Chapter 12
“It’s been hours since we returned. We were just checking to make sure you both were still alive.” Demetria smiled at Jillian and Vaughn as they didn’t make a move to get out of bed right away.
Vaughn sighed. “Don’t tell me the cat is out of the bag now.”
Howard said, “I told you they have a really strange way of taking on a mission.”
“Doesn’t look strange to me at all. Looks quite natural. Is the coloring book for all of us? I want the jaguar, but I might have to fight Howard for it.” Demetria patted Howard’s arm.
Jillian laughed, glad the jaguars enjoyed working with them as they all moved to the kitchen. “Now that’s something the three of you will have to figure out. How are you feeling, Vaughn?”
“Like I’ll be good as new—tomorrow.”
“We’re making spaghetti for dinner. The two of you can come in and just relax while we’re fixing it,” Demetria said.
“We have news.” Jillian hadn’t known what it would be like working with jaguar shifters. She normally got along with most people just fine, but she hadn’t been sure if working with jaguars would change the dynamics a lot. Luckily, it didn’t seem to. They appeared amused to see the changing attitudes between the two wolves. “And dessert’s on me.”
Vaughn frowned at her.
“You said the ice-cream bars are mine. So I’m sharing them.”
He snorted. “You didn’t seem happy to share with me last night.”
“That’s because it was my last one, and you didn’t ask.”
The jaguars chuckled.
“So what’s your news?” Demetria asked, stirring the spaghetti sauce.
They told them about the treasure-hunting expeditions while Jillian pulled up the articles on Douglas to show to them.
Demetria wiped her hands on a kitchen towel, then pointed to the screen. “Says here he was in Belize this past year looking for treasure.”
“Do you know something about it?” Jillian asked.
“Only that a lot of us go down there because jaguars still roam free there for now,” Everett said. “That’s where Demetria and I are going for our belated honeymoon this summer. We still need to have our wedding too.”
“You’re both invited to the wedding,” Demetria said.
“Wow, congratulations to both of you. I’d love to come.”
Vaughn echoed Jillian’s comments.
Jillian began to set the table and explained about Douglas and Miles’s group excursion in Belize this past year.
“Did the other treasure hunters smell like jaguars?” Demetria asked.
“They did, and Miles has been seeing one of them intimately. Kira Wells.” Jillian told them her brother and Douglas had been friends for ten years, and they’d even met at the Kitty Cat Club six months ago and talked about another expedition.
“I danced with Kira,” Vaughn said, “if she’s the same woman. And she danced with Douglas after me. But she didn’t dance with Miles. He said he hadn’t remembered seeing any of them there.”
“So the jaguar shifters who were at the club were probably the same ones who have now been in this area. Probably one of them overheard Miles and Douglas talking about their next expedition,” Demetria said.
“That was in Belize. And if it’s the same people, they just happened to sign up for the same tour as Douglas and Miles did,” Jillian said.
Everett pulled out his phone. “I’m going to update our boss on the situation.” He called Martin Sullivan and then put the call on speaker.
“Wait, let me pull up the articles on treasure hunting you found.” Martin didn’t say anything, then whistled. “I’m in the wrong line of business.”
They all told him where they were on the case and that this might be the first real lead they’d had.
“I suggest Demetria and Everett check out the Kitty Cat Club. Learn what you can. If Miles shows up before you leave, take him with you in case he recognizes anyone from the boat he was on in Belize. My agents may have a better chance talking with other jaguars about who might be involved. I want Jillian and Vaughn to stay here for when Douglas comes out of his coma. Howard can help track down any leads, in case you have to stay with Douglas.”
“Sounds good,” Everett said.
Everyone else agreed, and then they ended the call with the boss.
Vaughn served glasses of water for everyone to have with their dinner.
“We didn’t do a thorough search of Douglas’s cabin because I’d hurt my head,” Jillian said. “If you’re going to travel to San Diego tomorrow, maybe we can all do that after we eat.”
“Sounds good to me,” Demetria said.
“It’s about an eighteen-hour drive,” Vaughn said, looking it up on his phone. “Are you going to drive, or fly and get a rental car?”
Jillian looked up the information on her phone. “It’s only two hours’ flight time.”
“I vote for the flight,” Demetria said. “The JAG branch will pick up the tab, and we need to check into this sooner rather than later.”
“Okay, so we go to Douglas’s cabin tonight, in case there is something there. We wouldn’t want the jaguar to grab the evidence and run,” Everett said.
“Are the two of you okay to go?” Howard brought over a platter piled high with garlic toast. “We can run by there and let you get some more rest.” He winked at them.
Vaughn glanced at Jillian, letting her make the call.
“No. If all of us go, we have more of a chance of finding something crucial to the case. And if he comes back, maybe this time we can catch him,” Jillian said.
“We got Doc’s lab results, if you haven’t learned about them yet,” Demetria said while serving the spaghetti. “We were shocked to learn a jaguar injured Douglas after it appeared a wolf had. We will find the shifter who did this.”
Everyone took seats at the table.
“So when is Miles coming here?” Demetria asked.
That was the million-dollar question. “I’m afraid he’s going to confront Kira with some of these concerns,” Jillian said.
No one said anything, and Jillian knew just what they were thinking. Miles was playing with fire. If they were forewarned, the big cats might clear out of the area, and the team wouldn’t be able to locate them.
After they finished eating, they took off in two cars for the cabin. Howard stayed with the wolves and drove this time.
When they reached the cabin, Jillian warned, “A couple of the windows are open again.”
“We might have left them open,” Vaughn said.
Everyone was armed and ready for action as the jaguars went to the back and the side of the house. Howard and Jillian climbed the porch to open the door.
As soon as Jillian and Vaughn stepped on the front deck, it creaked. Though she suspected whoever was in the house had already heard the vehicles pull up, she still hated to let anyone who might be in the cabin know exactly where they were. Then again, whoever had opened the windows might have left already.
She tried the door and found it locked. Vaughn pulled out his lock pick, something most lupus garous kept on them. The lock clicked open. Then he pushed the door open and they waited, listening for any sign anyone was moving about in the cabin.
Vaughn shoved the door further aside and flipped on the light switch. No one was in the living room that Jillian could see, but she immediately smelled her brother’s scent, and it was fresh. From the way Vaughn glanced at her, she knew he did too. She nodded.
Then they moved in unison. Vaughn walked quickly around the couch, while she headed toward the kitchen. No one was in either location.
“All right, all right,” Miles called out. “You caught me. I’m coming out with my hands up. Don’t shoot! I was just getting ready to call you.”
Jillian couldn’t believe it! “Are you alone?” She was highly annoyed with her brother for coming back here. Now he really did appear to have been involved in all of this.
“Yes.” Her sandy-haired brother moved toward them, walking slowly down the hall, his hands up, his phone in his right hand, his blue-eyed gaze shifting from her to Vaughn.
Vaughn had lowered his weapon but was still holding it like he planned to shoot her brother if he made a false move. Jillian hadn’t holstered her weapon either, not because she didn’t trust her brother completely, but she didn’t trust that the cabin was clear.
“Are you all right staying with him?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’ll check out the rest of the rooms.” Vaughn stalked off to search the bedrooms and bathroom.
“Do you have any weapons on you?” Jillian asked her brother.
“Just a hunting knife.”
“What if the person who had injured Douglas had been here?”
“I would have taken care of him,” Miles said.
Right. And her brother would have gotten himself killed. “What are you doing back here?” Jillian was so annoyed that she could have arrested him just for being stupid about this.
“I really like Douglas. He doesn’t judge me like Dad does. I want to do something to help catch the guy who hurt him. I kept thinking about what you and Vaughn said about the jaguar coming back here for stuff and hurting you. So I thought maybe he left something else behind. Something that would prove he did it. Why are you here?”
“I’m investigating the attack.” Jillian couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with her brother.
“No, I know that. What I meant was what are you hoping to find…specifically?”
“Anything related to Douglas being injured.”
“I found something. Probably not related to the crime, unless someone else knew it was here and wanted it, so I thought I’d better see if it was here and turn it over to you for safekeeping in case whoever injured him was after it. That’s what I was getting ready to call you about when I heard the cars. I checked and saw it was you, so I didn’t panic. But, well, you might want to come in here and see.”
“What is it?” Jillian asked.
“Remember when we used to go camping with Dad at the old cabin, and he’d hide his gun while we went for a run as wolves?”
“Yeah, sure. Under the wooden floor planks. And he told us never to touch the gun unless he was with us.”
“Yeah. Beneath the wooden floor. Under the bed, not just in the middle of the floor, covered with a floor rug.”
“You’re a genius.” Jillian was proud of her brother, though she still didn’t know what he’d found.
“No, not quite. I told Douglas the story last year when we were swapping stories. He always had large sums of cash when he’d book a boat for us to search for sunken treasure. I wondered if he would have created the same kind of secret place to hide a lot of money. If Douglas truly meant for us to do a treasure hunt, he would have brought the money with him.”
Jillian stared at him. “The cash. Ohmigod. We found it.”
“You did? I’m so glad to hear it. I thought the jaguar who tore into him got it. I thought I’d find it in the cubbyhole. I flashed my penlight in there, but the bags of money weren’t there. The scent was though. So I figured Douglas had hidden the money there, then got it out to pay the boat rental guy. But when I checked with the boat rental management, they said Douglas wasn’t coming until today, so he hadn’t paid the money yet. I told them we had to cancel. So you really got the money. How much?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve got it. Vaughn gave it to Leidolf, who put it in his safe. Ten thousand dollars.”
“Yeah, that’s how much he spends on a boat, fully equipped for salvage. We spend a week out on a job, sometimes returning for provisions and then heading out again.”
“This is why you don’t get a long-term regular job?”
“See? That’s just how Dad would react.”
“It’s like gold fever.” She studied Miles for a moment. “That’s why you go off sometimes, and when you return to see me, you look like you’ve been sunburned on a beach. I thought you had taken up surfing or something.”
“You should see how scratched up we get, between the sand on our skin and our knees on the coral. Did you know that gold always retains its gold appearance? But iron and other artifacts are encrusted in centuries of marine life and look like rocks. Orange rust could be oxidized iron of some sort. Blackened items, oxidized silver. You have to know what you’re looking for. But we take metal detectors with us, and that helps to find some of it. It’s down there, just waiting to be found.”
“So what did you find hidden away?”
“Douglas’s treasure journal. I was just about to reach my hand in to grab it when I heard the cars pull up. I worried it was the jaguar that had injured you and maybe Douglas, so I closed it back up. I hurried to look and saw it was you.” Miles paused in the hall. “I thought the journal would prove Douglas was here so we could go diving. So did someone else know about the money? Maybe about his notes on treasure hunts? Had the person tried to intimidate him into telling where it was? I was going to call you,” he repeated.
Vaughn got on his phone and put it on speaker. “Hey, Everett, it’s all clear in the cabin. Got the phone on speaker. Miles is here. He said he found Douglas’s journal outlining treasure hunts that he had hidden. That would most likely confirm he was going to schedule a boat trip to search for treasure. We’re just about to get it. What are you all doing?”
“I’m glad to hear Miles is there and safe. Tell him he can go with us to the Kitty Cat Club tomorrow in San Diego. We were worried he might have gotten himself into trouble. He needs to come back to the ranch with us not only for his own protection, but so we can use his assistance to help solve the case.”
Jillian was certain Everett said that because he wanted her brother to feel important in resolving the case, and she could have given him a hug for it.
“On the trip to San Diego, absolutely. I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Miles said agreeably.
“Good. We’re retracing the tracks that everyone has left in the area…the jaguars’ and Miles’s. We smelled his scent as he walked from his cabin to this one. No jaguar scents, but we’ve found other evidence: jaguars’ hairs caught on underbrush and pugmarks in the wet soil. We’ll be at this for a while,” Demetria said.
“Sounds good. We’ll keep searching the cabin for other clues,” Vaughn said.
“Okay, out here.”
“The journal was in Douglas’s bedroom, right?” Jillian asked her brother.
Miles shook his head and motioned to another. “It wasn’t in Douglas’s room. It was in one of the other rooms.”
“Douglas might have hidden it there and purposefully stayed in another room, figuring if the other rooms were empty, no one would think he would have anything in them.” Though if Jillian had wanted to hide a large sum of money and an important journal, she would have put it somewhere near her so she could safeguard it better. Otherwise, she could imagine constantly worrying that someone else would find it, and she’d never get any sleep. She stared at the bed. It looked like it hadn’t been moved.
“I crawled underneath to look. So yeah, you’ll smell my scent underneath the bed, and on the boards where I pulled one up, but I didn’t touch the journal. I had to know it was there before I could call you, then I didn’t know who had arrived so closed it back up. No jaguar scent is under the bed, so they didn’t find it. I smelled the money, but I hadn’t been able to feel inside to see if it was there. Wait. Is your head all right?” Miles asked Jillian. “Vaughn and I can move the bed.”
“Vaughn’s shoulder is probably worse off than my head,” Jillian said.
“I can do it by myself.” Miles sounded proud that he was completely fit.
They all helped him move the bed anyway.
All three crouched over the spot and smelled for scents. Miles was right. All Jillian smelled were Douglas’s and Miles’s scents.
“Go ahead,” Vaughn said to Miles, giving him the honor of lifting the boards.
Miles smiled at him and looked to Jillian. She nodded. She decided right then and there that Vaughn was an all-right alpha wolf. Hot too.
Vaughn put his hand on her brother’s arm before he lifted the first board to stop him. “Wait. I heard something.” Vaughn checked around the boards. “Let me do it.” But he again paused. “What kind of a shot are you, Jillian?”
“Sharpshooter. What are you thinking?”
“I swore I heard the faintest sound of a rattle.”
“Hell, I’m glad you drove up when you did, or I would have just stuck my hand in there and seized the journal. I guess moving the bed disturbed the snake. I got this.” Miles grabbed a pillow from the bed and pulled off the pillowcase. Then he readied the pillowcase and nodded at Vaughn.
“Are you sure?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah. I used to help with rattlesnake roundups. We milked the venom to create antivenom. Douglas has done those too. I’m not surprised he might have used a snake to deter would-be thieves.”
Jillian let out her breath and shook her head.
Vaughn just smiled at the two of them. She didn’t. She wondered what else her brother had been doing that was that dangerous that she hadn’t known about.
Vaughn began to lift a board. Jillian readied her gun. If the snake struck at them, she was taking it out. She just hoped her brother didn’t get in the way.
Nothing happened. No snake coiling up and striking out. But she heard the faint rattle this time.
Vaughn gingerly moved the board aside and started on another.
Jillian’s heart was pounding, and she could hear her brother’s accelerated heartbeat too. But Vaughn’s was nice and steady.
He moved the next board and set it aside. They had a clear view of the rattlesnake right before it lunged at Jillian. Miles jerked the pillowcase over its head and grabbed the body. Vaughn helped him shove the rest of the snake inside the pillowcase, then Miles knotted it.
Jillian was shaking from the effort. She could handle about anything. But she hated rattlesnakes and copperheads. She was glad her brother could take care of it. She wasn’t sure she could have. Now she could smell the snake.
“Thanks for not shooting me, Sis.” Miles set the bag aside.
“It’s a good thing you reacted so quickly. I don’t think I would have had a chance to shoot it. So thanks.”
Vaughn shook his hand. “Good work. You’d come in real handy on a wilderness survival mission.”
Grinning, Miles looked perfectly pleased with himself, but waited to see what Vaughn told them to do next.
“Why in the world would he have put a rattlesnake down there? I mean, I suppose to protect the money and the journal, but how would he have done so without getting bitten? And how would he have gotten the money and journal back out again without risking the rattlesnake biting him that time either?” Jillian asked.
“I told you. He knew how to handle snakes,” Miles said. “We found a den of them in a bunch of rocks near here. He must have gotten one that was hibernating and slipped it in there.”
“Now you tell me!”
Vaughn and Jillian leaned down to smell the hole, but the only one who had left a scent was Douglas. And they could smell the ink on the journal and the money that had been there. “Just Douglas has been in here,” Vaughn confirmed. “Okay, go ahead, take out the journal.”
Miles showed them the old journal. “Thankfully, they didn’t find this. He keeps all his notes and hand-drawn maps. So he has several journals. I was afraid whoever attacked him might have found this one somewhere else in the cabin if Douglas had it out at the time. He doesn’t always bring one with him, so I wasn’t sure he would this time. We’ve had to go out and pick up a notebook before when he’s forgotten to bring one. He’s too meticulous not to journal about all of it.” Miles gently removed the journal as if it would break and handed it to Jillian.
Jillian was busy looking through the journal, admiring the well-drawn maps, many of them even colored with colored pencils—which made her think of the coloring book she and Vaughn were playing with. Beautiful.
Everett called Vaughn, who put the cell on speaker. “Yeah, Everett? I have you on speaker.”
“We’re coming in. Only two jaguars were in the area recently.”
“We found a journal Douglas used to document their treasure hunts,” Vaughn said.
“Okay, be at the cabin in a couple of minutes.”
“All right.”
They heard someone coming in the front door, but before he and Jillian could check it out, Everett called, “Just us!”