Page 7 of Lone Star Target

She had given in.

And any trust Jace had once had in her was long gone. Ditto for the love. But the heat was still there.

“You believe that your father or Marvin hired this man with the snake?” Jace pressed. “Because the build of the guy in that ski mask is wrong for it to be your father or Marvin. They’re both beefy, and this guy isn’t.”

Both Kit and Ruby made a sound of agreement, and it was Ruby who continued with the explanation.

“Marvin doesn’t appear to have the ready cash to hire someone, but it could have been her father who arranged this,” Ruby admitted. “After all, Ramsey was furious with Kit when he learned she’d called the Bandera Bluffs’ cops on Marvin. But the ski-masked guy with the snake could have also been a pal of Marvin’s. Because if Kit can’t testify about the attack, then Marvin won’t need to spill about his former boss.”

Clearly, that didn’t please Jace because he muttered more profanity under his breath.

“Or it could have been someone else who hired him,” Ruby tacked onto that a heartbeat later.

Jace definitely looked ready to jump on that, but Jericho spoke before he could voice anything. “Any other attempts to kill you?” he asked Kit.

“Possibly,” she answered. Probably, Kit silently amended. “I have an older brother, Trevor, who helps run my father’s business. This morning he came by my office to try to talk me out of resigning as Ramsey’s attorney. While he was there, he drank some coffee, and he became ill. I called an ambulance, and when his blood was tested, it showed traces of a poison.”

Jericho and Jace exchanged glances. “Were you the intended target or was Trevor?” Jericho asked.

“Probably me since Trevor poured the coffee from the pot in my office. I’d poured myself a cup, too, but I hadn’t drunk any of it yet.” Kit paused. “SAPD is investigating who had access to my office. It’s possible someone broke in last night and put the poison in the coffee, the cups or the pot.”

“Is Trevor all right?” Jace asked.

She nodded. “He’s been discharged from the hospital.” And now, Kit had to voice the unthinkable. “There was only a small amount of poison in his system. Not nearly enough to kill him. In fact, it was barely enough to make him sick.”

Kit waited for Jace to process that. It didn’t take him long.

“You believe Trevor might want you dead?” Jace asked.

“It’s possible,” she managed to say. “Jace, I’m so sorry,” she blurted out.

Of course, that confused him, and he was about to realize that she wasn’t apologizing for someone trying to kill her.

Kit took the phone from her pocket. Not her phone. But Trevor’s. Or rather one of his phones anyway.

“This fell out of my brother’s pocket when the EMTs were loading him into the ambulance, and I picked it up,” Kit explained. “It’s not his usual phone. His usual has a case with the family company’s logo on it.”

“It’s a burner,” Ruby provided, her tone as grim as Kit’s own. “And since the screen wasn’t locked, Kit was able to read the text.”

Jace leaned in, his gaze skirting over the words. Words that would no doubt feel like a punch to him. At least that’d been her reaction. A horrible punch to the gut that had robbed her of her breath and had sent her straight to Maverick Ops’ headquarters.

“Everything’s in place,” Jace read aloud. “Our cop is in the loop, and Jace Malley will be taken tonight. If your sister won’t try to save him and if she still wants to tell all, then Malley dies right along with her.”

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Chapter Four

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Well, shit.

That was Jace’s first reaction, followed by a whole bunch of other emotions. Anger. Really bad, pissed-off anger that someone was targeting Kit and apparently planning on using him to get her to cave.

Yeah, that riled him to the core.

But so did that part about a dirty cop, and he wished the hell he knew the cop’s name so he could go after him. Soon, he would learn that name and do the going after. For now though, there was a more immediate problem.

Kit.

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