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“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 them. He stood still as he set the security system, his gaze focused on the digital settings, glaring at them, trying to push back the need to destroy something.
He’d mastered those uncontained rages years ago. The ones that left every stick of furniture around him in slivers. The ones that left his hands bloody from ramming them into the walls.
He breathed in deeply and caught Chaya’s scent. A fresh, clean smell that almost, just almost, pushed past the putrid scent of betrayal in his mind. The smell of his own blood, his own pain.
“You lied to Timothy,” she whispered then.
Natches turned back and watched her. Dressed in his T-shirt and another pair of borrowed leggings. He was going to have to remind Dawg to check on her luggage, see if she had any of her own clothes left.
