Page 6 of Brawler
“Promise me something,” Moira said. “Take pictures that aren’t for work. Remember what it feels like to just…be.”
Emily laughed, but it caught a little in her throat. “You know I’m not going down there to breathe. I’ve got data to collect, cameras to check?—”
“Exactly,” Moira cut in gently. “You’ve been collecting data your whole life, Em. Maybe it’s time to start collecting moments you actually want to keep.”
Emily shifted in her seat. “Ben and I…we’re not together anymore.”
A soft sigh came through the line. “He was never right for you. I didn’t say anything because…well, you had to see it for yourself. But it’s hard to spot the right man when you’ve got blinders on.”
“Blinders, huh?” Emily said, attempting a dry laugh.
“Mhm. You’ve been looking for someone who fits where you think you belong, not where youdobelong.”
Emily turned to look out the glass at the tarmac. The heaviness in her chest was familiar. Moira didn’t press, but her silences always felt like open doors.
“Call me when you land,” Moira said softly. “Remember, you don’t have to be so busy proving yourself to be worth loving.”
Emily bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t answer that. Instead, she promised, “I’ll call,” and ended the call before Moira could peel back any more layers.
2
The rainforest smelledlike damp earth and secrets. Emily lifted her pack from the rickety bus floor and stepped out into a wall of heat so thick it seemed alive. Cicadas screamed from the canopy. Diesel fumes mixed with the sweeter rot of fruit left to bruise in the sun. Somewhere in that expanse of tangled green was her jaguar. Her lady. Her Sombra.
The female, the mother, the elusive shield who circled danger and defended her ground. The shadow Emily followed, after the name she’d given the big cat. Her throat tightened.
She dragged in a breath, tried to steady the knot of nerves inside her. The anger she’d banked from her fight with Ben still radiated like nuclear fallout. Fight? No. Call it what it was. The end of another failed relationship. Her aunt, wise woman that she was, had nailed it with her usual cut-the-bullshit clarity. Ben hadn’t been right for her, and deep down she’d known it. But settling for a life that never fit seemed right in an odd way. In the end, Ben had been the one with the courage to call it. If he hadn’t, would she still be pretending California was waiting?
Her guide was supposed to meet her at the edge of town, but when he didn’t show, she trekked to the nearest cantina. Aname scribbled on paper, arranged by a colleague. Only, when she asked for him, the bartender gave a shrug: ill, fever, gone for days. If she waited, she’d lose the week, and her elusive lady didn’t wait.
Emily hiked the straps of her pack higher. The jungle was dangerous, yes, but she knew its rhythm better than she knew her own heartbeat. A week alone, and she could finish. Her cameras were already set, scattered like breadcrumbs through a jaguar corridor on the edge of disputed land. She only needed to collect the data, log the GPS tags, and maybe, if luck tilted her way, catch another glimpse of the small family.
Sombra was the reason Emily hadn’t quit. The jaguar with scars across her flank like clawed hieroglyphs. Elusive, merciless, magnificent. Emily had followed her for nearly a year, piecing together a story of survival from paw prints, trail cam images, and tracks pressed into river mud. Sombra wasn’t just another data point. She was a force. A queen who held her ground no matter how the forest shifted around her.
Emily clenched her jaw. Protector. That word had teeth. It was what she hadn’t been when Dani needed her most. Sixteen years old, one stupid phone call from Tyler Davis, her crush, and she had walked away. Told her little sister to sit by the pool, blind in a world that had no edges for her. By the time Emily came back, there had been blood in the water. A body too light in her arms. Silence that never stopped echoing.
Since then, she had thrown herself at the voiceless, the wild, the vulnerable, the causes that couldn’t speak for themselves. Maybe if she could understand how creatures like Sombra guarded what was theirs, she could rewrite the story in her head. Prove it was possible to stay, to fight, to save.To grieve. To find forgiveness.
Emily’s chest pinched. Things she didn’t deserve. She forced herself to move, boots stirring the packed red dust of the road leading toward the green wall ahead.
Sombra didn’t share her ground. She carved it out, fought for it, patrolled its edges like a soldier. Emily had watched her drag prey twice her size out of a river, fight off a prowling male, even circle back through wildfire ash for the cubs, refusing to abandon them.
Her eyes stung. She knew what it meant to abandon someone. For what? A boy? The promise of the prom? She’d sacrificed her sister for her own selfish pursuits. Now she was here, looking out for creatures who would never know her name.
The jungle pressed humid and alive around her, demanding focus. Cameras to check. Data to collect. No room for ghosts.
By the third day she noticed it. Sombra’s path was wrong. The female was circling wide around her usual grounds, skirting a rich stretch of forest where prey was plentiful and water ran clear. The cameras there showed nothing. Not Sombra, not her cubs. Just silence.
Her heart clutched. Damn, had she lost them?
Sombra wasn’t supposed to have two cubs. One, maybe, if the jungle was generous. But Emily had footage of both, bright-eyed shadows tumbling in the undergrowth, alive and defiant against every statistic. If she could understand how Sombra kept her cubs alive against every odd, then maybe she could believe that not every life had to end in loss. Their survival was an act of rebellion, and their fierce mother was the blade cutting a path for them.
Emily swallowed hard, adjusting her pack straps as if the weight might steady her. It wasn’t just data. It was proof. Proof that survival wasn’t always about luck. Sometimes it was about refusing to leave.
Frowning, Emily crouched by one of her motion sensitive camera traps, wiping away the damp that had fogged the lens, her stomach suspended with hope. The data card inside blinked red. Corrupted. Disappointment was crushing. Another unit half a mile back had been the same, dead without explanation.
She muttered under her breath, more irritated than worried. Poachers, maybe. Someone had been tampering, though strangely there were no snares, no bullet casings, no butchered remains. Just a dead zone.
As she descended to the riverbank, she saw a glint. A fragment of metal half-buried in mud, blackened and twisted as if scorched. She knelt, brushed her fingers over its fin-like edge. It didn’t belong here. Not from any hunter’s rifle or farmer’s tool. Something about it tugged at her memory of news headlines and blurred photographs.
