“Simple.” Tate held up the cheetah’s phone, showing one of the photos Luke had found. “I won’t hunt down and kill the woman you’re all cozy with here.”
Dread flashed across Taggart’s face, but he quickly blanked his expression. “She’s no one to me. I hardly know her.”
Alex snorted. “You’re not a very good liar, Mal.”
The cheetah squeezed his eyes shut as the mamba put her head level to his. She flicked out her tongue, letting it touch the side of his face. “Can someone please get it off me?”
“She won’t bite,” Havana assured him, thoroughly enjoying his discomfort. She shrugged one shoulder, adding, “Well, not unless I tell her to.” And after listening to him try to justify the fact that he’d tried to kill her twice, Havana was seriously tempted to signal for the mamba to strike. Her devil would rather take care of him herself.
Aspen’s nose wrinkled. “Well, there was that time she bit a hyena without your say-so. You remember?”
Havana waved that away. “She was pissed that day.”
“She’s pissed today,” said Aspen.
Havana slanted her head. “You make a valid point.” She almost chuckled when Taggart swore beneath his breath, trembling.
He opened his eyes but didn’t look at the snake, as if intent on pretending she wasn’t there.
“We have shit to do, Malcom,” said Havana. “We don’t have time for you to deliberate on just how much the life of that woman in the photo means to you. Either she matters to you or she doesn’t. But be aware that we will get the information out of you one way or another. You might as well willingly part with it and save her life in the process.”
Sweat beading his upper lip, Taggart stared at her mate, a plea in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have hurt the devil if I’d known she meant something to you.”
“So you’ve said before,” Tate told him. “I don’t know why you keep repeating it.”
“Apparently he thinks it’ll be enough to make you let him go.” Luke snickered. “Even if you could forgive him, Havana wouldn’t. And, Mal, just one word from her will have that mamba sinking her fangs into you. Appeals are pointless.”
“Utterly pointless,” Tate agreed. “You’re going to die tonight. It’s going to hurt. A lot. And none of us will feel in the least bit bad about it, considering you not only shot Havana, you’ve been executing people for a while now. But if you tell me what you know about those jaguar shifters, I will not hunt down this woman in the photo—I swear that to you. I will leave her be and forget she exists. But if you don’t tell us what we want to know, I will do to this woman what you did to mine—only I won’t give her a quick death. No, she’ll suffer. Hard. Maybe I’ll even keep you alive so you can watch it happen. And you can explain to her that she wouldn’t have had to go through that agony if you had just done the right thing by her.”
Fear flickered across the cheetah’s face. “Fuck.”
Havana knew that, in reality, Tate would never hurt a woman. Knew he would never make one person pay for another person’s actions. But Taggart clearly believed Tate meant what he said, which was what mattered.
Tate lifted a brow. “So, what’s it gonna be?”
The cheetah briefly closed his eyes. “You swear you won’t touch her or send anyone after her if I tell you what you want to know?”
“I swear it,” Tate promised.
Taggart’s head jerked when the mamba’s tongue flicked his ear. He looked at Havana. “I’ll talk, I will, just get her off me.”
“But she looks so comfortable there,” said Havana. “It would be a shame to disturb her. She gets cranky when disturbed. So cranky she can just … lunge and bite.”
Taggart cursed again.
“Don’t look at Havana,” Tate told him. “You look right at me and start talking. The sooner you’re done, the sooner the mamba will slither away.”
Taggart took in a long breath. “I don’t know much about the jaguars, really. But I saw them one night when I was at a casino—Ace in the Hole, a place near the docks. Three girls were singing on stage. They weren’t very good, but one was hot as hell. Asian. A female jaguar. Long legs, big rack, purple streaks in her black hair. I bought her a drink after the show. We exchanged names. I told her she had a nice voice. She said I should tell her boss that because the old bastard had informed her that tonight’s performance would be her last—he was hiring a new act or something. Then, two guys showed up. They were jaguars, too.”
“Descriptions?” asked Alex.
Taggart reeled off quite detailed descriptions. Havana noted it all down on her cell phone’s notepad app.