Chapter Eleven
Deacon felt the words settle in the air like a shockwave.
I’m your daughter.
Noah went absolutely still. No blink. No breath. Just a man frozen in a moment he never expected, staring at Jessa as if he were trying to rewrite the past by sheer force of will.
“Is that true?” Noah asked quietly. Then he shook his head. “Of course it is or you wouldn’t have said it.”
Noah sank into the nearest chair, the tension draining out of him so fast it looked as if his legs simply stopped holding him. Deacon had seen Noah in firefights. He’d seen him walk into a burning building to pull out a civilian. He’d never seen him rattled.
But it wasn’t every day a man learned he had a thirty-three-year-old daughter.
Deacon stayed where he was, watching Noah try to absorb the hit. Watching Jessa try to stand steady under the weight of the truth she’d finally said out loud. The truth that was going to detonate through their lives whether any of them were ready or not.
Noah finally drew in a breath, slow and unsteady. “I am guessing Lauren didn’t tell me because her parents wouldn’t have approved.” He said it softly, more to himself than to them.
And he was right. Dead on.
He stared at the floor for a moment, jaw flexing, shoulders tight, the weight of thirty-plus years settling on him piece by piece. Then, he lifted his phone again, the frozen image of the sign glowing on the screen.
Ask Jessa who her father is.
His gaze moved from the phone screen to Jessa. “Does this have anything to do with the attempts to kill Deacon and you?”
Jessa let out a long, tired breath. “Possibly.”
Deacon watched her steady herself before she continued.
“There’s a blackmail file. Wynn has it. If he releases it, it’s possible it’ll incriminate Roman. He helped doctor paperwork about my birth.” Her voice wavered, but she didn’t back down. “It is also possible the file was meant to embarrass you. Or expose you in some way. Or both.”
Noah shook his head, sighed. “Jessa, you being my daughter is no embarrassment whatsoever to me, and if it comes out, so be it. It won’t expose me to anything that’ll hurt me privately or professionally.”
Deacon saw her shoulders ease the smallest bit. Relief flickered across her face, quick but real.
Noah leaned back, blew out a breath, and looked down at his hands for a moment before speaking again.
“Lauren and I were eighteen. We met at a party in Austin. We were stupid. Young. I thought she was the brightest thing in the room.” His mouth twitched, almost a smile, but grief pushed it away.
“We were together for maybe two weeks before I shipped out on my first assignment. She never told me she was pregnant. Never even hinted at it.”
He paused, eyes lifting to Jessa again. There was regret there, heavy and sharp, and Deacon felt the weight of it fill the room.
“If I had known,” Noah assured her, “everything would have been different.” Silence fell for a beat. Then Noah straightened in the chair, resolve settling in the lines of his face. “How can I help?” he asked. “Just tell me what you need from me.”
Deacon saw another round of relief wash over her. Good. It wasn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy father and daughter moment, but it was solid and what they both needed right now.
“Noah, there is more,” Deacon said. He drew in a breath, steadying himself before speaking. There was no easy way to ease into this. “Roman believes Lauren was murdered.”
Noah’s head snapped up, shock slamming through his expression. Before he could react, Deacon continued.
“I’ve already put in the request to have her body exhumed,” Deacon explained. “If Roman is right, a new autopsy could confirm it.”
“Who did this to her?” Noah groaned and dragged both hands over his face. Then he cursed under his breath. “And why?”
Deacon exchanged a brief look with Jessa. She looked pale, shaken all over again.
“We have suspects,” she explained. “Corbin Knox is one. He had access. He had resentment toward Lauren for years for not adopting him. And Shade had motive, too. He was taking money from her and may have tried to hack her files. Blackmailing her wouldn’t be a stretch.”
Noah’s gaze hardened. “And Wynn.”
Deacon nodded. “Wynn’s absolutely on the list. He could be pretending to be grief-stricken, but the truth is Lauren rejected him for years. He was in love with her, obsessed even. That kind of fixation can turn dark in a heartbeat.”
Noah stared at the floor, jaw tight enough to crack. “Lauren,” he whispered. “God.” Then his eyes lifted, filled with a fury Deacon figured he’d had on battlefields. “Find who did this,” Noah said. “I want the truth. I want names.”
Deacon nodded, his own resolve locking into place. They were all in this now, and the clock was ticking.
Noah straightened, some of that familiar command presence sliding back into place now that the first shock had settled. “I’ll get a team on this,” he said. “Tell me what needs to be done.”
Deacon nodded. “The exhumation approval should come through soon. Once that happens, we’ll know if Roman’s right about the toxic compound. For now, we need to find Corbin and Wynn. They’re both dangerous, and they both had access to Lauren.”
Noah pulled out his phone and fired off a rapid text. “You’ve got all of Crossfire Ops’ resources. Anything you need, Deacon.”
Deacon dipped his head. “Thank you.”
Noah turned to Jessa then. He opened his mouth, shut it, and then groaned. “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “Jessa… do you hate me?”
She blinked, surprised by the question. “No,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I can’t hold anything against you when I didn’t know you were my father.”
She swallowed hard, the last word barely making it out.
Father.
The weight of it settled over the room. Over Noah. Over Jessa. And Deacon felt it hit him too, quiet and heavy, like the start of something none of them was ready for.
A soft knock hit the doorframe before Deacon could respond to Noah. Deputy Kincaid stepped inside, holding a thick manila envelope in gloved hands.
“Sheriff, you’ll want to see this,” he said. “Courier dropped it off at the front desk. We scanned it. No explosives, no powders, no tech. It’s addressed to the sheriff’s office.”
The deputy set the package on the desk. Deacon slit it open with his pocketknife and pulled out a stack of documents. Official looking. Stamped copies, notarized pages, even what looked like emails printed from Roman’s business account.
At the top of the first page, bold letters screamed:
Proof that Roman Creed knew Jessa’s parentage from the beginning and concealed it to control the inheritance.
Deacon’s chest tightened. He flipped through the pages. Financial statements. Legal correspondence. A timeline of Lauren’s adoption of Jessa and Roman, annotated with accusations. Claims that Roman hid the truth from Jessa. Claims that he manipulated legal documents for personal gain.
Bullshit.
But dangerous bullshit.
Jessa stepped closer, her face draining. “Roman would never… He would never do that.”
Noah frowned. “These look engineered. Someone put real effort into this.”
“Yeah,” Deacon agreed, still scanning the pages. “And they want me to believe Roman had motive to commit fraud.”
“There’s no return address. Courier said the sender paid cash,” Deputy Kincaid pointed out.
Deacon set the documents down, the weight of them thick and toxic on his desk. Whoever sent this wanted destruction. They wanted chaos. And they wanted Jessa and Roman caught in the middle.
Jessa shook her head hard, her breath catching. “These are lies.”
She pulled out her phone and stepped a little aside, but he could see her tap her brother’s name.
Deacon listened to the clipped tone of her voice even without hearing the words.
She didn’t put the call on speaker, but he could see the tension in her posture, the way her hand tightened on the phone as Roman answered.
A few seconds later, she lowered the phone and looked at Deacon and Noah, her face pale with anger. “Roman got copies too,” Jessa said. “And some of the stuff has already been sent to the press. Not the most damning info but enough of it to cause trouble.”
Noah swore under his breath. “Someone’s playing a very ugly game.”
“Yeah, and a dangerous one,” Deacon added. “It’s not a smart move to piss off a man like Roman Creed.”
Noah made a sound of agreement, and he reached for the stack of documents on Deacon’s desk.
“I can have my tech team analyze these.” He lifted his phone, opened a scanning app and began taking images of the pages with a steady hand.
“If these were fabricated, and they almost certainly were, we’ll soon know. ”
Deacon watched him send the files off with a few taps.
The tension in the room thickened. A false paper trail. A coordinated delivery. And now the press involved.
Jessa lifted the phone back to her ear, listening.
Her expression shifted in small, tight ways while Roman spoke on the other end.
After a few seconds, she murmured. “Okay. Let me know.” Then she ended the call and turned toward Deacon and Noah.
“Roman says he’ll dig into this and get back to us as soon as he can. ”
Before Deacon could respond, another knock sounded. Deputy Marlene Ortiz stepped in, clutching a tablet against her chest. “Sheriff, I found something interesting on that deep dive I was doing on Shade.”
Deacon gestured for her to continue. “What’d you find?”
Marlene tapped her tablet. “Shade has been visiting Clayton Hargrove’s widow, Lila, in prison.”
Deacon felt his pulse kick. “Visiting her,” he repeated, trying to wrap his head around that. “As in they know each other?”
“Looks that way,” Marlene said. “He’s been seeing her weekly for the past six months. There are logs. They talk for about thirty minutes each time. He’s not on any official visitor list as a family member or legal rep. He listed himself as a friend.”
Jessa let out a breath. “Shade and Lila. That can’t be coincidence.”
Noah’s expression hardened. “If Shade was feeding her information or taking directions from her, it means we have a bigger problem than we thought.”
Deacon nodded slowly, the pieces shifting in his mind like a puzzle starting to take shape. Shade. Lila Hargrove. Roman and Jessa targeted. Lauren’s secrets surfacing. Someone was pulling strings. And Shade sure as hell looked like the someone who was doing it.
“Any idea if Shade and Lila knew each other before she was convicted?” Deacon asked.
Deputy Ortiz nodded. “Yes. It took some digging, but I’m confident Shade and Lila were involved before Clayton Hargrove was murdered.”
Deacon blew out a slow breath. “An affair?”
“That’s what it looks like,” she replied. “Phone records, encrypted messages, burner usage. They took care to erase most of it, but not all.”
Well, hell.
They’d investigated every aspect of the dead rancher’s life, but they obviously hadn’t dug deep enough into his wife’s. After she’d been convicted, there’d been no reason to do that.
More of those pieces settled into place.
Shade had motive. A big one. Lila blamed Lauren, blamed Roman, blamed Jessa, blamed him for being convicted.
They were the people who had helped unravel her carefully constructed life.
If Shade loved her, or even if he just believed her version of events, then revenge made sense.
It could explain the blackmail. It could explain the attempts to turn them on each other.
It could explain the attempt on their lives.
And if Shade had murdered Lauren, it would fit too.
Lauren might have figured out the affair. She might have threatened to expose it. Or Shade could have decided Lauren was the final obstacle to clearing Lila’s name.
Deacon lifted his gaze. “If Shade thinks we put Lila behind bars, then he’d want us all gone.”
Jessa’s eyes went hard. “And he’d have reason to kill my mother,” she added.
Deacon nodded. For the first time since the attacks began, he felt as if they were staring straight at the heart of it.
And that “heart” led right to Shade.