Timothy (14 page)

“Naran will give it to him,” Otto said, unapologetic about intruding on Tim’s thoughts. It was fine with Tim. He liked the mental bond, at least for now he did. Come Christmas and birthdays, it might be problematic.

“I’m sure we’ll work something out. I don’t want to know every secret you have, just the ones you want to share.”

Tim cocked his head at Otto. “Really? You don’t want to pry?”

Otto took off his sunglasses and pulled the key from the ignition. “No. The only reason I knew what you were thinking just now is because you were broadcasting it. It was like…like a mental megaphone or something. Very loud thoughts.”

Tim considered it for a moment as he looked out over the landscape they’d soon be scouting. “You’re right, I was. And I’m still not sure how I feel about Gansukh, but I guess since me and Dane have fucked before, I have no right to be jealous.”

Otto’s displeasure was evident in the way he scowled. “Let’s just not talk about either of our past sex lives.”

“Deal,” Tim said eagerly. “You ready?”

Otto unbuckled for an answer. They got out of the vehicle and Tim scanned the area visually, a hand shading his eyes as Otto used a pair of binoculars that could see further than even their enhanced vision. “I don’t see anyone, or any movement. We should be good to hit up one of the caves and shift.”

Tim bobbed his head and pointed. “That one looks like a good one.” Actually, it just looked like a cave, but it was close and Tim was dreading shifting. He just wanted to get it over with.

The trek to the cave only took them twenty minutes. They stripped off and Tim thought he did good not to jump Otto’s sexy ass. He did have Otto stand still though, so he could admire the marks he’d left on his honey-gold skin. Otto shivered every time Tim touched him.

Tim gave him a wicked grin then stroked Otto’s half-hard cock. “How big of a hurry are we in?”

Otto groaned and held Tim’s hand still on his shaft. Then he looked right at Tim, and the firm flesh beneath Tim’s hand began to change, as did the rest of Otto. Tim jerked his hand back with a yelp, because touching Otto’s dick was one thing, but palming him when he was a leopard and Tim wasn’t was just weird. And how did Otto shift so damn fast?

Tim glared at him. “That was not cool. I do not want to fondle your furry balls and kitty parts!” Otto chuffled and licked his lips. He rolled over and exposed his belly to Tim, along with the very part that Tim had been holding moments ago. “You pervert.” He snorted and concentrated on shifting, bracing himself for the pain only to let out a startled cry when he shifted rapidly and painlessly.
What the fuck?

Otto rolled back onto his belly and purred as he licked Tim’s face.
“What’s wrong?”

Tim shouldn’t have been surprised they could communicate when in shifted form. Hadn’t Oscar said as much? Yes, he had, but Tim sometimes zoned out when people were talking. Another reason it was a miracle he’d got through college.

“Tim? What’s wrong?”

Tim lifted a paw and inspected it closely, not sure what he was looking for.
“I’ve always hated shifting. It hurts like a bitch, so I don’t do it often even though I love being my leopard. It also takes a while. This time I just went
poof
practically and here I am, shifted and not in agony. What the fuck?”

Otto scowled, which was interesting on his snow leopard face.
“I’ve never had a problem. It’s—huh.”

“Huh what? You can’t just ‘huh’ then stop!”
Tim would swat Otto’s backside if he didn’t explain.

“That’s not much to discourage me, but I was thinking. It was a little more difficult to shift when I was in the United States. Really, I didn’t get to shift much so I thought it was just lack of practice. But when I think about it, any time I’ve shifted where we—or snow leopards, rather—aren’t native, I’ve had a harder time of it. Nepal, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, China, India—anywhere the traditional species is found, I can shift in the blink of an eye just about.”

Tim eyed Otto balefully.
“So because I don’t live on native soil, I have to suffer or be denied this freedom?”

Otto ducked his head. Tim felt bad for snarking at his mate. It wasn’t Otto’s fault.
“Maybe if you carry some dirt or rocks from here. You know, like a rock with a hole drilled through it, on a leather string?”

“Maybe. It’s worth trying out.”
And it was something new about what he was, what they were, for him to share with his family.
“Ready?”

For an answer, Otto surged past him with a giant leap, pushing off with his powerful hind legs. Tim barely missed getting smacked with Otto’s fluffy tail. Tim yowled his displeasure at Otto’s trickery, pouncing past him and leaving him behind, then Tim put his ass in gear and ran after his mate.

The sun felt good on his fur, warm and tender, like a lover’s touch. It melted into Tim, beginning a slow easing of his worries as he stretched his legs and bounded after Otto. The rocky incline wasn’t nearly as hard to climb in his leopard form. Four feet were definitely better than two when it came to uneven ground, loose rocks and pebbles. Though his family had a place in the mountains in Colorado, Tim had grown up in a more suburban area of Denver. He’d hardly got to run like this, and never in an area so well-suited for him.

With each step he took, he felt more like a playful kitten. He swatted at Otto’s tail every chance he got, and had to remind himself more than once exactly what he was supposed to be doing. Even so, he couldn’t have missed the poacher’s scent if he’d have tried. It slapped him in the breeze like a kick to the head, knocking him back a step. Otto snarled and lifted his nose to the wind.

“He’s been here since last night!”

Tim agreed. When they’d checked the lower areas yesterday evening, there’d been no new hint of the fetid odour they were now smelling. Unless…
“Unless he was here all along, just further up. He could have been beyond the Vengi, watching us. We didn’t even think to look further up!”

Otto growled and pawed at the ground. Tim understood. If they’d taken more time last night, went deeper into the mountain, past the Vengi pass, they might have found the poacher, saved Ochir, and saved Otto’s house. Tim felt the failure like the weight of the world crushing him.

“It’s not your fault, or mine. We didn’t know, and who’s to say the poacher wouldn’t have shot us, or Dad or Naran or Dane? I believe things happen for a reason, or I try to. Ochir will survive. He was very likely already hurt last night. The bruises looked a couple of days old, and I don’t care so much about losing my house and stuff. I care about you, and my family and friends. And I want to catch this fucking poacher before he hurts anyone else.”

Tim goggled at Otto, because he meant every word. It wasn’t the loss of his home or his belongings that upset him. Sure he’d been shocked at first, who wouldn’t have been? But now it was a driving need to protect those he loved that was eating at Otto.

“All right. Let’s find this asscunt and put an end to this.”
Tim thought he sounded pretty badass, himself.

Otto snorted softly.
“You are badass. You’re a snow leopard shifter. There’s not a thing on this planet that can beat that.”

“You do know there’s other shifters, right? My cousin Levi is mated with a cougar shifter and my cousin Oscar is mated with a wolf shifter.”

“Well, they get second-best shifters, don’t they?”
Oscar turned and flicked his tail then peered over his shoulder.
“Coming?”

Tim huffed a feline laugh and darted after his mate. They followed the noxious scent to a cave well beyond the Vengi Pass. Inside they found nothing helpful. Dirty blankets and abandoned camping gear. The odour was almost unbearable. The poacher hadn’t been straying far to use the bathroom. Tim noticed something on the cave floor, and he stuck his nose to it trying to see if it was deliberate or just a bunch of scratched gibberish.

He blinked around the fumes of waste and decay as he concentrated on the spot. When his vision cleared, he was so startled he shifted back into human form and plopped on his ass. “Otto!”

Otto yowled and ran over, knocking Tim on the shoulder and sending him flailing to stay upright. “You big oaf! Be careful.” Tim pulled himself to his knees using Otto’s thick fur as a handgrip. Otto hissed at him, a strange sound coming from a leopard, but somehow endearing as well. Tim leaned over and tapped the stone floor. “Look, is this just some random doodling or is it words in a language you understand?”

To Tim, it looked like a deliberately carved set of words or letters, but they weren’t anything he could read, so he could be wrong. But Otto shifted and ran his fingers over them.

“It’s a name.”

Tim frowned so hard his head hurt. “Surely he wouldn’t have left his own name? What kind of crazy fool would do that?”

“What kind of crazy fool indeed,” Otto muttered. “Amar Rana. Nepalese, I believe. But whose name is it?”

Tim wondered the same thing. “It’d be beyond stupid for him to leave his own name.” Something occurred to him, but he wasn’t sure he wasn’t just being creative with his thinking. Still, it was worth mentioning. “Maybe it’s a clue though. Like, he’s messing with us, getting tired of us trying to figure out who he is and what he wants, so he’s leaving hints?” He looked down at the markings, watching as Otto traced over them again.

“I think you might be right.” Otto rubbed at one of the letters with his thumb. “There’s been no appearance of snow leopard parts on the black market here, at least none I could find. Now I’m beginning to wonder if this whole thing wasn’t a set-up, some kind of vendetta against me or us,” he gestured between them. “Someone who knows what we are and wants to hurt us because of it.”

Tim looked around the cave. Would a sane person stay here? Maybe, but it’d take an evil fucker to hurt a kid like Ochir. “Whoever he is, we need to find him. I hope he didn’t catch the momma and her cubs.”

“Me too.” Otto stood and held a hand out to Tim. “Let’s turn over every piece of trash left behind in here. Who knows, maybe we’ll find something else.”

“Maybe.” Tim wrinkled his nose at the idea of touching anything else in the cave. He wasn’t a germaphobe, but the place was gross. It reeked, utterly and offensively. “Can we do it quick?”

“Yes, it fucking stinks in here.”

Tim grunted in agreement with the massive understatement. He toed over a rusty looking bowl then proceeded to check through a few dingy papers. As far as he could tell they were just sketches of terrain very much like where they were now. “Otto? You want to look at these?”

The drawings were actually pretty good, the detail exquisite, even. Tim was impressed despite trying not to be, because the paper itself smelt of the poacher and no one else, which he took to mean, the nappy smelling guy was the artist.

Otto shuffled the papers around as he looked at them. “Let’s step outside. Even with my cat’s vision, there are some things I can’t quite make out.”

“What can’t you make out?” Tim had thought he could see the drawings pretty well.

Otto shrugged and headed for the entrance. “I just want to be sure.”

Outside the sunshine bathed Tim’s nude skin and helped him to feel slightly less filthy from his foray in the cave. The wind had a sharp, bitter bite of cold to it though. Tim shivered as Otto scowled at the papers. “These are set in the Himalayas, up around Nepal, in places the Snow Leopard Conservation Programme has people monitoring and studying. What the hell? Is he mapping places to track us? Or our purely feline relatives?”

Tim rubbed his stomach then hugged himself in an effort not to freeze his balls off. He wasn’t sure if the cold outside was worse than the one inside him. “And if he’s one of the people who has worked for the SLCP?” It fit, which made Tim shudder repeatedly.

Otto cursed and wrapped his arms around Tim. “Goddamnit, I think you’re right. We need to get to the office and start pulling employee files. Volunteers, too, and anyone the programme has been in contact with, including our sources at the Museum of Natural History and the International Felid Genetics Programme.”

“Okay,” Tim stuttered out, his teeth chattering. “My ass is getting chapped in this wind.”

Otto chuckled and reached down to rub his butt. “Yes, the wind up here is worse, and it’s a good bit colder. Let’s shift.”

Tim gestured at the drawings. “What about them? And searching the rest of the cave?”

Otto glanced back at the opening. “I don’t think there’s anything else, but let’s check real quick. Go ahead and shift. I will after, and I’ll carry the drawings the only way I can—in my mouth.”

Tim looked at the papers dubiously. “Okay, but you have to brush, gargle and floss before putting your lips anywhere on me after having those in your mouth.”

“Deal.” Otto laughed and slapped Tim’s ass before grabbing a handful and jiggling it. “Now let’s take a breath of less-fetid air, then hit the damn cave back up.”

* * * *

Steve rifled through the files again before slamming them down on his desk. “I swear they were there! How the hell did someone manage to get in here and steal a year’s worth of personnel files?”

“And everything related to them, just about.” Tim slumped in his chair and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He’d never really had a headache before, but he thought he might be getting the mother of all of them. It felt like someone was in his brain hammering the backs of his eyes with a sledgehammer.
Fucker.

“Are you okay?”

Otto’s voice was edged with enough concern it made Tim’s eyes water—not a fun experience considering the throbbing in his skull. “Headache. I don’t think I’ve ever had one before.”

“Hmm.” Steve made some noise doing something, Tim didn’t know what. He wasn’t going to remove his hands in case his eyeballs shot out of their sockets. “Here, chew on this. Every now and then Lona gets a killer headache. She says shifters are immune to most human diseases, but headaches don’t discriminate. They make everyone miserable, and since shifters are more durable, to use her word, the headaches are more intense. Though how she’d know what headaches feel like for regular humans is beyond me.”