Page 1 of Outlaw Ridge: Hayes

Chapter One

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Hayes Brodie was so not in the mood for this shitshow. Then again, he was never in the mood to deal with a tanked-up asshole who’d just tried to kill him.

Shortly after said attempted murder, Hayes had managed to restrain the asshole—AKA Petey McGrath. He’d done that by putting him in a headlock and then slapping plastic cuffs on both his hands and his ankles.

That hadn’t stopped Petey though.

Nope.

Despite not having full use of his hands or feet, Petey had still tried to punch and kick Hayes. And, of course, the restraints hadn’t stopped the idiot either from spewing a string of uncreative, f-word-laced profanity.

That cursing had continued nonstop as Hayes had loaded him into his SUV and belted him into the backseat so they could begin the ten-minute drive to the Outlaw Ridge Sheriff’s Office.

Hayes had a mountain of gratitude that he hadn’t had to drive Petey all the way into San Antonio, a good hour away. It was late, going on midnight, and he was over and done dealing with this clown. He could stash him in the Outlaw Ridge jail and have someone from San Antonio PD come and collect him. Then, Hayes’ mission would be done, and Petey would become someone else’s problem.

With Petey still cursing a blue streak and doing his best to inflict harm to anyone or anything in his limited reach, Hayes turned into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office. There was a cruiser and a red truck in the reserved spaces, so he figured there’d be at least one unlucky deputy on duty. Unlucky because he or she would soon get a dose of Petey.

Hayes pulled to a stop in the visitor’s space behind the cruiser just as another vehicle, a Jeep, turned into the parking lot. He instantly went on alert. Petey had almost certainly pissed off a whole bunch of the wrong people with his antics, and Hayes thought this might be one of them coming to settle a score.

But that wasn’t the case.

He sighed though when the tall woman with the short, choppy brown hair stepped from the Jeep. She was wearing a dark blue Outlaw Ridge PD uniform.

Deputy Jemma Salvetti.

Someone he did his best to avoid. Even when certain parts of his body, especially the brainless part of him in his boxers, wanted no such avoiding. They’d been on a “blind” date, a setup at one of those stupid escape room deals where he’d first interacted with Jemma and felt the stirrings of heat.

Stirrings that he’d immediately shut down.

Or rather, Hayes had tried to do that anyway.

But no matter what the brainless part of him wanted, Jemma was hands-off for a whole lot of damn good reasons. Too bad those damn good reasons hadn’t stopped his so-called friends from making sure Jemma was at any and all social events that Hayes attended.

“Hayes?” Jemma greeted, and, yeah, it was a question.

Even though he lived just a few miles outside of the small ranching town of Outlaw Ridge, and there were those matchmaking attempts, he didn’t make it to the sheriff’s office that often. That was in part because of his wanting to avoidJemma but mainly since he didn’t have a lot of business with them.

As an operative for the elite private security company Strike Force, he had missions all over the country. Missions involving rescues, hostage situations, missing persons, and other assorted felonious activities. But in his seven and a half years of working for Strike Force, this was a first for him to have apprehended a fugitive so close to Outlaw Ridge.

“Jemma,” he greeted back.

In hindsight, he should have realized that she could be on duty. After all, despite being in her early thirties, she was pretty much a rookie. She’d had less than a year on the force after giving up her lucrative and successful law practice. Rookies usually got stuck on the night shift.

“What brings you here?” she asked. Even though she had that rookie label, it was an all-cop glance that she made to his backseat, where Petey was now thrashing his shoulder against the window.

“That’s Petey McGrath,” he said, tipping his head to the guy. “He assaulted his eighty-two-year-old grandmother, robbed her, and fled with money that he probably needed to pay off some loan sharks. His eighty-three-year-old grandfather took extreme objection to that and asked Strike Force to work with SAPD to track him down fast. I wasluckyenough to locate him first, and I was hoping the sheriff’s office could hold him until morning.”

Jemma eyed Petey, sighed, and nodded. “What was he doing in Outlaw Ridge?”

“His grandparents have a fishing cabin about five miles away, and Petey set off a silent security alarm when he broke in. The granddad called to let me know that, so I drove straight to the cabin and found him.”

“The sonofabitch punched me in the stomach,” Petey complained.

Hayes huffed. “Only after he tried to stab me with a kitchen knife. I knocked that out of his hand, and he tried to kick me in the balls and pull my hair. Before he resorted to biting or some other insulting attack generally reserved for eight-year-old kids, I punched him in the gut to knock the wind out of him and then restrained him.”

“You sonofabitch,” Petey repeated.

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