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The file in his hand was the coroner’s report on the Walker boys. The forensics report was due in any day. But it wasn’t looking good. And now, staring back at the four men waiting on him, he could feel his gut burning.
“What the hell do you and your sidekicks want, Cranston?”
Special Agent Timothy Cranston was supposed to be on suspended leave from the Department of Homeland Security. Zeke knew better. Timothy had never been suspended anywhere but on paper. The investigation running now was a time bomb waiting to explode with the same power that had been used on Joe and Jaime Walker’s mobile home. And Timothy Cranston was smack in the middle of the whole damned thing.
Short, round, his face more often than not wreathed in a smile that rarely reached his eyes, the agent had been Zeke’s nemesis for too many years. Anytime Cranston was around, trouble was sure to be there. And anywhere in Pulaski County that he found the Mackay cousins, he was damned sure to find trouble.
Douglas “Rowdy” Mackay, James “Dawg” Mackay, and their younger cousin, recently married to Homeland Security agent Chaya Dane, Natches Mackay.
Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches Mackay, and Timothy Cranston. Hell, he didn’t need this.
His own investigation was beginning to come to a head after the years that Cranston had kept him pushed to the sidelines, unaware until too late that Homeland Security was working to take down the Freedom League without him. Cranston and the Mackay cousins had cut off the head, now Zeke was going for the backbone. Alone. He wouldn’t be pushed out of this one. Not after all these years, the nightmares, or the evidence Cranston had against him personally.
“When the four of you show up, there’s trouble. I don’t need trouble this week. ” He strode across the office to take his seat behind the wide, wood desk that sat in front of the shuttered bank of windows.
Pulling his chair close to the desk, he slapped the file on it and stared back at the four men. The Mackays were tall, muscular, and dark. Rowdy, the middle cousin, was the most clean-cut, the thinker of the group. Dawg, the oldest, was more clean-cut than he had been before his marriage. He was no longer scruffy, but his wild days reflected in his light green eyes and his hard expression. Natches, the youngest, now, he was the wild one of the group. The ringleader of most of the trouble and unapologetic about it.
Dawg and Natches had worked with Cranston for several years. As far as Zeke knew, Rowdy had just been dragged into it lately.
“The Walker boys,” Natches drawled. “You have anything yet?”
Zeke leaned back in his chair. “They involved with DHS?” He stared back at the agent.
Of course they had been, he knew it and Cranston knew it, but he wasn’t so sure the Mackays knew it.
Timothy grinned. A flash of teeth, like a shark, and a sparkle of brown eyes. “Not to my knowledge. They weren’t one of my contacts. ”
Timothy was a consummate liar. Zeke knew the Walkers fed information to DHS
because they’d brought the information to him first.
Zeke looked at the Mackays.
“They helped us pull in information on that mission last year,” Natches revealed. At least Natches wasn’t lying to him. Yet. “Joe and Jaime were always reliable sources of information. ”
“You think their deaths had something to do with that operation?” Zeke asked. He knew it did, in part. Their murders had been too similar to others over the past twenty years.
He hoped for the Mackays’ sakes that it didn’t. Zeke was approaching his limit where their complete disregard for the chain of information was concerned. Running ops in his county, without his knowledge, not just once but twice, had pushed his level of endurance to its limit. And Cranston just took the damned cake. That son of a bitch had recruited Zeke ten years before when he had been with the FBI and Zeke had gone looking for an agent he could trust. When he’d chosen Cranston, he’d fucked up.
Cranston had begun the investigation without Zeke’s knowledge and then had the gall to draw in three other citizens of the county instead of coming to him. Ex-marines known for their wild ways.
The Mackay cousins had spent the past two years on an investigation into stolen missiles and homegrown terrorists that Zeke had been waiting on Cranston to begin taking down. And before that, Rowdy had been too damned quiet about a stalker that had targeted his wife. They hadn’t told him shit about their activities; now here they were, wanting to know about his.
They were wild and arrogant, and they made his life hell when they got involved in trouble. He’d hoped marriage would have settled them down.
“We don’t believe it should have,” Cranston answered as Dawg’s lips parted to answer.
Dawg flashed the little man a brooding glare. Evidently, Dawg was aware he was lying, too.
“You don’t believe?” Zeke kept his gaze on Dawg. “Dawg, you boys are newly married.
The three of you have babies on the way. Do you really want to spend a few nights in jail for withholding information on me again?”
Three Mackays glared back at him. “Your jail wouldn’t survive it, Zeke,” Rowdy stated.
“Don’t threaten us. Joe and Jaime were friends and their families are close to us.
Grandma Walker and their sister, Lisa, and her two boys are pretty much alone now.
