Thrill Ride

by Julie Ann Walker

  “It’s true,” Rock whispered, stepping forward to lay a hand on Boss’s big shoulder, nodding in that way a person does when they’re trying to convince someone to agree with them and, yes, obviously he had picked up on Boss’s kernel of doubt.

  “Rock—” Boss began, but he was cut off by Ozzie swearing loudly.

  “What the hell is the fucking matter with you?” Steady asked the question they were all thinking.

  “Cell phone jammer,” Ozzie said, looking ready to throw his phone on the ground and stomp it to smithereens. Of course, with his love of technology, he only glared at the offending piece of equipment like it had personally betrayed him, before shoving it back in his pocket. “So what now? How do we keep Eve and Becky hell and gone from here?”

  And, suddenly, all eyes turned to Vanessa.

  A deep foreboding throbbed in her chest before deciding to make like a Canadian goose and migrate south to the pit of her stomach.

  “What? What am I supposed to—”

  “You need to go out there and keep them away from the house,” Boss said, and she was shaking her head even before he finished. “Those spooks wouldn’t dare shoot an unarmed woman.”

  “No way. I’m not tucking tail and running.” At this, she turned to Rock, stuck out her chin, and glared. He might hate her guts, but she loved him and she damned sure wasn’t going to leave him right when the CIA was poised to blow him and everyone with him to Kingdom Come—wherever that was.

  “Go, Vanessa,” Rock nodded, and…was she imagining it? Or did something in his eyes soften, just for an instant.

  She decided to pretend that was the case even if it wasn’t, and she stepped forward, placing a tentative hand on his arm. His lean muscles bunched beneath her fingers, reminding her of how hard he’d been against her, how knowledgeable he’d been when giving her pleasure. Reminding her of…too much. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he hissed. His jaw was clenching so hard, she marveled he could speak at all. And, yessir, she obviously had been imagining that softening of his eyes. “You’ve doomed us, so the least you can do now is go save Becky and Eve.”

  She flinched like he’d hit her, but, in truth, his words—and specifically his hard, cutting tone—felt more like a knife, slicing her to the bone.

  Ozzie frowned at Rock, “Hey, that’s not fair. She only—”

  “Save it, Ozzie,” she interrupted, stepping back and shaking her head, a deep sadness pervading her body and weighing down her limbs. “He might be right.”

  In Black Knights vernacular, she might’ve fucked them all. Her love for Rock, her desire to have him back with her, back with the Knights, might’ve blinded her. Kept her from seeing what was really the right move. Which was probably leaving him the hell alone to try to figure out and clean up this mess by himself.

  Rock was nothing if not capable of dealing with his own problems. But despite what he’d told her time and again out in that jungle and on the long ride to San Jose, she thought she’d known better. She thought she’d known what was best.

  What an asshole she’d turned out to be…

  “But—” Ozzie tried again.

  “No buts. If I need to go out in order to keep Becky and Eve from barging in here and making the situation worse…” If it was possible to make this situation worse, considering her decision to betray Rock had backfired so fantastically that he was now cornered by the same group of people he’d managed to elude for the last six months. And, oh yeah. She’d simultaneously managed to put all the Knights in the middle of the CIA’s crosshairs, too. “…Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  And even though it took everything she had to turn away from Rock, even though her instinct was to throw her arms around his neck and tell him exactly what she was feeling, she knew he wouldn’t welcome the gesture, nor would he want to hear her words. So, with a deep, fortifying breath, she started to march out of the living room only to be stopped by a callused palm on her forearm.

  For one brief moment, her heart sprouted feathers and soared. Did Rock…?

  But, no. It was only Boss.

  “I’ll walk with you,” he said, his expression solemn, that kernel of doubt still in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” she swallowed, amazed to discover she was about to completely blow her cover as a hard-assed operator—again—and burst into tears. But she sucked it up. Literally. She made a snorting sound as she raked in another breath. “You have to know he’s not telling us everything, right?” she whispered lowly, keeping the conversation private. “He wouldn’t have played even a tiny part in killing innocent people. He…he just wouldn’t have.”

  “Hell, I know that,” Boss grumbled quietly. “But as right as you are about that, he might be right in that the only way out of this thing now is to give him up.”

  Oh, geez. Just the thought of what the CIA would do to him if they got their hands on him…

  The walk to the front door was the longest she’d ever taken, especially since each step took her further and further away from the only man she’d ever loved. But when they finally reached their destination, Boss didn’t give her a moment to second-guess herself. He opened the door the barest inch, shouting out, “I’ve got a woman exiting! Don’t shoot!”

  “Affirmative!” That loud voice echoed over the speaker and down the side of the mountain in the opposite direction, an effective death knell to the part she was going to play in the rest of this operation.

  But just before she squeezed through the door, hands up, palms out, she heard Steady yell to Boss the four most fantastic words ever spoken in the history of the world…

  “I’ve got a plan!”

  ***

  Rock stood by the front door to Eve’s vacation home, listening to the eerie sound of those black Chinooks muttering overhead, aware of the fact that the original six CIA agents had now ballooned to over twenty, and trying to guess what the odds of this thing actually working might be.

  Because Steady’s big plan?

  His death. Pure and simple. Richard “Rock” Babineaux needed to die.

  And with his head aching like a rotten tooth and the room spinning ever so slowly due to the fact that he was a pint and a half low on blood, he figured he was pretty close to accomplishing that goal.

  “Two to one,” Ozzie said from beside him. Because in all the years they’d worked together, the two of them had made a game of weighing the odds.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t a game.

  And he was starting to get that feeling…

  The one that told him things could go really wrong, really quickly. And he absolutely hated that feeling. Especially since he’d left Vanessa with the impression that this was going to be all her fault.

  He hadn’t wanted to be so hard on her, but he’d needed her out of the house. Safe. And the quickest way he’d known to accomplish that feat was to blame her for their current predicament and guilt her into leaving.

  Of course if this thing went sideways, those were going to be the last words she ever heard out of him and…

  Sweet Lord almighty!

  When she saw him go down, she was going to flat-out lose her shit—all the women were—and he hated that. He hated knowing she was going to think, just for a little while, that his death was on her. Because, yes, she’d betrayed him, and by God he may feel like holding her down so he could wring her neck, but he in no way wanted her to suffer under the impression that—

  “Naw,” Steady scoffed, interrupting his thoughts. “It’s way better than that. I’d say it’s closer to fifty-fifty.”

  Way better?

  Steady considered it way better that he only gave this thing—his plan—a fifty-fifty shot of working?

  Rock closed his eyes and girded his loins to do…well…what he was about to do. Because the truth of the matter was, they’d run out of options. So when Steady had piped up with, “You need to die, Rock,” before laying out a plan to make
that happen, on their terms, they’d decided to give it a go.

  But now that he was here, about twenty seconds away from opening that door and stepping into the abyss, he was beginning to regret his decision to go along with this harebrained scheme. Of course, that probably had a lot to do with the fact that, besides there being twenty-plus agents stationed outside with direct orders to shoot him dead if he put up any kind of resistance, he had three small capfuls of plastic explosives taped to his chest.

  That’s right.

  Plastic explosives. Taped. To. His. Chest.

  Mon dieu, he could only pray Wild Bill was on top of his game with those charges—way the hell at the very pinnacle of his game, in fact. Because when dealing with explosives of any kind, especially C4, you didn’t just check your work once—you checked it three times. And, by God, you better never let your attention wander while handling them or you might wind up missing a few digits at best, a few lifetimes at worst. And if Bill hadn’t calculated those percentages just right…

  Merde. He couldn’t think that way. These men had had his back for years, and he trusted each of them implicitly. Still, that didn’t stop the breath from shuddering out of him as Boss opened the door and shouted, “He’s coming out! Hold your fire! He’s unarmed and coming out! Do I have your word you will hold your fire?”

  A long, interminable second passed, then that deep voice that’d been issuing commands and yelling threats for the last forty-five minutes sounded over the loudspeaker mounted to the top of the van.

  The van that was now parked across the street. The same one the women were huddled in front of, being held at gunpoint—and, oui, that particular situation completely coddled his balls. “This is Special Agent Patrick Wilhelm! And you have my word, Mr. Knight, that as long as there’s no funny business, we will hold our fire!”

  Boss turned to Rock then, and the expression on the man’s face was enough to have Rock shaking his head and grinning. “Don’t worry, mon ami. We’re the Black Knights.” And harking back to their days with the SEALs, he added, “Hoo-ah?”

  “Hoo-ah, Rock!” Those Knights gathered around him barked in unison before he threw the door open and stepped over the threshold.

  The first thing to hit him was the pungent smell of aviation fuel. The choppers overhead were perfuming the jungle and neighborhood beneath them. The second thing to hit him was the setting sun. It was a bright, orange ball, glowing low along the horizon, and he blinked against its molten brilliance. It was beautiful, perhaps the last sunset he’d ever see…And too soon, a sound to his left diverted his attention. The people from the house next door were standing out on the road, watching the unfolding drama with wide, worried eyes.

  Of course, that was nothing compared to Vanessa’s expression.

  When his gaze zeroed in on her, held securely between Eve and Becky, he felt like keeling over then and there. Before his cue. Because the woman was bawling her pretty eyes out, pulling against the two women and shouting over and over again, “Rock, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay, chere,” he whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “It’s gonna be okay.” Then he closed his eyes and waited for his end…

  Chapter Sixteen

  What happened to the plan? Vanessa thought frantically.

  Steady was supposed to have a plan! But this wasn’t a plan. This was Rock giving himself up in order to save all of them, which wasn’t a plan!

  “He can’t do this,” she sobbed, noting that now instead of her holding Becky back from rushing into the house to be with Boss, both Becky and Eve were having to hold her back from sprinting to Rock. “There has to be another way. There has to—”

  “Stop it, Vanessa!” Becky barked in her ear, wrestling her back toward the van’s bumper like a pint-sized bar brawler. “If you go flying up to him like some sort of wild banshee, the CIA just might kill both of you. Use your friggin’ head, woman!”

  And, yes, Becky was right. She wasn’t using her head; she was listening to her heart. And she’d already done enough of that today, hadn’t she? Because it was her heart that’d insisted she bring Rock back here…

  Gulping down the hard knot of fear and remorse that’d been steadily growing in her throat ever since Bill and Steady tackled him off that dirt bike, she forced herself to stop struggling. But, it was obvious both Becky and Eve didn’t trust her as far as they could throw her, because each woman kept a restraining hand on her arm.

  She didn’t care. Nothing mattered right now except the man who was standing on that threshold, looking so brave and honorable as he sacrificed himself for all of them.

  She wanted to yell at him to come down from that cross he’d climbed up on, but she knew it’d do no good. Once Rock made a decision about something, it was nearly impossible to change his mind. And he’d obviously decided, along with the rest of the Knights—and you better believe she was going to rip every single one of them a new asshole for agreeing to this—that giving himself over to the CIA was the only solution. The only way out. For them. Not for him.

  Jesus, what did I do by bringing him back here?

  Doomed him, that little bastard of a voice answered.

  She closed her eyes, hoping beyond hope that when she opened them again she’d discover it had all been a dream. A very, very bad dream…But, no. No such luck. Because when she took a deep breath and blinked against the brightness of the sun glinting off the whitewashed stucco house, he was still standing there. Still looking so brave and honorable and…and so goddamned sacrificial.

  She could not believe she’d done this to him, brought him this point of no return, of no more options except to give himself up. She’d destroyed him and any chance he had of clearing his name by trying to save him. And she’d never, never as long as she lived, be able to forgive herself. She’d just made the biggest mistake of her life, and what made it all the more terrible was the fact that the biggest mistake of her life might very well result in the end of his life.

  The world around her dissolved into nothing but a blur as she allowed her eyes to linger on his wonderfully plain and, at the same time, wonderfully beautiful face.

  He was pale. Even at a distance, she could see that. His dark goatee stood out in harsh contrast to the skin of his face. And the clean bandage he’d applied over the wound on his neck was almost indiscernible against his pallor.

  And, yeah, who wouldn’t be pale? He was about to turn himself over to the CIA as a traitor, and The Company wasn’t exactly known for its leniency toward traitors.

  Pale, but clean, she noted distractedly. At some point he’d washed off most off the mud and grime they’d accumulated from their trek through the jungle, and she didn’t doubt that was because he figured he was in for a very long, very rigorous examination—both mental and physical—and why add sweat and dirt to the discomforts he was sure to suffer at the CIA’s hands?

  He’d traded in his tank top for a loose, gray T-shirt, which only emphasized how much weight he’d lost over the last few months. He’d definitely been running on empty when she found him.

  But at least he’d still been running, that taunting voice whispered.

  A hard sob shook her as she watched him take a step forward at Agent Wilhelm’s command. Then a gunshot rang out, loud and shockingly obscene. It was followed by three more in quick succession, and that’s when her world ended…

  ***

  When the first charge blew, Rock didn’t need to pretend to stagger back as blood sprayed out from his chest and up into his face. The C4 packed quite a little punch and, even though they’d put protective tape beneath the cap containing the small amount of explosive and a good amount of his blood, it still managed to sear his skin.

  The second and third blasts were a little harder to fake, but he did his best.

  Of course, the fourth shot caught him completely off guard and had him landing flat on his back with a loud umph. His left ear felt like it’d been sheered clean off the side of his head.


  Had Ghost decided to take one real shot? Make it count? Maybe to help Rock out with his bid for an Academy Award? If so, Rock was certainly going to give the man a piece of his mind, because…

  Merde.

  He’d didn’t remember the part where he signed up to be Picasso.

  Then again, going through the rest of his life minus one ear was a small price to pay if this thing actually worked. And that was the last thought he had before utter confusion exploded around him.

  Suddenly Boss was screaming, “You bastards promised not to shoot!” at the same time Agent Wilhelm shouted, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Which one of you assholes is firing!”

  And Vanessa?

  Well, Vanessa was just screaming her head off. Even through all the pandemonium, Rock could hear the agony in her wail as Boss hooked strong hands beneath his armpits and, with a mighty heave that had every single one of Rock’s sore muscles protesting, began hauling him back into the house. He let his head loll back on his neck, kept himself completely boneless. And once the soles of his boots cleared the threshold, Steady, ready and waiting at his predetermined spot, slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

  Then it was Ozzie’s turn in this little sideshow they’d scripted. The kid, after receiving his cue from Boss, squirted some of the blood Steady had drawn from Rock’s vein not more than thirty minutes ago onto the floor. Boss dragged Rock back through it, creating a huge bloody trail indicative of a man who’d just sustained three shots to center mass and a fourth one—four, really?—to the head. At the designated location, about fifteen feet down the hall and mostly concealed by the partition leading into the kitchen where they’d faked a humongous pool of blood, Boss dropped him.

  Rock opened one eye, caught the concerned look on Boss’s face, and gave him a thumbs-up. The C4 had managed to singe him, and he thought he smelled the pungent aroma of burning hair—which told him they should have shaved his chest before taping the explosives on—but, other than that and the god-awful ringing and burning in his ear, he appeared to be in one piece.