“Hey. Stop worrying. It’s going to be okay.”
“Of course it is.” Her smile was too bright, her eyes too green.
“Sweetheart, you start crying on me, and we’re going to have problems. I don’t have anyone to shoot yet.”
Her smile trembled. “Don’t worry about me. Crying isn’t something I do very well.”
But she turned her head, sliding back into the seat and moving back to the passenger side.
Alex whispered a curse. “I’ll murder the bastard, Zeke.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Don’t tell me about it, okay? I’m the one with the badge. Some things I might not need to know.”
“It’s clear, Sheriff.” One of the officers moved around the building. “We have the front and back entrance secured. We’re ready to move inside.”
“Let’s check the restaurant first. Work our way up.” Zeke looked into the truck. “You have the key, Janey?”
She shook her head. “I left those keys upstairs. All I have is the house key.”
Zeke grimaced.
“Natches has the keys. He carries them with him all the time. Just in case,” she told them. “If he’s on his way.”
The sound of the Harley racing through the streets could be heard.
“Sounds like him,” she muttered.
Janey clenched her fists, grit her teeth, and forced the tears and the fear back into the dark, lonely hole where they couldn’t feed, where they couldn’t build. She could feel herself shuddering on the inside, freezing. So cold that even when she wrapped Alex’s coat around her, she couldn’t get warm.
She wanted to curl into a corner alone and scream. She wanted to hit. She wanted to howl out at the pain and find something to untie the knot of horror growing inside her.
This shouldn’t be happening. She should be able to live in peace now that Dayle and Nadine were dead.
She shouldn’t have to be afraid again, shouldn’t have to fear for those she cared about.
She shouldn’t have to leave the town she loved to protect those who meant the most to her.
She pressed her knotted fists into her stomach as Natches moved up to Alex and the sheriff. Her brother’s voice was hard and cold now. It wasn’t angry; he wasn’t acting the fool as he had at the bar.
He was stone-cold serious, and the gun she glimpsed shoved into the holster at his side assured her of it.
Minutes later, Dawg and Rowdy were joining them, both of them armed as well. They weren’t joking around. They were still considered agents, attached to the Department of Homeland Security, owing to their participation in the investigation that had revealed Dayle Mackay and Nadine Grace as members of a domestic terrorist group.
“Janey, I’m locking you in the truck.” Alex turned back to her. “Keep the doors locked, no matter what.
Do you know how to use a gun?”
She nodded bleakly. “I know how to shoot.”
He reached over, popped the glove box, and drew out another, smaller automatic handgun. He checked the clip, then shoved the gun into her hands. “Use it if you have to, honey. You hear me?”
She nodded again, then turned to him. “Be careful, Alex. Please.”
“Always,” he said softly.
He moved back, hit the lock on his door, then slammed it closed. She watched them as they moved to the office entrance. Two officers were at the back stairs as the sheriff moved into the restaurant with Natches, Dawg, and Rowdy.
It was too dark back here, she thought. Too many shadows. Too many places for someone to hide. The officers left outside were cautious, wary. Their hands rested on the butts of their weapons as they watched, in different directions, their bodies tense and prepared.
Janey wanted to curl into the seat and just escape. Like she had escaped the day Nadine had touched her. She wanted to burrow into her own mind and pretend none of this was happening. But Alex and Natches were in there. Once again, someone else was protecting her; they were putting their lives on the line while she sat safely along the sidelines.
As she sat there, she heard a distressed feline wail. The officers jerked, turning toward the Dumpsters that sat along the fence on the opposite side of the truck.
“Fat Cat.” She jerked the door open as an orange blur jumped from the ground into the truck.
He was wailing and meowing plaintively as he tried to burrow beneath Alex’s coat.
Janey slammed the door closed and relocked it, then wrapped her arms around the heavy cat and stroked his fur.
“Where have you been, bad cat?” she whispered as he meowed again, a sound of mingled anger and fear. “Are you okay?”
She ran her hands over him, but nothing seemed hurt. He huddled at her side beneath the coat, his head sticking out, his topaz eyes glaring up at her.
“I know, I’m late. I’m sorry. Bad mommy, huh?” She stroked his head, almost smiling mockingly at her own words. “It’s okay. I’ll give you extra hamburger tonight. How’s that?”
As though he sensed the little reward, he laid his head on her lap, but his heavy body still trembled. Fat Cat didn’t like strangers in his territory evidently.
As she stroked him, she watched Alex, the sheriff, and Natches move from the office and head up the stairs to the apartment. They spoke briefly to the two officers; Rowdy and Dawg were still in the restaurant for some reason.
She stared at Alex as he moved behind the sheriff but in front of Natches, to the small landing. The door opened, a thin wedge of light spilling from inside.
That was what she hadn’t seen earlier. There was a light on inside the apartment. And Janey had been careful not to leave any on when she left.
“Who was here, Fat Cat?” she asked the feline quietly, still stroking his fur as she fought the panic trying to rise inside her.
She was shaking as hard on the inside as the cat was on the outside. And she was horribly afraid that her insistence on staying here, in Somerset, was going to end up hurting someone other than herself. Natches or Alex would end up hurt. Or both. And she didn’t know if she could live with herself if that happened.
Alex shoved the Glock into the back of his jeans, propped his hands on his hips, and glared around the room after they’d finished checking the apartment. Natches and Zeke were reading that letter, again.
Alex didn’t need to read it again. He’d had enough of it when Zeke first unfolded it. The filth in it was enough to make a grown man sick.
More of the same bullshit with a little addition about corrupting good patriotic men. Give him a fucking break.
The officers with Zeke were finished dusting for prints, and Dawg and Rowdy were giving the restaurant a last check before collecting Janey and bringing her up.
Zeke pushed the note into a plastic bag, secured it, and dated and signed it before shaking his head and moving to the door.
Natches stayed. He turned, glared at Alex’s neck, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Don’t start, Natches,” he warned him. “I’m not in a bullshit mood right now.”
“That’s my sister you’re jacking around with,” Natches accused him.
“Yeah, and it’s my sister one of you was jacking around with last year,” he bit out.
“Not me,” Natches argued.
“Yeah, well, one of you is just as bad as the other.” Alex sighed in irritation. “Get the fuck off my back.
Nothing you say is going to change a damned thing.”
“She’s going to try to leave,” Natches told him warily then. “I know her. She thinks I don’t, because I let that bastard send her away. But I know her, Alex. She’s going to try to leave, thinking it will protect us.”
“She’ll change her mind.” Alex moved through the living room, pacing it off.
He could feel something teasing at him here. How the hell had someone gotten into the apartment without activating the alarm? There were no hidden doors. There was no other way in. All the windows were secure. They’d checked the closets, checked the walls themselves. Nothing.
“And what makes you think she’ll change her mind?” Natches retorted. “That fucking hickey on your neck?”
Alex stopped and turned his head slowly. He stared back at Natches, feeling the itch under his skin, the
need to loose the pent-up violence raging through him.
“Keep pushing me.”
There was no “or else.” They both knew the “or else.” They could fight it out, but it wouldn’t change a damned thing.
“Hell,” Natches muttered.
They heard Dawg and Rowdy coming with Janey and that wailing cat. Hadn’t Alex fed that little monster earlier?
Janey stepped into the apartment, ignoring the tension between her brother and Alex as Fat Cat jumped out of her arms and ran to his missing bowl.
“Bowl’s on the porch.” Alex looked at Dawg.
Dawg stepped outside, retrieved the empty dish, and set it down. Fat Cat smacked him, claws bared.
“Little bastard,” Dawg growled. Then he snarled at the cat.
Janey picked up the bowl and moved to the fridge, where she filled it with the fresh hamburger she kept on hand for the cat.
She stayed silent. Fed the cat and filled his water bowl before turning and moving through the kitchen.
She turned the corner and headed for her bedroom.
“Janey.” Natches followed her to the hall. “We need to talk a minute.”
“I have to change clothes.” She shook her head, keeping her back to him. “I’ll be out in a little while.”
She closed the bedroom door and leaned her back against it, drawing in a shuddering breath. She could feel the sobs building in her chest and she hated it. Hated it. She hated crying, she hated the sense of helplessness it filled her with, and she hated trying, trying so hard to play the perfect little girl and never succeeding.
Shaking her head, she pushed Alex’s coat from her shoulders and tossed it over the bottom of her bed.
The heels and stockings came off next. Then the skirt and top. She only distantly realized she had forgotten to put her panties back on.
In the bathroom she showered, scrubbed the makeup from her face, and lathered her hair. She had to go shopping tomorrow, she decided. If being the good girl didn’t work, then screw them all, she’d be who she wanted to be. She was tired of hiding. Sick to her back teeth of being protected.
Drying off, she moved back into her bedroom, and drew on the long cotton pants she used to sleep in.
She hated those, too. The T-shirt. Tomorrow, she was buying gowns. Silky gowns. Sexy gowns. It didn’t matter if anyone else saw them. She would see them.
Running her fingers through her hair, she left her bedroom, rather expecting her apartment to be cleared of Mackays. It wasn’t. Ray and Maria were there as well now, Kelly, Chaya, Crista, and a concerned Faisal.
Faisal had moved into an apartment in town with a few other boys that the Mackays had taken under their wings over the years. The other boys were preparing Faisal for college. The incredibly bright, energetic young boy Natches and Crista had arranged to have brought out of the Iraq desert didn’t look any happier than the Mackays did.
“Aren’t you guys sick yet of dragging your pregnant wives out over nothing?” She threw Dawg and Natches a disgusted look.
“You’re something to us, Janey,” Chaya spoke up, her hand resting on the small mound of her belly as she sat on Natches’s lap in one of the kitchen chairs.
“You’re family,” Crista finished for her.
She, too, was pregnant, about a month further along than Chaya was.
“Besides, we can’t let the boys have all the fun.” Kelly, Rowdy’s wife, grinned from where she sat on his lap. “Otherwise, they might get spoiled.”
Janey bit back a retort. Opening the fridge, she pulled out the wine, poured herself a glass, and pushed the cork back into the bottle. She left it sitting out as she turned and faced the crowd.