And a little bit of the weight that’d been pressing on her shoulders lifted away. Because if Rock could forgive her for what she’d done, then maybe she could begin working toward forgiving herself. Sucking in a shaky breath, she nodded. And Rock must’ve been satisfied with what he saw in her face, because he winked and then strolled over to lay down inside the body bag.
And, okay, seeing him there like that, inside that retched thing, had tears threatening again. But she figured she used up her allotment of everyone’s patience when it came to hysterics, so she held them back.
“You…you c-carry body bags around with you?” Eve asked, watching with wide, terrified eyes as Ghost zipped Rock into the thing.
“Of course,” Boss said, bending to grab four duffels, shouldering two on each arm. “This isn’t a game of Risk we’re playing here. Men die in this business. But one thing’s for certain: if they do, we never leave ’em behind.”
“Hoo-ah!” Ghost, Bill, Steady, and Ozzie all answered in unison. And hearing that call to arms, that battle cry to duty and brotherhood, sent a shiver streaking down Vanessa’s spine.
Chapter Eighteen
Black Knights Inc. Headquarters
21 hours later…
“Why can’t I go home now?” Eve asked.
Bill watched as she glanced warily around at the hard faces of the Knights. Everyone who’d been down in Costa Rica was now gathered around the conference table on the second floor of the shop, anxiously waiting to hear the sit-rep—situation report—from Rock. Everyone except for Ozzie, that is. He was over at his bank of computers monitoring all CIA activity to make sure no one was second-guessing the show they’d seen down in Central America.
Of course, after the eighteen-hour, two-plane-ride journey north to Chicago, and the three-hour power nap each of them had taken upon arriving home—they’d all been fall-on-their-faces tired—it was a pretty sure bet if they hadn’t heard anything from The Company by now, they were in the clear in that respect.
Still…the Knights never took chances. Case in point, the next words out of Boss’s mouth. “You can’t go home because you know too much.” The big guy’s jaw looked hard as a rock, his gray eyes flinty.
A hand jumped to Eve’s throat as she swallowed…loudly.
Becky punched Boss on the shoulder, glaring at him. And when Eve turned to Bill beseechingly, he had to fight hard to keep from reaching across the table to grab her hand. Consoling her, protecting her, reassuring her had been his job…once.
But not anymore.
“What the hell?” Boss demanded, glowering at his wife, rubbing his shoulder as if her puny swipe actually hurt him.
“The way you said that, because you know too much,” Becky lowered her voice, frowning lopsidedly, and it was actually a pretty good impersonation of Boss at his most badass, “made it sound like there was an unspoken and now we have to kill you tacked on to the end.”
“It did?” Boss turned to Eve, his scarred brow arched in a ragged line.
“M-maybe,” Eve admitted. “Sort of…”
Boss glanced around the table, his expression asking the rest of the Knights for verification of the ladies’ assessment. He frowned fiercely when he was met with various winces, shrugs, and nods.
“See,” Becky stressed, never one to pass up an I-told-you-so. “You could use a little work on your delivery.”
“That’s not what you said last night when I—”
“Jesus, God, please spare me,” Bill held up a hand. Erp. The thought of Becky and Boss getting in on made him throw up a little in his mouth. One thing a big brother never wanted to picture was his little sister doing the nasty.
“You need to stay here because the CIA might try to make a grab for you as soon as you leave,” Ozzie added, swiveling away from his computers in order to face the group, for once not being his usual irreverent and obnoxious self.
“What?” Eve glanced at him in alarm. “Why? I thought you said they bought the ruse, so—”
“Just because they bought it doesn’t mean they won’t think to double-check. And you’re an easy target, Eve.” Ozzie’s serious expression—yes, the kid could pull one out on occasion—softened. Although, Bill had to admit, the fact that the guy was wearing T-shirt with a picture of Spock that read Trek yourself before you wreck yourself sort of ruined the whole hardened-operator persona he’d suddenly donned. “All it’d take is ten minutes with them poking and prodding at you before you’d fold like a cheap lawn chair.”
“Well I—” Eve began, but Bill decided it was time to interject. They didn’t have time to sit around pacifying Eve’s fears, and they really needed to get moving on, what he suspected was going to be, the monumental task of figuring out how to clear Rock’s name.
“Ozzie’s right,” he declared, making sure his harsh tone brooked no argument. When Eve turned to blink at him rapidly, raking in a shaky breath, he figured he’d nailed it. “You’ve still got a week left on the vacation time you took, so it’s best if you spend it here with us.” God help him. “Hopefully, by the end of that week, we’ll have either cleared up this misunderstanding with Rock or we’ll at least be well on our way to doing so. Then you’ll be free to leave.”
And, yes, that sounded a bit autocratic, even to his own ears. He figured it sounded autocratic to hers as well when her eyes narrowed to slits and her lips tightened.
“You can’t hold me here against my will.” She pinned him with a determined stare, one she wouldn’t have been able to pull off a decade ago.
“No, we can’t,” he assured her, allowing his face to soften. “But we’re asking. Nicely. Pretty please with a cherry on top?”
And, yes, he’d pulled out the big guns. Because that little phrase was one they’d used between the two of them that summer when they’d been young and dumb, when they’d mistakenly confused their mutual lust for something more. And maybe he was an asshole for whipping it out now, but he knew it would work like a charm. Because it always had…
“O-oh…” She looked flustered, just as he’d hoped. “Okay, but I—”
“Good,” he cut her off. He couldn’t stand it when she looked at him like that, so trustingly, so…innocently. She wasn’t innocent. Sheltered, yes. But not innocent.
Although she had been.
Once.
And he’d been such a goddamned idiot to try to protect that innocence and—
“All right,” Boss interrupted his thoughts, which was just as well. He needed to get his mind off the woman who’d—spurned, he guessed was the word—him, and get the sucker back in the game. “And since we’re talking logistics here, Ozzie, how goes the plans for Rock’s funeral?”
Okay, and how bizarre was that? To be talking about a guy’s funeral when he was sitting catty-corner from you?
“It’s good,” Ozzie nodded. “The Connelly brothers have a guy who works in the city morgue. He’s tagged a John Doe with Rock’s name and entered it into the system.” The Connelly brothers were a quartet of burly Chicago boys who manned the guardhouse by the main gate at BKI headquarters. And the crazy, Irish bastards had enough connections around the city—both legitimate and illegitimate—to make Bill’s head spin. “We’ve got a casket on order from Lakeview Funeral Home, and we’re negotiating a plot in Lincoln Cemetery. All BKI personnel are putting the finishing touches on their various missions, or abandoning them completely, and should be trickling home in the next seventy-two hours, give or take.”
And wasn’t that going to be fun? When the Knights walked in expecting to attend a funeral, only to realize Rock wasn’t really dead? If the Connelly brothers’ reactions to the news were anything to go by, Rock was going to be sporting some cracked ribs. Which was another thing Bill was still trying to get his head around, the fact that the Geralt, Manus, Toran, and Rafer Connelly could manage to simultaneously wrap a guy in a bear hug. Talk about one hell of a weird sight to behold. It’d looked like a human boulder pile, all huge and lumpy.
“
If anyone is watching,” Ozzie continued, “it’ll look like we’re doing what we should be doing. Making all the arrangements to bury one of our own.”
And bam! As always, the I’s had been dotted and the T’s had been crossed. There were days when Bill still felt the need to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t simply dreaming up the well-oiled machine that was Black Knights Inc.
“Fantastic,” Boss declared. “So now it’s time to get down to brass tacks.” He turned to Rock, and Bill watched the ragin’ Cajun blow out a deep breath. The man still looked dead-dog tired, but there was no mistaking the determination in his eyes or the hard set of his jaw. Rock was finally ready to explain just what the hell was going on. “You wanna tell us why the fuck our government is saying you killed ten hardworking Americans?”
***
And there it was.
The question Rock knew the Black Knights had been dying to ask from the first second they had him back in the fold.
He glanced across the table at Vanessa. And even after everything, after all the terrible things he’d said to her, after the way he’d pulled her close with one hand while simultaneously pushing her away with the other, she still looked at him with such trust in her beautiful, dark eyes, such…conviction. Like no matter what he had to say, she’d never stop caring for him, never stop believing in him.
Dieu, she was some kind of woman.
The best kind of woman. The kind that deserved a loyal, honorable, trustworthy man who’d worship the ground she walked on and love her with all of his heart. Too bad Rock could give her everything on that list except for that last thing.
The most important thing…
“First of all,” he began, slowly, then found himself stopping almost immediately in order to wrangle his erratic thoughts into some kind of order. This explanation was going to be long and laborious and, truth be told, he was probably going to step all over his dick trying to lay out the intricacies of the whole sordid tale. Not to mention the fact that he was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs over how the Knights were going to take it. He wasn’t sure whether they’d see what he’d chosen to do as something worth glorifying or reviling. Since, honestly, he reckoned it fell somewhere in the middle of the two.
“First of all,” he tried again, and this time he was able to finish his thought, “I want everyone to know, I didn’t kill those men. In fact, some of those deaths I wouldn’t have the first clue how to manage. I mean, how do you give a guy a heart attack?”
The question was meant to be rhetorical, but Ozzie interjected with, “Atropine.”
“What’s that?” Vanessa asked, her dark brows pulled down in a sharp V. While her attention was diverted, Rock found his gaze drifting over her pretty profile. And lower…to her breasts. Those beautiful breasts he’d kissed and caressed, those perfect nipples he’d licked and sucked and watched furl into little brown nubs. They were covered now by a lipstick red T-shirt that worked to emphasize the beauty of her black hair and olive skin, but he could remember them perfectly and—
Merde. Now his dick was hard.
Way to go, dipshit, he chastised himself even as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Dropping a hand, he tried to inconspicuously adjust himself into a more comfortable position, but when he glanced up, he found Ghost watching him with one black brow quirked in question.
He rolled his eyes and jerked his chin in Vanessa’s direction—better to admit the truth than have Ghost thinking he was some sicko perv who got wood from discussing all the esoteric ways to kill a man. Realization dawned in Ghost’s eyes, and he nodded once, sliding Vanessa a surreptitious glance before turning his attention to Ozzie.
And, oui, maybe Rock should take a page from Ghost’s book and pay attention, too. After all, it was his job, his life, they were in the middle of discussing.
“…derived from the nightshade plant,” Ozzie was saying. “It’s incredibly dangerous. Just a minute amount sprayed on the skin—”
“Great. Good,” Boss cut him off, coming as close to rolling his eyes as Boss ever came. “You’re a genius. We get it.” The big guy turned back to Rock. “Continue, will you?”
“Oui.” Rock didn’t relish the thought of laying everything out on the table. But as his dear ol’ daddy used to say, It’s time to shit or get off the pot. He’d been keeping secrets from the Knights for long enough, and it was time they knew the truth. “So, while I didn’t do the actual killin’, I did interrogate them. I was the one to extract confessions from them.” And, oh, the horror of digging around inside those men’s heads. Of discovering what made them tick, what made them happy or sad or horny or scared…
If it was possible to catch sociopathy from the scum of the Earth, then Rock was doomed. Because he’d gotten closer to rolling around in the psychological muck with those men than anyone ever should.
“That’s why your vanishing acts meshed with their kidnapping reports,” Ozzie said. “You were interrogating them.”
“Oui.”
“But interrogating them for what? Get them to confess to what?” Steady asked, leaning forward on the conference table, lacing his fingers together. Everyone liked to give Steady shit for being flaky, but the truth of the matter was, the man had a mind like a steel trap. He was the only Knight in residence who had a chance of giving Ozzie a run for the money in the IQ department, which was probably why the two of them got on so well. A case of über brain meeting über brain…
“The better question would be, what didn’t they confess to,” he said, trying to push away the memories of some of those confessions, of hearing the filth that spewed from the men’s mouths, of seeing their utterly inhuman lack of remorse for what they’d done.
Until they’d been caught, of course.
They’d always been sorry as hell to have been caught.
“Drug traffickin’, weapons deals, slave trade, child prostitution, murder, rape, extortion, money launderin’, the selling of military secrets.” The list went on and on. “You name it; these men did it. But in order to get a visit from me, they had to have knowingly participated in, or ordered the murder of, an innocent. That was a rule.”
Boss turned a page in the dossier in front of him. The one that listed all ten of the men Rock was accused of killing. And, oh yeah, there was the added benefit of having the guys’ pictures printed there as well.
Like Rock really needed any reminders…
The name, date of birth, face, and list of crimes of each of those men had been etched on the back of his brain with a dull knife.
“Nothing in the files suggests these men were involved in anything illegal,” Boss muttered, slowly flipping pages.
“Of course not,” Rock snorted derisively. “And that’s because the world’s greatest crooks are nearly impossible to catch and prosecute.” He looked around the conference table at the people he’d come to think of as family. The people who’d never stopped believing in him and who’d put their lives on the line, who’d gambled their reputations—who were still putting their lives on the line and gambling their reputations—to help him clear his name, and hoped like hell they’d be able to understand why he’d done what he’d done. “Connards like these men, men with connections and money and power, cloak themselves behind dummy corporations and under layers of cover. It’s the middlemen who get caught in sting operations. But these guys at the top? They almost always get away to either start another racket or simply amp up their current ones.”
“Seriously,” Ozzie concurred, nodding sagely. “You guys watched The Wire, right? The head honcho always seemed to slip away and—”
“Must it always come down to music, movies, or television with you?” Boss interrupted exasperatedly. “I mean, not all of life’s problems can be boiled down to pithy lyrics or witty dialogue.”
“Says you,” Ozzie snorted, shaking his head. “From an anthropological point of view, pop culture is a way to express the—”
“Ozzie’s right about th
e head honchos,” Rock cut in before the conversation digressed any further—as it had the tendency to do when Ozzie was in the room. “And because our justice system is both righteous on the one hand and flawed on the other, these guys are left to go about their business, killin’ and maimin’ and generally wreakin’ havoc on humanity. These men were domestic terrorists in every form of the word. And it was my job to apprehend them and get them to confess to their crimes, to make them spill their vile guts, catching the filth they spewed on tape.”
“And after the confessions?” Boss asked.
“I let them go,” Rock shrugged. “But not before I sent the tape to Rwanda Don. And from there I washed my hands of it.”
“What do you mean?” Ozzie asked. “You didn’t know they were being killed?”
“Oh, I read in the paper how a couple of them died, seemingly of natural causes, but I didn’t know the rest were six feet under until I got tagged for killing them and started doing my own investigations. Up ’til that point, I just assumed my interrogation tapes were being used in open and ongoing cases to bring the sonsofbitches to justice.”
“And you don’t know who killed them? If it was this Rwanda Don person or—”
“Non.” Rock shook his head. “Don was the brains behind The Project, not the muscle. Maybe he was the one who did the research on the men, found the ties to black market operations or murders…I don’t really know. All I know is, I was given a thorough, incredibly thorough file on each man. These files would not only document what information could be gleaned about this individual’s nefarious activities, but also his personal habits. His likes, his dislikes, his familial ties. Everything. And that’s what I’d use to get inside his head.”
“These were the same files The Company found in your PO box?” Boss asked. “The ones that implicated you in the men’s deaths?”
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