Page 6 of Lone Star Target

“Got it in one,” Ruby confirmed. “So far though, Shoemaker hasn’t spilled anything about Ramsey and likely won’t until he’s forced to do that in court two days from now. He’s almost certainly hoping that Kit won’t end up testifying, which would significantly weaken the prosecution’s case against him to the point that he would probably walk.”

Yes, and Kit didn’t want to live with that. There’d be no justice for the woman Marvin had assaulted.

Jace looked at Kit again. “And you need me to keep you alive so you can testify.” But he didn’t wait for a response. “Why me? Why not some other bodyguard?”

“Because I trust you with my life,” she said.

Kit hadn’t meant to make that sound so, well, intimate. But it was. And it was the God’s honest truth. In fact, at the moment, Jace was the only one that she did completely trust to keep her from dying.

A single muscle flickered in Jace’s jaw.

Either he’d sensed the intimacy, too, and was uncomfortable with it, or else he was realizing just how much danger she was in. What he didn’t realize, yet, was the rest of it.

The other reason why she’d needed him to be her bodyguard.

Jace was not going to like that part any more than protecting her.

“Please tell me Marvin’s in police protective custody so he can’t be murdered before he goes to trial,” Jace remarked.

“He is at a SAPD safe house, and so far, he’s been smart enough to stay put and not make any overt threats to Kit to try to intimidate her,” Ruby supplied, and she clicked the remote to bring up another picture. “Now, Jace, here’s what you’re up against on your assignment to protect Kit. This was taken in the parking lot outside her downtown law office yesterday afternoon.”

Kit hadn’t seen this particular photo, and she assumed that someone at SAPD had taken it as part of the investigation into the incident. However, she certainly recognized it. It was a photo of her car, both the driver’s and passenger’s doors open, with SAPD cops searching the area around it.

“Someone put a rattlesnake in my car,” Kit said, wishing she didn’t have a quiver in her voice. Wishing, too, that just saying it aloud didn’t cause her to feel the terror all over again when she’d gotten into her car and had heard the tell-tale sound of a rattler.

“Shit,” Jace muttered. Okay, that wasn’t a stony cop response. “Were you bit?” he asked her.

Kit shook her head. “It was coiled on the seat, and it struck out at me, but it got my purse instead.” And because she needed a moment of levity, she added, “I’m not sure if I should frame the purse for saving me or throw it in the trash because it might have a fang or two stuck in it.”

“Frame it,” Jericho suggested, joining in on the levity. Jace didn’t. He had his cop’s face back in place.

Ruby moved onto another photo. “This is the feed taken from a traffic camera right by the parking lot of Kit’s office.”

She clicked through the series of still photos that had been culled from the camera, and it showed a man wearing a black ski mask behind the wheel of a white Honda. The shots progressed to showing the vehicle moving directly toward Kit’s car, but the camera angle was off to show anything that happened in the next five minutes or so.

“The Honda was stolen about an hour before this footage,” Ruby added a moment later, “and SAPD haven’t been able to identify the driver. Understandable since at no point did he remove the mask.”

“How the hell did he get a snake in her car?” Jace asked.

“The person jimmied the lock on the passenger’s side and slipped a burlap sack onto the seat,” Ruby supplied. “Then, somehow he must have managed to open the sack without being bitten. I’m having other camera feed analyzed to see where he came from and where he went.”

Kit was hoping the techs at Maverick Ops would be able to do just that. But she was guessing the driver had taken measures to prevent being tracked to or from a place that would help identify him.

“Rattlesnake venom is rarely fatal,” Jericho threw out there. “So, was this a scare tactic?”

“Maybe not,” Jace interjected. “Kit has asthma…or rather she did,” he amended after he paused.

For some stupid reason, it made her feel good that he’d remembered that about her. Then again, she’d nearly died in his arms from an asthma attack when they’d been nineteen. So that memory would likely stick with him. Jace had saved her then by getting her inhaler from her purse and administering it himself to her since she’d been too out of it to manage it.

The following day he’d asked her to marry him.

Kit had always wondered if he’d done that as a response to nearly losing her. That had certainly played into why she’d jumped to say yes. Played into it, but that wasn’t the sole reason. She had been in love with him.

Heck, maybe she still was.

“I do have asthma, and sometimes I do have to use a rescue inhaler,” Kit explained for Jericho’s benefit. “If I’d been bitten, it’s possible that would have triggered a fatal asthma attack.” She lifted her shoulder. “Still, that would be a long shot so I guess it was a warning to try to get me to back off. I’m not,” she emphasized, looking at Jace when she said that.

Jace certainly didn’t give her any indication he was convinced of that. And she understood why. When they’d gotten married, she’d sworn to him on their late mother’s graves that she wouldn’t give into her father’s demand about the annulment.

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