Thrill Ride

by Julie Ann Walker

  Huh….

  He hadn’t really believed it would work. Then again, Wild Bill Reichert did know more about the esoteric use of all things that go boom than any man in the world.

  Agent Wilhelm’s voice sounded again over the loudspeaker, only this time he was relaying his intention to enter the premises and ascertain the condition of the rogue operator.

  Rogue. Rock detested that word. It was synonymous with a cheater, a blackguard. And, while technically he was operating outside of orders—had been for the last six months—none of those descriptions accurately portrayed him.

  “Come on in, you sonofabitch!” Boss shouted after he’d run back to the door, throwing it wide open. Rock figured now was the time to pull out his best Meryl Streep as a beam of golden sunlight slipped in through the opening, highlighting the back of his head where he lay in that sticky pool of fake blood and…

  Sweet Lord. The sound Vanessa made when she saw him.

  He was certain he’d hear it in his nightmares from this day forward. Because if heartbreak, guilt, denial, and grief all combined together into one huge, ugly lump, it would make the awful noise tearing out of Vanessa’s ravaged throat.

  It’s not real, chere.

  But for her, unfortunately, it was. And there was nothing he could do to reassure her. In fact, he felt a little guilty when it occurred to him that the scene she was causing likely went a long way in helping convince the CIA that what they’d just witnessed was, indeed, his death.

  And, as if Boss could read his thoughts, the big guy continued yelling, “You’ve killed him!” And even though Rock had his eyes closed, he imagined Boss was standing in the doorway like an avenging angel, all two hundred forty pounds of pissed-off operator, puffed up and looking ready to shoot someone. “You might as well come and see your handiwork!”

  Uh-huh. Rock could just imagine Agent Wilhelm jumping right on that, especially since it would require him to approach Boss.

  A couple of interminable seconds passed before heavy footsteps pounded up the steps of the front porch. Rock tried to pay attention to the direction those steps moved, but it was difficult given he was distracted by the noise of all three women sobbing hysterically. And the guy who’d been holding the gun on them, who was still holding the gun on them by the sounds of it, kept shouting, “Get back! Stay put!”

  Rock silently promised to kill the morceau de merde—piece of shit—if he so much as twitched that trigger in the women’s direction, but his attention was soon diverted by the conversation taking place at the front door…

  “Who took the shots?” Boss demanded, his tone filled with enough authority and rage to make most men curl into a protective fetal position. “Because I want that bastard’s balls on a platter!”

  “It wasn’t us,” Wilhelm declared vehemently. His voice sounded far less official when it wasn’t booming at them over the loudspeaker. “Swear to God, it wasn’t. One of my men saw a flash from a scope coming from the trees across the way. I’ve got part of my team in pursuit of the shooter.”

  Shooter. That would be Ghost, and no way in hell would the CIA catch him. That man came by his nickname honestly. If he wanted to disappear? He did. Period. End of story. Just…smoke.

  “Bullshit!” Boss thundered, sounding like he was vibrating with fury. Go Boss! Way to sell it. “You just killed an innocent man. And when we find out who was really behind all those murders back stateside, I’m going to see that you’re stripped of your position and the only job you’ll get in the intelligence community is that of urinal cake replacer in the men’s bathroom at Langley’s detention center!”

  Urinal cake replacer? Was that even a real job?

  “It wasn’t us!” Wilhelm shouted ferociously, and, okay, so there was that official tone.

  For a couple of minutes, obscenities were exchanged, and Rock imagined the two men were face-to-face like a couple of rabid dogs, snarling and barking and slathering. Then Wilhelm said, “I need to examine the body.”

  Body. Mon dieu, it was bizarre to be referred to as such.

  “You lay one finger on that man,” Boss rumbled, his voice pitched so low you could feel it in your chest like the boom of fireworks on the Fourth of July, “and I’ll personally put a bullet in your brain.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Wilhelm scoffed. And Boss must’ve made a face that begged the CIA agent to call his bluff, because a couple of seconds ticked by before Wilhelm opened his mouth again. And this time, his tone was far less assured. “Look, Mr. Knight, my men didn’t kill Babineaux. Someone else did. As a rogue,” there was that despicable word again, “he probably made a lot of enemies. Someone was waiting to take him out.”

  And, as Rock’s dear ol’ daddy used to say, B.I.N.G.O. That spells bingo!

  Because that was exactly the conclusion to which they’d hoped the CIA would jump.

  “Even if what you’re saying is true, you’re not touching him,” Boss declared, his uncompromising tone saying it all. Rock was pretty positive the guy’s Rock-of-Gibraltar expression probably said it even better. “That man lying dead over there,” he imagined Boss hooking a thumb in his direction and he held his breath, “has done more for the safety and for the sovereignty of our country than you and all those men you’ve brought with you combined. He bled red, white, and blue since the day he was born,” mostly just red, Rock could vouch for that, “and I won’t have you poking and prodding at his corpse, defiling him more than you already have.”

  “I’ve got orders—”

  “You’ve got orders to confirm his death,” Boss interrupted. “Well, as I’m sure you can see, the man is dead. If you want confirmation that that’s really Richard ‘Rock’ Babineaux lying over there in a pool of blood, you can just scoop up a sample and take it back to your fancy-schmancy lab at Langley. I’m sure you have a DNA profile on him from his time with the SEALs.”

  And hadn’t that been a fun day in the Teams? When they’d all filed down to the infirmary where an automaton-looking asshole with a needle and some plastic tubes took their blood, swabbed their cheeks, and removed a follicle of hair from each of them? Funner still was the fact that it’d all been done on the not-so-unlikely chance that their bodies were so badly burned or shredded or whatever that normal means of identification wouldn’t work.

  Of course, he never thought he’d be using those tissue samples to help fake his own death. But if there was one truism in the spec-ops community, it was always expect the unexpected.

  The silence while Wilhelm considered Boss’s decree stretched until it was palpable. Like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. And Rock’s heart, usually pretty good about keeping a steady beat, began thundering in his chest so loudly he thought it a miracle Wilhelm couldn’t hear it even from thirty feet away. And wouldn’t that be the way to blow this whole can of worms wide open?

  He fancied he could actually hear the second hand ticking on Boss’s big diver’s watch. Everything hinged on Wilhelm accepting this particular edict.

  And just when he was sure the guy was going to balk, Wilhelm yelled, “Dietz, bring me the collection kit! We’ve got samples to take!”

  ***

  He was dead. She’d killed him.

  She might not have been the one to pull the trigger, but she’d killed him just the same—and, yes, at any other time she’d have appreciated the fact that those were the exact words Rock had used to describe the deaths of those men and…

  Had used…

  She was already thinking of him in the past tense.

  Oh, God! She fell to her knees as two words spun around and around inside her brain.

  Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

  But even though her head knew it was true—she’d seen him take three shots straight to the chest and…oh, sweet Lord…the blood; the blood had been terrible—her heart was another matter entirely. Her heart couldn’t accept the fact that he was really gone. It was throbbing against her ribs, aching, denying what she’d seen w
ith her own eyes.

  And there was a part of her, an overwhelming part that wanted to scramble to her feet, run to Rock and gather him in her arms. Just squeeze him and kiss his lips before the warmth of vital, vigorous life left his body forever. Because that part of her, irrational as it may sound, believed that if she could just hold on tight enough, if she could just hold on long enough, he wouldn’t really be gone.

  But this stupid CIA agent refused to let her go…

  Then, from the front porch, she heard Wilhelm, that sonofabitch who’d let Rock get shot, ask Boss if he could pull a hair from Rock’s head and the tenuous thread that’d held her broken pieces of sanity together snapped.

  “No!” she screamed, struggling to her feet, flinging away Becky and Eve’s hands, ignoring the CIA agent who yelled, “Halt!” as she ran toward the house…toward Rock.

  She no longer cared if she lived or died. All she cared about was getting to him.

  And even when she felt the evil eye of that agent’s machine gun settling between her shoulder blades, she didn’t stop. Her feet flew across the street. “Don’t you touch a hair on his head, you motherfucker! I’ll kill you! I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”

  Her voice was nothing but a high-pitched shriek. And it was official. She’d completely lost it. But even though she knew she’d completely lost it, even though a part of her was standing outside of herself, watching herself do and say these things and not believing it, she couldn’t stop.

  Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

  The mantra kept time with her boots pounding up the porch steps. And she was amazed she wasn’t already sporting a hot piece of lead between her shoulders, especially when she shoved Agent Wilhelm, who was standing by the front door, watching her in wide-eyed astonishment, aside.

  “Ma’am, I—”

  But that’s as far as he got before her boots crossed the threshold, and she was immediately stopped by Boss’s big arms. He closed them around her to form of a huge, human straitjacket.

  “Let me go!” She sobbed, struggling in his unyielding grip as the fire of remorse and denial scorched through her veins and turned each breath she managed to rake in to hot ash. “Let me go to him!”

  “Leave him be, Vanessa,” Boss said in that bearlike growl he’d perfected. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

  And that’s when her heart caught up with her head. Hearing those words…There’s nothing you can do for him…was the final nail on the coffin of her hope, her…denial.

  Rock’s dead.

  And right at that moment, darkness consumed her and she knew no more…

  Chapter Seventeen

  “He’s dead.”

  They were the two most comforting words Rwanda Don had ever heard, which made up for the fact that R.D. was stuck in a coat closet, having been pulled away from the benefit dinner by the ringing phone. “You’re sure?”

  “According to reports, he took three slugs to center mass and one to the head,” the agent relayed without the slightest bit of remorse.

  R.D. couldn’t quite feel the same. After years of working with Rock, it was hard to take pleasure in the man’s demise. Especially since that demise would not have been warranted if the high-minded sonofabitch had just left well enough alone.

  But Rock wasn’t one to leave things alone.

  And now he’d paid the ultimate price.

  “The Agent in Charge has collected DNA evidence, and the teams are pulling out, on their way back home,” the agent continued, and R.D. batted away one particular overcoat that smelled like it’d been washed in expensive Burberry cologne. New money. You could always spot them by their overwhelming use of designer fragrance and their need to wave their wealth around with couture labels and excess bling. But, new or old, money was money. And, unfortunately, ever since the dissemination of those funds into the charities, that was something R.D. needed to keep the campaign going. “We’ll have the test results in twenty-four hours, but visual confirmation is at one hundred percent. It’s over.”

  Yes, that part was over.

  “We still have The Cleaner to worry about,” R.D. reminded the agent. “Where is he? Why has he suddenly gone AWOL? And, most importantly, do you think it has something to do with those trumped-up charges against Rock?”

  “We watch and wait on that front,” the agent said. And though it was extremely aggravating, R.D. had to admit that was probably the right strategy. No need to start jumping at shadows.

  “I’m assuming you’re still interested in receiving copies of the intel we acquired from Babineaux’s hideout?” the agent asked.

  Yes, and then there was that.

  R.D. needed to see those documents. Needed to make sure none of the information led back to The Project and, by extension, the person code named Rwanda Don…

  “Yes. Forward everything to me.”

  “The money—”

  R.D.’s face filled with blood. “We’ve already agreed on a price! Now get me the goddamned information before everything we’ve both worked for goes up in smoke!”

  Slamming a finger down on the phone’s end button, R.D. took a deep breath, smoothed bunched facial muscles, straightened a seam, and exited the coat closet. Nodding to hotel staff standing at attention along the hallway leading to the Mayflower’s ballroom—one of DC’s most respected hotels—R.D. pushed through the doors just as raucous cheers erupted from the crowd of well-dressed and well-coifed attendees.

  Governor Ward was on the podium, having just made a wonderful speech sure to elicit donations from wealthy pockets, and R.D. beamed with approval.

  The nomination was nearly in the bag…

  ***

  Eve hadn’t really had the opportunity to get to know Rock before he pulled his Polanski act and quit the country over six months ago. But that didn’t make watching the man get shot to death any less horrific.

  As she stood in her foyer, the sound of helicopters revving up and leaping into the air behind her—it was amazing how fast the CIA could load up and get the heck out of Dodge once they’d accomplished their mission—she couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s body. Or what she could see of it, that is. Most of his torso was concealed behind the partition leading into the kitchen, but the back of his head was visible, and there was so much blood. It was everywhere. Spattered against the front door, in a big ugly streak down the hall, and pooled around Rock’s head in a grizzly, sticky puddle.

  It had been touch and go for a while there, the CIA insisting on taking the tissue samples themselves, even though Boss had apparently threatened to shoot anyone who tried to touch the body. Then Boss made a call to some general in DC before handing the phone to Agent Wilhelm. Eve thought she heard Wilhelm say, “Yes, sir, General Fuller,” which would make sense since Pete Fuller was the head of the Joint Chiefs and likely the only person on the planet—besides the president himself—who was capable of convincing the CIA agents to simply stand by the front door and watch while Steady carried out the dubious tasks of gingerly plucking a hair from Rock’s head, scooping up some of the spilled blood, and taking a scraping of skin cells before handing all the specimens over to the waiting CIA agents.

  Agent Wilhelm had grumbled about still needing to take the body with them to the States, but Boss had threatened at that point to not only call General Fuller back, but also to put a bug in the ear of the Costa Rican government, which, from what Eve could gather, would’ve guaranteed an international dick-measuring contest because the United States wasn’t supposed to engage in covert operations in the Central American country without explicit approval from the host country’s government, which the CIA had not obtained.

  In the end though, she didn’t think it was legal, political, or job-related worries that had Agent Wilhelm settling for the samples they’d collected. It was the look each Black Knight wore. The look that said, Over our dead bodies.

  And speaking of dead bodies. There was Rock. So still…so lifeless…

  Oh,
geez Louise. It was too awful to contemplate.

  She didn’t realize she was openly sobbing until Billy grabbed the back of her head, pulled her into his arms, and pressed her face into his warm shoulder.

  He smelled like leather and sunshine and something faintly chemical. Except for that last thing…he smelled just like Billy. Just like she remembered him smelling all those years ago. During the best and worst summer of her life…

  “Shh, Eve,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against the side of her cheek. “It’s gonna be all right.”

  His deep voice should have been comforting. But it wasn’t. Because she’d just witnessed a man being gunned down on her front porch. And she was beginning to have her doubts that anything would ever be all right again.

  “Why?” she snuffled against his shirt, aware she was probably covering the thing with snot, but she’d be embarrassed about that later. For now, all she could concentrate on was the resounding silence in the house now that the helicopters had flown away. The silence that was broken only by Becky’s soft sobs. And her own, come to think of it. “Wh…why would they d-do that?”

  Hadn’t Rock deserved the right to defend himself? Wasn’t he an American, after all? How could his own government just kill him in cold blood? And, yeah, she’d heard that CIA agent claim it was some mysterious shooter—whom they had never been able to find, by the way—but she knew it had to have been them. The men who were supposed to uphold the country’s laws, not crap all over them in the absolute worst possible way.

  “Shh, Eve,” Billy soothed again, but it did nothing to console her, especially when she heard Vanessa—the woman had fainted dead away; she’d never seen someone actually do that—come to with a horrific shriek.

  “Rock!” she screamed, and Eve pushed out of Billy’s arms in enough time to watch Vanessa spring into a sitting position from where Boss had laid her out on the floor. Then she was scrabbling over to Rock, slipping and sliding on her hands and knees in the man’s blood and another hard sob clawed its way up the back of Eve’s throat.