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“Someone knows something, Dawg,” Natches said softly. “They know enough to throw Crista at you to distract you. Give you someone to suspect. ”
Dawg shook his head. “I know better than to be distracted that easily. Besides, we have everything but the money and the woman. How am I a threat to either, as things stand now?”
“This is someone who doesn’t know you heed your common sense when it’s important,” Natches pointed out. “This is someone who only knows the fact that Dawg distrusts everyone but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Which could be just about everyone you’ve met in this country and a dozen others. And it could be someone who is afraid one of the men we captured will talk. If he talks, who says they won’t name Crista?”
Dawg wasn’t known for his trusting nature.
“We’ll let them think they’ve succeeded then. ” He smiled slowly, watching as Natches grimaced.
“And Crista has an alibi. You were using her Rodeo; she was at home. ”
“Man, I hate that smile. ” Natches sighed, resignation glittering in his gaze. “What are you going to do?”
Dawg leaned forward, rested his forearms on the handlebars of the motorcycle, and let his grin widen.
“I’m going to let Crista distract me, of course. Why fight it? And while she’s distracting, I’m going to see who’s watching and what happens later. If she was thrown into my path to catch me off guard, then they threw her in for a reason. Let’s see what they intend to do with it now that they have her there.
And why it’s so damned important that she be there. They couldn’t have expected the raid. So their plans are going to be off balance. ”
“They expected her to be arrested, shipped off, and you running at her heels,” Natches bit out.
“Be careful they don’t catch you in that little net, and you and Crista get shipped off together. ”
Yeah, that one had occurred to him around midnight.
“I guess I’ll just have to take my chances. Hell, I’ve already broken more laws than I want to think about just getting her out of there. They told us to use initiative, but I don’t think that’s exactly what they were talking about. ”
“Sure it was,” Natches drawled. “We knew she wasn’t involved, so we evened the playing field with no fuss and no muss. Its redneck code. That’s what we’ll tell ’em. ” The laid-back country-boy drawl wouldn’t fool anyone who happened to know Natches. There was pure bloodthirsty redneck bloodletting in that tone, and it was something Dawg knew he could count on. Natches would watch his back.
His and Crista’s.
And that thought opened a whole other can of worms. One he wasn’t ready to empty right now.
He knew Natches hadn’t taken Rowdy’s defection from the ménages very well. He had waited, anticipated Rowdy’s return and the slow seduction of his fiancée, Kelly. When Rowdy had put the skids on that idea, Natches had been downright pissed.
Hell, the sharing had been a part of their lives since their first sexual encounter as teenagers.
The widow Barnes. She had been soft and sweet, older, more experienced, and lonely enough to take three young boys to her bed.
At the time, no one knew she was also hiding from her psychotic husband, a man who had been watching the teenage Mackay cousins slip into her house, and through the window he had watched the sexual antics they had gotten up to.
That first foray into the dark sexuality of a ménage had come back to haunt them last year when the lady’s son, warped beyond belief by his father’s molestation of him and the beatings he had endured, had begun raping the girls he claimed as his own.
Then he had targeted Rowdy’s stepsister and the woman that held Rowdy’s heart, Kelly Salyers.
The bastard had nearly killed them all before they stopped him.
And now, Natches was in the cold again, and Dawg knew that was how he had to be feeling. And he was withdrawing. Dawg had been feeling it for a while now. Natches was drifting away from them; the connection that had held him with his cousins all these years was gone now. The ménages, the emotional bond they created, Natches didn’t have that anymore.
“Come on, Dawg, stop wrestling over it,” Natches advised somberly. “Let’s play this out and see what the hell happens. I have an SOS out to her brother, Alex. The minute his head pops out of whatever hole the government sent him to, then he’ll come running with backup. ”
“We’ll play it out. ” Dawg breathed out roughly before pushing his sunglasses back up his nose.
There wasn’t much more they could do. Someone else, someone who knew too much, had dealt Crista into a very deadly game. To save her now, Dawg was going to have to risk everything and pray to God they caught the thieves before the Swede pulled in friends or the task force learned she was at the warehouse. If that happened, all shit was going to hit the fan.
“Look, man, we’re backup mostly. The majority of the investigation is being handled by those HS
tightwads. They won’t call us until something gets ready to go down anyway. We just lie back and keep watch on Miss Crista’s tight little rear, and we’ll do fine. ”
