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Zeke felt fury burn inside him and saw the desperation in Rogue’s gaze, felt it in his own body.
“I’ll be right there,” he snapped. “Have the state boys wait on me. ”
“We’re all waiting,” Gene promised. “I’d hurry though, because one of the neighbors thinks they saw someone in here just before we showed up. We could have a body. ”
“I’m on my way. ” Zeke snapped the phone closed and shoved it back into its holster as Rogue eased up until she was sitting on the desk.
Zeke clenched his teeth as she pulled the bra over her breasts and secured the little clip before pulling the silky top back down and smoothing her skirt over her upper thighs.
“Are you coming back?” She didn’t look at him as she asked the question.
“Eventually. ” Not tonight. If he came back tonight, God only knew how he’d handle the lust tearing through him. He needed time to consider this, time to figure out how he could protect her amid the danger he could feel brewing in the county.
“Eventually,” she breathed out as she lifted her head, her lips parting as a caustic smile shaped her lips. “A few hours? A few days? A few years?”
“There are things going on that you don’t understand, Rogue,” he said, trying to keep his voice low. “Things I have to deal with first. ”
Her head nodded jerkily. “Fine, deal with your things. ” She jumped off the desk and stalked to the door as he watched her, fighting the heaviness in his chest and his body’s demand that he stay.
She jerked the door open and stared back at him furiously. “Don’t come back until you’ve made up your mind whether or not you can stay long enough to at least supply the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am that any other woman would get. I don’t like being played with, Zeke. ”
She didn’t like being played with, but by God, he didn’t like games, either. At the moment, the game he was involved in wasn’t one he couldn’t step out of.
“Don’t push this, Rogue,” he warned her gently. “Don’t push me where you’re concerned. There are things you don’t know and don’t understand. Until I can fix that, then I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to offer. ”
“Did you hear me asking for anything?” she asked sweetly. The sweet part was a dead giveaway. Rogue was pissed. And she was hurt.
“I’ll be back. ” He strode to the door and stopped in front of her. “And the next time I catch you getting cozy with any other man, no matter who he is, Rogue, there’s going to be violence. ”
He didn’t give her a chance to respond. His hand curved around her neck and his lips took hers in a quick, hard kiss before he released her and strode from the office. He was out the back door in seconds and loping to his truck as he fought himself and his desire to walk right back inside where she waited.
She was his weakness. A man in his position couldn’t afford a weakness. Especially now. Zeke could feel it beginning to come together. Whoever they were looking for was getting scared. The questions he’d been asking about Joe and Jaime’s death had gotten a response. This was the response. Someone was scared the two men had left something, anything, hidden that would reveal what they were doing or why they were killed.
Now, Zeke just had to figure out what it was, without the hope of finding more.
SIX
Zeke walked into his office the next morning, paused,and stared at his visitors before shaking his head with a bemused acceptance that was beginning to grow inside him.
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.
The twins took care of them. We need to know what happened. ”
He stared back at Rowdy. Normally, Zeke would have believed him, but several years back, Rowdy had pulled his own bullshit over on Zeke. He hadn’t forgotten it. There were times he wasn’t sure he had forgiven it. He used to believe he was friends with these men, until he learned how easily they would hide the threats to the county he was duly sworn to protect.
They were here, and they didn’t know shit about what he was doing; only Cranston was aware of it, and only because the other man was well aware of who and what Zeke was looking for. While they were here, he may as well get what information he could.
“I don’t know what happened yet. Not fully,” he lied as he leaned forward and stared back at the cousins. “Did those boys do hard drugs that you knew of?”
They looked at each other in confusion before Rowdy shook his head firmly. “Joe and Jaime were hell-raisers, but they didn’t do the hard stuff. ”
Well, hell, that didn’t help him much where the coroner’s report was concerned.
“Do you have the forensics’ or coroner’s report yet?” Special Agent Timothy Cranston leaned forward in his chair, the wrinkled material of his cheap gray suit jacket shifting loosely on his shoulders.
“Cranston, what’s your business in this?” Zeke leaned back in his chair with a brooding look. “If this has anything to do with another operation in my county, then now’s the time to give me a heads-up. Otherwise, I’ll stop playing nice. ”
And that was Cranston’s only warning. The agent was hiding too much information from him and Zeke was losing patience with him.
Timothy grunted. “You stopped playing nice when your buddies in the Justice Department kicked my ass last year. Now, I’m being nice. ” His smile was all teeth.
“Janey’s upset over this. Rogue’s her friend and mine. Those twins were her friends, and Janey asked me to see what I could find out. I’d prefer not to pull in my own favors in D. C. at the moment, Sheriff. Might need those favors to get my job back. ” The lying bastard. “So why don’t we all just play nice, and see if we can help each other here. ”
Which pretty much meant Cranston was involved up to his beady little eyes in Zeke’s business. Playing along was easy enough, for the moment.
“Well, hell,” he growled, lifted the file, and tossed it closer to the edge of the desk.
“Initial report. Joe was pumped on heroin. The city’s investigative coroner still has the bodies, but this is the county coroner’s initial findings. Joe was pumped, walked in, shot Jaime, then himself. ”
Natches lifted the file from the desk, sat back, and opened it. Two cousins and one portly Homeland Security agent read over his shoulder.
“Not possible,” Dawg murmured. “Joe didn’t do this shit, Zeke. And he wouldn’t kill Jaime. ”
“Dawg, I’m doing my best with what I have here. ” Zeke sighed. “Forensics hasn’t come up with anything yet. No vehicle tracks were found outside the twins’ trailer, other than official vehicles that arrived that day. There was rumor of a fight over a girl, but no one knows who the girl was. There’s just nothing to stand on here but my gut and your suspicions. That’s not going to get me far. ”