Papa Bear (Finding Fatherhood Book 1) (8 page)

“He’s big on family. He believes in loyalty and family values.” Deacon’s voice was rough, and he seemed to require more time between each word to catch his breath.

In case it was just a trap, or an attempt to disarm or distract Lucas, he didn’t lift his foot. “Okay, but what does this have to do with Calderon? And Angel?”

Deacon managed a small laugh. “You feds sure are in the dark. Javier’s my father. Illegitimate, but I’m his kid. He’s always looked after me and looked out for me, even though he couldn’t officially recognize me. I guess his wife was a shrew, and there are politics at play with other cartels, so he couldn’t officially claim me even after Lydia croaked.”

He shrugged, looking unbothered by the fact that his father hadn’t publicly claimed him, but his pheromones gave him away. There was a sharp tang of bitterness, and an old lingering scent of pain that had existed for so long it had integrated into his pheromone signature. It was simply sharper at the moment.

Lucas couldn’t feel any pity for him. “Why did you go after Angel?”

The other man licked his lips, which appeared cracked. “When Papi found out I had a baby with Astoria, he was angry I hadn’t taken her to raise to start with. He impressed upon me the importance of maintaining the familial connection, and he made it clear that if I didn’t get my daughter back into the fold of the Calderon family, I shouldn’t plan on breathing much longer.”

In spite of himself, Lucas let out a snort that was partial laughter and partially disbelief. “For a man who values family so much, he clearly doesn’t mind getting rid of you if you don’t deliver Angel. That’s a strange juxtaposition, don’t you think?”

“Whatever.”

He crouched lower, still keeping is foot on the other man’s neck. “Why did you shoot at me in the tea shop with Angel there if you knew Calderon’s position on the matter?”

“I didn’t then.” He swallowed thickly. “Fucking Crosby mentioned her to Papi when he was telling him you were a tenacious-fucking-bulldog and explaining why you’d never stop pursuing me. Papi didn’t like the public nature of the shooting and wanted an accounting of my actions. Crosby thought he was helping by explaining why I’d tried to take you out, since I already knew you’d never give up. You wanted revenge for Astoria.” He sneered. “Were you in love with her? Did it drive you crazy to know I’d had her first?”

Anger surged through him, and Lucas stood up to increase the pressure on his throat. “You’re disgusting. She was a sweet young woman who had a series of assholes in her life. You deserve to die for what you did to her and for costing Angel her mother.”

“Too bad you don’t have time to kill me, law man.” The sweat was pouring off Deacon now. “They’ll be here soon, so you should get out.”

“Not a chance in hell.” Gingerly, he stepped off Deacon’s throat, keeping his eye on the man as he moved to his landline. There was nowhere to store a phone, and his sweatpants and badge were still in the hallway where he’d shed them. It was kind of strange to walk naked through Hunt’s apartment, though nudity didn’t bother him. It was just surreal in the moment.

He lifted the phone and dialed his boss’s number by memory. “You need to send people here right away.” He gave the address and brought his boss up to speed as quickly as he could. He glanced away from Hunt for just a moment, and when he looked up again, the other man had gotten to his feet. He placed the phone in the cradle, hanging up on McCready in mid-conversation. “Back on the floor now, scumbag.”

Deacon probably thought he was a quick draw, and that he’d have his gun out and in his hand in a matter of milliseconds, bringing it up to shoot Lucas before he could react, much less defend himself. Fortunately, Hunt was expecting Lucas to have the reactions of a man, not a bear. He marveled at the other man not having blinked an eye at seeing him transform from a bear and back again. Remembering Libby’s similar reaction convinced him Hunt had already known about the existence of shifters, though he probably hadn’t realized the head Marshal on the case was one.

Before Deacon’s fingers did more than wrap around the butt of the gun in his holster, Lucas had fired his own gun. The shots hit Hunt squarely in the chest, and he toppled backward from the momentum of the bullets, flying into the glass wall behind him. It shattered upon impact, and he kept going on through. He scrabbled desperately at the air, clearly in search of something to arrest his fall, but there was nothing.

Lucas walked over, steering clear of the glass, in time to see Hunt plummet to the ground below. He looked away before the drug dealer made impact with the cement, and when he looked down a moment later, he saw Hunt unmoving. It was too difficult to tell, even with his sense of smell, if Hunt was still alive, but he very much doubted it after three shots to the chest, flying through the glass wall, and down eight stories to crash into the pavement.

He paced the apartment and waited after securing Tim with handcuffs. He was expecting Calderon, but it was McCready and four other agents who poured into the apartment less than twenty minutes later. He hurried forward to meet his boss, relieved he’d had the forethought to dart into the hallway and grab his sweatpants a few minutes ago. It was awkward enough being in Hunt’s apartment in just a pair of pants, and it would have been ten times harder to explain if he’d been naked.

Before his boss could ask, though his interest was evident by the way his eyebrows seemed to creep up toward his hairline, Lucas said, “They took Angel when we had just gotten home from the cabin. I came after her straightaway. Libby has her now, and they’re back at my place.”

His boss just nodded before lifting his radio and quickly issuing orders for two marshals to go park in front of Lucas’s house and safeguard the people inside.

“Hunt told me Javier Calderon, or at least some of his goons, are
en route
to pick up Angel. They don’t know yet that she’s no longer here. If Javier’s with them, it might be a chance to arrest him.” He was on the FBI’s top ten most wanted, Interpol’s list of criminals, and likely half a dozen other countries around the world would have been equally pleased to put in a claim for jurisdiction over Calderon’s imprisonment and punishment.

“Why? As far as we know, selling child slaves is one of the things Calderon isn’t involved with.”

“Technically, Angel is his granddaughter. Hunt let it slip that he was an illegitimate son of Javier’s, and apparently dear old dad blew his stack when he found out Deacon wasn’t living up to his parental responsibilities. That was why he took Angel, planning to hand her over to the head of the biggest drug cartel in Central and South America.” His words dripped with venom and disgust, and if he’d been standing over Hunt’s dead body, he might have shot him once or twice just for the pleasure of the action, though the other man was dead.

Quickly, and working together, they set a trap for whomever was arriving to pick up the baby, all hoping Javier Calderon would be part of the group. Lucas had never seen him in person, but he recognized his smooth and sophisticated countenance when the man entered the apartment fifteen minutes later, just opening the door and stepping inside without bothering to wait for permission.

He must have had a casual relationship with Deacon, whose body had since been moved, to avoid alerting Calderon to any signs of violence. The team Ray had called in had cleaned the glass as much as possible too, so apparently, Javier hadn’t seen any signs of a struggle, and he didn’t detect any danger, or surely he wouldn’t have stepped into the apartment.

He was in his late fifties, and he looked like he would have been an elegant
Don
of the past, rather than the murderous thug he really was. He was surprisingly calm when all the guns present focused on him and his men. He looked directly at Lucas, inclining his head slightly. “Marshal Anderson, what an unexpected surprise. Where is my son?”

“Dead,” said Lucas with a small shiver of satisfaction. His bear purred in his head at the words.

Javier’s eyes widened, and his expression tightened. His anger was evident, though his tone was just as cool as it had been. “Who killed him?”

“I did.”

The cartel leader straightened his shoulders as he glared at Lucas. “Then you’re a dead man walking.”

“Perhaps, but if I were you, I’d be more concerned about your own fate. You’re under arrest.”

Javier scoffed. “Under arrest for what?”

“We have at least half-a-dozen extradition requests for you on file, so we won’t have any trouble holding you. I might be a dead man walking, but you’re about to get a taste of prison. With the crimes you’ve committed, you’ll be lucky if you ever make it out. If you do, you’ll be a shrunken old man. Your days of torturing others and selling your evil product are over.” Lucas got a strong surge of satisfaction when he strode forward, forcing Javier’s hands into handcuffs a moment later.

The man stood stoically, his expression revealing nothing, but his pheromones were steeped in the stench of fear, revealing his true reaction. He was terrified, and Lucas gloried in that. It wasn’t like him to usually enjoy wielding that kind of power over anyone, but Calderon needed to be off the streets. The only better solution was to have him lying on the ground next to Hunt, just as dead, but that wasn’t an option now, with all these witnesses.

Despite that thought, he didn’t think he could actually go through with cold-blooded murder anyway, though he had some of the best reasons imaginable for wanting to remove Calderon permanently. That was up to the justice system though, and he hoped fervently that for once they didn’t drop the ball. Hopefully, the punishment would fit the magnitude of his crimes.

By a strange twist of fate, Javier was indicted by a grand jury on the same day Libby received notification from the Department of Corrections that her mother’s parole had been denied once more. She let out whoop of joy and danced around the living room as Lucas and Angel emerged from the bedroom, where she’d been having a diaper change. He shot her a curious look. “What has you so excited? Did you see the news article about Calderon’s indictment?”

She nodded. “I did, but that wasn’t why I was excited. The parole committee voted not to let my mother out early, at least this time. That means she’s in there for a few more years.”

He came to stand beside her, putting his arm around her waist as he hugged her against him. “Congratulations, love.”

She snuggled closer to him as she put a hand on Angel’s back. The baby was starting to hold up her own head, but she was a bit young for that according to the research Libby had undertaken in an attempt to learn the ins and outs of motherhood as quickly as possible. “And congratulations to you too.”

He nodded. “An indictment isn’t a conviction though, and a grand jury is a lot easier to sway than a regular jury. There are a thousand ways it could still go wrong, and he could walk free, but I’m putting my trust in the justice system that it won’t play out that way.”

“That reminds me... The lease agreement for your building also came in the mail.” She handed him the envelope. She hadn’t opened it, but she was certain it was simply copies of the paperwork they had signed a couple of days ago. Lucas was leaving the U.S. Marshals, no longer wanting to be away from his family for assignments that could last for weeks or months on end, and wanting to avoid future emotional entanglements in people’s lives when the outcome could be so murky. He’d decided to take more direct action, and he was starting his own security firm.

She knew he’d recruited a couple of his friends, and though she hadn’t met them yet, because they were both traveling to reach them, she also knew they were shifters. She was happy with the turn of events, though she would have been happier still if Lucas had chosen a desk job, or to run the administrative side of the security agency, but she knew that wouldn’t have made him happy.

He would have been safe, but miserable, if he didn’t have a hands-on role in helping people and protecting them. This was the safest option that would allow him to be home the most amount of time, and that was important—especially since their small wedding ceremony was coming up in the next few weeks. When he had proposed just two days after they had recovered Angel, she hadn’t even allowed him to finish the question before she’d said yes. It just felt right, and she had trusted he was correct in his assessment that the social worker wouldn’t try to block the adoption.

Marla had been surprisingly accommodating when she’d learned they were engaged. Libby suspected Lucas had somehow influenced her, but she hadn’t asked for details. She didn’t care if he had intimidated the other woman into the decision as long as she became Angel’s mother legally alongside her soon-to-be husband. They were still a few weeks away from the final adoption hearing, but their attorney seemed confident everything would proceed smoothly, even with Libby’s criminal record. In light of the circumstances, and her age at the time, he was confident it wouldn’t even be a factor in the judge’s decision to grant the adoption.

Everything was falling into place, and she was confident about their future. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t dwelling on her past or forcing herself to give up something she wanted because of it. Instead, she was with her mate and her daughter, who would soon be legally theirs, and they were all safe. As long as Javier Calderon remained in prison, they were unlikely to be in danger again. If he got off on a technicality or some other snafu occurred, they’d worry about that then, but she was done living in fear or worrying about things she couldn’t change. She wanted to make the most of each day she had with Lucas and Angel, starting right then.

******

If you enjoyed “Papa Bear,” look for “Guardian Cougar,” the next in the Finding Fatherhood series (coming soon):

And keep reading for a bonus excerpt of another Kit Fawkes title.

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