A Very Jaguar Christmas

  “Now that’s what we’re all dying to know.” Howard laughed. “But Petrov isn’t telling, and no one has had any luck getting the truth out of her.”

  Everett still wondered why Demetria had been fighting her cousin, both of them in their jaguar coats, that time he’d tried to break up the fight. And he had broken it up, although not exactly as planned—the fight had stopped when Demetria injured him.

  She was a beautiful black jaguar, a rarer variety than the usual beige or brown, and her coloration appealed to him. Maybe because his brother and mother were black jaguars, and he loved how sleek they were, how beautifully they blended in with the night.

  Demetria and her cousin, Taramae, had been snarling and biting, and he had only wanted to stop the fighting before either of the women got hurt. He’d dated Taramae once after he’d learned Matt was seeing Demetria, mistakenly thinking she might be like her cousin. Everett soon learned she wasn’t. All she could do was put Demetria down, and Everett hadn’t liked it one bit.

  Brayden watched all three of them approach, Demetria from the south and Everett and Howard from the east, but he stood his ground, looking wary, with his hands shoved in jeans pockets and his unkempt curly, blond hair hanging down to his shirt collar.

  Two of the boys with him had shaggy brown hair and their arms folded across their chests. One of them was wearing black jeans and a light jacket; the other, blue jeans and a heavy sweater. They sized up Everett and Howard. The other two boys were clean-cut, nicely dressed, and didn’t seem to fit in with the rest. Sometimes teens like that could be the worst—kids with money had dads with lawyers to get them off the hook if they got into trouble.

  Demetria quickly identified herself and showed her badge. “Brayden, I need you to come with me.” Her voice was no-nonsense and authoritative, yet softer than Everett’s would have been.

  Everett and Howard moved toward the other boys in case anyone tried to stop Demetria from taking Brayden into custody.

  The boy wearing the black jeans narrowed his blue eyes at them. “You cops?”

  Demetria flashed her badge at him. “We are.”

  “So what’s he done?” the other one in jeans asked.

  “Come on, Brayden.” Demetria was still letting the choice be his, for the moment.

  “What if I don’t want to go with you?” Brayden seemed to be trying to act tough around his friends.

  “I’d have to tell you that you have no choice. But you’ll be better off if you come with me and don’t give me any grief.” Her tone was hard-core now. She was ready to use force if necessary.

  “He didn’t do nothing,” the boy wearing black jeans said.

  The clean-cut kids just stayed out of the confrontation, which Everett was glad for.

  “Brayden?” Demetria waited for his compliance.

  Brayden had to smell she was a jaguar shifter, and he surely knew they meant business since he’d been through the drill before. He might have even dealt with Demetria before.

  He glanced back at the other kids, but Everett noted that Brayden looked longer at the one with the stained black jeans. Everett suspected he was the leader of the little gang.

  “Are you going to send me to foster care? I’m seventeen. I can manage on my own.” Brayden smiled a little, but his smile was shadowed with sarcasm. “Unless you want to foster me.”

  Wrong thing to say. Everett knew Demetria would react to his taunt in a heartbeat.

  In a flash, she seized Brayden’s arm and hauled him to her Jeep. “We’ll talk about the arrangements later, but you’re not going to have to deal with your stepdad any longer.” She cast a glance in the direction of the other teens, but then directed her comment to Brayden. “And you’ll get your education, training, and some perks, I suspect, when you work with us.”

  “A cop?” The leader of the boys sounded incredulous.

  “And you’ll thank us for it,” she said to Brayden, ignoring the other boy’s comment. Then she left Brayden at the passenger’s door and waited for him to get in. Again, giving him the choice, for the moment.

  “If it doesn’t work out?” Brayden’s voice wasn’t as deep as a man’s and a little anxious, his bravado slipping a bit.

  “It will. I guarantee it.”

  “My stepdad will be pissed off when he learns you’ve taken me into custody again.”

  “Then he should have been providing better guidance at home.”

  Looking disgruntled, Brayden climbed in and closed the door.

  Everett and Howard watched while she drove off, then headed back to Everett’s car.

  “I’d say we work well together as a team, even if we didn’t do anything,” Howard said, surprising Everett.

  “Sometimes having a good mission doesn’t mean you have to do anything but be backup for another team member, even if she wasn’t exactly on our team. She’s one of us, and we’re in this together, fighting the bad guys.”

  “Hell, you sound like you should be teaching that ‘love one, love all’ crap.”

  “Not me. Like you, I like to take down the bad guys, not just talk about it. I want to run by Brayden’s house and see if we can have a word with his stepdad.”

  “You said his mom died?”

  “Yeah, at the beginning of this year. Brayden’s biological father died when he was seven, and his mom remarried a year later. I’m not sure how his stepfather, Lucian, felt about the boy initially, but we started getting calls like this a few weeks after he had the funeral for Brayden’s mother. This is the final straw though. Hanging out with human delinquents is just asking for trouble. We had to take him in.”

  “So you’ve been involved in this before.”

  “Not directly. My sister checked on him when she was doing only Guardian work. Lucian supposedly straightened out and began watching the boy. I suspect that’s why I got the case this time. And Demetria might have worked with him before. Tammy just wanted to make sure someone she knew well took care of Brayden this time. I’d never met the boy, but his mother’s death seems to coincide with the boy’s neglect. So what do you say? Shall we see the stepdad?”

  “Hell, we’re teamed up on this one. If it means we’re going to get any action, I’m in.”

  Everett smiled a little at Howard. So the big bad ass who couldn’t work with any other branch agents wasn’t so bad to work with after all. Maybe it had all been for show.

  When Everett and Howard arrived at the well-kept French provincial–style home, Everett thought it was a shame the situation with Brayden couldn’t have been resolved with his stepdad. But there was more to raising a kid than providing a nice home and other amenities. The boy needed a family to help him grow up, whether he was shifter or human.

  No one answered the door, not surprisingly. Everett got back into the car with Howard and checked with his office to see where Lucian worked.

  “Where to now?” Howard asked.

  “Lucian works for a painting contractor, and there’s no telling where he is currently. But I would like to tell him personally that his son has been taken into protective custody and will be living with another family.”

  They got the information from Lucian’s boss and headed to the newspaper office where he was supposed to be painting the outside of the building. But when they arrived, he wasn’t there.

  “Guess text messages and emails will have to do,” Everett said. “Lucian has a hot temper. Even though he doesn’t take care of the boy, he doesn’t want anyone inferring that he can’t handle it.”

  Howard shook his head. “Sounds like a hard case to me. Glad the boy will be helped though. I never thought a case like this would be that important. But I can see that it is. If we don’t catch teens when they’re at risk, we’ll have to track them down later.”

  “Agreed.”

  When they arrived back at the branch, Howard and Everett got
out of the car. Everett offered to shake his hand, but Howard declined. “Don’t want to ruin my reputation.” Then he gave him a maniacal smirk and headed across the parking lot.

  Everett wondered if Howard was going to write a scathing review of working with him, just to maintain his reputation. Everett’s review of Howard would be glowing, and he was glad he’d had a chance to work with the agent. He saw Demetria walking Brayden into the building, so he followed them in to get a word with her and Brayden.

  * * *

  Demetria saw Everett closing in on her and Brayden, and she waited for him to catch up, expecting him to be annoyed that she’d taken over his and Howard’s case. But she’d been given the case too.

  Everett appeared as tense as he had when she was having issues with Bruce earlier, only this time he had a different mission in mind. “Do you mind if I have a word with Brayden for a minute?” he asked.

  “No, go ahead.” She waited.

  When Everett didn’t say anything for a moment, she thought he expected her to leave him alone with the kid. But Brayden was her charge now. She wasn’t about to give him up to anyone except the jaguar family who would foster him.

  “Brayden, I tried to get ahold of your stepdad, but he wasn’t at work or at home. We’ll keep trying.”

  “I’ve asked several agents to help contact him. We don’t want his stepdad to believe Brayden’s in trouble,” Demetria assured Everett.

  “Like he even cares. All he cares about are his poker games and drinking. That’s all he cares about,” Brayden said, his face flushed.

  “How did he act toward you when you were growing up? Was he a good stepdad then?” Everett asked.

  Demetria rephrased the question for Brayden. “What he means is, did your stepdad treat you like you were his son?” Lucian could have provided a roof over Brayden’s head and food and such, but if he hadn’t wanted the boy and had only been interested in the mother, then it was a different situation. Though in that case, Demetria couldn’t imagine why Lucian wanted the boy home now. If he didn’t really care about his stepson, why not let him be raised by someone else? Was it guilt? A promise to his mother to take care of him? An alpha male need to prove he was in charge, even if technically he didn’t want to be?

  Brayden shrugged. “He paid for things.” Tears filled his eyes. “He just didn’t want to see me around.”

  “Why?” Demetria hated this part of the mission, hearing about the emotional and sometimes physical trauma these kids faced.

  Brayden swallowed hard and angrily swiped away tears suddenly running down his cheeks. “I reminded him of Mom.”

  Demetria gave him a hug. “It’s not your fault. None of it is.”

  “Was he a good father to you before your mother died?” Everett asked.

  Demetria rolled her eyes at Everett.

  He raised his brows at her in a question that said, “What did I say wrong?”

  “Did he play with you, have father-son talks, take you places like a father might?” Demetria asked. How would Brayden know what a good father was? A man could be a good father while he took his son on all kinds of father-son excursions, but another who did none of that could be just as decent. What was a “good” father supposed to be like?

  Brayden looked at the floor and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “What, Brayden?” Demetria asked.

  “He tried to lose me in the Amazon once. That was his idea of a father-son outing. I was eight, and my mom had just married him. It was kind of a honeymoon with the kid. Okay? Lucian wanted to take me on a jungle hike while Mom was cooking catfish. I saw a baby caiman and I wanted to check it out. The next thing I knew, Lucian was gone. I wasn’t scared at first. I knew I could just follow his scent and find him. But I lost his scent at a river. I–I felt panicked. Like I couldn’t breathe. I called out for my mom and stepdad. No one answered. They couldn’t hear me. My jaguar roar wasn’t that loud back then.

  “I was scared. Then I finally figured I had to find my way back to the campsite. I was worried they’d think I was lost for good and go home without me. I didn’t know for sure, you know. I was only a kid. I thought I was being stupid and got distracted. My stepdad said that afterward. He was furious with me. And I felt guilty for ruining everyone’s vacation. And I was mad at myself for not paying better attention.”

  “Ohmigod, Brayden. Why didn’t you tell anyone? Any of the Guardians that took you in before.” Demetria couldn’t believe he hadn’t told anyone how he’d felt all these years.

  He shrugged, his eyes glistening with fresh tears. “Mom was searching for me, calling, and I finally heard her and called back. We found each other, and she told me that I shouldn’t have wandered off. That Lucian was beside himself with worry and couldn’t find me anywhere. He was afraid a caiman had gotten me when he crossed the river.”

  Demetria wanted to kill Lucian. If he had truly done that to his stepson, he deserved the strongest punishment they could mete out. “But you suspect he left you behind on purpose?”

  Brayden nodded. “At first, I believed Mom and I believed him. He said he was angry I hadn’t stayed with him and went off exploring on my own, as if he was upset he’d nearly lost me too. I thought it was all my fault. He and Mom had a fight over it. He said if he was going to help raise me, I had to mind him. Mom wouldn’t even let me leave the house for weeks once we returned home. Not for punishment, but because she was so upset she might have lost me. But a few days ago, I was in my bedroom, and I overheard him talking to a friend on the phone about the trip we’d taken in the jungle. He said the jungle was the perfect place to lose a kid you didn’t want, if it worked out right and the damn kid didn’t find his way back. And then he laughed and went outside. I left the house after that and stayed away.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have tried to get rid of you later after that incident?” Everett asked.

  Everett had a valid point. If more incidents had occurred, it would seem more likely that his stepfather had truly tried to leave Brayden to perish in the jungle. Then again, Lucian and Nina had been newly married. Perfect opportunity, perfect motive.

  “Mom watched over me like an anxious mother jaguar would. I just thought she was being overly protective after she nearly lost me. We fought about it because I wanted some freedom, and I thought she was going overboard with all the restrictions. She was so upset that we never returned to the jungle. But I think she must have suspected something. Maybe she warned him that she had told others about what he had done. I don’t know. All I know is once Mom died, he didn’t care what I did.”

  “Yet every time we’ve taken you in, he wants you back.” Demetria couldn’t understand that part of the equation. If Lucian didn’t want the responsibility for the kid, why not let him be fostered by a Guardian family who really wanted to raise him?

  Brayden shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid I’d tell you what happened and maybe you’d believe he hadn’t been looking for me in the jungle. Or maybe he’s just controlling that way.”

  Demetria wasn’t sure. It sounded to her like an easy remedy. His wife was no longer around to take care of Brayden, and the Guardians were willing to take him in, so why not let him go? Unless he was managing a trust fund for Brayden.

  “Do you have a trust fund?” Demetria asked.

  “Yeah. Mom set it up for me when Dad died. She said it was mine when I reached twenty-one, because I’d be responsible enough to manage it then.”

  “How much?” Everett asked.

  “Around a hundred and twenty thousand when Mom died.”

  “So Lucian’s in charge of it until you come of age,” Demetria said.

  “Yeah. Mom was until she died.”

  “Whose idea was it to go to the jungle on the honeymoon?” Demetria asked.

  “Lucian’s.”

  “Okay. Well, it’s not an unusual place to go
for vacations. We all prefer the jungle because of our jaguar nature, and he wasn’t used to being responsible for a cub. Men, even real dads, can get distracted and forget to watch younger ones,” Demetria said. “But we’ll sure look into it.” Not that they might ever be able to determine the truth, but they would try. And they’d check into the management of the trust fund too.

  Everett handed him a business card. “If you need anything from me or just want to talk or anything, give me a call.”

  Demetria was grateful Everett had offered to talk with Brayden. He might feel more comfortable speaking with a male.

  “Demetria said I’d be working with the Guardians when I wasn’t doing school lessons with the family I’m moving in with. But I’d rather work with the JAG. You get to do really cool things.” Brayden glanced back at Demetria as if he suddenly was worried that she wouldn’t like to hear how he felt about her job.

  She got that all of the time. Most guys thought they were too macho to be Guardians, but the ones who joined her branch turned out to be great at the job. Taking down bad guys wasn’t the only worthwhile job. Sometimes they just needed to be there for the good guys.

  “We do things for the good of our kind too.” Demetria wanted Brayden to know that her work was important, but most of all, she wanted the best for him—whatever would keep him out of trouble and allow him to become another jaguar model citizen. “You can take the aptitude testing and see where you might best be suited.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that. Can I work with you on a case?” Brayden asked Everett.

  He smiled. “I’m off for a couple of weeks, playing video games and chilling out during my vacation time. Your foster family will want you to enjoy the holidays.”

  “Demetria said I had to work to keep myself out of trouble and learn to help others of our kind,” Brayden said.

  Everett was surprised she was such a taskmaster, though he had to agree with her on how to handle at-risk jaguar teens. “After the holidays, if it’s a local case and not too dangerous, we can see.”

  “I don’t mind going to the jungle. Really. And I promise to stick close by you at all times.”