Nauti Dreams (29 page)

represented.

Before he left, he’d been the bastard everyone thought he was and had been on a fast

track to self-destruction. It was why he joined sniper training; it was why he worked

without a spotter; it was why he had become one of their most proficient killers. Because

life didn’t matter to him—not his, and not those he was sent to kill.

To the man he had been, happiness was something others felt. All he had felt then was

the rage, the bitterness, the knowledge he was tainted by the blood of an incestuous,

child-beating son of a bitch. And the fear that somehow, part of Dayle Mackay lived

inside him. And then, he had seen true strength. He had seen a woman who should have

been weeping in horror, in fear, and she had stood strong. She had lifted her chin

defiantly and she had kept fighting.

And in those two weeks of recovery, she had let him hold her when she cried, when she

learned the husband she thought she could trust had betrayed her and his country. He had

teased her into laughter days later, and stolen a kiss. He had watched her eyes sparkle and

his soul had claimed her.

And she had changed him. In that short time, she had erased the man he had been, and

shown him the man he wanted to be. A man who was worthy of a woman that strong.

He stood on the deck now, leaning against the rail and staring into the dark water

stretching out behind the boat, and realized that he had grown up long before his cousins

had realized it. Maybe it had begun before Chaya, but he just knew it had cemented with

Chaya.

He had bitched about the sharing that didn’t continue after they came home, but only

because to not bitch was to reveal too much. And he didn’t want to explain Chaya. He

didn’t want to relive in words what he couldn’t forget in his memories. And he couldn’t

betray Chaya by taking another woman.

He’d let others think he had. Hell, he even watched Dawg take a few, but he hadn’t been

tempted to join in. He hadn’t wanted to be tempted to join in. Chaya had been so firmly

entrenched in his head and in his heart, that no other woman came close to the memory of

her.

She loved him silently, as though she was afraid that to love him any other way would

break her.

And his heart broke. As wild, as vicious, as his life had been at one time, it was nothing

compared to the loss Chaya had suffered in the space of a few seconds. The death of her

child, the knowledge that the father of that child had betrayed them both.

He breathed out heavily, tightening as he felt the boat rock, felt a presence behind him.

He knew who it was. He knew Dawg wouldn’t be asleep any more than he was tonight.

Not with the events that were beginning to reveal themselves and the knowledge of the

danger surrounding all of them.

He stood still, staring out into the water until a longneck beer was thrust in front of his

face. His lips quirked as he took the bottle and glanced at the man who leaned against the

rail beside him.

Dawg. They nicknamed him that for a reason. He never let things go. He chewed and

chewed on a problem, worried it and fought with it until that problem either evaporated

or bowed before him. He was as stubborn as the damned wind.

Natches took a long drink of the beer and waited.

“You changed,” Dawg finally said quietly. “Others didn’t see it like I did when you came

home. You played a good game of pretending you were fucking the girls, of being as wild

and woolly as you always were, but you weren’t.”

Natches stared at the bottle as he shook his head. “No,” he finally admitted. “I wasn’t.”

“You had no intention of sharing Kelly with Rowdy even if it had been what he wanted,

did you?” Dawg grunted. Rowdy would have killed both of them if they had touched

Kelly.

“Neither did you unless Rowdy really still needed it.” Natches brought the beer to his lips

thoughtfully. “Your game was just as good.”

Dawg sighed, the sound rough, worried. “I don’t have a daddy complex,” he finally

growled. “What I’ve got is a complex against games. Cranston’s games and Agent

Dane’s, especially after what I learned tonight. She almost destroyed you once . . .”

“She lost her daughter in a missile attack against enemy headquarters in Iraq five years

ago. That was the false order initiated by the League. I suspect to keep their own

activities secret. Beth was three. Her father was military intelligence and slipped her into

the country after he deserted to the other side.”

Silence filled the void as Natches held the beer loosely between his palms. “It was two

weeks after I rescued her from the terrorists who had taken her while she was on

assignment. Terrorists her husband betrayed her to. Nassar Mallah raped her with a baton,

Dawg. He beat her face until her eyes were swollen shut. He kicked her and beat her until

I wondered how she was still standing when I broke into that fucking dirt cell. But there

she was. She’d torn the clothes off the guard after I took his head off; barefoot and in

shock, she was ready to run.”

Dawg breathed out a vicious curse. A sound rife with the horror Natches described, the

images blooming between them, steeped in blood.

“We hid in a hole I’d made, and I activated the beeper for extraction. My team was

waiting not far out, and I knew it, but too far to wait on them to rescue her. I bandaged

her feet there, I covered her eyes, and in that dark little hole, I gave her my soul.” He

lifted the beer to his lips and finished it before turning to stare at the cousin that was more a brother, who was almost a father to him. “Cut her again, and we’re finished. As friends,

as family. Do you hear me, Dawg? That woman owns me, and she always will. You cut

her again, and we’re finished.”

Dawg stared at Natches. Between them a lifetime of memories and trials, tears and

brawling male adventures stretched. He’d have sworn years ago that nothing could come

between him and his cousins. But as he stared at Natches, the youngest of the cousins and

the one most scarred inside, he saw something he’d never imagined he’d see.

He was used to seeing Natches as the battered kid he was always helping to rescue from

Dayle Mackay’s brutal fists. Then as the wild, too charming, troublemaking hellion he

grew up to be. Then they went into the Marines.

And he guessed they really had grown up. Except Dawg hadn’t wanted to see it in

Natches. He hadn’t wanted to see the horrors his cousin had survived when they were

separated. And now, he saw it. But he saw something more. There was a core of pure

hard steel inside him. That steel had pulled the trigger and killed another cousin to save

Dawg’s heart. That steel faced him now, and damned if Dawg would have blamed him if

Natches had already decided to cut him out of his life.

Natches had given him and Rowdy a loyalty that, Dawg didn’t realize until this moment,

he hadn’t given his cousin in return.

“Fuck.” He sighed, wiping a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to cut her, Natches. Son

of a bitch, if I didn’t want to hate her though. And I was wrong.”

Natches continued to stare out on the water, and it broke Dawg up inside, seeing the pain

on his cousin’s face. Hell, he’d have killed anyone else if they so much as thought to cut

that little agent as he had. The Mackay cousins stuck together, it was that simple.

“I’d have never let anyone else do it,” he admitted, and it wasn’t easy. “We might fuss a

little between us, Natches, but you know that.”

Natches nodded then. “It’s the only reason we’re talking now, Dawg. It’s the only reason

my fist hasn’t gone down your throat and my boat is still here. Because I know that.”

Dawg almost felt a spurt of fear. How had he let his enmity, his fear for his cousin almost

bring them to that point? Fucking dumb redneck, he thought to himself. That was how.

Sometimes, he was still the dumb redneck he had been when he was young.

“She’s not plain,” he finally grated out. “But she’s tough. And whatever she’s dragging

you into scares the shit out of me because you’re not sharing it with us. And I know you,

Natches. I know you know what’s going on. You’re protecting her from us when you

don’t need to and risking yourself. And that’s what’s pissing me off about her.”

He watched as Natches lowered his head, his gaze slipping to his cousin’s bare back, and

he still flinched. After all these years, so many years, as the moonlight washed over the

scars on Natches’s tough, sun-bronzed flesh, fury still spiked through him.

Natches’s father had done that. That mean fucking bastard had lashed Natches until he

nearly killed him. He’d broken his rib, got him down, and then beat the living hell out of

him. When Dawg, Rowdy, and Ray had burst into the house, Natches had been curled in

on himself, nearly unconscious, his back in ribbons, and Dayle still laying the fucking

lash to him.

And Dawg had sworn that night, sworn to God, it would never happen again. That no

one, fucking no one, would scar Natches like that again, physically or mentally.

And still, something had had almost as profound an effect on Natches as his father had. A

woman’s pain. A woman’s scars.

In that second, he realized that was what pissed him off now. Once again, Natches wasn’t

watching his own back. He was more concerned with someone else’s safety, someone

Dawg didn’t know and was too damned wary to trust.

“Natches, stop looking at the fucking water, man. Tell me what the hell is going on. I

watched you tonight going over those files. You put something together, and you’re still

trying to protect the rest of us. Let us help you. We didn’t take that from you when we

were in trouble. Don’t do it to us now.”

Whatever it was, Natches had figured it out slowly, because he hadn’t hit the roof, he

hadn’t dug out his sniper rifle, and Dawg and Rowdy hadn’t heard the rage. Natches was

easier to figure out when he hit a hard, fast rage. The slow ones, those were damned

scary. And Natches was in a slow-building rage.

As he stared at Natches, the boat rocked again. Dawg looked up as Rowdy crossed the

deck now. Their boats were close enough to jump from one to the other. Rowdy wasn’t

being cut out from this late-night conversation and Dawg could tell from Natches’s

grimace that he knew it, too.

“Beer’s in the cooler,” Natches said softly, finishing the one Dawg had handed him. “Get

me another while you’re at it.”

He turned and lobbed the empty bottle into the trash can at the corner of the railing.

At least Dawg didn’t have to look at those fucking scars anymore. The sight of them just

pissed him off, even now, so many years later.

Rowdy got the beers and moved to them, his expression still as he handed them over.

“You two going to fight?” he asked, and his gaze narrowed on them. “I’m not up to

refereeing tonight, I’ll tell you.”

Dawg snorted. “No, I’ve just been trying to convince knuckle-head here to tell me what

the hell is going on with his woman and that damned Cranston. My neck is starting to itch

damned bad. It’s keeping me awake at night.”

“Natches will tell us when he needs to.” Rowdy shrugged, but Dawg heard the question

in his voice as well.

“Your neck itches,” Natches said then, his voice eerily quiet. “Have you felt the sights

between your eyes yet? Playing with you, targeting you, just waiting, because the time

isn’t right yet?”

Dawg froze. His gaze slashed to Rowdy’s and saw the same shock in his face that Dawg

felt.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Rowdy snarled.

Rowdy rarely cursed, Kelly just didn’t like it, and he tried to clean his mouth up. For a

Marine, that was some hard shit to do. And the fact that he was slipping told more of his

fury than anything else could.

Natches lifted his head then and stared at the mountains around them. The grief they saw

on his face then, the heavy, quiet sorrow had Dawg’s guts cramping with dread. Because

he knew. God help him, he was terrified he knew exactly what was getting ready to come

out of his cousin’s mouth.

“It’s Dayle, isn’t it, Natches? That’s who Cranston is after; he’s the one who was helping

Johnny. That’s why he’s playing games with you, and with your agent.” In a heartbeat,

Dawg knew the truth.

Natches grimaced, a tight, mocking smile twisting his lips before he tilted the bottle to his

lips and drank. In seconds the bottle was empty and crashing into the trash hard enough

to rock the can as Dawg and Rowdy flinched.

Natches stared at the can, wishing he could free enough emotion where his father was

concerned to just get mad. Just mad. Just enough to rage at the injustice of life that

allowed something as rabid as Dayle Mackay to sire a child.

But he couldn’t. All he could feel was that cold, hard core of knowledge inside him. The

same one he had felt when he realized Johnny Grace was as dangerous as a rattler coiled

to strike. His fingers itched to caress his rifle, to take out the threat, to make certain,

damned certain the bastard couldn’t strike at Chaya, Rowdy, or Dawg. Or, God forbid,

Ray.

Dayle couldn’t touch his sister, Janey, at least. She was away at college, far, far away;

Natches had made damned certain of it.

“He’s been playing with me,” Natches commented. “Not right now, but often enough. He