Read the book: «The Marshal's Justice»

Chapter One

The shot cracked through the air. Mercy. That was definitely not what Marshal Chase Crockett wanted to hear.

Or see.

The bullet slammed into the woman he’d just spotted. Her gaze connected with Chase’s a split second before she crumpled to the ground.

If she wasn’t dead, she soon would be. Chase was sure of it.

He cursed when he couldn’t go out in the clearing where she’d fallen and pull her out of the path of more gunfire. Cursed, too, that he hadn’t been able to stop that bullet from hitting her in the first place.

How the devil had this happened?

He didn’t have time to try to figure that out because the next bullet came right at him, and Chase had no choice but to dive behind a pile of rocks. Maybe he’d get a chance soon to return fire and make the shooter pay for what he had just done.

And what he’d done was shoot the criminal informant, Deanne McKinley, on the banks of Appaloosa Creek. A woman who had phoned Chase earlier and begged him to help her. If he’d just gotten her call a few minutes sooner, maybe he could have arrived in time to stop this.

Whatever this was.

Clearly, someone wanted Deanne dead, and now whoever had attacked her was shooting at Chase, too.

“If you want to get out of this alive, you might as well give up now,” the gunman shouted.

Chase didn’t recognize the voice, but he’d caught a glimpse of a guy wearing a ski mask before the man shot Deanne and then darted out of sight. He wasn’t even sure if the idiot was yelling at him or Deanne. Chase didn’t have nearly enough info, other than the call a half hour ago from Deanne to tell him she was in trouble. She said someone was trying to kill her, that she needed his help.

Help was exactly what Chase had intended to give her when he’d arrived.

So far, all he’d managed to do was dodge bullets, but if he had anything to say about that, things were about to change.

Chase heard Deanne’s hoarse moan, and she moved her hand to her chest. Alive. He had to do something now to keep it that way.

He didn’t know the exact location of the shooter, but Chase fired two shots in the guy’s general direction. In the same motion, he scrambled toward Deanne to try to pull her away.

Basically, it was a high-risk move with little chance of succeeding.

Or at least it should have been.

But another set of shots blasted through the air. Definitely not ones that Chase or the gunman had fired. They’d come from a cluster of trees about thirty feet away, and the bullets had been aimed at the shooter.

Maybe backup had arrived a little sooner than Chase had thought it would. Or it could be a hunter or nearby rancher who’d heard sounds of the attack and had come to help. Either way, he’d take it.

Chase grabbed hold of Deanne’s arm and pulled her behind a tree. It wasn’t much cover, but it was better than leaving her out in the open.

He fired off another shot to keep the gunman at bay and sent a quick text requesting an ambulance along with the backup. It would likely be one of his brothers who responded to his request since all three of them were in local law enforcement. Chase only hoped the backup and the ambulance arrived in time.

It’d be close.

Deanne was bleeding out from the gunshot she’d taken to the chest. Chase did his best to add some pressure to the wound, but it was hard to do that without constricting her breathing. He didn’t want her to suffocate.

More shots came from the gunman.

The idiot was moving closer to them, no doubt coming in for the kill.

Deanne mumbled something, something that Chase didn’t catch, and without taking his attention off the area where the shooter was positioned, he leaned in closer, hoping to hear what Deanne was trying to say.

“Help,” Deanne whispered.

“Help is on the way,” he assured her. Chase wanted to say how sorry he was for what had happened to her. Deanne had a criminal past, but she didn’t deserve this.

Deanne shook her head. “No, help her.” Her gaze drifted in the direction where those two other shots had been fired.

Each word she spoke was a struggle, and by the time she was done, Deanne was gasping for air. Still, she managed to say one last thing.

Something that twisted his stomach into a tight, hard knot.

No more breaths from Deanne. Her chest just stopped moving, and Chase could only watch the life drain from her eyes. Watch and mentally repeat what Deanne had said to him with her dying breath.

April’s in trouble.

His gaze whipped in the direction of the second shooter. The person was still hidden behind a tree, but Chase had the sickening feeling that he knew who’d fired those two shots at the gunman.

Was April really out there?

Just the thought of it twisted and tightened that knot even more. There was plenty of bad blood between April and him. But a different kind of connection, too. One that would last a lifetime.

Because April was pregnant with Chase’s baby.

However, April shouldn’t be here. Couldn’t be here. She was in WITSEC, tucked away somewhere safe with a new name and a location that even Chase didn’t know. A necessary precaution so that no one could trace her by following him.

April was also nine months pregnant, ready to deliver any day now.

He waited until the original shooter fired another shot, and he used that to help him pinpoint the guy’s position. Chase fired. He also got moving right away, heading toward those trees where the second shooter had been. Maybe he wouldn’t find April there after all.

But if she was, then that meant something had gone wrong.

He tried to recall every word of the short phone conversation he’d had earlier with Deanne. She’d been frantic, said she was in her car, somewhere near the Appaloosa Creek Bridge, and that she was being tailed by a gunman wearing a ski mask.

Had Deanne said anything else?

No.

Definitely nothing about April being with her.

So, maybe he was wrong about April, and Deanne’s words were merely the mumblings of a dying woman. And maybe that was one of his brothers out there helping him with the shots.

Chase scrambled his way through the trees and the underbrush, cursing the wet spring weather that’d clogged this part of the woods with mud and briars. It slowed him down.

He ducked behind a tree, fired off another shot and then had to reload. It was his last magazine so he’d have to be careful with the shots now and make every one count.

Whoever was returning fire at Deanne’s killer didn’t seem to have the problem of not enough ammunition. The person continued to shoot, spacing out the shots several seconds apart.

“Jericho?” Chase whispered, hoping his brother, the sheriff, was the one returning fire behind the sprawling oak that was now just a few yards away.

No answer.

And if it’d been Jericho, or his other brothers, Levi or Jax, they would have responded somehow to let him know not to fire in their direction.

Chase kept moving, working his way through the muck, and he finally got in position to spot someone. It was late afternoon and some sunlight still hung in the sky, but the woods created deep shadows. There was nowhere near enough light for him to see the person’s face, but whoever it was wore all black.

He risked lifting his head just a little, to see how this shadowy figure would respond, but he or she didn’t even seem to acknowledge Chase.

“I’m coming closer,” Chase warned the person, hoping this didn’t turn out to be a big mistake, and he scurried toward the tree.

Thank God the person didn’t shoot him, but this definitely wasn’t one of his brothers.

Not April, either.

Because while he still couldn’t make out much of the person’s face, he could see the silhouette of the body. Whoever this was darn sure wasn’t nine months pregnant.

Chase scrambled the last few feet to the tree and landed on the ground right next to the person who was kneeling. His heart skipped a beat or two though when he saw the ski mask. Identical to the one worn by the other shooter.

Hell.

He brought up his gun. Took aim. Just as the person shoved up the ski mask to reveal her face.

April.

Yes, it was her, all right. There was no mistaking her now. The black hair, the wide blue eyes. But she didn’t have her attention fixed on him. It was on the other shooter.

“Is Deanne okay?” she asked on a rise of breath.

“No. She’s dead.”

April had no reaction to that. Well, none that he could pick out in the dusky light anyway. A surprise. Deanne and she weren’t friends. Far from it after everything that’d happened, but still April had to be shocked by a woman’s murder.

However, reactions and that ski mask weren’t his only concern about this situation. Chase couldn’t stop himself from looking in the direction of her stomach again. Definitely flat.

“The baby?” he managed to say.

His baby. The one April should have been giving birth to any day now. But she certainly didn’t have a newborn with her, and she didn’t look as if she’d just delivered, either.

“Play along,” she whispered, a split second before she hooked her left arm around his neck, dragged him in front of her and put her gun to his head.

“I have Marshal Crockett,” April called out to someone.

“What the devil’s going on here?” Chase snarled, and he shoved her away from him.

“You have to play along,” April repeated. Definitely not the tone of a terrified woman on the run. Nor was that a weak grip she put on him when she yanked him back against her.

Damn. Was April up to her old tricks again?

“Put down your gun,” she added in a whisper. “And whatever you do, don’t shoot him.”

Chase didn’t get a chance to ask her anything else because he heard the footsteps. Heavy, hurried ones. And he soon spotted the guy who’d been firing shots at him.

The very snake who’d killed Deanne.

Chase didn’t put down his gun as April had demanded, but she shoved his hand by his side. Maybe so that his weapon would be out of sight. Or perhaps because this was some kind of sick game she was playing.

The killer came right toward them, and the moment he spotted April—and the gun she had to Chase’s head—he lifted his ski mask.

And he smiled.

Chase didn’t recognize him. The guy was a stranger, but judging from his sheer size and the hardened look on his scarred face, this was a hired thug. He certainly didn’t look like a man ready to negotiate surrender, not with that Kevlar vest and multiple guns holstered on his bulky body.

“Good job,” the guy told April. “Well, sorta good. That wasn’t you shooting at me, now, was it?”

“I aimed over your head. I wanted Marshal Crockett to think I was trying to kill you so he’d come to me. It worked.”

Oh, man. Was this really a trap? Possibly. But Chase kept going back to April’s play along comment.

What kind of sick plan was this?

The man stared at her. A long time. As if he might challenge what she’d just told him. Then, he shrugged. “Guess it did work. Now take a hike so I can finish this. Unless you’d rather watch while I have a word with your ex-lover. It might involve a bullet or two.”

Shaking her head, April stood. Slowly. “No, I’d rather skip that part. Just give me what you promised, and I’ll leave.”

Chase stood, too, hoping it wasn’t a mistake that he hadn’t already put an end to this hulking clown. Or that he’d semi-trusted April when she’d rattled off those whispered instructions about not shooting the guy.

“Give me what you promised,” April demanded to the man.

Now Chase heard some emotion in her voice. She was scared. Which meant whatever the heck was going on here was possibly about to take an even worse turn than it already had.

“You’ll have to wait a little longer,” the man said. He motioned for her to leave. “I’ll meet you at your car, and you’ll get it then.”

Chase still didn’t have a clue what this conversation was about, but he had no doubts that this bozo was about to try to kill him.

“You promised.” April’s voice was trembling now.

The man smiled again. There was no friendliness or humor in it. “And it’s a promise I’ll keep, okay? Just not right now at this second. I need to have that little chat with this cowboy cop first while you hurry along.”

April stayed put, and even though Chase kept his attention on the man and couldn’t see her, he thought she might be glaring at Deanne’s killer. Chase was certainly doing his own share of glaring at both of them.

“I need you to find somebody in WITSEC,” the killer told Chase. “April claimed she wasn’t able to help, but since you’re a marshal, I’m betting you got access to stuff that she doesn’t. I need to find Quentin Landis.”

Chase groaned. He shouldn’t have been surprised this was about Quentin. It usually was when April was involved.

Because Quentin was her brother.

Along with being a criminal. And the only reason Chase had met April to begin with was because he’d been investigating Quentin. At the time he had thought April was innocent and had no knowledge of her brother’s criminal activity. He’d been dead wrong about that.

“You expect me just to tell you where he is?” Chase asked, making sure he let this jerk know that wasn’t going to happen.

Quentin might be scum, but he was in WITSEC after turning state’s evidence in an upcoming murder trial, and it was part of Chase’s job to make sure that even scum stayed protected. Whether they deserved it or not.

The gunman stared at him. “Yeah. I didn’t figure you’d cooperate, but we had to try, didn’t we? Maybe if I put a few bullets in your kneecaps, you’ll recall something.”

“We?” Chase spared April a glance, but she only shook her head. He had no idea what that head shake meant.

Nor did he have time to figure it out.

“No!” April shouted. Not at Chase but at the gunman.

The gunman lifted his Glock and aimed it at Chase. Chase was doing the same to the killer with his own Smith & Wesson.

Chase beat him to it.

He didn’t fire into the Kevlar vest, but instead he double-tapped two shots to the gunman’s head. And Chase didn’t miss. The man dropped like a sack of rocks just as Chase had intended.

With that taken care of, Chase turned to April. “Now, what the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

But she didn’t answer. Probably because of the hoarse sob that tore from her mouth. “Oh, God.” And she kept repeating it.

She dropped to her knees and she grabbed the dead man by the shoulders, lifting his torso off the ground. “Tell me where she is!” April yelled. “Tell me.” The sobbing got worse when she put her fingers to his neck. “He’s dead. He can’t be dead.”

It wasn’t exactly the reaction Chase had expected since she knew this snake was a killer and had been prepared to kill again.

She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her eyes. “The baby.”

All right. That got his attention. “Our baby?” Chase asked.

April nodded, and her breath shattered. “Someone took her. And that dead man was my best hope at finding our daughter.”