Hell on Wheels (8 page)

She hiccupped and one mutinous tear escaped. Her chest was so tight she wondered how her heart continued to beat through the constriction. She’d hit a man, a patriot who’d sacrificed so much, who’d been recently tortured.

“Nothin’ to forgive,” he managed to grind out. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”

Huh?

She dashed away that single tear with shaking fingers. “For what? What have you possibly got to be sorry about? It wasn’t your fault you made it out and Grigg didn’t.”

Becky made a strange strangled sound, and Ali’s eyes darted over to the young woman. She was using the frayed hem of her grease-and-paint-stained T-shirt to wipe at the fat tears running down her reddened cheeks.

What in the world was going on?

The horror on the men’s faces, the anguish on the women’s was about more than Grigg’s death and her ill-timed venture into physical violence.

“So,” Dan said softly as he put an arm around his wife, who was also fighting a flood of tears. “If it wasn’t Brazil and it wasn’t the capture by the Lebanese, what else could it be? Grigg hadn’t been tapped for anything previous to those assignments in about two months.”

He was changing the subject. Ali knew a blatant evasion when she heard it. She opened her mouth to ask just exactly what it was they weren’t telling her, but Becky beat her to the punch.

“No,” the young woman announced firmly, every eye in the room settling on her tear soaked face. “He did have one other mission in there. A brief, personal security job he did for some senator.”

“Say what?” Ozzie turned away from the computers. “I don’t remember getting any authorization for that.”

“It didn’t come through the usual channel. It was on his personal computer. He was only gone for one evening. Came home early in the morning. I just figured he was doing some off-the-books work.”

“The hell you say,” Nate barked and Ali jumped. She totally forgot about trying to ascertain what dark secrets they were still keeping from her, what chilling knowledge had caused them all such immediate anguish, when she turned to see Nate’s livid expression. “He never told me anything about that.”

“You were away doing that Colombian job with Mac and Christian,” Becky supplied, wiping the last of her tears away with the back of her hands.

“How do you just happen to know what’s in Grigg’s personal correspondence, Rebecca?” Frank growled.

“Uh,” Becky nervously glanced toward Ozzie. The young man’s face was totally covered in oh-you’ve-done-it-this-time.

Frank glanced back and forth between the two. “What? What have you two been up to?”

“Okay,” Becky said, chewing on the soggy stick of her last sucker. “See, the thing is, me and Ozzie have an equitable little exchange going. I teach him how to disassemble, clean, and reinstall a carburetor, and he teaches me how to code. I teach him how to fabricate an oil tank, and he teaches me how to hack.”

“And that hacking includes personal email accounts?” Frank asked, his expression like a thundercloud. “Rebecca! Damnit!”

“Hey,” she yelled back in defense, “I thought he might’ve been in trouble! We were supposed to order pizza and watch a movie that night. But after he checked his email, he suddenly said he had to bail on me. He grabbed up his go-bag and a fistful of extra magazines and made tracks like the hounds of hell were baying at his heels. I got worried, so I,” she shrugged, protectively wrapping her arms around herself, “I peeked.”

“You
peeked?
At
personal
files? That’s
not
okay, Rebecca. Sticking your nose in the wrong place could very well get you killed one of these days. Do you understand me? Say you understand me,” Frank pressed and Becky dutifully nodded her head, but then she opened her mouth. Before she got a chance to say whatever it was she was about to say, Frank angrily waved her off. “No. Absolutely not. That’s the end of the discussion.”

Becky snapped her mouth closed and settled back in her chair, her face a mixture of defiance and misery, and Ali couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy. She understood the need to keep close tabs on those she loved and knew from first-hand experience how frustrating it could be when she couldn’t do that. She also knew that, like Becky, if she’d had a way to inconspicuously dig around in Grigg’s business, she’d have used it and not thought twice.

Maybe it had something to do with that extra X chromosome. Something about having a uterus and set of ovaries just made a person intrinsically more curious and infinitely more nosy. Whatever it was, she did her sisterly duty and flashed Becky a brief look of alliance. Becky smiled shakily in response.

“He never mentioned the job to you?” Frank asked Nate.

“Never.”

“Huh.” The big man rubbed his stubbled chin, shooting one last disgusted look at Becky, before turning toward the wall of computers. “Ozzie? You mind accessing Nate’s account to see just what Rebecca’s talking about?”

“Already on it, Boss.” Ozzie said.

Something was obviously…off about this entire scenario.

Ali’s stomach—never a reliable organ—turned over again. She grabbed her Coke and took a hasty sip.

“Is it unusual for one of you to take an off-the-books assignment?” she asked, some sixth sense telling her she wasn’t going to like the answer.

“
Yeah
,” Frank emphasized. She gulped more soda. “Unusual in that it’s just not done. Ever. And even if we
did
agree to take on independent work, we’d never accept a job without letting at least one member of the team know about it. You know, in case backup’s needed.”

Crapola.

“See,” Becky grumbled. “Now you know why I was so worried and why I…”

Frank flung her a look so ferocious the young woman’s shoulders hitched up around her ears as she trailed off, dutifully fixing her eyes on the table in front of her.

“Huh,” Ozzie interrupted, and Ali decided she was beginning to hate that word. “Simple and concise. Someone from the FBI, a Special Agent Jordan Delaney, asked Grigg to perform a private security detail for a party Senator Aldus threw for the Pakistani Ambassador to the Vatican. Dude,” Ozzie groused, “there’s a goddamned official for everything.” Shaking his shaggy blond head, he continued. “Anyway, according to this, more specific information was supposed to be forthcoming upon Grigg’s arrival in DC.”

“Get Special Agent Delaney on the phone,” Frank commanded. “Let’s figure out just what the hell is going on here.”

Ali couldn’t help but wholeheartedly agree.

“Uh-oh,” Ozzie murmured, and she decided that was another phrase she could do without. “No go on talking to Delaney. The man’s dead.”

“
Dead
?” Frank bellowed. “How? When?”

“Car crash. According to this,” Ozzie indicated his glowing computer screen, “police assume he fell asleep at the wheel. His car ran off an overpass on Highway 1 and ended up in the Potomac on the…” He leaned in closer to his monitor. “Shit. The crash happened the very night—or early morning more precisely—of Grigg’s supposed security detail for the senator.”

Oh boy, this was
so
not good. Even Ali, naturally cock-eyed optimist that she was, didn’t believe in coincidences of this magnitude.

Apparently neither did Frank.

“So Grigg takes a job for the FBI without telling any of us,” he said, “and that very night his FBI contact is dead and Grigg is less than twenty-four hours away from being snatched out of the middle of the Syrian desert and tortured by a group of terrorists who were never supposed to be in that region? Something stinks.”

“Yeah,” Ozzie said. “And this time it isn’t your socks, Dan Man.”

No one was in the mood to appreciate Ozzie’s attempt at levity.

“Okay,” Frank slapped his wide palm on the table, taking charge. “I’m going to get on the horn to General Fuller. Let him contact those fucks…uh, ’scuse my language, ladies, at the FBI. Hopefully, he can convince their director to look into whatever this Agent Delaney was investing. “

“Dude,” Dan snorted, “good luck with that. Those folks are tighter than a virgin’s pu…er,” he glanced sheepishly at Ali then winced when Patti slapped him on the back of the head. “Sorry,” he mumbled, kissing his wife’s hand and looking genuinely apologetic before returning his attention to Frank. “Let’s just say they’re never happy to share their secrets.”

“Well, they better
get
happy or we’re going to have to start rattling their fucking cages.” Frank winced. “Uh, ’scuse the language again, ladies—”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Frank,” Becky grumped, “we’re not gonna pass out because you’ve got a goddamned, shitty, little sonofabitchin’ potty mouth.”

Ali couldn’t help it, one corner of her mouth twitched.

Patti giggled behind her hand and Dan snorted.

Everyone in the room felt the release of pent-up tension, like a stretched rubber band had suddenly been turned loose. Nothing better than laughter through tears. Thank you,
Steel Magnolias
.

Frank, it seemed, was the only one who didn’t find Becky’s little speech entertaining. He glowered so fiercely, Ali wondered how Becky’s hair didn’t spontaneously combust. She had to give the young woman definite props for being able to flash the Black Knights’ boss a very convincing so-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it grin.

Ozzie piped up. “Oh, and FYI, that license plate Ali snapped a photo of belongs to a midnight blue Lincoln Navigator owned by a Mr. John Robert Godfrey. He’s a sixty-five-year old middle school principal who’s been working for the Wilmington School District for over twenty-two years.”

“No.” She was already shaking her head before he could finish. “I know the difference between black and blue. This vehicle was black, jet black. And the guy behind the wheel was closer to thirty-five than sixty-five.”

“Yeah,” Dan intoned. “It couldn’t be that easy.”

“What?” she asked.

“The first thing any professional operator would do while on a stake-out or doing reconnaissance is switch out license plates.”

“Oh,” her shoulders hunched. She’d been so proud of getting that picture. And it was all for nothing. “So that’s that then.”

“Not necessarily,” Frank assured her. “We’ve got a couple of strings we can pull and see what unravels. Now, I know you’re tired, but I need you to concentrate.”

She dragged herself upright and nodded, using every bit of self-discipline she possessed to keep functioning even though her stomach ached, her sleep-deprived brain operated through a sticky film of tar, and she really, really needed a little privacy to indulge in a good cry. Not to mention the fact that all the Coke made her need to pee like a Russian racehorse.

“Did Grigg send you anything out of the ordinary? A file, a letter? Perhaps even a package?”

She chewed on her bottom lip, wracking her sluggish brain. “No,” she finally shook her head. “Nothing.”

“I’ve had no opportunity, sir.”

The impertinent tone coming through the phone made Senator Aldus’s blood pressure threaten to shoot through the roof like Old Faithful.

His doctor warned him to cut his stress levels. How the hell he was supposed to do that when he was surrounded by imbeciles was anyone’s guess. If he looked in the mirror right now, his face would probably be the same burgundy color as the dress his wife decided—after much hand-twisting and hem-hawing—to wear to tonight’s charity ball.

His wife…

He’d married her almost twenty years ago for her political connections and bourgeois status. And he’d grown to hate her more and more each day since.

Just thinking of her made the thick vein in his forehead pulse in time to the beat of his heart.

“What the fuck do you mean you’ve had no opportunity? She’s been there nearly twelve hours!” The plastic casing of his cellular phone crackled in warning, and he took a deep breath in order to make himself release the death-grip he had on the device before he crushed it in his hand.

“Miss Morgan hasn’t left Black Knights Inc.’s premises.”

“So?” Aldus couldn’t help it; he once more tightened his grip on the phone and wished like hell it was the stupid shit’s neck. What good did it do to hire an ex-spook when the sonofabitch couldn’t do something as simple as a little snatch and grab? Obviously the CIA was losing its touch if this was the caliber of agent it was churning out nowadays.

“Pardon my saying so, sir, but you’re not paying me enough to break into Black Knights Inc. It might look like nothing more than a high-tech, highly secured custom motorcycle shop from the outside, but I’ve studied the schematics of the place, and it’s a goddamned fort. If all they’re doing is building bikes in there, I’ll eat my jockey shorts for dinner.”

Aldus’s wife poked her head into his home office, her ice-blond hair arranged to perfection, the diamond clusters he’d bought her for their tenth wedding anniversary—because he had to keep up appearances, even with the missus—glinting in her ears.

Christ! What now?

“Sweetheart,” she said in her nasally, upper-crust Boston accent. It screeched down his spine like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Hurry or we’re going to be late.”

“Just another minute, dear.” He pasted on a smile when he really wanted to throw his lead paperweight at her pretty, insipid face. Just thinking of the snap of those delicate bones and the bright burst of blood had his inauthentic smile turning genuine.

She nodded regally and backed out of his office. He listened until he heard the delicate click of her Prada slingback pumps echoing down the tiled hallway before he hissed into the phone, “I don’t give a fuck how you do it. Find a way to grab her. And do it now. Tonight. I want those missing files on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

He punched the end button on the cell phone so hard he chipped the manicure he’d received just this morning.

Fuck!

***

What
am
I
doing
here?

It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours Ali had the thought. Only
here
happened to be Red Delilah’s.

Not necessarily a quintessential biker bar name, but this was certainly a quintessential biker bar. Peanuts littered the floor, Metallica blasted from the jukebox but still couldn’t drown out the loud continuous click of a cue ball making contact with its target at the felt-covered table in the back, and the musty smell of spilled draft beer and old cigarette smoke lingered in the air.

Yes, this was certainly a quintessential biker bar. One that just happened to be run by
the
most intimidating, stereotypical, ’50s pin-up girl on the planet.

As if her day could’ve gotten any worse.

But wait. It had. Because she was here. In this god-awful place, wearing these god-awful clothes, finishing up her last bite of this…well, in truth the dinner was far from god-awful.

She’d woken up from her nap—if you could call eight hours of near comatose sleep after a good solid hour of crying herself sick, something as simple as a nap—totally ravenous.

Becky’d spotted her as she’d stumbled down the stairs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Without preamble or prudence, Becky demanded, “Get changed. We’re all headed over to Delilah’s. We’ll order dogs from the joint next door.”

Uh, what? “Dogs?”

“Yeah,” Becky eyed her with a sly grin. “You
have
had a traditional Chicago-style hotdog before, haven’t you?”

“Ugh. Processed mystery meat. No thanks,” she said, even though her stomach was busy gnawing a hole through to her backbone. She’d take a pass.

“Oh!” Becky grabbed her chest as if shot. “Bite your tongue.” She hooked a friendly arm around Ali’s shoulders and herded her back upstairs. “A traditional Chicago hotdog is an all-beef frankfurter with a boat load of toppings. We say it’s a dog that’s been dragged through the garden. You’ll love it. I promise.”

Ali had her doubts, but they were totally assuaged as she licked the last bit of celery salt from her fingers. No joke, there was only one word to describe the concoction she’d just wolfed down. Delicious.

Her outfit was another matter entirely. She warily glanced down at her bare midriff for about the thousandth time.

If the faculty and students of Ridgeline Elementary could see her now…

They’d probably run screaming in the other direction. Sheesh.

A ragged AC/DC tank top that did humiliatingly little to hide the lacy straps of her red bra combined with a skintight pair of Becky’s low-riding Guess jeans—which had more holes than material—to have her tugging once more at the cropped hem of her shirt in a vain attempt to conceal her belly button ring. Obviously Becky approved of that little item of jewelry because it was the one thing of her own the woman allowed her keep.

Pfft
. Really,
Ali
was the one who needed advice on fashion?

Glancing around at the other patrons, she scowled. No. Absolutely not. Not unless it was fashionable for a guy who closely resembled Santa Claus to squeeze himself into leather pants and a holey white T-shirt with a slogan that read FREE MUSTACHE RIDES
.

Ugh. Her hotdog started to reverse direction at the thought as the constant rumble of motorcycles coming and going echoed through the building over the sound of the jukebox. A group of businessmen, whom Becky described as “weekend warriors,” looked completely out of place in the rough-and-tumble joint, especially since they were bellied up to the bar beside a handful of burly looking guys wearing leather jackets with patches depicting a fearsome-looking angel holding a cigar in one hand and a handgun in the other and the words DARK ANGELS stitched across the top.

This place was surreal. Scratch that. Ever since Grigg’s death, her entire
life
was surreal.

And it didn’t lessen her foul mood in the slightest when the sky-high, red patent leather pumps that’d been foisted on her began killing her toes, even while sitting down.

How was that even possible?

Obviously the shoes were designed by some sadistic man who liked to cripple women…probably so they’d be unable to scamper away while he tried to give them free mustache rides.

“Stop fidgeting. You look great,” Becky assured her while absently scanning the bar. Patti had gone to use the ladies’ room, and the men of Black Knights Inc. were huddled around the jukebox in the corner, presumably to pick out more music.

Anything besides Metallica would work, Ali thought.

Or
not.

Pantera started screaming from the speakers, and she supposed next time she needed to be more specific when asking for small miracles.

Funny how the Knights were supposed to be plugging in new tunes, but not one of them was digging in his jeans for change. Neither were any of them actually
looking
at the jukebox.

They must consider her to be a real moron if they thought they were fooling her for a second.

They weren’t over there for the music. Oh no. They were over there discussing what options they had concerning her “situation.”

Over dinner, Frank told her General Fuller was unable to contact the director of the FBI. The Director was supposedly in closed-door meetings all day and wouldn’t be able to return Frank’s inquiry into what Agent Delaney was investigating until tomorrow.

Frank tried to give Ali the impression he intended to leave it at that, at least for the night. But one look at his frustrated expression and she quickly surmised he wasn’t the kind of man to simply wait around for answers to fall in his lap.

“I feel like a fool,” she groused as she toed out of Becky’s ridiculous shoes.

Becky shot her a sharp look. “What? You look fantastic. Very mysterious. Smoldering. So stop fidgeting.”

Ali snorted.

“You do,” Becky insisted. “Didn’t you see the look on Ghost’s face when you stepped into the shop?”

Yes, she saw it. And again she thought perhaps something hot flashed behind his eyes. But then when they’d all fired up the engines on their Harleys—which was a sound and sensation Ali would never forget for the rest of her natural life—she moved to hop up behind Nate, but he waved her off with a muttered, “You’re ridin’ with Ozzie.”

Okay
, she thought.
I
don’t even
know
Ozzie
but…whatever.

She supposed she really shouldn’t have been so surprised. Nate always went out of his way to avoid touching her. Not everyone. Just her.

“Stop pulling at that shirt,” Becky demanded now, giving her the evil eye. Not hard to do with a quarter inch of jet black eyeliner smeared around her lids. Alice Cooper was somewhere applauding and biting the head off a chicken. “You’re going to stretch it out and then I’ll have to trim the hem again.”

Trim the hem? If Becky trimmed the hem any more, it’d be nothing but a cotton collar attached to a couple of arm holes.

“I should’ve just worn my own clothes,” Ali sighed in resignation as it became apparent no amount of maneuvering would lengthen the hem of the tank top.

“Yeah, ’cause a pink, sparkly bebe T-shirt would’ve fit in so well here,” Becky stated dryly.

Okay, the woman had a point.

Red Delilah’s sported more leather than a herd of Texas cattle. All black, all shot through with silver studded detailing. All very intimidating—and that was before one started to read the T-shirt slogans.

And then there was Delilah. The bar’s proprietress.

She made the patrons look shockingly under-leathered. Ali couldn’t begin to guess the woman’s age. She had a sort of timeless quality about her. Like an old film star. And like those old film stars, her figure would make an hourglass weep with envy. Of course, it helped when all those curves were on display beneath a black leather cat-suit whose top must’ve come from a Victoria’s Cleavage catalog.

Sometimes God giveth and then he just keeps on giveth-ing.

Ali glanced in the woman’s direction as she sashayed—there was really no other way to describe the dramatic sway of those dangerous, leather-clad hips—out from behind the bar and over to the group of men by the jukebox.

If the Knights were dogs, they’d be panting.

She decided right then she didn’t particularly like Delilah—if that was really the woman’s name. Not because she was gorgeous. No, no. Ali objected to her existence because she managed to do the impossible.

Looping long arms around Nate’s neck, Delilah kissed him full on the mouth and leaned in to whisper something in his ear.

That’s when it happened. The impossible, that is.

Because that’s when Nathan Weller, former sergeant of the Marine Corps, current government defense contractor, and all-time Ice Man—as in cold as ice, heart like ice—laughed.

And not your regular ol’ tehehe-that-was-funny laugh.

Oh, no.

A big booming roar rose above the pounding rock ’n’ roll. His whole body was overcome by it. His head thrown back, thick throat working, big shoulders shaking.

It was the most amazingly…
bizarre
thing Ali’d ever seen.

Which was saying something given the clientele inside Red Delilah’s.

And for some reason she absolutely refused to think about, it…well…it rankled. She’d known the man for twelve years, and she’d never seen him laugh like that, which just proved she didn’t really know him at all. Case in point: she’d always considered him to be a little limited in the vocabulary department and then he goes and whips out a word like autoschediastic. What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks did autoschediastic mean?

It was disconcerting to think she could’ve been so wrong about—

“Got room for one more?” a deep, scratchy voice ripped her attention away from the couple by the jukebox.

Oh, good heavens.

She wasn’t sure if the guy who slid into the booth across from her and Becky was a welcome distraction or not. He had more hair than a mountain man and a belly that looked entirely capable of holding a whole keg of beer.

He winked at her and flashed his gold-toothed smile.

Really, no joke.

Like, all his front teeth were sparkly, solid gold.

Cripes. At least his shirt had no slogan. She supposed that was a saving grace…and would you look at how her standards had dropped since entering Red Delilah’s? The guy had chewing tobacco stains in his beard, and she was ready to give him intelligence points simply because he’d chosen to leave the personal advertisements at home.

Wow, the day had truly reached a new low.

“Buzz off, Buzzard,” Becky made a shooing motion with her hands. “No one’s interested.”

“Now Rebel, darlin’. Let the lady speak for herself.” Again the man…Buzzard? Really? fixed his troublingly licentious gaze on Ali. “Come home with me tonight, darlin’. I’ll give you a ride so good you’ll never hanker for the seat of a Harley again.”

Jesus, Mary, and Jos—

“
Whatever!
” Becky rolled her eyes. “Shirley told me your thing’s as crooked as those insurance scams you tried to get us all to invest in.”