Call of the Cougar (Heart of the Cougar Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

places.
    ***
    Tracey and Anton had been systematically inspecting each of the buildings, as she'd done before, ensuring no one had entered one recently. She was saving the schoolhouse for last. Not because she feared going in, but because she didn't believe the traffickers would use the same place again, if Ricky's information wasn't out-of-date.
    Unlike Honey, who had been older and she suspected had been working both sides of the equation, and then learned he had been, she assumed Ricky was in the midst of bad stuff going down, and he had a moral compass that said he'd rather be an informant than be involved in criminal activities. She normally didn't warn an informant how dangerous their life could be, but with him, being that he was so young, she had. They needed him, and he'd already helped bring closure to two cases, but he was the first informant who had worked for her that she really worried about. Maybe because he was so young.
    "Here," Tracey said, surprised Anton hadn't found the opening into the second saloon first. He had passed this way just moments ago, and again, she worried about him—that he was too distracted to really be paying attention if they got into trouble.
    With her headlamp on and her Glock readied, she climbed through the hole that had been covered with a single piece of plywood, aged, but only attached in a way that made it easy to swing to the side and up, like a secret door to a kids' hideaway.
    She had her gun out, more for encounters with rattlesnakes taking refuge in the saloon, rather than being anxious that they might find someone in here. This was the time of year and a great place for rattlesnakes to take refuge from the hot summer's sun.
    She heard no sounds, other than her boots walking across the creaking floorboards and then Anton joining her. Like the schoolhouse, she saw boot tracks, men's size elevens and twelves, tromping all over the dusty floor. Nothing real recent, but recent enough. Weeks, maybe? Days? She couldn't guess.
    It didn't mean that anyone sinister had been here either. Just that a couple of men, or even teens with big feet, had been wandering around in here. She started examining the floorboards, looking for any that were loose, just like at the schoolhouse before this.
    "Here," Anton said, breaking free from his gloomy mood for a minute.
    She hurried to see what he'd found behind the old dust-covered bar.
    "Fingerprints." He got out his kit to lift them off the scarred, oak countertop.
    She turned to study the floor and just as she realized that brand new footprints had walked this way from what looked like a store room, she knew she and Anton were in danger.
    She smelled the men's different colognes as they'd recently moved in this direction. Saw the business end of two rifles poke through the slats of a wooden door. With her enhanced feline vision, she easily caught sight of the slightest movement.
    She was quick, her cat actions so flexible even when in human form, she turned and dove for Anton. It was the best she could do. But she was afraid it wasn't good enough.
    Gunfire exploded from four different directions. Tracey slammed into Anton's six foot, two-inch frame, knocking into him. He went down like a wall of cement, hitting the wood floor hard. She landed on top of him, but quickly moved off him to see if he'd been shot.
    He was staring up at her with his nearly black eyes focused on her, and then he began to get up, but she saw the stain of blood spreading across his black T-shirt. She grabbed his shoulder and shoved him down.
    "You're wounded," she said, her voice hushed. "I'll take care of this. Stay there."
    Rounds crashed into the solid oak bar that they were behind, providing Anton and her some protection. Splinters of wood rained down on top of them as rounds hit the countertop. Tracey hurried to pull out her medical pack, then jerked Anton's black T-shirt free of his black cargo pants. Blood spilled from his side. She fumbled to rip open one of