The Cowboy's Deadly Mission. Addison Fox

don’t think it’s drugs anymore?” Tate had wondered at that, but his earlier questions about his staff still nagged at him. Ranger and Tris had come to mind first, but what did he really know about his men?

      “We’re not ruling anything out yet.”

      Unbidden, an image of the man with the slit throat filled his mind’s eye. He’d known Belle long enough to know the image haunted her, as well.

      He just hoped she’d find the killer before they had a chance to act again.

      * * *

      He hefted the large duffel bag from the front entrance of his hidey-hole out at the edge of the Pass. Since it was small town USA, no one had even been around to pay him any attention as he drove through town early that morning, and they’d likely have paid him no mind, even if someone had.

      Heading for the small kitchen, he placed the duffel on the counter and got to work.

      Blood had dried on the knife, a stark reminder of the job he’d completed in the wee hours of this morning. A blight and a pestilence. That’s what drugs had become in Midnight Pass.

      And like any good landowner knew, you handled pests with force. One or two, you’d swat at and forget about them.

      But an infestation needed swift and active punishment.

      The police, then the Feds, had tried. But the enemy had only become craftier. The technology designed to find the drug runners had been used against the cops, identifying the trails each night that were open and unmanned.

      And where technology wasn’t a viable solution, good, old-fashioned recruitment had done the job.

      How many of Midnight Pass’s sons and daughters had been consumed by the blight? Lured into addiction, the promise of another fix more than enough incentive to mule for the kingpins who grew rich off their misery.

      He’d watched it all. First from a distance, and then later, when the need to act grew and grew until it consumed him. When it would be a personal sin to ignore the monstrous proportions of the plague that now hung over the Pass.

      So he’d acted.

      He’d practiced and waited and then practiced some more. The low-level drug runner based in Juarez had been first. He’d intended to use the gun he’d bought off the streets, but had been inspired at the last minute by the man’s extensive collection of knives.

      The smooth stroke of metal on flesh had been intoxicating.

      And it was then that he’d known. Had understood.

      Society needed riddance from its dregs and he had a mission. A purpose.

      More, he now had a calling.