Hell for Leather

by Julie Ann Walker

  “So.” She tilted her head until her ponytail hung down over her shoulder in a smooth, golden rope. “You must be the indomitable Frank Knight. Billy has told me so very little about you.”

  And that voice…

  It was soft and husky. The type that belonged solely in the bedroom.

  “Everyone calls me Boss,” he managed to grumble.

  “I think I’ll stick to Frank,” she said with a wink. And for some reason, his eyelid twitched. “After all, there can be only one boss around here, and I’m it. Now, I hear you want to get into the business of building bikes?”

  “I’m considering it.” He couldn’t help but notice the way her nose tilted up at the end or the way her small breasts pressed against the soft fabric of the paint-stained, long-sleeved T-shirt she wore.

  Kee-rist, man, get a grip.

  “Well, then.” She nodded, pushing past him as she made her way toward the front door, “let’s go take a look at that bike you brought with you and see if you have any talent at all.”

  For a split second, he let his eyes travel down to the gentle sway of her hips before forcing himself to focus on a point over her head as he followed her back through the various machinery. Bill was right behind him, which helped to keep his eyes away from the prize…so to speak. Because the last thing he wanted was to get caught ogling the guy’s kid sister.

  Talk about a no-no of epic proportions. Especially if he didn’t fancy the idea of finding one of Bill’s size-eleven biker boots shoved up his ass.

  Once they reached the first set of glass doors, she pulled a thick pair of pink coveralls off a hook on the wall. Balancing first on one foot then the other, she stepped into the coveralls and zipped them up before snagging a bright purple stocking cap from a second hook and pulling it over her head.

  She looked ridiculous. And feminine. And so damned cute.

  He gritted his teeth and reminded himself of three things. One, she was way too young for him. Two, if things worked out, then despite what she thought now, he was going to be her boss. And three, he’d made a promise not to—

  “How much money are you thinking of investing?” she interrupted his thoughts as she pushed through the double doors and into the vestibule.

  As much as it takes…“We’ll talk more about that later.” He held his breath, waiting to see how she’d respond to both his authoritative tone and his answer. It was a test of sorts, to determine if they had any hope of working together.

  She regarded him for a long second, her brown eyes seeming to peer into his head. Then she shrugged, “Suit yourself.”

  When she opened the outer door, he once again had to dip his chin against the icy wind. The three of them slogged through the snow to the small, enclosed cargo trailer hitched to the back of his Hummer, and he fished in his pocket for the keys with fingers already numb from the cold. Once he opened the trailer’s back door, she didn’t wait for an invitation to jump inside.

  He and Bill were left to follow her up and watch as she walked around his restored bike before squatting near the exhaust.

  “You do all the work yourself?” she asked.

  The bike he’d been so proud of thirty minutes before seemed shoddy and unimaginative by comparison.

  “Yes,” he admitted, amazed he actually felt nervous. Like maybe she wouldn’t want to work with him.

  “Your welding is complete crap,” she said, running a finger along a weld he’d thought was actually pretty damned good. “But it’s obvious you’re a decent mechanic, and that’s really what I need right now, more decent mechanics. Plus,” she stood and winked, “it might be nice to have a big, strong dreamboat like you around the place day-in and day-out. Something fun to look at when my muse abandons me.”

  He opened his mouth…but nothing came out. He could only stare and blink like a bewildered owl.

  Holy hell, was she flirting with him?

  He was saved from having to make any sort of answer—thank you, sweet Jesus—when Bill grumbled, “Cut it out, Becky. Now’s not the time, and Boss is definitely not the guy.”

  “No?” She lifted her brows, turning toward Frank questioningly.

  And now he was able to find his voice. “No.” He shook his head emphatically, trying to swallow his lungs that had somehow crawled up into his throat.

  “Well,” she shrugged, completely unflustered by his overt rejection, “you can’t blame a gal for trying.” She offered him a hand. “I’m in, partner. That is, once I know exactly how much you’re thinking of investing.”

  “Bill will get back to you with the specifics,” he hedged, taking her hand only briefly before releasing it, more eager to get the hell out of there than he’d care to admit.

  Again she did that head-tilt thing. The one that caused the end of her ponytail to slide over her shoulder. She regarded him for a long moment during which time he thought his heart might’ve jumped right out of his mouth had his lungs not been in the way. Then she shrugged and said, “Fine. Go ahead and do that whole mystery-man thing. I don’t really give a rat’s ass as long as you’re good for the green.”

  And with that, she hopped down from the back of the trailer.

  He moved to watch her traipse through the snow to the front door of her shop. Only once she disappeared inside did he turn to Bill. “You sure she’s trustworthy enough? She seems a bit impulsive to me.”

  Impulsive and arrogant and bold and…way too cute for her own good.

  Bill smiled, crossing his arms. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, Becky’s as steady as they come. We can depend on her to keep our secrets. You have my word.”

  “And what about the hierarchy? How’s she going to react once she realizes I’m the one calling the shots?”

  Bill clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and chuckled. “I have no doubt you can handle her, Boss.”

  Uh-huh. He wished he shared Bill’s certainty. Because there was one thing he could spot from a mile away, and that was trouble.

  And Rebecca Reichert?

  Well, she had trouble written all over her…

  Chapter One

  Three and a half years later…

  Pirates…

  Wow. Now there’s something you don’t see every day.

  That was Becky’s first thought as she ducked under the low cabin door of the thirty-eight-foot catamaran named Serendipity and stepped into the blazing equatorial sun. Her second thought, more appropriately, was oh hell.

  Eve—her longtime friend and owner of the Serendipity—was swaying unsteadily and staring in wide-eyed horror at the three dirty, barefoot men holding ancient AK-47s like they knew how to use them. Four more equally skinny, disheveled men were standing in a rickety skiff tethered off the Serendipity’s stern.

  Okay, so…obviously they’d been playing the oldies a little too loudly considering they’d somehow managed to drown out the rough sound of the pirates’ rusty outboard engine motoring up behind them.

  “Eve,” she murmured around the head of a cherry Dum Dum lollipop as her heart hammered against her ribs and the skin on her scalp began crawling with invisible ants. “Just stay calm, okay?”

  Yep. Calm was key. Calm kept a girl from finding herself fathoms deep beneath the crushing weight of Davy Jones’s Locker or under the more horrifying weight of a sweaty man who didn’t know the meaning of the word no.

  When Eve gave no reply, she glanced over at her friend and noticed the poor woman was turning the color of an eggplant.

  “Eve,” she said with as much urgency as she could afford, given the last thing she wanted was to spook an already skittish pirate who very likely suffered from a classic case of itchy-trigger-finger-syndrome, “you need to breathe.”

  Eve’s throat worked over a dry swallow before her chest quickly expanded on a shaky breath.

  Okay, good. Problem one: Eve keeling over in a dead faint—solved. Problem two: being taken hostage by pirates—now that was going to take a bit more creativity.

  She wrac
ked her brain for some way out of their current predicament as Jimmy Buffett crooning, “Yes I am a pirate. Two hundred years too late,” wafted up from inside the cabin.

  Really, Jimmy? You’re singing that now?

  Under normal circumstances, she’d be the first to appreciate the irony. Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances.

  The youngest and shortest of the pirates—he wore an eye patch…seriously?—flicked a tight look in her direction, and she threw her hands in the air, palms out in the universal I’m unarmed and cooperating signal. But a quick glance was all he allotted her before he returned the fierce attention of his one good eye to Eve.

  She snuck another peek at her friend and…oh no. Oh crap.

  “Slowly, very slowly, Eve, I want you to lay the knife on the deck and kick it away from you.” She was careful to keep her tone cool and unthreatening. Pirates made their money from the ransom of ships and captives. If she could keep Eve from doing something stupid—like, oh, say flying at the heavily armed pirates like a blade-wielding banshee—they’d likely make it out of this thing alive.

  Unfortunately, it appeared Eve had stopped listening to her.

  “Eve!” she hissed. “Lay down the knife. Slowly. And kick it away from you.”

  This time she got through.

  Eve glanced down at the long, thin blade clutched in her fist. From the brief flicker of confusion that flashed through her eyes, it was obvious she’d been unaware she still held the knife she’d been using to fillet the bonito they’d caught for lunch. But realization quickly dawned, and her bewildered expression morphed into something frighteningly desperate.

  Becky dropped all pretense of remaining cool and collected. “Don’t you even think about it,” she barked.

  Two of the men on deck jerked their shaggy heads in her direction, the wooden butts of their automatic weapons made contact with their scrawny shoulders as the evil black eyes of the Kalashnikovs’ barrels focused on her thundering heart.

  “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” she whispered, lifting her hands higher and gulping past a Sahara-dry knot in her throat. “Everyone knows that.”

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Eve slowly bend at the waist, and the unmistakable thunk of the blade hitting the wooden deck was music to her ears.

  “Look, guys,” she addressed the group, grateful beyond belief when the ominous barrels of those old, but still deadly, rifles once more pointed toward the deck. That’s the thing about AKs, Billy once told her, they buck like a damned bronco, are simpler than a kindergarten math test, but they’ll fire with a barrel full of sand. Those Russians sure know how to make one hell of a reliable weapon—which, given her current situation, was just frickin’ great. Not. “These are Seychelles waters. You don’t have any authority here.”

  “No, no, no,” the little pirate wearing the eye patch answered in heavily accented English. “We only authority on water. We Somali pirate.”

  “Oh boy,” Eve wheezed, putting a trembling hand to her throat as her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “Don’t you dare pass out on me, Evelyn Edens!” Becky commanded, her brain threatening to explode at the mere thought of what might happen to a beautiful, unconscious woman in the hands of Somali pirates out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  Eve swayed but managed to remain standing, her legs firmly planted on the softly rolling deck.

  Okay, good.

  “We have no money. Our families have no money,” she declared. Which was true for the most part as far as she was concerned. Eve, however, was as rich as Croesus. Thankfully, there was no way for the pirates to know that. “You’ll get no ransom from us. It’ll cost you more to feed and shelter us than you’ll ever receive from our families. And this boat is twenty years old. She’s not worth the fuel it’ll cost you to sail her back to Somalia. Just let us go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “No, no, no,” the young pirate shook his head—it appeared the negatives in his vocabulary only came in threes. His one black eye was bright with excitement, and she noticed his eye patch had a tacky little rhinestone glued to the center, shades of One-Eyed Willie from The Goonies.

  Geez, this just keeps getting better and better.

  “You American.” He grinned happily, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Wowza, she would bet her best TIG welder those chompers had never seen a toothbrush or a tube of Colgate. “America pay big money.”

  She snorted; she couldn’t help it. The little man was delusional. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s the policy of the U.S. government not to negotiate with terrorists.”

  One-Eyed Willie threw back his head and laughed, his ribs poking painfully through the dark skin of his torso. “We no terrorists. We Somali pirates.”

  Whatever.

  “Same thing,” she murmured, glancing around at the other men who wore the alert, but slightly vacant, look of those who don’t comprehend a word of what was being said.

  Okay, so Willie was the only one who spoke English. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

  “Not terrorists!” he yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “Pirates!”

  “Okay, okay,” she placated, softening her tone and biting on her sarcastic tongue. “You’re pirates, not terrorists. I get it. That doesn’t change the simple fact that our government will give you nothing but a severe case of lead poisoning. And our families don’t have a cent to pay you.”

  “Oh, they pay,” he smiled, once again exposing those urine-colored teeth. “They always pay.”

  Which, sadly, was probably true. Someone always came up with the coin—bargaining everything they had and usually a lot more they didn’t—when the life of a loved one was on the line.

  “So,” he said as he came to stand beside her, eyeing her up and down until a shiver of revulsion raced down her spine, “we go Somalia now.”

  And she swore she’d swallow her own tongue before she ever even thought these next words—because for three and a half very long years the big dill-hole had refused to give her the time of day despite the fact that she was just a little in love with him, okay a lot in love with him—but it all came down to this…she needed Frank.

  Because, just like he always swore would happen, she’d managed to step in a big, stinking pile of trouble from which there was no hope of escape.

  She absolutely hated proving that man right.

  ***

  Briefing room onboard the navy destroyer, USS Patton

  Six days later…

  Sometimes Frank hated being proved right.

  “Well Bill,” he said as he skimmed through the plans detailing Becky and Eve’s rescue for what seemed like the umpteenth time. No way was he letting this op go off with even the slightest hiccup, not with Becky’s neck on the chopping block. “It appears your little sister has finally landed herself in a big, stinking pile of trouble. I always knew it’d happen.”

  Bill sat at the conference table with his desert-tan combat boots propped up, placidly reading a dog-eared copy of The Grapes of Wrath as if his kid sister wasn’t currently in the hands of gun-toting Somali pirates.

  Un-fucking-believable.

  But that was Bill for you. The sonofabitch was the epitome of serenity, always, even when balls-deep in the wiry guts of an IED. Which was why two hours after Frank made the decision to open his own private shop, he’d recruited Bill from Alpha Platoon. The commanding officer of Alpha still hadn’t forgiven him for that little maneuver, but Frank didn’t much care, considering it was a known fact within the spec-ops community that no one knew his way around things that went kaboom like Wild Bill Reichert. And Frank accepted nothing but the absolute best personnel—the elite of the elite—for Black Knights Inc.

  “It’s not like she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates, Boss,” Bill murmured as he licked his finger and turned a page.

  “I don’t care if she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates or
not.” He nearly popped an aneurism when the words evoked a starburst image of Becky in the merciless hands of those ruthless cutthroats. “The fact remains, she should’ve known better than to travel to this part of the world.”

  “Seychellois waters are considered secure. Pirates have never attacked a vessel so close to Assumption Island, so it is reasonable to assume the women believed they would be perfectly safe,” rasped Jamin Agassi.

  Frank glanced over at one of Black Knights Inc.’s newest employees and, not for the first time, felt a shiver of trepidation run down his spine. How could you trust a guy who knew the adjective form of Seychelles was Seychellois?

  And it didn’t help matters in the least that Agassi had been dubbed “Angel” by Becky because the man’s features were so perfect they were almost unearthly. Of course, the plastic surgeries he’d undergone after defecting from the Israeli Mossad and before Uncle Sam decided to conceal him within the ranks of Frank’s Black Knights no doubt had something to do with the perfection of the man’s mug.

  Goddamn pretty boy.

  Which only served to remind Frank of all the other goddamned pretty boys who worked for him. The ones who’d been out on assignment when the call for Becky’s ransom came in, leaving him to catch the next transport onto the USS Patton with only Bill and the FNG—the military’s warm and fuzzy acronym for the fucking new guy.

  “Yes, Seychellois waters,” he unnecessarily emphasized the word, “have never before seen pirate attacks, but military ships from across the globe have increased patrols and secured the shipping lanes around the bottlenecked Gulf of Aden, which anyone with a smidge of gray matter will tell you has only chased the pirates farther south around the Horn of Africa. So it stands to reason that it was only a matter of time before the waters around the Seychelles and Madagascar started seeing pirate activity.”

  See, just because he didn’t know the adjective form of Seychelles didn’t necessarily mean he was a slavering idiot. He knew some shit about some shit even though his vocabulary—liberally sprinkled with four-letter words on a good day—tended to indicate otherwise.