Hell for Leather

by Julie Ann Walker

  ***

  Outside Charles Sander’s House

  Ozzie wasn’t kidding when he called this place a ghost town…

  Delilah might have expected to find the deserted Main Street, the rusting gas pumps, and the crumbling roads that made up Cairo somewhere out west. Somewhere oil or gold, or oil and gold, had dried up, leaving the residents nothing to live or stay for. But here? In southern Illinois? Well, a ghost town of this magnitude—it had sprawling neighborhoods, and vast, empty public spaces—was bizarre, to say the least. Downright spooky, to say the most.

  Okay, and yeah, she was saying the most. Because on a scale of scary from one to ten—one being slightly foreboding and ten being shit-your-pants terrifying—this whole town fell somewhere around an eight. Eight or nine…

  “Lord almighty,” Mac breathed. “Looks like hell with everyone out to lunch.”

  And that was one way of putting it, Delilah supposed. Another way of putting it was to say that Cairo, Illinois, was a horror movie set sprung to life.

  She shivered as a gust of cool wind howled down the deserted street, rattling the shutters on the house next door like the ribs on a skeleton. And she tried, oh, man, how she tried not to let the gaping black windows of the dilapidated homes remind her of eyes, dead eyes. Of course, the fact that the entire block was pitch dark, illuminated only by the headlights of the bikes they’d parked on the street, didn’t help matters any.

  And, then, leave it to Ozzie to go and make everything that much worse by loudly whispering, “Ahhh! Make the lambs stop screaming!”

  Instantly, an image of Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter—complete with spooky half-mask—flashed in her mind’s eye, and she instinctively reached for the hand closest to her.

  It was Mac’s. And its warmth, not to mention its strength, kept her from turning around and jumping back on Big Red, leaving a mile-long trail of rubber in her wake as she hightailed it out of Dodge…er…uh, Cairo.

  “Holy crow, Ozzie,” Mac grumbled. They were all standing on a disintegrating sidewalk and staring up at Charlie Sander’s house. And although it wasn’t in much better shape than the crumbling dwellings around it, it did appear to still have all its windowpanes. And the yard, though not manicured by any stretch of the imagination, did look like it’d been recently mowed. “This place is creepy enough without any Silence of the Lambs references.”

  “Sorry,” Ozzie said, shuddering dramatically. “I just keep expecting some naked dude to come around the corner with his Johnson and nads tucked up between his legs, singing it rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.”

  Delilah squeezed Mac’s hand tighter, inching closer to his side and fighting the urge to glance over her shoulder. Was something back there? Watching? Waiting to sneak up and devour her soul in one greedy gulp?

  Mac chafed her freezing fingers with his free hand before turning to glare at Ozzie. “What did I just say about Silence of the Lambs references? I swear by all that’s holy, Ozzie, if you don’t cut that shit out, I’m gonna be forced to feed you my gun.”

  BKI’s tech guru held his hands in the air. “Sorry. Sorry. I just watched it again last weekend, so it’s kinda stuck in my head, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Zoelner huffed, “and now, thank you very much, it’s stuck in all our heads.”

  Another gust of damp, moldy-smelling wind. Another bout of bone-rattling shutter noise. Another shiver danced up Delilah’s spine.

  This was her Uncle Theo’s friend Charlie’s house? Why would anyone choose to live like this? Why would anyone choose to stay in this godforsaken town? And, yeah, she totally got why her uncle decided to leave her back at the hotel in Marion…

  Okay, okay. Just take a breath and focus on what’s important. Focus on why you came here, like—

  “Uncle Theo’s bike isn’t here,” she observed, glancing toward the glaringly empty, grease-stained driveway. “Which means he’s not here.” And for a moment, a heavy wave of disappointment overcame her fear.

  “It’s possible he’s parked in the garage,” Mac told her, giving her fingers another reassuring squeeze, a friendly squeeze.

  “Yeah, hermano,” Steady said, “but the question is, who’s gonna go check?”

  “Maybe we should state our intentions,” Zoelner suggested. “It is,” he checked the big watch on his wrist, “oh-five-hundred in the morning, after all. If Theo isn’t here, and this Charles Sander guy is, he’s not likely to be all that keen on a gang of bikers skulking around his house in the dark.”

  “Agreed.” Mac nodded. He cleared his throat and called, “Theo! Charles! Are you guys in there?” His deep voice echoed down the empty street, bouncing back to them a second later. “Theo! Charles!” he tried again. But when no one answered him save for an echo and the cackle of dead leaves flipping down the road on another gust of wind, he changed tactics. “We’ve got Delilah here! Charles, as I’m sure you know, Delilah is Theo’s niece and she’s feelin’ mean as a mama wasp that Theo’s not answering his phone! We’re here lookin’ for him! So, don’t turn us into buzzard bait, okay? We’re gonna approach your front porch!”

  Front porch…front porch…front porch…his words bounced around hauntingly before finally fading. Then, silence reigned over the derelict street.

  “Okay,” Mac said, chafing her ice-cold fingers one last time. “Let’s do this.”

  Uh-huh. That sounded simple enough, didn’t it? After all, she was with four big, tough men. It should’ve been easy to walk up to that chipped and peeling front door. It should have been. Unfortunately, someone, at some point, had glued her boots to the sidewalk.

  “Jesús Cristo,” Steady harrumphed, the first to start stomping up the sidewalk. “Let’s hope the inside of this place is better than the outside.”

  Mac ushered her forward. And was it just her? Or did the trip up to the front porch feel sort of like Dead Man Walking? As if she was heading toward her own funeral…

  Okay, and now you’re just being fanciful. Stop imagining things.

  “Mr. Sander?” Steady pulled the screen door open—well, frame of a screen door, really; there was no actual screen attached. “Mr. Sander!” Steady tried again, holding the metal doorframe open with his foot and banging on the front door. The thing might have been bright red at one point, but now it was a dirty crimson color, and the air on the porch hung heavy with the smell of the honeysuckle bush growing over the south side railing. Beneath that lingered the dank, moldy aroma of rotting wood mixed with a hint of dog piss and…was that marijuana? “Are you in there, Mr. Sander? We’re friends of Theo Fairchild!”

  Silence. Dark, dense silence.

  And, as if the place wasn’t atmospheric enough already, a barn owl, perched somewhere nearby, chose that exact moment to let loose with one of its screeching calls. Ozzie jumped, unholstering his weapon. “Seriously?” he shuddered. “I mean…Jesus!”

  “Knock again. If you don’t get an answer, try the knob,” Mac instructed Steady, still firmly holding Delilah’s hand. And it was a good thing, too. She feared his tough grip might be the only thing keeping her on the porch and not beating feet in the opposite direction.

  Steady knocked. Once. Twice. Three times. When nothing stirred inside the house, he turned the knob, pushing the door open.

  Something huge and snarling barreled out at them. The next thing Delilah knew, she was airborne…

  ***

  When the large shadow leaped from inside the house, Mac’s instincts kicked in…

  First thing: Protect the girl. He grabbed Delilah around the waist and lunged off the porch, landing on the hard ground on his back—Ow! Sonofa—before rolling Delilah beneath him and covering her with his body. Second thing: Acquire the target. He reached into his waistband, grabbed his Glock 22 .40 caliber pistol, pulled back the side, and lifted the weapon to stare down the night sights.

  Just as he’d been taught at the Academy, he scanned the yard in front of him. Acquiring target. Acquiring
target. Acqu—There!

  “Don’t shoot!” Ozzie yelled. “It’s just a dog!”

  And, sure as shit, Mac’d already figured that out for himself. He glanced over his shoulder to see Steady sprawled on his back in the middle of the porch, his neck wrenched back, his arms over his head aiming his handgun into the front yard. Ozzie and Zoelner had taken up positions behind the front pillars supporting the porch’s roof, their weapons drawn, their fingers on the triggers.

  Well, good to see we’ve all still got it, he mused, turning back in time to witness—oh, goody—the big, yellow dog squatting down in order to take a mammoth dump on the lawn.

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I was expecting,” he heard Ozzie mutter, amusement in his tone.

  “Mac?” A muffled voice sounded from beneath him. Ah, shit. He’d jumped on Delilah quicker than a duck on a Junebug, and now the poor woman was probably suffocating under his not unsubstantial weight.

  “Sorry, darlin’,” he apologized, pushing up on his elbows and staring down into her pretty face. There was a smudge of dirt on her chin, and her cheeks were flushed. But other than that, she appeared unscathed. He should have rolled off her. He should have.

  He didn’t.

  Because she was soft and lush, and for a moment, during which time he was quite sure he’d up and lost his cotton-pickin’ mind, he allowed himself to revel in the sensation of her beneath him. “It was a…” Holy crow, was that his voice? All low and growly? “…a false alarm.”

  She nodded jerkily. But it wasn’t fear he saw in her eyes. Hell, no. Fear would not have had every cell inside him screeching to a stop. Awareness would. And that’s exactly what was plastered all over Delilah’s face. Her awareness. Of him. As a man…

  And just as every cell inside him came to a grinding halt, so, too, did the rest of the world. The eerie sounds of the downtrodden neighborhood vanished. His teammates and the big, goofy dog appeared frozen in place. It was just the two of them. Just Mac and red-hot Delilah—her lush breasts brushing his chest on an indrawn breath, her green irises speckled with tiny flecks of gold. Up close like this, he could see that he’d been right all along. Her skin was completely, damnably flawless. Her lips plump and smooth. And speaking of… She opened her mouth on an exhale that tickled his chin and allowed her sweet breath to tunnel up his nostrils.

  The stupid things flared of their own accord, and when she saw his reaction, she shifted. Just a little. Just enough so that her leg slipped to the outside of his. Just enough for her fun parts to directly align with his. Little Mac, never one to miss this kind of opportunity, swelled and strained against his zipper. His balls instantly tightened and began throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He was lost. Lost in the sight of her. In the feel of her. In the wondrous—

  Slurp! A warm, wet tongue curled under his chin, then journeyed the length of his face to tangle in his hair. Slurp! The action was repeated, and he looked up into the bright brown eyes of the Labrador.

  Hello, reality. Where the hell have you been the last twenty seconds?

  “Cut it out, you big goofball.” He pushed the dog’s massive head away as the world around him once more skipped into action. The Labrador sat back, thick tail thumping the grass, a doggy grin splitting its face. Then the beast let loose with a gleeful, “Yorp!”

  The bark sounded like something that would come from the throat of a pubescent boy, cracking up an octave somewhere in the middle.

  “Well, that’s a pathetically wimpy excuse for a bark if ever I heard one,” Steady muttered, turning over to rub his tailbone—the thing no doubt bruised from the ass-plant he’d done onto the boards of the porch.

  “Yorp!”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Mac pushed at that big, yellow head again when it started nosing in his direction, long, pink tongue poised to strike. “We heard you the first time.” He squinted at the flashing, silver pendant attached to the dog’s blue collar, and thought, really? “Fido, huh? I guess ol’ Charles isn’t real creative when it comes to pet naming.”

  “His name is Fido?” Ozzie called from the porch, having holstered his weapon.

  Mac was about to turn and nod over his shoulder when he felt movement beneath him. A soft, seductive sort of wiggle.

  For the love of Christ! He was still sprawled atop Delilah!

  Now, he really wished he could say he nonchalantly, just oh-so-casually rolled off her. That would’ve been the acceptable way to handle the situation. But considering he remembered, at that precise moment, that he’d gone and sprung the world’s hardest boner—the thing could’ve been used to cut glass—it should’ve come as no surprise that the jackknife maneuver he used to propel himself upward was one for the record books. The World’s Most Ludicrous and Uncoordinated Dismounts record books…

  “Well, yeehaw, cowboy! Did that pretty filly buck you off?” Ozzie called. “And you call yourself a bona fide Texan? Pssht.”

  Mac chose to ignore Ozzie because, really, how the hell was he expected to think of a comeback at a time like this? Instead, he reached down, offering Delilah a hand, and hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t noticed the spruce tree he’d been packing inside his pants while lying atop her.

  No such luck. When he hauled her to her feet, the surprised, slightly speculative look in her eye—not to mention the deep flush staining her cheeks and that deliciously overripe chest of hers—told him she hadn’t missed a damn thing.

  Well…hell…

  Chapter Eight

  “Holy hemp balls, Batman! Look at the size of this thing! It’s Goliath’s bong!”

  Delilah was sitting at Charlie’s kitchen table and frowning at the personal income tax returns and financial records she’d found in the filing cabinet acting as an end table in the nearby living room. A needle in a haystack…that’s what she was looking for. Something nefarious in Charlie’s dealings that might tell her why he was missing along with her uncle. And Charlie was missing. Gone for at least two days, by her guess. You know, given the state of the dry, crusty food on the dishes stacked in the sink and the general mayhem the dog had created when he began to worry his owner wouldn’t return.

  The cushions on the brown, threadbare sofa in the living room were shredded, cotton sticking out everywhere and littering the space in great, white wads that glimmered in the light of the two lamps flanking the front window. Toilet paper was strewn around the downstairs bathroom and glued to the wet linoleum floor—glued because Fido had been using the toilet as his water bowl and he hadn’t been very fastidious about it, dropping big, sticky blobs of drool and potty water everywhere. And then there was the bottom of the front door… It looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a wood chipper and lost. The wood chipper being Fido’s teeth and claws in his frantic bid for freedom from the house.

  Poor Fido…

  She reached down to scratch the Lab’s soft, floppy ears and was rewarded with an adoring whine and the promise of eternal love shining in his soulful brown eyes. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s just the best boy in the whole world? Are you best boy in the whole world?”

  “He’s probably the most mellow boy in the world if he lives with the guy who smokes this thing,” Ozzie said.

  She glanced up from the dog to find Ozzie waving around a three-foot-long water bong in eye-bleeding orange. And, oh, how she wished the reason her uncle hadn’t been in touch with her was because he’d gotten himself good and baked.

  If he’d pulled the ol’ Cheech and Chong, she’d be pissed at him for scaring her shitless and doing something that by Illinois law could get him thrown in the nearest eight-by-ten. But at least she’d know what to do… Namely, feed him copious amounts of White Castle and Cheetos and wait for the THC to wear off before hauling his stoner ass back home. As it stood, she was no closer to finding her uncle than she’d been before she left Chicago. And, to make matters worse, now she was dealing with another old Marine who’d mysteriously gone AWOL.

  She glanced back down at the tax filings. There was someth
ing here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Besides his Social Security and military retirement benefits, Charlie Sanders didn’t have any income. But there were expenditures listed in his—

  The air around her heated as Mac brushed by her. She glanced up, only to find him not paying her the slightest bit of attention—so what else is new? Instead, he was in the process of making his third slow circle around the kitchen table. Squatting, he studied the orange and green linoleum floor as if in search of some miniscule piece of evidence. When he stood, she managed to catch his eye, but his expression was back to being dismissive.

  So, we’re playing it that way, are we? She lifted a brow, hoping the look she wore clearly relayed her thoughts. We’re just pretending nothing happened out there in the front yard? We’re just acting like you didn’t pitch a stick of wood big enough and stiff enough to hang my bath towel on?

  Mimicking her, Mac lifted a dark brow, his expression sliding from dismissive to inscrutable.

  Okay. So I guess the answers to those questions are yes, yes, and yes.

  Then and there she decided that, just as she’d long suspected, Bryan “Mac” McMillan was a big, irritating, confusing, A-hole. A big, irritating, confusing, holy-hell-hot-as-homemade-sin A-hole. And to make matters worse—as if she needed matters to be worse at this point; thanks, Universe, you giant dickwad!—ever since he’d sprawled atop her, so warm, so heavy, so very much a man, blood had been rushing into parts of her that had been too long ignored. Well…too long ignored if you didn’t count the pulse setting on her handheld showerhead—which she most certainly did not. Because, if memory served, there was a vast difference between a man’s touch and that of her trusty stainless steel bathtub accessory. So, yes. Blood. Rushing. Parts too long ignored. And the sensation was driving her crazy. Crazy enough to throw caution, and all his repeated rejections, to the wind and jump on the man like he was a bouncy house.