FOUR
The Nauti Boys were together again. Rowdy finished off his beer as he stared at the other two men who had followed him topside later that evening.
Natches, the youngest of them at twenty-nine, tossed the pizza box on the table and moved into one of the chairs that set beneath the awning. Dawg, the oldest at thirty-one, flipped on the CD player he had carried up and set it on the spare chair. The better to drown conversation. They had learned young to watch their discussions here at the marina and on the lake. Sound carried on the water, and they had learned more than one secret eavesdropping themselves.
“You’re pissed.” Dawg sprawled back in his chair as he stared at Rowdy through narrowed, green eyes.
Rowdy took his own chair and stared back at the two men. They had run wild through town and the Marines together, though Dawg and Natches had gone reserves after their first tour rather than staying in longer. Dawg managed the lumberyard his father left him, while Natches had opted to permanently distance himself from his parents’ thriving restaurants and owned a garage of all things. His dad stayed elbows deep in flour and Natches was a grease monkey. The family fights over that one had been interesting.
“I’m pissed.” Rowdy shrugged, knowing there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
Uncapping another beer from the cooler beside him, he stared at his cousins soberly, wondering if he would have made the same choices.
They were the bad boys of the county. The three of them had been the terror of Somerset, Kentucky, when they were young. Fathers locked their daughters up at night in fear of the three of them. They hadn’t exactly gained a good reputation where women were concerned.
“Damn, Rowdy, I’m glad you’re back.” Dawg shook his shaggy head, his raven black hair reflecting the lights of the marina. “Even pissed, it’s a hell of a sight better than dealing with this without you.”
Natches sipped at his beer, his own black hair not nearly as shaggy as Dawg’s but longer. It was pulled back in a ponytail at his nape, giving his features a harder, more savage appearance.
They knew why they were there.
Rowdy turned back to Dawg.
“You could have told me when you picked me up,” he informed his cousin, his lips flat, anger tightening his skull.
Dawg shook his head, lowering it briefly before sighing.
“Some things you just don’t know how to tell a man.” Dawg grimaced. “I figured you’d get a hint soon enough. It’s not like she’s the same girl she was last year.”
Rowdy bit back the angry response burning on his lips, but hell, this was Dawg. When Rowdy hadn’t been around to watch out for Kelly’s skinned knees and the bullies who liked to pick on her, then Dawg had been there.
“We’ve pulled all the info on this that we can find, Rowdy.” Natches straightened in his chair and reach for the pizza. “We’ve been working on it since it happened, trying to figure out who the bastard was.”
“And?” If anyone could figure it out, it was Dawg and Natches.
“Not much,” Natches admitted. “We’ve had four other rapes in surrounding counties over the last two years. All anal rapes, beatings, cuts, much more severe than Kelly’s. She got lucky. Her neighbor’s boyfriend heard the single scream she was able to get out. The boyfriend was a tough guy, broke in and tried to apprehend the bastard, but once he caught sight of Kell he let the guy go to help her.”
“All this shit going on at home and neither one of you were good enough to tell me what the fuck was happening?” Rowdy snapped.
He had talked to both of them over the past year and never realized that the distance he had felt had been something they were hiding rather than his own impatience to finish his tour.
“What could you have done, man?” Dawg tilted his head to the side and stared back at him questioningly. “We didn’t want the trouble of hiding an AWOL Marine the rest of our natural lives and didn’t figure Kelly needed that on top of everything else. We took care of her until you could get home.”
“Were there any rapes after Kelly?” He asked.
“Nothing with the same M.O.” Dawg shook his head. “It’s like the son of a bitch just disappeared. I’m hoping he did.”
“Ray keeps us up-to-date on Kelly though,” Natches sighed. “And we take turns being here at the marina when she’s working. She’s retreated so far into herself that sometimes I’ve wondered if we could find the girl she used to be. The closest I’ve seen was when you had her backed into the counter this afternoon.” Natches’s lips twitched at the memory. “She looked real comfortable there, Rowdy.”
“Asshole,” Rowdy grunted.
Rowdy stared at the other two men as he wiped his hand over his face and considered the situation for long moments.
“He’s not gone,” he finally sighed. “I want to believe he is, I really do. But I can feel it. He’s waiting.”
“Are you two free?” He looked at them and knew they would be, whatever it took. “We’re free. We made sure of it.” Natches nodded firmly. “How do you want to play it?”
“I need one of you watching our back whenever we’re away from the house. I can feel that bastard watching her. I felt it today when she was on the boat, like a damned itch just under my skin.”
Dawg frowned at that. “There’s been no sign of him, Rowdy. We’ve been watching her every second that we’ve been able to. No phone calls, no strange accidents. Nothing.”
Rowdy clenched his jaw at Dawg’s argument.
“Rowdy’s right,” Natches muttered over the music. “I’ve felt it all evening, especially since we came up here. That’s a feeling you never forget, Dawg. I’ve had a bead on me in the service enough times to know the feeling.”
“Hell, and here I was hoping it was just my overactive imagination,” Dawg grunted. “But if he’s watching, it’s the first time he’s watched close. I’ve only had the willies once or twice since all this hit the fan.”
The willies. It was the perfect description for that odd, warning tingle at the back of the neck, the knowledge that something, or someone, intended to take your head off if they had the right chance.
“Dawg and I made sure we were both fairly free this summer,” Natches stated. “We’re staying on the boats. We’ll watch for unusual movement or watchers. We haven’t seen anything so far, but with crazies like this, who the hell knows what set them off.”
They knew each other too well sometimes, Rowdy thought. His cousins had already anticipated what he would need.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dawg said, his voice graveled, suspicious, “whoever he is, he has to know her. Kelly’s not a creature of habit. She’s impulsive, unpredictable, and never where you expect her to be. He knew she would be home. He knew she liked to crack her window at night. You can’t tell it’s cracked from the street. He had to have known.”
“He studies his women,” Natches said. “Gets to know them somehow. We’ve been talking about this.” He nodded to the others. “Playing it out. I think he’s local.”
“Why?”
“The rapes are in a four-county radius around Somerset. Until Kelly, Somerset hadn’t been hit. She fits the profile of the other girls, though. The others he’ll call every now and then from what the detectives on the case told me, and ask if they’re being ‘good girls,’ but he hasn’t called Kelly. The only reason he wouldn’t call her, is because he’s close enough to watch her,” Natches pointed out.
“The guy lost it when he was interrupted. The others”—Dawg cleared his throat, fury flashing in his eyes—“he made them beg. First to live, and then for him. Kelly wouldn’t beg—”
“And he was interrupted—Shit!” Rowdy ran his hands over his head.
“But she’s still a ‘good girl,’” Natches pointed out. “When she stops being a good girl, what will he do?”
Rowdy felt his stomach pitch at the thought of that. This was why Ray was so pissed at his son’s return. Because he knew Rowdy had returned to claim Kelly, which was most likely the one thing guaranteed to push her stalker over the edge.
“The redneck code, cowboys,” Natches drawled. “You don’t fuck the good girls unless you mean it. He doesn’t rape them normally, he takes them anally. He’s not serious ’bout them. And he’s not going to ‘dirty’ a ‘good girl.’”
It was sickening, and the truly horrifying part was it all made sense. There were unwritten rules sometimes, a code, a way of dealing with women. Good girls versus “bad” girls and the rules of engagement. This rapist was twisting those rules. Perverting them in ways guaranteed to give a sane man nightmares. He was targeting good girls, or his perception of a good girl.
And Kelly gave the impression of the perfect good girl. But she was his naughty girl. He had seen it in her eyes eight years ago; he saw it there now. She wasn’t a fool, and she might very well be a virgin, but Rowdy knew that his naughty girl was in there, waiting for him. And he was going to claim her, love her, protect her.
No matter what it took.
“Rowdy, you start fooling with her and the bastard is going to come after her stronger,” Natches pointed out. “We can control it if we use it, control him and take him.”
“But only if he thinks Kelly isn’t a ‘good girl,’” Dawg injected. “Good girls can tame the bad boys. Unless he thinks Rowdy is up to his past games with Kelly, it might not push him over the edge in time.”
Rowdy stared back at his friends. He heard the question in Dawg’s voice, the suspicion. He leaned forward, bracing his arms on the gas tank as he watched them. He ignored the tightening, low in his stomach, the vague disquiet he felt at the thought of sharing Kelly. Of allowing his cousins to touch her, to hold her. He had waited for six years, ever since she turned eighteen, for the chance to show her just how much pleasure he could give her when he took her to his bed. He refused to remember the arousal she inspired two years before that. You didn’t lust after babies, and sixteen-year-old, wide-eyed virgins were just that. Babies. But the minute she turned eighteen, he had known his days of freedom were numbered.
“I haven’t changed.” He stared back at them with an edge of humor, of determination, as he ignored the odd, unfamiliar tightening in his chest. “Have you?”
Snorts of wry amusement met his question.
“Yeah right, and pigs started flying over the lake when it happened.” Natches laughed. “We’ve been waiting on you, Rowdy, you know that. You think that little girl would have stayed unclaimed if any of us had changed over the years?”
They were unique, maybe. Sexual fulfillment and pleasure wasn’t a game. It was something they took seriously, something they worked at. They all cared for Kelly, in different degrees. She was Rowdy’s life. But the others, hell, they loved her too, and they always would.
Loving Kelly himself didn’t change that. He’d kill any other man who dared touch her, but he hoped, prayed, he wasn’t wrong about Kelly and the fact that her needs would mirror his own.
The need was an enigma, even to the three men. Maybe they were too close, left on their own too much as teenagers—who the hell knew. They didn’t question it, they didn’t fight it. If Kelly didn’t want it, then it was a no-go, but he had a feeling about Kelly. She was a little sex kitten waiting to purr, and they were ready to stroke her.
So why was he suddenly tensing at the thought of Dawg and Natches inspiring that pleasure, that need within her?
He nodded slowly. She was his; there was no contest there. He would fight any man for her, even a friend. But here, there was no need to fight. Dawg and Natches didn’t own her heart, Rowdy did. And the pleasure he knew the three of them could bring her outweighed the subtle warning shifting through his chest.
“Will she agree?” Dawg asked the hardest question to answer.
“Before the attack, I would have said yes.” Rowdy sighed roughly. “Now, who knows?” He shook his head before wiping his hand over his face in a gesture of frustration. “We’ll see. It will have to be her decision.”
They nodded in reply.
“We get her over the attack first, take care of the attacker, then see where we go from there,” Rowdy said. “She’s not ignorant of the rumors, she suspects what’s coming. But”—he swallowed tightly—“she’s going to be scared now. And for that alone, I’ll kill the bastard.”