Chapter Four

“No!” Bronco and Emma shouted in unison.

Lucius sipped his coffee. “If you’re gonna work together, you can’t be picking fights like a couple of trigger happy gun slingers.”

Emma glared at her relative, and Tallulah poked his arm. “You’re not one to give advice.”

The kitchen became so quiet, Bronco swore the others could hear his heart thrumming in his chest—in time with Gaucho’s paw slapping at his thigh. He took deep cleansing breaths and sent the cat a message. “I’m okay, buddy, everything’s fine.”

Instead of responding with their all clear sign—an image of a curled up and sleeping Gaucho—the cat shot him a smoking hot mental image of Emma and Bronco locked in a passionate embrace. Where the hell did Gaucho get that from? In all the years they’d been partners, the feline had not once intruded into his love life. Why now?

“You’re not helping.” He shot back his thought at the cat.

The bobcat gave a short snort and a bark. The four-legged pain in the butt was laughing at him, as if to say, What flew up your nose?

He needed a human partner, not a lover. This was not the time for a romantic entanglement. It was one thing to take a risk with his life, another to take a risk with hers, the boss’s sister. Bert would kill him if anything happened to Emma.

“So,” he breathed and steepled his fingers to keep them away from Emma’s slapping hands. Lesson learned. “We have a situation that needs to be addressed ASAP. I’ll let Emma tell you about it, then fill in my role.”

She gave him a short nod and described the drone attack and horse killings. As she spoke, Tallulah covered her mouth and gave a muffled sob.

“We need to find out who is doing this and why. There’s no evidence of external terrorist involvement which really leaves only two choices. A foreign operative embedded in U.S. territory orchestrating the attacks or—”

“Home grown domestic terrorists,” Bronco finished. “Hate groups are spiraling out of control, and armed militia claiming sovereign rights have expanded their base over the last five years. A watchdog group estimates there are over eight-hundred active hate groups in the U.S., one of which is right in our back yard, the Neo-Nazi American Schutzstaffel.”

“Honey, I can tell you all about those sons of bitches.”

A woman stepped into the kitchen, and the room erupted into a chorus of greetings, hugs, and air kisses. Sweeping Emma onto her feet, the six foot tall, dressed-to-the-nines in the middle of the day female, showered her with kisses.

“Bronco,” Emma gasped between smooches, “this is one of my cousins, Stephanie.”

“You can call me Steph,” she said and gave Bronco’s hand an iron fisted shake, along with a lingering once over. “Emma, you sure got a cute one.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Emma ground out between clenched teeth. “We’re working together.”

“Mmmm, m-mm, mmm. Sure you are, darlin’.” Steph shook her head.

As Steph spoke Bronco realized the tall woman before him was—or had been—a man. Steph’s Adam’s apple plus the bone crushing grip pretty much sealed it for him. “Do you have a last name, Steph?”

“No, darlin’.” She waved a hand in the air. “I’m like a movie star, ya know, one name is more than enough for me.”

“So what can you tell us about the American S.S.?”

Steph grimaced, slid into a chair, and waved her hand at Lucius, “Honey, can you get me a double espresso, please?”

To Bronco’s surprise, Lucius jumped up and fussed with the gleaming Italian machine parked on the kitchen counter. Knobs turned, water hissed, and the aroma of the freshly ground beans filled the air.

Twirling her long black hair, Steph sighed. “They are the worst. They have a major hate on for LGBT folk and go out of their way to harass us at every turn.”

Lucius handed Steph the demitasse cup, and she sipped before breathing out, “Delish.”

“What did they do to you?”

“Not to me, specifically, but to our LGBT community. Those Neo-Nazi’s hate Two-Spirit people like me and the fact that we’ve been accepted in Crow society for-evah. Did you know that, back in the day, we were very much in demand as wives because we could work as hard as a man and be nurturing. We also served in sacred roles in our society, because we were considered to be prophets. We were consulted before major decisions for the tribe.” Steph sipped her espresso and sighed again. “Last year, one of those vile brown shirts lured a friend of mine away from a gay bar, promised her a night of wild sex. Put her in the hospital. She still has to walk with a cane.”

Bronco’s gut twisted. He recalled all too well the brutal ways of the Neo-Nazis. “Your friend recall seeing any tattoos on the guy—or his associates?”

“Tattoos? The thug who picked her up was clean-shaven, handsome—like you would look, minus the tats. She said he looked like the boy next door, only grown up. Not a tat on him. But his friends? They wore masks on their faces, and their arms were covered in tattoos. All ugly, but mostly of the numbers eighty-eight and eighteen eighty-eight.”

Bronco nodded. “Those numbers stand for the position of the letters in the English alphabet. A is the first letter and H is the eighth letter, so eighty-eight means “Heil Hitler”, and eighteen eighty-eight means. “Adolf Hitler, Heil Hitler.”

Steph shuddered. “Disgusting and frightening.”

“You got that right,” Bronco agreed. “What else can you tell me about them?”

She waved her hand for a refill, and her bracelets jangled. “Well, they are no fan of our government, I can tell you that. My friend said the whole time they were beating her, they kept calling her a lackey and a tool of liberals, the Elders of Zion, and the international banking cabal. Crazy talk.”

The wheels began turning in Bronco’s head. Catching his drift, Gaucho growled his disapproval. “Where did they pick her up?”

“The Garret. It’s a dance hall, karaoke bar, terribly safe. Which is why it was so shocking. Nothing bad ever happened at the Garret.” Steph shook her head. “Until that night.”

“Do they have security tapes?”

“Yes, of course,” Steph said with a quivering voice. “The Neo-Nazi wore a hoodie, kept his face covered. The creeps dumped my friend in the Saint Vic’s parking lot, naked, with a pink triangle tattooed on her chest.”

Emma cleared her throat. “Are you okay, Steph?”

“Yes, it’s just—so shocking. That’s not us. Billings isn’t like that. It’s the largest city in Montana, and it’s always been LGBT friendly. An attack of this nature—well, it’s disturbing. It’s like having a serial killer next door. It could be our neighbor.”

Bronco nodded. “The clean cut, fine upstanding citizen. Evil rarely wears a label that says ‘Caution: filled with molten lava of hate’.”

“I can’t talk about this anymore.” Steph slapped the table. “Enough doom and gloom. Do you like the décor? Have you sold any beadwork? When is that baby coming out so I can hold him?”

While Tallulah and Lucius filled Steph in all things LaBelle, Bronco leaned over and whispered to Emma. “Can we call a truce? I need to ask you a few questions—outside.”

She stood, stretched, and put her coffee cup and plate in the sink. “Come on, Franny. I bet you could use a walk by the river.”

Engrossed in their conversation, the other three merely nodded when Bronco and Emma stepped out the back door with both four-legged critters in tow.

They walked in silence to the river’s edge where the sun lapped at the water and trout teased Gaucho and Franny. Off his leash, the cat pounced at fish while the pug ran back and forth along the sand barking and yipping. Emma looked off into the distance, her gaze fixed on the other side of the river.

Bronco put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk down to you. I really need your help.”

She gave him the side eye, as if waiting for the other boot to drop.

“This assignment worries me. Bert will hand me my ass if you get hurt. Tallulah is too far along and way too hormonally challenged to be of assistance. I still haven’t heard what special ability Lucius has, but with that baby due in less than a month, it doesn’t seem fair to drag him into this investigation.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“We need to get eyes on this drone and find out where it came from. If we can figure that out, we can jam the radio signals between the person controlling it and the bird. My remote viewing can help us lay eyes on the source, but I’d feel better if we had hard data to back us up. I’m going to call your brother and tell him we need satellite images of the state, with a focus on the area around the Mustang Ranch.”

“Okay.” She quirked a brow at him. “What’s this have to do with me?”

Struggling to come up with the right words, he dragged the toe of his boot in the sand. “We need to find out if the Neo-Nazis are behind this. I want to get into Billings and scope out the gay scene.”

Emma began to laugh, and he put his hand up like a traffic cop. “I was hoping you and Steph would go with me, be my guides. I’d be a new guy in town, looking for a good time. If I can lure one of those cretins, get him to take the bait, we’d have a way in.”

“And then what? They beat the shit out of you? Maybe kill you?” Fists on her hips, Emma glared at him. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Besides, what makes you think you could play a gay guy well enough to pick someone up?”

“Hey, give me some credit,” he spat back. “I’ve got years of undercover work under my belt that I’m damn good at. Not once did the motorcycle clubs I infiltrated even suspect I was an ATFE agent. Besides, your cousin thought I was cute—”

Before he could finish his sentence, her hands were on his shoulders and Emma yanked him in for a kiss. Bronco’s brain turned to mush, and all the blood in his body raced to his groin. His hands moved of their own volition, running through her hair, pulling those lush lips into his, his tongue seeking entrance, his hips crushing against hers. She grabbed his butt and pushed his erection against the vee of her crotch, his desire and hardness growing with each thrust of his hips. He moaned, reached for her breast—and she shoved him away.

Like two gunmen in an old Western town, they stood with their hands at their sides, breathing hard and staring each other down. Confused, he looked around wildly to see if someone or something had interrupted her display of passion. “What just happened?”

“A test. There are some things our body can’t pretend.” Hair wild around her flushed face, lips swollen, she rasped, “Do you really think you can pass yourself off as gay?”

Stunned, he stared at her, his mind racing, grasping for thoughts, but all he could think of, all he could see was her in his arms, up against a wall with her legs around his waist, their moans of passion filling the darkness. A shout cut through his miasma of pheromones and lust.

“Get in here,” Lucius called from the back door. “It’s Bert. Says it’s urgent.”

Whistling for the pug, Emma stomped back to the hotel with Bronco and Gaucho pulling up the rear. Her fine ass addled his mind even as he tried to clear it of the sex-drenched fog.

What the hell was that about? A test? He hadn’t planned to do the bump and grind with every guy in the club, just hang out at the bar and get the lay of the land—so to speak. Truthfully, he’d never even considered the possibility that he’d have to prove he was gay to play the role. Dammit. She’s right. Well, that plan was out. He shook his head and stomped up the back steps, angry at himself for being so stupid.

Steph was no longer in the kitchen, nor was Tallulah. Lucius held a cordless phone out to Bronco. “He said to put it on speaker.”

“I tried to reach you both for ten minutes,” Bert’s voice boomed. “I forgot your cell phones aren’t worth the plastic they’re packed in out there. No cell towers. We need to get both of you satellite phones.”

“Speaking of satellites, boss, can you get eyes on the area around the Mustang Ranch, look for off the grid communities? We’re looking for a Neo-Nazi installation, the American Schutzstaffel?”

“Ugh. Those scumbags. Yeah, I can do that. But I have some more bad news for you guys.”

The three exchanged glances and Emma chewed her lower lip. “Thirteen bald eagles have been found dead in Northern Montana. All shot with .308s.”

“Ohmigod,” Emma breathed and turned pale. “That’s horrible.”

“Yes, it is. It means the terrorists are escalating their attacks against symbols of America. First the Mustangs, now bald eagles, next it’s—”

“The buffalo,” Lucius exploded. “They’ll be coming after them next!”

****

Staggering backward, Emma fell into a kitchen chair, overwhelmed by the enormity of the attacks. The bald eagle was not only the symbol of the United States of America, but also the sacred bird to the Crow and many other Native American tribes. The only thing that kept her from bursting into tears was knowing that her brother was safe in Washington, D.C., away from the terrorists who would take down sacred animals—and the shape-shifters among them.

“You can’t come out here, bro. You know that, right?”

“I hear you Emma.” Bert expelled a long sigh. “I’ll be here in D.C., working our military and intelligence grapevines to get whatever information I can.”

“If we can get a line on where they are,” Bronco added, “we might be able to jam the signals they’re using to control the drone.”

“I’ll get a request into our friends at MILSATCOM.”

“Speak in English, bro. I may have been USMC, but don’t know your alphabet soup.”

Bert sighed. “Short for Military Satellite Systems Communications Directorate. I’ll see what they can pull up for us.”

“And, boss one more thing. We’ve sort of got a situation here. Tallulah is more than a little hormonally challenged. And regardless of what talent Lucius has, I don’t think it’s fair to drag him into this when his wife is about to deliver any moment now.”

Lucius gave Bronco a nod and thumbs up.

“I’d like to request we move our consultant into the field.”

“Our consultant? You mean my sister?” Bert’s voice blasted out of the speaker. “In what capacity? What do you think she can do that you can’t do?”

“She’s a damn good fighter and soldier, sir, and on top of that she’s got a secret weapon.” He paused and gave her a significant look.

Emma wondered what was coming out of his mouth next. Good kisser? Because he was one damn fine kisser, and she still hadn’t recovered from that dizzying, bone melting lip-lock and embrace.

“Well?” Bert yelled. “What is it?”

“She’s a woman. And a damn good looking one.”

Livid that her female attributes were being discussed with her brother and her ancestor, Emma rose to her feet and launched herself at the phone. Snatching it out of an open-mouthed Lucius’s hand, she shouted, “I don’t know where this is going, I wasn’t in on this, bro.”

Bronco yelled, talking over her. “These attacks are too organized, too methodical, and too well-funded to be a lone wolf lunatic. My gut is telling me the Neo-Nazis are behind these killings.” Reaching for the phone and grabbing air, Bronco continued. “A single guy is too suspicious. But a couple—that’s a perfect cover. I want us to go in undercover as a couple, boss. I want to gut these bastards from inside out.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Bert roared. “She’s my sister. I won’t allow it.”

“Bert, you’re my brother, and I love you with all my heart, but I’m a big girl. I’m already involved. You can’t keep me out. I want in. I’ve wanted in all along and you’ve shut me out. Now your guy is telling you the same thing.”

The phone went silent for a long time. At last Bert said, “I don’t like it.”

“I know, boss, but unless you’ve got that Fury demi-goddess headed here…”

“Not available,” Bert responded. “She’s on an undercover assignment in the Middle East with her mother. And before you even go there, all our shifters are out. They’d be target practice for these goons.”

Exactly why Emma had told her brother to stay in D.C. He’d suffered enough for his country.

In a soft voice, she called his brother by his Crow nick name, Duuptakoische, Bald Eagle, and added in English, “Bronco needs me on this case with him.”

And God help her, she needed him, too.