The Nauti Boys Collection

by Lora Leigh

  She pulled the small notebook from her pocket and glanced at the name. It was cute. “Rogue Walker.”

  She nearly bounced into Natches’s back as he came to a hard stop, turned, and stared over her head at the sheriff. Swinging around, Chaya got a glimpse of complete male horror a second before it was gone.

  “It’s a cute name,” she announced.

  “Lord have mercy on us,” Sheriff Mayes muttered before Natches gripped her arm and led her to the door.

  “Try not to piss her off,” he suggested.

  Chaya would have grinned at the suggestion if her nerves weren’t still rattled over Denton’s death and the bombs they had found in the vehicles the agents drove. Someone was definitely trying to send a message. That person didn’t like the questions and was going to put a stop to them.

  “The file Cranston sent stated that Ms. Walker—”

  “Don’t call her miz nothin’,” Natches interrupted. “Call her Rogue. Period. Don’t comment on her clothes, her hair, or her motorcycle, and no matter what you do, don’t even hint at mentioning her past employment.”

  Chaya stopped and stared up at him with a frown. “She was a schoolteacher; what’s so bad about that?”

  “Lord help us if you ask about it,” he muttered. “Let’s get this the hell over with. If fists start flying, get back to the cruiser. We’ll be right behind you.”

  Oh yeah, she just bet he would be. He was probably praying for a fight to get rid of some of that testosterone.

  Shaking her head, she followed him into the bar and picked out the subject immediately.

  Dressed in black pants, boots, and a snug vest, Ms. Rogue Walker was tipping a beer to her lips and glancing to the door in boredom.

  Long golden red hair cascaded down her back in thick ringlets; pale creamy flesh was accentuated by the black attire and gave her an almost feyish appearance. She was slender but curvy. Full breasts pressed against the front of the vest, and deep, pretty violet eyes widened before a sharp, disinterested mask descended over her face and she turned away.

  Interesting. Chaya looked back at Natches. “A former conquest?”

  “Even I wasn’t that damned brave,” he growled. “Now get this over with so we can leave.”

  “Fine, get a beer, park your butt at the bar with the sheriff, and leave me alone.”

  He grabbed hold of her arm, keeping her from turning away as his head lowered, his eyes darkening in irritation. “Not gonna happen.”

  “Better happen.” She smiled tightly. “Or else? I can do ‘or else’ really well, Natches, and I can make it stick. This is the wrong place to decide to take over, and it’s definitely the wrong place for a public quarrel.” She jerked her arm out of his hold and tried to tamp down the adrenaline still racing through her. It made her cranky and it made it more difficult for her to hold on to the patience she knew she needed right now. “I’ll just be a few minutes. You can see me perfectly fine while having a beer.”

  “And when I get you home we’re going to have a talk about this ‘do it your way’ crap,” he said, scowling. “First thing.”

  “Fine.” She nodded. “First thing. I’ll be ready for you. Are we doing it naked or clothed?”

  Before he could do more than narrow his eyes on her, she turned and moved down the bar to where Rogue Walker was watching the confrontation with interest now.

  “I wondered when you would get to me,” she said as Chaya stepped to her.

  Her voice was beautiful. Chaya cocked her head to the side and stared at the petite woman. She was a few inches shorter than Chaya’s five feet seven inches, and much smaller boned.

  “Do you sing?” Chaya asked her as she lifted herself onto one of the barstools and turned to face the other girl.

  “In the shower,” she said suggestively, running her eyes over Chaya. “Want to hear me?”

  Strange, Rogue Walker’s file hadn’t said anything about an alternate lifestyle. Or a lover of any type.

  “Natches gets jealous.” She sighed mockingly.

  Rogue rolled her eyes. “As many games as that man played before he left for the Marines, he has no right to jealousy.”

  “Does any man?” Chaya countered.

  Rogue laughed, a soft, amused sound. “No, they don’t, Agent Dane. But I’m sure that’s not why you came here to talk to me. I assume this has something to do with that little bastard Johnny Grace?”

  Chaya pulled the digital recorder from her jacket pocket and laid it on the bar. “I need to record this,” she told the other woman.

  Rogue shrugged. “I sound like crap on it, but whatever.” She lifted the beer to her lips and sipped as Chaya set the recorder and stated the date, time, and subject.

  “For the record, your name is …”

  Rogue stopped her by laying her hand over the recorder and staring at her hard. “I imagine you know my full name?”

  “I do.”

  “State it and we’re going to fight. My name is Rogue Walker, period. Understood?”

  Chaya inclined her head. “Understood.”

  “And don’t state my age, please.” Her smile was all teeth. “If you don’t mind.”

  Chaya didn’t know the game this girl was playing, and she didn’t care. When Rogue lifted her hand, Chaya continued, as requested, and received Rogue’s affirmation that she was aware she was being recorded.

  “For the record,” Rogue drawled mockingly. “I thought Johnny Grace was a teeny-tiny little maggot that needed to be blown away, so you’re looking to the wrong person if you think I was helping him.”Il

  “Who would have helped him?” Chaya kept her voice low enough to keep those around from listening.

  Rogue shrugged. “His uncle Dayle. He’s a son of a bitch, but I’m sure Natches told you that. He wouldn’t have helped kill soldiers or steal weapons though. Dayle Mackay likes to knock the women around, and he likes to run his mouth about politics, but he wouldn’t sell missiles to terrorists unless he had them rigged to blow them to hell and back.”

  “What about Johnny’s mother?”

  Rogue sneered maliciously. “The only thing that bitch knows how to do is fuck her brother. Johnny got drunk one night right before he died and decided I should know that. Dayle tells her what to do, and she does it. She doesn’t make many moves without Dayle’s permission.”

  “But Johnny did?”

  Rogue stared across the bar as she tipped the beer to her lips and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. Finally she set the bottle back on the bar and shook her head.

  “I would have said no, but it appears he did.” She shrugged again.

  “Why would you have said that?” Chaya asked.

  Rogue pursed her lips. “Johnny was a weaselly little thing. He craved male attention and approval. I wouldn’t have thought he would have done that, simply because his uncle Dayle would have been disappointed in him. And he couldn’t have borne that. It was bad enough when Dayle found out he was gay.”

  “What happened when his uncle found out he was gay?”

  Rogue tapped a fingernail against the bar, frowning down at the movement for long moments. “Johnny didn’t walk for weeks,” she finally said. “I kind of felt sorry for him, went to the house to check on him.” She shook her head on a bitter laugh. “Dayle had beat him from head to toe. Johnny was in a dress, stockings, and a wig. Said it was his punishment.” Disgust marked her expression. “Damn, sometimes I wonder why I don’t just go ahead and move back to Boston. You know better than to get involved with people there.”

  Chaya glanced around the bar. There weren’t many customers, but those who were there seemed to keep an eye on Rogue. And Chaya.

  “Did Johnny spend much time in bars?” she asked the other woman then.

  Rogue shook her head. “Not really. Johnny was the home-and-hearth type. I guess that’s why it surprised a lot of us when we found out what he’d done. He didn’t seem the type.”

  “And you don’t care that you’re telling me all thi
s?” Chaya injected. “Getting people around here to talk hasn’t been easy. Yet you’re more than willing.”

  Rogue smiled. A wicked upturn of Cupid’s bow lips, and eyes filled with cynical amusement. “Lady, this county holds no love for me, or me for it.” Bitterness flashed in her eyes. “The only difference between me and the fine upstanding citizens of this town is that I tell the truth as I see it. Let’s see. Example. I bet a half dozen spiteful little bitches are going to tell you, if they haven’t already, how hard they partied with Natches the weekend before you lit back into town.” She smiled gleefully. “I can tell you Natches hasn’t snacked on any homegrown offerings since he came back from the Marines. Now, the good sheriff over there? Widowed at a young age, he sampled the fine pleasures of one Janice Lowell just last week. And from what I hear, he’s a real go-getter. An all-nighter.” She leaned over and waved at the sheriff over her shoulder.

  Chaya glanced back and was surprised to see Sheriff Mayes watching the other woman with narrow-eyed disapproval.

  “He does the whole good-cop routine so well.” Rogue sighed elaborately.

  “What else can you tell me?” Chaya asked her then.

  “I can tell you a lot of women want to claw your eyes out. Weekend gossip is so much fun. And I can tell you that one of your agents—” She paused and shook her head, the brittle amusement dropping for a second. “Hell of a way to go. I heard he was killed this morning and several others almost went up in flames as well. What do you want me to tell you, Agent Dane?” The mocking, devil-may-care grin was back.

  “Who was pulling Johnny’s strings? Even better, who set the bombs?”

  “If I knew, I’d be barbeque, too.” Rogue grimaced. “All I hear is a little gossip here and there.” She shook her head, the tiny bells at her ears chiming softly. “The Mackay family is damned weird though. Ray, he’s a good guy, so are Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches. I didn’t know Chandler before he died, thank God, but I know he and Dayle were having one major fight the night Chandler and his wife were killed. And I know Nadine Mackay Grace and Dayle like to get the nasty on a little too often.” Her smile was all teeth; her eyes were bitter and much too cynical. “If I had known anything more, trust me, one of the Mackay cousins would have known, because there’s nothing in this world I would have loved better than bringing down Nadine Grace.”

  “Why?” Sometimes that was the most important question a person could ask.

  Rogue picked at the label on the bottle of beer, then reached over and turned the recorder off.

  “Interview over,” she said softly.

  Chaya picked up the recorder, transferred it back to her pocket, and watched Rogue expectantly. “Just between us girls then,” she told her. “What did Nadine do to you?”

  Rogue glanced at where Natches and the sheriff sat, then turned her eyes back to Chaya. Somehow she wasn’t surprised to see the hollow pain reflected within them.

  “She helped create me,” Rogue said then, her voice low and haunting. “One of these days, I’ll get to remind her of that. Create a monster, and it can come back and bite you in the ass. Isn’t that true, Agent Dane?”

  Chaya nodded slowly. “That’s very true, Rogue. Very true.”

  “Natches, you’re making a mistake here,” Zeke muttered as they watched the two women. They couldn’t hear the words, but a look told a thousand tales. “You need to pull her out of this.”

  Rogue, the one woman who men in three counties feared on a daily basis, almost blushed, and she softened. She looked younger; her gaze twinkled in humor. Then her expression shifted again, sorrow, and then bitterness. Natches swore that in the years he had known her, which hadn’t been many, he’d rarely seen anything but hard, mocking amusement in her eyes.

  As he watched Chaya though, his chest clenched. He’d been ready to tie her to his bed and force her out of this. Make her swear she would duck and hide until this was over and let him deal with the mess Cranston was creating.

  But as he watched her, he remembered crashing into that filthy little dirt cell in Iraq. The smell of blood and death had filled the cramped area, but there had been Chaya, crouched, a gun in her hand, dressed in her tormentor’s uniform.

  Her eyes had been so swollen there had been no way she could have seen out of them. Her feet had been ragged, though he hadn’t known that at the time. She had been so bruised and mauled, he’d seen his own life flash before his eyes. Because he couldn’t have left her, and there hadn’t been a chance he could’ve carried her out of there.

  But she had run. There had been no tears, only strength. No excuses, no recriminations. She had fought to live and fought to fight, and it was those qualities that had first stolen his heart.

  And he thought he could take that from her now?

  “That’s not my job,” he finally murmured.

  “It’s your job to protect her, damn it,” Zeke cursed.

  And to that, Natches nodded. “It’s my job to watch her back while she does her job. You don’t change what you love, Zeke, or you never loved it to begin with.”

  He had fallen in love with the agent. Strong, independent, fiercely determined. Take those things away from her, and she wasn’t Chaya. She wouldn’t be his heart or his soul, and that he couldn’t allow.

  Natches escorted Chaya back to his houseboat after the interview, the tension burning hot and heavy through them.

  “The boat has been checked thoroughly,” he told her as they walked along the floating docks toward it. “Alex hit town a few hours ago. He and his team went over it from top to bottom while we were on our way in.”

  Alex Jansen was Special Forces and worked closely with Cranston. Chaya had worked with him several times. He was also Crista Mackay’s brother.

  It was already dark and growing bitterly cold for the season. The wind off the water felt like ice and cut through Chaya’s thick jacket like the sharpest blade.

  She felt cold from the inside out. As though icicles were growing in the pit of her stomach and freezing her with fear.

  What the hell was going on in this beautiful little county? A place where young men were punished in such horrible ways for their sexual preferences, where young women, like twenty-four-year-old Rogue, were more cynical than women twice their ages. And agents, good men, family men, were being targeted to die in an inferno.

  “Alex and his team are at Dawg’s right now.” Natches’s voice was low, restrained. “We’ll wait till later to meet with them. After you’ve had a chance to rest and eat. You haven’t eaten today, Chay.”

  Was that concern in his voice? God, she didn’t want to hear the gentleness in his voice when she knew he was furious. Probably furious with her. She was furious with herself. She hadn’t taken the proper precautions. Somehow, she had missed something during the interviews she had conducted. An expression, a flash of maliciousness, a lie. There were always signs. Always. It was always there, in the eyes, in the small shifts of the face, and she had missed it. And because she had, Kyle was dead.

  Cranston had arrived in town as she left the bar. The text message had flashed on her phone, warning her that he would meet with her the next morning. On Natches’s houseboat. She hadn’t told Natches yet.

  “Come on, baby.” His voice was a breath of warmth against her ear as he unlocked the door and they stepped into the heated interior.

  After locking the door behind them, he slid her jacket from her shoulders and unclipped her weapon from her side.

  “You need a shoulder harness for this.” He laid the holstered gun on the jacket at the end of the couch.

  Chaya stared at the gun for long moments. She hated it. She hated carrying it, she hated being tied to it, and she hated the life she had led for the last five years. God, the last ten years. The only part of her life that had seemed worthwhile was the time with Beth. And with Natches.

  She shook her head. “They aren’t comfortable.”

  She wanted to turn to him, she wanted to beg him to hold her, to take away th
e pain, and she couldn’t. She was the agent, this was the life she had chosen. What right did she have to burden him with her regrets now? He would only feel as though he should fix it, somehow drag her from it, and now she couldn’t let it go.

  “Chay.” His arms came around her as she felt her throat tightening with emotion. “I have you.”

  His head rested against hers, and his warmth surrounded her.

  “I need a shower.” She pulled away from him. “Do you want to order dinner? I could probably fix something when I get finished.”

  “How domestic.” He let her go, though his tone grated on her nerves, that hint of knowledge, patience, and just a tinge of condescending male. “I do know how to cook, Chay,” he told her a second later as he breathed out roughly. “I’ve been doing it for a while now.”

  “Since your father threw you out of your home.” She turned on him, feeling it burn in her now, that icy rage. Nearly everyone she had spoke to knew about it, mentioned it, seemed to wallow in the dirty gossip and nasty stories they thought they knew.

  “It was never my home,” he said simply. “It was a place to crash for a night or two.”

  He said that so simply, as though it didn’t even matter.

  “The scars on your back? He beat you senseless …”

  “Yeah, well, he managed it that time.” His grin was smug if tinged with bitterness. “He has a few scars on his back now though. What the hell is this, Chay? I was barely twenty years old. We got into a fight over my sister and ended up fistfighting. He had the bigger fists at the time. Too bad, so sad. I survived it.” He shook his head and stared at her in confusion. “If you want to crucify Dayle Mackay, I’ll be the first in line to help you, but that’s not what this is all about.”

  No, it wasn’t. It was about the fact that he had every intention of jerking her out of that bar. That he had informed her, quite bluntly, that they would be discussing it when they returned here.

  Well, she was ready to discuss it now.