After the parking lot ambush, Chapter 4 slows down to let the fallout land at home, where Jaz tends to Dean’s scrapes and bruises with a mix of exasperated affection and simmering fury. It’s a chapter that does double duty: showing the easy, lived-in dynamic of Dean and Jaz’s marriage, and unpacking exactly how dangerous the man who attacked Dean really is.

Jaz’s reaction is where the chapter’s real stakes come into focus. As the leader of a Hunter clan and head of Errington Security, she recognizes Manton’s cartel connections immediately, revealing that organized werecat criminal networks once kept out of Elk City by her late father may be testing the city’s defenses now that he’s gone. It’s a smart piece of series plotting — turning a single trafficking victim’s case into a question of whether Elk City’s fragile peace between the human and Unusual worlds is about to be tested by outside forces.

The chapter’s tension comes from the push and pull between Dean’s instinct to let the police and his colleagues handle it, and Jaz’s flat refusal to treat her city’s safety as someone else’s problem. It’s a disagreement rooted in love and worry rather than conflict for its own sake, and it sets up Jaz as an active investigator in her own right heading into the rest of the book — a reminder that in this series, the paramedics aren’t the only ones capable of fighting back.

📖 Start Dean’s next case — get The Paramedic’s Amazon on Jamie Davis’s site:

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The Paramedic’s Amazon — Chapter 4

Dean winced as his wife tended to his injuries.

“You should have listened to Brynne. Your ribs could be broken.” Jaz wiped at the scrapes on his arms with a damp washcloth, cleaning the remaining dirt and grit from the parking lot out of his wounds.

Dean twisted around where he sat on the closed lid of the toilet and probing with his fingertips at his side. “They’re not broken. Just bruised, I think.”

Jaz snorted in response as she turned to soak the cloth in the sink full of warm water.

Dean knew she didn’t approve of his decision to avoid getting checked out any more than Brynne did. He didn’t care. He just wanted to eat and get some sleep. There was nothing wrong with him he couldn’t deal with in the morning. He’d head in to the ER if it seemed more serious then.

“Tell me who it was who did this to you again? You said it was a werepanther?”

“That’s how I’d describe the guy. I knew he was some kind of cat shifter based on what I picked up from him during the ambulance call. Seeing him in the parking lot confirmed it. He was a big black cat. That’s a panther, right?”

Jaz nodded; her lips pressed together in a thin line. She dabbed at his scrapes, saying nothing.

Dean knew his wife well enough to know she was plotting revenge of her own against the creature who’d made the mistake of attacking her husband. He didn’t want her to go off on some sort of vengeance hunt.

“Hon, look at me. I’m going to be fine. Brynne scared him off and I don’t think he’ll be back. Besides, he has to know I’m aware of who he was. He’s probably a hundred miles away by now, figuring the police are after him. I’m sure Brynne reported it.”

“The police are the least of his worries. They won’t put a silver bullet in his skull.”

“Jaz, seriously, let it go. It’s more important that we focus on the good news from the attack.”

“Good news? Like what?”

“His attack means we freed Verity of his control,” Dean replied. “I call that a win. She can get the help she needs, and the authorities can find out where she came from.”

Jaz nodded. “If there’s a trafficking ring set up here in Elk City, it’s got to be rooted out. There has been no werecat activity from the Cartels around here for quite a while. My father made sure of that. Maybe they think they can come back now that he’s dead.”

“I didn’t know there was a cartel of werepanthers.”

“Most of the werecats in North and South America answer to one or two criminal cartels run by old-school families of werejaguars. They’re very rare and supposedly super powerful among their own kind. They have an agreement with Errington regarding this kind of thing. I have to look into this.”

“O’Malley was there, Jaz. Let the ECPD handle it. If there’s a ring like that operating here, they’ll take care of it.”

He could tell from her expression Jaz wasn’t convinced. She threw the supplies they didn’t use back into the first aid kit and dropped it on top of the toilet tank lid. “You know as well as I do how the Unusual community is with getting help from human law enforcement agencies. They’re afraid to reach out for help for even the simplest of reasons. Something like this would go unreported by almost everyone.”

Dean shrugged. “I had to report it and help Verity deal with it. It’s required. Besides, it’s just the right thing to do. Brynne’s looking into it, too, so that means James and Rudy will get involved. You’ve got enough on your plate working to get Errington Security’s international operations back online. Let someone else handle it.”

The Hunter clan leader shook her head, her blond ponytail swaying behind her. “Nope, keeping this city clean of scum like that is as much my job as it is the local authorities. I want this place to be a place of safety and refuge when I come home. It should be somewhere my family and I can relax without worrying about getting jumped in a parking lot.”

Jaz turned back to the sink, wringing out the washcloth. She stared in the mirror for a few seconds than sighed. “Look, I’ll stand down. Let me have my intel guy check into some things, though. These types move in certain circles. We might be able to get a handle on them where local police investigators can’t.”

Dean knew better than to argue with her about stuff like this. It was her company, and it was her decision to make if she wanted. He could’ve had a say, but he’d turned down the executive vice president position she’d offered him. He wasn’t ready to give up working on the streets just yet. Of course, that meant he didn’t have the right to say no to things like this, other than to express concern as a spouse. The dynamic between them might change someday, but for now it was the way they’d drawn the lines between their two jobs.

He changed the subject. He checked his injured arms. “This is good enough. I feel better already. Let me get a shirt on and we can go reheat the dinner Freddy made for us.”

Jaz smiled and nodded. “It smelled good.” Anger spread across her face. “I’m glad that shifter waited until you put the food down. If he’d ruined dinner, nothing would keep me from hunting him down.”

“Great, at least I know where your priorities lie,” Dean said, laughing.

“What can I say? Freddy’s food is just that good.”

The two of them went into the kitchen and started working side by side on getting the meal together.

Fifteen minutes later, as they sat eating, Dean asked, “Have you thought anymore about getting some time away from work so we can finally take that honeymoon trip we’ve been talking about?”

Her hesitation to respond was all the answer he needed. “Jaz, you promised. You said after you got back from Europe you’d have some time to do this.”

“I know what I said, but I have more on my plate now than when I left. I deal with one issue, and three more crop up. I don’t know how my father did it all.”

Dean leaned over the table and put his hand atop hers. “He delegated the small stuff to his management team.”

“There isn’t any small stuff. And there isn’t any management team.” Jaz shook her head. “There’s a rogue pack of werewolves roaming around Eastern Europe. I’ve had two teams in Budapest go missing while tracking them. I’m going to have to go myself if the head of European ops doesn’t get it under control.”

“I haven’t met him yet, have I?”

“Her, and no, you haven’t. I just put Elsa in place two months ago when I found out the last guy, a former German special forces operator, was taking payoffs to look the other way on some of our security accounts.”

“How did you find her?”

“Rudy recommended her to me. She’s the oldest daughter of the senior pack leader in Belgium.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “You hired an Unusual for the job? That’s pretty progressive of you considering where you were on the subject when we first met.”

Jaz smiled. “I’ve had a change of heart. After all, I’m married to a half-Eldara.”

“I might as well be plain old human if I’m going to keep getting my butt kicked by every evil bad guy to come along.”

“I’ve offered to teach you some weapons and self-defense techniques. I could get you a concealed carry permit once you’re trained.”

Dean shook his head. “No, you know how I feel about this. I’m a healer, not a fighter. Let’s just call it a division of labor in our marriage. One total badass is enough.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, dear. I’m serious. You need to be able to protect yourself. You’d think after everything that’s happened to you over the last year and a half, you’d understand that.”

“Nope, we both have our roles in this family. I’m happy with the way things stand.” Uncomfortable with the talk about weapons and fighting, Dean shifted the conversation. “So this Elsa you hired is a Lycan, just like the ones you’re trying to hunt down? It seems like she’d be a good fit if she’s willing to do the dirty work. Most werewolves I know don’t like packs breaking the rules. It only draws unwanted human attention.”

“The biggest problem is getting the strike teams to listen to her. That she’s both a woman, and a shifter is causing a problem among the older, more established members.”

“They listen to you, right?”

“Mostly,” Jaz replied and held up her hand. “Before you say anything, I’m dealing with the ones who are the worst. It’s not just my gender. It’s my age, too. They don’t think I have the experience to lead the organization. I’ve got some ideas on how to show them I’m the boss in more than title only.”

“How?”

“That’s one reason I’ve had to keep going back over there. I’ve fired three of them so far, and two of those poached their friends from the team to go into security operations for themselves. I can’t afford to lose experienced hunter team members. This whole last week, I’ve had to run damage control to keep the bulk of the remaining strike groups from running and hiring out for someone else.”

“What does this Elsa say you should do?”

“She suggests hiring more Unusuals to fill the gaps, but I’m worried it will cause more problems than it solves.”

Dean shrugged. “It seems to me that the people you’re losing are dead weight, not the cream of the crop. If these losers are quitting because of their prejudice, they aren’t going to be open-minded when on an operation either. I say good riddance. Let Elsa put together hybrid teams so everyone learns to trust each other.”

Jaz paused, considering Dean’s suggestion. “You’re just voting for Elsa to take over the hiring so you can keep me home here with you.”

“Of course I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right. Let her do her job. Have her send regular reports for you to review but, let her have full control for a while and see how she does. It works for us in the fire and emergency medical services. The Chief has to let the line medics have the option to be unconventional sometimes. A good leader trusts her crews to use their own skills and intuition. They know best when to be creative and when to follow the letter of the rules.”

Jaz stirred her spoon through the remains of the stew at the bottom of her bowl. “That might work. I have to go to Ireland next week and handle the opening of a new branch office there,” Jaz said. “Elsa will be there, too. I can have a chat with her about what you’ve said. I’ll see what she thinks about giving her more latitude in operational decisions and hiring.”

“Perfect\! I could go with you.”

“Go with me? Why?”

“We can kill two birds with one stone. You can go do your grand opening thing and meet with Elsa. Then we can take a few days and tour the Emerald Isle. I’ll bet if we ask Dougie down at the Irish Shop, he’ll even let us use that magical doorway in his place to travel to Dublin.”

Jaz smiled. “It would be nice to take a little time. A few days wouldn’t kill us. When’s the last time you talked to the leprechaun?”

“It’s been a few months, but he’s always said I could use the portal again if I needed to. It worked out well the last time with the CERT team. We went to debrief in a pub on the other side after the Barrens fire.”

Jaz smiled. “Well, I guess it’s a date, then. You set everything up with Dougie and I’ll make arrangements for a hotel and transportation while we’re in Dublin.”

“Perfect,” Dean said. He forgot how sore he was from the fight earlier. He stood and leaned over the table to kiss Jaz. “I’ll get to show off my hot hunter wife to everyone we see.”

“Who’s saying I’m not going to show off my new boy toy, too.”

They both fell into a round of chuckles and cleaned up their dinner. Dean tried to hide his pain when he moved and hoped he’d heal up before the trip came around. He didn’t want to go on his honeymoon all gimpy from this injury.

They finished the dishes and got ready for bed. Dean pulled out his phone and sent off a text message to Dougie to check about taking the secret portal doorway in his shop to Ireland.

It pleased him he’d been able to get his wife to slow down a little and spend some time vacationing. They both could use a break and she was the type to work all the time if someone didn’t make her slow down. It would be the perfect opportunity for both of them.