Authors: Julie Ann Walker
A snort of laughter erupted from between Rock’s lips before he could call it back.
Well, well, well. Aren’t you
just full
of
surprises
tonight, Miss Cordero?
When she’d flirted with him earlier, he’d been so blindsided by the whole thing that, for a minute there, he’d gone dumb and mute as a bag of hammers. But he was proud to say he’d recovered in enough time to slide her some pretty good one-liners.
Unfortunately, despite their titillating little tête-à-tête, it was obvious she was barking up the wrong damn tree where he was concerned. Because,
merde
, there was more than just lust in her eyes when she looked at him. Lust he could’ve dealt with quicker than a knife fight in a phone booth. But the visions of white weddings and matching rings he could see dancing around inside her pretty head stopped him cold. Happily ever after wasn’t an option for him…
“Hey,” Bill yelled from the front door, dragging him away from his thoughts, “what do you guys want us to do with Shogun here?”
“Put him in the interrogation room!” Boss ordered before turning to Rock and asking, “You ready for this?”
“
Oui
, I’m ready.” He nodded, taking a deep breath and turning toward the stairs.
As he made his way down to the first floor, he ground his back molars so hard it was a miracle he wasn’t shooting little shards of enamel and the occasional filling from his ass. He stalked into the claustrophobic supply closet they’d retrofitted into an interrogation room upon first learning of Johnny Vitiglioni’s paid assassins, tossed off his ball cap and tilted his head from side to side, cracking the vertebrae in his neck.
Zut.
He hated this next part. Digging around inside a person’s psyche always left him feeling dirty…
Goddamn, what’s taking so long?
Jake wasn’t accustomed to being outside the action. In fact, he was accustomed to being smack-dab in the middle of it. So this hanging out in the backyard with his thumb up his ass sucked. Hard.
He felt like a sitting duck, like he’d cut his leg on a piece of coral and was chumming the water in great white shark territory.
Oh, he knew Boss would never have left them if he truly thought there was any immediate danger, and he’d been telling Shell the truth about the level of security around the place, but that didn’t stop the hard burn of adrenaline from sizzling through his system, making his knees bounce until the beer in his hand threatened to shoot like a geyser.
With an effort, and so he wouldn’t make Shell any more nervous than she already was, he resisted the urge to recheck the clip in the Glock. Then he managed, just barely, to corral his jumpy legs and lean back in his chair.
Unfortunately, none of the physical calm he forced on himself stopped the dark thoughts from endlessly spinning inside his head.
Who
would
want
to
kill
Boss?
Would
this
dick-wad try to go after Shell and Franklin?
Did
this
dick-wad
know
about
Shell
and
Franklin?
Okay, and back to the original question, which was,
Why
the
hell
is
it
taking
so
long?
He covertly glanced around the courtyard, deciding on entry points and escape routes, figuring out where he’d place himself to best protect them on the off chance an assassin came crawling over the wall.
Christ, just the thought…
Well, I can easily hustle them inside the safety of the shop
, he assured himself. Then he frowned when he realized that would be the case if the perpetrator tried to come at them from any direction save the northwest corner.
Yeah, that northwest corner was a weakness. It effectively placed an intruder only three feet from Black Knights Inc.’s back door, cutting off their only secure avenue of escape.
So, the far southeast corner it is.
That’s where he’d make his stand. From the southeast, he could hoist Shell and Franklin over the wall and into the Chicago River on the other side. They’d both be safe in the water while he dispatched the person or persons stupid enough to screw with those he loved.
And if he couldn’t dispatch them? If the number was overwhelming? Well, then, he’d give Shell time to swim to safety with Franklin while he stayed and fought to his last breath and—
Whoa.
He’d just unconsciously included little Franklin in with those he loved.
So that meant…what? He loved the kid?
It made sense—he certainly loved Shell, and Franklin was part of the package and, okay, now his pulse was
really
hopping. He’d never been tasked with protecting a child before…
When Shell started gnawing on her lower lip, he decided the silence she’d requested wasn’t really doing anything to ease her tension. So, to try to take her mind off the situation, and
his
mind off the memory of what it was like to suck that full lip between his teeth—
come
on
, even pinned down by mortar fire he’d still have wild fantasies about that bottom lip—he determined it was finally time to offer up the apology that’d been sitting on his tongue since…well…since forever.
***
The expression on Jake’s face had Michelle’s heart flipping over in her chest.
“Shell?”
And when he said her name like that, even after all these years and even though her nerves were stretched piano-wire tight, her stomach took flight. “What?”
“There’s, uh, there’s something I’ve been needing to say to you for a long time.”
For the first time since her brother had disappeared inside the shop, Jake wasn’t craning his neck around every which way. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to the label he was nervously peeling from his beer.
Nervous? Jake?
Flip.
Uh-huh, and that would be her heart turning over.
Again.
Stupid. Stupid.
Stupid.
Don’t fall for it, Shell. Just keep it together for a little while longer.
“Jake,” she said, “whatever it is, let’s just forget about it, okay? Let’s just—”
“I’m so sorry,” he blurted before she could finish.
Okay, so…they were doing this.
Taking a deep breath, doing her best to shore up all her emotional walls, she asked, “You’re sorry? For what?” She had a whole list.
“For getting Preacher killed,” he whispered.
Um, okay, so
that
wasn’t what she expected. If he’d suddenly grown whiskers and claimed to be the Easter Bunny, she didn’t think she’d be any more shocked. “Jake, that wasn’t your fault. You did what you thought—”
“It
was
my fault,” he insisted, running a hand over his face and shaking his head.
“No,” she assured him. “That’s ridiculous.” She knew a little of what’d transpired on that wind-swept mountain. Her brother had given her the basics after Steven’s funeral. And as much as she’d prayed for the day when she’d see Jake the Snake brought low, she never wanted it to happen this way, with guilt and blame tearing him apart. “It was a vote. Fair and square. Steven made his own decisions that day,” she insisted, hoping her tone convinced him, because she was having a really tough time resisting the urge to reach across the small distance separating their lawn chairs to lay a hand of comfort on his muscular shoulder. She knew from experience, once she started touching Jake, it was almost impossible to stop. “Steven was a grown man who—”
He lifted his eyes to her face then. And they were so green, so tormented. “Did Boss ever tell you about the Marine barracks bombing?”
“Uh…no,” she shook her head, surprised and disoriented by the lightning-fast change of topic. “He…he never said anything about it.”
He nodded and went back to folding and refolding the beer label he’d finally managed to pull from the sweating bottle. Then he glanced up and made yet another visual pass around the courtyard. Yes, he may claim there was no cause for worry, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still on high alert.
She supposed there was some comfort in that. Of course, the small relief she garnered from knowing he would hop-to at a moment’s notice quickly dissolved when the silence between them stretched until it was a sharp, tangible thing.
When she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she cleared her throat and quietly asked, “Were you guys…um, were you stationed there when it happened?”
She remembered watching the footage of the horrendous event on the news. The scenes of carnage and destruction had been enough to have even the most stalwart constitutions running for the nearest toilet. At the time, she’d been beside herself with worry, wondering if her brother and all the men she’d come to think of as family were lying somewhere in that smoldering rubble.
Then Frank had called, joking around like usual, never breathing a word about the bombing, and she’d assumed Bravo Platoon was stationed elsewhere in Afghanistan.
“Do you, um, do you mind if we turn our chairs around?” Jake suddenly blurted, catching her off-guard yet again.
What
the
heck?
This conversation felt more like a verbal scavenger hunt, one where she was missing the clues.
“Uh, sure, I guess” she said, pushing up from her Adirondack chair and watching in confusion as he hastily turned it, along with his own, away from the fire.
“I want my eyes to adjust to the dark, and I also want to keep watch on that corner,” he explained with a jerk of his chin toward the corner in question.
O-
kay
. Her pulse, which hadn’t been steady all night, tripped over itself.
“What’s over there?” she breathed, trying to see something in all that pervasive blackness.
“Nothing that I can see, and that’s the whole problem.”
Huh?
“Okay,” he said, retaking his seat and grabbing his beer, “where was I?”
She wasn’t sure anymore. Her head was spinning.
“Oh, you asked if we were stationed there when the barrack’s bombing occurred, and the quick and simple answer is yes.”
She dropped down into her seat as a wave of dizziness and nausea overcame her. The realization of how close she’d come to losing them all trumped every other thought.
So
close. Too close…
“We were housed down the block from the marines. You see, SEALs and jarheads tend not to mix effectively when it comes to housing situations considering we’re an unruly, rough-and-ready bunch by nature, and Marine’s are a spit-and-shine, follow-the-rules group by training. You’ve sorta got yourself an oil and water situation there.” He grinned then and, even scared out of her mind, sick over the thought of nearly losing her brother and all the boys of Bravo Platoon, she had to mentally scold herself to keep from falling prey to his particular brand of allure as she watched his dimples deepen.
And, yes, considering the danger of her situation and the dreadfulness of their current topic of conversation, she fully grasped how ludicrous that was.
Of course, Jake always had the ability to muddle her thoughts, charming cad that he was.
“But that’s not to say we didn’t eat in the same mess hall with those dudes or have some brews around the same campfires,” he continued, his smile disappearing as his eyes grew shadowed, the memories obviously painful. “During that month, all us frogmen in Bravo Platoon got to know those leathernecks pretty good.”
“I’ve heard it said soldiers in war make friends really quickly,” she remarked quietly. “The shared experience and all that.”