Chapter 4

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.

“We don’t need another killing like last summer, Natches,” he warned him. “You didn’t have to kill Johnny. You could have wounded him and left enough to question. Then we wouldn’t have these folks running around now.”

Natches didn’t stiffen. There was nothing in his demeanor to indicate a change in mood. But the air around them seemed to crackle with tension and rage.

“Killing him was better than sex.” Natches’s smile was cold enough, hard enough, that Zeke wondered if he should feel an edge of fear. There was something completely unaffected in that smile.

“Better than sex with Agent Dane?” Zeke had a feeling he had just taken his life in his hands with that question.

Natches stared back at him, his expression closed. Tight. For a moment, Zeke thought he would speak, thought something would finally pass by that tightly shielded expression of his. Instead, Natches turned away, jumped back into the jeep, and shoved it into gear before pulling away with careful restraint.

Zeke slowly let out his breath, unaware that he had been holding it after asking that last question. And he had no idea which way the answer would have gone.

“You didn’t have to kill Johnny. You could have wounded him and left enough to question.”

Zeke’s accusation didn’t sit well with Natches, no more than his response had. That killing Johnny had been better than sex. Hell, killing that little bastard had set up a sickness in his gut that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Not regret. There was no regret. It was Johnny or Crista, and Crista had been innocent. No, it was something else, something Natches hadn’t known since he had taken a bead on Nassar Mallah, the traitor that had kidnapped Chaya in Iraq, and blew his damned head off. It was a knowledge that he was truly becoming a killer.

Didn’t matter the why of it, didn’t matter that it was monsters he was killing. What made him sick to his soul was that he no longer felt regret. He hadn’t regretted Nassar, and he hadn’t felt any regret over killing family.

He was afraid he was turning into the same sick bastard his father was, and that terrified him. It terrified him almost as much as the knowledge that through the day, something had shifted inside him where Chaya was concerned.

He wasn’t letting her walk away again. Not without having her. Not without fucking this hunger in his gut out of his system so he could survive the next time she decided to run out on him.

It was time to do something about her.

Natches drove through the darkened streets of Somerset, made a left onto the interstate and headed to the hotel Chaya was checked into.

Tonight, he wouldn’t be staring into her darkened window, wondering why the hell she was there. Tonight, he would find out exactly why she was there, and what she wanted in Somerset. He could guess until hell froze over, but if Timothy Cranston was heading this little operation that was obviously being conducted in his town, then God only knew exactly what was going on.

At least it had nothing more to do with the Mackays. Or not his end of the Mackays. He’d held back the past week, watched, gathered his own information. Had he learned this operation targeted his family, then he wouldn’t have hesitated to snatch Chaya and make damned sure Cranston understood it wasn’t happening.

Rowdy, Dawg, Kelly, Crista, his uncle Ray, and his sister. They were his family, and he’d not allow pain to touch them any more than it already had. The information he had attained so far assured him the Mackays weren’t targeted. Anyone else was fair game, and he was willing to help.

And he couldn’t stay away from her much longer. He’d never been able to stay away from her for long.

As he drove toward the hotel the memory of her rescue whispered through his mind. She’d been hurt, abused, and terrorized, and married. And when she had learned her husband had been the reason for her capture and torture, she had cried in Natches’s arms, while in the hospital in which she had been recovering. And she had begged him to help her.

He forced those memories back. He hadn’t cared that she was married even before they learned her husband was a traitor. She was his; it was simple. Then he had learned it wasn’t that simple.

She’d walked away from him. Disappeared as though she had never existed, and for years he hadn’t known where she was or how to find her. Until she’d arrived in Somerset on the operation to locate the missiles.

And what the fuck had she done when that mission was over? Run. She had run from him again without looking back, without acknowledging a damned thing that had happened in that fucking desert.

And he had let her go.

He pulled into the hotel parking lot and spotted her immediately where she stood, propped against the trunk of the rented sedan.

Her arms were crossed over the light blazer. She wore another silky top beneath it. Those short little thin-strapped tops were making him crazy. Jeans hugged her legs; the top of them rose barely to her hip bones, where the top she wore beneath the dark blazer barely met the band. And she wore boots. It was one of the first things he noticed last year; she wore leather boots. He surely did like a woman who wore boots. And boots on Chaya looked damned good.

He pulled up beside her, then he reached over and unlatched the door before swinging it open.

“Get in.” He didn’t ask. He’d gone too far to ask. He could feel the dominance, the possessiveness rising inside him, fighting against the restraint he was attempting to maintain.

She slid warily into the jeep and closed the door behind her before hastily locking her seat belt.

“Where are we going?” Her voice was soft, just a bit nervous, reminding him of that hidden hole and the darkness and the intimacy that had wrapped around them.

“Someplace where we can talk.”

Where they could talk. Chaya stared out the windshield as Natches drove, his command of the vehicle confident, but obviously restrained. She could feel the fine thread of tension moving through him, the obvious control he was exerting over it.

And she knew what he was like when that control slipped. When the restrained man became the dominant lover. When he became a force she couldn’t deny.

“What do we need to talk about, Natches?” she finally asked as he turned onto the main road and headed in the opposite direction of the marina.

“We’re not going to the boat?” The Nauti Dreams had been his home last year.

“Winter’s coming on.” His voice was as frosty as that season. “I moved out to the apartment over the garage last year anyway. Damned lake is getting too busy.”

There was leashed anger in his voice, a temper she didn’t want to chance right now. She had heard of his dangerous temper, the cold, lashing rage he could project, but she had never experienced it herself.

Chaya couldn’t imagine where she had found the courage tonight to actually get into the jeep with him. At one time she was known to have nerves of steel. Now she could feel the wariness moving through her. Not fear, but something female, something that recognized Natches as perhaps more man than she could handle.

Sometimes, Chaya reasoned, a woman just knew when she had too much man on her hands. Too much lust, too much strength, too much hunger. And all that described Natches only too well.

“You’ve been watching me,” she finally stated. “Why?”

He removed the glasses from his eyes slowly. How he managed to drive wearing the dark shades she hadn’t figured out. But when he looked at her, it happened again. The same thing that happened every time she stared into the perfect forest green of his eyes.

The breath seemed to rush from her lungs, nerve endings heated, and between her thighs she felt a flood of liquid warmth she couldn’t control.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he finally said as he turned and took a side road that led to his garage. “You should have resigned from DHS like I heard you had and gotten the hell away from Cranston.”

“What does that have to do with you watching me here? You knew there would be further questioning conducted in Somerset, Natches. Did you think it was really over? It won’t be for Timothy until he finds the money and Johnny’s coconspirator.”

“You’re so certain he had one?” He shook his head at that. “Johnny didn’t share that easily, Chaya.”

“Unlike the Nauti Boys,” she murmured.

She knew the rumors that the cousins shared their lovers and wondered at that, because Rowdy and Dawg seemed more than possessive over their women.

“Long ago and far away,” he muttered.

There was something in his voice that had her gaze sharpening on him. An ache of loss, of regret. Something that assured her he was right. Whatever sharing may have gone on in the past, it was over now. Her question, though, was how much he regretted it.

Silence descended then. Chaya watched as the darkened scenery sped by and they drew closer to the garage and the apartment over it.

“Here we are.” He pulled in behind the garage and parked the jeep beneath the wooden steps that led up to the second floor.

The light on the overhead porch threw a glimmer of golden rays below to add to the subtle landscaping lights behind the shrubs that grew close to the building beneath the porch.

Chaya moved from the jeep and watched warily as he waited for her at the front of the vehicle.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked, placing his hand at the small of her back and giving her a firm push to the steps.

“Sheriff Mayes and I ate after the last interview,” she told him, feeling his hand tense at her back.

She swung her head around to try to see him in the dim light. She could have sworn he growled something not quite complimentary where the sheriff was concerned.

“Keep going, Chay.” He crowded her, pushing her up the stairs, his larger, broader body making her feel too feminine, too weak.

She was a trained agent, or she was supposed to be, but every time she was around Natches the agent became overwhelmed by the woman.

He was her weakness; she had figured that out at a time when she hadn’t needed to know it. And the certainty of it had only grown.

She stepped onto the landing and stood aside as he unlocked the door, stepped in, and looked around before turning back to her.

“Come on in.”

Her heart nearly strangled her as it raced in her chest and jumped to her throat. She stepped inside, staring around the starkly masculine area as she felt her palms dampen.

Here, she was in his territory, completely surrounded by Natches. She stepped farther into the room, then paused at the mantel over the gas fireplace. A smile tipped her lips. There was a picture of Faisal, the young goatherd who had managed to contact Natches on a shortwave radio channel to inform him that a female agent was being held and tortured in the desert.

He was her savior as well that day. Faisal had covered Natches while he pulled her out of that dark, hellish cell. She knew the extraction team that had picked them up had made certain Faisal made it back to his goats.

“I talked to him a few months ago,” he told her. “He said you were still sending messages and money.”

She nodded slowly. She couldn’t protect him; all she could do was try to make things easier.

“He makes a monthly trip past one of the bases in the area. I make certain he has something waiting for him there.”

She could feel him behind her as he asked, “Do you ever talk to him?”

Chaya lowered her head and shook it. “No. I don’t contact him personally.”

She couldn’t. She’d tried several times, had actually gone so far as to purchase the phone cards and send him her number. She knew he had his own cell phone now. One he was very proud of.

She turned back to him. “Do you talk to him often?”

He nodded, the movement sharp. “His family was killed just before your rescue. I’ve been trying to make arrangements to get him over here. I haven’t had much success yet.”

Yes, she knew that, just as Cranston did. It was one of the promises versus threats he had made to force her into this operation. Cranston would make certain Faisal would be given his entrance into America, if this operation completed to his satisfaction.

She felt a chill race over her head at the thought, then down her spine. Then it sort of went over her body as she forced herself to move away from Natches. Once Natches knew who DHS had targeted, he was liable to kill her and Cranston.

“What do you want from me, Natches? You know I can’t give you this mission or Timothy’s suspects; so what’s left?” She stared around the large living room with its heavily cushioned furniture and male accoutrements.

There were pictures of Natches and his cousins Dawg and Rowdy. A few that were taken while he was in the Marines with buddies. There was a picture of Natches with Faisal.

A table had been set up at the side of the room with a jigsaw puzzle. Hell, she didn’t know people still did those.

There were some oil lamps on a table and a heavy lamp on the end table next to the couch. The kitchen and living room were separated by a bar. There was no dining room, but the kitchen was large enough for the heavy oak table that was set to the side of the room.

She assumed the doorway off the living room went to a bedroom, but she wasn’t checking that one out.

And as she stared around, she realized Natches hadn’t answered her.

She turned back to him, watching nervously as he strode past her and moved into the kitchen, his expression stark, furious. This was it and she knew it. Natches wasn’t going to let her avoid the past any longer.

“I’d have followed any other agent,” he finally growled, pulling out a beer from the fridge and unscrewing the top with a quick jerk of his hand.

Broad, long fingered. Those hands could make a woman think of heaven even as hell moved in around them. And she knew they could make a woman fly, steal her senses and her thoughts with their touch.

Would he ever want to touch her with those hands after Timothy’s operation finished here in Somerset?

“I didn’t think I’d see you back here,” he said, staring back at her with a hint of sensuality, a hint of anger.

“Cranston has a way of convincing agents to do his dirty work for him.” She shrugged with a mocking smile. “Come on, Natches, you know how it works. The follow-up was important. He wants that money and he wants to make certain no one else is involved here. That’s all.”

“Are you investigating my family?” Short and to the point. And here was where things were about to get sticky. Because she couldn’t lie to Natches. He had saved her, not just once but twice, and then he had held her and let her fly while she found her sanity once again.

“As far as Cranston is concerned, everyone is suspect,” she reminded him dryly. “You’re all on my list to question.”

“Why did he send you?” He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank, his gaze never leaving hers, the dark green depths dragging her in and leaving her breathless.

She was an agent, fully trained to ignore sexual need or even fear during a mission. But she couldn’t ignore Natches. He made her weak, made her need, and he made her fear herself.

“Because it amused him?” She lifted her shoulders as though she didn’t know and didn’t care. “He was pissed over my attempted resignation and decided to play with me. Cranston’s good for games like that.”

“Cranston’s good at games, period.” Natches finished his beer, then tossed the bottle in the trash as Chaya watched him closely now.

He ran a hand over his face before staring back at her.

“Do you have any idea how much I missed you?” he said, his voice soft. “How much I ached for you last year?”

Chaya backed up a step, her movement jerky as she tried to look everywhere but at Natches. She didn’t want to talk about last year; she didn’t want to talk about five years ago. She wanted this over with. She wanted to run and hide, to bury her head in the sand and pretend this mission and this man could be ignored.

“That wouldn’t have been very wise then, and it wouldn’t be now,” she answered, her throat tightening as she watched him, as she watched his expression flicker with primitive lust.

He wasn’t going to just let her go this time, and she knew it. He was going to force her to face everything she didn’t want to face, and she didn’t know if she could do it.

Chaya shook her head at the look. “Don’t, Natches.”

She couldn’t handle his touch, not now, when this entire mission hinged on betraying him. She wasn’t cold-blooded enough; she wasn’t the agent Timothy thought she could be.

“Don’t.” He shook his head wearily before running his fingers through his thick hair and staring back at her with an expression of torment. “How long is it going to lie between us like a double-edged sword, Chaya? When are you going to forgive me?”

No. Oh God, she couldn’t deal with this. Her throat tightened and closed with pain and fear as she saw the determination in his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about that.” She gave her head a hard jerk. “We can argue over this operation or Cranston or anything else. But not that.” She had to fight her tears, her sobs. She had to fight the memories that wanted to return in a rush of agony.

“Damn you.” He was across the room before she could avoid him. His hands gripped her arms as he jerked her against him, and she felt the heat of him, felt the weakness that threatened to flood her as she dragged in a hard, gasping breath.

“Five years.” He moved, forcing her to back up as she stared up at him in shock. “Five fucking years, Chay. How much longer do we have to suffer for something that neither of us caused?”

“No.” Her cry sounded too close to hysteria. “Stop, Natches. I can’t discuss this. I won’t.”

“She was a beautiful little girl. I saw her pictures later.” His voice was agonized, tormented.

Chaya heard the pain-filled moan that left her throat. Even when she was being tortured, she hadn’t made a sound like that.

“He stole her.” He groaned the accusation as she felt his forehead press against hers. “She was safe with your sister, wasn’t she, Chay? If he had just left her there.”

“Don’t do this.”

“She looked like you. She had your smile and your hair. Your innocence.”

“Stop it!” She screamed the words at him, tearing from his embrace as she pressed her fist against her stomach and swallowed back the sickness rising in her throat. “You didn’t know her. You didn’t raise her, and you didn’t love her. And it’s none of your damned business.”

Beth. Sweet Beth.

“She was three years old, and your husband had her flown to Iraq. While you were being tortured, she was landing at the airport in a military transport believing she would see her mommy again.”

Her heart felt as though it were shattering in her chest now, and she didn’t want to collapse from the pain of it. She had lost everything in that damned desert. She didn’t want to remember it, and she didn’t want to think about it or talk about it. Especially not with the man who had been there to witness it, who had held her back, who had covered her with his own body to protect her while her child died.

“Why?” She turned on him, tears she swore she wouldn’t shed escaping now. “Why are you doing this to me? Do you think I don’t know what happened?”

Her voice was rasping. She sounded nothing like herself. She sounded like the demented creature she had been the day she lost Beth.

“Army Intelligence didn’t know he had your child.” His expression looked as agonized as hers felt. “They didn’t give the orders to bomb that hotel, did they, Chay? Someone else did. Something fucked up like it always fucks up, and your baby was killed.”

She shook her head. Her body shook. Tremors raced through her as she stared at the ceiling. But she didn’t see the ceiling; she saw the missiles, ribbons of steam flowing behind them, the hiss of flight, the fiery destruction with impact.

“I know who killed her,” she whispered. She had always known.

Her husband. Beth’s father. He had killed their child just as surely as he had ordered his wife’s torture and death. But she knew even more than that. She knew there had been others, those who knew what her husband had done, and they had struck out. They had killed her child when there had been a chance of saving her.

She lowered her eyes back to Natches and saw the pain, his eyes so dark with so many emotions. Grief and sorrow and need.

“You hold her between us as though it were my fault,” he said then, his voice graveled, accusing. “As though I ordered the attack or I arranged her death, Chay.”

Chaya swallowed tightly and turned away from him again. She didn’t know which way to turn, which way to run. She wanted to run. She wanted to escape the shared memories, and she wanted to escape her own loss.

Natches had been with her when they had learned where Beth and Chaya’s husband, Craig, were staying. The suspected headquarters of a terrorist cell. He had raced after her when she went to rescue her child. He had thrown her to the street, held her down, and tried to shield her eyes as missiles slammed into the building.

“I held you when you identified her. I held you then, and I held you through the night. Did you think I wouldn’t hold you longer, Chay, if you had given me the chance?”