Bodhi
I talked Sutherland into filling her prescription and eating a little lunch while we waited for her operative to arrive. She was clearly feeling the pain now, but she wouldn’t take the pill. She was too polite to just out right refuse, but she walked around the subject so much that I finally stopped suggesting it. It killed me to see how much pain she was in. But what killed me more was the idea that she was going to face off with these Mahoney people all alone.
I knew these people. I didn’t like it.
“You should call Kirkland, get him to bring his entire team out here.”
She shook her head. “I told you, I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”
“Surely you can trust Kirkland.”
She shrugged, but the movement sent waves of pain through her body. I could see it in the way she flinched. She reached up and dragged her fingers through her long, gold hair, lifting it off her neck like that would help with the pain.
“Kirkland has been a godsend. I never would have been able to get Gray Wolf off the ground without him. But someone is talking to these people, telling them our plans long before we arrive. Ash is in this mess because someone told the Mahoneys we were on our way. And Ryan…whoever gave them the technology to track her had to be one of Ash’s closest associates. It had to be me, Kirkland, or Ash’s own brother.” She shook her head. “I don’t…I want to trust Kirkland, but I don’t know if I can.”
“I don’t like you doing this with just one other person. Surely there will be more than just one or two people guarding Ash.”
“Yes, but Ryan and I were both military. We know how to handle ourselves.”
“How long ago was it when you were in the military? Ten years?”
She tilted her head slightly, an uncomfortable smile on her lips that told me it had been longer than a decade. Too long.
“Sutherland—”
“This is my people, Bodhi. This is what we do for a living. Once we get inside, once we free Ash, he’ll be able to back us up.”
I shook my head, fear building inside my chest. I’d already done a stupid thing, coming to be with her after the Mahoneys tried to take her out in that accident. I’d crossed a line I swore I wouldn’t cross. My future, my brother’s future, was suddenly very uncertain. Losing Sutherland too…it was more than I could handle.
“There’s something you need to know.”
She studied my face, suddenly interested in what was coming out of my mouth. But then she spotted something just behind my head. She stood, somewhat gingerly, and accepted a hug from a very big, very handsome man. Hank Stratton. And behind him was Grainger North. Lance Griffin and Ryan Babcock rounded out the group that had suddenly descended on us. It made me feel a little better to see that her entire team had shown up, but not much. They pulled up chairs and settled around us, each intensely taking in the bruises forming on Sutherland’s face and the bandage that covered the stitches the doctor had put in her head.
“What happened?” Hank finally asked, gesturing to her face.
Sutherland started to brush it off, waving a hand like it wasn’t that important.
“They ran her off the road,” I said.
“They?”
“The Mahoneys.”
All four of the operatives were alarmed by this idea. As they should be.
“It’s not a big deal,” Sutherland said, downplaying it again. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine!” I slapped my hands on the table, causing people from all around the diner to turn and stare—including those who hadn’t already been staring. I reached up to adjust the cap I was naively hoping was hiding my identity, wishing—not for the first time—that I could hide in a crowd just like any other common guy. “You could have been killed,” I said, lowering my voice as I leaned across the table toward her. “And now you want to invite them to do it again?” I shook my head. “This whole thing is fucking insane!”
An awkward silence fell over our table. Sutherland stared me down with defiance. I could almost hear her thoughts, hear her wanting to tell me it was none of my damn business. But the woman had spent more than a few nights in my bed. It was my business.
“He knows about this?” Ryan suddenly popped off.
I rolled my eyes and got up, determined to walk out. I needed fresh air. I needed a moment to catch my breath and to push the anger down a little. But Grainger followed me, grabbed my arm before I could reach the doors.
“I know how frustrating it can be, being in love with an independent woman. But you’ve got to give her room to do what she thinks is right.”
“What she thinks is right is going to get her killed!”
“You really think I’d let that happen?”
Grainger was a tall man, intensely handsome. He probably could have given me a run for my money in Hollywood. But this was his world, this was what he did. If I couldn’t trust a man like him, who could I trust?
“If anything happens to her—”
“The best way to make sure it doesn’t is to keep your own emotions under control and to stay by her side.”
I nodded, turning slightly to cast a glance in her direction. She was watching me, concern in her eyes even as she spoke quietly to Lance and Hank.
“You’re right.”
We went back to the table and Sutherland gave a quick recap of what was going on. Ryan seemed really excited by the idea that they might be able to rescue Ash and Clint by the end of the day, so excited that I could see how much affection she harbored for that Homeland Security agent. It tempered some of my doubts about Sutherland and Clint, but not all of them.
I sat back, my arms crossed over my chest, listening with the cap pulled down low over my eyes. I knew every word she spoke as she spoke it, even the things I shouldn’t have known about. I spent hours watching the feed from the cameras I hired a contractor to slip into the wiring at the MidKnight bunk house and the few others I’d managed to slip into her kitchen and living room. I knew more about this whole thing than even a couple of the people sitting there at the table.
This was one discussion that wouldn’t get back to Carrington Matthews. I was determined to keep him out of the loop from now on no matter what that meant to my future. Or my brother’s. I was done with all this bullshit. Let the world find out where I really came from!
“We have eight potential properties. I think we could check out the five here in Casper today if we get a move on now.”
“We should divide into teams,” Hank suggested.
Sutherland nodded. “Yeah. You take Grainger and Ryan—”
“No. I stick with you,” Ryan interjected.
Sutherland regarded her for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. Hank, you, Grainger, and Lance take these three,” she said, using my phone to text him the address. “They’re right near each other, so it shouldn’t take but a couple of hours. If you see anything suspicious—call me at this number. We’ll be there as quick as we can.” She focused on Ryan. “You and I will check out the other two, then we’ll all go to Midnight and check out the remaining three properties.” Sutherland’s eyes fell on my face. “They have to be at one or another of these places.”
“If we find them?” Grainger asked. “Are we going to call for backup?”
Sutherland looked uncomfortable for a moment. Ryan came to her rescue.
“We don’t need anyone else. We’re a team on our own.”
“But Kirkland—”
Grainger tried to push the issue, but Hank stood up.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to get started.”
I followed them outside, taking Sutherland’s arm before she could catch up with the others.
“I’m going with you.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I can’t let you do that, Bodhi. We might run into resistance—”
“That’s why I want to be there.”
“But you aren’t an operative. I can’t be worried about you while I’m trying to do my job.”
“I’m certified in gun safety. I took a course when I did this action movie a couple of years ago.”
“Being certified and knowing how to handle yourself in a dangerous situation are two different things.”
“I can handle myself.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but Grainger came up behind her and pointedly handed a gun to me.
“Keep him in the back if you have to, but three guns are better than two in any fight.”
Sutherland looked uncomfortable, but she simply nodded.
“Can we get this thing on the road now?”
We loaded up, Grainger, Hank, and Lance in an unmarked sedan, Sutherland, Ryan, and I in a small black SUV. Hank called my phone just to make sure he had the number correct and we were off, Ryan following the GPS map on her own phone to the first address. My heart was in my throat the whole way, my imagination working overtime as I imagined what would happen if we found Carrington’s hideout. I’d only met the man a handful of times over the last few months, only knew him through our brief, but tense, meetings. But he gave off a vibe that scared the shit out of me.
This was real. It wasn’t a movie and there wasn’t a director who could call cut at any moment. Despite everything I’d done in my life, this was the most intense. But when Sutherland reached back for my hand, I knew there was nowhere else I wanted to be. As long as she needed me, this was where I would be.
Chapter 16
At the Ranch
Joss ran her finger over the map of the county, searching for coordinates that she wasn’t even sure she was reading correctly. It had finally occurred to her to call the phone company and ask them to give her the GPS coordinates of the phone. Although she didn’t have a court order, she talked them into giving up the information by telling them that she worked for Gray Wolf Security and she had the means to make the operator’s life a living hell. Apparently, the man had heard of Gray Wolf, because he caved fairly quickly.
Kirkland was leaning against the conference table, his phone stuck to the side of his head.
“She answer?” Joss asked when he disconnected the call.
“No.”
She’d known the answer, but she asked anyway.
Kirkland pushed away from the table and went to stand at the map, watching Joss move her finger along the lines she still wasn’t sure she was reading correctly.
“I think Sutherland suspects were working with the Mahoneys.”
“Why would we do that? Ash is family to us.”
Kirkland nodded, slipping the paper out of her hand where she’d written down the coordinates and quickly pushed a pin into the map at the right spot.
“But she’s been acting funny ever since we handed over Clint Barrow or Butler or whatever his name really is.”
“What did he say to her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should have put sound on the damn cameras down there.”
Joss studied the intersection where her husband’s phone had been earlier in the afternoon. It was in Midnight, about five or six miles from the ranch. He was so close, but he might has well have been on the moon.
“Do you think that could be where they’re holding Ash?”
Kirkland slid his arm around Joss’ shoulder. “There’s no way to know until we go there and check it out.”
She nodded, her mind already puzzling over the logistics of such an operation. They’d have to enlist the help of the local sheriff’s office and that would take a day to organize. Maybe if they just went in with Donovan and David, do it like in the old days…maybe that would be the best way to handle things.
She started to say that, but David chose that moment to walk into the room.
“Have you heard from Sutherland in the last few hours?” he asked. But even as he spoke, he was using a stylus to write on the surface of his iPad.
Joss walked over and read the message, a feeling like the splash of cold water rushing over her entire body.
We’re being filmed.
She wanted to check the ceiling for the telltale signs of a camera, but Kirkland was behind her and he laid his hands on her shoulders, giving them a squeeze to warn her not to react.
“I’ve called her a few times, but I think she might be out with her daughter,” Kirkland said, the words an obvious lie.
David cleared his first message and wrote another as he said, “She could probably use the break. Things have been pretty crazy around here.”
“Yeah. Maybe when she gets back, we can figure out what our next move should be.”
Cameras, new tech, in the wiring. Found quite by accident.
Joss found herself wondering how anyone could get any kind of tech past David. He was the most brilliant technology person she’d ever met. His wife, Ricki, came in a close second.
“Do we have any clue what they plan to do with Ash? Have they tried to contact us again?”
Kirkland shook his head, a new tension coming through his hands into Joss’ shoulders. He was clearly concerned about Ash, especially since there hadn’t been a response to the fact that we’d only handed over one of the people they’d asked for. We all assumed there would be a new demand for Becky Kay, but it’d been over forty-eight hours and there’d been no word.
Sutherland’s house, too, David’s next message read.
Fuck! Did that mean they’d been monitoring everything we’d done and said since we got here?
Was that why Sutherland had gone off the grid? Was she behind this?
“They haven’t. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We’ve got them on the run with the raid on their safe house yesterday.”
“But the blood…”
David put down his iPad and looked at Joss and Kirkland. There were dark circles under his eyes, the obvious marks of a man who hadn’t slept a whole lot in the last four days. As much as David and his brother fought, they clearly had a bond that was unbreakable. And the fact that their parents had died and they were basically all the family they had left—outside of their wives and children—Joss couldn’t imagine the idea of losing Ash was sitting well with David.
She touched his arm.
“We’ll get him back. And we’ll make sure the Mahoneys pay for putting you through this.”
“I just want my brother to come home. That’s all.”
“Me too.”
They all turned. Mina, Ash’s wife, was standing in the doorway looking like a willow tree that was about to blow over in the wind. David went to her, offered her his shoulder to lean on. She did, for a moment. And then she pulled away, straightening her spine to a ram rod, unwavering height.
“I want to be kept in on the loop with everything to do with Ash.”
Joss inclined her head. “Of course.”
“Even if the news isn’t good.”
Joss nodded again. “We’ll make sure.”
They’d been through hell when they first got together, Mina and Ash. She’d been the girlfriend of Dimitri Avdonin. Even had his baby on the night she and Ash met. She sought Ash out because she’d heard Dimitri talk about him, knew that if she was ever going to break free of Dimitri, Ash was the man to help her. And that led to Ash leading a team of operatives and cops into Avdonin’s safe house and taking out his entire crew, him included. It was what brought us to this place because Ash continued to do research into Avdonin, determined to head off any more attacks on his family from that corner of the universe, and that was how he discovered that the Mahoneys had been offering the Bazarovs financial backing, the same cartel Avdonin came to head up after Joss killed Bazarov and saw his son go to jail.
It was that whole ordeal—Carrington and his fight with the Bazarovs, Mina and her relationship with Avdonin—that led to Ash’s disappearance. Like Mina, like Ash, Joss was determined that this would be the end of it all. If it took everything she had, she would make sure the Mahoneys were crushed by the time this was done.
She wasn’t going to live with this shadow over her head for the rest of her life.
>
Chapter 17
Sutherland
The first building on our list was just a few miles from the warehouse where the ambush had taken place. The neighborhood was a poor one, most of the businesses in the area pawn shops and liquor stores. The building in question was once a bank, but that had been years ago. It looked as though it had been primarily abandoned since the bank relocated to a better neighborhood downtown.
“I’ll go in the back, you go in the front,” I said to Ryan. “You stay with me,” I told Bodhi.
“Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Ryan parked the car several blocks away after driving past the building three different times, coming at it from three different directions. It looked to be empty, but we knew that could be a trick.
We walked in silence up the street, trying to look as casual as possible. My heart was pounding in my chest almost like I was about to have a heart attack. I thought about my daughter, wondered what would happen to her if this went south. I’d left a will with strict instructions, one that I updated every year like clockwork, having learned a pretty intense lesson from the deaths of my husband and his father. Kipling was listed at Elizabeth’s guardian at the moment.
Would he take her in? Or would he pawn her off to someone else? He was newly married to a woman who loved him so fiercely she kicked me out of his hospital room when she thought I’d been responsible for his injuries. What might she do when he brought home a half-grown child for her to raise?
I knew Kipling would do the best he could. I just wasn’t sure about his new wife.
I glanced at Ryan. She had a very determined look on her face. I hadn’t allowed myself to stop and think about the fact that she was clearly in love with the man who claimed to be my brother. What would she think when he told her the truth? What would I think? Was he really my brother? What did that make her?
It was all very muddy right now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about anything more than getting through this day.
We separated at the corner. Ryan made her way up the front steps of the building to the boarded-up glass doors. Bodhi followed me down the alley to a steel door at the back. I was concerned for a second that we wouldn’t be able to jimmy the lock on the door, but when we drew closer, I could see it was already standing open an inch or two.
Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming Page 69