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Chapter One
She was making the world a better place one cookie at a time.
And there was nothing that saidI’m sorry that your deputy ended up being a traitorous bastard working for the cartelthan her cranberry-lemon cookies.
Jocelyn Carville parked her SUV outside of Alpine Valley’s police station. If you could even call it that. In truth, it was nothing more than two double-wide trailers shoved together to look like one long building. The defining boundary between the two sections cut right down the middle with a set of stairs on each side. One half for the courts, and the other for Alpine Valley’s finest.
A low groan registered from the back seat, and she glanced at her German shepherd, Maverick, in the rearview mirror. “Don’t give me that pitiful look. I saw you steal four cookies off the counter before I wrapped them. You’re not getting any more.”
Collecting the plate of perfectly wrapped sweets, Jocelyn shouldered out of the vehicle. Maverick pawed at the side door. Anywhere these cookies went, he was sure to follow. Though sometimes she could convince him they were actually friends. He was prickly at best and standoffish at worst. Good thing she knew how to handle both. His nails ticked at the pavement as he jumped free of the SUV.
“Jocelyn Carville.” The low register in that voice added an extra twist in her stomach. Chief of Police Baker Halsey had come out of nowhere. Speaking ofprickly. The man pulled his keys from his uniform slacks, hugging the material tight to his thigh. And what a thigh it was. Never mind the rest of him with his dark hair, deep brown eyes or the slight dent at the bridge of his nose telling her he’d broken it in the past. Nope. She’d take just his thigh if he were offering. “Here I was thinking my day had started off pretty good. What’s Socorro want this time?”
A tendril of resentment wormed through her, but she shut it down fast. There wasn’t any room to let feelings like that through. Jocelyn readjusted her hold on the plastic-wrapped plate, keeping her head high. “I’m here for you.”
Maverick pressed one side of his head against her calf and took a seat. His heat added to the sweat already breaking out beneath her bra. She was former military. It was her job to call on resources to aid in whatever situation had broken out and stay calm while doing it. To look at pain and suffering logically and offer the most beneficial solution possible. She was a damn good logistics coordinator. Most recently in the Pentagon’s war on the Sangre por Sangre cartel. Delivering cookies shouldn’t spike her adrenaline like this.
Baker pulled up short of the ancient wood stairs leading up to the front door of the station’s trailer. “Forme?”
“I brought you some cookies.” Offering him the plate, she pasted on a smile—practically mastered over the years. Just like her cookies. “They’re cranberry-lemon with a hint of drizzle. I remember you liked my lemon bread at the town Christmas bake sale last year. I thought you might like these, too.”
“Cookies.” He stared down at the plate. One second. Two. Her arms could only take the weight for so long. Lucky for her, she didn’t have to wait more than a minute. Because the chief walked right up those stairs without another word.
Maybepricklywasn’t the right word. A couple more descriptors came to mind, but her mama would wash her mouth out with soap if she ever heard Jocelyn say them out loud. Well, if her mama made an effort to talk to her at all.
She didn’t bother calling Maverick as she hiked up the three rickety steps to the station’s glass door and ripped it open. Her K-9 partner was always in hot pursuit of any chance of cookies.
This place looked the same as always. Faux wood paneling on the walls, an entire bank of filing cabinets with files that had yet to be digitized, with the evidence room shoved into the back right corner. Though it looked like someone had gotten the blood out of the industrial carpet recently. Courteously put there by said deputy who’d turned out to be working for the cartel. Jocelyn tracked the chief around one of two desks and moved to set the plate on the end. “Have you had any luck finding a replacement deputy yet?”
Frustration tightened the fine lines etched around those incredibly dark eyes. “What do you want, Ms. Carville? Why are you really here?”
“I told you—I brought you cookies.” She latched on to Maverick’s collar as he tried to rush forward toward the treats.
“Nobody just brings cookies.” Baker locked his sidearm in a drawer at the opposite end of the desk. “Not without wanting something in return, and certainly not when that someone is attached to one of the most dangerous and unrestricted security companies in the world.”
And there it was. Him lumping her in with her employer. Seemed every time she managed to get a word in edgewise, Baker couldn’t separate her from what she did for a living.
“I don’t want anything in return.” She motioned to the cookies she’d stayed up all night to bake. For him. Maverick was pawing at the carpet now, trying to get free. “I just thought you could use a little pick-me-up after everything that went down a couple weeks ago. I wanted to say—”
“A pick-me-up?” His dismissal hit harder than she’d expected. Baker faced her fully—a pure mountain of muscle built on secrets and defensiveness. He was a protector at heart, though. Someone who cared deeply about the people of this town. A man who believed in justice and righting wrongs. He had to be to do this kind of job day in and day out. “Let me make one thing clear, Ms. Carville. I’m not your friend. I don’t want to pet your dog. I don’t want you to bring me cookies or make arrangements for you to check on me to make sure I’m doing okay. You and I and that company you work for aren’t allies. We won’t be partnering on cases or braiding each other’s hair. Police solve crimes. All you mercenaries do is make things worse in my town.”
Mercenaries. Her heart threatened to shove straight up into her throat. That...that wasn’t what she was at all. She helped people. She was the one who’d gotten Fire and Rescue in from surrounding towns when Sangre por Sangre had ambushed Alpine Valley and burned nearly a half dozen homes out of spite. She didn’t hurt people for money, but no amount of explanation would change the chief’s mind. He’d already created his own definition of her, and any fantasy she’d had that the two of them could work together or even become acquaintances instantly vanished.
Jocelyn’s mouth dried as her courage to articulate any of that faltered. She almost reached for the cookies but thought better of it. “For your information, Maverick doesn’t let anyone pet him. Not even me.”
She dragged the K-9 with her and headed for the door, but Maverick ripped free of her hold. He sprinted toward the chief’s desk. Embarrassment heated through her. Really? Of everything she could’ve left as her last words, it had to be about the fact her K-9 wasn’t the cuddly type? And now Maverick was going to make her chase him. Great. No wonder she’d never won any argument about the importance of bonding as a team back at headquarters. She let herself be railroaded in the smallest conversations. No. She squared her shoulders. She wasn’t going to let one tiff get the best of her. She was better than that, had overcome more than that.
But Maverick didn’t go for the cookies.
Instead, he raced toward a door at the back and started sniffing at the carpet. The evidence room. Crap on a cracker. She didn’t need this right now.
“You forgot your dog.” The dismissiveness in Baker’s tone told her he hadn’t even bothered to look up to watch her leave.
“Thank you for your astute observation, Chief.” Jocelyn dropped her hold on the front door. She’d almost made it out of there with her dignity in one piece. But it seemed that wasn’t going to happen. At least not today. “You wouldn’t happen to have any bomb tech in your evidence room, would you?”
Maverick’s abilities to sniff out specific combinations of chemicals in explosives was unrivaled in his work as tactical-explosive-detection dog for the Department of Defense. And here in New Mexico. As cartels had battled over territory and attempted to upend law enforcement and local government, organizations like Sangre por Sangre had started planting devices where no one would find them—until it was too late. Soccer balls at parks, in a woman’s purse at a restaurant in Albuquerque, a resident’s home here in Alpine Valley. No one was safe. And so Socorro Security had recruited K-9s like Maverick onto the team in the name of strategy—find the threat before the threat found them. They were good at it, too. Protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves. Ready to assist police and the DEA at a moment’s notice. Founded by a former FBI investigator, Socorro had become the premier security company in the country by recruiting the best of the best. Former military operatives, strategists, combat specialists. They went above and beyond to take on this fight with the cartels. And they were winning.
Frustration and perhaps a hint of disbelief had Baker setting down his clipboard and pen on the desk. Closing the distance between them, the chief pulled his keys from his slacks once again. “Not that I know of. I can’t account for every case, but most of what we keep here is from within the past five years. Unregistered arms, a few kilos. Maybe Fido smells the cheese I left in the rat trap last week.”
