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“I love you. ” She whispered the words to herself.
Or so she thought. Natches felt his heart expand, nearly tearing from his chest at the sleepy, almost unconscious words.
I love you. Such a simple statement. Yet, those three little words embedded inside him and filled him with determination. He wasn’t going to lose her. He’d kill again first, and just as with Johnny, he would never regret it.
SIXTEEN
Timothy Cranston, a. k. a. the rabid leprechaun of DHS, strode into Natches’s houseboat as though he owned it. He was followed by the other five agents assigned to the Somerset case, and they looked harried, sleepless, and concerned.
Behind them strode Sheriff Mayes, and he looked ready to explode with fury. His golden brown eyes were sizzling with anger and his tall, hard body was tense with the effort at maintaining self-control.
“What happened?” Chaya stood from her seat at the table, her eyes going from Timothy to the sheriff.
“Someone tried to kill Rogue Walker last night. ” Zeke’s voice grated with fury. “And they a
lmost 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.
