Thrill Ride

by Julie Ann Walker

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Rock sat at the back window of BKI headquarters, concealed behind the tinted, leaded glass, and watched Boss lead the guy who was apparently claiming to have information about him through the back gate. The Knights knew discretion was the better part of valor. And as such, no one was allowed into the shop unless it was absolutely necessary. Which meant this little soirée was taking place out in the courtyard.

  Already, those Knights currently in residence—all wearing leather and looking, quite intentionally, like nothing more than a gritty, and very dangerous, motorcycle club—were gathered around the unlit fire pit, arranged on the multicolored, mismatched lawn furniture. Each of the men wore an expression that fell somewhere between simple curiosity and overt suspicion.

  Rock found himself falling somewhere between the two. Then his eyes landed on Vanessa in those goddamned sexy yoga pants, sitting on the green-cushioned chaise lounge chair, her gaze not on the man Boss was escorting, but instead on the ground in front of her, and he completely forgot about everything except the way she’d moved beneath him…above him, beside him. She’d been so sensual and sweet, so abandoned and giving. And, he was going to break her heart…

  Because even though last night meant more to him than he’d like to admit—oh, Lordy, did it ever; he was going to remember it until his dying day—it didn’t change the fact that they lived in a dangerous and deadly world. Deadly being the operative word.

  Which brought him back to the part where he was going to break her heart. Because she might’ve played the tough-as-nails-operator card last night, challenging him to give in to his desires, saying she’d understand if, in doing so, it didn’t change the way he felt about things, but the truth of the matter was she’d been deluding herself.

  And the only thing he knew to do now was to nip this thing in the bud before it went any further, before the attraction and…and the intense like—for lack of a better word—she was feeling for him turned into full-blown love.

  Because it could.

  He’d been in love before and recognized the telltale signs. In her. In himself.

  Mon dieu, he wasn’t stupid enough to think she was the only one on the brink. He could love her in a heartbeat if he let himself.

  “Have a seat,” Boss instructed the mysterious man, interrupting Rock’s spinning thoughts and jerking his wandering attention back to the group in the courtyard. And though their voices were muffled by the distance and the fact that the window Rock was sitting behind was only opened the tiniest bit, he had no trouble hearing the guy’s gruff reply, “I’ll just remain standing, if you don’t mind.”

  Then the man turned slightly, and something about his face sent an odd sensation skittering across the front of Rock’s cerebral cortex, halting his breath for a nanosecond.

  Was it memory? Or some strange recognition of a brother-in-arms. Both?

  “Suit yourself,” Boss crossed his big arms, remaining standing as well. “But I have to warn you, before you start going on with any stories about Rock, we don’t believe the charges leveled against him. And if you’re here to malign his memory—”

  “You shouldn’t believe the charges leveled against him,” the man interrupted, and Rock’s heart leapt. “They were complete bullshit.”

  “How do you know that?” Ozzie piped up from his position in a bright red Adirondack chair. As usual, a state-of-the-art laptop was balanced on one of the kid’s knees.

  “Because I was the one to kill those men.”

  ***

  Vanessa gasped, her eyes shooting to the rather unexceptional face of the mystery man—the guy had plain brown hair, plain brown eyes, and a profile that, while not unattractive, certainly wasn’t anything to write home about either. But unlike his appearance, the words that’d jumped out of his mouth were anything but ordinary. They made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and she couldn’t help herself; she slid a surreptitious glance at the dark window she knew Rock was hiding behind.

  Holy cow! He had to have nearly puked his own heart upon hearing that news. She knew she had. In fact, she had to swallow, twice, before she could breathe properly.

  If panting like a dog in the summer sun was proper breathing, that is…

  “You killed them?” Boss asked, still standing, the equivalent of a giant human exclamation point. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because that’s what I was trained to do. What I was ordered to do,” the man replied, the deep, nearly overwhelming sadness that pervaded his tone had Vanessa glancing uncomfortably away from his face.

  As she looked around, she noted the courtyard was still wet from the previous night’s passing thunderstorm, little puddles of glistening water standing in the small irregularities of the slate covering the ground and darkening the shingles on the roofs of the outbuildings. And the air? It still smelled damp and electric. Like perhaps another storm was rolling in. Something massive and dangerous and altogether too mysterious.

  She shivered in response.

  “What did you say your name was again?” Boss asked.

  “Jonathan Dunn. And I was The Cleaner for The Project.”

  Hearing those last two words had stars dancing in front of Vanessa’s vision.

  Could it be…? After all these months, could they really be on the brink of clearing Rock’s name? Of bringing him back to life? Or was Mr. Dunn completely full of shit? Some CIA operative sent in here to mess with them?

  But he knew about The Project…Then again, maybe he was The Project. Maybe this was Rwanda Don, the freakazoid they’d been looking for. Maybe this…

  Uh-oh. She’d better regulate her oxygen intake, and fast. Because her head was spinning.

  Leaning her elbows on her knees, she let her head drop between her shoulders and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths.

  “Please take a seat, Mr. Dunn,” Boss insisted. “It appears you’ve got a story to tell, and we’re all eager to hear it.”

  And that was putting it a touch mildly.

  The scuffling of Dunn’s shoes on the slate and the scrape of a metal lawn chair leg assured her the man had finally done as instructed. And then he started talking. And talking, and talking…

  After five minutes of listening to him outline a story very similar to Rock’s, she figured she’d tamed her breathing and was no longer on the path to going horizontal, so she glanced up.

  Dunn sat on the very edge of his seat, his forearms braced on his thighs, his hands clasped together loosely, his face still the picture of heartache and misery. According to his story, he worked in the Albany field office of the FBI, and about a decade ago he’d been assigned a case investigating an organized crime ring. Apparently, that case brought him to the attention of the local crime boss—a man like the men Rock had described, a man who ran the show but was so far removed, hidden under so many layers of cover, that evidence linking him to any overt crimes could never be solidified. As a result of Dunn’s involvement, and the subsequent arrests of quite a few of the crime boss’s family members, the man put a hit out on Dunn’s wife and daughter. Only, like everything that’d gone on before, the crime boss was savvy about it, and the deaths were never pinned on him. Which left Dunn with a broken heart and the fire of revenge burning in his belly.

  Enter the CIA, The Project, Rwanda Don, and the promise for an opportunity to exact some of that revenge…

  “Now I don’t know why your guy, Babineaux, was blamed for those men’s deaths,” Dunn was saying, in his thick New York accent. “For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why a simple motorcycle mechanic would get pinned for the jobs. Then a friend of mine at the FBI informed me of the real nature of the work you all do out here, and I began to wonder if maybe he’d pissed off a higher-up who was looking to eighty-six him. Then I found out the truth about that last man…” His voice broke, utter anguish in his tone.

  “What about the last man?” Boss pressed.

  “He was innocent.”

 
; Bahm, bahm, bahm… She could almost hear the three-note trombone slide in her head, and she held her breath—screw the stars that started blinking in front of her vision again.

  Steady, who was looking dark and deadly over at the picnic table while thoroughly cleaning his Smith and Wesson .45 caliber ACP handgun—the Knights were not above a little theatrics, and it was always good to let an unfamiliar get a glimpse of what was in store for him should he make one wrong move—asked, “How do you know he was innocent?”

  Dunn reached for his hip pocket, and Vanessa caught the subtle movement of the men’s hands. The Knights’ concealed weapons were going to make some quick appearances should Dunn try to pull anything from his pocket that was bigger than a credit card.

  Thankfully, all he extracted was a thumb drive.

  “This contains the supposed audio file of the interrogation of Fred Billingsworth. If you listen to it, it sounds like he’s confessing to a series of heinous crimes, just like…” Dunn shook his head and stared off into the distance, his mouth thinned. “Just like the others. But this one isn’t like the others. This one’s a fake. A guy at the sound lab at Quantico confirmed that after I got suspicious as to why my kills had fallen on Babineaux’s head. I started questioning everything, had my man review all the audio files on all the targets. But the only one that’d been tampered with was Billingsworth’s. I…I don’t know why, but Rwanda Don lied to me about Fred. Gave me false proof of his guilt. And as a result…” He stopped again, taking a moment to compose himself. “As a result I killed him.”

  Silence reigned over the courtyard, the steady drip of one of the clogged gutters on an outbuilding the only thing to be heard. Then, the silence was broken by Dunn shaking his head and whispering, “No. No that’s not true. I killed those other men. But I murdered Billingsworth.”

  And the act obviously haunted him. Those other nine had been monsters. Dunn had probably convinced himself that what he was doing was, maybe not right, but perhaps necessary. But Billingsworth? Billingsworth had been an innocent.

  And that made his death a horror…

  She’d worked her entire adult life with men who made a living by getting blood on their hands. And if there’s one thing she’d learned about them, it was this: they could live with the killing, as long as it was just and justifiable. But if it wasn’t? Well, then they tended to have serious problems. Because the same inner strength that made them so honorable and dependable also had the tendency to make them incredibly tough on themselves and incredibly unforgiving of what they perceived as a personal failure, particularly if that failure came at the cost of an innocent life.

  “Why are you here telling us this?” Boss asked.

  “Because I couldn’t live with the knowledge that you, Babineaux’s friends, his coworkers, might actually think he was responsible for what happened when, in fact, it was me.”

  “So why not come clean to the powers that be?” Becky said from her seat beside Boss. “Why not come forward and clear Rock’s name?”

  Yeah? Why not? If you’re feeling so guilty about—

  “What powers that be?” Dunn lifted his hands, shaking his head. “I don’t even know who I was working for over at the CIA.” Okay, so same ol’, same ol’. This Rwanda Don character was a frickin’ ghost. Unfortunately. “I don’t know who the hell to contact, because I don’t know who the hell would listen to me. And I won’t know who will listen to me until I find Rwanda Don.”

  Vanessa wanted to say, good luck with that.

  Because between Boss’s contacts in the intelligence community and Ozzie’s crazy ability to crack any computer system and code, the Knights almost always got their man when they went looking for him.

  But so far in the hunt for Rwanda Don? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

  “I will find him,” Dunn declared vehemently. “And when I do I’m going to ask him why he…” Again he seemed to need a moment to compose himself. “Why he turned me into an instrument of murder and mayhem when that’s exactly the kind of men we swore to obliterate.” Dunn glanced around the group, meeting each set of Knights’ eyes square-on. “But I swear to you, after I find Rwanda Don, after I have proof of The Project, proof that I’m not just some lunatic off the street, I will clear Babineaux’s name.”

  Boss glanced over at Ozzie. “His story check out?”

  Ozzie was staring at his computer screen. “All the stuff about the FBI, the case, and his family is public record.”

  Boss nodded, glancing toward the window Rock was concealed behind before looking over at Ghost. A quick dip of his chin, and the Knights’ acting sniper pushed up from his chair to stroll silently—it was eerie how quiet the guy was—toward the retractable awning the Knights usually kept rolled against the back of the shop wall. With the push of a button, the huge awning began to unfurl. At the halfway point, when it reached as far at its mechanical arms could stretch, it stopped. Ghost and Steady unraveled the rest of the tough, waterproof material, pulling it tight and securing the corners to permanent posts located at the far end of the courtyard. The result? A vinyl roof covering the entire area, protecting those in the courtyard from any prying eyes that might be in the surrounding buildings.

  Then, the back door opened, and there was Rock. Looking big and strong in his faded Levi’s, Pearl Jam T-shirt, and sweat-stained John Deer ball cap. Looking much more like a good ol’ boy and much less like a hardened operator. Looking like the man who’d rocked her world last night, the man who’d stolen her heart.

  And the expression on his face was indescribable. There was hope and concern and wariness. But above all else, there was pity. Because as much as he bore the burden of what had happened to Billingsworth, Dunn shouldered it more than a hundred-fold.

  What a nightmare.

  And Vanessa wanted to personally strangle whoever the hell this Rwanda Don person was for taking these honorable, dedicated, patriotic men and turning them into something less than what they wanted to be. Something less than what they’d signed on to be.

  Rock’s alligator cowboy boots clacked against the slate, and Dunn glanced over his shoulder, then jumped up like his pants were on fire. “Jesus! You’re alive!” he exclaimed.

  “It would appear so, mon ami,” Rock replied in that low, smooth drawl, and Dunn collapsed back into his seat. His legs folding beneath him.

  “Oh my God!” the man breathed, shaking his head, staring at Rock in disbelief, his face completely draining of blood. “It’s you. You’re The Interrogator. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.”

  ***

  Rock grabbed the seat beside Dunn, looking into the man’s bloodless face, and, oui, that sensation he’d felt earlier was definitely recognition. Not that he’d ever laid eyes on the guy, because he was certain he had not. But, still, there was something familiar there. And more than likely, it was because Rock could identify with the aura of sorrow and loss and determination that seemed to cling to him like a shroud.

  Cut from the same cloth, they were. Both patriotic with a deep sense of duty. Both experiencing intense regret over Billingsworth’s death. Both having been screwed over by the CIA and Rwanda Don.

  And, as if on cue, Ozzie scratched his head and started attacking his keyboard. The clickety-clack was so loud it snapped Rock’s attention away from Dunn and over to the kid.

  “What’s up, mon frere?” He’d seen that expression on the Ozzie’s face more than a time or two and referred to it as bloodhound mode.

  “Give me a second,” Ozzie muttered, frowning at his screen. “When Dunn said you were The Interrogator and he was The Cleaner, it struck a chord with me. I think I…” He shook his shaggy blond head, growling, “Screw you, CIA database. You think you’re so smart with your encrypted algorithms and backdoor defenses, but you’re not smarter than ol’ Ozzie.”

  Dunn glanced over at Rock, lifting a questioning brow. “Oui,” Rock smiled, “he talks to his computers like they’re alive. But, believe me, the kid’s not insane. If there’s a way to�
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  “Got it!” Ozzie announced, lifting a hand to Eve who was sitting beside him. The woman—her eyes had been flying at full mast ever since they’d been down in Costa Rica, and Rock wondered how she kept the things from drying out like a frog’s carcass in the July sun—looked at Ozzie’s raised palm.

  “Slap me some skin, woman!” Ozzie demanded, his dazzling smile lighting up the entire courtyard. Rock recognized that look, too. Ozzie was on to something…

  Could it be? Has he really found—

  “Oh,” Eve immediately reached up and slapped Ozzie’s hand, but the guy wasn’t going to be satisfied with only that. He was feeling celebratory—and completely oblivious to the fact that Rock was on the edge of his seat waiting to hear the good news—so he hooked an arm around Eve’s neck and smacked a loud kiss on her lips. When he released her, the poor, overwhelmed woman was beet red and, even through the haze of frustration and anticipation clouding his head, Rock heard a low growling noise.

  Then he realized it was Wild Bill.

  Ozzie must’ve heard it, too. Because the kid smirked before pursing his lips and blowing Bill a kiss. “Don’t you worry, Billy boy.” He wiggled his blond brows. “There’s enough Ozzie to go around. So if you wanna come over here and gimme a ki—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ozzie!” Boss thundered. “What have you found?”

  “Oh,” Ozzie turned his computer around, and on the screen was what appeared to be some sort of report. The sorry sucker had more than a few lines redacted. And even if the kid hadn’t already been cursing about the CIA database, Rock would’ve known he was looking at some form of Company document just by the number of blacked-out paragraphs. No one was as efficient and/or slap-happy about redacting information as the spooks.

  “What are we looking at?” Boss asked. Everyone, including Rock, leaned forward to try to read what words were still legible.

  “This is a thesis, written about ten years ago by a budding CIA psychiatrist,” Ozzie explained. “From what little I could gather from reading what remained of the text, it proposed a way to deal with an individual or group of individuals—which I took to mean terrorists, but it could very easily be homegrown bad boys—by splitting up the duties of investigation, interview, and elimination among a trio of operatives. It outlines a way to basically kill our country’s enemies, not those we take out with bombs and drone strikes, but those individuals we happen to catch and can’t necessarily prosecute by…erm, traditional means, without placing the responsibility of said duties on any one person’s shoulders. This thesis proposes that a team of three agents, trained in each specific area, could be utilized to annihilate these threats.”