You Had Me at Cougar (Heart of the Cougar #9) - Terry Spear Page 0,12

deals with rogue cougars, that’s often how they want to fight the special agents determined to take them down.”

“What about the case of the three men you just had to deal with?” Ava asked. “You had a partner, right?”

“No. Anyone who could have been a partner on the mission was on another case. And Leyton and Travis were working their own cases. Bridget is still home with the kiddos.”

“So you took on all three men at once?”

“We’re cougars. We learn to prowl, stalk, and take advantage of the situation. The three of them figured they had the lead. Three of them to one of me. They never thought I would get the best of them. It was a cat and mouse game for several weeks. I should say cat and mice—because I was hunting them.”

She was captivated by the idea, as much as she told herself she preferred baking to hunting, but it was in their blood—cougar blood. “Okay, so how did it all go down then?”

Chet rested his hands on the floating deck and looked over at her. “One of them was hiding in a cabin. The other two were waiting for me to come, sitting in trees, having the advantage of height.”

“But you still took all three of them down by yourself.” She figured he had to be really clever and outwit them to do that, not just stronger than all three cougars combined. She admired him for that.

“Yeah. I was wearing hunter’s concealment.”

“They didn’t need to smell you, just see you.”

“Right. I was at the cabin before they arrived. I overheard them talking about the cabin, its location and that was why they had to pick up food at the Chinese restaurant. It was the closest fast-food place to the cabin. Now, the problem was, were they telling the truth? Or did they know I knew they were going there, and it was a ruse?” Chet said.

“They weren’t that smart.” Ava figured it wasn’t a ruse because he got his men.

“Right, not a ruse.”

“But how did they know you were coming? I mean, they could have sat there for days before you caught up with them.”

“True, but they knew I was only a short distance behind them. Every time I caught up to them, they got out of my reach by the skin of their teeth. This time, I was going to be ahead of them. I reached the cabin first, looked it and the surrounding area all over, and then picked my hiding spot. As much as it doesn’t sound very brave, I hid under the bed, waited while they ate Chinese dinners at the cabin, and then they split up. Two went outside to sit in the trees on either side of the cabin to have the vantage point where they could see the door to the cabin and the windows in front and back. They planned to trade off, keep watching for me, and take me down. No more running.

“That worked for me. I was ready to finish this. I was tired of hunting them down.”

“So you took out the man in the cabin first.”

“Right. He was pacing across the living room floor as a cougar. He was the ringleader of the three men, murderers, all of them. When I was sure the others were gone, I came out and took him out before he warned the others.”

“It wasn’t a fair fight for you when you had so many to take on,” she said, knowing she would never be able to do something like that. Managing even one male cougar on her own would have been difficult enough.

“Yeah. No doubt about it. I waited for a while, thinking that maybe one of the cougars would come into the house, but remember how I told you that the one inside was the gang leader? I suspected that they were waiting for him to give them the word to switch off.”

“But if you went out the front door, the cat would look and know you weren’t the boss man. And then he would warn the other.”

“Exactly, and then I would have been facing two cougars instead of one. I might have still come out on top, or I could very well have been dead. The only thing I could do was wait for one of them to come into the cabin to see why the boss didn’t replace one of them on duty. He was supposed to go out there in three hours. So I had