Page 84 of Christmas Under Fire

Desiree let out a heavy sigh and closed her laptop.

“Done for tonight?” He questioned.

Desiree nodded. “I need to crash, or I’ll make mistakes.”

He walked her to her room, and they both stopped just outside the door. The air between them thickened with anticipation. Desiree inhaled, her eyes meeting his.

He reached out, his thumb brushing a smudge of soot from her cheek that she must have missed in her own shower. Her breath caught. Then his hand was cupping her jaw, tilting her face up to his. The kiss was slow at first—testing the waters since the last time. When she didn’t pull away, he leaned in and pulled her close. Then her hands came up to grip his shoulders, pulling him closer as the kiss deepened.

She broke away first, resting her forehead against his chest. “I promise I didn’t come here for that.”

“Can’t say I would be upset if you did,” he teased, stroking the back of her head with his hand.

Desiree let out a small laugh, then looked up at him again. “Go to bed, Chief. I’ve got your six.”

He nodded, then added, “You, too, Garcia,” like it was an inside joke.

She listened to the creak of the floor as he walked to the other end of the house, then headed into the guest room.

After getting ready for bed, she lay in the dark, flat on her back. The house was too quiet. She could hear Brandon’s soft, steady breathing from down the hall, the hum of the fridge, the shifting and settling of old wood.

She thought about the case, about the kiss, about the threat. Brandon was tough, but it didn’t mean he was invincible. And she knew now, she was invested. If something should happen to him, it would be more than she could handle.

Desiree whispered a prayer—short, like her mom used to do at the kitchen table, all need and no decoration. “Lord, help us find the truth. Keep Brandon safe and give me what I need to do my job.”

She listened for an answer, but nothing came at first. As she waited, though, a faint, familiar comfort took over, and she knew God was still there.

CHAPTER 11

The speedometer needle hovered just below fifty, Brandon’s truck shuddering in the way it always did on roads patched and repatched since the Carter administration. Brandon had his window cracked, left elbow propped, even with the temperature dipping into the low forties and the December dusk puddling fast behind the horizon line. Every few miles the engine sputtered, but he kept pushing it, chasing the tail end of the day past fields that were more weed than wheat and fence posts leaning like they’d lost the will to stand straight.

On the bench seat beside him, a folded county map lay open to a triangle of rural routes fanning south from Sweet Bloom. His phone glared with notifications—some from Desiree, some from the sheriff, a few from Kimble, who was covering the fire station and had already texted twice to “not get killed before the year-end bonus.” Brandon ignored them all for now.

He’d spent the afternoon calling in every favor he had, starting with Earl Gibbs, who was technically retired but never missed a chance to flex his badge at a rural café. Then he reached out to Harold Barkley, the towing yard owner, who kept a second set of keys for every car he ever hauled. After that, he contacted Greg Forora, a private investigator his father used to know out of Austin. All of them had just enough information that together, it pointed him in the right direction. Waddell had been seen coming and going at the Bellacroix spread, a cattle operation gutted by bad luck and worse floods, long since abandoned to squatters and coyotes.

Brandon took the last turn onto an unpaved drive and slowed to a crawl. Up ahead, the barn loomed in the shadows of dusk—a two-story, wood-plank relic with a tin roof that had more holes than solid strips. Broken windows were patched with slabs of cardboard, and the loading ramp was chewed up from years of trucks bottoming out. The air outside smelled faintly of old manure, but there was a sharper edge to it now, something chemical and wrong.

He cut the lights two hundred yards short and let the engine idle down. In the sudden hush, his own breathing seemed loud. Brandon drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, counted to five, and told himself this was just another scene, just another call. But the tremor in his hands told a different story.

He took a minute to look at the map again. Every route in, every way out, every possible hiding spot—he’d drawn them all in black Sharpie before heading out. No sign of a vehicle now, but tire ruts curved fresh into the weeds along the lot.

Before stepping out, he took out his wallet. Slid behind the battered insurance cards was a photo, the edges worn through a decade of pocket duty. His father, helmet tipped back and cheeks soot-streaked, grinning with a confidence that made him look taller than he was. Brandon touched the edge of the photo, not for luck, exactly, but for a sense of purpose.

He tucked the photo away, palmed his phone, and stepped into the night. The crunch of gravel under his boots was louder than he wanted, every step sounding like a starter pistol. He moved fast, but not recklessly, scanning the shadows, trying to see what he couldn’t. No light from the windows, but that didn’t mean much—power had been cut to the place for years.

The front door was padlocked, but the south side had a service entrance with the lock knocked out and a little wedge of cardboard acting as a doorstop. He didn’t hesitate, just eased it open and slid inside.

The smell of motor oil and rotting hay hit his nose hard, but beneath it, he noticed something that made his skin prickle; a note of accelerant so sharp it curled the back of his tongue. The darkness was complete for a second, then his eyes adjusted. Shadows draped the walls, cut by narrow strips of moonlight through the cardboard patchwork. There were shapes piled in the corners—plastic bins, milk crates, and a couple of old wooden barrels. And a glow, faint and flickering, from the far end of the barn.

He moved slowly, hand against the splintery wall, counting steps. The floor was a minefield of broken tools, old wiring, and at least one animal skeleton. He paused, straining to hear over his own heartbeat, but picked up nothing but the creak of the building shifting under his feet.

The glow resolved into a work lamp, its cord snaked to a battered generator. Someone had made a nest at the back of the barn: army cot, propane heater, a camp stove balanced on a crate. There was a toolbox, open and half spilled out. He took all of this in at a glance, mind running hot as he searched for any sign of movement.

“Show yourself, Waddell,” he called out, voice level and loud. The only answer was the electric whine of the generator. He edged closer to the workbench, ducked low, and checked the dim edges.

A flash of movement from the corner of his eyes caught his attention. Brandon ducked sideways, keeping the workbench between him and the potential threat. “Waddell, I know you’re in here,” he called out again. “We need to talk.”

The answer came, not as a word, but as a scrape of boot against concrete, then a silhouette stepped into the lamp’s weak halo. Waddell was older than his police photo, beard gone patchy, hair down to his collar, but his eyes were just as sharp and calculating.