The Marshal's Justice

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.