Who would want to hurt her?

That was what John intended to find out, and then he intended to do something about it.

SIX

Getting her to talk that night didn’t work out as John had hoped. Once they had dinner, Sierra drifted off to sleep on the couch while John called his father and discussed the investigation into the attack.

There was no new information.

John paced the upper deck of the Nauti Wet Dreams, frustration eating at him as he tried to piece together the information he did have. Which wasn’t much.

The assailant had obviously been male. The roommate who had burst into the bedroom that night hadn’t seen hair color or eye color, but judged his approximate height to be around six feet. It could have been anyone.

As John stood at the railing, a beer in hand, the sound of slow, even footsteps making their way down the dock drew his attention.

Watching, he almost groaned in irritation. Most people groaned in irritation when Timothy Cranston made his appearance, though.

The rabid little Leprechaun, the Mackay cousins called him. A former Homeland Security special agent who had retired to Somerset after the completion of an investigation that revealed a domestic terrorist organization in the area.

He paused at the front of the boat.

“I’m up here, Cranston,” John called out, the night and the water carrying his voice clearly to the other man.

“Ahh, the elusive John Walker Junior.” The amusement in the other man’s tone was just the wrong side of grating.

He moved across the deck to the spiral staircase that led to the sundeck of the houseboat.

“Too bad I’m not a little better at the elusive part,” John grunted. “What the hell do you want?”

Cranston stepped onto the deck, a quiet grin on his face as John leaned against the rail and glared back at him.

“The Walkers have quite a history in this area,” Timothy mused as he walked across the deck to the portable fridge and removed a beer.

John watched as he uncapped it and took a long drink, wondering what the ex-special agent was doing here.

“Calculating” and “manipulating” were two of the kinder terms used to refer to Cranston.

Turning back to him, Cranston moved closer, opting to sit in one of the deck chairs across from where John stood.

“I won’t ask again,” John stated with far more patience than he felt.

Cranston only chuckled. “The Mackay boys use that same tone with me, John. It doesn’t help them any more than it’s going to help you.”

No doubt. The little fucker was going to get himself killed one of these days. From what John understood, he was far too prone to fuck with too many people’s lives.

“You have a problem,” Cranston finally stated.

“And you’re one of them,” John pointed out.

To which Cranston’s low laugh filtered through the night.

“This could be true,” the other man agreed, nodding. “But honestly, JW, I could easily become your best friend.”

“Not if you keep calling me JW.”

He might just have to kill the little bastard himself if he kept that up.

“That’s what most people in these parts call you, you know,” Timothy informed him. “Especially those who knew your father.”

John restrained a sigh. Too many people in this area remembered his father before he moved to Boston. Or perhaps escaped to Boston would be a better way of describing it.

“Cut the shit, Cranston.” John shook his head wearily. “Why are you here?”

“Because someone was in town today asking some very pointed questions about John Walker Junior. Someone obviously not from the area.”

John froze. No one but his parents and sisters knew where he was, and there was no reason for anyone he knew to have followed him to Somerset, Kentucky.

“Who was he?”

“She.” Cranston grinned. “The intrepid investigator claimed to be your fiancée.”

John stared back at him in silent shock.

“I don’t have a fiancée,” he answered the other man.

Cranston tipped the beer back, finished it, then set the bottle on the floor of the deck.

“She didn’t seem much like a lady,” Cranston remarked. “Strange, I can’t imagine you hooking up with such a woman, even for a short time.”

John remained silent, refusing to answer the subtle question.

Cranston stared back, just as silent.

John couldn’t imagine Marlena in Somerset, Kentucky, for any reason. There had to be a mistake. But Cranston wasn’t a man that made mistakes.

“Strange, in the year you’ve been here, no one has questioned your arrival, nor followed you. It struck me as rather funny that this woman arrived only hours after you met your sister’s plane on Hickley’s private airstrip and collected a passenger.”

John crossed his arms over his chest and restrained the heavy curse hovering on his lips. Hell, he didn’t need this.

“What business is it of yours if someone claiming to be my fiancée is in town?” John tilted his head and stared back at the other man.

“Well, normally, I really wouldn’t care,” Cranston assured him. “But the last name Genoa tipped me off. Were you aware your ex-fiancée and her family were suspected of being involved with one of the largest crime families in the nation?”

Fuck!

John rubbed at the bridge of his nose and couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t surprised.

“No, Cranston, I had no idea.”

Cranston nodded in reply. “I had your family investigated rather heavily once I met your sister.” He grinned at some memory. “She’s a hell of a woman, but I had a job to do at the time. Of course, this was before your engagement. The thing I learned was that the Walker family was incredibly loyal, not to mention patriotic. When I learned you were engaged to the Genoa woman, I was rather surprised.”

“It didn’t last too long,” John pointed out mockingly.

“Because Sierra saved your sorry ass,” Cranston grunted. “There were agents with the Office of Homeland Security at the restaurant that night who had Ms. Genoa under surveillance. The reports were fairly precise. Once I checked further into it, I learned that Ms. Lucas had been instrumental not in just breaking up your engagement but also in stopping a much-needed infusion of financial prosperity into the Genoa family, which would have boosted them back into the good graces of their extended family. Walker capital would have been used to launder some rather dirty money.”

John could only shake his head. “Cranston, what makes you think that even criminals can’t marry for love?”

“Of course they can.” Cranston stared back at him as though surprised. “They just don’t normally survive it. Which works out for all us hardworking law enforcement officials.”

“I should have taken my uncle up on his offer to move to California,” John breathed out roughly, though he knew he could have never done so. Hell, he loved Somerset, especially on the days he didn’t have to deal with Cranston.

He was learning things tonight he didn’t really want to know. Things he really didn’t give a damn about.

“Marlena is no longer a part of my life, Cranston,” John pointed out.

“That explains why she was in town then, correct?” Cranston’s smile was benign, almost innocent.

No, that didn’t explain anything.

“She did leave this afternoon,” Timothy went on to say. “But not before, as I understand it, she made a trip here, to the marina.”

Thank God, Sierra had slept the afternoon away, and John was certain there was no way Marlena could have gotten the information that Sierra was there. No one knew she was there but the Mackays, and they wouldn’t tell anyone, he was certain of that.

“What’s going on, John?” Cranston asked then, his tone completely serious. “There’s reports from Boston that Ms. Lucas was attacked after you left town, nearly raped, beaten. She disappeared after being taken in by your family, and now a member of the Genoa family is here, looking for you. After a year? Tell me, boy, do you believe in coincidence of that sort?”

Hell no, he didn’t, but it couldn’t be anything else, could it?

“You think Marlena was behind Sierra’s attack?”

“Personally, I wouldn’t put it past her to have made the attack,” Cranston grunted. “But Ms. Lucas seems certain her attacker was male. My point is, your ex-fiancée is here, after a year, within hours of Ms. Lucas’s arrival. With her connections, finding your friend wouldn’t have been hard, John. Find you, they find Sierra. A ten-year-old could have figured that one out.”

“And why the hell does this even concern you?” John asked even as he let the information turn over in his mind and considered the possibilities. “Why are you involved in this, Cranston?”

The other man breathed out heavily. “It’s damned hard to retire, John. I see things. That was always my strength in Homeland Security. I could take coincidences and pin them together, and I could see the links when there didn’t appear to be any.” He stared back at John soberly. “My gut’s rioting here. It has been ever since I recognized Marlena Genoa walking into the Mackay Café in town and learned who she was asking for. Her arrival here isn’t a good thing.”

And John couldn’t defend her. He couldn’t protest. He couldn’t defend her and try to claim Marlena wasn’t capable of being involved in something as sinister as the attack on Sierra. He knew Marlena’s vindictiveness. If he added that to her possible criminal connections . . .

“Why come here herself if she has all these connections?” John asked Cranston, frowning as he tried to make the pieces of the puzzle fit in his mind.

“As I said, her family has lost financially, which lowered their cache within the family. Her marriage to you would have fixed that by providing a way to either launder money, or to embezzle funds to finance smaller investments for the family. Either way, her family could have moved back into the working stream. She’s doing her own dirty work because she has no choice. If she’s like other members of her family, then she’s after revenge now. The other girl is winning.”

John snorted at that. “This isn’t fucking high school, Cranston.”

“No, it’s real life, and where the hell do you think games like this begin, if not in school? These women learn from preschool how to manipulate and play payback. Don’t imagine life doesn’t often imitate those school yard games.”

Making it fit in his head wasn’t so easy, though. Marlena wasn’t above social revenge, but staging an attack against Sierra?

“So you’re saying Marlena arranged the attack to get back at Sierra for informing me of her affair with Gerard? Why wait for a year after I break off the engagement then?”

“I’m saying my gut is burning,” Timothy growled. “I see her, hear her questioning people about you and any guests you might have living with you, and things start adding up in my head. And I’m a nosy bastard, John. Nosy and damned particular about things like this. Somerset is my home now, and I look after what’s mine. That means you and that innocent little girl you now have sleeping in your boat. From what I’ve learned, she’s a damned fine woman. Women are to be protected, JW, and that’s our job. That’s a job I take damned seriously.”

He’d heard Cranston had taken Pulaski County as his own, and he was driving both Sheriff Mayes as well as Somerset’s Chief of Police, Alex Jansen, crazy with his interference. Crazy, because he was invariably right. And invariably, Cranston’s issues always revolved around women.

John pushed his fingers through his hair wearily. “If this is what is actually going on, then what’s the threat level I’m looking at?”