Deadly Vengeance at Crossfire Creek

Chapter One

Something felt way off.

A prickle slid down County Sheriff Deacon Raines’ spine. Not fear. Awareness that came from wearing a badge for over a decade.

He was pretty damn sure that someone, somewhere, had eyes on him.

But he definitely wasn’t seeing this mystery watcher. Still, the bad feeling remained, sliding through him and keeping him on high alert.

It didn’t help that the sun was long gone, replaced by the kind of deep winter darkness that swallowed headlights whole in this part of rural Texas. Deacon guided his cruiser along the old farm road, one hand on the wheel, the other rubbing the knot at the base of his neck.

The day had been long, and judging from the gut feeling he was getting, the night promised more of the same.

The headquarters of the sprawling private security company, Crossfire Ops, sat just behind him, its pole-mounted security lights still flickering through the trees like muted stars. He’d gone there for answers.

Which he sure as hell hadn’t gotten.

A rarity since the Crossfire Ops’ leader and Deacon’s friend, Noah Riggs, made a darn good living from getting answers and helping people with his team of elite security operatives. But Noah hadn’t been able to explain the puzzling things that’d been found.

Over the past week, Deacon and his deputies had uncovered surveillance devices—wireless cameras, audio nodes, signal boosters—hidden along access roads and tree lines just beyond their perimeters. All aimed inward at both Crossfire Ops headquarters and the sheriff’s office.

All recording.

And with no trail to who was doing those recordings. Or why.

Huffing, Deacon pushed aside his frustration of that no-answer visit to Noah, pushed aside, too, that prickle down his spine, and he focused on the drive. On getting home. Or rather he tried to do that. But he found himself still looking, still bracing for, well, something.

He slowed a fraction, eyes scanning the tree line. Only the darkness. Then his headlights caught movement. A flash of silver.

Metal.

A scope.

“Shit—”

The world exploded.

The first bullet tore through the hood, a thundercrack that punched the air from his lungs. The cruiser jerked, tires screaming as the engine sputtered. Deacon yanked the wheel, but the second shot slammed into the windshield, a spiderweb of glass bursting right in front of his face.

The cruiser skidded off the road, fishtailing across gravel. Then nothing but weightlessness.

The vehicle dropped into the shallow ravine like a stone. Metal groaned, glass shattered, and Deacon’s body was thrown sideways, restrained only by his seatbelt. The airbags deployed, and the impact slammed through him, snapping his head back. The world blurred into streaks of black and red.

Silence followed. Heavy, suffocating.

Pain came next. A sharp, burning line along his ribs. Warm blood dampening his shirt. Something, his radio maybe, had cut him. He tried to suck in a breath but got a mouthful of airbag powder and the copper tang of his own blood.

“Gotta… move…”

His fingers fumbled with the seatbelt. It released with a click that echoed too loud in the crushed cabin. He shoved the door with his shoulder until it groaned open, and he elbowed the airbag aside.

Cold night air rushed in, sharp enough to sting.

Deacon dragged himself out onto the gravel, grit scraping his palms. Every bone protested. His vision pulsed with black spots.

He had been shot at before. But this had been an outright ambush from a sniper. That damn prickle down his spine had been right, but this was a time when he wished his gut instincts had been wrong.

Drawing his gun, he crawled to the nearest tree and forced himself upright behind an oak. Every breath felt like a blade in his side.

The road above was empty, the world still again. No footsteps. No engine. No shout. But he didn’t get the sense that the shooter was long gone.

Nope. The asshole could be watching.

Waiting.

He reached for his radio clipped to his belt. Dead. Banged up in the crash, and yeah, he’d been right about the now broken radio cutting in his side. So he went for his phone in his pocket instead.

A twig snapped behind him.

Deacon spun, instincts firing, muscles coiling despite the pain, and instead of taking out his phone, he used both hands to grip his gun. He braced for a second attack, but the figure stepping toward him wasn’t the sniper.

It was someone he’d know anywhere.

Tall. Lean. Moving with the lethal grace of someone trained to slip in and out of danger like smoke.

Jessa Creed.

Hell. He hadn’t seen her in six months, not since her mother’s funeral, and he doubted she was here by accident.

For just a heartbeat, she froze when their eyes met.

She looked very much like the kick-ass private security operative that she now was at Creed Response.

The watery moonlight framed her, dark hair pulled back, tactical pack slung across her shoulder, her expression a razor’s edge between shock and something he didn’t dare name.

All right, he named it.

That old heat. The lust. The chemistry. Yeah, it had a lot of different labels, but it boiled down to one gut-punching fact. His body wanted Jessa. Always had. Always would.

Even now.

That was a good thing, he decided. He must not be hurt too bad if he could still remember this fire he had with Jessa.

“Deacon.” Her voice cut through the darkness, low and breathless. “You’re hurt.”

He was, but he had a more pressing concern. “What the hell are you doing here?” he rasped.

“Apparently, saving you,” she muttered. Not exactly a cocky tone. More like on a heavy sigh coated with a massive amount of concern.

With her attention firing all around them, looking for threats, she came closer, and her hands began to scan his injuries.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated, and by God, he needed that answer right now.

Because he didn’t want to have even a sliver of thought that she’d had anything to do with the shots that’d sent him hurling off the road.

But the sliver was already there.

Of course, it was. They had been lovers. Hell, they’d been in love. But now what was left were some really shitty memories and a whole bunch of bad blood.

Oh, and that lust.

Couldn’t forget about that.

“I got a tip from an informant,” she said, tearing open a field dressing that she grabbed from her pack. She made another sweeping glance around them. “You’re bleeding.”

Deacon had his own look around as he clamped his hand over hers to stop her from tending to him. “What informant?”

Their gazes slammed together. And held. And kept on holding for some snail-crawling moments.

Jessa was the first to look away.

“An informant in San Antonio, a hacker who lives on the dark web. He contacted me about a half hour ago and told me someone had targeted you for a kill,” she finally said.

She moved his hand off hers and got to work on wrapping a bandage around the gash on his arm.

“Right here, tonight, at this very spot. And that if I was to save you, I’d better get here fast.”

His pulse thudded, and he tried to wrap his head around that. “Meaning what? Was I the target or were you?” Because it occurred to him that the informant could have lured her here.

Her eyes lifted, dark and haunted. “I think we both were targets.”

Think not certain. Which only gave him more questions.

Deacon thought of the surveillance equipment that’d been found and considered it might be linked to Jessa. And maybe this attack was just an escalation of that? Maybe Jessa was… what? Drawn here by that informant to rub old salt in his old wounds?

He gave that some thought.

Then, he dismissed it.

There were a hell of a lot easier ways to bring Jessa and him together rather than on a farm road ten miles from any town. And the truth was that merely seeing her was salt enough. The old wounds were right there, always at the surface, and like the lust, those wounds weren’t going away either.

Since the sniper could still be nearby, Deacon did more of those glances around. If the asshole was moving in for another attack, there were no signs of it. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Hard to fight a damn ghost.

“Why do you think you and I are both targets?” he came out and asked. Then, he added, “Playing Captain Obvious here, but does it have something to do with Creed Response?”

No way could she say outright that it absolutely didn’t, but she didn’t offer up anything else either.

Not exactly a surprise. In the world of elite private security, Crossfire Ops, where Deacon had just left, was generally considered the good guys, the wounded warriors who now served up justice while still coloring within the lines.

Creed Response didn’t have lines.

Or if they did, Deacon knew they colored outside them often enough to have garnered the reputation of civilian black ops. You got a problem, we’ll fix it, no matter the cost.

Jessa was part of that.

Hell, she was the center of it since her adopted brother ran the company, and she was one of his top operatives.

“Well?” he pressed. “Is someone after you because of Creed Response, because of your brother?”

Before she even had a chance to respond to that, far off in the trees, a single metallic click echoed, the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt sliding home.

Jessa stiffened.

“He’s still here,” she whispered.