look marginally ashamed. “We are, but there are still some groups of people who are easier than others to victimise because of the way their families have ostracised them. It is sickening but true, unfortunately, and we don’t know how many men might have gone missing, but we have discovered a link between Suraj and Yangani and a human trafficking ring that extends through several north-eastern states as well as Europe.”

Then it sank in, what De la Garza was saying, and Preston shoved himself upright to sit on the uncomfortable clinic bed. “You’re telling me Paul might not be dead. He might be a…a slave somewhere? Maybe even in the United States?”

“It is possible,” she said slowly. “Although we’ve yet to find him in the arrests we’ve made. There are still investigations going on, and we’re hoping to find detailed information on the men Suraj and Yangani…took…in their personal items. We have someone working on accessing their laptops right now.”

Preston’s throat and stomach burned like he’d swallowed battery acid. “Jesus, who would do such a thing to someone else—especially here, in the US? Who would enslave their own countrymen and steal their freedom? Why? For what purpose?”

De la Garza shook her head. “People do the worst things to each other, Mr Hardy, for no other reason than because they can. We all know slavery is wrong. Some people just don’t care.”

It was more than that, it had to be. Some people got off on breaking laws, and breaking other people. Preston’s eyes burned with tears he repressed. At least, if Paul was a slave somewhere, he’d be alive.
But in what shape?

He rubbed at his eyes and couldn’t look at the FBI agents when he asked, “What do you think the chances are that Paul is alive still? I want to hope, God, do I want to believe…”

“I don’t know what to tell you in that regards, Mr Hardy, except that we have never found a body and we do know other men were trafficked by Suraj and Yangani.” De la Garza checked something on her phone then continued. “We’re awaiting word on Yangani’s health, whether or not she will survive surgery and recover enough to be of any use to us. Suraj did not survive.”

“The other leopard?” Preston asked, unable to focus on the idea of his brother being a slave any more than he could focus on Paul being dead.

“The one is still on the loose, and the other is being cared for by the local vet until someone from a large feline habitat in Arizona arrives to take the leopard there.”

Preston glanced up at her. “A snow leopard, in Arizona? Why not send it back to where it belongs, somewhere with, I don’t know, lots of snow, maybe?”

She hitched a shoulder up and down. “That’s not really our problem, Mr Hardy.”

That gave him something to do, to work on. “Just whose problem is it, then? PETA’s, maybe?”

De la Garza blanched and thinned her lips as she stared daggers at him. “I really wouldn’t advise siccing PETA on this case. We need to be able to concentrate on finding the missing men, not dodging paint and shit.”

Preston didn’t think PETA dealt in shit-tossing, but he also knew that wasn’t what the agent meant. He wasn’t going to do anything to cause a delay in finding Paul, either, whether Paul was alive or enslaved. Preston sighed. “Right, you’re right, of course. I’m just…a fucking mess,” he muttered. “But I still think the leopard should go back to wherever it came from.”

“Then might I suggest you speak with the representative from the Arizona feline facility when she gets here?” De la Garza waited until he nodded, then she had the other agent get the lady’s name for him. “She should be in tomorrow, I believe. They are in a rush as the local vet really isn’t prepared to deal with such a large predator, but they still have to make arrangements and set up a place for the leopard.”

“Understandable.” He swallowed and almost choked when he began coughing.

Someone put a straw to his lips and Preston drank greedily even though the cool water burned his throat at first. Then it began to soothe those damaged tissues and he almost wept with the relief from the pain. Temporary or not.

“Mr Hardy, maybe you should get a hotel room and try to sleep. It’s been a rough day for you.”

De la Garza’s voice held a glimmer of kindness and it almost undid Preston, but he wouldn’t let himself bawl like a baby in front of anyone. “Thanks,” he rasped. He licked his lips and held out a trembling hand for the glass.

De la Garza handed it to him. “We have the reports you filed with the police, but we’d like to ask you some questions about what happened today, and why you were following Suraj and Yangani.”

Preston closed his eyes and tried to organise his thoughts. He wasn’t going to admit that he’d intended to kill Suraj. Yangani, too, if he’d had to. If he’d discovered she’d played a part in his brother’s death. But now he didn’t even know if Paul was dead—he hoped he wasn’t.
God, if I had murdered two people… What was I thinking? What was I doing?

The pain and rage, the helplessness of not knowing where Paul’s body was, of the police not seeming to take Paul’s disappearance seriously even after they’d found traces of his blood—it’d driven Preston to a brink he’d never thought to be teetering on the edge of.

He would have to do some serious soul-searching. He’d been ready to commit murder in the name of revenge. A part of him didn’t think he’d have done it, would have been too weak, or perhaps too moralistic to go through with it.

But the scary thing was that a larger part of him thought he could have, and lived with himself afterwards. He’d have paid the price—Texas was a death penalty state.

“Mr Hardy?” De la Garza prodded.

Preston gave up trying to think of excuses, and instead opened his eyes. He got as comfortable on the bed as he could, then he began to talk in his raspy, rough voice.

Chapter Five

It had taken him too long to make it back to the town, but Nischal couldn’t show up naked or in leopard form. He’d have been shot if he had shifted and been seen. Everyone in Texas had guns, he knew that.

Almost a full day had passed since he’d escaped. Clothed in pants that were so big on him they kept sliding down his bare ass, and a shirt that thankfully covered that particular bit of flashing, Nischal followed the scent of his brother’s trail. It wasn’t easy, because Sabin had been put into a truck bed and hauled away. It took Nischal longer than it should have to find the veterinary hospital on the outskirts of the small town.

There were several vehicles in the parking lot, and people standing around outside, talking. Bits of their conversations drifted to him and he glared at the ground. Most were there because they wanted to see the ‘big cat’ that had been captured.

It turned Nischal’s stomach to think of Sabin being gawked at still while he had managed to get free. Nischal pondered the situation for a moment as he watched the people from across the street. He was dressed in such a way that he would stand out, in the stolen clothes he’d taken from a small donation station. There’d been bags of crap tossed beside it, busted-open bags, and he’d grabbed the first things he’d seen that he thought would cover him. He hadn’t found any shoes.

So he was very conspicuous in the overly big clothes and his bare feet. His hair was all over the place, too. He had a beard—something he hadn’t been able to grow before he’d been captured. But he’d only been a kid really, barely even twenty then. Now he was a damned hairy man.

Getting noticed would be a mistake. Chances were, people would have noticed him already were it not for the excitement of the shootout or raid, whatever it was. Nischal needed to get somewhere safe, so he could clean up better. Shave, whack off his hair, and perhaps find a way to get some clothes that would fit.

And he had to find out if Preston was okay. That worry was gnawing at him as intently as the worry over Sabin.

There was nothing he could do to help his brother now. Nischal would wait until darkness fell, then he’d come back. He’d find a way to get Sabin out of there, and together, they’d be free.

As for Preston… Nischal’s cock twitched and he sucked in a sharp breath. What was it about the man? Nischal placed a hand over his heart, which had begun to race. Preston called to something in him, and Nischal wouldn’t have any peace until he’d at least spoken to the man.

That was an understatement. His dick was fully erect and he needed to mate. It was a driving force he’d never experienced before. He’d been horny, before his capture—what twenty-year-old man wasn’t perpetually horny? This was different. It was like some sort of invisible force was pushing him, or pulling him, towards Preston.

As if to prove the thought true, Nischal blinked and realised he’d been walking again. There was something urging him on, and he didn’t fight it. His groin tingled, his balls drawing tight as he followed his instincts.

There was a hint of Preston’s spicy scent on the air. Nischal had picked it up unconsciously and was now avidly sniffing, letting the aroma of the man sink into his bones. Nischal could have closed his eyes and found Preston, which should have worried him, but it didn’t.

Instead thoughts fluttered through his mind, stories he’d heard that he’d thought were perhaps only tales passed down to keep shifters in line. He hadn’t known but one shifter other than his brother, and the things that old Kapuk had told them had seemed fantastical. Stories of mates, soul-bonds, mental bonds—Nischal had only half-listened at times. They’d seemed more like fairy tales than truths. Really, he’d thought the old man was cracked, but now, Nischal wondered. He’d never felt such an irresistible tug to his core.

Nischal stopped at a worn-looking motel. He thrummed inside with an energy and need that made him want to yowl. Instead, he sought the shelter of a shade tree as he studied the place.

Preston was there, in one of the rooms. Nischal didn’t know what he was going to do or say when he found him. Honestly, he’d probably come in his jeans just from Preston’s scent, then Preston would call the authorities on him and all hell would break loose.

Preston had affected him from the beginning, but not like this. Nischal didn’t know if he was being driven to the man because of their separation or in spite of it. He didn’t understand what was going on. A visceral need was controlling him, and his snow leopard was demanding that he pounce on Preston.