“Take the glasses off, Natches,” Rowdy finally bit out.
And he didn’t dare. He’d been out of the game too long. His eyes showed what he knew his face didn’t, and when it came to Chaya, they showed even more.
There were secrets he kept, secrets he was determined to keep. And Chaya was one of them.
“I have you, Chay. Hold on, baby. Just hold on. I have you.”
He almost flinched at the memory. The smell of gunfire, of violence and blood, filled his head, and the sounds of her screams. Screams so horrifying, so filled with rage and pain that he hadn’t known how to live with them in his head.
“I need to roll.” He pushed the coffee cup back and dug into his jeans for a few dollars to pay the bill.
He didn’t have time to fuck around here. Chaya and Zeke were on the move, and Natches was very curious as to the names on that list she had shown the sheriff.
He was very damned curious as to why she was here to begin with. He had the official line. He had the rumors and he had the suppositions his contacts had come up with. None of those satisfied him. None of those reasons kept his hackles from rising every time he thought about it, or every time he saw Chaya.
He tossed the money on the table and started to rise.
“I don’t want to make a mess of this diner, cuz,” Dawg said then. “And if we fight, you know there’s gonna be a mess. Sit your ass down here and tell us what the hell is going on. Let us help you, Natches.”
He stared back at Dawg, then Rowdy. He could see the concern in their eyes, the worry that he was riding that line again. He had ridden that line a lot in the past. The one that separated common sense from pure, bloody violence.
What the hell was wrong with him? He couldn’t make sense of it. He hadn’t made sense of it in seven years and it still didn’t make sense. When Chaya was anywhere near, he didn’t know himself. He didn’t know who he was and he didn’t understand the needs that tore through him, nor did he understand the extreme possessiveness.
In one hot afternoon in the Iraqi desert while he waited for the calvary to ride in and listened to the enemy get closer, he had found something he hadn’t expected to find.
There, buried in a hole, he had held a woman, and somehow that woman had slipped inside his soul.
How did that happen? In such a short time, how did one woman change everything a man knew about himself?
“I’m married.” She had whispered the words, and they had been filled with pain, with a knowledge he couldn’t have guessed at, at the time.
And what had shocked him clear to the bottom of his soul was that it hadn’t mattered. As he held her, he’d known that marriage wasn’t going to stand in his way. She was his, and that feeling had seared his soul.
And he had found a core of possessiveness that he hadn’t imagined lived inside him. That possessiveness had shocked him clear to the center of his being, and still had the power to throw him off balance.
“Natches.” Rowdy’s voice was warning. “Don’t walk out that fucking door.”
Natches shook his head and followed the woman he couldn’t stay away from. He had to follow her. He had to know what the hell she was doing and how much danger it was going to place her in.
“It’s okay, I have you, baby.”
He held her as she sobbed. Broken, horrific cries that ripped at his guts and flayed his soul as he carried her through hell. The smell of blood and death and broken dreams surrounded them, and all he could do was hold her.
As he left the diner he didn’t feel the late autumn air, he felt the heat of an Iraqi summer, the sun blazing down on Baghdad as fire blazed at their backs. He didn’t hear the traffic around him, or Dawg’s voice behind him. He heard her screams. He heard her pleas as she begged him, pleaded with him to let her die, too.
“Natches, enough of this shit!” Dawg and Rowdy caught him as he neared his jeep, gripping his arm and swinging him around. “Damn it, what the hell is going on with you? You’re starting to worry us, man.”
They were defensive, ducking instinctively, knowing his habit of swinging first and asking questions later. But Natches didn’t swing.
He knew these two men. Knew them almost as well as he knew himself, and he knew they wouldn’t let it go.
Shaking his head he pulled the glasses from his face and stared back at them. And he knew what they saw. Both men stepped back, staring back at him in surprise. He saw those eyes in the mirror every morning since Chaya’s return last year, and he saw his inability to control the need riding him more every day.
“My fight,” he told them both. “There’s no room for all of us here. I guess I finally grew up, huh?”
It was a reminder that as Dawg and Rowdy had matured, as their hearts became involved with their women, rather than just their cocks, their possessive instincts had kicked in. No one touched what they claimed themselves. They didn’t share their women anymore, not even with each other.
And they didn’t need to be involved in this. He knew Dawg and Rowdy, and he knew that knowing the truth would do nothing but worry them more.
They thought they knew Natches. That was the mistake most people made. They thought they knew him, understood him. They thought they could predict him, and they had found out they were wrong.
He turned away from his cousins, ignoring the worried looks they gave each other, and jumped into the jeep. Chaya’s rental car was still sitting here; that meant they were in Zeke’s official SUV. That wouldn’t be hard to find.
Chaya would never be hard for him to find, no matter where she was or how she tried to hide. He had proven that to her. And now he was paying the price.
He had let her leave a year ago. He wasn’t willing to do that this time around. He’d find out what the hell she was doing here. Then, he’d find Chaya.
He pulled from the parking lot in a squeal of tires and a grinding of gears before shooting out into the alley and heading for the main road. He didn’t know the names on that list she had given Zeke, but he’d find out tonight what was going on there. Until then, he’d shadow her and see if he couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
Because he knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be with Homeland Security and she wasn’t supposed to be in Kentucky.
So why was Chaya Greta Dane doing exactly what she wasn’t supposed to be doing in a place she wasn’t supposed to be?
And why the hell did he let himself care?
FOUR
Ezekiel Mayes was leaning against his car as Agent Dane pulled from the restaurant parking lot, and he waited. He had just dropped her back at her car, and knew he wouldn’t have to wait long; he was just curious who would show up.
He wasn’t left in suspense, and he had to hide his smile as the black jeep pulled in behind his SUV and Natches stepped out of the vehicle.
Those damnable glasses covered his eyes. The black lenses were a shield between Natches and the world, Zeke often thought. And damned if he could blame the other man. Natches hadn’t exactly skated through life. Some years, Zeke knew, he’d hung on by his fingernails alone as his father tried to destroy him.
Last year, Zeke feared, had been a breaking point for Natches. The day he had taken a bead on his first cousin Johnny Grace and pulled the trigger.
Natches had been one of the finest snipers the Marines had possessed. Often working alone, without the benefit of a spotter, completing his missions, then hanging around to gather intel. Four years in the Marines and he had nearly been a legend by the time an enemy sniper had taken his shoulder out.
If that was what happened. Zeke sometimes wondered. Natches wasn’t a man one could slip up on, even from a distance. He had instincts like the sheriff had never known in another man. Instincts honed in the Kentucky mountains and in his father’s home.
An ex-Marine himself, Dayle Mackay was one hard-bitten son of a bitch. If ever a man deserved a bullet, then it was Dayle.
“Figured you’d show up eventually.” Zeke sighed when Natches didn’t speak. “I wasn’t able to get any info, if that’s what you want to know.”
“Why is she here?”
“Follow-up is what I was told.” Zeke shrugged; he didn’t believe that one either. “They’re still missing the million. I guess the government has to line their coffers somewhere, huh?”
He tipped his hat back and stared up at the setting sun as Natches stood still and silent. What the hell was he thinking behind those glasses? Reading Natches Mackay was like trying to read ancient script. Pretty much impossible.
“Who is she questioning tomorrow?”
Zeke shook his head. “Hell if I know. Said she’d give me the names when we meet up in the morning. I couldn’t get shit out of her.”
She was as closemouthed as Natches was, and almost as wary. But where the man was stone-cold and silent, Zeke had seen nervousness in the agent. She had known from second to second exactly where Natches was behind them, when he would round a curve, or where he would park. That little girl had been so attuned to the killer shadowing them that Zeke had been amazed.
“Would you tell me if you had?” Natches asked him then, his big body shifting dangerously as he pinned Zeke with that shielded gaze.
“In this case, yeah, I’d tell you.” He nodded. “Because I want an end to this as well, Natches. What went down last year has ripped through this town like a plague. Homegrown fucking terrorists? God help us all. People are scared to trust their neighbors here now. And that bothers me. That bothers me real bad.”
Pulaski County was his home, his county, his watch and his responsibility. It was one he took seriously, and until last year, he had thought he was doing a damned fine job at keeping out the worst of the evil the world had to offer.
Terrorists. Son of a bitch. It was bad enough when the bastards were foreign, almost fucking conceivable. But homegrown? A man you’d known all your life?
He and Johnny Grace hadn’t been friends, but if anyone had asked him if the boy could kill, he would have given an emphatic no. And he would have been wrong. If anyone had told him Johnny had been conspiring to steal and sell missiles that would be used against his own nation, Zeke would have denied it to the last line.
Johnny had been strange. He’d been a little off in left field sometimes, but Zeke had never imagined what his smile hid.
“She’s after more than the money.” Zeke breathed out heavily at that thought. “There’s something more important here than that.”
“Like?”
“Like hell if I fucking know,” Zeke cursed. “You Mackays tell me what the fuck is going on after it’s done the hell over with.” He flicked Natches a glowering look. “If you had been honest with me from the beginning, we wouldn’t be standing here now, would we, damn it?”
“That or we’d be standing over your grave.” Natches shrugged. “We were almost standing over Dawg’s and Crista’s. I didn’t like that, Zeke.”
The understatement was almost laughable. When Johnny Grace had taken Dawg’s lover and tried to kill her, he had signed his death warrant with Natches.
There was nothing Natches cared for outside Rowdy, Dawg, and Rowdy’s dad, Ray Mackay. Unless it was his sister, Janey. Zeke had never figured out for sure if he gave a shit about the girl or not, but he knew he’d hate to test that boundary. Natches might act like she didn’t exist, but Zeke was betting the other man kept very close tabs on the girl.
“What are you going to do here, Natches?” he finally asked. “Don’t get between me and the law, man. I’d hate to have to butt heads with you. But I will.”
Natches’s lips quirked humorously. “I’ll stay out of your law, and you stay out of my way. Other than that, I don’t know what the hell to tell you.”
Frustration gnawed at Zeke then. He really didn’t need this. Natches was, Zeke often thought, the most dangerous man he knew. He wasn’t given to strong temperament, he didn’t hold grudges. But Zeke had a feeling that spilling blood didn’t bother him overmuch either.
