Hell on Wheels (2 page)

He shook his head because, honestly, it was all he could manage. If he so much as opened his mouth, he was afraid he’d scream like a girl.

“Nate!” She threw her arms around his neck. God, that felt right…and so, so wrong. “Tell me! Tell me what happened to you. Tell me what really happened to Grigg.” The last was breathed in his ear. A request. A heartrending plea.

“Y’know I can’t, Ali.” He could feel the salty hotness of her tears where she’d tucked her face into his neck. Smell, in the sweet humidity of her breath, the lemon tea she’d been drinking before he knocked on her parents’ door and told her the news that instantly blew her safe, sheltered world apart.

This was his greatest fantasy and worst nightmare all rolled into one. Ali, sweet, lovely Ali. She was here. Now. Pressed against his heart.

He reluctantly raised arms gone heavy with fatigue and sorrow. If Grigg could see him now, he’d take his favorite 1911-A1 and drill a .45 straight in his sorry ass. But the whole point of this Charlie Foxtrot was that Grigg wasn’t here. No one was here to offer Ali comfort but him. So he gathered her close—geez, her hair smelled good—and soothed her when the grief shuddered through her in violent, endless waves like the tide crashing to shore behind them.

And then she kissed him…

Three
months
later…

She had that feeling again.

That creepy, crawly sensation prickling along the back of her neck. The one that made her shoulder blades instinctively hitch together in defense.

She was being watched.

Ali Morgan hastened her steps. Her black, patent leather, ballet flats slapped against the hot pavement as she darted a quick glance across the street.

Nothing.

Not that that was unusual. She rarely saw him, the man she’d begun to think of as her elusive shadow. But somehow she sensed he was there…somewhere…

Snapping a fast look over her shoulder, she rapidly scanned the faces of the pedestrians behind her. Nope. He wasn’t back there, either. Not that she’d ever seen him full-on, but she’d caught enough glimpses of him to know her elusive shadow wasn’t the middle-aged man caring the brown-bagged loaf of French bread, nor was he the black-and-yellow-rugby-jersey-wearing guy who—

Yikes, who let him out of the house this morning?
He looked like a giant bumblebee, and the fact that he was gazing through the front window of the flower shop momentarily overcame her mounting fear. She snorted a giggle. Then the baby-fine hairs on the back of her neck twanged a loud warning, freezing the laughter in her throat like it’d been hit with a harsh blast of dry ice.

Crapola. Maybe she really was going crazy.

She’d had that thought more than a time or two in the past three months, because it wasn’t like Jacksonville was a huge place. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal to see the same faces over and over again.

“But that’s the whole problem now, isn’t it?” she muttered to herself.

She’d never actually
seen
her elusive shadow’s face. Maybe if she had, maybe if she’d gotten the chance to look into the guy’s eyes, she wouldn’t be feeling this alarming sense of…pursuit.

A sudden chill snaked down her rigid spine as her palms began to sweat. Her tight grip on the handles of the plastic grocery bags started slipping, and she adjusted her hold, hoisting her purse higher on her shoulder in process.

Two more blocks…

“Just two more blocks and then I’m home free,” she murmured, realizing by the quizzical look of the couple passing on her right that she was talking to herself again. That was another little eccentricity she’d picked up since Grigg’s death. The whole going-crazy thing was starting to look more and more likely.

She trained her eyes on the bright pink flowers of the potted begonia bushes positioned in front of her condo building—the ones the amiable Mrs. Alexander from 3C had planted just last week.

Just
one
more
block.
Just one more block and then she could throw on her front door’s chain lock, twist the dead bolt and finally take a normal breath.

She was so focused on those potted plants and the sanctuary they promised, she didn’t see the hulking shadow lunge out at her from the deep, murky alley.

It wasn’t until the first brutal, bruising jerk of her purse strap against her shoulder that she realized she might be in serious trouble. The second hard yank had her spinning around like a top, sending her shopping bags flying out of her hands, their contents scattering in the busy street like edible confetti.

A maroon sedan mowed over her sack of pecans, the shells exploding in a series of loud
rat-a-tat-tats
frighteningly similar to the sound of automatic gunfire.

“Hey!” someone yelled. “He’s trying to mug her!”

That was enough to snap her out of her momentary shock, and she grabbed hold of her purse’s inch-wide leather strap, pulling with everything she had. According to every self-defense guru on the planet, she should just let go. A purse wasn’t worth her life. But this particular Coach satchel had been a gift from Grigg…

The guy clutching her purse in his meaty fist was built like a German Panzer, all brutal, bulging muscles and non-existent neck supporting a ski mask-covered face. He easily could’ve ripped her little Coach from her desperate grasp if he hadn’t been simultaneously trying to fend off the strangely heroic man beating him about the head and shoulders with a hard loaf of French bread.

“Call the police!” Mr. French Bread bellowed, landing blow after blow until the loaf began to disintegrate and the smell of fresh-baked bread filled the humid air.

That was just the impetus needed to yank the frozen, slack-jawed onlookers into action. As Ali and Mr. French Bread wrestled with her mugger, people started pulling cell phones from various pockets and running in their direction.

The guy in the rugby jersey was the first on the scene, and he jumped on her assailant’s broad back, wrapping an arm around the guy’s meaty throat and squeezing until the mugger’s eyes—the only things visible inside that frightening mask—bugged out like a Saturday morning cartoon. Ali was suddenly sorry she ever compared Rugby Jersey guy to a giant bumblebee.

“Get his legs!” Rugby Jersey yelled, and Mr. French Bread dove at the mugger’s knees, tackling him and sending the three of them sprawling onto the sidewalk in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs.

Somehow her assailant managed to disentangle himself from the pile. He pushed his substantial bulk up off the concrete only to dart across the street, dodging traffic and nearly getting hit by a speeding UPS truck in the process. For such a
large
man, he was surprisingly agile. The UPS driver slammed on his brakes with a squeal of melting rubber and leaned from his doorless truck in order to shake a fist at the fleeing man’s back.

Ali dragged in a ragged breath and tried to keep sight of her assailant as he zigzagged around people and parked cars. Then she stopped breathing entirely, more stunned than if she’d been hit by lightning, when her elusive shadow suddenly emerged from Swanson’s Deli across the street.

At least she
thought
it was him. She could never tell for sure because he always wore a baseball cap that effectively shielded his face. Still…this man had the same solid build, the same square jaw…

Okay, it was getting too weird.

“Hey!” she yelled at the guy as both Mr. French Bread and Rugby Jersey picked themselves up off the pavement.

The man in the baseball cap gave no indication he heard her.

“Hey, you!” she called again, stepping off the curb. She was gosh-darned sick and tired of every day feeling this sense of…
paranoia
. If she could just get a look at him, she might—

The mysterious man took off like a shot.

What?
Was he really running away from her?

When he hopped into a big, tough-looking SUV, quickly gunning the engine, she had her answer.

He
was
running away from her.

What
the
h-e-double-hockey-sticks?

Just when she would’ve taken off after him, she was jerked back onto the sidewalk by Mr. French Bread. “Whoa, there,” the guy said, still trying to catch his breath. “The dude’s long gone. Don’t go getting yourself run over trying to catch him.”

Mr. French Bread gave up attempting to appear collected and bent at the waist to put his hands on his knees and drop his head between his shoulders, panting like a dog in the summer heat.

He thought she was going after her attacker, of course, which yeah, probably made a lot more sense than running after some elusive man whom she was sure had been shadowing her every move for the past three months.

Laying a comforting hand on her savior’s sweaty shoulder, she reached into her purse—the mugger had
not
succeeded; score one for Alisa Morgan and her two unlikely heroes—and pulled out her BlackBerry. Zooming in, she snapped a quick photo of the SUV’s license plate right before it careened around the corner. Then she bent to peek into Mr. French Bread’s red, perspiring face.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, glancing up to include Rugby Jersey. The guy was also blowing like a winded racehorse, leaning limply against the front window of the hardware store. Obviously neither of them was accustomed to much physical activity, which only made their actions all the more heroic. “You both risked an awful lot—”

Rugby waved a hand, cutting her off. “Damsel in distress and all that,” he chuckled, wincing and grabbing his side.

Great. Just what she’d always dreamed of being. Not.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, dismayed by the thought of him getting injured while trying to save something as insignificant as a purse.

“Nah. I think I just bruised a rib.”

She opened her mouth to thank him again when the piercing cry of a siren interrupted her.

“Looks like the cavalry’s almost here,” Mr. French Bread observed.

***

Black
Knights
Inc. Headquarters on Goose Island

Chicago, Illinois

The
next
day…

“Yeah, right. This is a chopper shop. Just a little ol’ custom motorcycle business…and I’m the queen of England,” Ali muttered beneath her breath, as she glanced through her front windshield at the expanse of the…
compound
was the only word to describe it.

No wonder Grigg had always insisted she stay at a hotel whenever she managed to make it to Chicago to visit him. He’d claimed the loft he lived in atop the “shop”—which would heretofore be referred to as Fort frickin’ Knox—was too small to sleep a guest comfortably, but she’d suspected he was feeding her a line of bull even then. And now?

Now, she
knew
it was bull.

Most folks would look through the huge iron gates at the multitude of small brick structures tucked around an immense factory building and dismiss it for simply what it claimed to be on its website, a top-notch custom motorcycle shop. Most folks would disregard the ten-foot-high brick wall topped by huge rolls of razor wire and the 360-degree pivoting cameras as the necessary precautions taken by savvy businessmen who had a small fortune in tools, bikes, and equipment, and who knew this wasn’t Chicago’s nicest neighborhood.

Yes, that’s what
most
folks would do.

She wasn’t most folks.

She’d had a Marine for an older brother who’d taught her a thing or two about security, and Black Knights Incorporated had it out the wazoo.

Unwelcome tears suddenly pooled in her eyes, because here was the proof that Grigg hadn’t trusted her. He’d died and she’d never really gotten the chance to—

“You’ll have to leave your vehicle at the gate, ma’am,” instructed the redheaded giant manning the gatehouse. He had a thick Chicago accent, turning the word
the
into the more percussive sounding
da
. “We don’t allow unsecured vehicles on the premises,” he went on to explain. “Someone will be down to escort you to the main shop momentarily.”

“Uh…oh-
kay
,” she said as she pulled her lime-green Prius to the side and parked, shaking her head. She glanced in the rearview mirror and dabbed at the tears still clinging to her lashes before pocketing her keys and slinging her beloved purse over her shoulder. Exiting the vehicle, she strolled back toward the gatehouse and the behemoth inside.

“So,” she said as she leaned an elbow on the sill of the window and eyed Big Red, “have you worked for the Black Knights long?”

“Long enough,” he grunted, never taking his gaze from the series of TV screens showing different angles of the grounds around the compound.

Ah, a talkative one. Wouldn’t it figure?

God, what was she doing here?

Nate Weller certainly wouldn’t welcome her. For Pete’s sake, he didn’t even
like
her. Always eyeing her with such cold calculation. Those fathomless black eyes of his following her like she was some strange bug, and he was the dispassionate scientist charting her activities.

Sheesh.

Okay, so maybe she had the tendency to talk too much. But that was partly his fault because he
never
talked, instead remaining constantly and aggravatingly aloof, which was a state so totally foreign to her that she, in turn, started jabbering like her mouth was attached to a motor.

Which was lovely, just lovely.

So fine. He didn’t like her. As far as she was concerned, he could just take his opinion of her and stuff it where the sun never shined. He didn’t have to like her in order to help her.

And why she was even mentally chewing over the state of his rather glaring lack of regard was beyond her. Because to tell the truth, she didn’t particularly like
him
either.

He was too solemn, too remote, too…
something
.

She could never determine just exactly what that something was—which was extremely irksome. But she’d have to deal with it, or ignore it, because she’d made her decision. She was here.

And speaking of here, where the heck was her escort? She tapped her fingers and glanced around impatiently. “Do you own one of their custom bikes?” she asked, just to have something to talk about because, yeah, waiting to see Nate was driving her crazy.

Big Red made a noise vaguely reminiscent of the bellow a mildly annoyed grizzly bear might make, and she didn’t know whether to take that as a
yes
or a
no
.

Great. Just great. This is turning out even worse than I imagined.

***

“So we got our very own helo. Guess now we need our very own helo pilot.” Frank “Boss” Knight, boss of Black Knights Inc., said as he glanced across the scarred expanse of his desk at Nate “Ghost” Weller.

He couldn’t help but search the guy’s impassive face for any signs of PTSD. Frank had been doing that a lot in the past three months, but no matter how hard he looked…

Nada.

No fidgeting hands or darting eyes or tapping toes.

But he knew, just because the guy didn’t show any of the more obvious outward signs of the disorder didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t have it. Nate had been tagged Ghost because he was so damned stealthy in the field. But ever since Grigg Morgan, Nate’s all-time best friend and ace spotter, died—especially considering the
way
Grigg died—and wasn’t
that
just one more happy thought Frank would rather not have today? Nate’d given new meaning to the nickname. Now he was Ghost because he was a walking dead man. No emotion. It wasn’t like the guy had been a big bowl of jolly to begin with, but now?
Damn
…