Hell for Leather: Black Knights Inc. (6 page)

But then it was gone. Just like that—
finger-snap
—and she was left to wonder if she’d really seen anything unusual at all. Perhaps the fear and fatigue, not to mention the crack to the cranium she’d received, were causing her to imagine things.

“I just—” Her voice sounded like she’d been swallowing broken beer bottles. “I just wanted to th-thank you for…everything.”

He shook his head, causing a dark lock to fall over his brow, his expression now firmly entrenched in the Mask of Inscrutability category. “Darlin’,” he said in that deep, smoky voice of his, “no thanks are needed. Helpin’ out in times of trouble is what friends are for.”

What
friends
are
for…

“A-are we friends, Mac?” she ventured, her mouth so dry she was almost tempted to take another sip of the goop that passed as coffee.

“Of course we’re friends, darlin’,” he drawled again.

“Lovin’! Touchin’! Squeeezin’!” Ozzie belted out in a surprisingly clear tenor, instantly breaking whatever spell she’d been under, severing the tie that had held their gazes locked together.

“Goddamnit, Ozzie!” Zoelner yelled. “If you don’t turn off that Journey shit in two seconds I’m going to lose my mind.”

“No way, man,” Ozzie retorted, never taking his eyes from his computer screen and never breaking the rhythm of his fingers dancing across the keyboard at lightning speed. “Steve Perry sings from the heart
and
the hair. You’d do well to appreciate that.”

“I’ll give you something to appreciate,” Zoelner shot back. “How about my boot up your ass? I can’t think straight with that crap on and you wailing like a goat being groomed with a cheese grater.”

“First of all,” Ozzie said, “I’ve been told I have a lovely singing voice.”

“You can’t believe the compliments your mother gives you,” Zoelner countered.

“And secondly,” Ozzie continued as if Zoelner hadn’t spoken, “you need to think straight to run a simple scan of military archives? Pssht! And they try to make us believe that all you government spooks are the cream of the crop. What a crock of—”

“Okay, boys,” Becky interjected, yanking a purple Dum Dum from her mouth. “Put away the rulers and button up your flies, because I’m finding jack shit on the city surveillance cams. We’ve run into a brick wall with the mystery man in Timberlands. The scoreboard says we’re down by one, so we don’t have time to sit around while you two figure out whose giggle-stick is the biggest.”

Giggle-stick?
Delilah felt her lips twitch.

Then, “Sweet lord of the rings!” Ozzie whooped, shooting a fist in the air. “Un-bunch those panties, Becky my dear, because
now
we’re cooking with gas!” He shoved a finger at his computer screen.

Becky slid her rolling chair next to his—one loose wheel clattered against the hard concrete floor—and leaned in close to his monitor. Turning, Becky pinned Delilah with an excited stare. “Does the name Charles Sander ring a bell?”

***

Delilah trembled at Becky’s question, and Mac instinctively squeezed her tighter to his side. Then he was reminded that, sure as shit, touching her
was
like taking a hit of crack—and let’s not even get into what the feel of her soft, warm lips or her hot, moist breath was like. Because
holy
shit
fire!
That innocent little kiss? He didn’t know it was possible to get so hard so fast. And all of this, all the touching and the friendly kissing was getting out of hand, making him forget himself.

Get
it
together, asshole.

And, yessir. That was a sage bit of advice if ever there was some. Time to take it. Like,
now
.

He jerked his arm out from around her back so quickly that Steady whacked him upside the head. “Be still,
chorra
. Or else it’ll look Dr. Frankenstein himself took a needle and thread to you.”

Okay, so that was one seriously unsmooth move, you stupid, horny dillhole,
Mac chided himself while simultaneously rubbing his sore head and lifting a warning brow at Steady who, like always, chose to ignore the killing gleam in his eye.

Luckily, when he turned back, it was to find Delilah hadn’t noticed his total douche-canoe maneuver. Her gorgeous green eyes were glued to Becky like the blonde was made of cane molasses.

“Charlie Sander. I—I don’t remember if that’s him or not,” she said, her breathy voice unusually hoarse, as if she’d swallowed all the gravel on the old ranch road that led to his boyhood home.

Christ
…that sound just…well, it just
got
to him. He was tempted once more to place a comforting arm around her shoulders. After all, she was so incredibly soft. So amazingly warm. So…
so
much woman—and, yeah, sick, twisted, shitheel that he was, he was referring to her boobs. Her lush, delicious, overly abundant boobs. And having her in his arms just now, and earlier, out in the courtyard, had felt…
something.
Something a far cry closer to
right
than he in any way, shape, or form wanted to admit.

Are
you
really
stupid
enough
to
let
history
repeat
itself?

The question was either posed by the universe or his own subconscious. Of course, where the query originated didn’t amount to a hill of beans, because either way, the answer was the same.

No.
No, he was
not
stupid enough to let history repeat itself. Because the truth was, no matter how good or how
right
she felt in his arms, That Woman was nothing but walking trouble and heartache.

He’d learned that the hard way…

Boy, howdy
, had he ever. Barely a week went by when he wasn’t reminded of the pain Jolene’s leaving had caused. Barely a month passed when he wasn’t wrenched from his sleep by the nightmare of her betrayal and what it had cost him. And sometimes, when he was all alone, he could still hear the sound of a strangled voice calling her name in the darkness.

“We haven’t been able to access your uncle’s text messages,” Becky said. “But we have been able to access his call log and Sander’s number is the only one with a southern Illinois prefix. Plus Charlie is a nickname for Charles, and—”

“Well, that’s—” Delilah shook her head a little frantically. Her slim, pale throat—a throat Mac
didn’t
want to touch and kiss and lick;
liar, liar, pants all the freakin’ way on fire!
—worked over a hard swallow. “That’s got to be him, right?”

Her excited tone hit Mac in his soft, gooey center. And,
yes
, he had a soft, gooey center. Because even though he may be determined not to let history repeat itself, not to let himself get caught up in her sticky web of seduction, that didn’t mean he wanted to see her enthusiasm ground to dust either. Fortunately—
thank
you
sweet
baby
Jesus
—Zoelner saved him from the unenviable task of having to be the one to douse that spark in her eye. “Don’t get too excited,” the ex-spook said. “This could be the guy we’re searching for, or it could just be coincidence. We still need to run his name through military records to see if he was a Marine.”

“Yeah.” Delilah nodded again. “Okay.” Mac could tell she was trying hard, and failing miserably, to temper her enthusiasm.

“Then, if he
was
a Marine, we can start looking for his last known address,” Zoelner added.

“Sounds good.” Delilah licked her lips. The dart of her pink tongue made Mac’s—

“Ow! Goddamnit!” he hissed. “Lord have mercy, Steady,” he groused, frowning up at the man. “Are you usin’ a seven-gauge needle to stitch me up, or what?”

“Oh, pipe down, you big baby,” Steady replied. “I gave you a local. And besides, this is just a little stab wound. People get stab wounds all the time.”

Mac turned to Delilah, one corner of his mouth quirked, his expression all about the
I
told
you
so
. But he was thwarted from speaking the words aloud when Zoelner yelled, “Bingo!”

“What’ve you got?” Boss strolled into the conference area from his office, then immediately ordered, “Good God, Ozzie! Turn that shit off!”

“What?” Ozzie lifted his hands, blinking innocently. “I’m kicking mad flava in your ears. I’d think you would all thank me for it.”

“I’ll thank you by way of a boot up your ass,” Boss growled, throwing an arm around Becky’s shoulders when she came to stand beside him, bending to smack a quick kiss beside the lollipop stick protruding from her lips.

“What is
with
everybody wanting to put their boots up my ass?” Ozzie asked the room. “I know it’s a particularly cute ass, but—”

“Ozzie!” a chorus of voices, including Mac’s, yelled at once.

“Sheesh!” The guy held up his hands and Mac noticed his T-shirt was printed with the Starfleet logo and the words:
Are
you
out
of
your
Vulcan
mind?
“Tough crowd tonight,” he grumbled, twisting to switch off the music. Boss shook his head before pinning Zoelner with a no-nonsense stare. “What’ve you got, Z?”

Leaning forward, studying his computer screen intently and still typing, Zoelner said, “Charles Sander
was
in Delilah’s uncle’s Marine Corps unit. And I’m using his cell phone number to locate a phone bill, which
should
give us his last known address. Uh…give me a second here.” More rattling as the former–CIA agent attacked the keyboard. “Well, shit,” he said after a few seconds, sitting back and raking a hand through his hair. “I have no idea how to find his last known address. All I’m getting for him is a post office box.”

“He has a house,” Delilah insisted. “My uncle always talked about what a shithole it was.”

“Yeah.” Ozzie shrugged. “But how do you suggest we find it?”

For a couple of intense, breathless moments, no one moved. Mac racked his brain, trying to figure out their next move.
There
has
to
be
something. There has to be a way to
—And then Delilah came up with the answer for him.

“The IRS,” she said. “I know a back door into their database. We can cross reference Charles’s name with his PO box and check to see if he’s getting a yearly property tax bill.”

“No way.” Ozzie shook his head vehemently. “There’s absolutely no way I’m hacking into the Internal Revenue Service.”

“Why the hell not?” Mac frowned, wincing when Steady hit another particularly sore spot. He was beginning to think there’d been nothing but sugar water in that syringe of so-called numbing agent. “You hack into the NSA’s and CIA’s databases all the time.”

“Uh,
yeah
.” Ozzie pulled a face. “But the IRS is
scary
.”

Delilah snorted and pushed up from her seat, strolling over to Ozzie and his bank of computers. Mac didn’t let his eyes ping down to watch the sway of her ass. Or if he did, it was only for a nanosecond…er…okay, so maybe it was
two
nanoseconds. “I do it all the time for the law firm,” she said, claiming the seat Becky had vacated. Raising her arms to twist her hair quickly into some kind of sloppy updo thingy, she began lightly, but efficiently typing on the keyboard.

Yessir. It was his naughty librarian fantasy come to life. Little Mac, the goddamned idiot, sure took notice. Which was good and bad. Good because it distracted Mac until he could no longer feel the tug and pull of Steady’s needle. Bad because his jeans had suddenly shrunk six sizes. He reached down to adjust himself, ignoring the knowing smirk on Steady’s face when the guy caught his move.

“And here we go,” Delilah said, pointing at her screen.

“Good God, that was fast!” Ozzie enthused.

“The IRS. They see all. They know all.”

“
See
”—Ozzie shuddered dramatically—“and that’s why they’re scary.”

“Where does he live?” Mac asked.

Ozzie leaned forward to squint at the computer screen in front of Delilah. “Some place called Cairo, Illinois. Let me see if it’s…” He tapped a few keys on his own keyboard. “Yeah. It’s about forty-five minutes south of Marion.”

“Mac?” Delilah turned to him then, a wide smile splitting her face and making her eyes sparkle like a field of green wheat after a big thunderstorm. “This is it! We’re going to find him!”

She jumped up from the desk and raced toward him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it tight. “We’re really going to find him!”

Every cell inside him thrilled to the touch of her fingers.
Holy
shit
fire,
was all he could think.
Just
like
a
shot
of
pure
crack
cocaine…

Georgetown, Washington, DC

Music…

The sweet, dulcet tones of Dolly Parton singing about working nine to five filtered into Intelligence Agent Chelsea Duvall’s dreams, making her smile. Until her unconscious mind recognized the sound of her ringtone and thrust her into wakefulness.

“Son of a hoochie mama,” she growled, fumbling on the nightstand for her glasses. “Ow!” she squawked when, in her mad scramble to get the suckers on her face, she stabbed herself in the eyeball with an earpiece. Squinting her abused eye closed, she glanced at the glowing red numbers on her alarm clock with her one remaining functional peeper.

Eleven p.m.
This
can’t be good.

“Agent Duvall here,” she answered, not bothering to read the caller ID. There were only a handful of people who’d be phoning her at this hour, and they all belonged to The Company.

“We’ve got a red flag,” came the immediate reply from Joe Morales, her supervisor.

“Roger that,” she sat up, throwing back the thick purple quilt her mother made her after college graduation and prior to her recruitment by the CIA. Purple had been her favorite color since she was six years old and fell head-over-heels in love with Fred from the
Scooby-Doo
gang. Her young mind had picked up on the not-so-unspoken attraction between Fred and Daphne, and she’d used her brilliant kindergarten reasoning and deduction skills to conclude that it was Daphne’s snappy purple dress that was the big draw for Fred. In the way of first crushes, Fred had eventually fallen out of favor. Not so the color purple…

Reaching over, she snapped on the bedside lamp. Diffuse yellow light spilled around her room, highlighting the piles of file folders stacked on her dresser, chair, and bench. Next to her, two laptops occupied the space usually reserved for a lover.

Such
is
my
life
, she thought fleetingly—maybe she needed to revisit the whole Fred thing. Pulling one of the machines onto her lap and flipping up the lid, she blew out a breath. “All right, I’m ready, sir. Where’s the breach coming from?”

“The Black Knights.”

For a moment, all she could do was blink in confusion.

Was
she
still
asleep? Was this all a dream?

Before she had the chance to pinch herself, her supervisor barked, “Agent Duvall, did you copy that?”

“Yes, sir.” She shook her head and scrubbed a hand over her face. “I…I
think
I heard you say the breach was originating with the Black Knights.”

“Affirmative.”

Oh-
kay.
But… “So I don’t understand how that’s a breach then, sir. The Black Knights are—”

“Are you still friends with Dagan Zoelner?” The abruptness of the question, along with that name,
his
name, caused a hard lump to take shape at the back of her throat.

Dragging in a deep breath, the smell of Tide on her freshly laundered sheets grounded her enough to croak, “I wouldn’t say that, sir. No.”

She hadn’t heard from Dagan in almost two years. Not since the day he called her up, asking her for help, and she went and said something stupid like,
what
are
you
involved
in
this
time?
It was the
this
time
—basically a blinking neon sign referring to that terrible tragedy in Afghanistan—that’d done it, that’d hammered in the last nail on the coffin of any affection they might have once felt for each other.

Or…more like it had hammered in the last nail on the coffin of any affection
he
might have once felt for
her
.

Truth was, she’d never stopped thinking about him. Never stopped worrying about him and wondering if he was happy with his new job at Black Knights Inc. Never stopped questioning how things might’ve been different if only—

“Doesn’t matter,” Morales said. “You were once friends, so that gives us just the
in
we need.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to call them up and ask them why they’re running a search on the phone records of Theodore Fairchild.”

“Should that name ring a bell?” She glanced around at the myriad files she’d
yet
to go through since that treasonous agent, Luke Winterfield, had leaked classified information to the press—and then run like a scared rabbit to hide out in a Central American country with whom the U.S. had no extradition agreement. Of course, if the location of the CIA and NSA black sites had been
all
he leaked, and if the press had been the
only
people he leaked to
,
she wouldn’t be getting calls about red flags from her supervisor at eleven o’clock at night.

“No. It shouldn’t ring any bells. At least not yet,” Morales assured her. “It could be nothing more than coincidence, but I want to make sure of that. And you’re just the agent for the job.”

Usually when her supervisor stroked her ego, the ambitious, upstart career woman in her was tempted to purr like a cat. Not tonight, though. Because tonight he was asking her to phone Dagan Zoelner.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, sir.” She hoped he couldn’t hear the slight tremor in her voice. “Do I tell the Knights
why
I’m inquiring about their most recent Internet search?”

“No.”

Chelsea waited for more. Nothing came.

Morales could be amazingly eloquent and long-winded, especially when he was ranting about terrorist factions and rogue nations. Or he could be frustratingly succinct. At this moment, unfortunately for her, he’d chosen to be the latter.

“If you’ll pardon my confusion here, sir,” she finally said, “what
do
I tell them if not the truth?”

“Tell them that in our ongoing effort to assist them in their exemplary work for the president and his Joint Chiefs, we’ve been monitoring the online activity on one of their computers and we were simply wondering if there was anything we could do to help in regard to their most recent endeavors.”

Chelsea lifted her brows.
Okay, and
now
he
goes
for
eloquent
? “And what’s the
real
reason we’ve been monitoring the online activity on one of their computers?”

“It’s just a leftover from when we were looking for Rock Babineaux,” Morales admitted, referring to the huge blunder involving the framing of one of the Knights by a psychotic former government psychiatrist. And, yes, Chelsea knew just how ironic that sounded. Psychotic psychiatrist.
Jesus.
“And you know that once we get our sharp, little eavesdropping hooks in someone, we don’t like to let them go.”

Did she ever. “Dagan…uh…” She cleared her constricted throat.
Damned
pesky
lump.
“What I meant to say is that Agent Zoelner—”

“
Former
Agent Zoelner,” Morales stressed, obviously still firmly entrenched in the camp of people who placed the blame for that failed Afghani mission squarely on Dagan’s shoulders.

“Yes, sir,” she capitulated. “Former Agent Zoelner might ask why
I’m
the one calling. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him, given the friendly relationship you two once shared, that you’ve been appointed the official liaison between the United States Central Intelligence Agency and the covert group known as Black Knights Incorporated.”

“Is the official liaison between yada, yada even a real thing, sir?”

“It is now. Congratulations on the promotion, Agent Duvall,” Morales said. And, yeah, as well as its sharp, little eavesdropping hooks, the agency was
also
known to come up with nifty titles for people when it behooved them to do so.

“Thank you, sir. Does this promotion come with a raise?”

“Of course not.”

Uh-huh.
“I didn’t think so, sir.”

“Get on it, Agent Duvall. And call me back with whatever information you discover.”

“Roger that.”

After punching the “end” button on her iPhone, Chelsea simply sat and stared at the blank screen as the old grandfather clock in the living room ticked away the seconds.

Oh, quit being such a wuss
, her pride finally admonished. And with a shaky finger—really? Were her hands shaking?—she dialed Dagan’s number…

***

“So, what now?”

All the Knights were seated around the conference table, and Delilah felt buoyed just looking at their capable, determined faces. Now that they’d identified Charlie
Sander
and pinned down his address, the cold fear that had squeezed her in its merciless grip, the one that had fostered all those nebulous, terrifying feelings that she might never see her uncle again, finally released its icy hold.

She
was
going to see Uncle Theo again. She wasn’t exactly sure how or when. But she was sure of
where
to start looking. Cairo, Illinois…

“It’s called a plan, shit for brains,” Steady answered the question Ozzie posed to the group, a grin pulling at his handsome, swarthy face. “You know, as in, we need one?”

“Well,
derrr
.” Ozzie rolled his eyes. “Thanks for that brilliant—”

“We head down to Cairo,” Mac interjected, cutting short what Delilah had come to suspect would be a lengthy back-and-forth. For a group of highly educated, highly trained men, they sure talked a lot of smack. Of course, her years behind the bar had taught her that an overload of testosterone tended to have that effect on guys when they were grouped together. “We check out Charles Sander’s house. And if we don’t find Theo there, we go door-to-door, flashin’ his photo until we locate someone who’s seen him.”

Yup.
And that sounded about right to Delilah. Then again,
most
things Mac said sounded right to her. It was hard for things
not
to sound right when they were spoken in that low, sexy, Texas twang of his.

Oh, pull your head out of your ass, Delilah.

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.” Ozzie harrumphed, and for a moment, she wasn’t completely sure she hadn’t spoken that last thought aloud. Then she saw Ozzie frowning at the laptop sitting open on the table in front of him. “The place is a ghost town.”

“All the better,” Mac muttered. He’d donned a fresh shirt, and he was swirling a stir stick in a piping hot cup of sludge…er…coffee. It
had
to be coffee, right? “Small towns are notoriously nosy. If Theo and his big, loud Harley rolled through, you can bet your bottom dollar he was noticed.”

“No.” Ozzie reached up to scratch at his mop of blond, fly-away hair. “I wasn’t being oblique. The place is
literally
a ghost town. Says here,” he pointed a finger at his screen, “that following some pretty severe race riots in the sixties, the town was mostly abandoned. Then, in 2011 when the Ohio River burst its banks, the Corps of Engineers evacuated most of the residents who were left. It’s possible Theo could have come and gone with no one the wiser.”

“Or there could be a handful of people still livin’ there who know everything about everything that happens in their town,” Mac quickly countered.

“Not to get off track,” Ali said, her bare feet up in her husband’s lap as BKI’s ugly, mangy,
obese
mascot of a tomcat attempted to balance himself on her knees while rubbing his furry face over her bulging belly. The feline was purring so loudly it sounded like a small plane about to take off. “But are you guys just going to forget about the man in Timberlands? The break-in and attack on Delilah seem awfully coincidental so close on the heels of her uncle’s disappearance.” She absently scratched the cat’s notched ears, causing him to ratchet up his purring to a rhythmic roar. “Or are those just my paranoid pregnancy hormones talking?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

“No, those aren’t just your paranoid pregnancy hormones talkin’,” Mac assured her. “And I’d just as soon bite a stink bug as quit lookin’ for Mr. Timberlands, but findin’ Delilah’s uncle has to be the top priority right now.”

“The top priority,” Boss interjected, “but not the
only
priority.”

“You have something in mind?” Mac asked, eyes narrowed in interest.

“I’m going to report the break-in to Chief Washington. Maybe his boys in the CPD can find Mr. Timberlands for us. If that’s all right with you, Delilah.” Boss turned to lift a scarred eyebrow at her.

“Hey,” she shrugged, “I’m taking all the help I can get. Obviously.” She gestured to the men and women gathered around the table.

“Good.” Boss jerked his chin. “That’ll let us focus all our efforts on the hunt for your uncle without completely allowing the guy in work boots to get off scot-free.”

And for the second time, gratitude surged so strongly inside Delilah that she felt overwhelmed. “I don’t know how—” She had to stop and clear her throat. “I don’t know how to thank you all for doing this. It’s just so—”

“Darlin’,” Mac’s deep drawl, not to mention that knee-loosening endearment, had the words screeching to a stop on the tip of her tongue as if they’d come equipped with a set of airbrakes. “I told you, that’s what friends are for.”

Friends…yeah… Except when it came to him, she wanted—she’d
always
wanted—something more.
Ack! And we’re back to that, Delilah?

Okay, it was official. She needed a lobotomy, if only to silence that annoying voice.

“So who’s goin’ on this little fishin’ expedition?” Ghost asked, absently rubbing his hand over his wife’s pregnant belly.

“Well,” Boss said, “since Ali has been… What did you call it the other day, Mac?”

“Storked,” Mac replied helpfully. “Down in Texas, we say she’s been storked.”

Oh, and
why
did she have to go and find stuff like that so freakin’ adorable? What was it about the slow-talking, overgrown, Southern boy sitting next to her that she found so fascinating?