CHAPTER THREE
JES
Jes unlocked her desk and took out the precious box she kept stashed toward the back, where no one would find it. This had been her hidden life. Her reason for everything she’d done. Her purpose for working hard all these years.
She took out the box of pictures—she’d gathered over time. The evidence she’d collected during her searches. Trembling, she dumped them once again, out onto her desk. With shaky hands, she sifted through them, looking for a specific one. She stopped when she came across one of Mira. Something always teased at the corners of her mind. She’d kept it because of this.
She dismissed that mystery, for now, in search of another. When she found the one that she searched for, she picked it up, staring.
Her father and mother had their arms around each other. They stood next to another couple. The same couple who’d been in the picture at the tavern. The other couple also disappeared that same day.
They were her father’s best friend—and his wife.
Now, her hands trembled, her body becoming like a young leaf, barely attached to its branch, doing everything in its power to hang on. She shook so hard, she sat, setting them on her desk—before someone in the office noticed. She sat like that, staring at them.
For the first time, she asked herself why she kept her personal pictures—pictures of her grandparents—pictures of his parents—with all the others. And, she realized she knew why….
Because, that day, the loving boy she’d known became a killer.
Yet, she was still missing a vital part of the puzzle. She pushed the rest of the pictures around on her desk, looking for one. When she found it, she stared. Her hungry gaze traveled over the young man’s face. The picture, itself, worn around the edges, from her handling it over the years. He’d been the only one to escape being torn to shreds, along with several gang members, that fateful day.
Her jaw ached with how hard she clenched it, as she looked once more at the pictures strewn across the slate gray background of her desk. She stared at each of the bodies, searching, yet no longer seeing the clues they held.
Long ago, what was left of those boys told her everything she needed to know of the kind of gang he’d been in, how he’d lived, and the monster he’d been, in his own right.
She got that.
Sure, they didn’t turn into a vicious creature like Justice did, but they’d murdered the innocent, preyed upon them like rabbits snared in traps, set for anyone who had the bad luck to stumble into the wrong place, at the wrong time. They were all killers. The whole lot of them, but that didn’t excuse the kind of killer Justice became that day.
He’d become their killer—as the creature he’d become. And Jes believed that killing, even to stop another killer, was wrong.
Why had he done it? How had he done it? What drove him to use his power in such an evil way?
She wouldn’t rest until she brought him in. She couldn’t. He betrayed her. He betrayed their people. He betrayed himself—his sisters—and his family.
Jes put his picture back at the bottom of her little metal lockbox. Then, she put the others on top.
The power they’d been gifted with, as the Jaguar People, was meant to be used to help the humans—not harm them. The Jaguar People were an ancient race—the protectors—the Watchers. They were supposed to keep an eye on things, keep others with such powers from breaking the rules, set up to protect their existence from the human species.
Jes looked at the stack of pictures, closed the lid and locked it.
The humans weren’t ready to know of her people, but that didn’t excuse her people from doing their duty to protect them. Justice violated that day—and in doing so he’d violated the very name he’d been given.
Justice—the protector.
Worse, he continued to threaten their hidden nations—with his every kill.
Jes stared off in space, remembering the boy she’d grown up with—but didn’t know at all. He’d become a threat to her people. He put them all at risk, threatening to expose them.
The ancient race of Jaguar People managed to remain relatively unknown—perhaps not in folklore—but they’d remained unreal to the humans, who were blinded to their existence by their own arrogance, thinking they were the only life-form as the only human-like race in all the galaxies.
The only intelligent beings.
How silly, Jess shook her head, staring at the box.
Of course, the humans even managed to convince themselves that the Fae were a fairy tale—despite centuries of folklore. Humans were afraid of their own shadows.
Justice escaped—because he and the beast carried something in common.
What made him do it?
She picked up the box and opened her desk drawer. She’d asked herself this same question hundreds of times, over the years. It never occurred to the human police officers that a boy could become a monster—capable of killing nine gang members. Why would it? He’d been a fourteen-year-old kid. How could a kid have torn a bunch of gang members from limb-to-limb?
She stared at the box, sitting in the bottom of her drawer and slid the desk drawer shut with a bang, thinking of his face. She’d memorized every inch of the photo, her only link to him.
A muscular youth, not even the strongest kid, at his young age, could do what he’d done—at least, not in his human form—so no one would’ve had any reason to suspect him. After all, he’d received over a hundred stitches that day, when those gang members nearly beaten him to death.
Even with what her father knew, he didn’t seem to suspect—since Justice was far too young to change—was still years from reaching his majority. Her father did suspect, though, that Justice had help from another of the Jaguar People.
But Jes had suspected Justice.
She’d loved that boy. She shook her head. No—she’d been infatuated with him. But no longer.... Now, she wanted to bring him in—to make him pay for what he’d done.
Still, she couldn’t get over it. How did he shift—when he’d been so young?
The Jaguar People were never supposed to tap into their power at that age—because of the danger. A power like theirs couldn’t be risked on the folly of passionate youth. Jes—herself—only reached her majority at the age of twenty-one.
How had Justice managed to transform at the tender age of fourteen? What could possibly have happened to him—to cause him to tap into such power?
Could that horrible beating have done it?
She doubted it. Not the beating alone, anyway. She shook her head. For the umpteenth time in so many years, she wished she’d been old enough to follow the leads, back then.
She chewed on her lip.
She doubted she’d find anyone who still knew him, or even remember him. Nobody would be left that knew. She wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the gang, who would have hunted him if he and his sisters hadn’t disappeared, weren’t all dead by now—but maybe….
Now, there was a thought.
She got up and went to the computer. For the rest of the evening, she sorted through the remaining known members of that particular gang, left from that time frame. Late into the night, she found what she looked for—the name and address of an ex-gang member—who should know if his gang sought out a youth for killing several of the dangerous members of his gang.
She knocked on his door before the sun made its way completely over the horizon. And he didn’t look too happy about it—when he finally opened the door.