by Lora Leigh
As he raced for the house he could see Falcon and Summer’s brothers running silently from the back of the house and hitting the tree line just as he did.
Raeg paused only long enough to check the front yard and porch before he tensed to sprint the rest of the distance to the front door. Just as he began to move, Cal grabbed his shoulder, jerking him back before he could push past the thick fall of weeping branches he was looking through.
“Sniper. Right there.” The older man pointed out the barest shadow within the marsh on the south side of the house.
Falcon and Summer’s brothers hadn’t run for the back of the house either.
“Leasa has overwatch, give her and the boys a sec to get eyes on anyone waiting to pick us off. I’m going to say we have two shooters,” Cal told him softly. “There will be two inside. It would take two of them to get the upper hand on Summer. That was her twenty-two that went off. Nothing since. They’ve managed to incapacitate her.”
The trill of a whip-poor-will sounded through the trees.
“That’s Caleb,” his father reported softly. “He has eyes on the second shooter.” A second call sounded from somewhere behind them. “That’s Leasa. She has the one to the south. Now, we get sight on those inside, or give them enough time to come to us.”
“Or kill her,” Raeg growled.
“Naw, that Russian wants her alive,” Cal said coolly. “She busted his pride. The only way he can get it back, is to bust hers. They’ll try to take her alive. If they can’t, then he’s going to want to kill her himself, face-to-face.”
They stood there, watching the house carefully, for what seemed like hours but couldn’t possibly have been that long.
Finally, the front door eased open an inch or so.
“They’re just checkin’,” Cal whispered. “Just want to know if anyone’s out here. They’ll go out the back when they don’t see anyone. That’s what we want. They’ll head for the marsh or the swamp itself. Probably poled in on an airboat. That would be the only way to get her out of here fast. They’re not dumb enough to go out the front door.”
“And they weren’t intelligent enough to stay the hell away from here,” Raeg stated.
“No, they sure as hell weren’t,” Summer’s father agreed. “Now get ready, they’ll move soon. When they go, they’ll try to be wily. Let’s see how fast we can outsmart them.”
Moving quick and silent, Cal led the way to a spot along the line of trees where they could see the back door.
And the old son of a bitch was right. No more than seconds later the back door opened. Two black-garbed figures and one unconscious Summer bouncing on a shoulder, were quickly out the back door.
Just as quickly, as they cleared the porch and began running, four shots were fired. The two runners went down immediately. Not even a heartbeat later, movement within the marsh and just within the shadowed depths of the swamp revealed the two snipers falling out of shelters, lifeless.
“Summer.” Raeg whispered her name, darted from cover and, using the various yard ornaments placed in a sheltered line to the back porch, made his way quickly to where she laid silently beneath the heat of the late morning sun.
Reaching the back porch he sprinted for the silent form of the woman he feared was going to be the death of him. He was already on the verge of a stroke. The fact that she wasn’t moving terrified him.
“Cover, cover!” Cal yelled behind him just as a volley of gunfire began spatting around them.
Raeg threw himself over Summer, aware of Falcon sliding in front of them and Cal right beside him, firing into the swamp.
From the second floor of the main house, a rifle fired in half a dozen slower bursts before the sound of an airboat could be heard racing from the area.
At the sound of the airboat Raeg picked her up in his arms and ran for the house as Falcon and Cal covered him.
She felt boneless, almost lifeless. Breathing though, he’d made certain of that first thing. But Summer had not just passed out. She wasn’t the passing-out type, and he knew it.
“Momma and Aunjenue are coming through the front!” Caleb yelled. “Lay her on the couch. Bowe’s calling Doc.”
Falcon had the back door open, allowing Raeg to rush inside with her. Crossing the kitchen and breakfast area into the large living room, he laid her on the couch gently, aware of the others rushing in behind him.
She was paper white.
Pulse was strong.
No obvious head trauma or bullet wounds.
“Move, Raeg, let me in there.” Summer’s mother pushed at his shoulder firmly. “Let me see her.”
Raeg moved away from her slowly and allowed her mother to begin checking her, feeling as though he’d been holding his breath far too long.
Behind the couch, Falcon, Summer’s father, and her brothers stood silently. Raeg looked his brother over quickly, making certain he was unharmed. Falcon’s pale blue gaze was icy, his expression savage, as he watched Summer’s mother check her for wounds.
“They used an electrical charge,” Leasa snapped as she lifted one shoulder and revealed the raw burn mark hidden by the strap of her dress.
Raeg eased Summer to her side, revealing the second wound the electrical prongs had made. Easing her back, Raeg watched as her mother brushed Summer’s long, tangled hair away from her face, her lips trembling for the barest moment.
“We were almost too late,” she whispered tearfully, looking up at her husband as he stood next to Falcon. “Almost too late, Cal.”
“Almost doesn’t count,” he answered, his own voice hoarse, his eyes damp. “Remember that. It doesn’t count.”
They’d all nearly failed her, Raeg acknowledged. He intended to make certain that never happened again.
* * *
More than an hour later Raeg stood in the dining area of the kitchen, looking into the swamp where the body of one of the snipers had dropped, not far from where Cal said the airboat had been hidden.
The shooters had a direct line to the back of the house, and no one could figure out how they’d gotten past the safeguards in place to alert the family of any intruders.
“Someone’s helpin’ them,” Cal breathed out roughly from where he sat at the table, nursing another cup of coffee. “They couldn’t have gotten past the alerts we have in place without someone here on the farm helping them.”
“Bowe and I will slip out this evening and change the alerts locations,” Brody told his father. “Caleb can shift the hands out of sight of the house for some reason and give us time to do it with no one the wiser. We leave the ones that’re out there currently in place and spread word around the farm that we believe water damage caused them to malfunction. No one will know any better.”
That could work, Raeg agreed silently, glaring into the swamp.
“It’s not the first time some dumbass thought they could get the jump on us,” Bowe spoke up. “It’s just the first time they got so close to actually succeeding.”
Because Summer had been alone, Raeg thought wearily.
“She was distracted,” her father said, drawing Raeg’s attention to the images reflected in the window. Cal raked his fingers through his hair on a heavy sigh. “My fault. I should have just let things go.”
He should just let the old bastard take the blame for it, Raeg thought. It would get Cal off his back and keep it that way. If Summer’s father took the blame for her distraction and loss of attention to her safety, then it would ensure the older man never demanded Raeg’s respect again. Summer’s father would know for a fact he didn’t deserve it.
And it would be a lie.
As much as Raeg wanted to find a way to maintain his emotional distance, he couldn’t do it at the expense of Summer’s life or possibly her father’s, because he was plagued by guilt. And losing her father would destroy Summer.
“This wasn’t your fault, it was mine.” Keeping his back to the room, his arms crossed firmly over his chest, Raeg glared at the images of the men beh
ind him.
Complete silence descended behind him. A patient, waiting kind of silence.
“How is any of this your fault, son?” Cal finally asked heavily.
Son. Hell, even his own father had never addressed him like that.
“My mother and I were at the Hampsteads the night Davis Allen and Margot flew here and took Summer.” He waited.
He was certain Summer’s father would have an excuse. When nothing came, he turned back to stare at the other man.
Cal just stared back, his eyes damp, his expression creased with grief.
Why didn’t my daddy help me? He’d heard Summer ask Margot that question the next day, and it still haunted him. So why wasn’t he using it to drive the nail deeper into that man’s soul?
Summer’s father finally nodded. “I understand then,” he said hoarsely. “You have every right to hate me.”
The son of a bitch. Where the hell were his excuses? His desperation to make Raeg accept that somehow it wasn’t his fault?
“It’s not my place to hate you,” Raeg finally sighed wearily. “Summer said the two of you had already settled it, and her understanding is all that’s required. Summer was distracted and alone because of my insistent anger toward you. This one was my fault.”
“Yes it was.” Aunjenue stepped into the kitchen, her expression, her voice so like Summer’s that they could be twins. “Daddy, Summer needs you upstairs.” She turned to her father with a little wink. “Ya know how she gets when she thinks she’s been weak. Daddy has to tell her what a brave little girl she’s been. It’s so pathetic.”
Pride flashed across Cal’s face.
“Like he does when you break a nail?” Bowe snorted, laughter filling his expression.
“Boy,” his father growled sternly. “I warned you. Stop now while you’re ahead.”
Aunjenue threw her brother a gloating look before turning back to her father. “Go tell her how brave she was, Daddy. I need to get home. Momma’s gonna be running me ninety miles a minute to have dinner ready as it is.” She propped her hand on her denim-clad hip with a sigh. “So try to hurry.”
Her father nodded quickly, pausing only long enough to lay a kiss on his youngest daughter’s forehead before heading upstairs.
When he was out of earshot, she turned back to Raeg.
“Daddy might not shoot you, and my brothers might be too damned amused to stop your stupidity, but if you ever disrespect my daddy again, I will. And Momma will skin you out for it. So put a sock in it, mister, or take your ass back to where you came from. Your choice.”
Turning on her heel, she followed after her daddy, that nose lifted, anger shimmering on the air around her.
The brothers in question looked at each other before they chuckled, a sound they kept quiet enough that she wouldn’t hear, Raeg noticed.
“Welcome to the family,” Caleb snorted. “Momma only threatens to skin us daily. And according to Auna, her gun stays loaded to shoot one of us.” He indicated himself as well as his brothers. “Now, let’s see if we can figure out how to draw Dragovich out into the open to keep him and his men from striking out at her again. ‘Cause I’m tellin’ you, he sure is about to piss me off…”
They were all fucking crazy, Raeg decided hours later when Summer’s family finally left the house. It was an effective crazy though, the kind of crazy that he hoped Dragovich could never anticipate.
Chapter
TEN
Too close.
God help him, they’d come too close to losing her.
The next morning, Raeg was still trying to recover from the almost successful attempt Dragovich’s men had made to take Summer.
He knew the terrifying sight of those bastards running from the house with an unconscious Summer would live in his nightmares for the rest of his life. They’d managed to incapacitate her and actually get her out of the house. Within seconds they would have had her in the airboat and out of sight, and there wouldn’t have been a damned thing he could do to stop it.
Even worse, it would have been his fault. Because he’d let her retreat as she’d asked him to. Because he’d taken his eyes from her and given the enemy the chance to strike. It was a mistake he had no intention of making again, he told himself later that afternoon.
Sitting at the dining room table, positioned with a direct line of sight to where Summer and Aunjenue sat in the sheltered corner of the back porch talking, he realized there was more than just protectiveness rising inside him. He could feel the possessiveness brewing in his mind as well.
Strange that he knew what that feeling was, because he’d never felt it before, not for any woman. And he’d felt that dark sense of ownership toward her for a long time, he realized.
He turned his attention back to the laptop and the program connected to the cameras the Calhoun family used to monitor the swamp bordering their home. The four surveillance devices were good, good enough that the programmed motion activation should have worked when the airboat invaded the vicinity.
Even if Dragovich’s men were using jamming technology, an alert should have gone out that the devices were offline or unable to connect.
Caleb had been right the day before when he said someone on the farm had to have helped the men who came after Summer. There was simply no other answer. Only someone who knew the location of the cameras and security alerts could have gotten past them. And only an employee or family member would know that information.
Pulling up a file he and Falcon had been putting together, he once again began going over the information on the men who had been on the farm the day before.
He put aside those of the friends who had visited with Summer’s brothers. Joel Wyman, a man Cal described as his eldest son’s best friend since childhood. The beer-drinking, loud-mouthed prick wouldn’t have been Raeg’s first choice as Caleb Calhoun’s best friend.
Then there were Bowe and Brody’s friends, Luke Jagger and Drew Stilman. Luke was Special Forces, home on leave after an injury, while Stilman was an investigative agent for the Bureau. There were no alarms going off there, so that left employees. Especially the foreman, Clay Tucker, and his assistant, Whitt Grayson.
Clay was a career farmer, Whitt a former Army Ranger with a dishonorable discharge haunting him. The Ranger was a little too obvious to suit Raeg, but he’d sent the information on to the team now parked in Cliffton.
Hopefully, Falcon’s agents could find something on one of them. The fact that Dragovich had to have a mole on the farm was apparent. Finding them would be the challenge.
Lifting his head from the screen of the laptop as his brother entered the front door, Raeg watched Falcon reset the security before pushing his fingers wearily through his hair. Catching sight of Raeg, he stalked across the living area into the dining room.
“Problems?”
Falcon’s lips pursed consideringly. “I’m not entirely certain.”
His brother’s expression was a bit thoughtful, maybe brooding, but Raeg couldn’t see any indication of coming danger. Going back to the files, he waited, knowing Falcon would tell him whatever was on his mind whenever he was ready.
The fact that it was taking the other man so long to give vent to whatever had the irritation gleaming in his eyes assured Raeg that it definitely had something to do with Summer.
Over the years, Raeg had learned his brother had definite telltale signs whenever Summer had done something, or was doing something, that confused Falcon. It wasn’t often women confused his brother, was how Raeg always rationalized it. He seemed to be able to see straight into their hearts, detect their feminine secrets and ways, and adapt in dealing with them.
Only Summer had ever put that particular look of frustrated confusion on Falcon’s face. Just as she was the only woman who had ever managed to break Raeg’s control. But was he smart enough to run as far away from her as quickly as possible? Evidently not, because right there he sat, his gaze moving to her every few minutes to make certain she was still on the por
ch with her sister.
“Has Summer mentioned any parties to you?” Falcon finally asked, his voice clipped as Raeg lifted his gaze to his brother’s with a bit of surprise.
“I haven’t heard anything about any parties. She’d know better than to try to attend one with Dragovich gunning for her. Why?” Surely she would know that now was not the time to attend any parties.
Falcon leaned forward and braced his folded arms on the table.
“Her aunts are currently at her parents’ house, and I could have sworn I heard something about parties this weekend, and Caleb sent a crew to open the guesthouses. They’re obviously expecting company.”
Saving the work he’d done on each of the files, Raeg closed them out, shut the laptop down, and closed it before giving Falcon his full attention.
“They have family reunions or something,” he recalled aloud.
“Family reunions are at the end of summer, not late spring.” Falcon shook his head. “The dates are always at the same time of the year, so that’s not what’s going on. And when I questioned Caleb about it, he became evasive.”
“What makes you think it has anything to do with a party then? The family’s well aware of the danger Dragovich represents, and they have enough situational awareness to know the danger any parties would represent. I don’t think they’d take that chance.”
Falcon’s lips thinned, his irritation increasing. “I considered that, until I learned the closest guesthouse was being outfitted with a hair dressing station and that Steven McGillan is arriving late, day after tomorrow. Steven’s her favorite hairdresser. I’ve heard of her having him flown in from DC to Paris just to fix her hair for an important event. The man’s weird as hell, but he only comes out for Summer when she’s preparing for some big event.”
Raeg turned his gaze to the glass doors and the two women still talking, their expressions intent as they stared down at the tablet Summer held to allow both of them to see it.
Surely to God she’d know better, he thought again. Summer wasn’t a stupid woman and she didn’t seem to have a death wish. Parties right now would be both stupid and suicidal.