"not in that group of names you won't," rowdy snorted. "i've gone over these files, agent dane. there's nothing here to identify any kind of leader of a homegrown militia network. these people are misfits. they can't decide where to use the bathroom next and you expect me to believe they're part of some growing grassroots terrorist group?"

"i'm more inclined to believe they're the pawns of such a group," she snapped back. "i've worked this case for five years, rowdy. i know the signs. and they're all here."

"who in somerset could organize and lead something like this?" dawg looked to the others then his eyes flashed with anger as he leaned toward her. "fucking mackays. me, rowdy, natches, we could do it," he snarled. "is cranston after our asses now?"

she shook her head.

"bullshit." his hand slapped the table. "there's no one in this county with more expertise in military, paramilitary, or plain dirt-assed killing than the three of us."

a sniper assassin, an explosives assassin, and rowdy, one of the marines' finest commanders. they'd all left the military early. for dawg and natches, after one tour, both with medical discharges. rowdy had taken two tours and signed out. no sooner had they returned than the league had begun growing within the area.

"i investigated that option myself," she told them, staring back at dawg coolly. "you don't have the ties nor do you personally have the temperament needed for such work."

he almost gaped back at her, rising halfway from his chair as natches stood fully to his feet.

"don't tell me i don't have the temper for it, little girl," he snarled. "that piddling-assed little car bomb that took out your agent looks like a firecracker compared to what i'm capable of."

"back off, dawg," natches warned him.

"leave him alone, natches. i can handle it." she smiled back at dawg tightly as his wife came up behind him, her eyes sparkling in anger as she glared at chaya.

" 'that piddling-assed car bomb,' as you call it," she bit out, "had a signature. we've tracked it before."

"i don't leave fucking signatures," he snarled.

"exactly. you don't. and that alone is your signature," she told him. "don't play dumb, dawg, just because you don't like me." chaya came to her feet, her hand gripping natches's wrist. "you, rowdy, ray, your wives, and your closest friends were investigated first. thoroughly. i headed that investigation. i know how thorough it was, because i knew none of you were evil. snarky, damned mean when you need to be, and so damned arrogant you make a woman's back teeth clench. but you're not traitors, and you're not terrorists. and i proved it."

"she's right." alex spoke up, drawing their gazes. he was leaning back in his chair, his gray eyes lit with amusement. "you'd make lousy terrorists, and you made lousy soldiers. i believe that's why the marines let you all go so easy, because you don't follow orders worth shit." he leaned forward and smiled placidly. "but they think i do. and chaya knows her stuff. she's not the only one who's been working this case. now, if we're all through playing these little power games, maybe we can get back to work here and figure out who the hell timothy is chasing. just in case he hasn't figured it out himself."

natches stared back at dawg, furious, bordering enraged, but the rage wasn't directed at his cousin. it was building inside him, threatening to burn out of control, because of his own suspicions. no, his own certainties.

he let chaya pull him back to the chair and ignored her worried looks as the work continued. finally, she moved away from them as alex filled them in on the freedom's league and their ties. it was information she already knew in abundance. she knew it, because that damned organization had killed her daughter.

he watched as she moved to the living room, sitting outside the group of women. finally, maria drew her forward, her smile kind. maria was the kindest damned woman natches had ever known until his cousins began falling in love. they had chosen women with those same qualities.

finally, chaya and crista were talking. natches watched them, noticed dawg watching them, and caught his cousin's eye. they were going to have to talk about this, and soon. he couldn't figure out dawg's problem with chaya, and he was beginning to not even care what the problem was. it was going to stop.

finally, as the hour grew later, they stood and stretched, shook their heads and admitted they would have to wait on timothy. natches stayed silent, watchful.

chaya was exhausted and he led her to bed, tucked her against him, and waited for her to go to sleep. while he thought. and all the thinking in the world wasn't helping him to make sense of the knowledge brewing in his gut, or the anger tormenting his mind.

thinking was only making it worse.

fifteen

natches left chaya, exhausted, sleeping peacefully in the bed he'd dreamed of her sleeping in.

when he'd returned from iraq, he had thrown the bed he'd partied in for so many years right into the lake. he'd come in at night, taken one look at it, and something inside him had shattered.

the man who had slept in that bed wasn't the same man who had returned to it. the man who had returned belonged to someone now and was no longer the man that bed 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.