Page 9 of Crossfire Creek Vengeance

She swallowed hard, scanning the shadows, the muzzle flashes sparking through the trees. “We survive,” she whispered. “Long enough to make a plan.”

Another bullet slammed into the dirt so close it sprayed her cheek with grit.

Jessa pressed lower, pulling Deacon with her, shielding as much of his body as she could. Bullets chewed through the fallen log they hid behind, splintering wood into their hair and clothes.

“Jess—” Deacon rasped, trying to angle his gun around the log.

“No,” she hissed, dragging his arm down. “You fire blind in this, you’ll give them a clean shot at us.”

More rounds cracked through the trees, kicking up leaves, snatching branches off overhead limbs. Corbin returned three sharp shots from behind his boulder, but the barrage didn’t slow.

“Got at least two shooters,” Corbin shouted over the chaos.

Great. Because one wasn’t enough tonight.

Another bullet slammed into the log so hard Jessa was surprised it hadn’t torn right through. Deacon coughed, pain rippling through him, and she tightened her grip on his shoulder.

A beat later, the gunfire faltered, only for a breath, a heartbeat, but enough for Jessa’s instincts to flare. Something was changing. Then, she heard it.

A low rumble. Distant at first. Growing louder.

An engine.

Jessa snapped her head toward the direction of the original muzzle flashes. Through the trees, barely visible between the trunks, a pair of headlights flicked on—high, sharp, slicing across the dark like a blade.

A vehicle. Off-road. Fast.

“Shit,” Corbin muttered from behind his cover. “He’s bolting.”

More branches cracked, heavy footfalls pounding through frost and leaves. Someone running hard, fast, toward that waiting vehicle.

The engine revved. Tires churned dirt and gravel. The roar climbed, echoing through the trees.

Jessa lifted her head just enough to see a dark SUV swing around, fishtail slightly, then shoot toward the old access road. Too far to make out the driver.

Too fast to target.

Her heart pounded, her pulse a fierce drumbeat in her ears as the taillights vanished into the night.

Gunfire stopped.

Silence crashed down around them. Cold, brutal, final.

Corbin rose slowly from behind his boulder, jaw tight, eyes sharp and furious. “Son of a bitch.”

Jessa pushed herself up on shaking arms, scanning the empty clearing where muzzle flashes had once sparked. The night felt hollow now, heavy with the knowledge settling like lead in her stomach.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “We had him, and he’s gone.”

Deacon leaned his head back against the frost-coated log, breath ragged. “No. He had us.”

He was right. And now Wynn had gotten away. Again. With a head start, and a target still on both their backs.

Chapter Three

The antiseptic sting hit first, then the tight pull of the final stitch. Deacon gritted his teeth and forced himself not to flinch as the nurse at the small county hospital snipped the thread and smoothed a bandage over the fresh line of sutures. The cut along his side burned like fire, but it was nothing compared to the pounding behind his ribs.

“Try not to move too much,” the nurse, Selma Lambert, instructed. “Those stitches will hold, but only if you give them a chance.”