The Marshal's Justice

Chase paused, trying to brace himself for how she was going to react to the next thing he had to tell her.

“There was blood on the floor.”

That caused her breath to shudder, and she staggered back. Maybe would have fallen if Chase hadn’t caught her. He hooked his arm around her waist, putting them body to body again. Also giving him feelings he didn’t want to have.

Lust.

Not an especially good time for it, but it always seemed to happen with April. Chase cursed it and wished there was some way in hell he could make himself immune to her.

The Marshal’s
Justice
Delores Fossen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DELORES FOSSEN, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received a Booksellers’ Best Award and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She was also a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. You can contact the author through her web page at www.deloresfossen.com.

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

Copyright

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.”

Chapter Two

April felt the fresh wave of panic slam into her like a Mack truck.

First the baby. Then Deanne’s death. Now this.

The emotions were too raw and strong, overpowering her so much that they were hard to fight. But April knew she had no choice except to keep fighting.

If she gave in to it, her baby might be lost forever.

Despite possibly destroying evidence, April rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Looking for anything that would tell her where he was holding the baby.

No wallet. No ID. No photos. No scraps of paper with details of any kind.

Nothing.

Tamping down the panic, she forced herself to get to her feet. Chase helped by taking hold of her arm. April didn’t have to look at his expression to know that he wanted answers. And he wanted them now.

However, April didn’t have some of those answers, especially the ones Chase would want most.

Even though Chase still had hold of her, April started toward Deanne. Yes, she knew the woman was dead. April had seen her fall after taking the bullet. Had also seen her talking with Chase moments before it looked as if she took her last breath. April didn’t know what, or how much, Deanne had told him, but she figured she’d soon find out.

“Who has the baby?” he snapped. “And when was she taken?”

April had to shake her head again, and she motioned toward the dead man. “Whoever he was working for took her. Around midnight two masked gunmen broke into my house, held me at gunpoint and demanded to know where Quentin was. When I said I didn’t know, they kidnapped the baby.”

A sound came deep from within his chest. Not a good sound, either. Pure anger. “And you didn’t call me?”

She’d braced herself for the question, and the anger. Or so she’d thought. Hard to brace herself, though, for that kind of emotion.

“The kidnapper said if I contacted you, anyone in your family or anyone in law enforcement, I’d never see the baby again.” She hadn’t wanted to believe that, but April hadn’t been able to dismiss it, either. “They said they’d be in touch soon and left.”

“So, you called Deanne instead.” Chase didn’t sound happy about that at all. Of course, nothing about this situation was going to make him happy.

“Yes, I thought it would be safe for her to come. I figured no one would be trailing Deanne to get to me. Especially after things ended so badly between us.”

Well, it’d ended badly between Deanne and April’s brother anyway. Deanne had been the one to turn Quentin in. Of course, in doing so Deanne had turned in April, as well.

“As a CI, Deanne dealt with dangerous thugs like the ones who took the baby,” April explained. “And she did come right away when I called her.”

“Because she felt guilty for what happened,” Chase supplied. “She shouldn’t have. Both Quentin and you made your own beds.”

Since it was true and there was no way to make Chase see the legal shades of gray that had gotten her to that point, April just continued with her explanation. “I waited for a ransom demand, or any kind of communication from the kidnappers. And about an hour and a half ago, someone finally called and said for me to come to the Appaloosa Creek Bridge, that there’d be instructions for getting the baby back.”

Chase didn’t come out and tell her she’d been stupid, but what he felt was written all over his face.

A face that shared a lot of features with their daughter.

Same light brown hair. Same deep blue eyes. It both broke April’s heart and warmed it to see those features on her precious baby.

“I guess Deanne got spooked and called me?” Chase asked.

Chase was not going to like this, either. “Not quite. When I got to the bridge, the kidnapper was waiting for me. The same one you just killed. But he said he wouldn’t give me the baby unless you came to the bridge, too. I tried to talk him out of that, but he insisted it was the only way.”

She’d been right. Chase didn’t like that. Because it meant she had lured him there.

“So, you had Deanne make the call,” Chase said.

April nodded. “I knew if I called, you’d have too many questions, and I wouldn’t have had time to get into it. Like now.” She paused. “Are your brothers on the way?”

Chase didn’t jump to respond, but he did follow her as she approached Deanne’s body. “Yeah. They should be here any minute. How safe are we out here?” He took out his phone and fired off a text. To one of his brothers, no doubt, so they could find them in these woods.

“I’m not sure if it’s safe at all,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t wanted to get you involved in this, but I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had choices. Everybody does.”

They weren’t just talking about the baby now but her past. A past that Chase was probably sorry had included him.

“Now tell me what the hell happened here,” he insisted.

She would. But where to start? The past sixteen hours had been one nightmare after another. Though Chase would want to know the details prior to that. Especially one detail.

The baby.

The one they’d conceived nine months ago when they’d had to face yet another nightmare. Landing in bed with him had been a lapse in judgment. Or Chase would consider it a lapse, anyway. Yes, they’d been attracted to each other since they first met, but Chase considered her a common criminal. And in many ways, he was right.

“I gave birth two months early,” she said.

April tried to rein in her emotions. The fear. The hatred for the person who’d put all of this in motion. Hard to rein in anything, though, when she knelt beside Deanne and touched her.

Dead.

Of course, she already knew that, but it sickened her to confirm it for herself. The tears came. No way to stop them, but she tried to brush them away. Later, she’d grieve for the woman who’d lost her life way too soon and had died trying to help April.

Later, April would do a lot of things.

After she figured out how to untangle this mess that could cost her the baby.

Chase knelt, too. So they were face-to-face. And even though he tossed some glares at her, he continued to keep watch around them.

Always the lawman.

A good lawman, too. For all the good it’d done. It hadn’t been good enough to help Deanne or their daughter today.

“Why didn’t you have someone call me and tell me you’d had the baby?” he snapped.

Yet another long story, and she was already dealing with too much to bring those memories this close to the surface. “Bailey...that’s what I named her...was a preemie, and at first she had trouble breathing on her own. She had to spend most of the time since her birth in a neonatal unit. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but she’s fine now.”

At least April prayed she was.

And the possibility that she wasn’t fine brought on the tears again. Sweet heaven, she was so tired of crying. So tired of being terrified. So tired of not having her precious baby in her arms.

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me.” Chase’s tone didn’t soften despite the tears, but he finally cursed and slid his hand over her back. For a very brief moment. Probably in an attempt to comfort her.

Too bad it didn’t work.

April figured she could use some serious comforting right now, but comfort wasn’t going to help her find the baby.

“I didn’t tell you at first because I didn’t want to risk anyone following you to the hospital,” she said. “Because I delivered so early, we didn’t have nearly enough security in place for you to come running to me.”

It was the truth. But it wouldn’t be a truth that Chase wanted to hear. Soon, he’d press her for a better explanation.

But that had to wait.

“The gunman and I left our cars by the Appaloosa Creek Bridge,” April told him. So that’s the direction she headed. “Maybe there’s something inside his car that’ll help me find Bailey.”

“Not me. Us. You’re not looking for Bailey alone.”

He hesitated when saying their daughter’s name, the way someone would hesitate when pronouncing a foreign word. Maybe because he was just getting accustomed to the idea of fatherhood.

An idea that he’d struggled with for months.

Now, here it was, slugging him in the face. Crushing him, too. Because it was certainly crushing her.

“Maybe the baby is in the kidnapper’s car?” Chase suggested.

“No. Believe me, I checked. I even looked in the trunk when he opened it to take out an extra gun and some ammo.” There’d been absolutely no sign of the baby.

Chase walked in step beside her. “What about Deanne—was she faking being afraid so she could lure me here? Or was the gunman actually threatening to kill her then?

“Deanne’s fear was real. And warranted. The thug said the only way I could get Bailey back was for you to come, and that if I didn’t agree, he’d kill Deanne. I thought we’d be able to overpower him or something. I also didn’t think he’d want you dead. Not right off the bat like that anyway.”

She’d been wrong about a lot of things. Definitely a stupid plan.

“The thug made me put on these clothes,” she said, motioning at the all-black garb. “Deanne, too. I’m not sure why exactly, but I think he wanted to make you believe you were surrounded by hired guns.”

And the thug knew that Deanne and April couldn’t just shoot him. Because he was the only one who knew the baby’s location.

Still glaring, Chase cursed. Not general profanity, either. Like the glare, it was aimed specifically at her. But this time, the glare didn’t last as long as the others. That’s because Chase stopped and, without warning, latched on to her and hauled her behind a tree.

Had he heard something? Because she certainly hadn’t. Of course, with her heartbeat thumping in her ears, it was hard to hear much of anything.

The moments crawled by, but Chase still didn’t budge. “Why did that goon want to find Quentin?” he whispered. Obviously, he intended to use this waiting time to fill in some of the blanks. But in this case, she had just as many blanks as Chase did.

April had to shake her head. “My guess is Tony Crossman wants to settle up things with Quentin and me.”

Which wasn’t much of a guess at all because Quentin and she were responsible for putting the king of thugs, Tony Crossman, behind bars. Their testimony, along with the testimony of Crossman’s CPA, had put the CPA, Quentin and April into WITSEC, too.

However, even behind bars Crossman still had plenty of money and resources, and he’d apparently used both to come after her and take the baby. There was only one thing that could have gotten her to cooperate with one of Crossman’s thugs.

And that was Bailey.

“I haven’t seen my brother the entire six months I’ve been in WITSEC,” she added when Chase got them moving again.

Something Chase probably already knew because that’d been the plan all along. It would make it hard for Crossman’s henchmen to find Quentin and her if they were in different places leading separate lives.

Chase mumbled more profanity. “Someone probably hacked into WITSEC files to find Bailey and you. We thought we had a breach not long ago, but it turned out to be a false alarm.”

April had heard about that possible breach, and it’d involved yet someone else connected to Crossman. A criminal named Marcos Culver, who’d been running one of Crossman’s side businesses of money laundering. But that man had never been a threat to her. And besides, Culver was dead now.

“I need to find out who could have hacked into WITSEC,” Chase continued, “and try to link that person back to Crossman. Or anyone else who might be involved.”

Even though he didn’t spell it out, April knew what he meant. Chase believed her brother could be involved in this.

And maybe Quentin was.

After all, April would have paid a huge ransom to get Bailey back. Chase would have as well once he’d learned what had happened, and the one thing her brother probably needed right now was cash since he’d blown through his trust fund that their grandparents had set up for both of them. Still, something like this seemed extreme even for Quentin.

“Stop,” Chase said, and without warning he yanked her behind another tree.

Again, April hadn’t heard anything, but clearly he had because Chase lifted his head, listening. Finally, she heard the footsteps. Someone was coming up on them fast.

“Your brothers?” she whispered.

Chase shook his head.

April leaned out just a little and spotted the man skulking his way toward them. Definitely not a Crockett lawman. This guy was dressed all in black and was wearing a ski mask.