“I’m not ready to know,” she admitted, and that only pissed him off further. “But I do know that Dawg has never asked me or my sisters and mother for anything. Not a damned thing, Brogan, for taking us in and securing our lives and our futures. Everything we have and everything we are, we owe to him. And all he’s ever asked is that I stay away from you until you can prove you’re not the man his contacts say you are.”
There, it was all out in the open now.
His jaw clenched in anger as he glared back at her, wondering whether she believed the rumors or believed in herself and her instincts.
“And what kind of man do his contacts report I am?” he asked carefully.
“That you’ve betrayed your country,” she whispered, her expression so filled with hunger, need, and pain that she tempted him to paddle her ass and show her what she could believe in.
“Do you think I betrayed my country?”
It wouldn’t matter about the reports or what she believed. He was going to have her. Tonight had proven to him that without his protection right now, certain people would consider her fair game simply because it was known he was interested. Donny and Sandi had made the first strike, but Brogan knew his interest in her was well known. If the men he was searching for suspected he was a government agent, then it could be much worse.
Even more important, he had to get this operation behind them so he could find the time and the space he needed to figure out what she was to him as well.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Brogan,” she whispered. “It’s what Dawg thinks he knows.”
“And you always obey your brother?” He knew he wasn’t being fair to her, but by God, she was his. She was going to have to make a choice, and she was going to have to make it soon.
“It’s not that simple.”
“I’m making it that simple,” he growled as she turned and jerked the bedroom door open.
“That doesn’t mean I’ll follow along,” she retorted, the emerald of her eyes lighting with an inner flame that only made his dick harder. Only made him want her beneath him more.
He wasn’t going to argue this with her five minutes after her brother had left. No doubt Dawg had already suspected he was there, and he’d said just what he’d known he needed to. His object was to keep Eve from sleeping with Brogan, and tonight he’d achieved his objective.
“We’ll discuss this. Soon,” he warned her, stomping to the patio door.
Eve stared up at him, seeing the promise in his eyes and almost shivering at the latent dominance and pure demand in his look.
Her lips parted to argue, to inform him that they’d discuss it when she was ready, when a sudden, horrified scream pierced the house.
The layout of the house put the kitchen directly across from her and Brogan, on the other side of the house. There were two halls leading from the kitchen to each wing. The shortest distance to the kitchen was the narrow hall just outside Brogan’s room that opened directly into the kitchen.
Before the scream was silenced, she and Brogan both were running.
He made damned sure she didn’t get ahead of him as they turned into the hall, knowing there would be no room for her to do so once they reached the narrow passageway, she noticed.
They had no more turned into the hall than another scream shattered the silence of the night, and the sounds of her sisters yelling through the house could be heard.
Terror pierced Eve’s mind as they shot into the kitchen and raced for the open back door. She was terrified of what they would find, knowing her mother was not a woman who frightened easily.
As they pushed out the door to the back porch, Eve came to a hard, sudden stop.
Her eyes widened, horror filling her as she felt her stomach pitch at the sight.
The back part of the wooden porch that surrounded the house was covered in blood, entrails, and body parts of the dozen or more fat rabbits her mother bred and used for the dinner table.
As with the chickens in the chicken house that provided eggs and meat, the turkeys and occasional duck her mother raised, and the deer she convinced Dawg to take her hunting for each year, Mercedes Mackay was known for her fresh meats, like venison during holidays and special occasions.
The rabbits represented five years’ work with only a few of the plump animals actually making it to the dinner table.
Mercedes and Eve had raised the four babies she’d bought, and from there began breeding them. Now they were gone in the most horrific manner that Eve could have imagined.
She didn’t always agree with her mother’s entirely pragmatic approach to food. Mercedes had learned to appreciate more than store-bought meats as a child. And growing up, Eve and her sisters had often been more than grateful for her mother’s ability to prepare wild game. Though Eve herself found she much preferred buying her meat from the grocer rather than raising it herself.
Now, staring at the porch, seeing the blood and mutilated carcasses of the animals that had been penned close to the house to ensure that no predators attacked them, Eve well understood why her mother was screaming.
Mercedes had been screaming for Timothy and her daughters, terrified that if someone had been brazen enough to come onto her porch and do something so horrific, then her family could be in danger as well.
Timothy and, surprisingly, Dawg had made it to the back porch ahead of Brogan and Eve. Behind her, she could hear her sisters’ gasps, then the silence that filled the room.
“Why would anyone do this?” Her mother was furious.
Turning on Timothy as he held her to him, his gaze hard, cold as he stared at the carnage, Mercedes demanded an answer. “Timothy, why would they do this?”
Timothy could only shake his head before his gaze turned to Dawg, then Brogan.
Brogan had separated himself from the other two men. Enough distance was left between them that Eve had the feeling that he was ensuring that no one could ever mistake him and the other two men for friends.
Who would care?
“Are they pets?” Brogan asked her, his voice low.
Eve shook her head. “We get a lot of hunters as guests. She breeds them for when they stay.”
The hunters often swore they came more for Mercedes’s preparation of the wild meat than they did for the hunting.
The look in Brogan’s eyes was so hard, so frigid, Eve actually shivered.
Casually, Brogan leaned against the side of the house, pulled a pack of the slim cigars he smoked from his shirt pocket, and lit one up.
“I guess you don’t know anything about this, right, Brogan?” Dawg snarled as his head swung around.
Several other guests had moved out to the porch, following Mercedes’s screams.
It was almost dawn, and most people were asleep, but the guests on Eve’s side of the house had obviously been awake.
The two single men, Jed Booker and Eli Grant, stood at the other end of the porch, their eyes on the bloody destruction spread out before them.
“I want everyone to stay as far back as possible,” Timothy ordered as he led Mercedes into the house.
Eve slid to the other side of the door as he did so, turning to go in.
Her mother was immediately surrounded by Piper, Lyrica, and Zoey as they led her to the other side of the kitchen and began preparing coffee. Their move allowed her to ensure that she heard whatever the men decided to discuss.
Eve could feel the tension in the air.
Unless they were standing exactly where Eve was, no one could have seen the looks that passed between Timothy, Dawg, and Brogan. But Eve saw them.
Brogan might be giving the impression of distance, but the look they shared assured Eve that they were all three on the same wavelength at the moment.
“Campbell, you and the other guests should return to your rooms,” Timothy ordered.
“Looks like a fox ignored the henhouse and went for the rabbits instead,” Jed commented as he scratched at his chest through the jersey jacket he wore.
Jeans and a jersey jacket wasn’t exactly summer attire, she thought.
He’d pushed the sleeves to his elbows and put his hands in the pockets as he leaned against the corner of the house and stifled a yawn.
Eli didn’t say a word, just continued to watch out of hazel eyes that seemed darker in the low light. Finally he gave a slow nod toward the three men before turning and heading back down the hall.
A moment later, Jed yawned again. “I’m going to get ready for work,” he finally stated. “By the time I get back to bed it’s going to be time for breakfast.” He paused, his sharp gaze turning on Eve. “We still having breakfast?”
She almost grinned. She would have, if her imagination and her fear weren’t in overdrive.
“Knowing Mom, I’ll say yes.” She nodded.
“See you then.” He turned and disappeared, leaving Eve alone with Timothy, Dawg, and Brogan.
“This wasn’t a fox,” Eve stated, keeping her voice low as she stared at each man in turn before pausing as she caught Brogan’s eye. “Was it?”
Brogan shrugged, but she could see a warning in his eyes, in his expression, as he watched her.
“Whatever it was, it won’t be back tonight,” Dawg growled. “I’ll get Natches later today and get some security cameras up out here. That way we catch the fox doing this and put it out of its misery.” His voice hardened.
“You’re not calling Alex?” Eve demanded, speaking of Somerset’s chief of police and one of Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches’s best friends.
“Killing a rabbit isn’t a crime, Eve.” Dawg sighed. “And if it was a fox—and they are prone to indiscriminately kill—then how is Alex going to help?”
This was no fox kill. Eve had seen a fox go after chickens and kill them, and she had never seen carnage like this. There was that warning in Brogan’s gaze, though, as well as Dawg’s. A warning to watch what she said.
“Go inside, Eve.” Brogan’s voice was so low, the tone so dark, that she found herself doing just that.
Casting them all a look filled with irritation, she stepped into the kitchen with her mother and sisters, gritting her teeth as she closed the door carefully behind her.
“Why are you still here?” Dawg demanded, not bothering to lower his tone or attempt to hide what he was saying as he looked up from where he was crouched on bent knees to study the porch.
“I’m nosy.” Brogan didn’t bother to lower his voice either. “It’s not every day I get to see a fox’s kill, you know.”
Dawg snorted at the comment.
“They’re watching you.” This time Dawg’s voice carried no farther than Brogan’s and Timothy’s ears.
Lifting the cigar to his lips to hide his reply from anyone watching now, Brogan stated, “Yeah, they are.”
“Retaliation?” Dawg questioned.
Would Donny and Sandi go to these lengths?
“I’ll find out,” Brogan promised.
And he would.
If Donny and Sandi were behind this—and he didn’t doubt in the least that they could be—then it wouldn’t happen again. He’d show the two and anyone else what would happen if Eve was struck at again.
They were testing him; he could feel it.
Doogan had warned him when Eve’s name had first come up that there could initially be problems. There were those who would do anything to keep her brother from getting involved in their business. That was one of the things that made Eve so important to the operation at this point. The second and even more important reason was the report that someone had information that could clear this case up, and only Eve could convince them to come out of hiding.
The minute the rumors had started that Brogan was interested in her, the report had hit Doogan’s desk. A confidential informant had contacted Doogan claiming that the thefts of military files were linked to something far bigger than DHS realized, and there was information that someone had answers besides the thieves. Someone that might be convinced to come forward if he thought Eve Mackay was in danger.
