Authors: Julie Ann Walker
“But crooked in the right direction.” Buzzard winked again, not in the least bit concerned to discover there were women sharing his bedroom secrets, nor was he denying the fact that he was involved in criminal activity. He leaned forward and his breath smelled like cheep beer and strong cigars. “Gotta a little upward tilt to it that hits
just
the right spot.”
Oh God.
What
was she doing here?
***
Scotch.
That’s what he needed. A nice single-malt. Lagavulin if he had his choice. And while he was taking his little trip through fantasyland, he might as well throw in a quick slap and tickle with that brunette in the corner. The one who’d tossed him a couple of shy smiles. The one whose leather skirt and V-neck Motley Crüe T-shirt were doing a fairly fantastic job of enhancing what were already quite a few blessings from God.
Right.
Like either of those were even a slight possibility.
Not that ex-CIA agent Dagan Zoelner didn’t think he had the sexual chops to seduce the brunette. He figured he could have her naked and sweaty in no time at all. A few compliments, some sensual music, a nice glass of wine…
Which just served to remind him of the scotch that was also
so
not gonna happen. Two things he didn’t mix on a job: booze and women. And wasn’t that just a crying shame?
Damn! The day had gone from bad to worse.
Because he was no longer sure he was working for the “good guys.”
Well…to be completely truthful, he’d been having doubts for weeks, ever since Aldus instructed him to snatch Alisa Morgan and bring her in.
Dagan was confident that there wasn’t cause for such drastic measures.
After following the woman around for nearly three months, after monitoring her every move and all her correspondence, he’d come to the conclusion she was just what she appeared to be—a kindergarten teacher who led a normal, if somewhat dull, life. She was less likely to be involved in a scheme to sell government secrets to the highest bidder than he was likely to be involved in an abstinence lecture.
“Can I getcha something else?” the middle-aged cocktail waitress asked as she sidled up to his table, her stick-thin legs protruding from the top of a pair of loose, calf-high boots until it looked like she was standing in buckets. From the weary lines around her eyes and lips and the way she unconsciously wielded a tray full of drinks, Dagan could tell the woman had been slinging beer for a couple of decades.
He glanced down at his tonic water before smiling up at her. That had its usual effect. The woman’s eyes widened and the wrinkles around her mouth softened as she grinned in response. “Thanks,” he told her, “but I’m fine for now.”
“Okay, sugar,” she purred, laying a thin hand, tipped with long, pink, fiberglass nails, on his shoulder. “But when you change your mind, my name’s Shirley. Just holler.”
“I sure will.” Dagan winked at her, and she giggled like a woman half her age before turning to deliver the contents of her tray to a group of rambunctious college kids at the back of the bar.
Dagan took a sip of tonic and glanced at the booth where Alisa Morgan was sitting.
He’d convinced Aldus to let him handle the situation. As opposed to the senator’s plan to kidnap her, he’d contemplated seducing the woman. He’d figured he could oh-so-innocently inquire about the missing files while she was hot and heavy. In his experience, a little pillow talk went a long way. But she was just so damned…
sweet
, and in the last three months she hadn’t had any men in her life, which proved she wasn’t the type to casually hop into bed with a handsome stranger. So even if he could somehow seduce her—okay, he knew he could—the question quickly became: did he want to? Did he want that on his conscience?
No. He most certainly did not.
Changing tactics, he’d been in the process of devising a way to casually bump into her, to befriend her and then…she’d been mugged.
He was pretty sure Aldus was behind the attack on Alisa Morgan despite the senator’s protestations of innocence. And that just didn’t sit well with him…at all.
He was absolutely convinced that, whether or not Ms. Morgan had the files, she was an innocent pawn simply caught in the middle of…whatever the hell this was turning out to be.
He hadn’t been too surprised when she’d taken off after the mugging. Nor had he been surprised when she’d stopped at her dead brother’s former place of employment. After all, what could make a woman feel safer than to surround herself with a bunch of ex-spec ops types?
Oh, he knew all about Grigg Morgan and his friends and their custom motorcycle shop. At least he thought he did…
One look at the blueprints of the compound that was Black Knights Inc. had convinced him he didn’t know dick.
Earlier this afternoon, when Dagan tried his contact within the CIA—he still had one even after that horrible little incident in Iraq, saints be praised—in order to get more information, he’d run into the proverbial brick wall. Which fell directly into the downright spooky category, because the CIA was supposed to know
everything
.
Well, it appeared
they
didn’t know dick about the guys at Black Knights Inc. According to his source, the Knights were just what they seemed. A group of ex-military men who’d traded in their knives and guns for wrenches and grinders.
Um. No.
The whole motorcycle thing was only their cover. Anyone with any sort of military training could tell you those bad boys absolutely reeked of government affiliation.
Which meant that Grigg Morgan had been affiliated with the government. And that didn’t lend much credence to Senator Aldus’s claim that Morgan had become tired of living on a grease monkey’s salary, had taken the skills he’d learned from Uncle, and employed them in order to steal highly classified and potentially threatening government documents. According to Aldus, Morgan had planned to sell those documents on the black market.
Sure. And Dagan was the bloomin’ tooth fairy.
He was beginning to suspect the good senator was completely full of shit. Which meant the intelligent thing to do would be to quit this sketchier-by-the-minute job, haul ass back to DC, and forget he ever heard the name Senator Alan Aldus.
But something held him in his seat in the corner table, deep in the dusky shadows of Red Delilah’s. And it wasn’t the brunette who’d become disheartened with his lack of follow-through and decided to take her gin and tonic and her very nice ass—
Sweet
Lord! It’s heart-shaped!—
into the next room.
He almost groaned at the lost opportunity, but he didn’t give chase as his always-intrepid cock begged him to do.
Because like it or not—which he most certainly did
not—
he’d allowed himself to be dropped center-stage in the middle of what was promising to turn into a shit-storm of near epic proportions.
So he’d do what he did best.
Watch. And wait.
And then former sergeant Nathan Weller turned dead black eyes on him and Dagan’s entire plan for the evening did a one-eighty.
His CIA contacts
had
been able to give him the military files on the employees of Black Knights Inc., and despite all the black ink hiding about fifty percent of what the documents held, the damned things
still
read like a catalog of Great American Heroes.
Shit! It was a rare thing when an ex-spook was genuinely rattled.
But there you had it. He’d spent the entirety of his adult life weighing the risks, playing the odds, and right now, looking into Ghost’s eyes, he suspected both were stacked up against him.
Like any smart man, Dagan Zoelner knew when to cut his losses and get the hell out of Dodge.
“I could be wrong, but I’m thinkin’ Ali and Ghost are sittin’ in a tree,” Ozzie whispered in Nate’s ear as Delilah returned to her position behind the bar. Nate snatched a surreptitious glance back at the table where the ladies sat.
“D’you have a death wish?” he asked the kid in all earnestness, even though he was only giving Ozzie about half of his attention because Buzzard—that dick—was reaching across the table to grab Ali’s hand.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Ozzie singsonged. “I’m right, aren’t I? You
like
her.” He didn’t wait for Nate’s reply before he announced gleefully to the others, “Nate ‘Ghost’ Weller, aka Mr. Emotionless, has
feelings
.”
Sweet. Christ.
What
was
it with everyone today? First Delilah and now Ozzie. Did he have some sort of flashing neon sign on his forehead?
“Y’better get away from me,” he advised Ozzie, skating another quick glance toward the booth. Now Buzzard—that dick—was levered halfway across the tabletop, whispering in Ali’s ear, and the woman was just crazy enough to laugh at whatever the licentious old fart was saying.
“But dude, that’s so sweet, so roman—”
Nate grabbed the kid’s arm none-too-gently and jerked him into the corner behind the jukebox. Boss lifted a brow at the two of them but continued his conversation with Dan.
“—tic,” Ozzie finished, rubbing his upper arm where Nate’d manacled him. “Easy on the goods, man. The ladies love these guns.” The kid flexed his biceps and bent his head to give each of his “guns” a kiss.
“I don’t know what you think,” Nate growled, “but there’s nothin’ doing between me and Ali. She’s just the little sister of my best friend. End of story.”
He really, really wished that was the end of the story.
“But her voice is so happy, so sunny,” Ozzie reminded Nate of the one rather humiliating moment of his day. Was he…? Yep, the kid actually had the audacity to flutter his eyelashes and make exaggerated googly-eyes.
Death wish. There was just no other answer.
He stared at the kid, hoping Ozzie would realize how close he was to getting plugged.
He didn’t.
“I think you should ask her out,” Ozzie declared, wiggling his brows.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think I should—”
He stopped right there because the hairs at the back of his neck suddenly twitched with life. Carefully setting his beer atop the jukebox, he scanned the bar.
There. In the far corner. He allowed his vision to adjust to the shadows, and his eyes clashed with a cold, gray stare.
Uh-huh. He experienced a moment of…well, not recognition, because he’d never seen the man before. But it was certainly an instance of like-meeting-like.
Ol’ Mystery Man in the Corner was an operator, for what or for whom he couldn’t begin to guess. But the guy was an operator. He had a certain deadness about the eyes that said he’d been stripped of all his idealism and left with only one thing: the mission.
Lifting his chin in a gesture that succinctly conveyed
come
on
over
and
introduce
yourself,
pendejo
,
Nate was momentarily stunned when Mystery Man simply slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and shook his head. Once. One quick jerk of the chin from left to right.
Just Nate’s luck. A man with balls bigger than brains. Did the guy really think he could get out of the bar?
Not likely.
Not with four of the Black Knights in residence.
“What?” Ozzie asked, instantly alert. The kid may be a nuisance of legendary status, but he was as much a warrior as any of them. He instinctively knew when the customary shit was about to hit the proverbial fan.
“Guy in the corner,” Nate said. “He’s gonna try’n’ make a break for it. We’re not gonna let ’im.”
Ozzie turned just in time to see Mystery Man slowly lift himself from his shadowy seat. Upon standing, Mr. Mystery faced the trio in the booth. Ali, Becky, and Buzzard—that dick—were completely unaware of the little war of calculated movements and cold, intense eye contact that was waging around them, which was just as well. Then Nate noticed the unmistakable hollow outline pressing into the fabric of the front pocket of the guy’s jacket, and his head nearly exploded. That distinct circle was pointing straight at Ali.
The fucker dared?
Rage poured through him, hot as iron through a smelting furnace, but there was nothing for him to do about it. One wrong move and Ali could take a bullet. And that just wasn’t going to happen.
Not on his watch.
Not ever.
He stood stock-still and silently seethed. Had anyone been paying attention, he felt sure they’d see him pulling a teapot routine, steam pouring from his nostrils and ears.
The instant Mystery Man slid out the back door, both he and Ozzie bolted, grabbing for weapons as they went. The cold steel of his 13RTK Recon Tanto blade felt truly satisfying as he palmed it with one hand while reaching into his waistband for his .45 with the other. Just in case that wasn’t enough, he had two extra seven-round clips in his jacket pockets.
He just never felt quite dressed without enough firepower to start a small war, which probably said something rather unpleasant about his psyche, but who cared?
Not him.
He could hear the heavy footfalls of Dan and Boss behind them as both men sprang into action. Years of instinctual readiness made them react in less than a split second.
He smiled at the taletell
shnick
of Dan chambering a round into his baby—the Ruger P90 he’d inherited from his father.
The Knights liked to tease Dan about spending more time caressing that gun than he did his wife.
My
wife
isn’t likely to have to save my life anytime soon
, was Dan’s stock reply.
Well Nate, for once, was mighty glad to know the little .45 was in good working order. Because they were likely going to have to shoot someone.
Mystery Man had had the extremely bad sense to point a gun at Ali. Chances were fairly good—unless he had one hell of an explanation—the dude wasn’t going to walk away from the encounter without a couple of extra holes in him.
The four of them burst through the back door into the alley. The overflowing dumpster across the way had gone from ripe to emanating what Nate could only assume must be poisonous fumes, but Mystery Man was nowhere in sight.
Damnit!
With a hand signal, he motioned for Boss and Dan to head left while he and Ozzie searched right.
Geez. This whole thing with Ali was steeped in un-fucking-believable. To recap, she’d been mugged, bugged, and threatened with a bullet. And all of that in less than thirty-six hours.
Grigg, my brother, what the hell did you get us all involved in?
***
“The part of hovercraft doesn’t suit you, Frank,” Becky snarled as she tried to keep up with Ozzie and the program they were simultaneously trying to hack. “Breathing down my neck doesn’t make this process go any faster, it just makes me nervous.”
So
back
the
hell
off, you big, dumb, blind, exasperating oaf!
She couldn’t say that last part. Not if she valued her job—which she did. Unfortunately. There was something about eating three times a day that appealed to her. Then, of course, there was her lollipop habit. Not cheap.
“Didn’t you tell me just this morning that you were learning all of this in order to take on a more lucrative position within our organization? Well, stress comes with the job, Rebecca. Get used to it.”
Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca. Grrreat. God, he made her want to get a name change.
And yes, she’d told him this morning after she’d confessed how she’d broken into Grigg’s personal email account that she was learning these rather, er, dubious computer skills from Ozzie in order to better serve the team. Frank’d been ape-shit pissed enough about that little revelation, she figured it was probably prudent he not know Ghost was teaching her to shoot, Billy was giving her private lessons on explosives
,
and Steady was schooling her on rudimentary field medicine.
Yepper. It was best to just keep all that to herself. Ease him into the idea of her joining the team, really joining the team, a little at a time.
But first, she had to handle him looming over her, casting that monster shadow with his unbelievably wide shoulders, heating her back with the insidious warmth of his hard thighs, smelling like hot leather and cold beer and…Frank—which she could totally do. Yessiree, she could handle it. No problem.
Her fingers typed in the wrong command, and she cursed.
“I’m in,” Ozzie announced, and she threw her hands in the air.
In consolation, she unwrapped a grape Dum Dum and angrily plugged it into her frowning mouth. She nearly cracked a tooth, but seconds later the explosion of sugary flavor helped her focus on the task at hand instead of Frank’s distracting nearness.
Oh, and the teensy tiny minor fact that he was a total dill-hole where she was concerned.
Exiting her machine, she rolled her chair toward Ozzie’s monitor and watched code zip across the screen. They were plugged into the City of Chicago’s surveillance system. Not a totally difficult hack job, but the resident computer virtuoso had beaten her again.
Whatever.
She’d continue to practice. At everything.
Because maybe then Frank would take her seriously, instead of viewing her as the necessary nuisance that kept all their covers intact. Maybe then he’d see her as a grown woman instead of the grease-covered, lollipop-sucking little sister of one of his men. Maybe then—
“Now we just need to upload the partial picture we got of Mystery Man from Delilah’s security camera into my program and compare it to possible matches in the city’s system. If we can get a better picture of the guy’s face, we can run it through the facial recognition software and determine just who in the world we’re dealing with,” Ozzie explained while his fingers continued to blur above the keyboard.
“Did you get a chance to see this guy?” Dan asked Ali. “Is he the one following you?”
Ali leaned in closer to the upper right hand corner of Ozzie’s monitor where the grainy photo of Mystery Man flickered rapidly as it was compared to the city’s surveillance footage.
“Looks like him,” she murmured, concentrating on the picture. “The hair’s right. The build’s right. He’s certainly not my mugger. That guy was huge. More the size of Frank, but…” she frowned at the photo, “I can’t positively tell if that’s my elusive shadow or not,” she finished with frustration.
Yes well, they were all frustrated. But the fact that the guy had simply disappeared after supposedly pointing a gun at Ali’s head wasn’t what was putting a hard kink in Becky’s mood.
Nope. Her kink had everything to do with a certain man whose
nom
de
guerre
was Boss.
Why did he have to be such a hardass? Why couldn’t he just admit—
Suddenly the flickering stopped, and two photos appeared side-by-side on Ozzie’s computer screen.
“Damn, the boy’s good,” Dan whistled when the two snapshots pulled from the city’s site revealed less than the one taken from Delilah’s. They were clearly of the same man, but in both photos the guy’s face was averted. “Seems to know just where the cameras are and is careful to avoid them.”
“Told ya,” Ghost muttered. “The guy had spook written all over ’im.”
“CIA?” Frank asked, thankfully turning away and taking his heat, smell, and omnipresence with him. She could finally draw in a full breath.
“If I had t’ hazard a guess,” Ghost replied.
She noticed how Ali’s eyes widened at that particularly disturbing news and wondered if the woman consciously realized she’d just taken a step closer to Ghost, or if Ghost realized he’d unhesitatingly placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Those
two
are
fighting
a
losing
battle
, she thought.
They
should
just
do
it
already
and
get
it
over
with.
Yeah, right. Who was she trying to kid? Like she had any expertise when it came to the vagaries of romance, considering the only things keeping her warm at night were flannel sheets and Mr. Blue.
She was
such
a loser. Here she was, twenty-five years old, not too sore on the ol’ eyes—at least that’s what most of her friends of the male persuasion assured her—and all her action came from a seven-inch piece of sculpted bright blue rubber that required D batteries.
“Fuck!” Frank raked a hand through his hair and winced when he realized he’d let his potty mouth run away with him again in front of the ladies. She wondered if he was careful to act like a gentleman when he headed up north.
Oh yes, Becky knew all about his visits to Lincoln Park. She just didn’t know who he was visiting. And short of following him—she still had
some
pride left where he was concerned, thank God—she’d exhausted all other avenues of discovering who his secret trysting partner, or partners, ugh, were.
“First, it’s the FBI; now maybe we can add the lovely CIA to this unholy alphabet soup mix,” Frank growled. Shaking his head, he glanced at his timepiece. “It’s oh-one-hundred. Let’s hit our racks for the night. Maybe tomorrow will shed some light on this…this,” he shook his head again, “whatever the hell this is.”
Yeah, and maybe tomorrow Becky would finally get up the nerve to tell him how she really felt.
And also maybe tomorrow pigs would fly.
***
Ali couldn’t sleep.
It had nothing to do with her eight-hour nap or her strange surroundings, because even though the guest loft at Black Knights Inc. was more the size of a hotel room, just big enough for a little kitchenette and a white-tiled bathroom with a shower stall—at least Grigg had been telling her the truth about
something—
it was still beautifully appointed and completely welcoming.