Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming

by Glenna Sinclair

  There was a narrow staircase that led up to a second floor. I paused at the top, looking down over the living room. It was a nice apartment, probably quite a showpiece in its heyday. But the furniture was dated and the wall décor generic. It was more than likely a rental, someone's source of secondary income. I wondered if they knew who they were renting it to these days.

  The single bedroom was impressive, large enough to fit my entire set of rooms back on MidKnight Ranch. There was a massive king sized bed complete with a dark blue down comforter and an impressive array of pillows. The low dresser held nothing but a couple of old movies for the DVD player attached to the flat screen television. The bathroom sported a deep garden tub and a long, walk through shower that was clearly part of a recent renovation. Why they'd renovate the bathroom and nothing else, I didn't understand, but the moment my eyes fell on it, my skin began to crawl under a day's worth of dirt and dust.

  Might as well clean up while I waited. It would likely be a while before they came for me again.

  I turned on the water and waited until steam began to billow near the ceiling. I undressed and stepped in, loving the angles of all the different showerheads. Whoever designed it clearly meant it for a taller person, but with a few minor adjustments, it was perfect for me, too. I let the heat work my muscles, closed my eyes, and tried to feel human again. So much had happened these last twenty-four hours...

  I couldn't stop thinking about Ash Grayson. I had only just met him a little over ten days ago, but I knew his reputation long ago. One didn’t live on the West Coast and not know who Ash Grayson was. There were articles about him in all the regional magazines, in military and business publications. The police department I worked for there in Seattle even contracted with Gray Wolf Security briefly while I was still a rookie cop, using two of their operatives and some of their security equipment to track a couple of Wall Street types who were stealing from their brokerage firm. The things people said about them was impressive. Cops don't often openly admire outside security firms. The fact that they not only admired Gray Wolf, but asked for their help, was beyond impressive. It said volumes about Ash Grayson, too.

  I'd expected a gruff, unpleasant man, an all business kind of guy. But he was easy going, easy to laugh. If he'd been in a uniform, he would have been the perfect guy.

  Why was he missing? Why, of all the people who walked into that building yesterday morning, why Ash Grayson? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it about his status, about his wealth? Or was there something more to it than that? After hearing him say how personal this thing was to him, I wondered if that had something to do with it. If it was personal to him, was it personal to Jack Mahoney, too?

  Was Clint right? Was there a snitch in Gray Wolf? How did they know Ash would be participating in this raid himself? How did they know our teams would be going to the upper floors? How did they know when we'd be there? Who were those men who pulled up after the raid began? What caused the explosion? And how did that assassin know Gray Wolf had trackers on all their vehicles? How did he get the device to follow us? Why us? Why would an organization like the Mahoney Cartel care about a private security operative and a small city detective?

  There were too many questions. But I was afraid I had a few answers. I just didn't want to admit them to myself.

  I washed with the soap provided, some rose scented stuff that left my skin like silk. I dried off in the massive cotton towels provided by whoever my host was. There was a bottle of lotion on the counter, ironically the same brand I use. It was almost as if they'd known I was coming.

  I thought of Clint as I rubbed the fluid into my skin. I wanted to know where he was, hoping they were tending to his wounds. I hoped there was no infection, hoped my field experience hadn't made the situation worse. He hadn't shown a lot of discomfort in the last hour or so we were together, but he was running high on adrenaline from the encounter with the shooter.

  I knew there was more to Clint than met the eye. A small city cop didn't know and do the things he'd done. But did that mean everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours been an act?

  Despite everything, I couldn't stop thinking about his hands on my body. As I rubbed the lotion into my skin, I remembered the rough touch of his hands, the sharp pain of his slaps against my ass. I couldn't stop thinking about the need in his kiss, the urgency that overwhelmed us both there on the side of the road. I'd never done anything like that before and my body was still aching for what hadn't come to a satisfying conclusion.

  More questions came when I opened the floodgate that was Clint Barrow. Would he ever touch me again? Would we see each other again? Would we ever have an excuse to be alone again?

  Did I even cross his mind?

  There was a pair of slacks and a dove gray blouse waiting for me in the closet there in the bathroom. I ignored them in favor of the clothes I'd picked out for myself. Clean clothes would have been nice, but how did I know there wasn't a bug sewn into a hem?

  I put back on my bra and panties, folding the rest and carrying them into the bedroom. I crawled under the down comforter and curled up against some of the massive pillows, exhausted from the long day of driving. I could see a camera hidden in each corner of the room, one hidden in the control pad of the DVD player. I was tempted to wave, but I was a good girl and played along, pretending I didn't know what was happening here.

  I wrapped my hand around the handle of the fish deboning knife I'd taken from the kitchen drawer, the hint of a smile touching my lips as I closed my eyes.

  They'd come for me soon. They'd have a surprise when they did.

  Chapter 12

  Clint

  I walked into the surveillance room, my hip numb from the lidocaine the doc had shot me up with before replacing the thread Ryan had used on my wounds with dissolving medical sutures. It felt a little odd being back in a suit, but it offered a little more authority, was more fitting to my rank than jeans and a leather jacket. Unfortunately.

  "There are worse things to see on this job," one of the guys quipped as I walked in, leaning forward just slightly to look closer at the monitors. It took every ounce of control I had not to hit him in that moment.

  He was watching Ryan strut around the apartment's bedroom in nothing but a bra and panties.

  "What has she been up to?"

  Both men immediately sat up a little straighter at the sound of my voice, one turning to look at me while the other—the voyeur—pretending to find something very interesting in the surveillance log.

  "She wandered around the apartment for a few minutes, checking everything out, then showered. Now she seems to be settling down for a nap."

  I nodded, leaning forward a little to see her clearer. She had her back turned to one camera, but the other had a clear picture of her face. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was still quick and shallow. She wasn't asleep yet.

  "She make the cameras?"

  "No. I don't think so, anyway."

  She had. I knew she had. She probably had a knife, too.

  I watched her for a second longer, my thoughts going somewhere they shouldn't. She was collateral damage, an incidental. She was no longer important to the case unless we could get her to tell us something about Gray Wolf Security we didn't already know, and I doubted that. We'd hold on to her until this phase of the case was over, but then... passing ships in the night.

  It was a pity, really. She was the first woman in a long while who challenged me. The first to surprise me. There was something about her, something more than her tight abs and her tighter—

  "Clint? They're ready for you downstairs."

  I sighed as Annabeth stuck her head in the door. I could feel her eyes heavy on my face, curiosity written clearly in her expression. Annabeth was... she was convenient. She was a constant in my life thanks to the fact that she handled the flow of information. We'd hooked up a few times last year, but I always got the impression that it was just as casual to her as it was to me. But the
moment she set eyes on Ryan there was this possessiveness about her that was starting to creep me out a little.

  No time to worry about it right now.

  I tugged at my suit jacket as I followed her down the hall, nervous as I always was before one of these debriefings.

  "Special Agent Butler," a tall, gray haired man said, coming to me to shake my hand. I knew him only by reputation and was deeply impressed that he'd be bothered to attend my debriefing.

  "Director Procter."

  The man smiled, clearly impressed that I knew him on sight. But it was my job to be observant and his picture hung in the regional offices. He was our district director after all.

  My boss, James Conway stood as well, shaking my hand as the director backed off. There were several others in the room as well, but mostly minor players, people who were barely important enough to be kept in the loop on this case, but not important enough for me to know their names.

  Annabeth sat at the back of the room, her eyes never leaving me as I made my way to the front.

  "Make note that this is in regards to case number AG900-004-8188," Conway said for benefit of the recording device that was taking down every word we spoke.

  I took a deep breath.

  "My name is Special Agent Clint Butler. I was undercover with the Casper Police Department, using the name Detective Clint Barrow. As part of my duties with that department, I was assigned to a planned raid on the commercial building located at 265 Commerce Street. The raid was a multi-jurisdictional operation that was brought to the police department by the FBI. They had also enlisted the help of the private security firm, Gray Wolf Security. The strategy meetings took place at the Gray Wolf offices in Midnight, Wyoming with Ashford Grayson and Sutherland Knight running the meeting."

  I stopped for a moment, looking around the room. There was polite interest on most of the faces, some not even bothering to look at me in favor of writing notes on yellow legal pads that would be taken up before they left the room. I always wondered why they bothered.

  "The plan was for four teams to go into the building and one to stay out on the street to offer support. The FBI would make up the first team. Supported by team two, they would go into the basement where intel said the Mahoneys had set up a storage spot for the illegal guns and drugs they were moving through the state. Team three, run by a Captain of the CPD would go to the second floor to evacuate an accounting firm reported to do business there. Team four, my team, would go to the third—the top floor—and extract the employees of a real estate business.

  "Teams three and four were to go in first, bring down the innocents before the raid went into full swing. We were to go in through the side doors and up the front stairs. However, Ashford Grayson, based on intel from a source he would not name, insisted on changing that. He thought it would be better if we all went through the back door and up the back stairs. This was a change that was made minutes before we entered the building. However, the Mahoneys were prepared."

  I looked around the room, a little unnerved by the attention I was suddenly receiving. Every eye in the room was on me now.

  "We were halfway up the stairs to the second floor when they blew the security door in the basement. It was like a signal to the men waiting on the stairs. They threw smoke grenades down at us and began firing blindly into the smoke. Three of the men behind me went down. I continued up, managed to make it to the second-floor landing, but Mahoney's men had backtracked, gone up to the third-floor landing. There were more men there, half a dozen, waiting for us. It was an ambush."

  I adjusted my stance, catching my hands behind my back as I rocked on my heels.

  "I started waving men back, telling them it was an ambush and they should leave. A couple of the Captain's team went through the door to the second floor. They came back out and said that there was nothing there, no accountant, not even a desk. The intel had been wrong. And then Mahoney's men came back down the stairs after us. We fired at them, they fired at us. We retreated. It was a small space, our movement limited. Several more men went down. Those of us still on our feet made it back to the first floor. Most of them ran toward the front of the building. I went to the back, looking to help the teams in the basement. I heard voices and stepped behind a door. There were four men escorting Ashford Grayson and one of his FBI liaisons out of the building, their hands tied behind them with flexicuffs. They were shoved into vans and driven away.

  "I stepped out into the alcove and surprised another of Mahoney's men I hadn't seen. He fired and hit my hip. I fired twice, hitting him in the center of the forehead. I stumbled outside, the fresh air causing me to have a coughing spell from the smoke grenades. I was on the ground when a Gray Wolf operative came around the corner. I convinced her to get me out of there. She drove to a small town some miles away and took me to a motel where she performed first aid on my wounds. We then drove through the night to reach Denver."

  Silence fell in the room as I finished my report. The director was looking down at the table, watching the eraser of his pencil bounce against the table top. Conway was leaning back in his chair, clearly waiting for someone else to be the first to speak. The only friendly face in the crowd at the moment was Annabeth.

  "Have you blown your cover with the Casper Police Department?" someone asked.

  "I don't believe so. If I check in soon with the excuse of the bullet wound, I think they would buy it."

  "And you're sure it was Ashford Grayson being escorted out of the building."

  "There's no doubt in my mind."

  The director sat up a little straighter. "You're sure it was Mahoney's men taking Grayson out of the building? It wasn't local cops or some other agency?"

  "No. Besides, why would another agency be involved without our knowledge?" I shook my head. "Not only do I believe it was the Mahoneys, but I think they knew we were coming, I think they knew exactly what our plan was, and I think they allowed us to come for the sole purpose of taking Ash Grayson."

  That sent titters around the room.

  "Why?" the director asked. "Why would the Mahoneys want to take Mr. Grayson?"

  I shook my head. "Because he knows too much about them. Because he screwed up their plans with the Russians. Because he brought Gray Wolf to Wyoming. Because Jack Mahoney's nephew committed suicide in Gray Wolf's backyard."

  "You seem to think Ashford Grayson is a sympathetic character."

  I tilted my head slightly as I thought about that. "No. I just haven't been convinced that he's not."

  "Innocent until proven guilty." The director thought about that for a moment. "I guess that's how they teach you kids these days."

  The director fell quiet as the others asked me questions. I answered them all as honestly as I could, most of them operation related questions. Something about the director's questions nagged at me, though, distracting me.

  Did he know something about Ash Grayson I didn't?

  I'd been on the ground floor when the agency first became aware of Ashford Grayson. When his operative single handedly took out several of the top echelon of the Bazarov Cartel, everyone sat up and took notice. We'd been preparing an undercover operation to infiltrate the Bazarov Cartel in order to work out way closer to the Mahoneys at the time. It was pulled back, a wait and see attitude instituted. We didn't have to take long.

  I saw the pictures. I saw the reports. I was impressed with Gray Wolf's actions that day, the day they took out what was left of the Bazarov's in Santa Monica. There had been a time when the Bazarov Cartel was a force to be reckoned with. We'd pushed them back, forced them out of Texas and Florida. California was their final stronghold and it looked like they were like cockroaches, coming back strong despite everything we'd done. But then Gray Wolf got involved and they were gone in a matter of months.

  The fact that Ashford Grayson married the mother of Dimitri Avdonin's child was a red flag for the agency. They had ideas that he might be planning on taking over the Bazarov territory for his own purposes. Gray Wolf
Security worked just barely on the right side of the law. It wouldn't take much for them to move over that line. But when nothing happened after more than a year's observation, the agency backed off.

  We turned out attention to the Mahoneys. We had them on the run, pushed back against a wall in Florida and Nevada. All of us, all the agents on the case, had dreams of being the one to pull down Jack Mahoney himself. When we got word that they'd moved into Wyoming, we thought it was a sign of trouble in the organization, that we were getting them on the ropes. But then Ashford Grayson's name came up again a little less than six months ago.

  He was checking into the Mahoneys, making waves by contacting people he shouldn't have even known about let alone known how to contact – asking questions that set off any number of alarms among my superiors. He made himself look guilty with every step he made.

  I understood the director's skepticism. But nothing I'd seen while surveilling the Mahoneys in Wyoming suggested to me that Grayson was dirty. And they didn't see the look in his eyes as they escorted him out of that building.

  It was almost like the director wanted everyone to believe Grayson was dirty. It was like he needed them to.

  Why?

  "Thank you, Special Agent," Conway said. "You're dismissed."

  I started for the door, but the director stopped me with another question.

  "I understand the Gray Wolf operative is still here. Why is that?"

  Warning bells in my head advised me to be very careful in the way I answered that question. I hesitated just a second, then slowly turned.

  "We'd like to speak to her after she's had time to rest, ask her about Gray Wolf's operations. I feel it's possible the Mahoneys learned the details of the operation from someone connected to their offices."

  "Why would you assume it was Gray Wolf?"

  Because an assassin came after us with Gray Wolf technology.