by Leigh, Lora
Rogue felt the pain explode in her chest as Zeke stared back at her. The lack of emotion in his voice, in his eyes, cut her to the quick.
“It was all some elaborate ruse then?” she whispered. “It was never about us, was it, Zeke?”
“I couldn’t afford for it to be about us, Rogue,” he said softly as he turned away from her again. “Not yet.”
He wasn’t turning away because he couldn’t bear to see her hurt, she saw. He was turning away to collect the weapons that lay on the other side of the room. His gun belt and weapon, which he strapped on efficiently. The rifle he collected from the side of the wall.
“You’re an intelligent woman,” he said, his tone so precise, so cool she felt flayed by the very lack of emotion in it. “Stay here where you’re safe. Stay off the phone. I’ll let you know when it’s finished.”
She fought back her tears and her anger. She tried to swallow and felt as though she would choke from the tightness in her throat.
“John,” she whispered. “What about my brother?”
God, John had been right all along. This wasn’t about love, it wasn’t about anything Zeke might want from her emotionally. It was about a very elaborate deception. It was all about his job, nothing more.
“Natches has John out of the way,” he promised her. “He’s safe. You’re safe. Now let me clean up my town and undo the damage Thad Mayes did to this county without leaving any more scars on my conscience.”
Scars on his conscience. He was protecting her so he wouldn’t feel any guilt if she ended up hurt. It was no more than that. She wanted to go to her knees from the pain; instead, she managed to hold her head upright and even managed to nod.
“By all means.” She forced a tight smile to her face; she even managed not to shed a tear. “I’m sure I can find something to do here while you’re out saving the world.” She waved her hand negligently back at him. “Have fun, Sheriff Mayes.”
Be safe, Zeke. She whispered the words silently as he turned and headed for the stairs.
She wouldn’t cry yet, she promised herself. She wasn’t going to let herself shed more tears for another betrayal. She’d shed enough, she’d lost enough dreams. She wouldn’t lose her pride as well.
His foot rested on the first step before he paused. His back was still to her when he said, “I didn’t want things to be this way.”
Lips trembling, she had to force back the cry welling in her soul. She hated him. Oh God, she hated him! She hated him just as much as she loved him.
“But they are,” she said, barely holding back the pain now. “We’ll talk later, Zeke. You have a job to do. Right?”
He nodded, his head still turned away. “I have a job to do.”
With that, he moved quickly up the stairs and left her alone with a basement filled with his memories, his life. Pictures and boxes of mementos. Sand in a bottle. Seashells. A framed picture of his wedding day. Shane’s first photo as a newborn. And stacks of pictures from Zeke’s childhood.
She turned and stared around the basement, willing her heart not to shatter into the pieces she knew it had already shattered into. She could feel the jagged wound in her soul and the ache that seemed never ending.
Pressing her hand into her stomach she pushed back the sob locked in her throat and took a deep, hard breath. Her knees were shaking, her hands trembling, and damn Zeke Mayes to hell, there were tears on her face.
Her breathing hitched as she wrapped her arms across her breasts and turned away from the pictures, the story he had told her. There were gaps, there was something missing. Something he hadn’t told her.
Rogue turned back and stalked to the table, scrambling for the pictures, searching for answers. There had to be answers here. There was more to this than he had told her. There was something in his eyes that assured her of that before he left. There were demons that haunted him, dark places that festered in his soul. Parts of him that she had sensed and yet had never known.
There were secrets.
She pushed aside the first piles of pictures, went through the others. She stacked them in neat, orderly rows as she moved through them.
There were Zeke’s baby pictures. Pictures of him with his mother and father as a toddler, pictures as he grew and became a teenager.
The majority of the pictures after his teen years were those with his father. In each progression there was a hardness to Thad Mayes’s once-handsome face. A cold reptilian chill began showing in his eyes.
There were pictures that raised the hair on the back of her neck. Pictures of Thad Mayes, James Maynard, and Dayle Mackay participating in sex acts that would have brought shame to the most hedonistic of men. But there were no more pictures of Zeke.
“He burned them all, you know.”
Rogue jerked around, fear strangling her as she saw a panel slide open to reveal a gap in the cement wall of the basement, and watched as Jonesy stepped through it.
Eyes round, terror surging through her, she watched as he moved into the basement and looked around slowly, his expression heavy and filled with regret as his gaze came back to hers.
“Jonesy,” she whispered, a sob finally tearing from her throat.
“We were always the best of friends,” he said softly. “Me, Thad, and James. Your daddy didn’t change that. There were just some things that I was too young to understand then.”
He stepped fully into the room and then she saw the handgun he held at his side. The one he lifted slowly and aimed toward her.
“John’s dead,” he said. “I took care of him and that Mackay bastard before I came here for you and the sheriff.”
She shook her head; her hands clenched desperately around the rim of the table beside her as she lowered her head and shuddered from the pain. Not Jonesy. Oh God, she couldn’t bear it. She loved him like an uncle. He’d saved her when she needed him. He’d been her friend.
“Why?” she sobbed, her head lifting as fury began to pour inside her. “Why, Jonesy?”
He shook his head. “The bastard burned the pictures of his boy while he obviously saved all the others. Thad was a fool. I warned him that little son of a bitch would end up turning up and taking a bite out of our asses. He always was a foolish little prick.”
“Why?” she demanded again. “Why are you here? Why are you involved in this?”
He tilted his head and watched her almost curiously.
“Because, despite your sheriff’s beliefs, the head of the serpent was never cut off, sweetheart. Mackay didn’t have the temperament to be the head of anything. He took orders. He was a soldier that became a liability. He was a disease. The head is alive and breathing.” He smiled, a cold, hard curve to his lips. “And Zeke might run, but he can’t hide from the truth. He’s a part of it. He’ll always be a part of it.”
TWENTY-TWO
She was hurting. Zeke swore he could feel her hurt as he left the house and forced himself into the Tahoe he had hidden in the back drive. The vehicle was hidden there, beneath a dense covering of trees where it wouldn’t be detected, along an old dirt farm road his father had used when his parents had lived in this house.
His father had moved into another house closer to town after Zeke and his mother had left. The farm had been pretty much abandoned for years, until Zeke returned.
It was the hardest thing Zeke had ever done, forcing himself into the vehicle before starting the engine and pulling out of the drive. He headed back toward the Bar when everything inside him was urging him to return to the house, to explain, to tell her why this had to be done and the ghosts he had to exorcise from his own past.
His mother hadn’t left his father simply because of his adulterous activities. Nothing was ever that simple with his mother. She had divorced Thad Mayes because he had finally crossed a line that was unacceptable to her. He had tricked his son into committing a crime that she knew would haunt him for the rest of his life.
At the age of fourteen, Zeke had shot and killed a man. It didn’t matter th
at he had killed another of the League’s members, one that his father wanted rid of. It didn’t matter that the man was a deviant with the sexual tastes of the criminally insane. The fact was, Zeke had killed him. He had lifted his father’s handgun from the table, turned, and shot the bastard in the heart, just as his father had taught him during target practice.
The old hunting cabin where the murder had taken place was gone now; someone had burned it to the ground after Zeke and his mother left town. Zeke often wondered if his father had destroyed it. If he’d ever regretted that night and fought to get rid of the memories as well.
Zeke still had nightmares. He still remembered his father’s pride, how he had lifted the slain man’s head in one hand and smiled back at the camera James Maynard had wielded, as though the death were a triumph.
Zeke had become ill. He’d thrown up for days. For weeks he’d been unable to sleep, until he finally told his mother what had happened. It was then that she had packed their bags and escaped with him to Los Angeles, along with many of the pictures she knew his father had.
Her insurance, she had called it. And Thad Mayes had sent her more insurance over the years. He’d been confident she wouldn’t talk; she knew the price of talking. Everyone who talked died. Proof didn’t matter, but she’d had enough to keep her safe.
Now Zeke was breaking that unwritten law of keeping silent. He had talked. Years ago he had talked to Timothy Cranston when the plans to trap the homeland terrorist group were first being hatched.
He hadn’t known the Mackays would be brought in on it. He hadn’t known he would be pushed out of the investigation once it started. He hadn’t known about the pictures his mother had amassed. But he knew now. DHS knew now. They knew everything, even his own crime.
He’d stayed as far away from her as possible until it wasn’t possible any longer, he told himself. But he hadn’t used her to the extent she believed. Taking her to his bed had been something he’d been unable to fight. But still, it had played into the job he had set for himself. That of trapping the last members of the League.
He needed Gene’s attention focused on him while Cranston and the Mackay cousins worked their magic to finish the investigation they’d started years before.
It would come to a head tonight. They had the Walkers’ killers; they had the information on the last of the members of the League in this area as well as others. They had pictures; they had his mother’s journals, all of which would be turned over to Cranston the second they met up. And tonight Gene would be at the bar with the last members of the homeland terrorist organization that would finally be rooted from his county forever.
It was almost over. More than twenty years of hell, and Zeke would see the end of it tonight. When the sun broke in the morning, the weight of a lifetime of guilt would be lifted from his shoulders, and he would have the satisfaction of knowing he had finished it.
And tonight, Zeke had broken Rogue’s heart. He’d seen it in her eyes and he’d been helpless to stop it, just as he’d been helpless to stay away from her. He’d grasped at the excuse to forget his own principles and take her to his bed. He’d known what he was doing even as he’d done it, and he’d prayed they’d both survive it.
He had known he was going to hurt her, but he hadn’t expected to feel that pain as though it were a part of him as well. He hadn’t expected to hurt with her for everything he knew they may not have.
Not that Zeke was willing to let her go yet. He knew to the bottom of his soul if he survived this night, he’d do his best to heal her heart and claim it again. But if he didn’t return, if he couldn’t come back to her for whatever reason, then he’d know she wouldn’t wait. The pain would ease with the anger, and her hatred would protect him from her loyalty.
Turning onto the back road that led to Rogue’s bar, Zeke tightened his hands on the wheel of the Tahoe and felt the muscles in his jaw flex at the thought of claiming her, free and clear, knowing there might be a real future, rather than just the here and now, or the hope of a future.
This had been hanging over his head for too long. The risk of discovery before the remaining members of the League were identified. The risk that the men he was searching for would realize just how deep he was into this rather than watching from the sidelines as it had appeared.
At this point, nothing mattered but finishing this and getting back to Rogue to explain, to beg for forgiveness. To touch her. To know he had the right to touch her as he needed to. God help him, as he needed to.
The need to touch her, to taste her one last time had been nearly overwhelming. If he had though, he’d have not made it out of the house without possessing her, without telling her the truth. Without loving her.
“I’ll be back, Rogue,” he whispered, and he wished he had said it before he left.
He made the final turn toward the bar when the world exploded around him.
Zeke slammed on the brakes as a ball of fire erupted into the night where Rogue’s bar had been. Debris and flames tore through the darkness as vehicles were racing out of the parking lot.
It rained fire. The ground shook with a secondary explosion, spurring Zeke to slam his foot on the gas as he flipped the sirens on.
The Mackay cousins and Rogue’s brother were in that bar. They were waiting in the office, watching through the security cameras as Gene met with the other members of the League that were still free at the bar. He’d been meeting them right beneath Zeke’s nose. So confident. Damn him. He’d taken Zeke’s trust for granted, had taken his loyalty for granted.
All these years he had trusted Gene with the truth. He’d discussed each move he’d made with the other man; he’d let him in on every step he’d taken. And he’d been betrayed. He’d hoped he was wrong. Prayed he was wrong. He had never imagined the depths of Gene’s guilt though.
That betrayal was like acid on his tongue as the Tahoe screamed into the bar’s parking lot. The vehicle slid to a stop, rocking from the force applied to the brakes as Zeke caught sight of Dawg dragging Natches and John across the parking lot.
He jumped from the vehicle, racing toward them.
“Cranston and Rowdy. Where are they?” he screamed as he gripped Dawg’s shoulders, holding him in place.
Dawg’s face was pale, blood streaked, his green eyes wild. “Inside. Goddammit, they’re inside.”
Everything inside Zeke began to congeal in complete rage. Turning on his heel, he ran for the bar. Pushing through the hysterical guests pouring from the main entrance to stagger into the smoky haze inside as he searched for the other two men.
“Cranston!” he screamed out the agent’s name.
“I have him.”
Zeke turned, staring in shock as Gene stumbled through the smoky haze.
He and Rowdy supported Cranston’s half-conscious form. Gene’s blond hair was singed, soot covered his face. A gash along his forehead seeped blood and Rowdy didn’t look much better.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Zeke took Rowdy’s weight as he swayed and nearly went to his knees. “Son of a bitch, their wives will kill me.”
“No shit,” Gene snarled furiously, his blue eyes enraged. “If I don’t end up killing every friggin’ damned one of you myself. Motherfuckers. This is what I get for trusting a slimy damned Homeland Security agent and my best fucking friend.”
Confusion and rage clouded Zeke’s mind. With his hands full of Rowdy’s nearly unconscious form, he couldn’t slug Gene. He followed him instead, finally having to duck and sling Rowdy’s weight over his shoulder to rush him from the bar as another explosion shook it.
Too damned much liquor. It was going off like mini-bombs as the fire began to race through the entire building.
“Thank God. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.” Dawg raced toward them, his green eyes demented in his haggard face. “Is he alive?”
Dawg jerked Rowdy from Zeke as Gene collapsed on the grass, far enough away from the bar for safety, and let Timothy Cranston’s weight slide to t
he ground.
“What the hell happened here?” Zeke jerked Dawg around, glaring down at him as sirens began to fill the air.
“We fucked up, that’s what the hell happened,” Dawg screamed. “You were watching the wrong man. Fucking Cranston, I’m killing the son of a bitch this time. He had us watch Gene when Gene was working with him all along. He wasn’t the man we were searching for.”
Dawg was out of control. Thick, heavy veins pulsed in his neck as his green eyes glowed with a rage that warned Zeke that the other man wouldn’t think before killing.
“What the hell are you talking about? You were watching the wrong man?”
“Because I’m not your goddamned killer, you fucking moron.” Gene stumbled to his feet, swaying before righting himself. “And Cranston knew it. The dirty bastard, I’ve been working with him since the day those two state police offers were killed. Yeah, the fucking pictures you found?” he sneered in Zeke’s face. “I didn’t kill those men, Zeke.”
“You were there!”
“I was there, and my whole fucking family was at risk if I made the first fucking wrong move!” Gene screamed. “My family, Zeke. My wife. My kids. I contacted someone I knew in DHS after the bodies were taken away. The morbid motherfucker had me watching you.”
Shock resounded through Zeke with a tidal wave force as he stared back at Gene. Cranston was a manipulating bastard, there was no doubt of that. From the moment he had hit town with the supposed excuse of having been suspended, Zeke had known he was playing games. Hell, Zeke had been helping him play those games, and he’d never suspected he was being hung out to dry like every other agent that ever worked for Cranston was hung out.
“He had me watching you,” Zeke rasped.
“And the killer got away.” Dawg pushed between the two men. “Your killer is Jonesy, Zeke. He slipped out of the bar after taking a baseball bat to Natches and Walker. He’s gone.”
Zeke stared back at him, fighting to process the information bombarding him now.