Chapter Ten
The Crossfire Creek County Sheriff’s Office was a squat, tan-brick building that had clearly been added onto three different times over the last forty years.
Functional. No-nonsense. A place where paperwork and bulletproof vests lived side by side.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and the faint scent of burnt coffee drifted from the break room.
Deacon’s office sat at the back of the building, past a row of cubicles and framed commendations. His door was open, his name etched into a simple metal plate.
Inside, the space was exactly what Jessa expected from him, orderly and restrained. A solid oak desk with neat stacks of files. Two battered guest chairs. A wall-mounted whiteboard filled with notes and timelines from ongoing cases. No clutter. No distractions.
Jessa should have been able to breathe here. But her lungs felt tight.
His deputies had brought them in straight after the attack, after her SUV had been reduced to twisted metal and shattered glass on the side of the road. The only thing between them and a body bag had been pure luck and Deacon’s and her instincts.
Now, she paced the length of his office, trying to work the tremor out of her hands, trying to keep her thoughts focused. The adrenaline had mostly burned off. The anger hadn’t.
At his desk, Deacon was on the phone, his tone clipped, each word edged with the kind of frustration she rarely heard from him.
“Nothing? Not a single visual?” Pause. “What about the old service road? Did anyone see a truck matching either description?” Another pause. “Damn it. All right. Keep looking.”
Deacon ended the call with a low curse, and he dragged a hand over his face, frustration etched into every line of his body. That gesture alone told her what she already suspected.
“No sign of the shooter,” he said, voice rough. “Not a damn trace.”
Her stomach dipped. She’d hoped, foolishly so, that maybe there’d be something to give them a lead. Something that would keep them from standing in the crosshairs again.
“But I spoke with Sheriff Chase,” he added. “She’s agreed to bring Shade here to the county office for questioning. He’ll be here soon.”
Good. Not good. She couldn’t decide which.
Shade being here meant answers were possible. It also meant one more unpredictable variable in a case already crowded with them.
Deacon pushed himself to his feet, angling toward her. His movement was only a little slow, barely perceptible, but she saw it anyway. Felt it. The pain from his stitches. The crash. The gunfire.
He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him, close enough that for a heartbeat she thought he might pull her into his arms.
And for a heartbeat, she would have let him.
A sharp rap on the door shattered the moment. Deputy Lane Kincaid poked his head in. “Sheriff,” Lane said with a nod to Deacon before shifting his focus to her. “Ms. Creed. Your SUV’s been towed to the county crime lab,” he reported. “Techs are already going over it. I’ll keep you posted.”
He handed Deacon a set of keys next. “And, Sheriff, your new cruiser is out back. The one you wrecked last night is… well, it’s done.”
“Figures.” Deacon accepted the keys with a grim look. “How’s that deep dive going on Shade?” It was a request Deacon had made shortly after they’d arrived at the sheriff’s office. Not just one on Shade though but also Wynn and Corbin.
“Still putting it together,” Lane replied. “Should be done soon.”
Deacon thanked the deputy and told him to let them know the moment Shade arrived. Lane gave a quick nod and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving the office hushed again.
The silence had barely settled when Deacon reached for her.
His arms came around her with a quiet urgency, pulling her against the solid heat of his chest. Jessa stiffened for a fraction of a second, surprised, then let herself breathe into the hold.
“I’m all right,” she murmured against him.
“Good,” he said, his voice a low rumble near her ear. “Because I’m really doing this to steady myself.”
A short burst of air left her mouth. Not quite a laugh. “You are not.”
He leaned back just enough for their gazes to meet. His eyes swept hers, slow and searching. She felt the moment shift, thickening, warming, despite everything else burning down around them.
Heat roared between them. Familiar. Dangerous.
Deacon lifted a hand to her jaw, his thumb brushing her cheek in a way that unraveled every defense she had tried to rebuild in the past year.
Then, he kissed her.
It sure as heck wasn’t soft. Wasn’t tentative either. It was a claiming kiss, full of memory and hunger, the kind of kiss that made her forget all the reasons kissing him was a bad idea.
She responded before she could think better of it, her hands sliding up his chest, clutching his shirt.
When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing hard. “You said you didn’t want to kiss me,” he said, his voice gone rough.
Jessa swallowed, heat stirring at the base of her throat. “I lied.”
Deacon’s smile broke slowly, the kind that always hit her low in the stomach. He leaned in, clearly about to kiss her again, when his phone buzzed.
He cursed, checked the screen. And his expression shifted.
“It is Noah,” he said. “He’s on his way here. He says he has security footage he wants me to see.”
Jessa felt her entire body tense. Seeing Noah meant facing the man who had unknowingly fathered her. It meant facing everything she had been avoiding since the truth dropped into her life like a grenade.
But she also wanted to see that footage. Answers were too rare right now to ignore something like that.
Before she could say anything, another knock sounded at the door.
Deputy Kincaid opened it a crack. “Sheriff, Shade, AKA Brett Calder, is here. I placed him in interview room two. He has an attorney, Michael Farrow, with him.”
Deacon nodded. “Thanks. We will be there in a minute.” The deputy left, closing the door again, and Deacon looked at her. “You can observe. Come on.”
Jessa followed him through the quiet hallway, her pulse tapping at her throat. They moved past the administrative desks toward the pair of small interview rooms at the end of the wing. Deacon opened the door to the observation room, and she stepped inside.
Jessa immediately saw Shade through the one-way glass. He sat at the metal table with his lawyer beside him. Shade’s shoulders tense, jaw locked tight, eyes flickering toward the door like a man calculating exits.
“This is harassment,” the lawyer snapped the moment Deacon stepped into interview. “My client has cooperated fully. Dragging him in here is unnecessary.”
Shade huffed under his breath. “I won’t sit around and be accused of whatever crap you intend to say I did.”
Deacon didn’t react. He calmly took his seat, opened the case file, pressed record on the small device at the edge of the table and spoke in his steady, official tone.
“This is Sheriff Deacon Raines conducting an interview with Brett Calder and his counsel on Thursday at nine fifty-nine in the morning. Present in the room are Sheriff Raines, Brett Calder, also known as Shade, and attorney Michael Farrow. Mr. Calder, you have previously been read your rights but I am going to go over them again.”
He read them without a trace of irritation, something Jessa wasn’t sure she could have managed. Something that Shade and his lawyer weren’t managing well either.
When Deacon finished, he lifted his gaze. “All right then. First question. Where have you been this morning?”
Shade shrugged. “Driving. To Crossfire Creek. Alone.”
Jessa’s stomach tightened. No alibi. No witness. Nothing to rule him out as the man who had shot at them.
“Let us talk about Lauren Creed,” Deacon insisted. “Specifically, your blackmailing her.”
Shade’s posture snapped straight. His lawyer sat forward at the same time. “That is a mischaracterization,” the attorney snapped. “My client provided digital security services for Ms. Creed. He was compensated for his expertise.”
“That is one way to put it,” Deacon replied with a whole lot of skepticism in his voice.
Jessa felt heat climb into her throat as she listened, her nails digging into her arms. Because if Shade had blackmailed her mother, then he had motive for murder. And motive for everything that followed.
Deacon held Shade’s stare. “All right, let us hear your version,” he said. “Start talking.”
Shade’s shoulders bunched the moment Deacon pressed him. “There was no blackmail,” Shade spat out. “None. I did some work for her, that’s all.”
“Then you won’t mind if I get a warrant for your bank records,” Deacon replied. “We’ll see if there were any unexplained deposits in the months before Lauren Creed died.”
The lawyer shot upright in his chair. “Sheriff, that’s unnecessary.”
Shade leaned toward him, whispering sharply. Jessa couldn’t make out the words, but Shade’s expression flickered between annoyance and fear. The lawyer murmured something back, calm and clipped, and Shade exhaled through his nose.
When Shade faced Deacon again, he was already backpedaling. “All right. Fine,” Shade muttered. “Lauren did give me money, but it wasn’t blackmail. She hired me. Sometimes she wanted her cybersecurity tested for vulnerabilities. She paid for that. Voluntarily.”
Jessa’s jaw tightened. It was a neat explanation. Too neat. It fit conveniently enough that Shade could dodge being charged if they couldn’t prove otherwise. Lauren was gone, the only other person who could confirm or deny the story.
Deacon tilted his head slightly, the look that meant he smelled a lie. “Testing cybersecurity,” he repeated. “And you expect me to believe that’s the whole story.”
Shade lifted his chin. “Believe whatever you want. It’s the truth.”
Jessa’s stomach twisted. Because it wasn’t the truth. Not all of it. She could feel that same cold instinct that had kept her alive on ops.
Deacon didn’t ease into the next question. He hit Shade with it like a hammer. “Did you murder Lauren Creed?”