Terry Spear - [Shifter 02] by Jaguar Fever Read Free Book Online Page A

won’t, either,” David said.
    She smiled, intending to learn what she could later. “So you guys are…?”
    “Part of a Special Forces unit called the Golden Claw JAG Elite Force. We do a little of everything.”
    She thought the organization sounded like an admirable cause and important for their kind.
    “It sounded too dangerous for me to join. But… we weren’t given much of a choice.” David was smiling when he said it.
    She shook her head and wondered how often Wade and his brother had faced danger on their jobs. And off their jobs. She and her brother had certainly encountered trouble from time to time while visiting the rainforest over the years.
    “What about the man who murdered your mother? Did they ever catch him?”
    “No.” Wade glanced out the window, and she suspected that wasn’t the end of it.
    “Are you searching for him?”
    Wade’s gaze swung around to meet hers. His eyes were dark and feral—a hunter’s eyes. “Yeah.”
    She swallowed hard. No wonder Wade was in the business he was in. “Every time you look for a hunter, do you suspect it might be the man who murdered
your mother?”
    “Yeah. But he might have given up hunting after that. We’re still looking for him.”
    She bit her lip. “But if she was killed as a jaguar, she would have turned into a human. Wouldn’t he have reported it?”
    “You’d think so.”
    Realization dawning, she gaped at him. “You think he knows? About our kind?”
    “Yeah, like he’s one of us.”
    That sent a chill racing up her spine. “Why would he have hunted her?”
    “We don’t know. Speculation? To give her to someone who wanted a female jaguar shifter.”
    “Slave trade—only not in humans.”
    “That’s what we believe, but we haven’t been able to uncover such a market. So we really don’t know. Unless he’s just human, was scared out of his wits to see her shift, and took off. What could he say? ‘I killed a jaguar that turned into a human?’ And all he has left to show for it is a murdered woman. So yeah, we’re still looking.”
    “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “What about Belize? What’s going on there exactly?”
    “A team of hunters has gone down to Belize to capture a jaguar, and they’re staying at another resort only a few miles from yours.”
    Maya stared at Wade, then slumped against the car seat. “You hadn’t told me that. I’ve got to get word to Connor and Kat as soon as I can. They’ll have been running in the jungle as jaguars from the time they arrived.”
    “We have another problem.” David leaned back against the car seat, looking wiped out.
    Wade looked at Maya as if she was the source of it. “What’s the problem?” Wade asked.
    “The human, Thompson, looks to be real trouble,” David said.

Chapter 4
    Thompson. Oh, him. Maya had nearly forgotten about the zoo man who had questioned her about the jaguar on her web page. She pulled Wade’s shirt away from the gash on David’s head and was not happy to see that the bleeding hadn’t completely stopped.
    “The one who helped Maya out of the dance club,” David said, explaining to Wade who he meant. “He was asking her about the jaguar on her website.”
    “What jaguar?” Wade asked, frowning.
    She clenched and unclenched her teeth. “I told him the jaguar was Photoshopped, but he believes the cat in the photo was stolen from his zoo in Portland, Oregon. I put the picture up only a couple of days after the jaguar was taken.”
    Wade glanced back at Maya. “I take it the jaguar was you.”
    She smiled at him.
    “He didn’t believe the jaguar was Photoshopped,” David added. “ And she told him she was the jaguar and was from a family of jaguar shifters.”
    “Yeah, like any human would believe me,” she said, giving David her fiercest look.
    Wade wished that Maya’s sweet body was pressed up against him in the backseat, instead of his brother. Not that he wanted the head laceration to go with it.
    His whole outlook on