“Thanks, Doc.” Justine was glad he had confined them because she could imagine them taking off and this would be an unsolved case then. She brought out a recorder. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

  Roger frowned at her. “A jaguar attacked us, obviously.”

  “Did you know who the jaguar was?”

  “Hell, no. It was an unprovoked attack. We’re innocent and here we’re zip tied to the beds as if we were the ones at fault.” Fenwick looked just as growly.

  Both men were badly bruised and bandaged.

  “Did you notify family?” Rowdy asked the doctor.

  “They said they have no family and they’re not from around here,” Doc said.

  “Okay, so you were both inebriated when the fight occurred,” Justine said.

  “That’s why the jaguar took advantage of us,” Fenwick said.

  “What were you doing in the woods?” she asked.

  “We were going to take a run as wolves and then this jaguar came out of nowhere,” Roger said.

  “And your car? What happened to it?”

  Both men looked at each other and then Fenwick quickly said, “The driver of the other vehicle slammed into my pickup and totaled it.”

  Justine suspected that wasn’t the case or they would have mentioned that first and not told the story about just going for a wolf run, besides the fact that Fenwick and his friend had been drunk.

  “So the driver of the vehicle was a jaguar? The one who fought with you in the woods?” Rowdy asked.

  “Yeah,” Fenwick said.

  “What happened to his car?” Rowdy took pictures of both men.

  “Hell if we know,” Roger said.

  “Okay, so the vehicles collided—”

  “He rammed us,” Roger said.

  Since the men had already lied about some of the details, she assumed it was the other way around, unless the jaguar had been drinking over the limit also. “You get out of your vehicles and then what? You all shift to go for a run?” Justine figured they’d fought as humans, exchanged verbal threats, then shifted and tore into each other in the woods.

  “We got out of my vehicle and approached the other guy’s car.” Fenwick let out his breath in exasperation. “We had to exchange insurance information and shit.”

  “And things got out of hand, and you shifted, he shifted, and you fought in the woods.” Justine assumed it since he seemed hesitant to tell the whole story.

  “There was no making peace with the big cat. He claimed the accident was Fenwick’s fault and…” Roger shrugged.

  “You shifted and fought, but you had sense enough to leave the road first so no one would see you shifting and fighting.” Though she wondered if the jaguar had moved the confrontation to the woods since she figured these guys hadn’t been thinking with a clear head.

  “Yeah, if we hadn’t, that fool jaguar would have fought us right on the road!” Fenwick shook his head.

  She suspected the wolves had been too drunk to make that decision.

  Fenwick frowned. “Did you tow my truck?”

  “Someone did,” Rowdy said. “It was gone when we arrived.”

  “But you found him and us, right?” Roger pulled at the restraints, looking irritated that he was confined.

  “He was gone, the vehicles were gone. Only the two of you had remained behind,” Rowdy said.

  “So he’s hiding, guilty, just like we said he was.” Fenwick glanced at Roger, and he nodded.

  “We won’t know for sure until we get his side of the story,” Rowdy said.

  “Hell, he committed a hit and run then.” Fenwick smiled a little.

  True, it did mean he left the scene of the crime, though if the wolves were the fault of it all, that was a different story.

  “We need your addresses, phone numbers, and the place you’re staying right now.” Justine hoped they’d at least be honest with her about that.

  “We’re just passing through, pulled up stakes and driving around the country, looking for someplace else to settle,” Roger said.

  “Former pack?”

  Fenwick cleared his throat. “Loners.”

  Justine didn’t trust anything he said. She wondered if they were with a pack that had chased them out, or that they were in trouble with and they ran before they could be dealt with. She knew of some packs around the states, maybe the Arctic wolf pack knew of some too and she’d send word about the two men.

  “Former address?” she asked.

  “Just been traveling,” Fenwick said.

  “Okay, fine.” It meant more work locating where they were from, but she’d send out the word.

  Rowdy raised his brows. “Sounds to me like you’ve got something to hide.”

  “What the hell is a human doing here anyway?” Roger asked. “Since you obviously know about our kind, you should have been eliminated.”

  Rowdy smiled. “The way I see it is that you’re on the run, were drunk, totaled the jaguar’s car, started the fight, belligerent like you were in the pub you visited the night beforehand and the bartender had to toss you out, and if anyone should possibly be eliminated, I’d certainly vote for you.”

  Fenwick scowled. “You wouldn’t have a vote, human.”

  “No, but I would,” Justine said, “and I agree with my partner.”

  Doc inclined his head. “I’d have to agree with the special agents too.”

  “Okay, we’ll be talking to you again,” Justine said.

  “Wait, you can’t hold us here.” Fenwick jerked at his restraints.

  “Yes, I have the authority until we know who’s at fault. Since you won’t tell us where you’re from or anything much about yourselves, you’re a flight risk.” Then Justine waited for Rowdy to say anything further.

  “We’ll turn them over to the jaguars’ holding facility soon,” Rowdy said to the doctor. “No sense having them tying up a couple of beds if they don’t need any further medical care.”

  “You can’t lock us up in the jaguar confinement facility,” Fenwick said, but Rowdy and Justine were already leaving the room.

  “Time to wrap Christmas presents.” Justine hoped Rowdy really was okay with it. “Are you ready?”

  Rowdy got the door for her as they said goodbye to the receptionist. “Yep. I thought we could send out the word about the two wolves and see if any of the packs had heard of them.”

  “That’s exactly what I was planning to do. Between the two of us, and others we know, we might be able to find someone who knows them.”

  Then they finally arrived at the center where volunteers were busily wrapping presents of all sizes. Justine looked over at Rowdy. "You know you're really a good sport about this."

  "Well, I don't know how good I will be at wrapping things, but I'm all for helping social causes, especially during the holidays."

  Justine’s parents saw them and came over to talk to them. Her mom hugged both Justine and then Rowdy and motioned to a table they could go to.

  Frank shook Rowdy’s hand and slapped him on the back in a hearty greeting. “It’s really not all that bad, once you learn how to wrap presents correctly.”

  Rowdy laughed. “I’m ready.”

  Then he and Justine took their seats at one of the tables, but before they began wrapping presents, they shared notes about which packs they knew of. Then they began to share the pictures of the men with the packs. Mission came first.

  Once they were done, Justine glanced at Rowdy as he wrapped a doll in a box. “You’re really good at that.”

  “Thanks. Mom told me I was the worst present wrapper ever and so she taught me how to use less tape, fold edges, and create envelope corners on the ends of boxes.”

  Justine laughed. “I had to learn how to do this when I started wrapping presents with my parents as a team.” She paused in her wrapping. “Hey, listen, Christmas is next week, and you have to come over and have Christmas Eve dinner and the turkey with us on Christmas Day. I should have asked you earlier, but I’d forgotten about it.”

  He wrapped another package. “I sure will. Thanks. I had dinner offers from the jaguars and the wolves back home, but then I came up here. I figured I’d manage to fix something, but it would be really special to have it with you and your family.” He paused. “You know, last night I had a couple of bear shifters come by my cabin. Teens, I think. They weren’t full grown. Fully grown bears would be hibernating. So I figured they had to be shifters. And I thought the one looked like Andrew, but I couldn’t be certain. He had been wet, and his fur was darker than the bears I saw.”

  Frowning, Justine stopped wrapping the present she was halfway finished with and pulled out her cell phone. “I have the teens’ pictures I took when they were bears raiding beehives.” She found the pictures and handed Rowdy her phone. “Does this look like them?”

  Rowdy studied the photos. “Could be. I’m not an expert on bears.”

  “They all look the same, right?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “So what were they doing?”

  “I don’t know. Checking me out? I think.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  “I found bear fur by the shifter door of the cabin. Martin recommended I stay there and called the owners with a heads-up to let them know I work with shifters. They gave me the cabin by the edge of the woods. More private. Perfect if I’d been a shifter.”

  “Or perfect for teen bear shifters to skulk around your cabin.” She began working on her present again.

  “Yeah. I wonder what they were up to. If I’d been a shifter, I would have chased after them.”

  She sighed. “If I turned you—”

  “Hell, yeah! Seriously?”

  “I would never have considered doing it for an ordinary human, but seeing how you work with shifters and the disadvantage you’re at in working with us, knowing what we are, having to always explain yourself to us…”

  “You’d have a partner for life. I mean, to work here. You wouldn’t be burdened with having to take me as a mate. I’d be able to do so much more.”

  She laughed. “We take a mate for life.” She showed him the pictures on her phone that Martin had sent her of him shirtless, his muscles glistening with sweat, and he was giving the person who took the pictures of him a sexy, little smirk.

  Rowdy frowned at them. “Who sent these to you?”

  “Martin. He said that one of his she-cats put them in your personal file.”

  Rowdy laughed. “This is all you had of me to judge me by when here I’m going to be working for you?”

  She smiled. “I figured you would be really handy if we had to lift anything heavy—like pulling a teen bear out of a partially frozen lake.”

  He chuckled.

  Then she glanced in the direction of the entryway. “Speak of the devils.”

  7

  Wondering who the devils were that Justine was talking about, Rowdy looked at the doorway and saw two teens walk into the room.

  “Andrew and Kenny Brixworth. What are they doing here?” Justine asked.

  “Maybe their dad is making them wrap presents for losing his truck in the lake,” Rowdy said.

  The boys headed straight for their wrapping table, and she wondered if Rowdy was right. “Did you come to wrap presents?”

  “We—” Andrew said.

  “Yeah, we did.” Kenny eyed Rowdy with suspicion.

  “Were you at Rowdy’s cabin last night?” Justine asked.

  Andrew sighed. “Busted. We saw you together.”

  “Where?”

  “Going to the doctor’s office. We—” Andrew said.

  Kenny cleared his throat. “We saw a jaguar fighting wolves in the woods where we were planning to run the other night.”

  “Seriously? Pull up some chairs and help us wrap presents,” Justine said.

  Andrew grabbed an empty chair and joined them at the table. “Dad told us to come and talk to you about it while helping to wrap presents because, uh, we—”

  Kenny pulled up a chair and started to wrap a present. “We lost his truck in the lake and we weren’t supposed to be out running the other night.”

  “It was more than that,” Andrew said.

  Kenny nodded. “Yeah, we went to the pub and saw the drunken men there.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be in the pub,” Rowdy guessed.

  “Right. So then the two drunk wolves left the pub and we asked if we could drive them somewhere and they said no,” Andrew said.

  Kenny cut off some wrapping paper. “They got in their truck and weaved all over the road. Then they smashed up a car and both vehicles spun out of control and went off the road. We drove down the road a way, then decided we had to go back and check things out. Make sure no one was dying.

  “We pulled the pickup off the road, got out, and hurried back to where the wrecked vehicles were. We didn’t see anyone there. We thought maybe the drivers and passengers were badly hurt and walked into the woods, but then we heard fighting and saw a jaguar and the wolves tearing into each other. We tore off, not wanting to get chewed up. We thought that they were just getting their aggressions out because of the car wreck.”

  Andrew said, “We didn’t tell anyone about it because we weren’t supposed to be at the pub—”

  “Or driving the truck out that late,” Kenny said.

  “And you’d be grounded again. Why were you at Rowdy’s cabin?” Justine asked.

  “We heard the wolves had been badly injured and we saw Rowdy with you at the clinic. So we figured you knew about the fight. We thought maybe we wouldn’t be in as much trouble if we talked to him than if we talked to you since you already caught us at the beehives.” Andrew smiled. “And because he saved Kenny.”

  “Yeah, we had a change of heart when we saw Rowdy, figuring he would be sore with us, and we took off.” Kenny glanced at Rowdy. “Thanks for saving me, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What do we do about this now?” Kenny asked.

  “You two do nothing. But we need to know if you caught the numbers on their license plates or anything else that would help us,” Rowdy said.

  “A partial,” Andrew said, and gave it to them.

  “Jaguar’s car or the wolves’ truck?” Justine asked.

  “The jaguar’s. A yellow Nissan Altima. But it wasn’t the jaguars’ fault, we don’t think,” Kenny said. “The wolves had been quarrelsome at the pub. That’s what our dad always calls us when Andrew and I fight. Quarrelsome. They were drunk. The bartender threw them out, then saw us in the pub and made us leave. The wolves wrecked the other vehicle, and they had a pickup truck, unfair advantage. And then things got really out of hand.”

  “Thanks for finally telling us,” Justine said.

  “We’re sorry we didn’t tell you earlier,” Kenny said.

  “Yeah, we got heck for that too,” Andrew said.

  Then everyone hunkered down to get the Christmas wrapping done, but Justine and Rowdy left after an hour and a half to look into the partial license plate number for the car that the jaguar had been driving.

  “They seem to always be getting themselves into trouble of one kind or another,” Justine said as they headed back to the office.

  “They remind me of me at that age.”

  “There’s hope for the boys yet then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what made you become a homicide detective?” she asked.

  “A good friend of mine was murdered in college, and I didn’t feel the homicide detectives were looking into the right suspect. I began following the guy who had done some handyman stuff around his parents’ home and the police had interviewed him, but he had an airtight alibi. I wasn’t buying it. His mother said he was at home sleeping, and she’d swear to it.

  “I didn’t believe her, but without hard evidence to prove otherwise, the police wouldn’t do anything else about him and went after another possible suspect who had no alibi. Someone my friend had fought with over a girlfriend. Sure, the guy was a hothead, but I knew he would never have killed him. I was following the one I suspected did the killing. When I saw him trying to kill another college student after that, I notified the police. This time, they really looked into his story and found enough evidence to prove he had done the murder and attempted murder on the second guy.”

  “What was his motivation?”

  “With the first case, my friend saw this guy breaking into his parents’ home and he killed him for it. In the second case, he had a fight with the guy and tried to kill him. He had gotten away with it once. Why not again? So what made you become a police detective?”

  “My dad was an insurance fraud investigator. But he couldn’t arrest the wrongdoers, only hand over evidence to the police. I wanted to actually put the handcuffs on them.”

  Rowdy smiled.

  “Seriously.” She found the record for the jaguar’s car. “Okay, we have a Mason Talbot, owner of the yellow car out of Tomball, Texas.”

  “That’s near Houston. I’ll call Everett and ask if they can run down any leads there.” As soon as Rowdy got hold of Everett, he put the call on speakerphone. “Justine’s here with me. We’re trying to learn what we can about a Mason Talbot.” He explained why.

  “We’ll see what we can come up with. I’ve never heard of the jaguar myself personally, but we’ll get back with you as soon as we learn anything.”

  “Thanks, Everett. We appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing. How are things going for you there?”

  “Great. I rescued a teen bear shifter from a lake today, and now we’ve got this wolves-versus-jaguar’s case going on, so a great start already. And I might even have some luck at convincing a wolf to turn me.”

  Everett laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Wait, does that mean you might not be returning to us?”

  Rowdy glanced at Justine. She only just smiled.

  “I have no idea,” Rowdy said.

  “Well, we’ll really miss you if you do and I know more than a few will wish they had turned you already so we could have kept you here.”