Page 3 of Deadly Revenge

No!This kid wasn’t dying tonight, even if it blew her operation.

“Chattanooga PD,” she yelled, stepping away from the shed. She wanted to run to the kid, but that would only draw fire his way. “Drop your weapons and get on the ground!”

The remaining gang member from the Grand Cherokee wheeled and fired at her. Jenna barely felt the sting in her arm as she returned fire. The shooter fell to the ground. Silence filled theair. She quickly scanned the area for Phillip but didn’t see him. She turned toward Sebastian and Viper.

Sebastian grabbed the boy and held a gun to his head. “Put your gun down,” he ordered.

If Jenna did, she and the boy would die. Nothing like this should’ve happened tonight. This was supposed to be nothing more than gathering intel on Sebastian.

The boy squirmed against the drug dealer’s hold.

Her surroundings fell away as she lasered in on the two. “No. Let the kid go. Put your gun down.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t happening.”

Jenna kept her gun trained on Sebastian, but he used the boy like a shield. She couldn’t take a chance on hitting the kid.

“Don’t make matters worse for yourself by killing a kid and a cop.” When he hesitated, she added, “Give yourself up.”

A sneer formed on his lips as he turned toward her and barely shifted the gun away from the boy’s head. Almost on cue, the boy screamed and flailed his arms and legs against Sebastian’s body. “You killed my daddy!”

The boy wriggled out of his grip, and Jenna fired, hitting Sebastian in the chest. Instead of falling, he fired the automatic at her.

Her ears rang from gunfire. The last thing she remembered before blackness claimed her was the boy running for the apartment.

1

THREE YEARS LATER

A little before midnight the man pulled his vehicle off the blacktop onto an abandoned logging road in the Cumberland Plateau in Russell County, Tennessee. Seconds later he climbed out and shot a glance toward thick clouds that smothered the full moon. A gust of wind brought with it the promise of a storm. Hurriedly he slipped on the night goggles, adjusted the strap, and set out for his target.

Fifteen minutes later he emerged from the woods that abutted the property belonging to former Pearl Springs city councilman Joe Slater. He couldn’t see the back of the house, but darkened windows along the front indicated no one was up. The garage was connected to the house with a covered breezeway, and he crept toward a side door. Once inside, he found Slater’s fancy SUV parked beside his wife’s Escalade. The GMC Hummer was the only vehicle Slater drove.

He slid under the SUV and found the nut assembly that held the tie-rod in place. Using tools he’d brought with him, he pulled the cotter pin locking the castle nut in place and let it fall to the floor while he tackled the nut. Once it was off, he wrapped it in a handkerchief.

He crawled out from under the Hummer, and his heart almost stopped at the opening click of a door. He wriggled back and snapped his flashlight off a split second before the door opened. Overhead fluorescents lit up the room. He barely breathed while he slipped his hand in his pocket, where he carried a Glock subcompact semiautomatic.

Footsteps approached the passenger side of the Hummer. Plaid pajamas and leather house slippers came into view and stopped so close, he could grab Slater’s legs if he wanted to. The man muttered something under his breath about an insurance card as he opened the truck door and fumbled in the glove box.

“Told her it was there ...” Slater grumbled and slammed the door. “Don’t know why she couldn’t wait till morning.”

Less than a minute later, Slater killed the lights, plunging the garage into pitch darkness. Tension eased from the man’s body, and he took a shaky breath.That was close.

He checked his watch and forced himself to wait thirty minutes before easing out of the garage with the castle nut in his pocket. As tempting as it was to keep it for a souvenir, it might be better to toss the nut on the shoulder of the road for the cops to find—that way they would think it simply came loose and fell off.

He was halfway across the front yard when a dog yapped. An ankle biter—it figured that Slater would have the kind of dog that sneaked up behind a person and sank its teeth into their ankle when they weren’t looking.

The front porch light flickered on, revealing a large “Harrison Carter for Senate” sign in the yard. He stepped back into the shadow of the garage, his jaw clenched so tight that pain shot down his neck. After a few seconds, the dog quieted and the light went dark.

A whip-poor-will’s lonely call filled the June night as he entered the woods. Legend said that the bird was an omen of death.

Thunder rumbled, and he turned and stared at the dark house. Slater had lined his pocket with taxpayers’ money for the last time.

2

Jenna Hart sighed. The second week of June should smell like sunshine and honeysuckle, not gas fumes and death.

“What do you think happened?”

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