Nauti Dreams (31 page)

they almost succeeded.”

“Damn!” Chaya turned away, scrambling through the files laid out in front of her,

looking for information. “Rogue didn’t know anything. She would have told me if she

did.”

“Maybe she just didn’t know she knew anything,” Natches suggested as he propped

himself against the edge of the table and sipped at the coffee cup he held.

His green eyes were like flints of ice as he watched Timothy. “Isn’t that how it usually

works, Timothy? It’s what a person isn’t aware they know that always trips them up. Or

what someone suspects they know?”

“Rogue knew something,” Timothy growled. “She rides with that damned group of

troublemakers on a regular basis. Several of them were tied to Grace and Bedsford.”

“By association only.” Natches shrugged, but Chaya caught the calculated drawl in his

voice. “Hell, arrest the whole town and pull them into interrogation. Everyone but

everyone associates eventually here.”

“This little town of yours isn’t as closed off as you want to think it is, Natches,” Timothy

snapped. “The tourism rate is incredible. Lake Cumberland is one of the greatest draws in

the area.”

“So now we’re looking for tourists?” Natches lifted his brow and Chaya almost winced.

He’d been cool and focused all morning, going through the files, making notes,

answering her with short, brief replies.

“I hate Mackays.” Timothy sighed.

“Yeah, especially when they’re self-proclaimed generals of a homegrown militant

group.” Natches grinned tightly, then reached behind him for the files he had stacked

there, and threw them to the table. “Try those boys and see if you come up with more

than I did.”

Chaya stared at him in shock.

“What are you saying, Natches?” Timothy stilled, the agents around him adjusting their

posture, their hands in close proximity to their weapons.

Natches laughed at the moves as Sheriff Mayes angled himself to cover Natches if

needed. Interesting. A man Chaya would have sworn didn’t uphold loyalty over the law,

yet he was silently aligning himself with Natches.

“Stop baiting him, Natches.” She turned back to him, narrowing her eyes at the gleam of

anger in his gaze. “We want to keep Timothy calm, remember? I’m certain his secretary

wasn’t able to slip his meds in his coffee this morning, so let’s not tease him.”

It was a running joke that his secretary needed to dose his coffee with sedatives. He was

so hyper sometimes he drove the rest of them crazy.

“Look at the last file.” Natches shrugged as he finished his coffee and set the cup aside.

“You’ll see what I mean.”

Chaya hadn’t seen the files. Natches had been up working before she awoke, and he had

stayed distant, refusing to discuss whatever he was working on.

“You’re not dealing with clumsy, drugged out hometown boys here,” Natches informed

them as Timothy pulled out that bottom file.

Chaya barely managed to stifle her gasp.

“You’re dealing with men who have had a dream all their lives,” Natches stated

mockingly. “Instead of sending Chaya in and risking her neck on this fool’s errand you

gave her, you should have come to someone who would know.”

Dayle Mackay. There were three pictures on the front of the file. Dayle Mackay,

Chandler Mackay, and another man who Chaya knew was suspected to be part of

Freedom’s League. These were obviously the men they had needed to target.

“Chandler wasn’t in the military,” she said, her voice low, shocked.

“Nope, Chandler liked to play war games though. His pansy ass was too important to

risk, big-shot architect that he was. But he liked to show his kid how tough and strong he

was, usually with his fists, though his wife did have a measure of control over him.

“Now, good ole Dayle Mackay, there’s another story.”

Natches had once thought he had pushed that part of his past behind him, that he had

conquered that hatred, that bitterness. Maybe he hadn’t fully managed it, he thought as he

watched Cranston read the file.

“Dayle didn’t care who he beat up on, or how bad. And he kept his wife sedated enough

that she didn’t really give a shit either. He married money, confiscated the money on her

parents’ deaths, and let her live to watch all his glory plans move right along. General

Dayle Mackay. That’s what he calls himself in private. But then, he always has, so it

wasn’t easy to put it together at first.”

He moved aside as Chaya shifted closer to him. Hell, he’d thought he could have a life

with her, and now that was being tested in the worst possible way. The son of a traitor?

She had been married to one traitor already; he was pretty sure she wouldn’t want another

in the family.

“The other files, those are the men I remember from years back who made late-night

visits, sat and drank his fine wine and talked about the golden future they could create.”

He had been a kid then. Those memories were always rife with pain. Natches had been a

nosy kid, and sometimes he had been caught being nosy. And he’d paid for it.

“They’re all right here together,” Timothy exclaimed as he pulled free one of the few

pictures Natches had stolen out of the house before his father had disowned him.

“That picture was stolen by accident.” He grinned. “I used to steal family pictures, not

that we had a lot. His wife, Linda, she tried taking them for a few years, but finally gave

up. She liked being sedated better.”

Natches looked at the picture. Six men. Dayle, Chandler, and the men he remembered

visiting when he was younger. And one woman. Nadine Mackay Grace between the two

Mackay brothers, their arms around her as they grinned for the camera.

His mother, Linda, wasn’t in the picture. Just those hard-eyed men and the sister the

Mackay brothers had used for their own pleasure.

Natches moved back to the coffeepot, feeling the need to slip away, to hunt. His rifle was

clean and ready, ammunition prepared, his knapsack was packed. He could leave at a

moment’s notice and no one would have a clue where he was going. Or that the need to

kill the man who sired him was eating him alive.

“Delbert Grant is your explosives expert,” he told them. “He was in town a few weeks

ago. He’s been out of the service a hell of a long time. But his son was with him; I guess

every man needs an apprentice.”

Natches almost snorted at the thought.

“How do we get the evidence we need against them?” Timothy mused as he turned to his

agents, and Chaya moved to Natches.

He tried to pull away from her again, to ignore her gaze.

“Don’t. Please.” She stared up at him, then laid her head against his chest and he

wondered if his heart was going to shatter in that moment.

He couldn’t stop himself from touching her, from letting his hands flatten against her

back and feel her melting against him.

But he stared over her head and watched as the agents went through the files, comparing

names, associations, and placing each one at specific points of operation.

They weren’t incredibly wealthy men. They were plotters, planners. They were bullies

and self-appointed saviors. They were the worst kind of enemy.

“This one has a boat on the lake.” The sheriff tapped the file of one of the more well-to-

do members of the group. “He has a group out here several times a year. They don’t

cause trouble, but they give you a clear feeling of trouble.”

“Uncle Ray wouldn’t let them dock here,” Natches told them.

Timothy’s head raised at the mention of Ray’s name. “Where are your cousins? And

Jansen? They’re not around this morning.”

He stroked Chaya’s back as she turned in his embrace to watch Timothy. She was still

relaxed against him, conforming to his harder, larger body, as though her petite frame

could cushion him against any of this.

“They’re around,” he said softly.

Chaya tensed at the sound of his voice. Soft, almost gentle. A lazy drawl that held no

warmth, no comfort.

Chaya watched as Timothy narrowed his eyes on them, taking in their position, the way

Natches held her against him. It was an unmistakable picture and the special agent’s gaze

flickered with knowledge.

“Yeah, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it, Timothy?” Natches asked, and Chaya forced

herself to remain silent, to keep her eyes on Timothy. “You sent her in here stirring the

pot so you could draw us out and make us do your work for you.”

Timothy exhaled roughly, ran his hand over his balding head, and gave Natches a wary

grin.

“I knew if anyone could do it, you boys could.” He finally shrugged. “I was getting

nowhere. All we had was the Somerset connection and Johnny’s connection to your dad

and your uncle.”

“Don’t,” Natches snapped. “Never title those two with those names again. You call them

by name; you don’t relate them to me.”

Cold bitter rage cut through his voice then, and Chaya felt her heart breaking. She had to

blink back her tears, and watched as Timothy lowered his head and ran his hand over his

face before nodding sharply.

“Yeah, you’re right.” The agent sighed. “They don’t deserve it. You’re a fine man,

Natches, you and your true uncle and those cousins of yours. You’re damned good

people. I’m not fighting you for that. Nor am I going to argue over the stench the other

two have cast on the rest of you. But we have to deal with this now.” His fingers flicked

to the files Natches had produced in the early hours of the morning. “We can’t arrest

them without proof.” He looked at Chaya. “And we don’t have anyone tying them close

enough to Johnny Grace yet.”

“You will have,” Natches stated. “When you’re fishing for the big bass, Cranston, you

just have to have the right bait.”

“And who’s the right bait?” Cranston asked him warily.

“I am.”

Chaya felt her heart nearly stop in her chest as fear began to drive a spike through her

soul. She twisted around, ignoring his attempt to hold her in place, and stared into the

hard, savage expression that had settled over Natches’s face.

This wasn’t the man she knew. The man who teased or laughed or even the man she had

known to be angry. This wasn’t anger, it wasn’t even rage. It was pure icy terror packed

into six feet two inches of tight, hard Marine assassin. This was the man who had killed

Johnny Grace the year before, the man who left Timothy Cranston sweating in fear for

months after that operation. And seeing the icy, frozen core of that man sent a tremor of

wariness through her.

And he knew it. His gaze licked over her, icicles and cold fire, causing a shiver to race

down her spine.

“You’re the wrong bait.” Chaya had to force the words past her throat. “He knows we’re

together; he knows I’m an agent. He won’t go for it.”

“Sure he will,” Natches drawled, and God she hated that sound. There was nothing warm

or comforting in it.

“How do you figure?” she bit out, pulling farther away from him to stare back at him

angrily. “He’ll know it’s a trick. A trap. He’ll never mess up like that.”

“Keep looking in those files,” he told her then. “Check out Fletcher Linkins. We were in

sniper training together.”

Her gaze moved to the files and then back to him. “Good ole Fletch is dead, did you

know that?” He directed the question to Timothy.

Timothy nodded. “Car wreck while he was on leave about four years ago.”

“He didn’t wreck his car,” Natches snarled. “He was killed. I went looking for him after I

returned home. I wanted to know why a fellow sniper took a bead on me and tried to take

my head off. He was already dead when I found him. Because he had failed the mission

the Freedom’s League gave him to kill me. Check his link to good ole Dayle.”

Timothy shook his head. “Why target you?”

“Because I was helping Chay in Iraq.” Natches smiled tightly. “I was investigating the

orders that sent those missiles into that hotel and I was the one that took out Nassar for

torturing her. They wanted me out of the way. They didn’t want me tying the threads

together, because then I would have known.”

“And you didn’t know what was going on in Iraq until Chaya came back this time,”

Timothy mused, nodding his head. “It makes sense.”

“Dayle’s involved in this up to his eyeballs. He’s connected with the men in that photo,

and those men are all connected in various ways to military intelligence and/or DHS.

They’re not wealthy, they’re not powerful, but they’re going to be. If they’re not

stopped.”

Chaya wrapped her arms across her breasts and listened as Natches and Timothy

discussed how to trap them. She watched Natches, and she knew he’d already decided

exactly what he was going to do. He was only going through the motions here, letting

Timothy get his say in. He was patient, controlled, and Timothy had no clue that Natches

was already formulating his own plans.

It was the reason why the other cousins weren’t here. It was why Alex wasn’t here.

Because they were already working their end. He’d already discussed it with them.

The knowledge of that had her jaw clenching as she stared at him, willing him to meet

her eyes. When he did, she wanted to flinch. Because she could see beneath the ice, and

she could finally see the pain building inside him.

Finally, Timothy and his agents were gone and Natches was locking the door behind