“And now they’ll die.” He shrugged, that ice lingering in his gaze, his voice. “Soon.”

—

Angel packed slowly, not that she had much to pack. The saddlebags that secured to the back of the motorcycle didn’t hold a lot. The rest of their gear, supplies, and various weapons had shipped out that morning with Tracker’s ’vette and the black Range Rover that traveled from job to job with them.

She wasn’t ready to leave Somerset yet. She wasn’t ready to turn her back on the last dream that had survived her childhood. The dream already slowly dying in her soul.

After securing the pack and setting it next to the door, her gaze was caught by her reflection in the full-length mirror there. Shattered sapphire eyes. Once, when she was a child, her eyes had been a soft gray, her hair dark blonde rather than the sunlit color she kept on it.

She’d resembled her father then, but once she’d hit her teens, Tracker, the man who had saved her, said she began looking like her mother. She could see her mother in her features now. The shape of her eyes, the curve of her brow. The set of her chin.

She was shorter than her mother though, her frame more delicate than the former Homeland Security agent’s. She had her mother’s smile, Tracker would tell her sometimes, when she allowed herself to smile.

Pulling back from the mirror and blinking, not to hold back tears—Angel never cried—but to fight back the hurt, the pain that leaving brought.

Tracker was right; they had no reason to stay. They’d been away when Zoey had needed them, arriving back in town only days after Jack Clay had been killed. Two months was too long to stay in one place without a job. The Mackays were going to start asking questions, and Angel didn’t want questions. She had wanted recognition. A recognition that hadn’t come. All she saw was suspicion, and Tracker was right, it was killing her.

Picking up the pack and opening the door she stepped into the small living room of the cabin they’d taken after returning, her gaze narrowing on the three men standing tensely by the door.

“Eli?” Her gaze flicked to Tracker and their partner, Grog. Both men were tall, imposing, not so much handsome as roughened.

And she knew both of them. Something was wrong.

“Angel.” Eli nodded his dark blond head before turning back to Tracker. “I have to go. I just thought I’d stop on my way.”

He was in a hurry. Moving quickly from the cabin he left Angel with the two men who had rescued her when they were little more than boys themselves. They’d sheltered her, protected her, trained her to fight with them.

“Tracker?” She could feel the tension growing in the room, the knowledge that neither man was explaining Eli’s visit.

“Gear up.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sure you’ll want to stop at the marina before we ride out of town.”

“The marina?” she asked carefully. “What’s happened?”

“Someone tried to kidnap one of the Mackay girls just minutes ago . . .”

She didn’t wait to hear the rest.

She didn’t have to gear up. Her weapons and thigh holsters were in the customized, hidden carriers built into the chest rest of her motorcycle, extra ammo stored with them. She raced outside, Tracker and Grog close on her heels.

Jerking the leather jacket and protective helmet on she was racing from the gravel drive in seconds, fear racing through her system with a shock of adrenaline pouring into her bloodstream.

This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be . . .

“Angel, get control of yourself,” Tracker advised smoothly into the radio link built into the helmets. “Let’s see what’s going on before we do anything.”

See what was going on? They knew what was going on. She should have expected this. She should have known it would happen.

“I’m cool, Track,” she promised, her voice even, without the panic she could feel rushing through her. “I have to be sure, though. I can’t leave without being sure they’re okay. You know that.”

“We’re just making sure everything’s okay then,” Tracker repeated. “Friends checking on friends, Angel. Remember that.”

Her heart was in her throat, fear pulsing through her and threatening to steal the small shred of control she possessed.

“Friends checking on friends,” she promised. “That’s all. Nothing more.”

—

The chief of police, Alex Jansen, and his wife, Natches’s sister Janey, were rushing inside to their daughter Erin. Behind them more than a dozen police cars were pulling in, their sirens thankfully silent.

“Zoey.” Mercedes Mackay, Zoey’s mother, followed minutes later with her lover, Timothy Cranston, and Rowdy’s father, Ray, with Christa’s mother, Maria.

The office was packed and still more cars were arriving. Her three sisters and their husbands, hard-eyed, dangerous Homeland Security agents moved in behind their mother. As Zoey’s sisters rushed to check on Bliss, their husbands moved with predatory danger to the doorway, their gazes meeting Rowdy’s before they turned and walked outside.

Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches, along with Alex and Janey were still holding on to their teenage daughters, their embraces tight, protective.

“What happened?” Dawg was the first to ask that question as he tucked his daughter close between his and his wife’s sides.

“We saw the van coming and tried to hurry and get across the parking lot,” Annette assured her father. “Just like you taught us, Dad. As soon as it turned toward us we were moving. The guy jumped out and grabbed Bliss, though, and I think we just went kind of crazy.” She shook her head before giving her father a fierce look. “We weren’t letting anyone take Bliss.”

Bliss mumbled something at her father’s shoulder.

“What, baby?” Natches’s voice was thick, a hoarse growl as Bliss lifted her face from her mother’s shoulder.

“I lost my knife, Dad.” She pouted. “I did what you taught me to do, but he moved too fast and pulled it from my hand.” She lifted her hand. “And he got his nasty blood on me.”

She had her fingers fisted as though to hold the blood in her palm, and it wasn’t just a smear.

“God love your little Mackay hearts.” Tim sounded like the evil leprechaun her brother and cousins called him, Zoey thought. “Alex, get me an evidence kit.”

“I have it, sir.” The officer standing guard at the door stepped into the room, the evidence kit with its vials and cotton swabs, plastic bags and plastic tweezers was pushed into Tim’s hand.

Tim turned to Bliss, pure pride beaming in his expression as he tore the pack open.

Joining him, Alex Jansen, the chief of police, helped the former DHS agent collect the blood from Bliss’s hand as the adults stared among the teenagers in shock.

“When did you give her a knife, Natches?” Rowdy asked faintly.

“When she asked me to teach her to shoot a gun.” Natches grimaced.

“She was ten,” Dawg drawled, amused as he glanced at Rowdy.

“And she knows how to use it.” Chaya touched her daughter’s cheek gently, her voice trembling nearly as hard as her fingers were. “I taught her how to use it.”

“I’m okay, Momma,” her daughter promised, her expression solemn. “See? I told you teaching me to use the knife was a good idea.”

She was damned proud of herself, Zoey thought, trying to dry her own tears. And she should be. All of them should be.

“Dad, the guy driving was yelling at the guy that tried to take Bliss,” Erin Jansen spoke up. “He said, ‘That damned Mackay is here. He’s not supposed to be here.’”

Rowdy turned from his wife and daughter slowly. “What did he say, Erin?” he asked carefully.

“For the other guy to hurry because you were here and you weren’t supposed to be. Uncle Rowdy, weren’t you leaving when we got here with Aunt Kelly?” Erin asked, her gray eyes narrowed speculatively. “Someone knew you weren’t supposed to be here.”

“I was going to Dawg’s,” Rowdy said softly, suspiciously, as Tim finished collecting the blood Bliss had protected in her closed fist for DNA. “But Natches was running late to watch the marina.”