Leopard 03 - Burning Wild

acquired several large pieces of property he was certain concealed natural gas just waiting to be developed. Looking at Drake—his friend—the one person who had stood for him, he realized that all of his accomplishments stacked up to very little. Billions of dollars maybe, but the money was a tool for him. And he knew what he had to do with it.
    Drake needed a solution. In comparison to his friend’s problem, the years Jake had put into his plan to take down his enemies seemed a waste when a man as good as Drake was suffering.
    Jake cleared his throat. He found it strange to think about another person, to worry about them. Emma’s influence. She was doing something to him with her presence that he couldn’t quite understand, but he knew she had changed him somehow in the brief two years she’d lived in his home. He didn’t know when the change had occurred, but he knew Drake was more important than any revenge possible.
    Jake pulled open the door. “Do you want me to drive?”
    Drake shook his head. “I’ve got it. Just shove Joshua over.”
    Jake gave the other man a good-natured push and Joshua lifted his head and growled a warning. “Get in the back,” Jake said. “You can sleep there.”
    Joshua snarled but complied, curling up to go back to sleep even before Jake slid into the passenger side. “Who did your surgery? Are there doctors in your village?”
    “We have one doctor for our people, but no specialist like I needed, and my bones won’t graft and shift.”
    Drake sounded matter-of-fact on the surface, but Jake listened with heightened senses. Drake didn’t show by his expression that he was depressed, but Jake caught the heavy note in his voice and looked at him sharply. “I need you here, Drake.” He kept his voice low, the admission churning his gut. He hated that feeling, the sudden clawing fear at the idea of losing his friend. He wasn’t supposed to need anyone. It made him feel vulnerable and small.
    He took a breath. No. It wasn’t really fear of losing Drake. He had asked Drake to come to him, to leave the rain forest and help him. Drake was his responsibility. That was all. The way Emma and the children and even Joshua were his responsibility. He needed to find a way to help the man, to save him, because there were few good men left in the world.
    Drake didn’t pretend to misunderstand what they were talking about. “You’re going to find out soon enough that a leopard can’t be suppressed forever. I don’t have a lot of time left, Jake. And frankly, what the hell is there left for me?”
    “Surgery. Don’t be an idiot. You don’t give up until you’ve tried everything, and you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. Your bone won’t work. We don’t have a cadaver, but you have me. Or Joshua. One of us might have the ability to regenerate and if we don’t, we’ll find someone who does have it.”
    Drake shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “I doubt it’s that easy.”
    “Nothing worthwhile ever is.” Jake’s mind was already working at a fast pace. He could easily set several of his staff searching for the best team of orthopedic surgeons. With enough money, anyone could be bought. And the one thing he had was money. “I’ll set it in motion tomorrow. If neither Joshua or I can be used, we’ll keep looking for a donor until we find one.”
    Drake moistened his suddenly dry lips. “You think someone could really fix me? That I could go without the plate? I thought about having them amputate the leg.”
    “Why shouldn’t they be able to fix it? We just need the right surgeon and the right donor.” He glanced out the window. “You forgot to turn on the headlights. You’re using your leopard’s night vision.”
    He’d noticed both Joshua and Drake did that a lot, interchanged the leopard’s senses with their own.
    Maybe their leopards weren’t as destructive as his and were more easily controlled. He’d studied the animal quite a bit. They had bad tempers. Jealous rages. They were highly intelligent and cunning, and were secretive creatures. He was all of those, amplified a million times.
    Drake didn’t bother with the headlights. Instead, he changed the subject. They were driving over the trail back toward the ranch house. “You need to tell me everything you know about Emma’s background. I know you must have had her investigated before you ever hired her.”
    “I’ve got her file, but there’s not much in it. Where she went