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

Maya.
    If she wasn’t involved in the theft of his cat, he did not plan to give her trouble. If she was? He would file charges against her. Guaranteed .
    Hunkered down among the ferns and shrubs, he watched and waited.
    As soon as the lights went out in the house and everyone had gone to sleep for the night, Thompson planned to take a look around the gardens to see if they had any kind of structure that would house a big cat. He’d looked for evidence earlier in the day while Maya had been busy with customers. He’d confirmed that the greenhouse was the same one that the cat had been photographed in, and he’d found evidence of cat hairs on the tile floor. Then he’d followed her to the club and thought how appropriately it was named: the Jungle Cat Fever Club, a place where the sellers of illegal cats could gather and no one would be the wiser.
    Now he was watching the front of the house, wishing he had his hunting buddy, Joe, with him so that Joe could watch the back door when he heard it open and shut.
    Thompson moved as quietly as he could, keeping to the forest until he could see the back side of the house. He saw a small clearing of land back there—a slate patio and a grassy area. Except for the light slipping through one of the windows of the house and a couple of softly glowing iron lanterns hanging on posts, the area was cloaked in darkness. He saw no one, suspecting that whoever had opened the back door had stayed on the patio. The gardens were too dark to explore without using a flashlight.
    He heard no footfalls, either. Men and a woman were talking and laughing inside, so Thompson figured Maya was still in the house.
    Trying to get comfortable, Thompson settled down next to a tree, using it for a backrest and wishing everyone would go to sleep so he could investigate the property, then retire to his hotel room for the rest of the night. This was the part he hated about the hunt. The waiting.
    He was stiff, hot, hungry, and getting drowsy after two hours of being hunkered down among the shrubs and trees, his thoughts drifting to his wife and adopted kids. He loved what he did—protecting wildlife from human predators—but sometimes he thought he should let someone younger do the job and stay home more with his family.
    The back door opened, and he was immediately wide awake. The remaining lights suddenly shut off inside the house, but the pale golden glow from the lanterns outside cast a soft light. He held very still, waiting. The back door was still open, but no one was coming out.
    In his peripheral vision, he saw movement and couldn’t help but turn his head. He quickly stifled a cry of distress. A jaguar . A large male jaguar! The big cat sniffed the ground at the entryway to the garden path, then loped toward the back door.
    Thompson’s jaw went slack. He wanted to yell, to warn Maya that a jaguar had run into the house—which he couldn’t believe—when another male, more golden in color, ran outside through the same door.
    Two. Holy crap. Two male jaguars. Cold sweat dripped from his pores.
    No one inside was screaming for dear life, which he couldn’t understand. The back door shut with a clunk, and the jaguar stood outside the house, sniffing the ground and the air, and then taking off down the garden path.
    Thompson was having heart palpitations, while thanking God that he was downwind of the jaguar so the big cat didn’t notice him. Thompson couldn’t get his breathing under control. Trying to consider a plausible explanation, all he could think of was Maya saying she was the cat in the photo, that her family of jaguar shifters had taken her picture, then they all had milk to drink, that Wade’s brother had called her Wildcat… and that all added up to? One damned, big jaguar-smuggling ring.
    Now the jaguars were loose in the house and in the garden. When he thought humans were in control of the jaguars, that had been different. If the jaguars had escaped their pen and were running