He reached out, smoothing back a thick swathe of hair from her cheek as emotion overwhelmed him, tightened his chest, and reminded him of what he could have lost. If he had given in to the demand that he take her the year before, the attack might have never happened. Hell no, it wouldn’t have happened, because he would have demanded reassignment. He couldn’t have left her. He had known that then. Once he had her, there was no way he could have walked away.

He was crazy about her. So crazy in love with her that it terrified him clear to the soles of his feet. She was young as hell, and still so innocent it broke his heart.

Leaning forward, he pressed a butterfly kiss against her forehead before tucking the sheet closer over her shoulders. Minutes later he was striding into the living room where Natches and Dawg waited on him. Natches had his head back on the couch, eyes closed. Dawg just looked grouchy as he stared back from the chair he sat in.

“Bastard!” Dawg grunted as Rowdy dropped into a chair across from him. “Guard duty sucks.”

There was a gleam of envy in Dawg’s eyes, despite the amusement in his tone.

“Did guard duty pay off though?” Rowdy lifted a brow, staring back at his cousin questioningly.

Dawg grinned in satisfaction. “Guard duty paid. I slipped out the doggie hole and found a nice little perch topside. We had some definite movement.”

Natches’s eyes opened as he straightened in his seat, his expression going as darkly dangerous as Rowdy felt. Evidently this wasn’t information Natches had been given, which surprised Rowdy.

“What kind of movement?” Rowdy asked, paying attention to the dangerous, predatory light that gleamed in Natches’s expression as Dawg continued.

“Little fellow, barely taller than Kelly. Dressed in hunting gear with a hooded mask. He was being real careful. Watching the house from heavy cover. I couldn’t get a shot.”

“Did you recognize anything?” They were getting close. The stalker was losing his grip on reality if he had followed them so quickly.

Kelly’s stalker was obviously beginning to crack, and that was what they needed. Just a small fracture in his self-control and they would have him.

Dawg shook his head. “I watched him as best I could. Maybe something will trigger if I see him around anywhere.” A grimace twisted his expression. “Catching him might not be easy, but I have a feeling he’ll make another move soon.”

Of course he would, he considered Kelly his. The fact that the Nauti Boys had her, were possibly sharing her, would be too much for his tenuous hold on reality to survive.

“I’ll take guard duty from here on out,” Natches spoke up then, his voice bland, unassuming. Dangerous. A good ole boy attitude covering a steel core of determination.

Rowdy stared back at him curiously. Natches had changed in ways that were hard to put a finger on. He had returned from the Marines only months before Rowdy had, quieter and a hell of a lot harder than he had been when he went in. That hardness was more than maturity and confidence, more than a soldier who had seen battle in the sands of another nation. Despite his vow that he had never grown up, somehow, Rowdy knew better.

“Fine.” Rowdy nodded slowly. “You take watch. We’ll head into town in the morning, take Kelly shopping, do some stocking up. We’ll let the bastard see what he’s missing. If he’s the nutcase I suspect, he’ll hit by tomorrow night.

“Are we going to give him an opening?” Natches’s voice softened.

“We can’t make it look too easy. He has to work for it.” Rowdy sat back in the chair, considering their options. “Dawg, weaken the security monitor on the kitchen window, and in the shrubbery beneath it. Make it look natural, something he can get through. He’s broken the women’s security systems so he’s not a stranger to it. Let’s see what the bastard’s made of.”

Dawg nodded sharply as Natches continued to watch them with a hard, merciless stare that assured Rowdy that he wasn’t the only one waiting to shed blood.

Rowdy turned his gaze back to Natches, realizing in that second that he had seen the look in his friend’s eyes before. He had seen it in another man’s eyes, a Marine assassin. He had worked alone, disappearing for weeks at a time and returning with that same dead, cold chill in his eyes.

Hell. He blew out a silent breath as Natches met his eyes, his expression never changing. What the hell had Natches gotten into while he was in the service?

“Go ahead and set up,” Rowdy told him quietly. “Let me know before morning how you want to play it.”

Dawg’s head had lowered, proof that he was aware of a truth that Rowdy hadn’t been privy to. A truth he still wasn’t certain of the details to.

“I’ll go public with you when you need me to,” Natches said softly. “I’ll use the bolt-hole otherwise.”

The bolt-hole, or dog door as Dawg had amusingly named it, was the single, secret entrance into the house from a shrub-hidden door several hundred feet around the base of the hill. Dawg wasn’t the trusting sort, and his time in the Marines hadn’t helped his trust issues any.

“Boys, we need to talk when this is all over and done,” Rowdy sighed, watching the weary resignation in his cousins’ eyes. “Keeping secrets among ourselves isn’t a good thing, ya know?”

Dawg grunted, a sound of wry amusement that was typical Dawg. Natches’s lips quirked into a smile.

“A good drunk maybe,” Dawg growled as he rose from his chair and paced across the room toward the kitchen. “Until then, boys, I need food. You want me to take mess duty?”

Rowdy’s eyes met Natches’s in shock, as his cousin’s widened in horror.

“Hell no!” They both came out of their seats, rushing for the kitchen as they heard pans rattling beneath the stove cabinet and remembered Dawg’s past attempts at manning a stove. The memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

He had checked on his girls. His special good girls. Kelly was weak—she was allowing herself to be degraded, to be taken. Oh, how he had hoped she had been the only one. He had prayed, prayed so long and hard that his good girls were waiting on him.

He curled into the corner of the small dark apartment, rocking himself gently as he stared at the first of his lovers. He had thought she was so pure, so sweet. With her long, silken blond hair, and her innocent blue eyes. She had a soft voice, one that stroked the senses and made him think of his mother before she became a whore. Before she had turned his father away, before his father had stolen him away for his mother’s sins. They had to punish her. She hadn’t been a good girl.

He sniffed, realizing he was crying. He hated crying. Crying never helped, tears made a man weak, he remembered that from his father’s lessons. A man had to do what he had to do. His father had been weak. The old man had cried, he had raged but he had left the depraved creature he had married rather than punishing her.

He should have punished her. If his father had punished his mother, then she wouldn’t have been so bad. She would have been the good wife and mother she should have been. If she had been a good woman, then she wouldn’t have lost her son.

He flinched at that memory, shaking his head to force it back from his mind as he reached out to touch thick strands of hair that flowed out from his good girl’s head.

He touched the silken strands, rubbing them between his fingers, remembering how soft and sweet she had been. Before she had let herself grow weak. Before she had let another man convince her to be bad.

He stared at the man, a tight smile crossing his lips at the sight of the nude man, laying half on the bed, half on the floor. He wasn’t dead, but he would soon wish he was.

The girl. He sighed wearily as he let himself stare at the blood staining the carpet. She stared back at him sightlessly, her china blue eyes reflecting the horror of her punishment.

Kelly must have somehow convinced this one that she could be bad, too. How, he wasn’t certain. He could have sworn his girls didn’t know about each other. He had taken pains to be very careful. But Kelly was so bad, so depraved, that she would have found a way to convince the others that they too could escape him.

They belonged to him. They were his good girls. He wouldn’t allow another to touch them, not like his mother had.

He pulled himself to his feet, careful to pick up the knife and clean it of the blood that stained it. Her blood.

“You’ll always be my good girl now,” he whispered as he stepped around the blood and moved for the spare bedroom.

He had hidden there for hours, waiting for her to come home. Waiting to assure himself that she was a good girl. Only to listen in pain and fury as another man touched her.

He fought back his tears again as he entered the dark room and headed for the window he had used to slip inside the apartment. He had bypassed her security. How easy it had been. She had thought she was safe from him. That she could disobey him as his mother had disobeyed his father. She had found out wrong. Just as Kelly would have to learn as well.

TWENTY-TWO

The next morning, Kelly would have preferred to enjoy the awakening caresses Rowdy was bestowing as she swam toward reality rather than the warm, sensual dreams twining around her. Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by Dawg’s growling message that her mother and Ray were on their way, and they had better get their asses ready before the arrival. His words, not hers.

She had enough time to shower and dress, never realizing the kind of devastating news her parents would bring.

“Her name was Dana Carrington.” Ray’s voice was low, angry. “She was murdered, and her boyfriend was molested.”

Kelly sat in shock, listening as Ray recounted the murder that had taken place the night before. She sat at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around her coffee cup as Rowdy stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders as she felt fear tremble through her.

“Kelly.” Her mother leaned forward in her chair, staring back at her worriedly. “I called your aunt Beth in Montana, she wants you to come stay—”

“No.” Rowdy’s voice was hard.

Kelly’s gaze flickered to Ray. He glanced at Rowdy in concern, but said nothing more.

“She’s not safe here, Rowdy—” her mother protested.

“She won’t be any safer there,” he argued as Kelly tightened her fingers on the coffee cup. “At least here, Dawg and Natches and I have a chance of catching this bastard.”

“By letting him think she’s screwing all three of you?” Maria came out of her chair then, her cry filled with fear as she faced Rowdy. “For God’s sake, Douglas, what if using her doesn’t work? What if he gets to her—”

“Enough,” Rowdy growled warningly.

“Kelly, listen to me, whoever this is has killed now. He won’t stop…” Her mother stared back at her, her eyes damp with tears, her lips trembling.

“That’s enough, Maria,” Rowdy protested.

“Let her have her say, Rowdy.” Ray shook his head regretfully. “She’s her mother.”

“All of you stop it!” Kelly’s palm cracked on the kitchen table, sending an enveloping silence to fill the kitchen as all eyes turned to her. Ray and her mother, Dawg and Natches, Rowdy, she could feel their gazes boring into her as she lifted her head and stared back at her mother.

Kelly drew in a deep, hard breath. Fear was like a snake coiling in her belly, striking at her chest in an effort to be free.

“Rowdy’s right,” she whispered. “He won’t stop killing now. If I stay here, there’s a chance he can be caught—”

“Oh God, Kelly, listen to yourself,” Maria protested desperately. “That girl last night is dead. He raped her boyfriend while he was unconscious. He’s not sane.”

“And I can’t run.” She shuddered at the thought of being terrified of the dark for the rest of her life, of being terrified of what could happen. But even more, she knew there were a lot of things Rowdy would allow, but he would never let her go. “We have to face it. Now. Here.”