The pool is closed, p.1
Deadly Revenge, page 1
Praise for Fatal Witness
“A decades-old mystery. A budding romance. Danger at every turn. Patricia Bradley delivers all this and more in Fatal Witness—an intense and entertaining journey from start to finish.”
Reading Is My Superpower
“Smart, high action inspirational romantic suspense.”
Booklist
Praise for Counter Attack
“Balancing a slow-burning romance with a twisty mystery, this will keep Bradley’s fans hooked till the final page.”
Publishers Weekly
“Patricia Bradley introduces her new Pearl River series with a bang with Counter Attack.”
Life Is Story
“Buckle up, because Counter Attack by Patricia Bradley takes you on an intense ride!”
Reading Is My Superpower
“Counter Attack practically oozes with mesmerizing word flow, fascinating scene changes, and likable characters.”
Interviews and Review
DEADLY
REVENGE
Books by Patricia Bradley
LOGAN POINT SERIES
Shadows of the Past
A Promise to Protect
Gone Without a Trace
Silence in the Dark
MEMPHIS COLD CASE NOVELS
Justice Delayed
Justice Buried
Justice Betrayed
Justice Delivered
NATCHEZ TRACE PARK RANGERS
Standoff
Obsession
Crosshairs
Deception
PEARL RIVER
Counter Attack
Fatal Witness
Deadly Revenge
PEARL RIVER • 3
DEADLY
REVENGE
PATRICIA BRADLEY
O
© 2024 by Patricia Bradley
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
Grand Rapids, Michigan
RevellBooks.com
Ebook edition created 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024005996 | ISBN 9780800741648 (paper) | ISBN 9780800746322 (casebound) | ISBN 9781493447107 (ebook)
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design and images by Kirk DouPonce.
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and postconsumer waste whenever possible.
To my Lord and Savior
“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Books by Patricia Bradley
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Turn the page to start reading the first book in another thrilling series!
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Prologue
Chattanooga Detective Jenna Hart backed her ten-year-old unmarked Chevy into the church parking lot beside an even older Ford. If things went south, she could make a quick getaway. Not that she was expecting anything to go wrong.
Her confidential informant had indicated the Scorpions were meeting at the James A. Henry School tonight, and Rick Sebastian would be there. This was a first. Sebastian was slippery, and up until now, the Chattanooga Gang Unit had no hard evidence linking him to the Scorpions.
Captain Billingsley’s instructions were only to gather intel and take photos. Jenna adjusted the camera on her shoulder and doused the car lights, plunging the area into darkness.
The moonless night and absence of streetlights hid her from prying eyes, but it also hid the drug dealers she’d come to monitor. Evil always preferred the darkness to light.
She climbed out of the Chevy and flinched at the screech of tires two streets over, barely relaxing when there was no follow-up crash. She scanned the area for a marked patrol car, noting a couple of working streetlights between her and the school a block away. Where was Officer Creasy? He should already be set up in case there was an opportunity for him to make an arrest.
The gang unit used two types of surveillance, passive and active, and her captain had made it plain she was only to observe and take photos, not to arrest anyone. If Jenna observed anything illegal, she was to alert Creasy, who was supposed to be in a marked patrol car two blocks away, and he could make the arrest without compromising her position.
She quickly called his cell number, and it went straight to voicemail. Jenna left him a message. “I’m here. Where are you?”
Maybe he wasn’t coming. Creasy had made it plain when she’d worked in patrol that female officers should be relegated to handing out parking tickets. Jenna frowned. When she talked to him earlier, he had blown off her CI, saying he wasn’t reliable. While she didn’t think he would ignore the assignment, he could always plead that he got tied up in traffic or with another investigation.
For all she knew, Creasy could be hanging out with Phillip, her now ex-fiancé. They were buddies. Jenna had heard from one of the few friends she had at the precinct that her ex-fiancé and his cronies liked to gather at the bar, downing a few beers and coming up with new ways to make her look bad as a detective. Apparently it wasn’t enough that Phillip had publicly blamed her for their breakup, even though she wasn’t the one who broke off the engagement.
She clenched her jaw. Phillip wasn’t going to win. She’d worked hard to become a detective, and she wasn’t giving it up without a fight. She could understand if he wanted out of the relationship since they had been drifting apart, something she blamed on the long hours they both worked—her with the gang unit, and Phillip with homicide. She didn’t understand why he was attacking her professionally. It was like a puzzle with pieces missing.
Where is Creasy? She didn’t think the patrol officer would actually bail on her, but he was like a lot of other officers whose attitude toward the gangs was “Let ’em kill each other off.”
Not that any of them ever said the words out loud. Jenna’s concern was for the innocent people who got in the way.
She froze as a man in a hoodie materialized out of the darkness and jogged toward the empty school, throwing an occasional look over his shoulder. It was impossible to tell if it was Sebastian, but the jogger’s lean frame was about right . . . except there was something familiar in the way the man moved.
She checked her phone again for a message from Creasy. Nothing. The meeting was going down, and if she waited, she would lose the opportunity to get intel.
Jenna was on her own, not that she actually needed the officer for backup—the whole point was to see who came to the meeting and get photos. She had no plans to do anything that would give her location away.
With a quick prayer and a deep breath, Jenna moved away from her car, rubbing her wet palm on her dark workout pants before checking her pistol. She hadn’t taken time to change other than to buckle on a vest and her duty belt. She should blend in well with the dark area.
It wasn’t that she had no fear of Sebastian—she did. It was rumored the drug dealer was a cold-blooded killer and responsible for the deaths of at least ten rival gang members. Jenna wanted to send him away for longer than the five years he faced if convicted on the current drug charges of cocaine possession, but rum
Without that hard evidence, the DA couldn’t bring up the deaths in court, not even for an indictment from a grand jury. While Jenna didn’t expect to get evidence pointing to any murders tonight, she would get photographs of him with known Scorpion members. Perhaps one of them could be persuaded to turn state’s evidence. And any intel she captured could be used at trial to put Sebastian away for a lot longer than five years.
Jenna took a second to text Creasy again.
Where are you?
Getting off 27. U?
James A. Henry. If I observe anything of interest I’ll radio you and you can intercept.
She blew tension from her lungs. Creasy was five minutes away. At least he was coming and should be ready by the time Jenna was in place.
She jogged toward the building, following the path of hoodie guy. Jenna turned a corner, and smack talk drew her attention. Sounded like it was coming from the apartments facing the school. She hugged the shadows of the school building and eased to where she could see what was going on.
A problem. That’s what was going on. Five or six teenage boys were playing basketball under the security lights at the apartments. Jenna checked her watch. It was after midnight. Shouldn’t they be in bed? Jenna didn’t know why she was surprised they weren’t.
After working the gang unit for two years, she shouldn’t be surprised at anything. Besides, summer heat kept kids indoors during the day, and this was a way to let off steam.
Still, it complicated matters. Jenna couldn’t help but worry that the teens might get caught in the crossfire if something went wrong in the meeting.
The hoodie guy stood off to one side, watching the game. Probably waiting for the drugs, so he wasn’t Sebastian, but again, something about him seemed familiar. One of the boys broke away from the game and approached him. Jenna inched closer and hid in the dark shadow of the large trash receptacle.
“Hey, Ross!” The teen high-fived the man in the hoodie. “What’s up?”
Ross? She blinked and stared at the man in the hoodie. It couldn’t be.
“Not much, my man.” He turned, and his face came into full view as he scanned the empty James A. Henry parking lot.
Phillip? Jenna’s stomach plunged to her feet. No. She blinked, praying that she had seen wrong. But no amount of blinking would change the fact that the man was Phillip.
Maybe he was working undercover. No, Phillip headed up Chattanooga PD’s homicide division. He’d never worked undercover.
Like a bolt from the clouds lighting up the sky, clarity exploded in her brain and the puzzle pieces fell into place. Suddenly all the times that Phillip had cancelled their dates made sense. And all the times he’d pumped her for information about the gangs . . . and Sebastian. The last time she’d asked him why he wanted to know. Now she understood—he’d been keeping tabs on how close she was to arresting his partner.
What a fool she’d been.
Jenna held her breath and pressed deeper into the shadows as Phillip’s gaze swept past her hiding place before he turned back to the teenager.
“Meeting a friend,” he said, dropping his voice.
Jenna caught that part, but once Phillip turned to face the teenager, she couldn’t hear their conversation. They talked for a few minutes before the teen gave Phillip another high five.
My man. That’s what he’d called the teenager. Her legs turned to rubber, and she braced against the wall. The boy was one of Phillip’s dealers.
How had love blinded her so? Jenna hated what the gangs and drug dealers were doing to this neighborhood—just last week, two teens died in this very apartment complex from overdoses. It was a never-ending problem that wouldn’t go away until thugs like Sebastian were put in jail for good.
And Phillip was part of it. How much of what she’d passed on to him had benefited Sebastian?
Nausea hit her stomach so hard, she almost doubled over. Jenna clapped her hand over her mouth, swallowing the bile back down her throat. She had to get a grip. Sebastian would be here any minute. Jenna checked the time on her phone. Creasy should have texted he was in place by now too. No message from him, either.
Phillip turned toward her, and Jenna quickly snapped his photo with the digital single-reflex lens Canon, zooming in on his face. She was far enough away that he couldn’t hear the sound the camera made. As a precaution, she used her phone to snap several and checked them. Grainy, but Phillip was identifiable.
Jenna emailed them to herself, wishing she had the same capability to send the photos on the camera. They would be clearer, which would be better for admission in court. She stayed in the shadows as the boy returned to the game and her ex remained on the sidelines.
Where was Sebastian? Minutes ago, she couldn’t wait to photograph him. Now all she could think about was the fact that Phillip was somehow involved.
No wonder he’d been upset when she talked about bringing Sebastian in for questioning about the murder of a rival gang member.
“You’ll never get evidence he was involved in the murder, and he’ll accuse you of harassing him.”
They’d argued, and he insisted it was because he was looking out for her career. She’d actually bought that when the DA agreed with him. But at least the arrest a couple of weeks ago for possession of two hundred grams of cocaine had stuck, even if he had made bail and was back on the streets within two hours. When Sebastian was convicted—and he would be since there was no way he could wiggle out of those charges—he’d be looking at five years in a state penitentiary.
She wanted him gone for good, had been trying to nail him ever since transferring to Chattanooga’s gang unit two years ago. He was like Teflon. Nothing stuck because no one had been able to get the goods on him. The message from her CI made her think that might change tonight. Jenna had to focus on that and deal with arresting Phillip when this was over.
Her heart stilled when a fancy Range Rover wheeled onto the school property and parked out of her line of sight. Three doors slammed. Probably two people in the front and one in the rear.
Jenna held her breath as Phillip jogged past her hiding place. Out of habit, she almost called out to him, thinking he would surely back her up. Evidently her mind hadn’t processed the fact that her ex was a dirty cop. Once his footsteps faded, she slipped out of her hiding place and crept toward the corner of the building, then skirted what looked like a storage shed before she eased around it. Low murmuring reached her as she rounded another corner, and the Range Rover came into sight.
Instead of being near the back entrance, it was parked at the edge of the old school’s parking lot in the shadows of an apartment building. The last unit with every light blazing caught her attention. Lord, keep those people inside!
A garbage dumpster sat near the Range Rover, and she wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of the sour odor emanating from it. If she could ignore the odor and reach the dumpster, she would be close enough to overhear their conversation.
Jenna hesitated. If she tried to reach it, she might give her position away, and that would blow the whole operation. Her current location would have to do. She raised the camera and framed the three men standing beside the SUV with Phillip facing them, his back to her. She zoomed in with the Canon for a good look at their faces. One was Sebastian, one she didn’t recognize, but the other was Viper, a known Scorpion member.
No one had ever been able to put Sebastian in the company of the gang. Jenna quickly snapped half a dozen shots as an ambulance wailed its way to one of the nearby hospitals, covering the sound of her camera. To be on the safe side, she took a couple of shots with her phone.
She needed a photo of Phillip and Sebastian together. She quietly shifted her position, and using her phone again, she zoomed in on Sebastian just as Phillip turned and looked over his shoulder. Bingo! Captured both of them. Jenna took a second to check the photos. Way too grainy, and Sebastian was in the shadows. Maybe a video editing program could pull out the details. Again she sent the photos to her computer before she switched back to the Canon. One man turned toward the Range Rover, opened the hatch, and took out a package.
Showtime. Suddenly a dark Grand Cherokee wheeled into the parking area on two wheels. She ducked back behind the shed as three men spilled out of the Jeep with guns blazing. The man she hadn’t recognized with Sebastian dropped to the ground.
