Page 55 of Lone Star Target

God, he could be killed.

Kit resisted calling out for him to get him back inside. Resisting, too, taking hold of him and pulling into the SUV. No way was he a hundred percent, but she couldn’t add to his disadvantage by distracting him.

However, maybe she could distract the gunmen.

She threw open the passenger’s side door, and as she’d hoped the gunman leaned out, no doubt trying to shoot her as she stepped from the SUV. But she didn’t get out. She stayed put, and Angel put two bullets in the SOB’s chest.

Just as Deanna had done, the guy crumpled onto the road.

Despite having just seen his boss and comrade die, the second man didn’t back down. In fact, his gunfire increased, and he was sending a spray of bullets at Angel and them.

Kit looked on in horror as Jace bolted out of her line of sight, running to the back of the SUV. For several heart stopping moments, she thought he’d been shot, and she scrambled across the seat to try to help him.

But unlike Deanna and the now-dead gunman, Jace was very much alive.

Jace dropped to the ground, rolled to his right, and when he stopped, the weight of his upper body was on his forearms. He took aim.

And he fired, doing exactly what he’d been trained to do.

Jace ended the threat then and there.

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Chapter Twenty

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With his arm around Kit, Jace and she watched as Marvin and his lawyer looked over the papers that the district attorney had just handed over to them. Jace heard Kit drag in her breath and hold it.

A breath she released the moment that Marvin signed the plea deal.

It’d been a long time coming, and a hell of lot of people had died trying to stop this, but it was finally happening. Marvin would get a reduced sentence in exchange for information that would lead to criminal charges against Trevor, Ramsey, Deanna, and some of their business associates.

Of course, Ramsey was facing murder charges, and Deanna was dead and therefore beyond the reach of the law, but Jace figured by ending up dead, she had received ample punishment for her crimes. Now, Trevor and Ramsey would be, too.

And, yes, Marvin would as well.

His sentence had indeed been reduced by four years, but with his hot temper, Marvin would almost certainly do something in prison to get those four years, and more, added to his time behind bars.

“It’s done,” Jace heard Brandon mutter.

The young man looked as if he hadn’t slept in the forty-eight hours since his mother’s death. And maybe he hadn’t. Kit had certainly had two restless nights, and she would probably have to deal with those horrific images of the attacks for the rest of her life.

Jace hated Deanna for that.

Hated that the greedy witch had set all of this into motion. In doing so, she had come damn close to killing her own son and Kit.

When the cops and CSIs had gone through Deanna’s things, they’d found proof that she’d hired Rattler, someone she had met when he had worked for Ramsey. She had also hired Norm Pearce and his brother, Mike, and they were the now dead masked thugs that Deanna had brought with her for that final attack.

It’d been the Pearce brothers who’d killed the cop protecting Marvin. The cops had been able to confirm that with texts that they’d gotten from the dead men’s phones. Somehow, the brothers had managed to find the location of the safehouse and had barged in, killing the cop, but Marvin had fled out the back before they could kill him as well.

That part of Deanna’s plan had failed.

And so had the incidents involving Brandon.

By hiring Rattler to kidnap and do a fake attack on Brandon, Deanna had hoped to manipulate Kit’s love for her nephew. Rattler was supposed to make the threats to Brandon appear real so that Kit would cave and not testify.

However, Rattler had screwed up and had actually hurt Brandon when he’d fired through the window at his apartment. Then, he’d nearly gotten Brandon killed during the ransom drop-off. If Rattler hadn’t died that day, Deanna likely would have made the man her next target.

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