Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming

by Glenna Sinclair

  Joss shook her head. “I thought the exchange was out of the question. Sutherland—”

  “Sutherland is busy with her duties on the ranch. I’m in charge of this and I say we give them Clint Barrow. One is better than none.”

  Joss narrowed her eyes, remembering Sutherland’s argument in the earlier hours of the morning. She hadn’t liked what she said in the moment, but she could see the logic of it. And she’d watched the video of Ash they’d sent. Ash was clearly telling them not to put anyone else at risk. Handing over this Clint person—no matter who they thought he was—wasn’t right.

  “Kirkland—”

  He bristled, clearly aware of which way her argument was about to go.

  “It’s already done,” he said, holding up his hands. “Clint’s on his way to the drop. And if Becky had been here…I would have sent her, too.”

  Chapter 5

  Sutherland

  Kipling McKay was alone when I stepped through the door of his private hospital room, his eyes close and his broken body wrapped in wires and bandages that made me want to wince. One leg hung suspended from ropes to aid in the healing of his thigh bone, shattered by a bullet, his hospital gown lumpy where bandages covered the stitches left behind after surgery on his bowels to fix injuries from more lead. He must have heard my footsteps over the sounds of the television and the beeping machines because he opened his eyes and turned toward me, a smile in his eyes, but not quite on his lips. His jaw was destroyed by yet another bullet, his handsome face bruised and partially covered in bandages, his jaw bone wired back together as best as the doctors could do.

  It hurt me to look at him this way, to see vulnerability in a man I’d always believed was unbreakable. He held out a hand to me and I took it, reassured by the strength that still existed there.

  “How are you?” he asked, his words a mumbled whisper.

  “Where’s Harley?”

  “I made her go to a motel, get some rest.”

  “She could have come to the house.”

  “Didn’t want to be that far away.”

  I understood that.

  He pulled my hand up against his chest, caressing it with the other of his hands. Tears filled my eyes for the millionth time in the last forty-eight hours. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood because I hated the weakness that tears put on display, hated the idea of showing this strong, wonderful man how vulnerable I truly was.

  “Tell me what’s happening.”

  I laughed a little. “Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, Kipling.”

  He studied my face. “I know they took Ash. I know it was an ambush, and I’m pretty sure that’s why.”

  I nodded. “The operation went very badly. They knew we were coming, even knew the small changes we made right before we went in. They were waiting for us, for you.” I pulled my hand away, pressing both hands into my lap as I once again fought tears. “We were so careful! But, somehow, we sent you into an ambush. This…it’s my fault!”

  “It’s not your fault, Sutherland,” he said, the words forceful despite the wires. “There’s obviously someone on the inside working for the Mahoneys. We just have to figure out who that is.”

  “We have to get Ash back, but I don’t know how.”

  I told him about the video the Mahoneys had sent, the message at the end Ash had snuck on. I told him about our argument over whether we should hand over Becks and Clint as the Mahoneys had asked. I told him everything, struggling with tears the whole time.

  Kipling was quiet for a long moment.

  “Ash doesn’t want to lose anyone else. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you to come looking for him.”

  “I know.”

  “But first, you have to figure out who the mole is.”

  I chewed on my lip, my mind going back to that familiar puzzle. It was a very short list of possibilities, and no one on the list could possibly be the mole.

  Me. Kirkland. David.

  I focused on Kipling. “Ryan told us that the Mahoneys sent an assassin after her and the detective she left the scene with, and that he was using technology only Gray Wolf would have been aware of, technology only Gray Wolf would have access to. That would have to mean that me, Kirkland, or David gave it to them and I know damn well none of us did that.”

  “Then take it out of the equation.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “If that doesn’t fit the puzzle, then it’s likely not a piece. Take it out.”

  “But what does that leave?”

  Kipling’s eyes were bright. He was quiet, waiting for it to snap in my head.

  “The operation itself. They knew we were coming, knew how we were coming.”

  “And who knew that?”

  I shook my head slowly, that morning playing out in my mind. “Everyone. Except…the change Ash made at the very end, only the team leaders knew that. And only Ash, you, and I knew he would be making any changes at all.”

  “And the captain from Casper, the sheriff from Midnight.”

  That was true. Could one of them…?

  “It’s possible it’s not someone in Gray Wolf.”

  “Possible. Could be someone who knows our operations.”

  “Who could that be, though? The only people who know our operations are the people we work with. And none of them would turn on us.”

  “It almost has to be someone from one of the law enforcement organizations who worked with us.” Kipling reached for my hand again. “You’ll figure it out, Sutherland.”

  “I have to. If I don’t, Ash could pay the price.”

  “Don’t take it all on your shoulders, Sutherland,” he said, his mumble becoming more pronounced as speaking began to wear him out. “There are plenty of people at Gray Wolf to help you.”

  “And if it turns out I can’t trust them?”

  “You can trust me.”

  I smiled, tears finally finding their way down my cheeks.

  “I know,” I whispered as I leaned down to kiss him gently on the tip of his nose. “I’ve always been able to count on you. I don’t know what I’d do if—”

  “You’ll never have to worry about that.”

  I squeezed his hand as I stood. “I should get back.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “You think your wife is okay with that?”

  He shrugged. “She’ll have to be.”

  *****

  Lance was in with Becks, holding her hand even though the doctors had given her a very intense sedative. She wouldn’t wake for hours, if they allowed her to wake at all. The burns to her arms and side were bad, third degree. She’d have to have skin grafts some time down the road. But it could have been much worse. At least it was confined to just the one side. If that was really a blessing.

  I stood at the door and watched, but I didn’t go in. Lance had enough to deal with right now without having to make small talk with me. The way he looked at her—it was clear the man was in love. And I knew Becky was in love with him. All those years she had to live in hiding, all those years running from the last man she thought she loved. She was afraid to trust him, but if she could see the look on his face now, she wouldn’t hesitate. I hoped she would see that someday soon.

  Hank was in the waiting room when I walked by.

  “Hey,” I said, pausing with my hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “I was waiting for you. Thought I could drive you back to the ranch.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can get Shelby to come get me.” I patted his shoulder gently. “I know how you feel about Becks. Stay here.”

  There was hesitation in his eyes, but I could see that he really wanted to stick around. I patted his shoulder again.

  “Have you called Jonnie?”

  “She’s got class. But I’ll call her when it’s done.” He stood and dug in his pocket for the keys to his Jeep. “Take it. I can get Jonnie to take me home later.”

  “You�
��re sure?”

  “Yeah. Go.”

  Except for Shelby, Hank had been the longest employee on the ranch. I liked to think we were good friends rather than just employer-employee. I reached up on my tip toes and kissed his cheek lightly before I walked away. It seemed like today was the kind of day when it was okay to show those closest to you just how much you cared.

  The drive out to the ranch seemed like a long one today, exhaustion making my eyes itch. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten more than a few hours of sleep in one stretch. The idea of going back to the house and collapsing in my big, soft bed seemed almost irresistible. I wondered if anyone would even notice if I did.

  It seemed odd, the cameras looking down at me from the top of the closed gate that stretched across the front lane leading onto the ranch. It’d had an old, rolling, wrought iron gate since I could remember with the name of the ranch written across the top. But we rarely closed it. With ranch hands coming and going, with deliveries and construction crews and the cattle being moved from one part of the ranch to the other, it just seemed like such a hassle to keep the damn thing closed all the time. But now…the Mahoney Cartel had forced us to change the way we do things and I hated them for that almost as much as I hated them for shooting Kipling and taking Ash.

  I punched in the code and watched the old gate lumber across the newly oiled tracks David and his team had repaired and wired for security. I drove the Jeep over the cattle guard and headed back to the barn, a little surprised to see a huge collection of cars parked along the lane near the bunkhouse.

  What was going on?

  Shelby was leaning against the side of the barn where I parked Hank’s Jeep. He stepped forward when he saw it was me.

  “We got the fire under control. Forced it into a narrow patch where it should burn itself out in a few hours.”

  “Who’s up there?”

  “Barney and Chris. They’ll let me know if anything goes wrong.”

  I inclined my head to let him know I’d heard, then turned on my heel to head into Gray Wolf’s office. But he called my name, the tone of his voice warning me that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  I turned back, my eyes wary and weary—worried, but exhausted—as I studied his face.

  “What?”

  “You know, a lot of shit’s been going down around here, a lot of accidents that didn’t really seem like accidents?”

  “Yeah? Like the fires, the stream, the exploded fence?”

  “And the wet feed.”

  I’d almost forgotten about that one. Nearly forced us to put down half of our show horses and a few of the work horses.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “And?”

  “Your friend there in the bunkhouse ain’t the only one who knows how to handle a little surveillance equipment. Most of this has been happening on the south side of the property, so I set up a couple of cameras I got from Old Fred downtown. And I caught sum’thin’.”

  He pulled a small camcorder out from behind his back and shielded the screen from the sun so that I could see what was on it. The camera had been focused on the fence line between MidKnight and Circle B—Bodhi’s ranch. Like me, Shelby had assumed the sabotage was coming from there because it happened to always happen along the property line we shared. And, for a second, it appeared that we’d been right.

  Someone in a hooded sweatshirt could be seen climbing over the fence from the Circle B. Before he did, though, he dropped a can of gasoline over the top.

  “Who is that?”

  The person seemed too small to be a grown man, but too large to be a small woman. There was something about the way he moved, though, that seemed familiar to me.

  And then he happened to glance toward the camera.

  Shit!

  “Bobby Jensen.” I looked at Shelby. “Does Hank know?”

  He shook his head.

  Hank had taken Bobby under his wing a few weeks ago, when the boy was caught on tape destroying the kindergarten room at the local school. He’d felt for the boy, realized he was just trying to blow off some steam because he felt helpless as his family struggled after losing their ranch. He stood up for him against the school board, got Kirkland to pay the boy’s fine somehow, and gave him a job here to help him not only pay the fine back, but to earn a few bucks to help out his family. It was a good thing Hank had done and I’d been completely behind it. But if Bobby was the one setting fires on my ranch, something had to be done.

  “Is Bobby on the ranch right now?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s not scheduled to be here until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do you mind if I hold on to this?” I slipped the camera out of Shelby’s hand. “When he comes in tomorrow, call me. I want to speak to him. And keep an eye out for him. If he steps on the ranch before he’s scheduled to work, I want to know that, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I patted Shelby’s arm lightly. “This was good work. I really appreciate it.”

  “Of course.”

  Shelby seemed almost offended by my words, but that was Shelby. He thought of this place as his. He’d worked here since Mitchell was a child, so I supposed it was his in a by the sweat of his brow sort of way. I just nodded and headed off, my mind switching tracks almost like a car switching lanes.

  I made my way past the parking lot of cars in front of the bunkhouse, taking note of each one. Some belonged there, belonged to my operatives or our visitors. I recognized Steve’s patrol car. There were a few trucks I suspected belonged to his deputies. Some of the dark sedans I didn’t know, but guessed were FBI or CIA issue—government anything just had this sort of stink about it.

  What was going on?

  Kirkland looked up when I came into the office, cutting off a conversation he was having with some woman in a dark suit to come to me. He touched my arms, pulling me back into the entryway of the office.

  “We just heard about Becky. How is she?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my voice steady.

  “Third degree burns.”

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered, his eyes falling to the floor for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

  “Lance and Hank are with her.” I craned my neck around him, looking at the room crowded with new faces. “What’s going on here?”

  “We might have gotten a break. The sheriff’s department identified a potential location where the Mahoneys might be holding Ash. We’re organizing an operation to go check it out.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  Kirkland looked a little sheepish. “It all happened so fast. We just…we pushed forward as soon was the drop was done.”

  “The drop?”

  His eyes came up to meet mine. There was a determination there that was clearly fueled by the same emotion that caused our disagreement early this morning. And I knew.

  “You handed over Clint?”

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  Anger stormed through me like that grass fire storming across the south pasture. If I’d opened my mouth in that moment, the only thing that would have come out would have been heat and bile. I turned away, this need to get out of there, this need to make him disappear burning through me.

  “This is my office. This is my operation,” I said between clenched teeth.

  “You weren’t here.”

  “I was taking my friend to the hospital!” I spun on him, thrust a finger into his chest. “I had my cellphone on me, and you damn well knew it! You could have called me, couldn’t have warned me!”

  “You would have just tried again to talk us out of it. There isn’t time for that!”

  “But it wasn’t your choice to make! It was mine!”

  The room had grown quiet. I could feel the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes on me. I wanted to tell them to get the hell off my ranch, too, but knew that would be a mistake. Ash was in trouble and I needed these people to find him. And that was what was important. But these same people had handed th
e only man who knew where I came from, the only man who could give me answers I needed, over to people who would more than likely kill him before the end of the day.

  What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

  “You just made a horrible mistake, Kirkland. You could have just made things worse for Ash.”

  “I did what they asked of us.”

  “And where’s Ash? Huh? What good did it do you?”

  Kirkland had enough humility to accept the burden. He lowered his head, but not before I saw the color drain just a little. He knew as well as I did the fact that we’d only followed part of the orders, the fact that Ash hadn’t been returned right away, proved that handing over Clint wasn’t going to get us anywhere. He’d just sacrificed a man’s life for nothing. And he had no idea how much help Clint could have been to us if he’d just taken the time to listen to him and to act on what information he might have been able to supply us.

  Clint was, after all, Homeland Security. He’d worked for years trying to bring down the Mahoneys. He probably could have helped us plan this operation in such a way that no one else would get shot, no one else would be taken. He might have been the secret weapon we needed to get through those doors and bring Ash home alive.

  But now we were completely on our own.

  God help us.

  Chapter 6

  Ash

  I saw them bring him in, saw them push and shove him up the drive from the SUV that brought him to the house. And I could see by his condition that they’d worked him over somewhere else before they brought him for an audience with the boss.

  What I didn’t know, was who the hell he was.

  FBI, probably. I knew they’d nabbed one of my contacts at the FBI the same time they grabbed me. She’d been in the back of the SUV with me, but I hadn’t seen her since.

  I stood at the windows all day, never moving away, never really changing my position. I’d been in the Green Berets long enough, helped with enough CIA operations, to know that my best chance was to know everything about my enemy that I could. I knew a lot about the Mahoneys, everything I could read in FBI files, on the computer searches Gray Wolf conducted on my behalf, everything I could possibly get my hands on. But seeing them in action, watching the comings and goings of their leader, their lieutenants, watching the guards protect the grounds, was a source of information that I couldn’t get from reports and news articles.