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A moment later, Jed yawned again. “I’m going to get ready for work,” he finally stated. “By the time I get back to bed it’s going to be time for breakfast. ” He paused, his sharp gaze turning on Eve. “We still having breakfast?”
She almost grinned. She would have, if her imagination and her fear weren’t in overdrive.
“Knowing Mom, I’ll say yes. ” She nodded.
“See you then. ” He turned and disappeared, leaving Eve alone with Timothy, Dawg, and Brogan.
“This wasn’t a fox,” Eve stated, keeping her voice low as she stared at each man in turn before pausing as she caught Brogan’s eye. “Was it?”
Brogan shrugged, but she could see a warning in his eyes, in his expression, as he watched her.
“Whatever it was, it won’t be back tonight,” Dawg growled. “I’ll get Natches later today and get some security cameras up out here. That way we catch the fox doing this and put it out of its misery. ” His voice hardened.
“You’re not calling Alex?” Eve demanded, speaking of Somerset’s chief of police and one of Dawg, Rowdy, and Natches’s best friends.
“Killing a rabbit isn’t a crime, Eve. ” Dawg sighed. “And if it was a fox—and they are prone to indiscriminately kill—then how is Alex going to help?”
This was no fox kill. Eve had seen a fox go after chickens and kill them, and she had never seen carnage like this. There was that warning in Brogan’s gaze, though, as well as Dawg’s. A warning to watch what she said.
“Go inside, Eve. ” Brogan’s voice was so low, the tone so dark, that she found herself doing just that.
Casting them all a look filled with irritation, she stepped into the kitchen with her mother and sisters, gritting her teeth as she closed the door carefully behind her.
“Why are you still here?” Dawg demanded, not bothering to lower his tone or attempt to hide what he was saying as he looked up from where he was crouched on bent knees to study the porch.
“I’m nosy. ” Brogan didn’t bother to lower his voice either. “It’s not every day I get to see a fox’s kill, you know. ”
Dawg snorted at the comment.
“They’re watching you. ” This time Dawg’s voice carried no farther than Brogan’s and Timothy’s ears.
Lifting the cigar to his lips to hide his reply from anyone watching now, Brogan stated, “Yeah, they are. ”
“Retaliation?” Dawg questioned.
Would Donny and Sandi go to these lengths?
“I’ll find out,” Brogan promised.
And he would.
If Donny and Sandi were behind this—and he didn’t doubt in the least that they could be—then it wouldn’t happen again. He’d show the two and anyone else what would happen if Eve was struck at again.
They were testing him; he could feel it.
Doogan had warned him when Eve’s name had first come up that there could initially be problems. There were those who would do anything to keep her brother from getting involved in their business. That was one of the things that made Eve so important to the operation at this point. The second and even more important reason was the report that someone had information that could clear this case up, and only Eve could convince them to come out of hiding.
The minute the rumors had started that Brogan was interested in her, the report had hit Doogan’s desk. A confidential informant had contacted Doogan claiming that the thefts of military files were linked to something far bigger than DHS realized, and there was information that someone had answers besides the thieves. Someone that might be convinced to come forward if he thought Eve Mackay was in danger.
A year of investigation and still they hadn’t figured out which of Eve’s friends could possibly know about the thefts, let alone know why the files were being stolen.
“What are you going to do?” Dawg murmured, as he seemed to still be studying the death spread across the porch.
Timothy was still silent, but the calculating rage that burned in his eyes assured Brogan that his silence didn’t bode well for whoever was behind the bloody mess Mercedes had walked out to.
“Go hunting,” Brogan answered just as quietly. “For fox. ”
SEVEN
