ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (11 page)

Ash

I didn’t sleep much. My dreams were filled with images of Rose, lying battered and unrecognizable in that hospital bed. It hurt me in ways I couldn’t even begin to describe to see her that way. This woman who’d held my rag tag bunch of operatives together, who made us the family we’d become, never should have known such pain. The people who did this…they were going to pay.

The sun had been up a while when I heard Ford making noises in the other room. I dropped a kiss on Mina’s temple before slipping out of bed, tugging back on the jeans I’d worn the day before, and crossed to the guest room. Ford was kicking his legs up in the air, not crying, but not making the happiest sounds in the world. I lifted him up and cradled him against my chest, whispering words of affection against his ear.

“You’re okay, champ,” I said softly. “You’re going to be okay.”

We walked around the room a little, and he began to nod off again. He did that sometimes, waking before he was really ready to greet the day. I was putting him back in the basinet when the chime on my phone sounded. It was in my pants pocket, forgotten this morning when I came home. I tugged it out, thinking it might be something about Rose even though my logical mind knew that it was the tone for an email, not a phone call.

I didn’t recognize the sender’s email address, and there was nothing in the subject line. It crossed my mind to delete it without looking at it, but with everything that had been happening and the email David had shown me yesterday, I thought it might not hurt to look.

I wished I hadn’t.

You think if you hide behind fences you’ll be protected. But we can get to you anywhere, any time.

There were several attachments. A picture of Donovan’s SUV after the accident. A picture of Kirkland sitting on the sidewalk after he was shot. A picture of the outside of Rose’s house. But what made my blood run cold, what really underscored the creepiness of the whole thing, was a picture of Mina and Ford in a restaurant somewhere.

No one knew about Mina and me. Not even my brother and my friends had known that our relationship had turned romantic until the barbecue yesterday. Yet, someone had known a picture of her would upset me. A picture that, based on how big Ford was, was taken some time ago.

I didn’t understand. Who would want to hurt us? Who would be close enough to us to know who to hurt and how to do it and be close enough to know about Mina? I briefly wondered if Mabel or Ricki or Kate, the outsiders, the new members of our little group, but I knew how ridiculous that was as the thought burst through my mind.

Emily and her husband Jack…but what motive would they have to give information on us to an enemy?

A bug on our phones was a possibility, but David had a program that checked for that sort of thing during routine updates.

It didn’t make sense. The only thing I knew to do was to ask Mina.

She was still asleep, curled up with her dark hair tangled around her face. I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her shoulder, reluctant to take away the peacefulness on her face, but needing this information. If she knew something that could help me find the people who did this…

“Mina, babe,” I said, shaking her shoulder. “I’m sorry, baby, but I need to talk to you.”

She rolled onto her back, rubbing at her eyes with side of her hand.

“What’s going on?”

She was beautiful, this woman lying in my bed. I’d never thought I could ever want anyone other than Alexi. I’d thought I’d found my one and only and no one else would ever be good enough, would never be more than the meaningless sex that had filled my life before her. But that was before Mina, before the first time I tasted her lips, before the first time I touched her bare skin. That was before I knew how perfect it could be with her.

I was almost grateful that Alexi had been so selfish. If she hadn’t disappeared from my life, I might be married to her now, locked in a marriage that couldn’t have possibly made either of us happy.

“I need to ask you something, and I’m not sure how to do it.”

She sat up, propping herself up against the pillows. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, too.”

“First, I—”

“I know who attacked Rose. And I’m pretty sure it’s the same people who attacked Donovan and Kirkland.”

Cold fingers started to play a symphony on my spine. I cocked my head, trying not to jump to conclusions.

“How do you know that?”

“Have you ever heard of Dimitri Avdonin?”

No, no, no…

I studied her face, the symphony’s tempo accelerating.

“Mina…”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, tugging the sheet up over her bare breasts. She stared at her hands in her lap, her hair falling down around her face. “I’ve tried to tell you before.”

“Tell me what?”

She shook her head, color rising on her cheeks.

“Mina, tell me how you know the name of one of the leaders of the Bazarov Cartel.”

My words were slow, measured, but there was anger behind them. And fear.

“He’s Ford’s father.”

No, no, no….shit, shit, shit!

I got up and started to pace.

“How did you get mixed up with Avdonin?”

“I…” she hesitated. “It’s going to sound really bad.”

I stopped to look at her, really look at her. “What do you mean?”

Her head came up, and there were tears on her face. “Ash, I told you, I was not in a good place when I first came to Los Angeles. I didn’t have money. I was desperate.”

“That’s a reason to get involved with criminals?”

“I didn’t know at first.”

I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that she would not know what Avdonin was. I’d never come face to face with him, but we’d had two cases through Gray Wolf where we had a run in with other members of the cartel. The first case ended when a group of cartel members tried to take Kirkland out in an alley in downtown Los Angeles. Joss managed to take them out by running the client’s car into them—one of the last cases in which we allowed the client to use his own car—and they backed down. The second involved Joss again. Ironically, it was the case that brought her and Carrington together, but not before she was forced to take out Vitaly Bazarov, the head of the cartel.

Bazarov was dead, and his son was in prison. We’d assumed that meant that the cartel would dissolve itself without leadership. Apparently we were wrong.

“How do you know they did this, that they hurt Rose?”

“It’s their M.O., and I know they wanted to hurt you.”

“Me?”

She brushed at her face again, wiping away the tears. “That article came out in Mabel’s magazine and it incensed Dimitri. He couldn’t believe that you would advertise yourself that way, and that you could gloat after what you’d done to the Bazarovs. He’d been planning on getting revenge for what happened last fall, but seeing that article…”

“You knew who I was when you approached me that night?”

It just sank in, like a branding iron against a heifer’s flank. If she knew about the article, the article that came out two weeks before Ford’s birth, then she knew who I was when she asked for my help that night. Why? Why would she do that? Was she—?

I didn’t want my thoughts to go there, but I couldn’t help it. Was she in on this thing with Avdonin?

“I ran away. I knew you could help me.”

“But if I knew the truth? Is that why you never told me?”

“Ash, I—”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“No, Ash, you have to let me explain.”

She climbed off the bed, naked and so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. I turned away, but she grabbed my arm and tugged at my bare skin.

“Please,” she said, her voice just a choked mutter. “Please, you have to let me explain. I didn’t mean for it to go on like this. I wanted to tell you, but I was so afraid. I can’t go back out there; I can’t take Ford outside the fence. He’ll come after us. He’ll hurt us.”

I jerked my arm away.

“You used me.”

“I didn’t…”

Even she knew it was useless to argue.

I turned, and there was just something about the way she was standing there, no shame in her nudity, no regret in her eyes. It made this incredible anger build in my chest, so painful that I couldn’t ignore it. I needed to lash out; I needed to make her hurt as much as I was hurting.

I grabbed her upper arms and shook her, pushing her back toward the bed. She fell when the back of legs hit the mattress, and I tumbled down with her, my knee forcing her legs apart.

“You lied to me. You betrayed everything I thought we shared. I trusted you, and you took advantage of that.”

“No.”

It was a whisper, barely loud enough for me to hear. She didn’t even believe in her own lies enough to speak them loud and clear. This beautiful woman wormed her way into my bed and made me believe that I could actually move on with my life. I’d imagined things I was afraid to put into words, a future…a life.

But that was over now.

“Did he send you here? Did he want you to report back to him, tell him how successful his little attacks on us were? Did he want to know how pathetic we were? Did the two of you laugh at us? At me?”

Her tears were coming faster, sobs tearing at her chest. But it was too little, too late.

“Or did he simply get tired of your pretty little ass nagging him? Did he kick you out when you became too much trouble for him?”

She tried to shake her head, but there wasn’t enough space between my face and the mattress. I was so close to her that my breath moved her hair every time I spoke, my spittle slapping her like tiny little spikes. She flinched when I moved closer to her, my lips so close to her jaw that I could have been coming in for a kiss.

“You’ll stay here. Don’t even think about coming downstairs. Don’t think about even looking at anyone in this house. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. Your boyfriend is my priority right now, but—believe me—I will deal with you when this is all done.”

I got up, my gaze falling over her for a long moment, one last, long look at that beautiful body. Then I grabbed a shirt and headed out. Just as I reached the door, I heard her say, “I’m sorry.”

I was sure she was, but she’d be even sorrier later.

Ash

It only took a few minutes to get everyone gathered in the office. I studied the faces of my friends, my brother, feeling the sudden weight of responsibility settle on my shoulders. Emily and David had warned me. Don’t bring her into the house, they’d said. You don’t know enough about her, they’d told me. But I delivered her baby. I believed that meant I could trust her.

How stupid could I have been?

“First,” I said, raising my voice to get everyone’s attention, “I called the hospital and got an update on Rose. She’s got some pretty serious injuries, broken bones and lacerations on top of the surgery they had to perform to remove her spleen and repair her liver. But the doctors say that, barring complications, she should recover.”

I could see the relief on their faces. I wished I could share the sentiment.

I crossed my arms over my chest and waited as they processed that information. Carrington was holding the baby, but his hand was wrapped around Joss’s. Ricki was curled in a chair, her face pale, but she managed a smile for David. Donovan whispered in Kate’s ear as he wrapped his arms around her. Kirkland and Mabel always seemed to be touching, always whispering to each other like no one else in the world mattered.

I’d thought I’d found something like they had.

What was it that made me so blind when it came to women? Why couldn’t I see this coming?

“There’s more,” I said after a few minutes.

“What more could there be?” Kirkland asked.

“I have an idea who’s behind all this.”

That got everyone’s attention. Especially David’s. He studied me with the knowledge that came with a lifelong relationship. I could see tension come into his shoulders and saw him glance at the smartphone that was attached to the programs on his computer that monitored the safety of everyone in this room.

“It’s the Bazarov Cartel.”

There were a few gasps. Kirkland and Joss exchanged a look.

“Why can’t we get away from those people?” Carrington demanded to know.

“I thought they were crippled when Joss killed old man Bazarov,” Donovan said.

“Apparently Dimitri Avdonin has taken the reigns.”

That sent another ripple of surprise through the room.

We’d come face to face with Avdonin once. During that first case, it was Avdonin who went after the client, prompting Joss to run her car into him and his buddies. He was arrested and charged with a weapons violation, but Bazarov’s lawyers managed to get him off with a slap on the wrist.

Avdonin was a dangerous man. And with the entire cartel behind him? He was a force to be reckoned with.

“He’s coming after us because of what I did,” Joss said.

I nodded. There was no point in denying the truth. Joss wouldn’t appreciate it if I did.

“We—I—assumed they would be disorganized after Bazarov’s death. It never occurred to me that Avdonin had enough clout to move into the leadership this quickly. But, not only is he in charge now, but he clearly has a loyal following.”

I picked up the pictures I’d printed from my phone and passed them around. They were the ones from the email, minus the one of Mina and Ford. I didn’t see any point in showing them that one. That was personal.

“I got these in an email today. I’d suspected that these things were connected. Now we have proof.”

“Have you told Emily?” David asked.

“I have. She informed Jack, and he’s got a patrol car out by the main gate.”

David nodded. He already knew. His program would have alerted him.

“So, now what?” Kirkland asked.

“I’ve reassigned your current cases to members of the surveillance teams. For now…” I shook my head. “Emily wants us to sit tight and let the cops do their thing. Other than up the security patrols along the fence, we stay here and wait.”

No one objected. No one complained.

I wouldn’t have blamed them if they had.