by Lora Leigh
“By association only.” Natches shrugged, but Chaya caught the calculated drawl in his voice. “Hell, arrest the whole town and pull them into interrogation. Everyone but everyone associates eventually here.”
“This little town of yours isn’t as closed off as you want to think it is, Natches,” Timothy snapped. “The tourism rate is incredible. Lake Cumberland is one of the greatest draws in the area.”
“So now we’re looking for tourists?” Natches lifted his brow and Chaya almost winced.
He’d been cool and focused all morning, going through the files, making notes, answering her with short, brief replies.
“I hate Mackays.” Timothy sighed.
“Yeah, especially when they’re self-proclaimed generals of a homegrown militant group.” Natches grinned tightly, then reached behind him for the files he had stacked there, and threw them to the table. “Try those boys and see if you come up with more than I did.”
Chaya stared at him in shock.
“What are you saying, Natches?” Timothy stilled, the agents around him adjusting their posture, their hands in close proximity to their weapons.
Natches laughed at the moves as Sheriff Mayes angled himself to cover Natches if needed. Interesting. A man Chaya would have sworn didn’t uphold loyalty over the law, yet he was silently aligning himself with Natches.
“Stop baiting him, Natches.” She turned back to him, narrowing her eyes at the gleam of anger in his gaze. “We want to keep Timothy calm, remember? I’m certain his secretary wasn’t able to slip his meds in his coffee this morning, so let’s not tease him.”
It was a running joke that his secretary needed to dose his coffee with sedatives. He was so hyper sometimes he drove the rest of them crazy.
“Look at the last file.” Natches shrugged as he finished his coffee and set the cup aside. “You’ll see what I mean.”
Chaya hadn’t seen the files. Natches had been up working before she awoke, and he had stayed distant, refusing to discuss whatever he was working on.
“You’re not dealing with clumsy, drugged out hometown boys here,” Natches informed them as Timothy pulled out that bottom file.
Chaya barely managed to stifle her gasp.
“You’re dealing with men who have had a dream all their lives,” Natches stated mockingly. “Instead of sending Chaya in and risking her neck on this fool’s errand you gave her, you should have come to someone who would know.”
Dayle Mackay. There were three pictures on the front of the file. Dayle Mackay, Chandler Mackay, and another man who Chaya knew was suspected to be part of Freedom’s League. These were obviously the men they had needed to target.
“Chandler wasn’t in the military,” she said, her voice low, shocked.
“Nope, Chandler liked to play war games though. His pansy ass was too important to risk, big-shot architect that he was. But he liked to show his kid how tough and strong he was, usually with his fists, though his wife did have a measure of control over him.
“Now, good ole Dayle Mackay, there’s another story.”
Natches had once thought he had pushed that part of his past behind him, that he had conquered that hatred, that bitterness. Maybe he hadn’t fully managed it, he thought as he watched Cranston read the file.
“Dayle didn’t care who he beat up on, or how bad. And he kept his wife sedated enough that she didn’t really give a shit either. He married money, confiscated the money on her parents’ deaths, and let her live to watch all his glory plans move right along. General Dayle Mackay. That’s what he calls himself in private. But then, he always has, so it wasn’t easy to put it together at first.”
He moved aside as Chaya shifted closer to him. Hell, he’d thought he could have a life with her, and now that was being tested in the worst possible way. The son of a traitor? She had been married to one traitor already; he was pretty sure she wouldn’t want another in the family.
“The other files, those are the men I remember from years back who made late-night visits, sat and drank his fine wine and talked about the golden future they could create.”
He had been a kid then. Those memories were always rife with pain. Natches had been a nosy kid, and sometimes he had been caught being nosy. And he’d paid for it.
“They’re all right here together,” Timothy exclaimed as he pulled free one of the few pictures Natches had stolen out of the house before his father had disowned him.
“That picture was stolen by accident.” He grinned. “I used to steal family pictures, not that we had a lot. His wife, Linda, she tried taking them for a few years, but finally gave up. She liked being sedated better.”
Natches looked at the picture. Six men. Dayle, Chandler, and the men he remembered visiting when he was younger. And one woman. Nadine Mackay Grace between the two Mackay brothers, their arms around her as they grinned for the camera.
His mother, Linda, wasn’t in the picture. Just those hard-eyed men and the sister the Mackay brothers had used for their own pleasure.
Natches moved back to the coffeepot, feeling the need to slip away, to hunt. His rifle was clean and ready, ammunition prepared, his knapsack was packed. He could leave at a moment’s notice and no one would have a clue where he was going. Or that the need to kill the man who sired him was eating him alive.
“Delbert Grant is your explosives expert,” he told them. “He was in town a few weeks ago. He’s been out of the service a hell of a long time. But his son was with him; I guess every man needs an apprentice.”
Natches almost snorted at the thought.
“How do we get the evidence we need against them?” Timothy mused as he turned to his agents, and Chaya moved to Natches.
He tried to pull away from her again, to ignore her gaze.
“Don’t. Please.” She stared up at him, then laid her head against his chest and he wondered if his heart was going to shatter in that moment.
He couldn’t stop himself from touching her, from letting his hands flatten against her back and feel her melting against him.
But he stared over her head and watched as the agents went through the files, comparing names, associations, and placing each one at specific points of operation.
They weren’t incredibly wealthy men. They were plotters, planners. They were bullies and self-appointed saviors. They were the worst kind of enemy.
“This one has a boat on the lake.” The sheriff tapped the file of one of the more well-to-do members of the group. “He has a group out here several times a year. They don’t cause trouble, but they give you a clear feeling of trouble.”
“Uncle Ray wouldn’t let them dock here,” Natches told them.
Timothy’s head raised at the mention of Ray’s name. “Where are your cousins? And Jansen? They’re not around this morning.”
He stroked Chaya’s back as she turned in his embrace to watch Timothy. She was still relaxed against him, conforming to his harder, larger body, as though her petite frame could cushion him against any of this.
“They’re around,” he said softly.
Chaya tensed at the sound of his voice. Soft, almost gentle. A lazy drawl that held no warmth, no comfort.
Chaya watched as Timothy narrowed his eyes on them, taking in their position, the way Natches held her against him. It was an unmistakable picture and the special agent’s gaze flickered with knowledge.
“Yeah, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Timothy?” Natches asked, and Chaya forced herself to remain silent, to keep her eyes on Timothy. “You sent her in here stirring the pot so you could draw us out and make us do your work for you.”
Timothy exhaled roughly, ran his hand over his balding head, and gave Natches a wary grin.
“I knew if anyone could do it, you boys could.” He finally shrugged. “I was getting nowhere. All we had was the Somerset connection and Johnny’s connection to your dad and your uncle.”
“Don’t,” Natches snapped. “Never title those two with those names again. You call them
by name; you don’t relate them to me.”
Cold bitter rage cut through his voice then, and Chaya felt her heart breaking. She had to blink back her tears, and watched as Timothy lowered his head and ran his hand over his face before nodding sharply.
“Yeah, you’re right.” The agent sighed. “They don’t deserve it. You’re a fine man, Natches, you and your true uncle and those cousins of yours. You’re damned good people. I’m not fighting you for that. Nor am I going to argue over the stench the other two have cast on the rest of you. But we have to deal with this now.” His fingers flicked to the files Natches had produced in the early hours of the morning. “We can’t arrest them without proof.” He looked at Chaya. “And we don’t have anyone tying them close enough to Johnny Grace yet.”
“You will have,” Natches stated. “When you’re fishing for the big bass, Cranston, you just have to have the right bait.”
“And who’s the right bait?” Cranston asked him warily.
“I am.”
Chaya felt her heart nearly stop in her chest as fear began to drive a spike through her soul. She twisted around, ignoring his attempt to hold her in place, and stared into the hard, savage expression that had settled over Natches’s face.
This wasn’t the man she knew. The man who teased or laughed or even the man she had known to be angry. This wasn’t anger, it wasn’t even rage. It was pure icy terror packed into six feet two inches of tight, hard Marine assassin. This was the man who had killed Johnny Grace the year before, the man who left Timothy Cranston sweating in fear for months after that operation. And seeing the icy, frozen core of that man sent a tremor of wariness through her.
And he knew it. His gaze licked over her, icicles and cold fire, causing a shiver to race down her spine.
“You’re the wrong bait.” Chaya had to force the words past her throat. “He knows we’re together; he knows I’m an agent. He won’t go for it.”
“Sure he will,” Natches drawled, and God she hated that sound. There was nothing warm or comforting in it.
“How do you figure?” she bit out, pulling farther away from him to stare back at him angrily. “He’ll know it’s a trick. A trap. He’ll never mess up like that.”
“Keep looking in those files,” he told her then. “Check out Fletcher Linkins. We were in sniper training together.”
Her gaze moved to the files and then back to him. “Good ole Fletch is dead, did you know that?” He directed the question to Timothy.
Timothy nodded. “Car wreck while he was on leave about four years ago.”
“He didn’t wreck his car,” Natches snarled. “He was killed. I went looking for him after I returned home. I wanted to know why a fellow sniper took a bead on me and tried to take my head off. He was already dead when I found him. Because he had failed the mission the Freedom’s League gave him to kill me. Check his link to good ole Dayle.”
Timothy shook his head. “Why target you?”
“Because I was helping Chay in Iraq.” Natches smiled tightly. “I was investigating the orders that sent those missiles into that hotel and I was the one that took out Nassar for torturing her. They wanted me out of the way. They didn’t want me tying the threads together, because then I would have known.”
“And you didn’t know what was going on in Iraq until Chaya came back this time,” Timothy mused, nodding his head. “It makes sense.”
“Dayle’s involved in this up to his eyeballs. He’s connected with the men in that photo, and those men are all connected in various ways to military intelligence and/or DHS. They’re not wealthy, they’re not powerful, but they’re going to be. If they’re not stopped.”
Chaya wrapped her arms across her breasts and listened as Natches and Timothy discussed how to trap them. She watched Natches, and she knew he’d already decided exactly what he was going to do. He was only going through the motions here, letting Timothy get his say in. He was patient, controlled, and Timothy had no clue that Natches was already formulating his own plans.
It was the reason why the other cousins weren’t here. It was why Alex wasn’t here. Because they were already working their end. He’d already discussed it with them.
The knowledge of that had her jaw clenching as she stared at him, willing him to meet her eyes. When he did, she wanted to flinch. Because she could see beneath the ice, and she could finally see the pain building inside him.
Finally, Timothy and his agents were gone and Natches was locking the door behind them. He stood still as he set the security system, his gaze focused on the digital settings, glaring at them, trying to push back the need to destroy something.
He’d mastered those uncontained rages years ago. The ones that left every stick of furniture around him in slivers. The ones that left his hands bloody from ramming them into the walls.
He breathed in deeply and caught Chaya’s scent. A fresh, clean smell that almost, just almost, pushed past the putrid scent of betrayal in his mind. The smell of his own blood, his own pain.
“You lied to Timothy,” she whispered then.
Natches turned back and watched her. Dressed in his T-shirt and another pair of borrowed leggings. He was going to have to remind Dawg to check on her luggage, see if she had any of her own clothes left.
“Why did you lie to him, Natches?” Her voice was soft, and the sound of it tried to ease the ragged edges of his soul.
“How do you know I lied?” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at the woman who held his soul with such silken bonds that he knew he would never be free.
And he felt just as unworthy of those bonds now as he had in Iraq. Not that it was going to stop him from tying her to him, and better she learn what he was now, rather than later. But sometimes, in the darkest reaches of his soul, there were moments that he cringed at the thought that he was dirtying her.
“I’m a trained interrogation specialist, lover. That’s what I do. Remember?” Her smile was just as hard and just as tight as his had been earlier. But that word on her lips. Lover. Hell, no one had ever called him “lover,” even teasingly. It was such a simple word, and often used so carelessly. But it wasn’t a word Natches had used, or had used for him. And it sank inside him, tried to warm him in all the places he had gone cold and hard. For years, he had existed on autopilot, a Marine, a man who knew he had no true home, no family other than the cousins and uncle who still yet belonged to others. Nothing was his alone.
Until Chaya. And here he stood trying to protect that one precious thing in his life, perhaps two, and he could tell she was going to fight him tooth and nail. Just as his cousins fought him.
He shook his head and moved into the room, staring around it, and realizing why he had moved from the houseboat to the garage apartment the year before. This wasn’t a home. He hadn’t wanted it to be a home.
“Natches, you’re not talking to me.” His head jerked around at the slightest thread of fear in her voice.
She stood across the room watching him, her arms wrapped across her breasts as she stared at him. And those pretty eyes, such a warm, sweet honey color, seemed to spill inside him.
“He was part of the reason your daughter was killed.” He spoke the words slowly and watched her flinch, watched her and made her accept that betrayal. The group Dayle Mackay was a part of had found a way to authenticate a strike that had never been approved. The strike that had killed her child.
“You weren’t.” She swallowed tightly as he watched her battle her tears.
He had only seen her cry once, and God help him, those tears followed him in his nightmares. Wrenching sobs tore from her soul as he held her safe beneath him, forced her head to his chest and watched that hotel explode.
And that night, the first time he had loved her, the night her daughter had died, he’d had to tear his gaze away from her, turn his back on her and clench his fists to keep from going after Dayle Mackay then and there. Killing him would only solve a part of the problem. Just one part out of a dozen. But he
wanted to kill.
Because he remembered her screaming sobs as he dragged her back to the small hotel where he stayed sometimes. There he had held her, rocked her, loved her, and he let silent tears fall from his own eyes.
“His blood is mine.” He turned back to her and shook his head as he felt the chill inside him.
“And your blood?” she whispered as she moved to him, took his hand and placed it on her stomach. “You’re blood is here, Natches.”
He caressed her stomach through the clothes; he couldn’t help himself. Her heated flesh met his calloused hands, and as he did when he held her at night, he imagined he felt life there. Hope.
He shook his head and wanted to pull away from her, but he couldn’t force himself to.
“And when this is over, you may curse the night you allowed me to come inside you.” He found the strength to pull back from her, to walk away.
“You son of a bitch!” He didn’t get far before her fingers gripped his wrist and she jumped in front of him. “Excuse me here? But are you daring to walk away from me?”
He dragged his fingers through his hair, a frown jerking between his brows at the anger on her face, the accusation in her eyes.
“I have things to do, Chaya.”
“And of course you’re not going to do the ‘partner’ thing you’ve been preaching about here and tell me what the hell they are. Right, Natches?”
He nodded slowly. “That about sums it up.”
She looked as though he had slapped her. Natches stared back at her in confusion as she backed away from him, her face paling.
“So much for all my courage and strength that you so highly respect,” she sneered. “I guess, once again, I’m delegated back to the weak little woman who has to be protected. Right?”
“This is my fight,” he bit out.
“Because it’s your blood?”
“Fucking A,” he snarled.
“Well, excuse me, Mr. Mackay, but there’s a damned good chance I’m carrying your blood inside me, so I think that makes it my damned fight as well.”
And how the hell was he supposed to counter that argument?
“It doesn’t work that way, Chay.” He tried pure male dominance and decisiveness.