“You’re point being that I’m risking our child if I try to help you. What about you? If anything happens to you, who is going to help me raise our baby? Who’s going to teach him how to be a man?” Her eyes didn’t glitter with tears now, they glittered with anger.

His lips quirked at the sight of that anger.

“If anything ever happens to me, you’ll be taken care of,” he told her. “Just as Kelly or Crista would be taken care of if anything happened to Rowdy or Dawg. But that wasn’t my point.”

“Then get to your damned point so I can tell you how much of your time you’ve wasted. I’m keeping track of it by the way.”

He had no doubt in his mind that she was.

“My point was, Chaya, until you, I never dreamed I’d find a woman strong enough to make certain my child was protected. Even if it had to be protected against me.”

Her eyes widened then, and Natches forced himself to face the fear that had followed him most of his adult life.

“They say blood will always tell,” he told her. “Dayle Mackay uses his fists at the slightest provocation. He’s one of those men that should have been sterilized before he had a chance to breed. To make certain that kind of mean wasn’t hereditary.”

“Are you crazy?” She jerked away from him then, her expression incredulous as she rolled from the bed and stared back at him furiously. “You just wasted a half hour of my time with that crap?” She was almost snarling now. “Get your ass out of the bed, get dressed, and tell me what the hell you have planned before I have to shoot you.”

“You’re strong enough to stand up to me, Chay. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough to keep from murdering Dayle Mackay if you have to see the monster that sired me.”

There, it was out. He said it. That was the end of the subject as far as he was concerned. He rolled from the bed himself and jerked his pants from the floor. When he straightened, he stared back at her, feeling that inner rage flashing through him.

“Cranston needs that son of a bitch alive,” he told her. “I don’t want to take away from your courage or your pride, Chaya, but this is my battle, and it’s my fight. I won’t have the control to keep from blowing his head off if he strikes out at you. And he will. Just to test me. Just to make sure he has what he wants, he would do it.”

“Like hell,” she bit out. “Natches, what could he want that would make him so stupid? He’s worked with the League most of his life from what I understand. He’s been damned good at what he’s done. What could he want so much that would make him mess up to that extent?”

Chaya was furious. She stood her ground in front of him, glaring back at him, enraged that he would try to protect her when he needed her.

“My soul,” he said bitterly. “What does any monster want, Chay, but your soul?”

“Natches . . .”

His hand went over her mouth, and when she stared into his eyes, she saw something that almost terrified her. Something more frightening than the icy rage she had seen before, something more destructive than mere fury. She saw a feral determination, animalistic, almost uncontrolled as he stared into her eyes.

“If he so much as breathes violence in your direction, so much as curls a finger to touch you, he will die.” Natches’s lips curled back from strong, clenched teeth. “If he breathes the same air you’re breathing, so much as dares to step in your direction, I won’t bother to think, I won’t bother to try to control my rage. Is that what you want?”

She swallowed tightly, the anger draining away to be replaced by a sorrow so strong it nearly stole her breath as her hand lifted and she touched his face. “What did he do to you?” she whispered.

“He created me,” he stated coldly. “Now, he’s going to have deal with me. But if DHS wants him alive when we’re finished, then you’ll stay out of it. Otherwise, I’m not making any promises.”

EIGHTEEN

With Cranston aware of what they were looking for, it didn’t take long to get the files of the men in the photograph with Chandler and Dayle Mackay, or to find the connections that brought them together.

They were in the same Marine Corps unit for nearly eight years. They had stayed in touch afterward. Hunting trips. Fishing trips. Covers for their own dreams of glory as they drew in more and more recruits after they left the service but stayed involved in various military groups.

They had no true power backing them, individually, but they had gained it as a group. Here and there. Drawing in like-minded soldiers, at first, discharged soldiers, and slowly working their way up until their recruits were coming in from active service.

They had them tied in together. They connected the dots through the day until Cranston was certain it was only a matter of time before they had those responsible for the strike order in Iraq that had killed Chaya’s child. But to ensure their arrest and the complete disclosure of all their members, they needed something more to bring Dayle Mackay in.

Natches would get them more. And Chaya was terrified how he would manage that, and what it would do to his soul.

Letting go of the fight over his decision to meet with Dayle Mackay by himself wasn’t easy for Chaya. But she’d seen that the more she argued with him over it, the more determined he became.

Redneck pride and stubborn will. She’d heard about it; she’d just never seen it. Not that he was a whole lot different from any other man of his kind. It just rankled more perhaps because he was hers.

And that was the part that was driving her crazy. He had charmed her, seduced her, loved his way right into her soul, and now he was shutting her out.

She looked over at him from where she sat at the table. Stretched out on the couch, one arm behind his head as he supposedly watched television.

He wasn’t watching that droning news report any more than she was. He was wired, tense, waiting. Whatever Dawg and Rowdy had done that day evidently wasn’t going to have immediate results.

As she watched him, her cell phone beeped imperatively at her ear.

“Dane,” she answered the call, watching as Natches tensed further.

“You want to tell me what the hell your boyfriend’s cousins are up to?” Cranston snarled in her ear. “They just had a rather heated, if amusing, argument in the parking lot of Mackay Lumber. It seems they’ve had a bit of a falling out with their cousin over a fucking picture he found.”

God, what were they doing?

She lifted her eyes as Natches sat up and turned to face her. His eyes narrowed as she stared back at him.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered. “And he’s not talking.”

“Agent Dane, we don’t need fuckups here,” Cranston bit out. She could imagine him scowling, his face wrinkling like an irate bulldog’s. “Find out what the hell is going on.”

“And you expect me to do that how?” she asked him, still watching Natches, fear building inside her. “Do you have the details of the conversation?”

“Oh, something along the lines of wiping their hands of him forever because he destroyed evidence against someone. A picture. One that implicated someone they didn’t name, but anyone with a brain could put it together.”

She licked her lips nervously as Natches rose slowly to his feet and walked toward her. Her teeth clenched as he slipped the wireless unit from her ear and brought it to his own.

“Chaya’s rather busy right now, Timothy,” he said quietly. “Try again later.”

He disconnected the call and tossed the unit to the table.

“Don’t answer it.” He pointed his finger to the ringing phone, then turned and walked into the kitchen.

And Chaya had had enough. She stood to her feet, gathered the files she was working on, and pushed them into her case. Shutting her laptop down, she pushed it into the case as well and carried it to the door.

“Walk out that door and I’ll tie you to the bed.” His voice never rose.

“I’m sick of that threat now.” She sat down on the chair and pulled her socks on her feet before pulling her boots to her.

He pulled a beer from the fridge, opened it, and moved back to the living room, where he sat down on the couch and watched her, his green eyes intent, his expression carved from stone.

“I’m not Crista or Kelly,” she told him. “I won’t be pushed behind you and protected, nor play the helpless little woman. If that’s what you think, then you should sit down and rethink your options. That one isn’t working.”

She pulled the first boot over her foot.

“He’ll be calling sometime tomorrow,” Natches stated. “Alex will be contacting Cranston tonight. At present, this marina, as well as the lumber store, is under surveillance by three of the men in that photo.” He pointed to the picture laid out on the table. “If you walk out of here, you compromise me, is that what you want?”

She let the boot fall back to the floor.

“What have you done?” she whispered, staring back at him as she felt her chest clench with dread. She remembered the year before, the operation that had very nearly ended with Crista Jansen’s death because Dawg had played games with Johnny Grace. And now, Natches was setting himself up as a target.

“Everyone knows the Nauti Boys always stick together. Nothing comes between them. Now something has; there’s a division. Nadine glimpsed it that morning Dawg and I were arguing at the diner over you. Remember?”

She nodded, remembering the morning she had threatened to tell Crista on Dawg.

“They’ve seen us arguing more than once here lately, over you and this investigation. That worked in our favor. Now it appears that Dawg and Rowdy are arguing between them because I destroyed a picture that implicates someone in the investigation. And Dawg’s letting his opinion that ‘blood will tell’ be known.”

Chaya shook her head slowly. “What kind of blood? What does he mean, ‘blood will tell’?”

“Meaning, Chaya, that evidently, when it comes right down to it, my loyalty is to the bastard that sired me rather than the family that raised me.”

“And you’ve kept me in the dark about this for what reason?”

“Hoping I could keep you out of it?” He arched his brow mockingly. “I’m telling you, because I’ve decided there’s no other choice. Have you considered how someone found out who your agents were and managed to plant highly professional explosives on their vehicles?”

“Cranston suspects a leak,” she whispered. “He’s been going over the files. So have I.”

Natches shook his head. “There’s no leak, sweetheart. You were all staying at the Suites. You met there, in one particular room for a meeting most every morning.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because dishonorably discharged Private Michael Wheeler works there. And he’s very good friends with Dayle Mackay. Look at the files on the men who have joined the ranks of the League. Most are dishonorably discharged for abuse, ignoring the chain of command, sex crimes. Those who weren’t in the military are malcontents with a bitch, nothing more. Except maybe dreams of glory. Once I determined who at the hotel could have gotten in a position to watch you, it was easy to figure out. That’s where Cranston made his mistake. He was afraid blood would tell, so he sent you in so he could watch me, see which way things would swing before he pulled me in.”

“He was afraid you would protect Dayle Mackay.”

“Just as his agents were. Just as his agents no doubt discussed in that room after you left each morning. The room could have been bugged, individual rooms could have been bugged. Who knows? But Dayle found out what was going on, and he knew Cranston was onto him; otherwise they would have never struck out at the agents.”