Hawkins_McCullough’s Jamboree_Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I’m assuming that was her last name before becoming McCullough. I’d toss her into a deep hole or cage and lock the door, but that’s just me.” He told her what her name was before. “Colonel Lauren Burcher? I knew that she was something more than just a woman. She’s a bitch.”

  “Yeah, she might say the same about you. But she’d be happy with it instead of pissed off like you are.” She looked like she didn’t understand, and he’d bet she didn’t want to. “I was called Mac in the service. My family is the only people that call me Hawkins. Or sometimes Hawk when I’m not in too much trouble with them.”

  She didn’t say the obvious next line of “that must happen a lot then.” Hawkins realized that she was going to forever do the unexpected and not care a bit if it offended or even pissed someone off. She was a great deal like Lauren, but Jamie would be meaner when pressed, he guessed.

  “Why don’t you come home with me?” She turned and looked at him then. “I have a nice house. My brother helped me buy it when I was in the service.”

  “You still are. In the service, I mean.” He nodded, not saying anything. “I’m not going home with you. I have one that I like well enough. But you’re to stay away from me. I don’t want to get involved with you at all.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.” He pulled her body to him and was surprised that he didn’t hurt her again. Pressing his mouth to hers, hoping that she’d allow him a taste of her, he moaned when she finally did.

  Her body fit his. When he held her closer, letting her feel what she was doing to him, he thought he would happily die right now the way she’d wrapped her arms around him. Before he could lift her up from the floor, find a hard place to lay her while he feasted on her body, she pulled her mouth away from his.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He started to tell her that she had nothing to be sorry about when she disappeared. Hawk was left holding air, and was no closer to finding anything out than he had been before. And Hawk wanted to know everything. Reaching to Burcher, he asked her if she’d do him a favor.

  If you’re going to ask me if I can find out something about your girl, I’m already on it. Your mate is a piece of work, by the way. She isn’t the least bit impressed with me, nor does she care that I could snap her like a twig. Hawk wisely said nothing. He was reasonably sure that Jamie could not just snap Lauren, but get rid of the body without any trouble. There isn’t much when I do a regular search, but I’m digging. Where is she, by the way?

  Gone. She was here, then vanished. I need to talk to Jon too. Maybe he can shed some light on things. Lauren said she doubted it. Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too. I might have to return to Washington, but I’ll be in contact with you while I’m gone. I’m assuming that Mom and Dad know that I’ve found my mate?

  Yes, but it wasn’t me. I was really pissed about that too. Colin told them before I was able to. She paused for too long, but he knew better than to hurry her along. Hawk, your mate is really in the shit. She’s not just wanted by some very unsavory people, but there is a warrant out for her arrest as well. Murder and robbery. But they know her as an entirely different name. Holly Tree. Even I can tell that’s a fake, and I’m not looking very hard.

  I’ll need what you can find. I don’t have a clue where she is, or even if she needs a place to stay. But she’s my mate, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I ever doubted that I wanted one. She said that she’d have it couriered to him. Thanks. I owe you one.

  Never, Mac. Never that. I owe you so much, I don’t think being immortal is ever going to be long enough to pay you back for most of it. He said nothing. I’m printing it up now and making arrangements to have it brought to you. Should be there by this evening.

  Hawk could disappear too. He didn’t care for doing it, because when he reappeared, he had to be careful where he was landing, so to speak. But this time he had no choice. He should have been in Washington yesterday. He only had a few more missions to go before he was done with everything military. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t dreading it.

  Chapter 2

  Jamie was going to find the men looking for her and take care of them. She was frankly sick to death of all this cat and mouse shit. Not that she had any idea why these particular men wanted her; she just knew that it had to end now.

  Reaching out beyond where she was, she found two of the four men not too far away. This was good, she thought, and willed her body there.

  “Holy fuck.” She just cocked a brow at the man who spoke. “They didn’t tell us that you could fade in the woodwork like that, then come out and scare us. We’ve been hunting for you for a while now.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of your clumsy attempts at trying to find me. Why, is what I want to know. Why do you even care where I am?” The second man started for his gun, and Jamie lifted him up so that he was on the ceiling. “Answer me.”

  “We were only told to not hurt you in any way. Nor was we to touch you without your consent. I’m guessing you’re not too keen on that either.” She shook her head and told the first man to sit down. “Yes ma’am, I can do that. Are you by chance going to come quietly with us? We sure could use the money that is attached to bringing you in.”

  “No, I’m not going anywhere quietly with you or your moron friend.” He looked up at the guy on the ceiling. “Would you like to join him? If not, tell me who is sending out what I’m assuming is the cream of the crop to find me.”

  He looked at her, confused. She didn’t have time to tell him what she’d meant, and asked him again who had sent them. This shit was going to stop now.

  “His name? I don’t know. He had this application online that said how they were looking for a woman and they’d pay well to whoever found her.” He grinned. “I could take your picture with me and then he’d have to give me something, don’t you think?”

  “No, you’re not taking my picture. You want to know why? Because you’d be just stupid enough to think that he’s ever going to pay you whether you bring me in or not.” He told her that he’d promised. “Yes, I’m sure. Because people who put ads on the computer and pay way too much to find me are going to be the most honest people around. He’s going to kill you. Whoever he is, you’re as good as dead. Once he figures out that I’m caught, the rest of you will die so he doesn’t have any witnesses.”

  “Nah, you can’t be right about that. He said he’d pay us.” Jamie gave up and looked around the room. “You wanting to have a seat? We just ordered us some dinner, and it’ll be up soon enough.”

  “Did he give you a phone? Do you still have the email that he sent you, if that’s how he contacts you?” Idiot said that he did and got up to hand her the phone. Then he went to the laptop and brought up the email. “You can read it right there if you want. See how he’s saying over and over that he’ll pay whoever brings you in.”

  Touching her fingers to the email, she was tracking where it came from when she felt someone else doing the same. Reaching out to whoever it was, she cursed for a good minute before finishing the search of the address of the computer the man had used. When she had it, she reached out to Lauren and asked her what the fuck she was doing.

  I’m sure that you’re aware that someone is trying to find you. So, I’m looking for the IP address so I can look like the hero to you, and maybe you’ll be more respectful to me. I am a badass, you know. Jamie told her the address she was hunting for as well as the phone number. How the fuck did you get that before me? I’m telling you, Jamie, I’m liking you more and more with each passing moment.

  Leave this alone. You’re only going to bring some next level shit down on your head, and that will bring in more people. You don’t know what you’re fucking with here. Lauren told her to tell her. You really want to know everything about me? I’m telling you right now, it’s not pretty or very nice.

  Yes, I do want to know. That way I can tell whether or not we can become BFFs or not. Lauren was going to be the death of her, she knew it. Who is this
person that you’re hunting for, and what does he have to do with two men in the hotel in Indiana?

  I’m here with the idiots now. And if the person looking for me is anything like these guys, I can hide right out in the open and they’ll never find me. She had a feeling they were a distraction, for her to follow up on so that she could be found. They’re trying to find me for reasons that you can’t understand.

  I’m pretty smart, so lay it on me.

  Jamie left the two men in the hotel, bound and gagged, to go to where Lauren was. Calling in the police to come and take them away was the only way to keep them from being murdered. There was enough hardware and weapons in the room that they’d be in jail for a while.

  She was alone in the big office, and Jamie wanted to keep it that way. Taking away her ability to reach out to anyone, she felt safer than she had in recent weeks.

  “That’s a neat trick you have there. You said you were in Indiana, yet here you are a few seconds later. Are you going to talk to me, or do I have to rough you up a bit first?”

  Lauren laughed, and Jamie wondered if everyone knew just how insecure this woman was. Lauren was joking. But Jamie wasn’t in the mood for it, nor for this woman trying to get into shit that was bigger than she was. Standing up, she started pacing the room when Lauren laughed. She asked her if she’d blocked her from talking to anyone else.

  “Yes. Not that I don’t trust you, but I do have trust issues with everyone. You were going to call in the troops, and one of them would have been Hawk. I’m not going there with him.” Lauren nodded and leaned back in her chair. “Where to start.... All right. My real name is James Fitzpatrick. I change my name when it suits me, or someone knows it. I was named James by the proprietor of the children’s home I was in. He hadn’t checked on my gender and filled out my certificate wrong.”

  “Why use your real name this time?” Jamie told her that she used it from time to time. Just to throw them off. “Ah, I get it. If you are forever changing up your name, they’ll think that one is a fake too. Good job. I would have thought of it sometime.”

  “Anyway. I was special in that I was really an orphan in the place, but no one knew what had happened to my parents. The others were kids that they’d pick up off the streets. Not to do the humanitarian thing, but to have them for something else they had in mind. They’d give them a meal, and in exchange for the shitty stuff they’d been fed, they were chained to the bed, as I was, and sold for different projects that came along. I, however, wasn’t ready to go anywhere until I was five. I put up a fuss when they tried. I used to be a bear. Now I’m everything.”

  “So are Jon and Mac. Though I don’t think he’s played around with his skills enough yet to know what he can be.” Jamie knew that feeling. “So, you were taken to this lab where Jon was. For the sole purpose of using you as a test dummy?”

  “No, not at first.” She heard someone at the door and looked at Lauren. “You might as well let him in. This might keep him from pursuing anything with me.”

  The door opened, and Hawk was standing there. She wasn’t starting over, and he seemed to know not to ask her to. When he was seated in the office’s only other chair, Jamie picked up where she had left off.

  “When I was first at the lab, I was getting injections every couple of hours. And on the days that they got a reaction from them, they’d celebrate like it was Christmas or some shit like that.” Jamie looked at the wall in front of her, wondering what happened to all the underlings that had worked there.

  “They’re all dead.” Jamie nodded, Lauren having answered her unspoken question. “There was some trouble for a little while afterwards, but we took care of it. That’s what we do, work together to figure out how to make us all safe.”

  “And that’s what I’m doing right now. Trying to make you see that you’re unsafe while I’m here.” Hawk stood up, then sat back down when Lauren told him to. “When I turned fifteen, things started to go haywire with their tests. I was also getting stronger than them, so they had to shoot me with a dart to knock me out before they’d feel safe enough to come into the cage to get me. That didn’t last long either.”

  “You adapted to what they were giving you.” She nodded at Hawk when he spoke softly. “You said that you were getting stronger. I’m assuming that you don’t mean just your powers.”

  “No. I was physically stronger than anyone there, and I proved it on a daily basis. After a while I was let out of the cage. It was probably less expensive than replacing them every day. I did not like being confined.” Hawk nodded. Jamie knew he would understand being confined and what it could do to a person like them. “When Jon escaped—I’m guessing that someone here helped him out—I was found and tied down with special chains. That too didn’t last long, and before I left for the final time, I destroyed all the notes that I could find on me. As well as anything on the computer.”

  “So to us, who had the computers scanned and read, you didn’t exist. That is a good trick too. Why?” Jamie asked Lauren what she meant. “Why do you care if your name is found out? It’s not like you couldn’t hide from them. Or better yet, kill them when they proved too close to you.”

  “What they did to me was my business. And when I left, I didn’t want some fucked up government agency finding me and trying to make me into what they wanted.” Hawk simply said a weapon. “Yes. I was supposed to be the next Jon. The one that got away. But the trouble with that was, I decided long before then that I wasn’t going to be anything to anyone that I didn’t want to be.”

  “What is it you can do that would be considered a weapon? I don’t mean the fact that you can morph into anything, including larger weapons I’m assuming. But they must have known of one thing that kept you there for so long.” She nodded and stared at Hawk. “Will you tell me?”

  She nodded and stepped back from them. Closing her eyes because the light would hurt her a little, Jamie turned into the weapon that would end all strife for everyone. She would be used against every kind of enemy possible before they used her for their personal gain.

  “Holy Christ.” She let them come closer but didn’t let them touch her. She could incinerate them with only a touch. “You can burn through armies and houses too. Is there more to you than this?”

  She reached out with her heat and touched a paper on the desk. It burned and disappeared with the flame that she could control. But the desk and anything around it or on it was unharmed. Letting the flame go, she stood there and let them stare. Her heart hurt because she could see the excitement in their eyes. They’d sell her off in a moment if they thought that they could.

  “I’m not excited because I know what I can do to you. I would never sell you to anyone or anything. But I am excited to know that you can take care of yourself and me if it came to that.” She told Hawk that he should be terrified. “I would be if I knew that you were out there searching for me. I’m assuming that the people who are searching for you have no idea of what you can do, at least that part of it.”

  “No, they don’t. Do you realize what I am? What I just turned into? I was a ball of the hottest fire ever known. I’m not just hot, I’m white hot. Things that I touch, including people, will be gone without a trace. And these fucking idiots think that they’ll be able to corral me into doing what they want.” Hawk nodded and sat down. He looked relaxed enough to take a nap. “You’re being dense if you think this is a good thing. I can move into a home, burn only what I want, and get out without a single trace that I’d been there.”

  “I understand that more than you can know right now. I know what it’s like to be thought of as only a weapon. Something that can be used to kill without being killed. I’ve been in plenty of situations that had me going into a person’s home, killing the man or woman there, and getting out. And no one would know that he was dead until they checked on him. I’m that good.” Jamie looked at Lauren when she nodded. “What you fail to understand about me—and that’s all right, because we don’t know each other that
well—is that I just don’t care what you can or can’t do. You’re my mate, and I will, if I’m able, protect you like I would hope that someday you would do for me.”

  Jamie wanted to stomp her foot and scream at him that he was being a fool. Just as she was thinking of something that she could do to him, to make him understand, she felt the danger.

  “Get down.” They both obeyed like she’d made them do it. Jamie reached out with her power and knew that the helicopter was coming for Lauren. Whatever she’d done, she’d pissed off the wrong people. Jamie looked at Lauren and realized that she might not know what she’d done either. “I’m going to have to destroy the men coming here. Don’t move.”

  ~*~

  Hawk didn’t know what to think about this. He was glad that Jamie had been able to take the men out, but he was worried about her. She no more liked to kill than he did, it seemed. He looked over at her as she stood near him. They had come to the scene of the wreckage before the first police officer did.

  “They were after Lauren. While they didn’t know where she was, they had an idea that it might have been in the downtown area, not at her home.” Hawk asked Jamie if she knew what they wanted. “Yes. She apparently stopped a shipment coming into port, and the men were pissed about it. One of them, a boss in the area, he was on the helicopter as well.”

  There was a helicopter there in the rubble of the accident. But the only way that he knew that was because he’d been told it was there. The wreckage was massive, yet it was contained. He wondered if Jamie was doing that now or if she’d done it when she’d pulled them out of the sky.