Nauti Nights (28 page)

cheeks or give her eyes more of that confused, uncertain look.

He had a feeling Crista had once believed that she knew him. That she could predict him. He could have

told her that wasn’t going to happen.

He moved from the truck as she and Kelly headed into the spa, meeting Natches and Rowdy at the front of

his truck and staring around the street curiously.

“We picked up a tail,” Natches said quietly, his dark green eyes glancing to the gray sedan that had pulled in farther up the street. “She pulled in behind you after you hit the city limits.”

Dawg glanced up the street, his gaze narrowing on Greta Dane. Normally when a woman looked at man

with an expression as cold and hard as flint as Greta was giving him, it tended to make the balls draw up in fear.

Thankfully, Dawg wasn’t prone to allow such things to affect his private parts.

“Something’s up,” he murmured, turning back to the other men. “Have you heard from Cranston?”

“Nothing.” Natches shook his head as he crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands by his

sides. “We picked the bulldog up there just inside the city limits, and she didn’t bother to try to hide it.”

Dawg rubbed his hand over his chin. “Stay here. Let’s see what I can find out.”

119 of 183

2/12/2007 8:45 PM

NautiNights

file:///C:/Users/Kathy/Shared/Lora%20Leigh%20Nauti%20Nights.html

He stepped to the sidewalk and strode quickly to the little sedan Greta was driving. As he neared, the

window rolled down, and Greta’s pinched expression increased. She was also nervous. She tucked a

cigarette between her lips and lit up as he neared the car.

“What’s up, Greta?” Dawg leaned against the pickup next to her and stared back at her quizzically.

“Cranston’s orders,” she informed him waspishly. “Unlike some people, I’m a team player.”

Dawg tilted his head and smiled slowly. “Are you implying I don’t play well with others, Greta?”

She drew on the cigarette again before flicking the ashes to the portable ashtray in the middle console.

“I’m not implying anything, Mackay. I’m stating a fact.”

The stare she leveled back at him was suspicious, chilling in its complete lack of emotion.

“So you were ordered to watch me?” he asked her.

“No, I was ordered to follow your girlfriend.” Her own smile was nothing short of relish. “I didn’t ask

why.”

Bullshit.

Dawg stared back at her, his gaze narrowed, his body prepared. Somehow, Cranston had focused on

Crista. This wouldn’t be a good thing.

“Have fun keeping up with us,” he told her then, returning the smile with interest. “I’d make sure I wasn’t easily shocked, though. After we leave here, we’re heading into the mountains. I have a blanket in the

truck, and we’re stopping for a light little picnic lunch that my favorite restaurant is currently putting together for us.

Then, since it is private property, I thought I might introduce my girlfriend to a little fresh-air lovin’. Now, I don’t mind a little exhibitionism every now and then, but you should be prepared. It could get rather

hard-core.”

He watched her face flush. The hardened agent could kill a man without a thought, but the subject of sex seemed to make her jumpy as hell.

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” she gritted out.

Dawg nodded slowly and smiled again. “I’m sure you will, sugar. Just to be on the safe side though, I

think I’ll have Natches go with us and sit with you for awhile. Some things just shouldn’t be done alone, ya know? And Natches, he makes damned good company in such situations.”

Her gaze flickered over to Natches and Rowdy as Dawg turned as well. Natches grinned slow and easy.

He might not know what the hell they were talking about, but even from there, Natches would have seen

the hard flush on Greta’s face.

“You sic that perverted bastard in my direction, and I’ll shoot him,” Greta warned him then.

Dawg shrugged. “He’ll survive. You’re not allowed to kill him, and a little bloodshed between friends…”

He smiled again. “Could get interesting.” He straightened and dropped the smile. “You talk to Cranston,

tell him I’m waiting to hear from him, sugar. Soon.”

He didn’t give her time to reply, but he was guessing she was on her cell phone even as he strode back to where Rowdy and Natches were waiting on the sidewalk in front of his truck.

120 of 183

2/12/2007 8:45 PM

NautiNights

file:///C:/Users/Kathy/Shared/Lora%20Leigh%20Nauti%20Nights.html

“She’s watching Crista,” he told Natches softly as Rowdy listened in interest.

“Bad news.” Natches grimaced as he lowered his head as though to check the tips of his cowboy boots.

“How long does this female stuff take, anyway?” Dawg glanced at the doors to the spa, knowing damned

good and well he wasn’t waiting inside the building for Crista to finish. No way, nohow; all that estrogen could be fatal.

“Wax, trim, and style,” Rowdy mused. “You’re looking at three hours.”

Dawg leaned against the truck. “You two can just stand here and wait it out with me,” he decided.

Natches grunted. “I had things to do, Dawg.”

“Get over it. God only knows what Cranston has up his sleeve, and I’m not standing outside this place by myself.”

“Hell. I’m getting the shit jobs and none of the pleasure,” Natches cursed. “This growing-up crap you two seem so intent on is starting to piss me off. I think I’ll go talk to Agent Dane for a while instead. She’s always good for a smirk or two, if nothing else.”

Casting Rowdy and Dawg both an irate look, Natches ambled from his slouch against the hood of the

truck and headed for Agent Dane’s vehicle.

The agent in question lit up again as she watched Natches warily.

“Do you think he’s really pissed?” Rowdy drawled as Natches neared the woman’s car.

“With Natches, who the hell knows anymore.” Dawg shook his head wearily. “That boy didn’t come out

of Afghanistan easy. He was going to stay with the bum shoulder despite his CO’s advice until the

Marines booted his ass out.”

Natches, already an excellent shot when he went into the Marines and an instinctive hunter, had been

quickly inducted into training as a sniper/assassin. Dawg suspected his cousin had more kills to his record than he was admitting to, and secrets that only Dawg could guess at.

“You two didn’t do anything easy,” Rowdy said then. “I thought the agreement was that we’d go in, do

our duty, and come home without changing who or what we were.”

Dawg had a feeling Rowdy wasn’t talking about the lack of need in sharing his pretty fiancée.

“Hey, you started it,” he said anyway. “Getting all possessive and snarly over Kelly the way you did.”

Rowdy snorted at that. “Don’t play dense, Dawg, it doesn’t suit you.”

Dawg grimaced. “We were more suited to some things than you were, Rowdy. You just didn’t want to see

it.”

“Killing?” Rowdy asked. “You were never suited to that. You or Natches.”

“You just didn’t want to see it.” Dawg stared his cousin in the eye then. “Killing wasn’t the draw, though.

It was taking out the monsters. And that was something Natches and I both were ready to do before we

were out of our teens.”

Dawg’s and Natches’s fathers were bastards. But most of the men out of that family were bastards.

Literally. Good ole Grandpa August had sired sons from one end of the nation to the other. He had paused in Somerset long enough to fake a marriage to Ellen Mackay and give her a daughter and three sons. Then

121 of 183

2/12/2007 8:45 PM

NautiNights

file:///C:/Users/Kathy/Shared/Lora%20Leigh%20Nauti%20Nights.html

he had nicely informed her that the marriage was illegal because he was already married, and then he had disappeared.

Ellen Mackay had taken the August name from her sons and given them hers instead. Four kids that she

had raised herself with little help, and she had died knowing that out of all those kids, only one of them had a sense of decency. Ray Mackay had been solid as the earth. The rest? Hell, the rest of them were as black-hearted and mean as the old man himself.

As Dawg understood it, his cousins in Texas hadn’t fared any better. Their father, Joe August, the

legitimate issue of old Nate August, had been pure evil. The hell he had visited on his sons had nearly

destroyed them. It was only by a miracle that they had survived both during and after the torture they had endured.

“I saw Johnny’s mother and Natches’s dad with their heads together outside the courthouse yesterday

when Kelly and I were driving through. They looked like they were brewing up trouble.”

Nadine Mackay Grace and Dayle Mackay were vipers apart; when together, the destruction they could

cause had destroyed more than one life.

“Hell,” Dawg cursed. “Dayle’s already disowned Natches. What more could he do to him?”

“I just wish I knew for sure it was Natches they were targeting.” Rowdy sighed. “I don’t know what the

hell’s up, Dawg, but it’s not feeling good.”

Hell, no, it wasn’t. Dawg could feel his teeth clenching and his neck itching. Those two things were a

surefire warning that shit was coming down.

“Fallback position?” Dawg murmured.

“I have you covered,” Rowdy answered.

Dawg had explained Crista’s presence at the warehouse as well as the risk that Crista could be identified as part of the group attempting to sell the missiles.

Their fallback position was clear: Rowdy and Natches would hold the line, while Dawg pulled Crista into

the mountains to an old, hidden hunter’s cabin they had found years before as teenagers. No one knew

about the cabin but the three cousins, and it would be the ideal place to hide Crista until they figured out the best way to protect her. Or until Alex and his group returned from wherever the hell they were.

“I’m going to put out a call to Alex’s contact,” Dawg muttered then, hating the need for that. He had

hoped to be able to avoid contacting Alex. “We need to let him know Crista could be in trouble before it’s too late.”

Rowdy nodded, then glanced back to where Natches leaned against the sedan farther down the street,

obviously arguing with Agent Dane.

“When was the last time you saw Natches argue with anyone?” Rowdy asked.

Dawg glanced at his cousin and grinned. “The last time Greta spoke to him.”

“Interesting.”

“Damn interesting,” Dawg agreed as he pulled his cell phone from the holder at his belt and flipped it

open. It took only a second to hit the speed dial number that connected with Alex’s contact.

“Leave a message.” The voice was cold, hard.

122 of 183

2/12/2007 8:45 PM

NautiNights

file:///C:/Users/Kathy/Shared/Lora%20Leigh%20Nauti%20Nights.html

Dawg said one word. “Crista.” Then disconnected the call. Within hours Alex would know things had the

potential to go from sugar to shit with his sister in a very short time.

And then he propped himself against the hood of the truck and glanced at the front door of the spa. Crista was inside, possibly getting the intimate waxing he had spent so long that morning talking her into.

His body tensed, lust rose sharp and painful inside him, hardening his dick in an instant.

God help Cranston if he messed with Dawg’s fun later that evening. He had waited years, hell, Dawg felt

as though he had waited all his life for this. The man or woman who dared to mess with it would pay.

Painfully.

Being intimately bald was a curiously disconcerting feeling, Crista thought as she rode beside Dawg

several hours later toward the surprise he had promised her.

In the backseat, a covered wicker basket emitted the succulent scent of fresh fried chicken from beneath the large checkered tablecloth secured over the top of the lid.

There was also a new addition to the back of the truck. On the rack hanging on the window stretched a

rifle. It hadn’t been there when she had gone into the spa, but it was there now.

And Dawg was testy. He kept checking the rearview mirror, taking turns, and using back roads she hadn’t

known existed.

“Are we being followed?” Not for the first time, she turned and looked behind them.

“Yep.” Taciturn and too soft for comfort, his tone did little for the nerves beginning to build in her

stomach.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“They’re staying far enough back to stay out of sight,” he said as he took another turn. “I’m just getting far enough ahead of them to pull over and trash their tracker.” A grin stretched his lips. A dangerous grin. “I want to get them good and lost first.”

“There’s a tracker on the truck?” Her voice shook, but hell, it wasn’t every day she realized she was being tracked. Being followed would be bad enough.

“Hang on,” he warned. And not a moment too soon. The truck came to a rocking stop.

Jumping out, Dawg strode quickly behind the truck, bent from sight, and seconds later straightened and

ran back to the driver’s side. Jumping in, he threw the truck in gear, flashed her a smile that was less dangerous and more filled with fun, before tossing an electronic disc out the window and speeding away.

Crista stared around the area they were in. They were deep in the mountains, and evening was coming on.

Even she couldn’t find her way back to town from here.

“You’re going to let someone get trapped in these mountains in the dark?” she asked carefully. “Who is

it?”

“A friend.” He chuckled.

“You’re going to get a friend lost in these mountains?” she asked in disbelief. “Dawg, your friends don’t get lost that easily,” she pointed out.

123 of 183

2/12/2007 8:45 PM

NautiNights

file:///C:/Users/Kathy/Shared/Lora%20Leigh%20Nauti%20Nights.html

“Most don’t.” He nodded on another low laugh. The playful grin on his face reminded her of a little boy