Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming

by Glenna Sinclair

  For example, the man these men knew as Jack Mahoney never left the house. Never. Not even early this morning when four SUVs went rushing out of the yard. He had several lieutenants who did, coming and going dozens of times a day. They were like busy little worker bees, flitting around, doing all the hard work for their queen. Only, in this case, it was their king. And the guards, they were very careful not to follow the same pattern more than once, moving along the grounds at odd angles, their organization chaotic enough that an enemy would never be able to predict where they might be at a specific time. But they were always there. Somewhere.

  It was smart. It was a brilliant way to handle things; it was what I would have done if given the same situation. If my people were to attempt a rescue, they would have to be very careful. That’s why I stood there, watching. If they made me make another tape, if there was some way for me to get information out to my people, I needed to know these things.

  And it kept my mind off my family, off Mina, my gorgeous wife, off Ford, my six-year-old son, and off Rachel, my daughter. Then again, that seemed impossible because they were always on my mind. Yet, if I let my mind go there too long, if I allowed myself to think of what might happen to them if I didn’t get out of here, I’d go crazy.

  If I had regrets, it was only that I might have let them down by pursuing this. But I had to believe I’d done the right thing. I had to protect them and knowing everything about that man, about my son’s biological father, was the only way I could be sure that his legacy wouldn’t come back to bite us all in the ass. Yet, ironically enough, by knowing everything I’d brought us to this place.

  Had I made things worse? Probably.

  Would I survive this?

  I was going to try damn hard to get back to my family. And if I didn’t, I had to believe my people—my Gray Wolf family—would take out the Mahoneys and make sure Mina, Ford, and Rachel were protected. And that would make it all worth it.

  The door opened and I tensed, but I didn’t turn around. There was only one of two reasons why they would open the door: either it was meal time—but I’d just ignored my midday meal—or they were coming to take me down to see the boss man again. I waited for them to come up behind me, to grab me and drag me out into the hall. Then the door slammed closed again.

  Curiosity got the better of me. I turned to discover that they’d brought the stranger into my room, the beaten fellow I’d seen them half dragging, half carrying into the house just a short time ago. I crossed the room, eyeing him cautiously. I had no idea if he was a victim or a plant. Their people…they were intelligent. I wouldn’t put anything past them. But then the guy gurgled and I realized he was choking on his own blood.

  I jerked him onto his side and watched as he weakly spit blood onto the expensive carpet. And then he began to cough, deep spasms that clearly send waves of pain through his body.

  I’d seen enough violence in my time to know he had a few broken ribs, bruised lungs, maybe even some internal injuries. His face was pretty fucked up, too, his nose clearly broken, his eyes swollen suggesting possible damage to his eye sockets.

  They’d done a number on him. That they couldn’t fake.

  I went to the bathroom and wet a rag, the only solace I could offer the guy. I helped him onto the couch and pressed it to his forehead, making sure to keep his head elevated so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “Who are you?”

  Only one of his eyes was open enough for him to focus on me, his other too swollen to see much of anything. He said something, something that sounded like Kent, but I wasn’t sure. He closed that eye and sighed. The man must have been in a lot of pain.

  I sat back on the coffee table and watched him, waiting. They’d brought him here, put him in this room for a reason. I needed to know what it was.

  He slept for a while. I got up and returned to my post at the window, watched as another wave of SUVs left the compound together, making me wonder what they were up to. I knew the Mahoneys had business here in Wyoming, not just the drug trade we’d been trying to stop with our operation the other day, but other things. Real estate deals. I knew they were trying to get in on the ground floor of new development all around Casper. Not all their business was illegal.

  But this felt different. This felt harried. Panicked. I wondered if it had something to do with my people. I hoped so.

  The man gurgled, pulling me back into the room. I resumed my seat on the coffee table and stared at him, waited for him to open that eye again.

  “Who are you?” I repeated.

  He cleared his throat, that one eye looking at me a little wildly.

  “I’m Ash Grayson,” I said, touching his shoulder gently. “Who are you?”

  He just nodded before struggling to sit up. I helped him, pushing some pillows behind his back to support him. He focused on me again, a look of something like wonder in that one eye.

  “I know who you are,” he said slowly. “I’ve watched you.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded, then clearly regretted it as he flinched with pain. He reached up to touch his head and I saw that his knuckles were bloody and bruised. He’d fought back. Good for him.

  “Homeland security,” he said with something like a croak. “Watching you since Bazarov.”

  I tilted my head, studying him with new interest. “Me?”

  “Superiors thought…trying to steal territory.”

  “They thought I was moving in on Bazarov’s territory?” I wanted to laugh, the idea was so perverse. “They do realize that I work for the good guys, right?”

  He moved his shoulder slightly, like he wanted to shrug but didn’t want to disturb his broken ribs. “Trust no one.”

  I understood that philosophy.

  “How did you end up on Mahoney’s radar?”

  His lone eye darkened. He focused on me, the wheels clearly turning in his head. I didn’t understand at first, but then…there was more to this man’s story and something told me it was very important to escaping from our current predicament. But the locked door to our luxury prison opened at that moment.

  “Get up. We’re moving out!”

  I bit back a smile. Must be my people. They must have had them on the run.

  Chapter 7

  Sutherland

  I stood at the back of the room and watched as Kirkland described his plan to the men and women standing around the room. I still saw red when I looked at him, but I also understood that finding Ash was a priority and, right now, this was our best bet. But it didn’t make what he’d done any less insulting.

  “We enter the compound from five different directions,” Kirkland was saying, pointing to a diagram someone had drawn and pasted to the white board at the front of the room. “Team One will take the northwest corner, Team Two the southeast—”

  He had his back to the room, his finger on the diagram, when Ryan suddenly burst into the room and tackled him, slamming her little fists into his ribs and his chest. It probably wasn’t the smartest move she’d ever made, what with a dozen uniform cops and her fellow operatives standing around him. But, even as they grabbed her and pulled her away, I was silently cheering.

  “You can’t assault your boss in front of the local sheriff,” I said to her a few minutes later when we were left alone in a conference room.

  “He gave Clint to those people! No one told me. They didn’t let me say goodbye!”

  Tears filled Ryan’s eyes even as she paced the room, her fists clutched at her sides. Her back was ramrod straight, fireballs shooting from every pore. If there was ever a picture of anger, it was Ryan in that moment.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, so many thoughts rushing through my mind that I couldn’t have given voice to them even if I’d wanted to. This girl was the closest thing I had to answers right now. Clint was gone, but she spent days alone with him, knew him better than anyone else here. Did she know the secret he’d told me in the early hours of the
morning?

  She scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “The Mahoneys are going to kill him. You know that, right?”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “The only reason they could possibly want him is because they know he’s Homeland Security.”

  “How would they know?”

  She shook her head, her tears flying around the room. “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if his supervisors had something to do with it.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because they wanted to kill me. Why would they do that if they weren’t working the wrong side of the game?”

  I had to agree with her. Clint was on the run from his own agency when he came to us, when he told us the truth about his work with Homeland Security. He saved Ryan at an extremely high risk to his own safety. And we just handed him over to the Mahoneys.

  “We’re about to move on another possible Mahoney compound. If he’s there—”

  “He won’t be. They’re always one step ahead of us.”

  She fell into a chair as she said it, laying her head on the table as her shoulders shook. I sat beside her and rubbed the back of her arm, wishing I could do more to console her. She looked up, her eyes red with her grief.

  “They said you were with him last night, that he said something to you that made you pass out.”

  I blushed, aware of the accusation in her voice.

  “Ryan—”

  “Who is he to you?” She tilted her head slightly as she studied my face. “I saw the way he was looking at you all night, the way he looked to you for a reaction every time he dropped some sort of bombshell. Why did it matter to him what you thought?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

  “He’s someone to you. I don’t know him well, but I know him enough to know there’s a connection. He’s not the kind of guy to connect easily, so it must be really important to him.”

  "You know me, Rainy."

  Rainy.

  "How do you know that name?" she demanded.

  "Because it's me, Rainy. I'm your brother."

  But was it really my place to explain it to her? Did I really know enough to tell her? Did I know enough to even believe it myself?

  “Ryan, I know this is a terrible situation. But we’ve got to focus on the operation at hand. And I know you want to be there, I know you want to be a part of this.”

  She sighed, sitting back, and dragging her fingers through her hair.

  “If they’ve hurt him, I will make sure that Kirkland Parish pays for it!”

  “He was only doing what he thought was right.”

  “He was thinking only of himself and his friend. He has no idea how helpful Clint could have been to us right now.”

  I agreed, but I couldn’t tell her that. I couldn’t encourage mutiny in the ranks. I touched her arm again, tried to offer some reassurance in the only way I knew how.

  “We’ll go on this operation. We’ll learn as much as we can. And then we’ll move forward.”

  “You have to find him, Sutherland. You have to bring him back.”

  I nodded. “I will do my best.”

  I only hoped it was in my power to do so. I needed Clint Butler back as much as she did.

  *****

  I hadn’t held a gun in my hand in more than twelve years. Not since I left the Army. But I stood here now, a mile from the target, a gun pressed against my left thigh and a flak jacket cutting into my ribs and arm pits.

  “We go in all at once,” Kirkland was saying. “So wait for the signal before you lead your team inside.”

  “And if we hit resistance?” a sheriff’s deputy asked.

  “You respond accordingly.”

  There were satisfied nods all around.

  Everyone involved in this operation had been involved in the previous one that had gone so desperately wrong. They all had reason to want redemption here today. The idea that they might be allowed to wipe out a few bad guys along the way was just a bonus.

  “We should proceed with caution, however,” Steve told his deputy. “We are still law enforcement officers.” The man was duly chastised. He nodded, stepping back slightly to rejoin his fellow deputies’ ranks.

  Joss seemed distracted. She was standing near Kirkland, acting supportive. But she kept glancing at her cellphone like she was waiting for an important phone call. That worried me a little. She was one of the original Gray Wolf operatives. If she was distracted, what did that say about the operation itself?

  “Stick to the plan. Be safe.”

  It was all I could think to add to the discussion. Kirkland had taken the lead on this—as he had on most everything since Ash disappeared—but I was still technically in charge of the Gray Wolf offices here in Wyoming. It was my job to support my team.

  Even if I was beginning to wonder if I could trust them.

  We were going in on foot, five teams approaching a ranch house set up basically like the one on MidKnight. The house sat back from the main road about a quarter of a mile and looked out over the property with nothing obscuring its view: no trees, no buildings, no hills. They could probably see for miles out the top floor windows. Thanks to surveillance Kirkland had had Donovan run, we knew there were guards who patrolled the yard twenty-four/seven, not following any predictable pattern. We also knew there were at least two dozen men inside the house at any given time, men who were well armed and prepared for a fight.

  We were coming to this operation with three dozen men and women, all as well armed. The odds were still in the Mahoneys favor because they knew the house, knew the property. We had the advantage of surprise, but they had everything else. If this went down without someone taking a bullet, it would be a miracle.

  I was leading a team of four: Hank, Grainger, Joss, and Ryan. Joss should have led her own team, but she told Kirkland she’d be more help on my team than running one of her own, making me wonder if she was lacking confidence in my ability to run this. The more distracted she appeared—she was still checking her cellphone as we approached the property—the less concerned I was about her opinion and the more concerned I was about her ability to be a participating asset on this operation.

  We were assigned to go in through a set of French doors on the west side of the house. I felt like an ant under a microscope as we approached, aware that we were visible, as were the rest of our teams, to anyone looking out the window. In fact, I was surprised we hadn’t run into resistance the second we approached the perimeter fence. There seriously was no cover out here.

  Grainger couched low in front of the doors while Hank and Ryan stood covering him on either side. Joss and I stood back, our guns at chest level, waiting for anything that might come from the outside.

  “Now!”

  I nodded to Grainger and he used an automatic lock picker to get the doors opened in less than a second. Hank was the first through the door, his gun on the ready. Ryan followed, moving to the east as Hank covered the west. Grainger, then Joss, then I followed. The tension in my shoulders was almost painful as I listened for even the slightest sound. It became obvious after only a moment, however, that the place had been abandoned.

  The house was fully furnished—quite nicely, actually—with a decided lack of personal touches. It looked like a showcase, one of those houses they set up to sell all the neighboring houses. But there was debris, fast food containers and discarded coffee cups, all over the place. And trashcans overflowing with shredded paper.

  It was clear they’d taken out of here in a hurry. But they were gone. They'd known we were coming. We searched our assigned grid as ordered, but found nothing.

  “Sutherland, you might want to come upstairs,” Kirkland said in my ear.

  I marched up the main staircase, Joss, and Ryan behind me as Grainger and Hank met up with another team to check their grid. Kirkland and Steve were standing outside a door halfway down the massive hallway. When I joined them, I could see that it opened onto a large suite c
omplete with luxurious furnishings like the rooms downstairs and tall windows that looked down over the front of the house. On the couch, we could easily see a significant blood stain, thanks in part to the fact that the thing was an off-white color. I walked over and touched it, my fingers coming away with just a smear of fresh blood. There was a rag on the floor, too, still wet with a watery mixture that included more blood.

  My heart sank.

  “Clint!”

  Ryan came rushing into the room and snatched the rag out of my hand, shoving it into Kirkland’s face.

  “You did this! You handed him over to them and they beat the shit out of him! Or worse!”

  The worse was what I was trying not to think about. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her back against my chest before she could punch Kirkland in the nose and whispered in her ear.

  “But this is proof of life, Ryan. Try to hold on to that.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He was actively bleeding and someone tried to treat him with that rag. They wouldn’t do that if he was already dead.” She went still at that, her body relaxing just slightly against mine.

  “We don’t know it’s Clint’s blood,” Joss had to go and point out. “It could be Ash.”

  Ryan glared at her. “If Ash was injured and had been bleeding all this time, he’d be dead.”

  “Stop,” Kirkland said softly. “It doesn’t matter whose it is. What does matter is that whoever was lying here bleeding was doing it within the last few hours, which means we’ve got them on the run.”

  “We should have them. Period,” Ryan pointed out.

  “Why weren’t we aware that they were no longer here?” I asked.

  Kirkland’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he shifted, moving back away from us as though he was uncomfortable with the question. I was sure it was more about frustration with himself.