Chapter 8
“Let me get this straight,” Vaughn growled at Jillian. “We are working together on solving the crimes committed here, right?”
Howard laughed. “I’m sure glad I’m with the two of you. I don’t know when we’ll ever solve the case, but it’s sure entertaining to see how we’re going to do it.”
Jillian’s jaw was set as she opened her car door. “Sure. We’ll start with examining the cabin for any evidence of foul play. Together.”
“You said you didn’t think your brother was guilty of any crime. So why not talk to him?” Vaughn couldn’t help how furious he was. If her brother wasn’t guilty of anything, they needed to clear this up pronto. If Miles knew something, even if he didn’t think he did, they needed to learn about it and see if it led them in the right direction.
“Listen,” Jillian said, getting out of the car and placing her hands on her hips, “he’s my brother. He might have talked about anything, thinking he was having a private conversation with family…me, his sister. I had to let him know I wasn’t alone. That if he needed to tell me something, he also needed to know others were listening to the conversation. It was up to him to decide if he wanted to talk in front of anyone else. Apparently, he didn’t.”
“Which means he could be damn guilty.” Vaughn pinned her with a glower.
She took off for the cabin. “I’m not the bad guy. Neither is my brother.”
“If he is, you’re covering for him, whether you believe he’s guilty or not. Hell, maybe you were the one who did it.”
Jillian whipped around, her mouth hanging agape. “You think I tore into Douglas?”
“Maybe you got there before your brother did. It’s only your word that you arrived at Douglas’s cabin after someone attacked him. Maybe your brother shows up and discovers what you did. Being a protective brother, he warns you to call Leidolf to take care of Douglas so you’re not accused of attempted murder. You do.
“Miles leaves, but returns—well after Leidolf’s men have taken injured Douglas and the evidence away—to see if anything else was left behind. Before he could leave some evidence that muddied the waters, I caught your brother standing in front of the blood left behind. Maybe you’re right. Miles had nothing to do with it. Maybe he’s helping you cover up that you did it.”
Her eyes were wide in disbelief. “What about you!”
Vaughn nearly laughed. He hadn’t expected her to accuse him. He didn’t believe she had injured Douglas either. But he wanted her to realize that by covering for her brother, she could be a suspect.
“Yeah, you! Who says you didn’t wound him? What if you did it in the heat of an argument over some old pack feud, hadn’t planned it, and then took off to get cleaning supplies to take care of the mess? I arrive, find Douglas in bad shape, and call Leidolf for help. After we left, Miles arrives to see his friend and finds the blood on the floor. Miles ends up getting some blood on him, if that really happened. Who says he really did end up with blood on his muzzle? We only have your word that he did.
“So after you injure Douglas, you return to the scene of the crime and unexpectedly come face-to-face with Miles at the cabin. He smells your scent and realizes you’re the one who injured his friend. Miles takes off, certain you’re going to kill him if you can catch him. He’d be the perfect patsy all tied up in one neat little package. Now you can’t dispose of the body, most likely believing Douglas was dead, because I’ve already gotten help and removed him from the cabin. And you can’t hide the evidence like you’d planned because Leidolf’s men have already gathered it and taken it away. You have to silence the witness though. And you’d have to take care of Douglas before he comes out of his coma. You call Leidolf to tell him you’re going after a suspect. Then you go after my brother to take care of loose ends.”
Standing on the deck, Howard was smirking, waiting to see how this all played out.
Vaughn smiled at Jillian. She appeared a little taken aback that he would be amused at her accusation. She didn’t look amused. He liked how gutsy she was and how she didn’t take his comment about her actually attacking his pack member to heart. He liked how quick she was to turn the tables on him, but at the same time make some valid points.
“Should we…check out the cabin now?” Howard asked.
“For what it’s worth, Douglas owes you his life,” Vaughn said to Jillian. “And I can’t thank you enough for that.”
She looked up at him, appearing a little surprised that he hadn’t been serious about accusing her of the crime. “If he’s all right when he comes out of the coma.”
“Agreed, but you’ve given him a chance to live, and for that I’m thankful.”
They headed inside the cabin, and Vaughn asked, “Which room is Miles’s?” He could have just smelled for Miles’s scent, but he wanted Jillian’s cooperation, even if she didn’t want to give it. He still couldn’t believe she had warned Miles.
“Down the hall, second room on the right.”
For her sake, Vaughn truly hoped he didn’t find anything that would indicate her brother had been involved in the attack.
When they reached the bedroom, he saw the bed was unmade, and drawers were open and empty. The closet door was open; nothing in there either. He looked under the bed, but didn’t find anything. He yanked back the covers of the bed. Then he spied a tiny bit of red silk and lace and pulled the covers back further. A pair of feminine lace panties were lying crumpled on the sheets. He glanced over his shoulder at Jillian to see her response. Her cheeks were flaming red, and her mouth was parted in a way that said she was as surprised to see them there as he was, her gaze quickly shifting to his. Vaughn lifted the panties off the mattress and realized they belonged to someone who smelled of cat. Yet he hadn’t smelled anyone other than Jillian and her brother who had been in the cabin recently.
“Cat, but she had to have worn hunter’s spray or we would smell her scent in the cabin.”
Howard checked out the scent. “Don’t recognize her, but jaguar for sure.”
Jillian closed her gaping mouth.
Vaughn wasn’t shocked her brother had been with someone, but he was bowled over with the notion that canines and felines could be mixing it up together. Talk about an odd pairing. But now that they knew jaguar shifters existed, they did have that in common with the cats. They were all shifters. Would they even be able to have shifter kids?
“Looks like he packed up in a hurry and took off.” Vaughn still felt that Miles’s every action said he was guilty—of something.
Howard tucked the panties in a baggie. “Evidence,” he clarified when both Vaughn and Jillian watched him.
They left the bedroom, and Vaughn glanced in Jillian’s room. Her bed was neatly made, and it appeared as though she could still be staying there.
“My stuff is still here,” she confirmed, sounding irritated with him. “I do have a couple of bags at Leidolf’s guest house, but I’m staying in this area too in case my brother needs to get in touch with me.”
“Like he did earlier, when you warned him away from talking to you in the car.”
She gave Vaughn a caustic look, but didn’t comment.
Vaughn walked into the kitchen and checked out all the cabinets.
“Any ice-cream bars in the freezer?” he asked, teasing her now, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
Howard looked puzzled. “Is that some kind of clue?”
Jillian rolled her eyes.
While Vaughn and Howard looked through the fridge and the rest of the cabinets, she went outside to make a call to her brother. He didn’t pick up. When she got his message machine, she said, “What the hell is going on? I’ve teamed up with the wolf who went after you. I shot him even. He’s investigating—” The voice mail cut her off.
She hoped her brother didn’t think she’d killed Vaughn. She tried again. “He’s investigating the attack on his pack member. We’re working together. So call me and we can talk. He’s sure you—” The message ended again. “Damn it.”
Vaughn exited the cabin and saw the phone in her hand. “Did you get ahold of him?”
“No. If I had, you would be the first to know.”
From his expression, he clearly thought she was being sarcastic.
“I left him a message though. I told him I shot you for chasing after him.” She smiled at Vaughn.
His mouth curving just a hint, he lifted his brows.
“But that you were still investigating him.” Jillian had tried several times to get ahold of her brother last night, but hadn’t had any success. When she saw his car still parked at the cabin this morning, she presumed he had still been running as a wolf. But he had apparently come back since, and packed up and left in a hurry. Now she wasn’t sure what was going on.
She couldn’t get the image of the red panties out of her thoughts either. She could just imagine what Vaughn had been thinking. That she obviously didn’t know as much about her brother as she thought she did. When had Miles brought some woman there? Probably when Jillian had run into town for groceries earlier in the day and had been gone for a couple of hours.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t smelled the woman’s scent. He must have had her wear hunter’s spray so Jillian wouldn’t know about it. If that was the case, she wondered how he would have convinced the woman to wear it. Unless she’d done so herself. But why? Worried how Jillian would feel about her brother hooking up with a cat? She could imagine her brother not wanting her to know, afraid she might let it slip to their parents.
But if they both really cared about each other, or even if they were just having a fling, who was she to say that anything was wrong with it? The bag with the red panties swayed in Howard’s hand as he walked out to the car, and she wished he would shove the bag in his jacket pocket or something.
The woman could have at least made sure she took her panties with her! Unless she meant to leave them for Miles as a memento of their time together. Ugh.
Jillian locked up the cabin again.
“Okay, do you want to go to Douglas’s cabin next? See what we can learn from there?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah, though Leidolf’s men probably cleaned up any evidence we might have gotten from the scene,” Jillian said.
“I take it you didn’t know about your brother seeing some woman.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Howard shook his head. “Happens to the best of us. We just lose our heads and…”
“Attempted murder doesn’t fall under that category.” Jillian wished she could get in touch with her brother and iron this out with him alone.
When they arrived at Douglas’s rental cabin, she parked, and they all left the Land Rover. Immediately, Vaughn pulled out his gun and began hand signaling to them, silently telling them which direction to go while he went to the front door.
What had he seen?
Already frowning, Vaughn shook his head at her. What did that mean?
She and Howard moved quickly around to the back and side of the cabin so whomever Vaughn thought he’d heard wouldn’t escape. Jillian wished she had heard or seen what he had. She felt like she was working blind. Howard looked as clueless as she felt. He shrugged and then disappeared around the side of the log building.
At the back of the cabin, two windows were open, although they shouldn’t have been, and Jillian thought she heard a rustling movement in the trees. She knew she should pay attention to the windows in case anyone jumped out of one, but she couldn’t help feeling like someone was moving around in the woods.
The front door banged open, and Vaughn hollered, “Come out with your hands up, and I won’t have to shoot you.”
Her heart beating spasmodically, Jillian was half watching the windows, half watching the woods when something big and golden, his fur decorated in rings of black, leaped out of the window onto her. Her gun went off as her head hit the packed soil hard. For a moment, she didn’t hear anything.
Then Vaughn hollered from inside the cabin, sounding alarmed. “Jillian!”
Howard also called out to her, just as concerned.
She opened her eyes and wondered where she was for a moment. Feeling disoriented, she recalled that the jaguar had knocked her down. She twisted around to see him bound off into the woods. As she got to her feet, she thought she saw another jaguar, smaller, female, north of where the big cat had raced off, but only for a split second. Then the cat blurred into two and disappeared. Jillian rubbed her eyes, then stumbled after the bigger cat, her head pounding, and her vision swimming. The big cat was running away, or…two of them mixed together, their tails whipping back and forth. Then they were gone.
Running from the side of the house, Howard had nearly reached her. He began stripping off his clothes. “Take my things back to the cabin, will you? I’m going after the cat. This is the best way to catch him.”
She hated to have to stay behind, but she heard Vaughn running to catch up to them, and she knew she and Vaughn needed to learn what they could at the cabin while Howard tried to chase down the other jaguar. Wolves wouldn’t be a match for a jaguar if he decided to stand his ground and fight them.
Then Howard was completely naked, and he shifted. She had never seen a jaguar shifter shift into his animal skin, so it was a few seconds before she realized she was staring and not being proactive. She began grabbing his clothes off the ground.
“Are you all right?” Vaughn came up from behind her, gently taking hold of her arm.
Not having heard him get that close, she swallowed a startled scream.
“Sorry. I saw him take you down.” Vaughn wrapped his arm around her waist, offering his support. “You appeared to be out for a few seconds while I was climbing through the window. I worried—”
“Thanks. I’ll be all right.” She realized then that in all the excitement, she hadn’t noticed how much her head was pounding. She clutched Howard’s clothes and gun in her arms. “He didn’t try to kill me. He just knocked me down so I couldn’t shoot him.”
“Could you have shot him?”
She shook her head, and Vaughn tucked a curl behind her ear, his other arm still steady around her waist, his gaze dark. She liked his protective, caring nature.
“Because he was a jaguar?”
Like she’d only shot Vaughn because he was a wolf and jaguars were more exotic, rarer, or something. “Because he wasn’t trying to kill me. He didn’t really hurt me.” If he’d wanted to hurt her, he could have taken a bite out of her or clawed at her. “Was it… Oh, I was going to say the same scent as the woman who had been with Miles, but this was a male.”
“I didn’t smell his scent at all. Which means he’s wearing that damn hunter’s spray. I saw a blond-haired man looking out the window just as we drew close to the house. Then he moved quickly away from the window.”
“Did he look like any pictures that Douglas had on his phone?” she asked.
“I couldn’t tell. He moved so fast that I didn’t see enough except that he was fair-haired. I’ll look at the photos again, but I doubt I’d be able to successfully identify him.”
Jillian sighed. “I have to admit that him being a jaguar made it difficult to even think about shooting him, if I’d had time to aim.”
“I understand. It’s easier to shoot wolves.”
She frowned up at Vaughn, not sure if he was teasing her. “You were chasing down my brother. If a jaguar had been, I would have shot him.”
Vaughn smiled, then shook his head. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. Just a little dizzy, nauseous.”
“You lost consciousness. I knew it. Damn it.” Now he sounded really worried again.
She shifted Howard’s clothes to one arm, then rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her vision was clearer, and she knew she really was fine. “Were there two of them?”