Chapter Two #2
She didn’t add the rest. Didn’t tell him the part gnawing at her, the guilt twisting under every breath. She didn’t trust herself to.
A branch cracked somewhere deeper in the woods. Close. Too close.
Jessa’s fingers tightened around her weapon, adrenaline spiking again. “We move on my signal,” she whispered.
He nodded, eyes sharp despite the pain.
The headlights were gone. The woods were quiet. But Wynn, or whoever drove that vehicle, was still out there. And Jessa wasn’t about to let that shadow get any closer to the man bleeding beside her.
Deacon’s eyes said he had a hell of a lot more questions. Questions she didn’t have the breath or the strength or the damn emotional bandwidth to answer right now.
“We need to move before he circles back,” she whispered, lifting his arm back over her shoulders.
They pushed deeper into the trees, the cold gnawing harder now. He leaned more heavily on her with every uneven step, and she kept adjusting, shifting, silently begging the universe not to let him collapse.
Branches thinned. The trail opened up. And through the trees, she finally saw her SUV. Black. Angular. Bullet-resistant. A refuge waiting in the dark.
Relief flooded through her, but before she could take another step, movement flickered to their right.
A shape. Low. Fast. Closing in.
“Down,” she hissed, dragging Deacon with her behind a fallen log half-covered in frost.
They hit the ground hard. The cold blasted up through her knees. She positioned herself between Deacon and the movement, gun raised, every muscle coiled tight.
Leaves crackled. A shadow slid between the trees.
Wynn.
It had to be.
She steadied her breath, ready to fire the second she caught a clear silhouette. A figure finally stepped into a slant of moonlight. Not Wynn though.
Corbin Knox.
Jessa’s stomach dropped, a cold different from the winter air slamming into her chest.
Corbin wasn’t subtle. He never had been. Broad shoulders crowding the space around him. That cocky, too-sure swagger. Eyes scanning the dark with predatory focus.
Deacon exhaled sharply. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he whispered. He knew Corbin. Everyone in her life knew Corbin, knew that he was Roman’s former foster brother before Lauren had adopted Roman and Jessa.
Corbin was Creed Response’s resident hurricane. A man with unmatched tracking skills and an uncanny ability to be everywhere she didn’t want him.
And yeah… the man had a thing for her.
Corbin took one slow step closer to her SUV, head tilting as if he sensed them. Jessa tightened her grip on her weapon.
Deacon reached out, fingers brushing her sleeve. “Jess,” he said like a warning.
A warning that he didn’t have to spell out. Corbin Knox wasn’t a friend. He wasn’t an enemy. He was something worse. Unpredictable. And he was between them and their only way out.
Corbin moved closer to her SUV, head shifting, scanning the trees as if he could smell trouble in the air. He wasn’t supposed to be here. And Jessa didn’t trust him.
She never had, not completely.
She eased Deacon lower behind the log, her hand sweeping across his shoulder in reassurance before she rose up just high enough to aim over the bark.
“Corbin,” she called softly.
He froze. His hand dropped to his sidearm but didn’t draw. His head snapped toward her voice, zeroing in with unsettling ease.
“Jess?” he whispered back.
She straightened slowly, enough to show her face but not enough to give up her cover. “What you doing here?”
Corbin stepped forward, moonlight catching the edge of a smirk that wasn’t really a smirk, more like the ghost of one. “Same reason you are. I got a ping from Shade.”
The hacker. The dark web phantom who had fed her the initial tip.
Her stomach tightened.
Shade rarely contacted anyone directly. So, contacting Corbin meant something else was happening, something Shade thought Corbin needed to know.
Or something Corbin arranged.
“I was told Deacon was gonna get lit up tonight,” Corbin continued, his voice low. “Figured I’d show up before someone had to scrape him off the pavement.”
Behind her, Deacon grumbled, “Appreciate the vote of confidence.”
Corbin’s gaze flicked past her, locking onto Deacon’s slumped form. His face hardened. “Damn, Raines. You look like shit.”
“Feel worse,” Deacon muttered.
Jessa cut in, her tone sharp. “Why did Shade contact you?”
Corbin shrugged one shoulder. “Why’d he contact you?”
“That’s not an answer,” she snapped.
He stepped closer. Too close. Instinctively, she shifted, blocking his path to Deacon. Corbin noticed, and his smirk returned, a flicker of something knowing in his eyes.
“What’s going on, Jess?” he asked quietly. “Why is Marty Wynn trying to kill the county sheriff? And what does he want with you?”
The way he phrased that—What does he want with you—made her stomach knot.
Deacon stiffened beside her, listening.
She held Corbin’s stare, searching for a lie, a crack, a tell. He held her gaze right back. Calm. Confident. And just a little too smooth. Either he truly didn’t know anything more… Or he knew a hell of a lot and was playing close to the vest.
“Corbin, you need to tell me everything you know,” she insisted.
He slid his hands into his jacket pockets, posture relaxed in a way that made every hair on her neck stand up.
“Sure, sweetheart. I’ll tell you everything.
” A beat of silence. Then he added that dangerous, charming half-smile tugging at his mouth.
“If you tell me why a washed-up Strike Force sniper wants you dead badly enough to shoot at a sheriff to lure you out.”