Page 12 of Lone Star Christmas Mission

Since she’d followed his career, she knew he’d been a decorated Navy SEAL and had followed that up with an equally stellar career for Maverick Ops.

“Harvin must be delusional or cocky to go after a former SEAL,” Kayla concluded.

“He’s both,” Cash was quick to admit. “And he’s very dangerous. Added to that, we can’t exactly put out a warning for anyone in a Santa suit to be careful. It’s Christmas Eve.”

Cash was right. There’d be hundreds of Santas out and about. No way to protect them all, which meant Harvin likely would have no trouble coming up with his next victim.

Or rather his lure.

Because that’s what the next one would likely be. A way to get Cash and her to do thatsurrender.

The next wave of emotions surprised her. Kayla had figured on some fear, anger, and panic coming along with the threat of death. But other things flashed into her head.

“After I just kissed you, I wasn’t thinking about Harvin,” she admitted. “Or the past. I was thinking that I might finally be ready to start living again. An actual life without all this baggage and nightmarish smudges.”

Kayla didn’t say the rest of what she’d been thinking. No, the timing sucked for him to hear all of that. But she had been considering that she wanted that actual life to be with Cash.

The silence came, settling between them. But not for long. His phone buzzed, and Kayla got a fresh sense of dread. The dread went up when he took out his cell from his pocket, and she saw Ruby’s name on the screen.

Cash answered it and immediately said, “Ruby, you’re on speaker. Kayla is right next to me.” He’d no doubt added that in case Ruby could soften whatever she was about to say.

“We just got a call from Harvin,” Ruby explained. “He’s set up another live feed on the dark web, and he wants Kayla and you to tune in.” She paused. “Brace yourself. He has another victim.”

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Chapter Five

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Hell. Cash had hoped they’d have more time, that Harvin would have a cooling off period from his last kill. A cooling off that would give Ruby and the Maverick Ops’ search team a chance to find the asshole and stop him before he could murder anyone else.

But Harvin apparently wasn’t taking a break.

Worse, the sonofabitch wanted everyone, including Kayla and him, to be witnesses. Of course, Harvin intended for them to be much more than mere observers. This live feed was no doubt his way of throwing down the gauntlet. The challenge for Kayla and him tosurrender.

“Are you willing to talk to Harvin?” Ruby asked.

“I am,” Cash said, glancing at Kayla. Of course, she nodded. “We’re both willing,” he amended.

“Figured as much,” Ruby muttered. “I’m sending you the link for the live feed now,” she explained. “The techs are already examining it to try to determine location.”

Maybe the techs would get lucky with that, but Cash was betting that Harvin didn’t intend to stay in this place for long.

“When you click on the link, block your video,” Ruby instructed. “No need to give a killer a visual on Kayla or you.”

Yeah, no reason except Harvin might demand it. But Cash would deal with that if and when it happened.

The link popped up on his phone, and Cash had a quick debate as to how to handle this. If he viewed this on the small screen of his phone, he could maybe exclude Kayla from seeing the worst of it.

Or seeing it at all.

He wanted to try to talk Kayla into just keeping her eyes closed, but one look at her face and he knew he would fail at that.

“I want to watch it,” Kayla insisted. “I need to hear what he has to say.”

Cash did a whole lot of silent cursing and hoped he could undo any damage Kayla would experience from looking at this nightmare.

He went ahead and sent the link to his monitor. The huge Texas landscape painting over the mantel faded, the feed replacing it. Like the other footage, this one was grainy and dark. Not a warehouse this time but rather the interior of a rustic log cabin.

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