Havana held up the bottle of water she’d brought with her, and he swallowed with an audible click of his tongue. She unscrewed the cap and removed it. “Tip your head back.” He did so, and she carefully poured some water down his throat. “You may have noticed the newbies. They’re from the Olympus Pride. The one coming toward you is Tate Devereaux, the Alpha, in case you don’t recognize him.”
Fear flickered in Hyman’s eyes.
Tate sidled up to her and glared down at the cougar. “I’m also Havana’s landlord, and I’m naturally pretty pissed that someone would target a female who’s under my protection. What’s your name?”
The cougar swallowed and then coughed. “Rupert Merchant,” he replied, his voice hoarse.
Havana smiled again. “It sure is a pleasure to meet you, Rupert.”
“I prefer Hyman—just sayin’,” Bailey interjected.
“I admit, it does have a certain ring to it.” Havana dragged over a stool and sat down in front of him. “Are you part of a cougar pride, Rupert?”
He gave a lethargic shake of the head. “Loner.”
“I see. Well, as you can imagine, I’m awfully curious as to why you shot me with tranqs last night. Maybe you could clear that up for me.”
He licked his lower lip and briefly averted his gaze.
“Or Bailey can bite you again. That’s always an option. Look, this can go one of two ways. You can answer our questions and then die. Or you can piss around, relive the experience you had last night, and then we’ll talk again once the venom has worn off. Either way, we’re not going to stop questioning you until we get our answers.” She paused. “Why did you come for me?”
He was silent for a long moment. “It … it was just a job.”
“A job?”
“I got a message on my cell. It had your name, address, car registration, and the address of where you work. I was to grab you and take you to the abandoned factory near the old lighthouse. Your car wasn’t parked outside your building, so I came here, noticed your car in the lot, and I waited.”
Unease pricked its way up Havana’s spine, and her devil froze. “Someone texted you my details? Who?”
“Don’t know. Never met the guy. He called me one day and said he’d heard good things about me from his associates; heard I’m a man who gets shit done and he’d like to have me on his payroll. I couldn’t trace his call, he made it through a spoofing site. He always contacts me that way.”
Tate folded his arms. “And what is it you do for him?”
Rupert hesitated. “It’s always the same—he sends me a person’s details and a location where I should take them. It’s never the same location, and he’s never the one waiting for me.”
“Who is?” asked Tate.
“There are only ever two guys—they’ve never told me their names. They barely even talk to me, but I know from their voices that neither of them is the guy who calls me. When I arrive, they transfer whoever I’ve brought from my van to theirs.”
And that would have been Havana’s fate, Tate thought, grinding his teeth. Her devil shifter DNA was the only thing that had saved her. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have probably received a call at some point today to tell him that she was missing. The very idea made his cat lash out with his claws. “How do you contact this man who hired you?”
“I don’t. He contacts me.”
“And what does he want with these people you retrieve for him?”
“He never said. But they’re always lone shifters. Sometimes women, sometimes men, sometimes children. Different breeds of shifter. Like he’s picking people at random, or just wants a random selection of people.”
Sometimes children. Anger bloated Tate’s insides, but he kept it out of his tone as he asked, “And you have no idea why?”
“He never told me. And the guys who I deliver the loners to wouldn’t tell me shit either.”
“Describe these men for me,” said Havana.
“They wore ski-masks. I never saw their faces. But I scented that they’re jaguars.”
Tate lifted his brow. “And the person who hired you? Is he a shifter?”
“I don’t know—he never said, and I never asked.”
“The jaguars didn’t once say anything that would give you an idea of what their boss wanted all these loners for?” asked Havana, her tone purely conversational.
Tate noted that she sure was good at acting calm and non-judgmental even while she had to be pissed.
The cougar swallowed. “One time, when I was just about to drive away after dropping off a swan shifter, I had the window open and heard one guy say that the boss would definitely get ‘top dollar’ for the swan. I didn’t hear all of the second guy’s response, but I heard the words ‘shame you and me can’t bid at the auction.’”