Nauti Dreams (9 page)

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.

“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