In Rides Trouble: Black Knights Inc.

by Julie Ann Walker

  “Because of the terrible look on your face when you realized she wasn’t here,” Shell continued. “And ever since the guys told you she’d stop by later, you’ve checked the clock on the wall every two minutes.”

  Okay, so he’d apparently been playing the role of Captain Obvious.

  “I’m just worried about her, he hedged.” I can’t shake the feeling we haven’t seen the last of the pirate who got away.”

  “Bullshit, Frank.” Shell grabbed his good arm, squeezing gently. “It’s an easy enough question. Do you love her?.”

  For a split second, he considered lying…No, I don’t love her. I care about her like I do all the guys but…No. He’d never lied to Shell before, and he wasn’t about to start. Oh, not because he was opposed to lying as a general rule. In his line of work, he told more untruths than truths. Hell, come to think of it, his whole life basically was one giant untruth, so, no, lying wasn’t the issue. It was the lying to his sister that was the issue.

  “Yeah,” he sighed heavily against the restraint of his half-body cast, and the motion caused his newly rebuilt shoulder to grumble in protest. “Yeah, I love her.”

  It was the first time he’d admitted it aloud. The first time he’d ever really admitted it to himself.

  And the truth will set you free? Whoever came up with that gargantuan load of bullshit was a frickin’ jackass, because now that the truth was out there—just hanging out there like a whore’s underpants on a hot Friday night—he felt so, so much worse. Because Shell was going to feel bad for ever making him—

  “So what’s the problem?”

  He turned to gape at her. “You know what the problem is. She’s barely twenty-six!”

  “So?” Shell shrugged. “Last I checked, twenty-six is officially considered way past the age of consent in every state in the union.”

  Well, thank God for that, because even if twenty-six wasn’t past the age of consent, he didn’t think he’d have been able to resist Becky last night. Not when she whipped off her clothes and stood in front of him so naked and…

  No, she hadn’t been naked. Naked was a way to describe any Joe Shmoe sans a good set of threads. When he shucked his clothes, he was naked, all hairy ass and knobby knees and wrinkly balls hanging out for the world to see. But Becky…man, Becky had been nude.

  Wonderfully, perfectly, artistically nude.

  Kee-rist. What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell was Shell thinking now?

  “Have you completely forgotten my promise?” he bellowed and then flinched when Franklin stirred sleepily, rooting around his fist for his thumb. When the little guy found it, he shoved it into his soft, cherubic mouth and settled back into sleep with a shaky sigh.

  “I haven’t forgotten one word you’ve ever said to me,” Shell whispered, tucking a thin hospital blanket around Franklin’s sturdy little shoulders. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about now.”

  “I promised you I wouldn’t turn out like him, and, by God, I won’t! I refuse to!”

  “For the love of…Frank, would you please start making sense?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t turn out like Dad, and I don’t—”

  “Wait.” She held up a hand, interrupting him. “Wait just a minute. How does your loving Becky have anything to do with your promise not to turn out like our father?”

  “Because she’s so much younger than me, and she’s so—”

  “Dad’s lady friends,” Shell made the quote signs with her fingers while rolling her eyes, “were young?”

  Frank frowned, nodding. Of course they were young…

  “You never told me that.”

  He hadn’t? So then…

  “How young were they? No—” She held up that hand again, shaking her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I have a lifetime’s worth of disgust for that douche bag already. No need to add more fuel to the fire.”

  “So then what did you mean when you asked me to make that promise?”

  The look she gave him clearly questioned his mental acuity. “I meant I wanted you to swear that when you grew up, when you became a man, you’d find someone to love. Someone you could give your whole heart to without ever looking back, without ever having regrets. Someone you wouldn’t be tempted to cheat on. I meant simply that you should be a good man. A good husband. And a good father, if it ever came to that.”

  “Yeah, I got all that. But I also thought it had to do with his particular penchant for younger women.”

  She slapped him on the back of the head.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “For being a jackass. Why would I have you promise not to date younger women? That’s absurd!”

  “I was only twelve, Shell,” he mumbled in his own defense, rubbing at his sore noggin. “Jesus, you think you’d have more sympathy for a man fresh from surgery.”

  “I have very little sympathy for fools, fresh from surgery or not.”

  For a moment, they sat in silence, each contemplating the ramifications of a promise made between two kids, two siblings who’d had nothing but each other to depend on after their father disappeared and their mother decided to hide her shame behind contiguous bottles of Stoli.

  Finally, Shell ventured, “So besides your moronic misconception of what your promise to me meant, is there anything that’s keeping you from going down on one knee and begging the lovely Rebel Reichert to love you forever and ever, amen?”

  “Did you just quote Randy Travis?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where did I go wrong?” He glanced toward the ceiling, grinning when she pinched his arm.

  “So I’m a little bit country and you’re a little bit rock’n’roll. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Hell, I think I liked it better when you were quoting ol’ Randy.”

  “Oh, don’t pretend like you didn’t love Donny and Marie. I seem to remember you had a life-sized poster of Marie Osmond stuck to your ceiling. What was it doing up there, Frank?” Shell batted her eyelids with such fervor, he worried she might start losing lashes.

  “Can it, creep,” he grumbled.

  Chuckling like only a little sister can chuckle when she’s got her big brother over a barrel, she asked, “So? What’s stopping you?”

  “What’s stopping me from what?”

  “Ugh, the problem with you men…scratch that. Let me rephrase. One of the problems with you men is that you can never follow a conversation. So, what’s stopping you from going down on one knee and professing your love for Becky?”

  “It’s not that we can’t follow conversations,” he told her in defense of every male on the planet. “It’s just that we’re linear conversationalists. When we veer off track, it takes us a while to reorient ourselves.”

  “Just answer the damn question.”

  “What’s stopping me from going down on one knee?”

  She nodded.

  “Bad knees?” he offered.

  Folding her arms in the huffy pose she’d perfected in childhood, she tilted her head and watched him as he considered the question.

  So, what’s stopping me? What’s stopping me now that—

  And suddenly, like a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky, the answer struck him. He glanced at his sister in slack-jawed astonishment. “Well…nothing, I guess. I…”

  Holy shit. There was nothing standing in his way. Nothing keeping him from finally claiming the only woman who’d ever managed to touch his jaded heart, the only woman he could envision walking down the aisle with, the only woman he could ever see growing round with his children, the only woman he could look at and imagine growing old with…

  Holy, holy, holy shit!

  So he could still be surprised, because suddenly the universe—in the form of his beloved si
ster—had just handed him the one and only thing he’d ever coveted, the one and only thing he never dared dream could be his.

  She chuckled at the look of shock, hope, and sheer joy plastered all over his face.

  “I was beginning to think I’d never see the day.” She squeezed his arm, and he was so overcome, he jerked her against his chest, hugging her tight—damn the pain in his shoulder. He barely felt it.

  “Oh man, Shell,” he whispered over and over again.

  “Oh, Frank,” she murmured, smacking a loud kiss on his ear. “I’m so happy for you.” She pushed back, her smile watery. “I really like her, you know. I mean, I only just met her, but she seems really spunky.” She made a face. “She’d have to be to put up with you.”

  “She’s great, Shell. So smart and talented and kind. She feeds her cat too damned much, and she’s too nosy by half, but she’s got the biggest heart and she’s so flippin’ brave it kills me and…what?”

  Shell was shaking her head, laughing. “You really are in love, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed, feeling like the world must’ve leapt into a closer orbit with the sun. Suddenly everything was warmer, brighter…“I’m really in love.”

  ***

  “What are you two grinning about?” Bill asked as he shouldered into the hospital room, juggling a cardboard carton full of Starbucks and a bag of fresh-from-the-oven blueberry muffins.

  He was struck again by the sight of Michelle.

  Shit, all this time he and the rest of the Knights had thought Boss was sneaking up to Lincoln Park to see some Pamela Anderson archetype when, in fact, the man had been visiting his sister. It was so absurd, he couldn’t help but snicker.

  Of course, now the small smile that flickered over Rock’s mouth whenever the subject of Boss’s lady love was raised made a whole helluva lot more sense. Rock was the only Knight who’d been with Boss before the founding of Black Knights Inc., and the squirrely son-ofagun had obviously known all along what the deal with Michelle really was.

  Bill glanced over at Rock and vowed to give the cagey bastard an earful for letting them all make such fools of themselves…

  “It’s a brother/sister thing,” Michelle explained, and he had to remember what he’d asked her. Oh, yeah. He’d asked what they were grinning about.

  “Ugh, I understand those,” he groused, and she flashed him a warm smile of thanks as he passed her a tall white-chocolate mocha, extra whipped cream. The woman liked her coffee sweet. God help her if she ever came to visit the shop. He lifted the lid on his own house blend and blew across the steaming liquid. “Only the brother/sister things Becky and I share usually end in insults, minor injuries, or yelled promises of retribution.”

  “Oh, Frank and I have our fair share of those, too.”

  Bill turned to eye Boss and the monstrous blue cast that wrapped from his waist and chest up around his shoulder and extended down his entire arm, keeping it frozen in an awkward angle away from his body. The surgeon said it was a species cast or a spica cast or some such thing. Bill didn’t care what it was called, because what it looked like was some maniac’s idea of medical torture.

  “So when are they letting you blow this joint, Boss?” He fished in the bag and pulled out a muffin, dropping it in Boss’s greedily outstretched fingers.

  Food was the first thing the big guy had requested after coming out of the anesthesia…

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. According to the nurse, the first thing Boss had requested was Becky, and that really threw Bill for a loop. He couldn’t help but wonder if things had changed between Boss and his sister since he’d had that little chat with the dude back at the shop.

  He hoped so.

  Because despite whatever little flirtation she had going with Angel, he knew Boss was the only man on the planet who could make her truly happy, since Boss happened to be the only man on the planet with big enough balls not to be intimidated by a woman of her particular talents and…uh…call it moxie.

  Not to mention, Boss was the only man she happened to love…

  Oh, she tried to hide it, and perhaps she did—from the other guys. But a big brother knows when his little sister gets a particular look in her eye. And she’d had that particular look in her eye since the first day she’d been introduced to Boss.

  “They say they want me to stay overnight,” Boss replied around a mouthful of muffin. “Something about keeping an eye on my pain meds.”

  “That’s probably—”

  Somewhere a phone rang; the tone was the opening jingle to Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

  “That’s me,” Boss said, and Bill chuckled. He figured if he had to have a brother-in-law, he could do a lot worse than Frank Knight.

  “Where are my pants?” Boss asked.

  “Here.” Michelle opened the little closet and pulled out Boss’s worn jeans. Digging in the hip pocket, she retrieved his phone and tossed it to him. And even loopy on medication, Boss’s reflexes remained those of a cat.

  He caught the phone one-handed, punched the “talk” button, and held it to his ear. “Well, I’ll be damned. Dagan Zoelner, I was wondering when you were going to give us a call…what?”

  Bill frowned when Boss’s eyes sharpened, his expression turning murderous. Automatically Bill reached to make sure his Sig was safely nestled at the small of his back, because he’d seen that look on Boss’s face before and it was usually when they were neck-deep in bad guys.

  “Goddamnit!” Boss yelled, and everything began happening at once. Franklin woke up and started bawling, Boss ripped out his IV-lines and scrambled from bed, Rock asked, “What’s up?” even as he checked to see that his two extra clips were full, and Bill’s phone started vibrating in his pocket.

  Pulling out his cell, he glanced at the caller ID and lifted a brow. Whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not, he’d been waiting for this call, but it was not a good time.

  “What?” he barked impatiently, watching Boss push Michelle away as he started trying to hop into his jeans using only one arm.

  “Billy?” Eve’s strangled voice sounded through the receiver. “He’s…oh God!” Her voice broke on a pitiful sob. “He’s got Becky!”

  ***

  Sharif could not believe how easy that had been.

  Snatching Becky had been as simple as waiting for her to appear alone from the safety of the high-fenced complex in which she lived, following her city bus as it slowly wound its way through the traffic-clogged streets of Chicago, hiding out in the men’s restroom of that sleazy bar while she got pissed on cheap whiskey, and lying in wait for the moment when she excused herself to the loo—because ladies always eventually excused themselves to the loo.

  Hitting her with the stun gun had been a cinch; she hadn’t even seen him slip from the men’s restroom.

  He’d been on her, pressing the electrical prongs into the side of her neck and squeezing the trigger, before she ever knew what hit her. Of course, his error had been in not realizing what a jolt of that magnitude would do to a small, inebriated woman. Instead of simply incapacitating her, the shock had knocked her out cold.

  Still, he couldn’t help but think it’d all worked out for the best.

  Having her unconscious certainly made it easy for him to hoist her over his shoulder and stuff her into the trunk of his rented vehicle—the vehicle he’d been able to secure on the stolen passport his father proudly handed him before he walked out of the house in St. Ives. Having her unconscious had also solved the problem of transferring her from the trunk into his abhorrent little room in a fleabag motel way out on the south side of town. He simply backed up to the door, opened the trunk, threw the discolored comforter he swiped from the queen-sized motel bed over her, and carted her inside.

  No one had given him a second look.
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br />   Which was just one of the three reasons he’d chosen that motel…its location in a neighborhood where a woman’s screams were so de rigueur, nobody gave them more than a passing thought. The second reason was the metal bed. It was absolutely perfect for what he had in mind. And the third reason was loitering across the street at the petrol station. A group of pathetically dressed gangbangers who’d no doubt sell him the cocktail of street drugs he knew it was going to take to make this ordeal last, and last, and last…

  Oh, Becky Reichert was going to beg for death before he was finished with her. Beg for it!

  “We’re going to have some fun, you and me,” he promised her, tightening the last rope around her slim wrist. Having her unconscious had made the process of tying her, spread eagle on the bare, stained mattress, just that much easier as well.

  So it’d all worked out for the best, except…

  He frowned at her T-shirt and heavy jeans. This little endeavor, this waiting for her to wake-up so he could revel in the fear and pain and anger in her dark eyes, would be so much more enjoyable if she were naked, if he could gaze at her pale breasts and supple thighs.

  But he didn’t dare untie her, and even if he did, he still wouldn’t be able to undress her one-handed.

  Looking around the room, he realized he’d forgotten one crucial piece of equipment. Something he could use to cut away her clothes.

  Bollocks! He usually wasn’t so absent-minded, usually made sure to cross all his Ts and dot all his Is before he embarked on any assignment, but he’d been feverish and weak and obviously both had interfered with his mental processes.

  Well, what was done was done. He needed to figure out a way to rectify the situation.

  Scissors would be his best bet. Less gratifying than a knife maybe, but so much easier to wield one-handed.

  With a frustrated shake of his head, he moved to the dingy window and pulled back the dusty blinds. Eyeing the rundown petrol station across the street, he wondered what the odds were on them carrying a pair of scissors.

  Fifty-fifty he decided as his eyes pinged over to the group of hoodlums lounging on the chipped curb.