In Rides Trouble: Black Knights Inc.

by Julie Ann Walker

  Then his body did him one better, because all that water he’d been drinking let down and he needed to urinate, urgently. Unfortunately, since he’d insisted Ghedi and his men guard the Hamilton’s crew so he could sequester himself alone with her, there was no one to take over guard duties.

  He squirmed against the stool he was sitting on until he could stand it no longer.

  “I’m going to relieve myself,” he told her and waved his gun when she turned to scowl at him. He could just urinate in front of her, he supposed. She’d probably seen Ghedi and his men doing much worse during her time in captivity. But the thought of such grotesque, classless behavior disgusted him. He was worlds apart from those dirty, ignorant pirates, and he refused to stoop to their level. “You will continue working. And do not think of trying to escape. We’re locked in here. The only way out is if I call to my compatriots on deck and they let us out. Do not take it into your head to hide from me either.” He could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. “Let me be clear. If I am forced to come searching for you, you will not enjoy what happens once I find you.”

  Her nostrils flared, but she turned back to her work, grumbling something he couldn’t make out.

  Oh, he hoped she’d run.

  It would give him a reason to give chase, chase would lead to capture, and capture would lead to punishment.

  He really, really fancied the idea of that last bit.

  ***

  “We secure here?” Frank asked Bill as he pulled a ziptie tight around the wrist of a struggling pirate and shoved the man aside to join his trussed up compatriots. He couldn’t help himself, he smashed the man’s skull into the bulkhead with just a little more force than was necessary.

  After covertly boarding the tanker, overtaking the untrained men had been laughably easy. Up in the Hamilton’s bridge, more than half of the pirates had been asleep, leaving just two guards to watch over the entire crew of hostages. And though those two men had been vigilant—vigilantly keeping their eyes and weapons trained on their prisoners, that is—they hadn’t been prepared for a group of silent shadows sneaking in behind them and relieving them of their AKs in the blink of an eye.

  “Affirmative,” Bill answered, slapping his hand over the mouth of the small, hogtied pirate kneeling in front of him. The guy kept on screaming, “Parley, parley, parley!”

  Frank grunted, motioning for Bill to remove his hand. The little pirate—dude, is that an eye patch?—relieved of Bill’s restraining hand, took a deep breath before he started begging, “Please, sir, please—”

  “Shut up,” Frank barked. “This isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean, and you’re not Jack Sparrow… or One-Eyed Willie, for that matter. There is no parley.”

  Bill made a face, then glanced at the gaudy little jewel glued to the center of the pirate’s eye patch and burst out laughing.

  Frank felt one corner of his mouth twitch before he glanced into the shadowed corner of the Hamilton’s big bridge where the pirates had stacked the tanker’s crew together like a pile of sweating sardines. Angel murmured reassurances to the wide-eyed hostages as he sliced through their restraints, but when he caught Frank looking at him for verification that Becky was somewhere in there with the rest of the tanker’s crew, he shook his head.

  Yeah, that would’ve been too easy. Obviously she was still being held down in the engine room.

  “How many are down in the engine room?” he asked One-Eyed Willie, who was still pleading, blubbering, and switching back and forth between English and his native language in such rapid succession that Frank’s temples started to pound. “How many!” He grabbed the guy’s shoulder, giving it a hard shake.

  Oh man, was that a…? Kee-rist, it was. An actual tear leaked from the corner of the pirate’s one good eye. The guy…kid really—if One-Eyed Willie’d seen his twentieth birthday then Frank was the bleeding Tooth Fairy—was trembling so hard, he feared the little shit’s yellow teeth might rattle right out of his head.

  Taking a deep breath, praying for patience, he bent until he could peer into the young pirate’s tear- and sweat-soaked face. Damn, the guy needed a Kleenex in a bad way, but Frank tried his level best to ignore the giant snot bubble threatening to burst when the One-Eyed Willie sniffled.

  “What’s your name, son,” he said, grinding his back teeth against the burning desire to wrap his hands around the bastard’s neck and just wring the truth from him. Every second Becky remained unaccounted for was one second too long.

  “G-Ghedi,” the young pirate whispered, his eye huge as he took in Frank’s size and shrank away like Jack must’ve after he climbed up the beanstalk.

  Yeah yeah, Frank got that a lot.

  “Well, Ghedi, I know from surveillance photos that at least two of your number are piloting the skiffs back to Africa, but that leaves one of your group unaccounted for. Is he down in the engine room with Becky? Is he somewhere else?”

  “No, no, no,” Ghedi shook his head, and Frank warily eyed that snot bubble. The thing was going to burst any minute, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be anywhere near it when it did. “She alone. Other men, they all on boats back to Somalia. She alone. She all alone, work on engines.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Frank got as close to the guy’s face as he figured was safe, “If you’re lying to me, fuckwad, I’ll kill you.”

  “No lie. No, no, no lie.”

  Bill nudged his arm and leveled his gun at One-Eyed Willie’s leaking nose. “Well Boss, let’s go get our girl.”

  Frank didn’t bother with a response or wait to give Bill instructions to stay and guard the pirates, he just turned tail and made like Carl Lewis as he raced toward the engine room.

  Chapter Four

  “Hello, Rebecca.”

  The words, spoken over Becky’s left shoulder in that deep, grumbling voice, nearly had her dropping the wrench and sliding to a weepy puddle on the floor.

  Thank you, sweet Lord, we’re saved.

  She’d just spent the last three minutes arguing with herself about whether she should ignore Sharif’s warning and attempt an escape. She’d figured she could find a nice little hidey-hole, wait for the right moment, then jump out and bash him over the head with the wrench. She’d really enjoy that part—the bashing him over the head part—and of course, she’d have his Glock. But what then? She’d still be locked in the engine room, and the pirates just might take it into their heads to do something terrible to Eve in retaliation.

  All that pondering was for naught, because Frank had arrived. The man she admired, respected, and adored from afar—since he made it absolutely clear that’s as close as he wanted her—had arrived.

  Here I come to save the day!

  Mighty Mouse maneuver complete. Finally.

  She considered throwing her hands in the air and crying hallelujah or maybe bursting into soggy tears of gratitude—have herself a real Oprah moment. But that was so cliché, so very damsel-in-distress. Instead, she pasted on a fierce scowl, swung around, and fisted her greasy hands on her equally greasy hips.

  “Well, it’s about damn time you got here,” she groused, tilting her chin far back and letting her eyes drink in Frank’s wonderfully familiar face.

  The bright overhead lighting—which didn’t do a thing to help with the stifling heat in the engine room—highlighted his frame and reminded her just how big he really was. With shoulders like a stevedore, bowling ball-sized muscles in his upper arms, and thighs like a professional baseball catcher, he was a mountain of a man. But he was so precisely proportioned, every part of him so in harmony with the rest, that unless you were standing next to him, you’d never know he was a behemoth.

  A wonderful, beautiful behemoth.

  Okay, maybe beautiful was pushing things a bit, especially since he had a thick, gruesome scar that slashed through his left eyebrow and a thin white
one that cut up from the right corner of his mouth. According to her brother, Frank received the first in a knife fight with a jihadist outside a café in Karachi, Pakistan. The story behind the second one was a mystery no one had been able to solve.

  So no, he wasn’t beautiful. But his storm-gray eyes were the fiercest she’d ever seen, and his thick, curly, sable-brown hair was as silky and shiny as mink fur. Add those features to a wide forehead and rather full lips, and you came up with an incongruent face that was…well, breathtaking in a brutal, visceral sort of way.

  Not that she could see much of that breathtaking face right at the moment, considering it was covered with an uneven pattern of gray/black face paint, and his thick hair was hidden beneath a tight diver’s hood. Still, she was able to make out the mocking twist of his lips.

  “I wouldn’t let you become an operator, so you decide to try your hand at piracy, is that it?” he asked with feigned exasperation.

  She stuck her tongue in her cheek and lifted one brow. “A girl’s gotta find excitement where she can.”

  He snorted and let his gaze wander over her, his hard expression suddenly softening.

  Okay, yepper, she must look about as good she felt.

  “Are you okay?” His tone was unusually gentle.

  “I’m just hunky-dory,” she reassured him even as hot tears burned the back of her throat and proceeded to make camp in her nose, stinging like a fresh cut doused in alcohol. It was appalling to realize she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his capable arms and cry, cry, cry herself dry. Just release all the pent-up fear and anxiety of the last six days.

  Boy, wouldn’t that shock the hell out of him? Tough-as-nails Rebel Reichert letting someone bear witness to any vulnerability? Proving, for once, that yes, she was a woman, prone to tears just like the rest of them? And then there’d be the whole touching him thing.

  In the three years they’d worked together, she could count the number of times they’d had actual physical contact on two hands. And in each of those instances, he’d jumped away like she was on fire because, you know, he wouldn’t want to give her any ideas or anything. Wouldn’t want her to start thinking they could have any sort of relationship beyond employer-employee.

  So yeah, if she were to leap into his arms and bury her face in his neck, he’d probably need to be fitted for a body bag, and then where would she be?

  Armed, that’s for sure, she thought as she swallowed down the hovering tears and covetously eyed the waterproof M4 strapped across his broad back.

  “Did you bring me a weapon?” She raised a finger toward the matte black barrel of the automatic. The smell of him, the smell of hot male skin and salty seawater invaded her nose and made her dizzy. Or maybe it was just the fumes from the busted diesel engines.

  That had to be it, because she was not the type of namby-pamby girl to get all gooey over one guy’s particular aroma. Although…she could admit she was very partial to the way Frank usually smelled. A strange combination of Zest soap, warm leather, and gun oil.

  Oh, who was she kidding? She wasn’t just partial to the way Frank smelled. She was partial to Frank. Which only made it that much more infuriating when he treated her like the inconvenient annoyance he had to suffer to maintain the cover for Black Knights Inc.

  He grabbed her hand away from his M4, his big palm hot as it briefly encircled her wrist before he quickly released her.

  Yepper. Go figure…

  “I can do you one better than a weapon.” He grinned that endearing lopsided grin of his, the one that always hit her straight in the heart. Pulling out a watermelon-flavored Dum Dum, he brandished it in front of her face, then snatched it out of her reach when she went to swipe it from his grasp.

  “What’s the magic word?” he taunted.

  “Gimme,” she growled, eliciting a low bark of laughter that sounded so wonderful she nearly dissolved into a puddle again.

  Geez, she needed to get some sleep, or at least take a moment or two to pull herself together before she wimped out and totally ruined her reputation as a hard-ass. Or did something equally stupid like grab his ears and finally, finally do what she’d been dreaming of for the past three-plus years…just lay a big, wet one on him.

  Yeah, that’d go over well…

  He solicitously handed her the sucker, and she flashed him a dazzling grin tinged with watery gratitude before ripping off the wrapper and shoving the treat in her mouth. Her eyes drifted closed when the sweetness exploded on her tongue.

  Those idiot pirates had raided her stash of suckers the very first day of their arrival, and she’d been going through sugar withdrawal ever since.

  “I might just leave you a little something in my will for this,” she murmured around the sucker.

  He grunted as he grabbed her elbow and started escorting her down the metal gangway toward the exit. Okay, and apparently the no-touching rule only applied outside the realm of heroic rescues. In which case, she should seriously think about getting abducted more often.

  “What’d you, uh…what’d you do with Sharif?” she asked.

  “Who’s Sharif?”

  “The interpreter,” she sneered the word, even as her elbow tingled beneath his callused palm. “The guy who’s been waving a Glock 19 at the back of my head for the past ten hours.”

  He skidded to a halt so fast he nearly gave her whiplash. He raised his M4. His thick neck went on swivel.

  “What?” she whispered, the fine hairs on her arms twanging upright. Even though the room was easily over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, an icy chill snaked down her spine. “You didn’t apprehend him on your way in?”

  “No,” he spoke in a rough whisper. “We were told you were alone.” He activated his throat mic, “Bill, you there?”

  Billy?

  She glanced with longing at Frank’s right ear and the clear, plastic cord snaking up from his throat mic. She wished she was wearing that earpiece so she could hear Billy’s affirmative. She’d missed her big, stupid, lovable brother like crazy, and she very much wanted to ask Frank how many of the guys he’d brought with him. The knowledge that “her boys” would come to rescue her, if she just held on long enough, was what kept her going this past week.

  “One-Eyed Willie lied,” Frank related to her brother, and if she hadn’t been so scared, she would’ve laughed. He’d come up with the same nickname for Ghedi as she had. “There’s a sixth man on board. He was down here guarding your sister, but he ghosted.”

  He tilted his head, listening to Billy’s reply. “Affirmative,” he muttered as he used one hand to keep her at his back, his big body shielding her, his weapon quartering the area as he continued to hustle her through the maze of machines toward the exit door.

  “That goddamned Ghedi.” She peeked from behind the expanse of his back, expecting Sharif to appear at any moment and start spraying 9 mm rounds.

  “I told the guy I’d kill him if he lied to me.”

  “Don’t kill him,” she whispered, sorry for Ghedi and the plight of all men like him. “He’s just a stupid kid. He probably thought Sharif would somehow manage to save his ass.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Sharif? I uh, I didn’t really—Geez, sorry,” she whispered, tripping over a loose hose. His big palm snapping out was the only thing that kept her from face planting. “He said he was going to pee. I didn’t see exactly which direction he headed, but somewhere toward the bow I think.”

  “How many rounds?”

  “Fifteen,” she related, delighted to be able to answer his question, hoping she impressed him with her knowledge. “The standard clip size.”

  “Extra mags?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna—”

  “You’re going to drop your wea
pon and kick it away,” Sharif said, stepping out from behind a large instrument panel and moving behind Becky, snaking a sweaty arm around her throat and pressing the barrel of his Glock tight against her right temple.

  She was getting really sick and tired of having guns shoved against her head, not to mention the smell of Sharif’s overpowering cologne had mixed with his sweat and body odor over the last ten hours to create a sickly aroma that triggered her gag reflex.

  As fastidious as the guy appeared to be, upchucking all over his arm might be just the thing to get him to release her.

  She was considering doing just that when she suddenly sensed a…readiness in Frank. At the sound of Sharif’s command, he’d frozen in front of her. Her fingers, where she was holding on to his gear belt, felt every hard muscle in his wide back tense into living stone. He didn’t turn around, didn’t so much as twitch, but she held her breath, waiting for his next move.

  Sharif must have sensed it as well, the crackle of electricity in the air. “Whatever you are considering doing, you should dismiss it right this instant. I have a gun to Miss Reichert’s head, and I will blow her brains all over your back before you so much as have the chance to turn around. Now drop your weapon and kick it away!”

  “Don’t do it—”

  She winced when she heard the hard clank of the M4 hitting the metal decking. It made a terrible screeching sound as Frank booted it across the floor.

  “Now your reserve weapon,” Sharif demanded. When Frank bent quickly, Sharif’s Glock jabbed harder into her temple as he barked, “Slowly!”

  Frank complied, carefully bending to remove the Springfield Armory XD-45 from his ankle holster. He flung it over to join his M4 before straightening.

  She once more grabbed on to his gear belt, taking comfort in the feel of his hard muscles against the backs of her fingers and the more lethal hardness of…

  Oh, Frank, you wonderful, lovely man.

  Okay, so Sharif now had them at a distinct disadvantage, considering he was the only one with a gun. Fortunately, he wasn’t the only one with a weapon, because it wasn’t just Frank’s taut muscles brushing against her fingers. The deadly length of his seven-inch KA-BAR was right there, too.