by Lora Leigh
“Natches.” Rowdy’s voice was warning. “Don’t walk out that fucking door.”
Natches shook his head and followed the woman he couldn’t stay away from. He had to follow her. He had to know what the hell she was doing and how much danger it was going to place her in.
“It’s okay, I have you, baby.”
He held her as she sobbed. Broken, horrific cries that ripped at his guts and flayed his soul as he carried her through hell. The smell of blood and death and broken dreams surrounded them, and all he could do was hold her.
As he left the diner he didn’t feel the late autumn air, he felt the heat of an Iraqi summer, the sun blazing down on Baghdad as fire blazed at their backs. He didn’t hear the traffic around him, or Dawg’s voice behind him. He heard her screams. He heard her pleas as she begged him, pleaded with him to let her die, too.
“Natches, enough of this shit!” Dawg and Rowdy caught him as he neared his jeep, gripping his arm and swinging him around. “Damn it, what the hell is going on with you? You’re starting to worry us, man.”
They were defensive, ducking instinctively, knowing his habit of swinging first and asking questions later. But Natches didn’t swing.
He knew these two men. Knew them almost as well as he knew himself, and he knew they wouldn’t let it go.
Shaking his head he pulled the glasses from his face and stared back at them. And he knew what they saw. Both men stepped back, staring back at him in surprise. He saw those eyes in the mirror every morning since Chaya’s return last year, and he saw his inability to control the need riding him more every day.
“My fight,” he told them both. “There’s no room for all of us here. I guess I finally grew up, huh?”
It was a reminder that as Dawg and Rowdy had matured, as their hearts became involved with their women, rather than just their cocks, their possessive instincts had kicked in. No one touched what they claimed themselves. They didn’t share their women anymore, not even with each other.
And they didn’t need to be involved in this. He knew Dawg and Rowdy, and he knew that knowing the truth would do nothing but worry them more.
They thought they knew Natches. That was the mistake most people made. They thought they knew him, understood him. They thought they could predict him, and they had found out they were wrong.
He turned away from his cousins, ignoring the worried looks they gave each other, and jumped into the jeep. Chaya’s rental car was still sitting here; that meant they were in Zeke’s official SUV. That wouldn’t be hard to find.
Chaya would never be hard for him to find, no matter where she was or how she tried to hide. He had proven that to her. And now he was paying the price.
He had let her leave a year ago. He wasn’t willing to do that this time around. He’d find out what the hell she was doing here. Then, he’d find Chaya.
He pulled from the parking lot in a squeal of tires and a grinding of gears before shooting out into the alley and heading for the main road. He didn’t know the names on that list she had given Zeke, but he’d find out tonight what was going on there. Until then, he’d shadow her and see if he couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
Because he knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be with Homeland Security and she wasn’t supposed to be in Kentucky.
So why was Chaya Greta Dane doing exactly what she wasn’t supposed to be doing in a place she wasn’t supposed to be?
And why the hell did he let himself care?
FOUR
Ezekiel Mayes was leaning against his car as Agent Dane pulled from the restaurant parking lot, and he waited. He had just dropped her back at her car, and knew he wouldn’t have to wait long; he was just curious who would show up.
He wasn’t left in suspense, and he had to hide his smile as the black jeep pulled in behind his SUV and Natches stepped out of the vehicle.
Those damnable glasses covered his eyes. The black lenses were a shield between Natches and the world, Zeke often thought. And damned if he could blame the other man. Natches hadn’t exactly skated through life. Some years, Zeke knew, he’d hung on by his fingernails alone as his father tried to destroy him.
Last year, Zeke feared, had been a breaking point for Natches. The day he had taken a bead on his first cousin Johnny Grace and pulled the trigger.
Natches had been one of the finest snipers the Marines had possessed. Often working alone, without the benefit of a spotter, completing his missions, then hanging around to gather intel. Four years in the Marines and he had nearly been a legend by the time an enemy sniper had taken his shoulder out.
If that was what happened. Zeke sometimes wondered. Natches wasn’t a man one could slip up on, even from a distance. He had instincts like the sheriff had never known in another man. Instincts honed in the Kentucky mountains and in his father’s home.
An ex-Marine himself, Dayle Mackay was one hard-bitten son of a bitch. If ever a man deserved a bullet, then it was Dayle.
“Figured you’d show up eventually.” Zeke sighed when Natches didn’t speak. “I wasn’t able to get any info, if that’s what you want to know.”
“Why is she here?”
“Follow-up is what I was told.” Zeke shrugged; he didn’t believe that one either. “They’re still missing the million. I guess the government has to line their coffers somewhere, huh?”
He tipped his hat back and stared up at the setting sun as Natches stood still and silent. What the hell was he thinking behind those glasses? Reading Natches Mackay was like trying to read ancient script. Pretty much impossible.
“Who is she questioning tomorrow?”
Zeke shook his head. “Hell if I know. Said she’d give me the names when we meet up in the morning. I couldn’t get shit out of her.”
She was as closemouthed as Natches was, and almost as wary. But where the man was stone-cold and silent, Zeke had seen nervousness in the agent. She had known from second to second exactly where Natches was behind them, when he would round a curve, or where he would park. That little girl had been so attuned to the killer shadowing them that Zeke had been amazed.
“Would you tell me if you had?” Natches asked him then, his big body shifting dangerously as he pinned Zeke with that shielded gaze.
“In this case, yeah, I’d tell you.” He nodded. “Because I want an end to this as well, Natches. What went down last year has ripped through this town like a plague. Homegrown fucking terrorists? God help us all. People are scared to trust their neighbors here now. And that bothers me. That bothers me real bad.”
Pulaski County was his home, his county, his watch and his responsibility. It was one he took seriously, and until last year, he had thought he was doing a damned fine job at keeping out the worst of the evil the world had to offer.
Terrorists. Son of a bitch. It was bad enough when the bastards were foreign, almost fucking conceivable. But homegrown? A man you’d known all your life?
He and Johnny Grace hadn’t been friends, but if anyone had asked him if the boy could kill, he would have given an emphatic no. And he would have been wrong. If anyone had told him Johnny had been conspiring to steal and sell missiles that would be used against his own nation, Zeke would have denied it to the last line.
Johnny had been strange. He’d been a little off in left field sometimes, but Zeke had never imagined what his smile hid.
“She’s after more than the money.” Zeke breathed out heavily at that thought. “There’s something more important here than that.”
“Like?”
“Like hell if I fucking know,” Zeke cursed. “You Mackays tell me what the fuck is going on after it’s done the hell over with.” He flicked Natches a glowering look. “If you had been honest with me from the beginning, we wouldn’t be standing here now, would we, damn it?”
“That or we’d be standing over your grave.” Natches shrugged. “We were almost standing over Dawg’s and Crista’s. I didn’t like that, Zeke.”
> The understatement was almost laughable. When Johnny Grace had taken Dawg’s lover and tried to kill her, he had signed his death warrant with Natches.
There was nothing Natches cared for outside Rowdy, Dawg, and Rowdy’s dad, Ray Mackay. Unless it was his sister, Janey. Zeke had never figured out for sure if he gave a shit about the girl or not, but he knew he’d hate to test that boundary. Natches might act like she didn’t exist, but Zeke was betting the other man kept very close tabs on the girl.
“What are you going to do here, Natches?” he finally asked. “Don’t get between me and the law, man. I’d hate to have to butt heads with you. But I will.”
Natches’s lips quirked humorously. “I’ll stay out of your law, and you stay out of my way. Other than that, I don’t know what the hell to tell you.”
Frustration gnawed at Zeke then. He really didn’t need this. Natches was, Zeke often thought, the most dangerous man he knew. He wasn’t given to strong temperament, he didn’t hold grudges. But Zeke had a feeling that spilling blood didn’t bother him overmuch either.
“We don’t need another killing like last summer, Natches,” he warned him. “You didn’t have to kill Johnny. You could have wounded him and left enough to question. Then we wouldn’t have these folks running around now.”
Natches didn’t stiffen. There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate a change in mood. But the air around them seemed to crackle with tension and rage.
“Killing him was better than sex.” Natches’s smile was cold enough, hard enough, that Zeke wondered if he should feel an edge of fear. There was something completely unaffected in that smile.
“Better than sex with Agent Dane?” Zeke had a feeling he had just taken his life in his hands with that question.
Natches stared back at him, his expression closed. Tight. For a moment, Zeke thought he would speak, thought something would finally pass by that tightly shielded expression of his. Instead, Natches turned away, jumped back into the jeep, and shoved it into gear before pulling away with careful restraint.
Zeke slowly let out his breath, unaware that he had been holding it after asking that last question. And he had no idea which way the answer would have gone.
“You didn’t have to kill Johnny. You could have wounded him and left enough to question.”
Zeke’s accusation didn’t sit well with Natches, no more than his response had. That killing Johnny had been better than sex. Hell, killing that little bastard had set up a sickness in his gut that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Not regret. There was no regret. It was Johnny or Crista, and Crista had been innocent. No, it was something else, something Natches hadn’t known since he had taken a bead on Nassar Mallah, the traitor that had kidnapped Chaya in Iraq, and blew his damned head off. It was a knowledge that he was truly becoming a killer.
Didn’t matter the why of it, didn’t matter that it was monsters he was killing. What made him sick to his soul was that he no longer felt regret. He hadn’t regretted Nassar, and he hadn’t felt any regret over killing family.
He was afraid he was turning into the same sick bastard his father was, and that terrified him. It terrified him almost as much as the knowledge that through the day, something had shifted inside him where Chaya was concerned.
He wasn’t letting her walk away again. Not without having her. Not without fucking this hunger in his gut out of his system so he could survive the next time she decided to run out on him.
It was time to do something about her.
Natches drove through the darkened streets of Somerset, made a left onto the interstate and headed to the hotel Chaya was checked into.
Tonight, he wouldn’t be staring into her darkened window, wondering why the hell she was there. Tonight, he would find out exactly why she was there, and what she wanted in Somerset. He could guess until hell froze over, but if Timothy Cranston was heading this little operation that was obviously being conducted in his town, then God only knew exactly what was going on.
At least it had nothing more to do with the Mackays. Or not his end of the Mackays. He’d held back the past week, watched, gathered his own information. Had he learned this operation targeted his family, then he wouldn’t have hesitated to snatch Chaya and make damned sure Cranston understood it wasn’t happening.
Rowdy, Dawg, Kelly, Crista, his uncle Ray, and his sister. They were his family, and he’d not allow pain to touch them any more than it already had. The information he had attained so far assured him the Mackays weren’t targeted. Anyone else was fair game, and he was willing to help.
And he couldn’t stay away from her much longer. He’d never been able to stay away from her for long.
As he drove toward the hotel the memory of her rescue whispered through his mind. She’d been hurt, abused, and terrorized, and married. And when she had learned her husband had been the reason for her capture and torture, she had cried in Natches’s arms, while in the hospital in which she had been recovering. And she had begged him to help her.
He forced those memories back. He hadn’t cared that she was married even before they learned her husband was a traitor. She was his; it was simple. Then he had learned it wasn’t that simple.
She’d walked away from him. Disappeared as though she had never existed, and for years he hadn’t known where she was or how to find her. Until she’d arrived in Somerset on the operation to locate the missiles.
And what the fuck had she done when that mission was over? Run. She had run from him again without looking back, without acknowledging a damned thing that had happened in that fucking desert.
And he had let her go.
He pulled into the hotel parking lot and spotted her immediately where she stood, propped against the trunk of the rented sedan.
Her arms were crossed over the light blazer. She wore another silky top beneath it. Those short little thin-strapped tops were making him crazy. Jeans hugged her legs; the top of them rose barely to her hip bones, where the top she wore beneath the dark blazer barely met the band. And she wore boots. It was one of the first things he noticed last year; she wore leather boots. He surely did like a woman who wore boots. And boots on Chaya looked damned good.
He pulled up beside her, then he reached over and unlatched the door before swinging it open.
“Get in.” He didn’t ask. He’d gone too far to ask. He could feel the dominance, the possessiveness rising inside him, fighting against the restraint he was attempting to maintain.
She slid warily into the jeep and closed the door behind her before hastily locking her seat belt.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was soft, just a bit nervous, reminding him of that hidden hole and the darkness and the intimacy that had wrapped around them.
“Someplace where we can talk.”
Where they could talk. Chaya stared out the windshield as Natches drove, his command of the vehicle confident, but obviously restrained. She could feel the fine thread of tension moving through him, the obvious control he was exerting over it.
And she knew what he was like when that control slipped. When the restrained man became the dominant lover. When he became a force she couldn’t deny.
“What do we need to talk about, Natches?” she finally asked as he turned onto the main road and headed in the opposite direction of the marina.
“We’re not going to the boat?” The Nauti Dreams had been his home last year.
“Winter’s coming on.” His voice was as frosty as that season. “I moved out to the apartment over the garage last year anyway. Damned lake is getting too busy.”
There was leashed anger in his voice, a temper she didn’t want to chance right now. She had heard of his dangerous temper, the cold, lashing rage he could project, but she had never experienced it herself.
Chaya couldn’t imagine where she had found the courage tonight to actually get into the jeep with him. At one time she was known to have nerves of steel. Now she could feel the wariness moving through her. Not fear, but something
female, something that recognized Natches as perhaps more man than she could handle.
Sometimes, Chaya reasoned, a woman just knew when she had too much man on her hands. Too much lust, too much strength, too much hunger. And all that described Natches only too well.
“You’ve been watching me,” she finally stated. “Why?”
He removed the glasses from his eyes slowly. How he managed to drive wearing the dark shades she hadn’t figured out. But when he looked at her, it happened again. The same thing that happened every time she stared into the perfect forest green of his eyes.
The breath seemed to rush from her lungs, nerve endings heated, and between her thighs she felt a flood of liquid warmth she couldn’t control.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he finally said as he turned and took a side road that led to his garage. “You should have resigned from DHS like I heard you had and gotten the hell away from Cranston.”
“What does that have to do with you watching me here? You knew there would be further questioning conducted in Somerset, Natches. Did you think it was really over? It won’t be for Timothy until he finds the money and Johnny’s coconspirator.”
“You’re so certain he had one?” He shook his head at that. “Johnny didn’t share that easily, Chaya.”
“Unlike the Nauti Boys,” she murmured.
She knew the rumors that the cousins shared their lovers and wondered at that, because Rowdy and Dawg seemed more than possessive over their women.
“Long ago and far away,” he muttered.
There was something in his voice that had her gaze sharpening on him. An ache of loss, of regret. Something that assured her he was right. Whatever sharing may have gone on in the past, it was over now. Her question, though, was how much he regretted it.
Silence descended then. Chaya watched as the darkened scenery sped by and they drew closer to the garage and the apartment over it.
“Here we are.” He pulled in behind the garage and parked the jeep beneath the wooden steps that led up to the second floor.
The light on the overhead porch threw a glimmer of golden rays below to add to the subtle landscaping lights behind the shrubs that grew close to the building beneath the porch.