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.”
The marina, Kelly, Zoey, and the girls, Zoey knew. They were never, at any time left to work at the marina without one of the men close by. Today, Natches and Chaya were scheduled.
Zoey saw the look the men shared and she knew, she absolutely knew in that second that no one should have known that Rowdy wasn’t going to be here, but they’d known Natches and Chaya were running late.
Tim finished sealing the evidence bag, then handed it over to Alex.
“I’ll contact Mark and Tyrell and we’ll have a team in place by morning,” Alex stated, the ice in his voice as scary as it was in Rowdy’s.
Mark and Tyrell owned a private security firm out of Virginia staffed with all former military and Special Forces personnel.
“I want to know why.” Rowdy’s tone was graveled, a certain indication of his level of fury.
“There’s been no chatter where Somerset’s concerned,” Timothy informed them. “I would have known immediately if there were.”
“Tracker’s here.” Alex turned to the group as they all glanced to the office window where three black, powerful motorcycles were easing through the police cruisers still parked outside. “Looks like he has Grog and Angel with him.”
Tracker.
Rowdy watched as the other man secured his cycle, then straightened and pulled the full face helmet from his head and stared around with narrowed eyes.
Six-four, black hair, and intense blue eyes, the mercenary had seemed to take an interest in staying in the county lately. Dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and heavy black motorcycle boots, he looked like a fight waiting to happen. Unfortunately, he was far more dangerous than he appeared as well.
Grog, Tracker’s suspected brother, was just as tall, his eyes a startling shade of vibrant green, propped one foot at the side of his cycle before setting his helmet on the chest rest in front of him.
Between them, Tracker’s second in command, Angel, drew every male gaze in the parking lot as she pulled her helmet from her head and released the long, sun-kissed blond strands of hair held captive beneath it.
Silken waves fell to just below her shoulders, giving her face a softer, sensual appearance. Until Rowdy glanced at her eyes. An intense violet blue, like a sapphire starburst she often had to use contacts to disguise, the color distracting from the fact that a complete lack of mercy gleamed in their depths.
That was, if a man got around to looking in her eyes.
Today she was dressed in figure-hugging jeans with leather chaps strapped to shapely legs, boots similar to Tracker’s, and beneath the leather riding jacket she slid from her shoulders and threw over the seat of the cycle, she wore a tank top that did nothing to hide her feminine curves.
Angel was an enigma within a group he and his cousins had found impossible to pull any concrete information in on. Even Timothy, if he could be believed, knew very little about the group. He trusted them though, and that always managed to rouse Rowdy’s suspicions.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Rowdy growled as the three moved past the officers positioned outside and entered the convenience store.
Seconds later Angel stepped into the office, her gaze going immediately to the girls who stared at her with some kind of damned hero-worship. Somehow, Angel had managed to “run into” the girls and their mothers enough times that Rowdy had begun to see a pattern.