Lone Star Christmas Mission (Hard Justice #9.5)

Chapter One

Cash Whitaker silently cursed when he stepped into the house and saw the blood. Blood that was nearly the same color as the shattered red Christmas ornaments next to it.

Don’t let it be her blood . Don’t let it be Kayla’s .

Those were the thoughts, the prayers, and the pleas that were pulsing in his head. The fear was ripping through him the same way that someone had torn through this living room.

With his Glock in a death grip in his hand, Cash kept moving, kept listening. Kept watching for a kidnapper, or a possible killer, as he threaded his way through the carnage.

The sofa and chairs had long, jagged cuts in them, exposing the fluffy white filling that looked like snow. What was left of the Christmas tree lay smashed and battered on the hardwood floor. The wrapped presents around it had been stomped on, the ribbons and contents crushed.

With the exception of the overhead light, every possible glass object and bit of decor in the room had been broken. The mirror above the fireplace. The windows and lamps. The Santa and angel figurines that he guessed had once been on the mantel and end tables.

Had the kidnapper left the overhead light intact so Cash would have no trouble seeing that blood and the destruction?

Maybe.

The mess could have been designed to be a distraction. And it was. But setting up a distraction was far better than an out of control rage from some strung-out asshole who might have taken Kayla.

Cash saw more blood, splattered drops of it that led out of the living room and toward the hall. Cash followed the grisly trail, still listening for any signs of life.

There weren’t any.

But he refused to believe she could be dead. No, Kayla had to be alive. He’d already failed her once. A big assed failure that had crushed her soul. And his. He couldn’t fail her again.

“I’ve got the money,” he lied, calling out to…well, whoever the hell had sent him the text.

Come alone. No cops. No Maverick Ops buddies. Bring 50K to 614 Shelter Lane by midnight or Kayla Morgan dies .

The text had arrived at 11:30 pm. Definitely not enough time for him to gather a ransom demand and get here before that deadline. And Cash had a bad feeling that the money hadn’t been a strong motive in the kidnapper getting him to come here. No, this felt like more.

Like a sick kind of déjà vu.

Cash had thankfully been familiar with both the rural address outside of San Antonio and the home owner, Kayla Morgan. Yes, he knew her, and he couldn’t let her die. That’s why he’d started the half hour drive straight here from his house in the Texas Hill Country to a rural area just outside of San Antonio. Along the way, he’d also called his boss, Ruby Maverick, head of an elite security force, Maverick Ops.

Of course, Ruby had insisted he wait for backup, and as one of her operatives, Cash would have normally followed her orders to a tee.

Well, to a tee-ish anyway.

Sometimes, criminals and therefore the missions couldn’t play by the rules or have the luxury of backup. It was already three minutes until midnight, and if he waited, it’d be way too late.

He’d done plenty of dangerous solo missions before. First in military special forces and for the last five years, missions for Maverick Ops. And he had a plan. Not an especially good one. But it was the best that he had been able to come up with at such short notice. He would attempt to negotiate with the kidnapper and free Kayla. If negotiations failed, he’d killed the SOB who had taken her.

Cash kept moving. And saw more blood.

These weren’t just drops but smears as if someone had maybe stepped in it while on the move. Perhaps while running to try to escape. The sight of it tightened his gut even more, and he had to shut down the thoughts that the worst had already happened.

Again.

That déjà vu shit was kicking in again.

Cash just kept walking, letting the blood lead him to a room at the end of the hall and to an open door. Kayla’s bedroom, he knew. He hadn’t actually been inside it, but he’d glanced in it once when he’d visited her here a year ago to exchange Christmas presents.

The lights were off in the room, but the curtains and blinds were both fully open on the trio of floor-to-ceiling windows. There was enough moonlight filtering in through the trio of windows to provide some illumination.

And some damn creepy effects.

Kayla’s house was way out in the sticks on acres of ranch land jammed with trees. Some smack dab right outside the windows. That moonlight was spearing through the winter-bare branches and creating a sort of spooky-assed shadow puppet show of skeletal fingers reaching out for him. Those shadow fingers skittered and snaked over the walls, bed, and floor.

Bringing up his gun and steeling himself for an attack from the kidnapper, Cash stepped into the bedroom and immediately whirled to his right when he heard the muffled sound.

“Hell,” he spat out.

Kayla .

She was slumping sideways in the doorway of a walk-in closet that was pitch black. Cash couldn’t tell if there was anyone behind her. But he had no trouble seeing her face. The fear.

Oh, and that blasted blood.

Along with it being splattered pretty much everywhere on her clothes and hands, it was streaming down the side of her head and smeared into her blonde hair. She had a strip of duct tape over her mouth, and there were plastic cuffs securing her wrists. Despite the cuffs, she was holding something.

A Bowie knife.

The blade was glistening with more blood.

Cash hurried to her, dropping down on his knees beside her and pulling off that tape from her mouth while he continued to keep watch around them. “You’re hurt,” he blurted.

She muttered his name, and the tears spilling down her cheek cut through the blood. “I knew you’d come,” she muttered on a rise of breath. There was both hope and desperate worry in that whisper.

Of course, he’d come. He would have literally walked through fire and anything else to get to her.

“Who did this to you?” he asked, easing the knife from her grip so he could use it to free her from the plastic cuffs.

Kayla was trembling when she tipped her head to the pitch darkness behind her. Shit . Was the kidnapper right here, hiding and waiting to strike?

Hoping he wasn’t hurting her more than she already was, Cash took hold of Kayla’s arm and dragged her out of the closet doorway and into the bedroom, positioning himself between her and whatever monster was inside.

With the fury of a million fires raging through him, he felt around the closet wall for the light switch, knowing that he was destroying what was essentially a crime scene, and he didn’t care. Cash had one goal—to deal with the sonofabitch who’d done this to Kayla.

He finally located the switch, flipping it so hard that it probably came close to breaking, and the overhead light flared on, blinding him at first. But not for long. His vision quickly adjusted, and what he saw first was the spray of blood. It was every damn where. On the clothes hanging on each side, the carpet, the walls. Even on the ceiling.

Cash had no trouble figuring out the source.

A man dressed in a blood-drenched Santa suit was sprawled out on the floor. And this Santa was very much dead.