His methods weren’t always by the book, and the consequences rarely made it to the report. There were whispers of “unofficial” justice—broken noses, shattered ribs—but noone ever talked, and more than once, someone else stepped up to take the blame.
People treated him like a force of nature—part myth, part man.
And while everyone feared crossing him, I knew something no one else did.
Jagg had a secret.
And it was a big one.
I was there. He didn’t know it, of course.
It was my third night on the job, during Berry Springs’ annual bluegrass festival. Main Street was shut down, lined with food carts and tents, music echoing from a makeshift stage in the town square. The kind of night that blurred the line between the town’s cowboys and its artists. But not for Jagg. He wasn’t drinking or talking. He moved through the crowd silently, eyes scanning hip to hip, reading every concealed weapon, watching.
Then he slipped into the shadows. And I followed.
I lost sight of him—until I heard a scream. I sprinted across the footbridge behind the park’s maintenance shed and came to a hard stop. Two silhouettes. Jagg was on one of them.
I ducked behind a tree, breath caught. He wasn’t just fighting—he was dismantling. Precise, fast, brutal. A younger man, at least twenty years Jagg’s junior, was on the ground within seconds, both arms twisted behind his back. Jagg leaned in, whispered something, then released him. The guy bolted like he’d seen a ghost.
That’s when I saw why.
Jagg turned to help a second boy off the ground. Smaller. Bloody. Shaken. He tore a strip of fabric from the kid’s shirt and wiped his face, then led him quietly into the dark.
The next day, I learned the kid was an autistic juniorhigh student—beaten for playing the violin. Rumor had it Jagg took him to Steele Shadows Security and enrolled him in self-defense training. Two weeks later, the same kid pulled up to school in a restored vintage Mustang. He was never bullied again.
The other kid? The one Jagg roughed up? That was the governor’s son.
Most assumed Jagg would lose his badge. But he walked into the Capitol with a video—proof of the assault, proof of what led to it—and walked out untouched. The footage has never been made public. Whether it even exists is still debated.
But the damage was done. Jagg was on thin ice. The CID Commander, the Chief, the Governor—they were all waiting for him to slip. Everyone knew it.
When dispatch had summoned me to the Voodoo Tree, I’ll admit, I sped to the park. It wasn’t often that anyone got to work with Jagg. The guy was a loner and rarely pulled anyone into his cases. And when he’d asked me to help? I hadn’t been that excited since I discovered I had Cinemax for free.
I had a chance to learn from the man himself.
Dammit, I wanted to be him. I wanted to have that kind of innate authority that came so easily to the man. I wanted to have that kind of presence.
I wanted people to fear me the way everyone feared him. Hell, the wayIfeared him.
I decided right then and there, I wouldnotlet him down. I would soak in everything I could so that when Jagg was fired, as he inevitably was going to be, I would have a chance at becoming the next Detective Max Jagger. I just had to prove myself first, and it was going to start with that case. IfJagg really believed the Wiccan shrine in the woods had something to do with Seagrave’s death, I was going to find out.
...Evil witches and hexes, or not.
7
JAGG
Colson grabbed the cell phone from my hand.
“Where the hell did you get this video?” he demanded.
“Lady across the street.”
His gaze shot to mine. “Cora Hofmann?”
I dipped my chin.
“What the?… We already interviewed her. Hell,Ipersonally interviewed her. She said she didn’t see or hear a thing that night. Until we showed up, anyway—which, by the way, I was informed kept her cats up all night. The woman hates the police, that much was obvious.”
