“The Freedom League?” Brogan asked, his gaze flickering to Eli. This was the first they had heard this.
“Yeah, that Freedom League.” Donny swallowed again, obviously terrified, but more terrified of losing his lover.
Luck was with him tonight, Brogan thought. He’d never imagined that coming here to beat the shit out of the little bastard over some rabbits would end up with information on the very investigation he’d been working for two and a half years now.
“You know something else, Donny,” Brogan stated smoothly, confidently.
He could see it in the other man’s eyes every time his gaze met his lover’s.
“Just talk, that’s all,” Donny wheezed. “There’s talk that the files Brogan Campbell stole are really important. They have coordinates in them for something. Something that the League wants.”
“And where did you hear this talk?”
“I was outside at the bar one night, snortin’ a little somethin’—somethin’,” he said nervously.
“I don’t care what you were doing,” Brogan stated softly. “What did you hear?”
“Some dude was takin’ a call.” Donny’s voice lowered as though he were afraid others might hear him. “I don’t know who it was. He was pissed; he said Brogan had to be behind it because they were searching for the same thing. He said he knew it was Brogan Campbell. That only Campbell had a reason to want those files or the information in them.”
Sandi was still crying, though not as hard.
“What’s Brogan Campbell searching for?” he asked as though he didn’t know.
Desperation filled Donny’s gaze now. “I don’t know,” he rasped. “I swear to God, I don’t know.”
“What have you heard, then?” Brogan asked.
Donny licked his lips nervously, his gaze seeking Sandi’s again. Sandi gave the barest nod.
“Come on, Donny; don’t make my friend over there hurt her, okay? Neither you nor Sandi would like it.”
Donny’s gaze flickered nervously. “When Brogan showed up he got real interested in this motorcycle touring club we have. The dude said who they were lookin’ for was there. They just don’t know who he is. But he can read some files they have, and they think Brogan has the other files. He said Brogan was the only one with the background and experience to steal them, too. He said this dude they want can read them. Then, when I was in Fort Knox a few weeks later, there were these dudes at the bar I went to, they was talkin’ ’bout Dawg and Eve’s daddy. They said there was talk circulatin’ heavy that there were files their daddy worked on while he was in some federal agency he worked for that hid the location on somethin’, and those files were stolen. Talk was maybe Dawg would know what that somethin’ was, and the only way to find out would be to use his sisters to scare him, but no one can go after a Mackay, ’cause if they did, then whoever that dude is that can read those files also has lots of information on that Freedom League and if any Mackay, or anyone that any Mackay loves is threatened, then he’s gonna talk. And he’s gonna tell all these secrets he has on that Freedom League. And they don’t want him talkin’ ’cause word is, he knows everything. Who wasn’t caught, who’s still hidin’, and lots of other stuff.”
Bingo. So that’s why Doogan wants Eve.
“Anything else, Donny?” he questioned softly. “Come on, anything else?”
“I swear that’s all.” He whimpered. “I swear that’s all. I swear.”
Brogan lifted the knife from Donny’s neck and released him slowly.
Donny stepped back quickly, his gaze seeking his lover’s.
“You hear anything else, Donny, use the number,” Brogan growled. “Don’t make me come back.”
Donny gave a quick, short nod.
Hell, Brogan expected both of them to be gone within hours.
“One more thing, Donny.”
“No one will know you were here,” he promised, then gave a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Trust me; I don’t want anyone to know.”
Brogan strode quickly from the room, Eli and Jed following close behind as they left the house and disappeared into the trees.
The four-wheelers they’d used to get into the mountains were still waiting where they’d left them. Brogan mounted the rugged machine as Eli and Jed did the same, and they started the engines and headed for the enclosed trailer several miles down the mountain and the pickup it was attached to.
The night—or morning, he should say—had yielded far more information than he had ever expected.
Pulling the four-wheeler into the covered trailer as Eli and Jed pulled in behind him, Brogan knew he finally had a direction to move in. Something other than just a list of files currently under review by the military for destruction. Brogan hadn’t seen a location for anything when he’d gone through the files, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It meant he was going to have to go over them much more closely. According to the information Donny had, the files were evidently encrypted, if whoever he’d overheard talking that night, was right. So it made sense Brogan hadn’t found it. What he needed was someone with the ability to read and crack military code.
Otherwise, there would be no keeping Eve out of this.
His director thought they had one asset no one else could touch.
That asset was Eve.
Because whoever cared enough for Eve that they would only come out if Eve needed them or would only trust whoever she was with, evidently had the ability to not just decode the encryption, but also had information on a militia that Homeland Security believed had been disbanded more than five years before.
He’d been trying to find someone Eve was close to in his search for this informant. Maybe the way to go about this was to see whom Eve and her father, Chandler Mackay, now had in common.
That was where the answers lay.
To get those answers he would have to make Eve break a promise and betray the brother she loved.
He would be risking his soul, but he knew the plans the Freedom League had when it had been disbanded. They had been only months away from assassinating the president and ensuring the vice president, who had been a part of the militia, took his place. From there, they would have ensured the government officials they’d been amassing information on, would fall in with their plans. If they succeeded, the world as he knew it would be over forever. The Freedom League’s ultimate plan was the destruction of free enterprise, freedom of speech, and race equality. The nation would have been broken apart from the inside out, and before the American citizens even realized the danger they were in, it would have been too late.
According to Donny, the League was still in place, and that meant their plans were still in place as well.
And that, he couldn’t accept.
EIGHT
Eve often helped not just at the bar, but also at Janey Mackay Jansen’s restaurant, Mackay’s Fine Dining. She helped Natches at the garage and in the office, and sometimes at Dawg’s lumber and building supplies store, or, if needed, on the farm he had bought.
When she wasn’t working for various cousins or their friends, then she worked for her mother.
Fortunately, John and Sierra had hired two experienced waitresses within a few nights of her confrontation with Sandi Mikels. Unfortunately, that left Eve at loose ends for a few days—until her sisters learned she was currently jobless.
They saw that as extra time off from the inn to enjoy their summers more. Before she knew it Eve found herself working two straight twelve-hour days until she managed to put the skids on Piper and Lyrica.
Eight hours she didn’t mind. Twelve hours she had a bit more of a problem with.
On the third day she found herself on cleaning duty after Zoey disappeared to “paint” again. Piper and Lyrica had made plans, leaving her mother without the extra help at the same time that dinner preparation began.
There were eight guest suites, four to each wing at the side of the converted two-story farmhouse. The suites weren’t overly large, though Eve’s was smaller than the others. Each suite consisted of a bedroom, bathroom, and small sitting room with a reasonable-size flat screened television.
That morning after the guests left, she went through each room that had the service tag hanging on the outside of the door to clean or just refresh the rooms. On the back of each tag the guest had written what services were required. Changing the bed, extra towels, or a variety of other services listed to check off on the back of the card.
Armed with cleaning supplies, clean sheets, pillowcases, and towels, she made her way from the rooms on the opposite wing from her own and worked her way around to the side she shared with Brogan, Elijah Grant, and Jedediah Booker.
Her plan was to finish in her room and sneak in a nap. Her evening was free, and she intended to keep it that way. She’d worked two weeks straight without a day off, and she was determined to make certain she had a break.
When she reached Brogan’s room, nerves began to attack her normally calm demeanor.
Her hands were shaking as she unlocked the door and slowly stepped inside. The butterflies were beating at her stomach while her pussy decided it was a fine time to go from aching to all-out clenching in need.
And all it had taken was stepping into his suite.
She was pathetic.
Carrying the clean bedclothes to his bedroom, she was happy to see he wasn’t a slob. There wasn’t so much as a stray hair in the bathroom.
The same for the sitting area of the small suite. All it really required was a quick run across the floors with a vacuum and dusting the furniture before she returned to the bedroom to make the bed.
She had every intention of making the bed quickly, too.
Pulling the first pillow from the neatly straightened blanket, Eve stared at it for long seconds before slowly pulling it to her and burying her face against the ultrasoft cotton of the pillowcase covering it.
His scent was there: a clean, midnight scent that forcibly pulled the memory of his touch to the forefront of her mind.
Once again she could feel the heavy weight of his body against her own, his lips traveling down her neck, moving steadily closer to her hard, aching nipples.
She hadn’t slept worth anything since that night. She tossed and turned, aching for him, and too wary of his warning of what would happen if he heard her masturbating again to risk it.
It was so tempting, though. The need for release was like a hunger she couldn’t assuage. She couldn’t forget it, and even if she could masturbate, she wouldn’t be able to satisfy it.
Been there, done that, she thought wearily. She couldn’t allow herself to take Brogan as a lover.
She had to get over it. This hunger for him was going to make her crazy.
Getting over it would be easier said than done, though.
For the first time in nearly eight months she had finally accepted one of the numerous invitations to dinner that she received. While picking up her check from the bar the night before, one of John and Sierra’s friends had come into town from Boston and stopped by.
Before the evening was over he had invited her to have dinner with him that night, and with a sense of desperation she had accepted.
Chatham Bromleah Doogan III, tall, dark haired, and dark eyed. He had a steady, confident aura about him, and John and Sierra both really liked him.
She was thankful that Brogan had left with the motorcycle touring group he was a part of that afternoon and wasn’t due back until sometime in the hours before dawn.
The group went most weekends sightseeing on the bikes. A group of over a dozen couples, riding their motorcycles along the scenic mountain highways and byways of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio.
Plenty of time, she thought to herself, to have dinner with Chatham, or Doogan as he’d told her to call him, and to figure out whether she truly was ruined for another man.
Not that she intended to do more than have dinner, because she didn’t. But there was always the chance her body would see the error of aching for Brogan and decide to ache for someone else instead.