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And the area near Caddo Lake was no exception. A hauntingly beautiful backdrop with its swamps, Spanish moss–draped trees, and waterways.
Spanish moss caressed her face like spectral fingers as she ducked under gnarled branches.
Her heart pounded in time with her footsteps, fueled by anticipation and rage. After three months of dead ends, she had him. The killer who had butchered three Native women. This time, it was personal.
She gritted her teeth against the memories threatening to surface and poured on more speed. The dense woods of Caddo Lake were her home terrain. She knew every root, every hollow, every creature that slithered through its depths.
He didn’t stand a chance.
A snap of a twig. The rustle of leaves. There, ahead, a flicker of movement. Her rifle was in her hands in an instant, the scope finding its target. A dark figure crouched behind a cypress tree, chest heaving.
Stefan Camden. Wall Street boy having returned to his roots in Texas.
A psychopath, through and through.
Judging by what he’d done to those women, he’d really enjoyed the pain he inflicted.
She stared through her scope at the crouched figure.
As a Texas Ranger, and a big-game hunter in a past life, she’d sat on this side of a scope countless times before, eyeing a predator.
She frowned, her finger steady on the trigger, but her discipline took over.
Her path to becoming a Ranger in the great state hadn’t been a linear one.
She had started as a wildlife biologist, studying the habits of the animals she now hunted. She didn’t hunt to kill, but to protect. Big game, like mountain lions, would rip small herds of sheep apart. Ruining livelihoods, tearing through entire herds… Sometimes, though a painful truth, a well-placed bullet spared many lives.
And other times, she went after bigger game.
That was how she had ended up here, in the heart of the forest, ready to bring Stefan Camden to justice.
She watched him for a few more moments, observing his every movement. He seemed to be muttering to himself, his eyes darting around, searching for an escape route. Rachel had him cornered, and he knew it.
Got you.
She moved closer, as silent as the shadows, senses primed. He didn’t hear her.
Didn’t hear a single sound. She could move like that, in the dark, creeping forward without anyone noticing her. For decades—almost three, to be precise—she’d spent her life moving in the woods.
Camden was waiting in ambush, she realized.
She could’ve shot him.
Could’ve attacked him from behind.
But where was the fair play in that?
Even predators had the right to a fair fight. He lay in ambush? So be it. Let him. She welcomed it.
So she took a step intentionally on a fallen, dried branch.
Crack.
He whirled around. Eyes widened in his panicked, blond features. When he sprang with a roar, knife glinting, she was ready.
They crashed to the ground, a tangle of limbs. She landed a punch, felt the satisfying crunch of bone. He slashed wildly with his knife, scoring a line of fire across her arm. She barely felt it.
Grappling had also been part of her training. Not a family tradition. She’d never been able to spend much time with her father, after all. Nor her mother. Growing up an orphan, one had to pick up skills from various sources.
