He trusted Zeke. Trusted him more than the Mackay boys did, and had no doubt anything he said would stay with Zeke. Another slipup. A year ago, he wouldn’t have given a damn. Nothing would have induced him to tell the sheriff anything personal.

Zeke turned his head, looked up at the window, then back at Alex, and let out a soundless whistle.

“Damn, Alex. Natches is as protective over that little girl as he is his new wife and that skinny kid he had brought out of Iraq. Are you sure about this?”

“No.” He was damned sure he was going to end up fucking her, no matter what he told Zeke.

“You’re fourteen years older than she is, Alex. That’s a lot of years. If you don’t have more in mind than a few hot nights, then you better watch your ass. Or your head. Because Natches is damned good with a sniper rifle himself.”

Actually, Natches was better at it than Alex.

“Yeah. I better be careful.” But not because of Natches. Fighting Natches wasn’t what worried him.

Hurting Janey. The thought of that bit at him.

Zeke sat silently then, staring up at the window with Alex.

“She tell you about the notes?” Zeke asked then.

Alex lifted his head slowly. He and Zeke were more than just friends. Before Zeke got out of the military, they’d fought together a time or two. They had more of a connection than Zeke had with the Mackay boys. Alex knew when Zeke was telling him something sensitive.

“What notes?” he asked carefully.

“Yeah, I was afraid she was keeping it to herself, especially after she made it a point to make me swear to investigate it myself. Hell. Damned Mackays. Every one of them is trouble in one way or the other.”

“What notes, Zeke?” Alex could feel the tension tightening in his body then, the hairs at the back of his neck lifting in warning.

“There’s been three in the past two months. Words cut out of the newspaper and taped to plain white paper. No prints, nothing unusual, no way to trace it. Always left somewhere she won’t miss them. The first was taped to the door of her apartment. The second shoved under the front door of the restaurant.

The third was shoved under her apartment door. All three warning her to get out of town. That a traitor’s slut wasn’t wanted in Somerset.”

Damn. Alex felt his hands curling around the steering wheel, tightening. Violence raged through his body, and the need to exact vengeance slammed inside him.

“Natches doesn’t know?”

“She made me swear I wouldn’t tell a single Mackay.” Zeke smiled at that thought of that. “I haven’t told a single Mackay.”

No, he was telling Alex. Alex slid him a furious glance. The bastard.

“So I get to spread all the good news?”

Zeke shrugged before pulling a plastic envelope from inside his jacket. “I was out looking for you tonight anyway. I was waiting for you to heal up a little bit before we talked. You’re still officially deputized with DHS last I heard, so this is your business.”

Alex took the envelopes. “Copies?”

Zeke nodded. “All three of them as well as the report where we dusted for prints. We didn’t find anything. But I don’t like the tone of those letters, Alex,” he admitted. “They worry me.”

They worried Alex now. And what worried him even more was the fact that Janey wasn’t telling her family about them. They could protect her, help watch out for her. Yet she was taking it on alone.

“You weren’t able to find out anything?” Alex asked again, even though he knew Zeke would have told him if he had.

“Nothing. And I’m worried about her. I hear the crap that goes on in this county. And I’ve been in that restaurant to hear some of the comments she gets. She’s like a damned robot in there, and people can be mean. They keep striking until they see blood. Janey doesn’t show blood. It could end up getting her hurt worse.”

Natches was going to have to know about this. If Zeke thought the youngest Mackay cousin would kill him for fooling with his sister, it was nothing compared to what Natches would do if Janey ended up hurt and he’d had no idea there was a threat against her.

“Natches is going to be pissed at you, Zeke,” Alex warned him. “He’ll know you held back on him.”

Zeke shrugged. “It won’t be the first time, will it?” His voice was filled with amusement. “Be careful, though, Alex. Janey’s not the play-around type. She’s been hurt a lot in her young life. There’s no sense in adding to it.”

No. There wasn’t. But damned if he could stay away from her now.

“I know that, Zeke.” He knew it clear to the bottom of his soul.

Zeke nodded and left the truck, leaving Alex to stare up at that damned window as the light went out.

She was going to bed. His body clenched at that thought of it. Did she sleep naked? Somehow, he doubted she did. She was young, a virgin; had she learned how sensual the sheets could feel against her naked flesh?

He would show her. Show her how erotic it could be to sleep naked, curled against his body, his hands petting her through the night.

He closed his eyes and breathed out roughly. His cock was pounding in his slacks, fully engorged and torturing him with the need for sex. Not just any sex either. Oh hell now, it had to wait thirty-seven years to get picky and decide it was getting hard for only one woman.

One younger woman.

He was hooked on her kisses, and he had a feeling he was about to get hooked on much more than those perfect sweet lips.

He groaned at that thought. Natches would kill him for sure, but after that kiss earlier, Alex decided, it just might be worth it.

THREE

Alex pulled into the marina parking lot a little after seven the next morning. It was damned cold on the water in February. Those Mackays were frickin’ insane. All three of them were still on the houseboats, all of them with very pregnant wives.

Certi-fucking-fiable. That was all he could think. One of those very pregnant wives was his sister, Crista, and Alex was still ready to blow Dawg’s head off for not having that house ready yet. If it weren’t for the fact that Crista was the one holding things up, he and Dawg would have already fought.

He looked around and saw Ray Mackay’s pickup in front of the marina office, though he knew Ray wasn’t there. He’d called the other man that morning and asked him to meet him at Natches’s.

Shit. This wasn’t going to be easy. Natches had just gotten his sister back, thought she was finally safe and secure, and now this crap. And Janey, Alex knew, hadn’t mentioned a word to her brother.

He stepped out of the pickup, tense, wary. Dealing with the Mackays all at once wasn’t a fun time to be had, and bringing news like this?

He couldn’t get those letters out of his head, though. They were brutal, filthy trash. No wonder Janey was so damned wary, almost frightened, last night. She couldn’t know who was doing this to her; she would suspect everyone, and he couldn’t blame her.

He moved quickly from the parking lot along the docks. As he neared the Nauti Dreams , Natches’s houseboat, the door opened and Natches stepped out. He was still as wild as the wind, Alex thought.

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and bare feet. His black hair was mussed, his dark green gaze sharp despite the drowsy look on his face.

“You’re working early, Major,” Natches drawled as Alex stepped onto the boat. “Playing Cranston’s lapdog again?”

Alex sighed. He’d been working with Cranston for years. His team was one of the agent’s favorites to call out for the hairier assignments. Alex had already been called before a review board twice because of the insanity that was Cranston. But damn if the agent didn’t make life interesting.

They called him the Rabid Leprechaun, and Cranston was inordinately pleased with that title. So much so that his agents and Alex’s team worried that he took it a little too seriously. The thing about Cranston that the Mackays never understood, though, was that it wasn’t about the manipulations he conspired to do; for Timothy, it was all about the past and everything he had ever lost. It was about retribution. And in ways, it had been for Alex as well. He understood that. For Alex, though, the thoughts of retribution were melting away beneath thoughts of Janey.

“Not this time, Natches.” He shook his head as he stopped in front of his friend. “We need to talk.”

Natches’s eyes narrowed dangerously before he inclined his head into the houseboat. “Well, we’re all here as you asked. Keep your voice down, though; Chaya’s still sleeping.”

Evidently, all the Mackay women were sleeping. Ray, his son, Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches were waiting, but Crista, Kelly, and Chaya were absent.

He stepped into the wide front room and stared at the men huddled around the table at the side, a pot of coffee between them.

“Alex, good to see you.” Ray Mackay, Rowdy’s father, with his sharp Mackay green eyes and graying black hair, waved him over. “Get a seat, son. We have a cup for you.” He poured coffee into a cup as Alex stepped over to the table.

He didn’t sit down. Neither did Natches.

“Seven in the morning,” Natches commented with a drawl. “Must be trouble.”

“Trouble follows Alex,” Rowdy grunted. Evidently he didn’t like getting up early anymore either.

“So does Cranston,” Dawg commented mockingly. Another less-than-polite Mackay. Hell, they were nicer than this before they decided monogamy was the spice of life.

“No Cranston this time.” Alex pulled the letters from inside his jacket, unfolded them, and handed them to Natches. “I got these last night. They’ve come in the past two months, to Janey.”

Natches took the letters slowly, his gaze locking with Alex’s. He could feel the sense of danger, the ragged, burning fury already building as he stared into the other man’s gray eyes.

When his eyes moved to the letters, his blood began to boil.

Traitor’s whore. Slut. You’re not wanted. Get out of town before you’re carried out in a casket.

Traitor bitches aren’t wanted. You dirtied yourself with daddy and auntie. Did you moan for them? Did you beg like the bitch you are? Take your dirty ass out of town before you’re taken out.

Fucking daddy and auntie isn’t nice, little bitch. Get the fuck out!

Natches could feel the fury burning, building.

“She didn’t tell me about these.” Natches handed them to Dawg and Rowdy, knowing what was coming once they read them. “She would have told me.”

Fear was balling in Natches’s gut now. This was what Janey had been keeping from him for months?

Was this why she had moved from the marina to that apartment in town, so he wouldn’t find out?

God, she didn’t even trust him, her brother, to help her? But why should she? He hadn’t been able to help her in all the years Dayle had controlled her. What would make her think he could help her now?

“She made Zeke swear not to tell you about them. It was the only way she agreed to turn them over. I’m still officially on the investigation from last year. He turned them over to me instead.”

Natches turned away and reached for his boots. He and Janey were going to have a talk. Now. This

wasn’t happening. Damn whoever had written those letters to hell. He wasn’t letting anything else destroy his sister.

“Where are you going, son?” Ray rose from the table.

“To get Janey.”

It was the only solution. Get her back in the middle of the Mackay clan where she could be watched, protected. There was no other choice.

Alex watched him. He understood Natches’s determination, but he’d also seen Janey’s last night in that apartment. She would fight her brother, draw further away from her family. That wasn’t the answer. He had the answer; he just had to let everyone see it in their own way.