In Rides Trouble (7 page)

“What?” she swung toward her brother. “What’s he talking about?”

Billy’s lips curled in as his hard jaw sawed back and forth. It was his classic you’re-not-going-to-like-what-I-have-to-tell-you expression. He’d donned it fairly regularly since they were kids, and it never boded well.

“Out with it,” she demanded, hands on hips.

“He’s right. It’s the only way to maintain our cover,” Billy explained. “Besides you and Eve, no one on board the
Hamilton
knows who we are. It’ll be hard to keep it that way if we don’t get out of here now.”

“Okay, but…but where will you go?” They were all certifiably nuts. Frank was in no condition to—

“Back to the USS
Patton
, the destroyer we arrived on. She’s anchored a few miles out. Once on board, we’ll sail over here and pick up you and Eve and any of the
Hamilton
’s crew that needs medical attention.”

“
He
needs medical attention!” she yelled, pointing at Frank’s freaky-looking arm.

“Just need to pop it back into place,” Frank said, his tone similar to the one he might use for
pass
the
potatoes
. She spun to glare at him, letting him read in the her face exactly what she was thinking in her head—which was that they were all frickin’ frackin’ crazy.

That arm was…well, it was not right. He should be medevacked to the nearest hospital, raced into surgery and—

“Will you do the honors?” he asked, turning to Angel and completely ignoring the fact that her head was threatening to explode.

“No, he most certainly will n—”

That’s all she got out before Angel grabbed his arm and with a twist and a shove snapped the appendage back into place.

Oh, sweet Jesus, the sound it made. She figured she’d hear it in her nightmares.

“Once on board the
Patton
,” Billy told her, drawing her attention away from the makeshift sling Angel started fastening out of bungee cords, “you can’t let on that you know us, or that we’re the ones who facilitated the rescue. Except for the captain and the commander, the entire crew thinks we’re simple K&R specialists hired by Eve’s father to secure your ransoms.”

“Okay,” she said absently, sneaking a peek over at the slapdash field dressing that was going on, “but I still think—”

“Let’s do it,” Frank said, wiping the blood out of his eyes with the hand that wasn’t secured in the temporary sling.

“You can’t possibly think to—” she began, but none of them were listening to her. They all started jogging across the deck, making their way toward the aft of the drifting ship.

She raced after them. “Stop!” She tried pulling on Billy’s arm, but with the disparity in their weights, it was like trying to halt an elephant. “Billy,” she pleaded, “he can’t make—”

Her brother spun and slapped a hard palm over her mouth, his eyes bright with fury. He nodded for Boss and Angel to continue when they stopped to glance at him over their shoulders.

“I’m right behind you,” he assured them and once they were out of earshot growled, “This is how it’s done, sis. You wanna be an operator? Well, an operator protects his cover, through injury, through torture…hell, he’ll even die to protect it. So you go on back to Eve, impress upon her just how important it is that she keep her damn mouth shut, and I’ll see you on board the
Patton
. Do you understand me? Nod if you understand me.”

What could she do? She nodded.

Billy gave her one last probing look before he raced to catch the others, and she could only watch helplessly as, one by one, they disappeared over the side of the tanker and into the starlit night.

***

“
Aahhhh!
” Sharif screamed as he pulled the big knife from the center of his right palm, biting his cheek against the mind-bending pain until the bright coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.

He threw the blade over the railing with a vicious curse and ripped off his wet shirt, clumsily trying to secure it around his useless hand.

“That bitch,” he whispered, managing to use his left hand and his teeth to tighten the makeshift bandage. The maneuver ignited a flame of hot agony that exploded up the length of his arm and detonated at the base of his skull.

That
bitch…

Staggering, swallowing down the urge to vomit, he grabbed the smooth wooden steering wheel and squeezed his eyes closed, sucking in ragged breaths and praying for the weakness to pass.

When it finally did,
finally
, he blinked open his eyes and turned to glance behind him. The smoke from the ruined engine parted for a brief moment and in the blackness of the nighttime ocean, he saw the bright lights of the
Hamilton
on the far horizon
.
It was a shining, taunting beacon heralding the position of the prize that would have allowed him to leave this distasteful business once and for all.

“That bitch! That bitch! That
bitch!
” he yelled over and over, pounding his fist against the wheel and imagining it was her pretty American face.

If she had not stalled, if she had not had the audacity to ignore his repeated threats to blister her soft hide for every minute she dawdled at tasks he knew she could have accomplished in moments, she would have had those big diesel engines repaired, and
he
would have been sailing back toward the Somali coast aboard a multimillion dollar trophy instead of this ridiculous sailboat.

“I will kill her,” he vowed, grinding his teeth as he tucked his ruined right hand up into his armpit. With a shriek of vitriolic agony, he applied, what he hoped, was enough pressure to stop the bleeding. “I will find her,” he panted through the pain. “I will find her and show her what a woman’s true place is in this world…and then I will kill her.”

***

“So does this pass muster?” Becky asked Billy and Angel as she held out her arms and pirouetted. “Am I allowed to go see Frank now?”

The wait for the USS
Patton
’s arrival after the guys disappeared over the side of the tanker had seemed interminable, and she knew her pacing made everybody onboard the
Hamilton
, especially Eve, nervous, but she wasn’t able to help it. All manner of horrific scenarios had flashed through her brain, not the least of which being Frank eaten by a huge great white shark because he’d been bleeding into the water.

She kept seeing that mammoth shark from
Jaws
, and that creepy
da-da…da-da…da-da-da-da
music circled endlessly through her brain. Add in the horrific picture show of those last seconds with Sharif at the rail, the certainty she’d felt that they were her final moments, and it was an understatement to say she was going nuts. Just when she was on the verge of screaming and pulling out her hair, the big destroyer arrived on the black horizon, its sparkling lights like a lodestar in the night.

She and Eve were the first to transfer aboard where they were met by Billy and Angel. Both men looked rather guileless in their civilian clothes and anyone seeing their innocent, freshly scrubbed faces wouldn’t believe they’d just frogmanned a pretty spectacular rescue.

Oh, but they had.

“Hello, Miss Reichert, Miss Edens,” Billy shook their hands. “I’m Vinnie, and this is Bruce,” he said as he nodded to Angel. “We’re here to negotiate your ransom, but uh,” he shuffled his feet and grinned—he stopped just short of
aw
shucks-ing
it, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes—“I guess that’s a moot point now, isn’t it? Still, your father is paying us hourly, Miss Edens, so we’ll do our best to see to your comfort until we can get you both home
.
”

Under the watchful eyes of the destroyer’s crew, she and Eve carefully played their parts, shaking hands with the men and feigning unfamiliarity. But as soon as the four of them were alone, trudging down a metal gangway, she snorted, “Vinnie and Bruce, is it? And is Mark down in sick bay?”

Billy glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes widening in feigned surprise. “As a matter of fact, he is. How in the world did you know?”

She shook her head and chuckled. Leave it to her big brother to come up with aliases that all just happened to be the names of the transient band members of KISS.

“How is he?”

“He’s fine,” Billy answered.

“He’s fine,” Angel echoed from behind.

Pfft.
“Well, then, when can I go and see
Mark
?”

“After you shower, my dear girl,” her brother told her, stopping before a metal door labeled
women
. “Not to be rude, but you two smell like something that recently crawled out from under a rock…at the dump…one that was sitting in the Porta-Potty section.”

From the corner of her eye, Becky saw Eve’s tired face glow crimson in the artificial overhead light.

Poor Eve. She’d always been particularly vulnerable to Billy’s bad manners.

“Geez, Billy,” she growled, “tell us how you really feel, why dontcha?”

“I just did,” he grinned as he held the door wide, handing her and Eve each a towel and a stack of clean, folded clothes.

The shower was heaven, and she heard Eve’s deep groan of pleasure from the stall next door, but she didn’t dilly-dally. She wanted to see Frank. She
needed
to see Frank in order to assess his situation for herself. Angel and Billy were obviously complete crap at accurately diagnosing a man’s injuries, evidenced by their quick assurances that he was absolutely fine.

He was not. How could he be? His arm was nearly ripped off!

After quickly scrubbing away the grease and grime of nearly a week, she put on the warm-up suit someone—one of the female crew members, she suspected—had loaned her. Slipping on the pair of blue hospital booties, she opened the door to find both men waiting.

Which was why she was twirling, arms held out, in order to give Billy and Angel a good gander at the racy, red, über-chic, cotton warm-up. Someone shopped at
Victoria’s Secret
. She made a mental note to find her mysterious benefactor and thank the woman.

“Angel’s going to take you down to sick bay,” her brother informed her. “I’ll wait here for Eve.”

She folded her arms and scowled up at him. “You be nice to her.”

Billy’s jaw locked, and she tried not to roll her eyes. That hard-ass expression of his might work on some. Not her.

“I was never anything
but
nice to her,” he grumbled.

“Pfft,” she punched him in the shoulder and gave up on not rolling her eyes. “I’m serious. She’s been through a lot. The last thing she needs is you rehashing the past.”

“Since when do I ever rehash?” He planted his fists on his hips. She called it his Superman pose. It made the little sister in her want to hold her finger an inch from his nose while chanting, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you…”

She resisted the urge, saying instead, “Just don’t mention—”

“Becky,” he growled, “I swear, after all you’ve put me through this week, I’m going to wring your neck if you don’t turn tail and run.”

It was his favorite threat, one he’d once made good on when she was five and he was ten. Although at the time, he hadn’t understood what the expression actually meant, so he’d taken a big black permanent marker, held her down, and drawn fat circles around her neck.

As punishment, their father forbade him to play Nintendo until the evidence disappeared completely. And she—never having been one for vanity—had delighted in “forgetting” to wash her neck. The humiliation of wearing the black smudges was nothing compared to the sheer joy of watching Billy gaze longingly at his Super Mario Bros. cartridge.

It’d taken weeks for the marks to vanish and to this day, she couldn’t help but grin every time he repeated that particular threat.

Ow!

Damn, that hurt. Her injured cheek wasn’t quite ready for grinning yet.

Note
to
self. No overly demonstrative facial expressions.

Billy patted at his pockets. “I know I’ve got a marker around here somewhere…”

“All right, all right,” she capitulated. “I’m going. But you’re a greasy, grimy monkey turd,” she called over her shoulder as she darted down the gangway, Angel following behind her.

“Grow up!” her brother hollered back.

“A greasy, grimy monkey turd with fish lips and bird legs and the brain power of an amoeba!” she yelled, joy and relief at finally,
finally
being back where she belonged making her voice bright.

“Oh yeah?” Billy just couldn’t let her have the last word. It would’ve gone against twenty-six years of tradition. “Well, you look like a can of smashed buttholes, and your breath smells like you eat used kitty litter!”

Her laughter echoed through the ship.

Man, it’s good to be back.

“I feel like a new woman,” Eve said as she emerged from the women’s shower room, and Bill’s laughter at his little sister’s crazy antics died like a grease fire doused in baking soda.

Eve was dressed in a royal blue version of the cotton warm-up Becky’d worn—Angel had wheedled the clothes out of some starry-eyed female sailor—only on Eve’s 5’10” frame, the hems of the legs hit her mid-calf.

Still, she managed to pull it off. Oh hell, who was he trying to kid? She made the damn things look like they were supposed to be those short little island pants women donned when the weather turned warm. The kind of pants she’d worn that summer they dated. The kind of pants she’d paired with a super sexy set of wedge heel thingamabobs that’d made her mile-long legs look even longer.

Some things never changed. Just his goddamned luck.

“You don’t look like a new woman,” he told her. “You look exactly the same way you did eleven years ago.”

Without a week’s worth of grime and grit covering her face, she was just as drop-dead gorgeous as he remembered…unfortunately.

“Where’s Becky?” she asked, ignoring his last statement even though a blush climbed up her throat to stain her cheeks.

“She went to check on our boss.”

“Good, I’ll go join her.” She nibbled on her lower lip like she always did when she was nervous. The gesture was so familiar, reminding him of everything that happened between them, and he couldn’t stop the sudden fury that raced through his veins. “I want to tell her that I…Hey! What are you doing?”

What was he doing?

He was frog-marching her toward the briefing room Captain Garcia had allocated for the Knights’ personal use, that’s what he was doing.

It was amazing how the years just…fell away. Leaving room for all the old hurts to come rushing in.

“You can go see Becky later. For now, you and I need to talk.”

“I…I don’t know what we have to say to one another,” she stammered, her big eyes wide. “It’s been over a decade. S-surely we can just let bygones b-be bygones.”

“If it was up to me, I’d take you up on that, sweetheart. But it’s not up to me.”

She sucked in a stunned breath before she ripped her arm out of his grasp. “Don’t call me sweetheart, and
don’t
touch me! You lost that right eleven years ago!”

“Lost the right!” he bellowed at her. It was as if he was a twenty-year-old kid again, with the same twenty-year-old temper. “You obviously have a very selective memory,
sweetheart
.”

“Oh!” she stomped her foot, and
there
was the pampered little princess who’d broken his heart. He unceremoniously shoved her into the briefing room and kicked out a chair. Motioning for her to sit with a hard point of his finger.

She threw her nose in the air and crossed her arms over her chest.

God
damn
it!

He wasn’t handling this well, but she always did that to him. Made him act out of character.

Whenever she was around, he felt the need to beat his chest and knock heads together, and the whole thing was as disconcerting as it was ridiculous. “Eve,” he growled. “Just take a damn seat. I promise you I’m not here to rehash the past. Whether you believe it or not, there are more important things to discuss.”

“Like what?” she asked, still refusing to sit.

Fine. Let her stand. He, for one, was beat.

He plopped down in a chair on the opposite side of the conference table and scrubbed a hand over his face. Sighing heavily, he said, “Like the fact that you can’t tell anyone, I mean
no
one
, not even beloved Daddy, about me or my partners’ involvement in this little endeavor.”

“But…why?” She obviously chose to ignore his slur against her father.

“Because one of the things that makes us so effective is the simple fact that no one knows the true nature of our work—besides the President and his Joint Chiefs, of course.” And now the two commanding officers of this naval ship.
Damn
it!

“You’re kidding me,” she shook her head, eyes darting around the room as if trying to find the hidden cameras. Only no one was going to jump out from behind the door and yell,
You’ve been punk’d!

Nope. Not this time.

“Becky said you guys were private government defense contractors. There are tons of those, so I don’t know why—”

“We’re more than that,” he told her. “Much more.”

“But…but,” she shook her head again.

Yeah, a lot of folks had trouble believing the reality of 007 when they were faced with it. Probably because the real-life version was so much less sexy. Blood and guts and days spent wallowing in your own smelly sweat certainly weren’t “martinis, shaken not stirred.”

“But the captain and his first mate know who you really are. Becky told me so.”

“Yeah, they do, and don’t think for one minute it didn’t burn our asses to blow our covers.” He didn’t bother to correct her terminology in reference to the commander.

“But Dad is going to wonder what happened to me. He’s going to ask…” She started chewing on her lower lip again.

“So tell him the truth. A group of spec-ops guys rescued you and then disappeared. End of story.”

“But that’s
not
the end of the story, and I’ve never lied to him.”

“It’s not a lie, Eve,” he grumbled, frustrated. “It’s an omission.”

“Lie, omission, they’re the same thing, and I don’t understand why I’d need to compromise my relationship with my father just so—”

He growled, slamming a palm on the table and causing her to flinch.

Good. Great. She needed to be scared. She had no idea the power of the powder keg of information parked beneath her oh-so-fine ass.

“Let me rephrase,” he enunciated slowly, “you
will
keep this to yourself.”

She searched his face for a brief second, her rapid breath causing her chest to heave, before she cautiously lowered herself into the seat he’d kicked out.

Finally.

He was getting a damn crick in his neck looking up at her.

“The things we do, the things we’re
tasked
to do, don’t necessarily fall under the guidelines of international law. This mission included. And given that, there are quite a few really, really bad guys out there who’d love to know our true identities.”

“But I don’t know any bad guys,” she murmured.

“Maybe not. But you of all people know how quickly rumors fly.” Being the daughter of one of the richest men in America, she’d graced the cover of more than one tabloid.

“So you’re telling me…
What
are you telling me? That our government sanctions illegal activity? That you guys are the ones they call to conduct it?”

“Which is harder to believe? The fact that our government skirts the boundaries of global bureaucracy or the fact that they trust me, a gearhead from the projects, to do the honors?”

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes filling with tears that she tried to blink away. His damn ulcer lifted its head at the sight and started gnawing away at his stomach again.

Good
going, Bill. Way to put the “ass” in class.

“I never cared where you were from, Billy,” she whispered. “You were the one who had a problem with it.”

“Fine. Whatever.” He shook his head, feeling like someone should probably kick his ass for the way he was treating her, but he just couldn’t help it. “My point is every major power on the planet does the exact same thing as our government. Only the really good ones, the really smart ones—which I like to believe Uncle Sam falls into both categories—do so without any
real
evidence of direct meddling left behind. In order to do that, there have to be men like me, men like the Black Knights, who can be trusted to work autonomously, completely off-the-grid. Men who can be depended on to go in, get it done, and get the hell out of Dodge. Men who can be counted on to take the terrible secrets they carry in their heads all the way to the grave. So you see, it’s really very simple.” He raked in a calming breath. “If you tell anyone who I really am, what I really do, it could get me and the men I work with killed.”

Her narrow throat worked as her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Holy moley, Billy,” she said.

“Yeah.” One corner of his mouth twitched at the familiar G-rated profanity. “You said it.”

***

“You look very pretty in red,” Angel said in that deep, husky voice of his after they’d gone some distance down the gangway from the women’s shower room.

“Whatever,” Becky rolled her eyes. “With this cheek, I look like I should be staring in a Lifetime movie.”

“If I say you are beautiful, then you are. I don’t make a habit of lying to my friends.”

She angled her head over her shoulder, eyeing the mysterious ex-Mossad agent’s dazzlingly beautiful face. “Are we friends, Angel?”

“I think you are my
only
friend, Becky.”

She shook her head as she descended a set of stairs. Angel’s big boots echoed hollowly on the metal risers behind her, drowning out the quiet shushing of her hospital slippers and reminding her that every step she took was bringing her closer to Frank. She denied the urge to take off running because, geez, she couldn’t be
that
obvious.

“That’s not true,” she reassured Angel. “You have all the other Knights. They’re your friends now.”

“Nonsense,” he snorted before instructing her to hang a right. “They tolerate me. That is not the same thing as actually liking me.” They both turned sideways and nodded at the
Patton
crewman who passed them on the narrow walkway.

“They’ll come around,” she assured him. “Just give them time.”

“You did not need any time. You accepted me right away.”

Yepper, she sure had. But only because she’d felt so darned sorry for him.

He’d been forced from his country, his culture, his family, his job. He’d been made to undergo extensive surgery in order to completely change his appearance.

Man, she still had trouble imagining what it must be like for him to wake up every morning and stare at a reflection that wasn’t his own…

Disorienting at best, she figured. Downright spooky at worst.

And having always had a soft spot for the underdog—which he definitely was, coming into the tight-knit group of the Black Knights the way he had—she’d immediately decided to take him under her wing.

“I was just trying to make the transition easier on you,” she admitted. “I know what it’s like to be the outsider.” After all, since Patti’s death—Patti had been the Knights’ secretary extraordinaire and Dan “The Man’s” wife—Becky was the only one in the Knights’ employ who wasn’t actually part of the team. She was just the face of the “public” operation. The wunderkind motorcycle designer who made sure all their covers as simple mechanics remained in place. But when it came to their missions, to the actual work they all did? She was kept smack-double-dab in the D-A-R-K, which, yep, pissed her off…big time. And was just one more reason why’d she’d started studying to be an operator.

Angel stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She turned, glancing curiously into his dark eyes. They were the only part of him that hadn’t changed from the man he’d been before. Oh, the plastic surgeon had no doubt altered the shape, but the eyes themselves were likely the same. And if the eyes were the windows to a man’s soul, then Angel’s soul was lost…lost and hurting…

“I never really thanked you for your hospitality that first night,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “For making me feel welcome by cooking that, um…meal.”

She swallowed down the deep sorrow that stuck in her throat like a load of peanut butter every time she really allowed herself to stare into Angel’s sad eyes and forced a playful snort. “That’s because you were too busy trying not to throw up.”

“The matzo ball soup was not so bad,” he assured her.

“It was barely palatable, and you know it.”

He shrugged. “Okay, but the kugel—”

“Was downright inedible,” she finished for him.

“I thought the rugelachs were very tasty.”

“Uh-huh, once you got past the fact that chewing them was tantamount to chewing rocks.”

“Becky,” he grabbed her other shoulder so she was forced to continue facing him. His eyes were bright with sincerity. Too bright. Her cheeks heated. She’d never been very good at accepting gratitude. Even the head-knuckling “thanks” she usually got from the guys after doing them some favor usually made heat wash like water from the top of her head down over her shoulders. “It was wonderful of you to go to such trouble. I want you to know how much it meant to me.”

“Stop,” she waved her hands in front of her eyes, trying to divert the conversation away from the uncomfortable road it was heading down, “you’re making me all
faklempt
.”

He shook his head, his lips twisting. “You know the real pronunciation is
verklempt
.”

“Well, that’s what I get from learning all my Yiddish from
Saturday
Night
Live
, isn’t it?” She made a face and he laughed.

Thank
God.
Joking, palling around, now
this
was footing she was comfortable with.

“Now,” she said, once more turning to head toward sick bay, “give me the scoop on the story everyone’s being told about the
Hamilton
’s liberation.”

“They are saying the pirates surrendered without a fight once a specialized group of spec-ops guys boarded the ship.”

“And these spec-ops guys? Where’d they supposedly disappear to?”

“It is a mystery.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “You know how those spec-ops guys are.”

“Do I ever…”

They stopped and nodded to another crewman who squeezed by them. Angel waited until the man was out of earshot, before continuing, “They’re telling everyone there was another ship, a NATO vessel—whose identity will remain secret—from which the group of men operated. Of course, that vessel has since quit the area.”