Chapter Fifteen
The ranch felt wrong.
Too quiet. Too scraped raw by flashing lights, boot prints, and evidence flags. Deacon was well aware that his home had been turned inside out, every acre treated like a question that needed answering.
Ten hours.
That was how long the CSIs had been out there, combing through dirt, brush, trees, and fencing. Ten hours of measuring, bagging, photographing. Of turning his life into a checklist.
Jessa paced the living room, her phone pressed to her ear, and she was speaking in a low, tight voice. She was talking to Roman again. She never stopped moving when she was on the phone. As if standing still might let the weight of everything crash down on her.
“Yes,” she said. “I know. I’m not leaving here tonight. We’ll talk in the morning.” She paused, listening, then added, “I promise.”
Deacon didn’t miss the lie. Or maybe not a lie. Maybe a half-truth. Jessa always sounded like that when she was trying to keep Roman from worrying while doing exactly what she planned to do anyway.
He stood at the front window as the last CSI truck rolled down the drive. The sky had darkened to that deep blue that came just before night settled in. Headlights disappeared between the trees. The property was his again, but it didn’t feel like it.
Not yet.
He waited until the dust settled. Then he checked the monitor one last time and reset the perimeter security. Locked. Armed. Safe.
For now.
The case was still wide open. Wynn was still out there. Corbin was still a question mark. And today had added two bodies to an already bloody trail.
Jessa murmured something else to her brother, something he didn’t catch, but he sure as heck heard her heavy sigh.
She looked as exhausted as he felt, dark circles under her eyes, tension etched into every line of her body.
But exhaustion was only half of it. Beneath that, she was wired. Sharp. Pissed off.
He understood that feeling all too well.
Someone had brought violence straight to his home. Someone had stood on his land and opened fire without a second thought. That crossed lines that couldn’t be uncrossed.
What still floored him was how close it all had come. Too close.
It was a miracle Jessa was standing there unhurt. That Noah and Roman had walked away without a bullet in them. That he was still breathing. That the horses were untouched, restless but safe in the pasture. That Ranger had not taken off after the gunman and paid for it.
They were all still in one piece.
That didn’t feel like luck. It felt like borrowed time. And whoever had tried to take it from them was going to pay.
Jessa ended the call and lowered her phone. “Roman hasn’t been able to find Wynn.”
Deacon nodded, not surprised. Wynn knew how to disappear. “I’m fine with Roman putting a team on it,” he let her know. “I’ve got deputies out looking too. If we find Wynn, we’re arresting him.”
He didn’t bother hiding the frustration that followed. The problem was the rest of them.
Shade and Corbin.
Both of them had motive. Both had plenty of opportunity. Both were neck deep in lies and half-truths. And yet none of it was enough. Not the kind of evidence that would stick.
If he could have hauled all of them in and locked them up, he would have done it without hesitation. Get every suspect off the street and stop the damage before someone else ended up dead.
Instead, they were chasing shadows. And those shadows were dangerous.
He crossed the room and pulled Jessa into his arms. She came willingly, pressing close as if she needed the contact as much as he did.
“How bad are you hurting?” she asked, her voice low.
“It’s more of a dull throb now,” he said honestly. “Not too bad. The over-the-counter stuff helped.”
He didn’t add that holding her helped more. He didn’t have to. She felt it anyway, her body molding to his, grounding him.
For a few quiet seconds, it was just them. Breathing. Existing. Letting the day crack a little around the edges.
His phone buzzed. He sighed but reached for it, keeping one arm around her as he checked the message.
“They’ve got IDs on both gunmen,” he let her know.
Jessa pulled back just enough to look up at him. “Who?”
“Names are Trent Haskins and Miguel Roura,” Deacon read. “Both freelancers. Ex-military. Both tied to contract work across three states. Violence for hire.”
He scrolled through the rest of the text. “They weren’t locals. No personal connection to this place or to any of us. Whoever hired them wanted distance.”
“So someone paid to have us killed,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” he answered.
That truth settled heavy in his chest. This wasn’t impulse. This wasn’t grief gone wild. This was planned. And whoever was behind it was still out there.
Jessa stayed close, her arms still around him. “Wynn said he didn’t hire them,” she reminded him.
“He could’ve been lying,” Deacon admitted.
She studied his face. “Why would he, though? He didn’t exactly hide the fact that he thinks we killed Lauren. He was pretty vocal about wanting payback.”
Deacon frowned. That was the part that didn’t sit right.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “He hasn’t been subtle. If he’d paid for it, you’d think he’d want us to know.”
He let that thought turn over in his mind, uncomfortable and persistent.
“What if Wynn’s just the patsy,” he said. “What if Corbin or Shade’s been stirring him up? Feeding him half-truths? Keeping him angry enough to distract us while they move in the shadows?”
He didn’t like how well that fit.
“I don’t know,” he added, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “But now we’ve got names on the gunmen. That helps.”
She nodded.
“We’ll find who hired them,” Deacon said. “There’s always a trail. Payments. Contacts. Someone made a mistake.”
And when they did, he intended to be there to catch it.
Jessa shifted back just enough to look at him. “Maybe we should keep working. Your home office is still set up.”
He shook his head. “Not right now.”
What he wanted was her. Flat out. No point pretending otherwise. But he also knew they were wrung out, running on fumes and adrenaline.
“I want a break,” he said. “Correction—we need a break.”
She searched his face, then nodded, understanding more than he’d said out loud.
He didn’t give himself time to overthink it. Deacon cupped her face and kissed her. At first it was gentle. Familiar. Comforting. A quiet promise that she wasn’t alone in this mess.
Then Jessa sighed against his mouth, her hands sliding up his chest, and the kiss deepened. Heat flared fast and sharp. The soft turned hungry. The slow turned urgent.
Deacon pulled her closer, pouring everything he hadn’t said into the kiss. Fear. Relief. Anger. Need.
Long. Hot. Deep.
For a few precious seconds, the case faded. The danger blurred at the edges.
There was just her.
Jessa’s lips parted as she said his name.
He felt her smile, even as she leaned into him, her fingers weaving around the back of his neck.
It was like they’d been waiting for this moment so long they’d gotten used to the ache of it, and now—just now—the ache dulled, replaced by something thumping, alive, reckless.
She tasted like black coffee and mint, like the dinner they’d both barely touched because the kitchen was crawling with uniforms and statements and urgency.
He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, out of habit but for what, he wasn’t sure. For the months of distance? For bringing her into a nightmare she couldn’t wake from?
“Don’t be,” she said. “Just, don’t.”
He kissed her again, and she didn’t break this time.
Instead, she knotted her hands in his shirt and pulled him back to her.
Another kiss. Way more heat. So much of it that Deacon thought it could burn him to the core.
He let his hands nestle at her hips, thumbs searching for the familiar dip over her bones.
“You don’t…” she started.
His lips parted her sentence. “I do,” he said.
She shook her head just enough to break the line of the kiss, but not the line of their bodies. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
Deacon grinned into the hush of the house. Oh, he knew all right because he was feeling the same damn thing.
Her hands left his shirt and cupped his cheeks, gentle as they’d never had to be before. She searched his face, the way someone searches a piece of paper they think might hold a secret.
He was sure there were still secrets between them, but the heat sure as hell wasn’t one of them. Deacon kissed her again. And again until the heat turned to raw, familiar urgency. Until he knew he either had to stop or haul her off to bed.
He went with option two.
Since he wasn’t in any shape to do any hauling, Deacon just kept kissing her while he started the slow, mindless walk toward his bedroom. Jessa didn’t put up any roadblocks. Just the opposite, she kept up her part of the kisses as well.
At the doorway, she finally tore her mouth from his, pressing her forehead to his chin, a quiet detour.
Deacon paused. Her breath gusted against his neck, uneven and real, and for a second, he braced himself for a rush of second thoughts, confessions, any sign of her skittishness.
Instead, Jessa slid her hands down to his butt, anchored herself, and nudged him backward with a nudge so subtle he almost missed it.
They crossed the threshold like that, faces close, feet uncoordinated, mouths already seeking their next collision. The room was dim, sheets tangled, the bed itself an afterthought in a space meant for sleeping solo. But tonight it was all a collision course.
Jessa kicked the door with the back of her foot, and it creaked in protest before thudding shut.
The darkness swallowed them, or maybe it just gave them cover, permission to fumble.
This was no choreographed striptease, no sultry lowering to the mattress.
Just a greedy tangle of limbs, denim scraping against skin, the pop and drag of buttons and zippers, and the way she laughed when he tried and failed to get her shirt over her head in one smooth move.
He muttered an apology, snagged on her hair, but she only closed her eyes and shivered as if the apology was the best part.
They finally got naked. No easy feat what with all their clothes and gear. But it was worth it to feel her bare against his skin.
She smelled exactly the way he remembered, something electric, something real.
Her skin was still flushed, blushing high on her cheekbones and throat.
He pressed his mouth to that heat, following it with his mouth, then hands, then more mouth.
Jessa laughed again, but this time it was a thinner, more desperate sound, like the laugh was trying to outpace her own heartbeat.
Deacon got them moving again to the bed, and he eased her back on the mattress. And quickly remembered that certain positions were going to pay hell with his injury. Jessa understood that, too, because she shifted positions with her on top of him.
It was perfect. She was perfect. And Deacon just let himself surrender to the heat. To her.
Until he got hit with a shred of common sense.
“Condom,” he managed to say, and he reached into the nightstand drawer and took one out.
Jessa popped it from his palm, holding it between two fingers like a dare. Wordless, she tore the wrapper and just rolled it on with a deliberate slowness that made his pulse skip offbeat.
She braced herself, palms to his chest, hair a curtain around their faces. Deacon, for a blink, didn’t recognize the woman above him. This version of Jessa was direct, intent. Owning her desire like it was a birthright.
A bead of sweat caught at her collarbone. He wanted to lick it off, taste the salt, but she was already lowering herself onto him.
He buried a groan in her shoulder, the pain in his side a fizzing afterthought compared to the bright surge of everything else. She moved with a purpose.
The rhythm was rough, then tender, then rough again, and he just tried to keep pace. Tried not to make this end too soon. But any amount of time would be too soon when it came to Jessa.
They found a groove, and this time he let her set it.
She steadied herself on his thighs and moved in a way that was bright and wild, no holding back.
And he could have sworn that, in that dark room, every time he blinked he saw her grinning, saw her not just wanting him but enjoying herself in a way he’d never seen her.
This was a new version of Jessa, somehow rolled back, distilled, made urgent and sharper by everything they’d survived since.
He lost his thoughts for a minute or an hour.
There was a moan, and he didn’t even know whose voice it was.
Jessa’s hair stuck to the sweat on his neck, and her hands scrambled for something to grip.
He gave her his own hands—fumbled, caught her palm, squeezed it.
She shuddered, a quake that rolled through her, and Deacon felt it echo, an aftershock deep in his gut.
They fell hard at the same time, finishing this together.
She slumped down onto his chest, still breathing as if she’d sprinted a marathon. Her body was boneless, and Deacon craned his neck to kiss her temple. Jessa didn’t move, didn’t even open her eyes, but her cheek twitched into a lazy smile.
It would have been easy—so easy—to make a joke, to kill the moment before it got oxygen. He almost did. Instead, he just lay there, Jessa’s heart thrumming slow against his, sweat cooling between them, and decided to remember every second.
Instead, he stayed still, Jessa’s heart beating steady against his, sweat cooling between them, and chose to etch the moment into memory.
Whatever came next, this was real.