Hannah Hood Lucero
Four years in the Navy and another three in the Coast Guard should have prepared Dalton Campbell for anything, but when Petty Officer First Class Lucy Holt stepped onto his 87-foot Marine Protector two weeks ago, he felt entirely out of his depth. When the rest of the guys had “welcomed” Holt to the Mississippi Gulf Coast duty station, she’d taken it in stride. Within a day, she’d proven to be the sort of woman who ate snark and innuendos for breakfast.
No matter how many times Campbell reminded himself that he shouldn’t date a coworker, nothing dampened the unexplainable attraction he felt for this feisty woman. To make matters worse, she seemed to gravitate toward him more often than not. Maybe it was because he hadn’t participated in the light hazing, but if that were the case, she had a strange way of showing it. If anything, it appeared to bother her when he’d refrained from the ribbing. It was as if she’d made it her mission to loosen him up.
When she’d sidled up to him after a search and rescue call came in this morning, she’d said, “Bet you a Brooklyn’s pizza that I find that kid first. You’re buying dinner.”
Like an idiot, he’d said, “Okay.”
Okay?
He shouldn’t have let himself fall prey to the challenge in her eyes or the overpowering desire to taste her perfectly kissable lips. Who was he right now?
Holt elbowed him, motioning with her hand to slow the small, special purpose craft.
“Kill it,” she barely mumbled, cutting off the engine herself. Campbell took a deep breath and bit back the reprimand that burned on his tongue. Holt gripped his forearm, asking, “Did you hear that?”
He listened but didn’t reply.
Where he was the very definition of “by the books,” Holt seemed to work entirely from instinct. Just yesterday, they’d butted heads on whether to board a shrimping boat headed into Biloxi Harbor. If Holt hadn’t jumped onto the vessel—without authorization—the coasties wouldn’t have found the cocaine stowed aboard. How had she known?
Campbell swallowed the lump in his throat and focused port side of the skiff, scanning the shoreline for movement. They had a missing kid to find. Campbell’s questions about Holt’s sixth sense could wait until dinner.
“There,” she whispered, pointing at something to the west of their position on the Bayou Caddy water. “What is that?”
Light flashed in an oak tree on shore. A gust of wind answered for him, but Campbell cleared his throat and asked, “You seriously heard a wind chime over the engine?”
“No.” She shook her head. “There’s something else out there.”
As if in response, a faint cry for help reached them. Holt put a boot on the edge of the boat.
“Don’t you dare.” Campbell placed a firm hand on her shoulder, narrowly stopping her from diving in.
“Payton could be hurt.” She shrugged his hand away.
“There’s a time for instincts and a time for procedure,” he groused and cranked the engine again, aiming the bow toward what looked like an old dock. “Call it in and grab the med bag.”
While Holt radioed to the other search teams, Campbell sent up a silent prayer that they really had found the nine-year-old who’d decided alligator and snake-infested waters were preferable to boating with his drunken—reportedly unstable—uncle.
“Help me!” a kid’s voice sent a jolt of adrenaline through Campbell. Before he could secure the boat to the only piece of dock that didn’t look like it might float downstream, Holt was splashing through the murky water.
“Crazy, infuriating woman.” He grabbed the shotgun they’d need if reptiles were lurking and jogged to catch up. When he was beside her, he hissed, “This isn’t Sector Detroit, Holt. Watch where you’re steppin’.”
The woman snorted, as if water moccasins were funny.
“I was born and raised in Mobile, Campbell.” She gestured east. “Would you stop worrying about me and get your head in the game?”
That explained her southern accent. What excuse did she have for the devil-may-care attitude?
“Payton?” Holt called out, pointing to a trail of blood on the ground.
Too much blood.
“I’m here!”
A waving hand appeared from behind the same oak with the wind chime. He didn’t miss the smirk she directed at him as she picked up her pace. She stopped short when she rounded the tree, all confidence draining from her expression when she saw the large gash across the boy’s leg.
“My uncle t-tried to k-kill me…” Payton’s tear-streaked face crumbled. “I b-b-barely made it here.”
“Get to the boat.” Campbell shoved the shotgun into Holt’s hands and dug for a tourniquet in the med bag. “Call for medivac.”
Holt sprinted away as Campbell let his own instincts take over. It had been a long time since he’d had to rely on his Navy Corpsman training. The kid was going into shock. A few more minutes, and he would have bled out.
When the chaos of landing a helicopter and loading Payton onto it concluded, Holt fell unusually quiet. When she turned to Campbell with red-rimmed eyes, he realized she’d been crying.
“He’ll be okay,” he reassured her.
“He didn’t jump in the water, did he?”
Campbell shrugged. “Whether he jumped or was pushed, he narrowly escaped the propellers. His uncle ran him over. My instincts tell me I could bet on it. Speaking of bets … I owe you a pizza.”
Holt tsked, a smile pulling at her lips. “After all that, I owe you a pizza.”
“What if I want it to be a date?” He pursed his lips.
She chuckled. “I’m still buying. But if you play your cards right, I’ll let you kiss me goodnight.”
With a hum and a wink, she turned and left him gaping at her mind-reading abilities.
Oh, she was trouble alright.
She currently resides in South Mississippi with her husband and three children on their ten-acre homestead. They have a dog, thirteen chickens, and at least fifty species of mosquitos, depending on the month of the year. When she isn’t in the garden, at the stove, or homeschooling, she can be found at her computer—just follow the sound of frenetic typing. Her motto is, “Draft, edit, read, repeat.”
Hannah is the author of the Sons of Vigilance series and other titles. Her latest book, A Name to Remember, releases in June 2025.
Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, or her website.
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