Her lungs froze in an instant, as did her heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what are they doing in there?
“Do you understand me?” he asked again, reaching up to grasp her bicep and give her a little shake. “I have to know I can trust you. There’s more at stake here than you realize.”
She swallowed, nodding jerkily. He searched her eyes for a second longer before turning to throw open the door. Following him inside, she quickly glanced around, expecting to see…she didn’t know what, especially not after that speech he’d just given her. But to her utter relief and astonishment, the place looked rather ordinary. Rather like she’d expect a custom motorcycle shop to look. The exposed brick wall lining the right side of long hall he led her down was covered with old motorcycle license plates. And when they pushed out into the main body of the shop, she saw all the usual equipment. Bike lifts. Power tools. Blow torches. A big, precision water saw. The place smelled like burned coffee, hot metal, and old oil. It smelled just as she’d imagined it would smell and—
“This way,” Mac motioned, turning to clomp up a set of metal stairs. She followed him, the sound of their footfalls on the treads echoing around the huge space, bouncing against the brick walls painted with massive, colorful caricatures of all the Black Knights. Yup. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. Bikers loved nothing better than to immortalize themselves in murals or in their own tattoos. Then she topped the last riser…
Uh…okay.
Because the lower floor might’ve looked like your typical custom chopper shop, but this second floor? Well, this second floor looked like what she imagined NORAD must look like. Stacked two-high against the far wall was a bank of massive computer screens, all blinking and buzzing, showing satellite images and real-time feeds from places that had to be on the other side of the globe. And sitting in front of that bank of computers, iPod earbuds shoved in his ears, head bobbing to whatever music he was listening to while tossing a pencil in the air, was Ace. The guy she’d been led to believe was the Black Knights’ resident wiring expert. She immediately adjusted her thinking on that score. Especially when he turned and his jaw slung open like there was a two hundred-pound weight attached to his bottom teeth. He yanked the earbuds from his ears. “Delilah? Wh-what the hell are you doing here?”
She swallowed, shaking her head because she just couldn’t take it all in. “M-me?” she finally sputtered. “The better question is what the hell are you guys doing here? What is this place?” She was starting to get the feeling she’d been a lot closer than she ever could’ve imagined with her earlier comparison to Area 51.
“No time for explanations,” Mac cut in, stomping over to Ace. “We need to find the number for our contact in the Coast Guard.”
“Why?” Ace asked him, though his astonished expression was still glued to Delilah’s face.
As Bill filled him in, Delilah made sure she kept her eyes focused straight ahead. Not that the urge to look around wasn’t intense, mind you. It was really, really intense. But if she wasn’t mistaken, this place looked suspiciously like a secret government installation. And those unlucky civilians who stumbled upon secret government installations usually found themselves six feet under, didn’t they? Well, they did in the movies—which was her only point of reference since she’d never seen the likes of anything like this in real life—so, yup, she’d just go with what she knew and focus on seeing as little as possible.
Holy shit. Holy, holy, holy shit!
A chill that had nothing to do with her wet clothes or the cool air of the warehouse slipped up her spine. With half an ear, she listened while Ace contacted the Coast Guard. With the other half, she concentrated on the pulsing sound of all her blood rushing to her head. She couldn’t believe it. The Black Knights are some kind of—
“He says he can’t raise the ship.” Ace turned away from the computers, lowering his cell phone from his ear.
Delilah watched as the two men exchanged a look. “Call Washington,” Mac instructed. “Let him know the situation. Tell him to alert the Ludington police.” Then, Mac said four words she never thought she’d hear outside an AMC movie theater. “And get the chopper…”
Chapter Twenty-five
Harbor View Marina, Ludington, Michigan
9:27 a.m.
What the hell is the matter with me? Bill thought as he secured the last rope around a cleat on the weathered dock. Eve Edens had professed her love, her no strings attached love, almost two hours ago, and he’d yet to do or say anything in response.
And, yeah, yeah. So, they’d been a little busy fighting a raging storm that’d battered them unmercifully until it finally decided to blow itself out a mere five minutes before they pulled into port. But that was only a small part of the reason why it’d been Mum City inside the cramped wheelhouse. The truth was, he’d kept his mouth shut was because he didn’t know what to say to something like that. A part of him gloried in her confession. She loved him! Everybody wanted to be loved, right? According to Lennon and McCartney, that’s all you needed. On the other hand—there’s always another hand, isn’t there?—a part of him was—
“Your turn,” Eve said, cutting his thought short. She’d emerged from the cabin after donning a dry T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. Standing at the sailboat’s rail, she was in the process of pulling her damp hair back into a ponytail. The way her arms were raised, he could see the faint outline of her erect nipples. Those sweet nipples. Those sensitive nipples. Those nipples he’s sucked and laved and licked and…
Shit. Now was not the time to be thinking about her nipples. If he started thinking about her nipples, next thing you know he’d be thinking about getting her back into bed. And a man shouldn’t think about getting a woman who’d just confessed her love for him back into bed unless he had something more than slack-jawed silence to offer her.
“I, uh…” He had a tough time meeting her gaze. Her eyes were too sad. Too hurt. Too…something he didn’t want to acknowledge. “I think I’ll go make sure Chris left his extra truck for us.” Chris was an old high school friend who’d moved from the city to Ludington to become a fishing guide. Before they’d pulled away from the dock back at Belmont Harbor, Bill had called and asked the man to leave his spare truck in the parking lot. “Also, I need to stop at the yacht club, if it’s open, to call back to BKI. Let the guys know we made it,” he told her, shuffling his flip-flops against the slats of the dock. “Why don’t you get everything secured on the boat, and after I’ve, uh, checked on everything, I’ll come back and help you with the bags.”
Silence met his suggestion. And he was forced to raise his eyes. She was just standing there at the rail staring at him, chewing on a hangnail. “Billy,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t tell you that to make you—”
“I know,” he cut her off, feeling like a complete ass-hat for fucking this thing up. And he was fucking it up. But, goddamnit! He didn’t know what to say to her! His feelings for her were…confusing.
Yeah, he mentally snorted. Which is like saying advanced nuclear physics is confusing…
“O-okay.” She nodded, still chewing on that nail.
Blowing out a breath—he was quickly becoming disgusted with himself—he regarded her for a second more before turning to traipse up the dock. His flip-flops made a slapping sound that echoed out over the quiet harbor. For all the fury of the storm, its passing had brought on an eerie calm, made even more so by the fact that the marina was deserted.
Yeah, because no sane person would be caught dead out on the lake on a day like this…
Jesus Christ, what a morning! If he lived to be one hundred and eighty, he hoped he never had to experience another like it. When he closed his eyes, the image of Eve’s orange life vest and black hair adrift out in the middle of all that frothing water blazed on the backs of his eyelids. It caused his heart to stutter, his ulcer to start complaining, and h
is brain to stumble over a series of questions—most of them along the vein of: If you don’t love her back, then why does that memory haunt you?
Shit on a stick! What a morning, indeed…
He shook his head as he stepped off the end of the dock, traipsing up a small slope toward the large, empty parking lot. The air smelled crisp and clean, like wet evergreens and cool, clear water. It looked like his buddy Chris had come through for them. An old, beat-up, blue—well it used be blue, but now it was mostly rust—Chevy sat parked at the far end of the lot. He decided to pull it closer, so they wouldn’t have as far to walk with the bags.
I regret not telling you right from the very start that I still love you. And I will always love you…Eve’s words whispered through his mixed-up, mashed-up skull for about the thousandth time. And even though they caused warmth to pool in his chest and spread out through his limbs, he still didn’t know how to respond to them.
Was he a coward? Had he been accusing Eve of being lily-livered when all this time he was the one who needed to man-up and grow some balls? Was he so afraid of being hurt again that he wasn’t willing to risk—
The sound of squealing tires invaded his thoughts. He glanced up to see a dark SUV careening around the corner into the parking lot, and all his warrior’s instincts sprang to life. But, it was too late…
***
Fuck! He was late!
Jeremy torqued the wheel of the big SUV, the second one he’d been forced to borrow from Devon Price since the first one had crapped out on him about two-thirds of the way to Ludington. And then because, you know, he couldn’t exactly call AAA to come give him a tow since that would mean a paper trail, he’d been forced to sit on the side of the road for three fucking hours waiting for one of Devon’s flunkies to deliver him a new vehicle.
Hence, he was late.
But not too late, he assured himself. Because if he wasn’t mistaken, that was Bill Reichert standing in the middle of the parking lot, which meant Eve couldn’t be too far behind. And if he could just get them both back out on the sailboat, maybe he could tie them up, which would give him time to hotwire a motorboat, and then everything could still go as planned.
Yeah, this thing can still work out…
Stepping on the brakes, his stomach sat where his heart should be and his heart throbbed in his throat, he flipped off the safety on the stupid, nickel-plated 1911 Devon had given him.
Why the hell gangbangers thought bright, shiny, nearly glow-in-the-dark guns were something to be coveted he’d never know. Then again, now was not the time to contemplate the idiocy of the thugs who made up the Black Apostles, because Reichert was lunging toward the ratty old truck parked fifteen feet away, and Jeremy couldn’t let the man secure transportation. Shit would go downhill fast if he allowed that to happen.
Throwing open the driver’s side door, he pointed the pistol straight at Reichert’s bare chest and yelled, “Halt! Stop right there!”
But Reichert didn’t listen to him. The idiotic sonofabitch just kept on racing for the truck, and Jeremy’s plan went up in a puff of smoke. He was left with only two options. He could kill Bill and Eve right here in the parking lot, leaving behind a pile of evidence with the hope there wasn’t enough to lead back to him, with the hope that with Devon’s alibis and cars and weapons he could still slip the noose. Or he could give up and go home. In the first option, he stood a chance, a small chance, but still a chance of coming out of this thing on top. In the second option? Well, in the second option he’d be dead. Devon Price didn’t make idle threats.
He went with door number one and squeezed off two rounds in quick succession…
***
Boom! Boom!
Eve froze, the hair on the back of her neck twanging upright.
She knew that sound. Ever since she’d begun taking shooting lessons, she knew that sound, sometimes even heard it in her sleep.
“Billy…” she whispered his name like a prayer before reality kicked in and she raced for the door to the cabin. Wrenching it open, she managed to pull it from its top hinge, and it slammed back against the side of the cabin with a loud bang. She didn’t bother using the stairs as her heart grew wings and attempted to fly out of her mouth, she simply jumped down into the hold, stumbling when her foot caught on the last tread. Immediately righting herself, she reached for Billy’s duffel in the small booth.
“Please, please, please…” It was a chant she breathed over and over as she dug through his gear and then…“Yes!”…Her hand landed on the hard outline of a handgun. She wrenched it from the bag, relieved to find it was a Glock 17, a pistol she’d trained with. Pulling out the clip, she wasn’t surprised to find it full. Slamming it back into place with the edge of her palm, she turned to race up the stairs when something tucked into the mesh side compartment of Billy’s bag caught her attention. It was the little snub-nosed Smith & Wesson she’d used at Dale’s house. Quickly grabbing it, she shoved it into the waistband at the small of her back, before climbing the stairs, running across the deck, and taking a flying leap onto the dock.
Crack! The wood on the pier splintered beneath the force of her fall, and her right ankle and left wrist screamed out their objections. She ignored them both as she pushed up and ran. Ran like she’d never run before toward the end of the pier and up the small embankment that led to the parking lot. She topped the rise in time to see Billy dragging himself behind an old beat-up truck while someone with dark hair—it was too far away; she couldn’t quite make him out—stalked toward Billy’s position with his arms raised in such a way that there was no mistaking he held a gun.
With her heart and lungs pounding in time to the rapid slap of her sneakers against the parking lot, she lifted the Glock and squeezed the trigger. Again and again. And all the while she was screaming Billy’s name…
***
He was in a world of hurt…
Not metaphorically. Literally. He was pretty sure the slug that’d plowed into his thigh hit bone. But that was nothing compared to the one that’d torn through the center of his chest, making it almost impossible to breathe. And the pain…it was like nothing he’d ever known. And he’d known pain before. Plenty of times before.
Fuck. He was a dead man. He knew it like he knew his name was William Wesley Reichert.
“Billy!” Between the loud buzzing in his ears and sucking sound his chest made anytime he attempted to take a breath, he heard his name echo across the parking lot. A series of loud pops followed, and he rolled himself over on the pavement, one hand pressed to the hole in his chest as blood poured hot and heavy between his fingers. The movement resulted in agony. A searing torture that, for a moment, precluded his ability to think. Then he saw Eve running toward him, slim legs eating up the distance, black ponytail flying out behind her, right hand raised and firing his Glock in steady bursts, and suddenly his brain kicked it.
And it was weird…
Because his first thought wasn’t about the man who’d shot him, and why. Or even about the danger Eve was in, or the fact that his life was waning, leaking out of him and onto the craggy surface of the lot. No. His first thought, the first scintilla of cognition that darted though his head was that Eve Edens was beautiful when she ran. Absolutely, positively perfection in motion. All long legs and lean flanks, born and bred and built for speed. And then sanity and reality suddenly waylaid him, and he realized exactly what her speed was doing.
It was bringing her closer. To him. To the gunman who’d taken him out.
His heart, already laboring in his ruined chest, threatened to explode. No, Eve. No! He couldn’t allow her to risk her life for him. He couldn’t allow her to—
“Turn around! Run!” He meant to yell the words, but they came out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper. Coughing, he felt flecks of blood splatter his lips, and he raked in a shallow, sucking breath that burned like the fires of hell. “Turn
around! Run!”
This time his words had some volume. Unfortunately, the volume cost him a series of deep, wracking coughs that filled his mouth with blood. Even so, he couldn’t take his eyes off Eve. He couldn’t take his eyes off the crazy, courageous—she was the goddamned bravest thing he’d ever seen—woman. He couldn’t take his eyes off her because he was dying, and he knew the last thing he wanted to see was her. Eve. The woman he loved.
The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He loved her. He’d never stopped loving her. And he’d been an idiot to hold something against her that she’d done over a dozen years ago, when she’d basically been nothing more than a scared, confused adolescent. And why the hell it took him shaking hands with the Reaper to finally admit as much he didn’t know. Perhaps when faced with the great beyond, all other fears and reservations just disappeared. He loved her. And either she hadn’t heard his warning shout, or she’d just chosen to ignore it, because her steps didn’t falter. Not even once. And the insane, foolish, lionhearted woman was going to get herself killed trying to save a man who, for all intents and purposes, was already dead.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
As if to prove his point, the gunman returned a volley of rounds, and a bullet grazed Eve’s shoulder, spinning her like a top and dropping her to the ground.
No!
He choked on his own blood, releasing the wound on his chest so he could use both hands to drag himself toward her. But it was futile. Because a split second later, she was up and running toward him again, returning fire like a battle-hardened soldier.
No! Turn around! Run! Save yourself!
Born Wild Page 28