In Rides Trouble: Black Knights Inc.

by Julie Ann Walker

  With a bellow that had white spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth like a rabid dog, Sharif yanked the knife from his arm and lunged toward her.

  God forgive me, she prayed.

  Three pounds of pressure and a half-breath later, it was all over.

  ***

  “No!” Frank roared, his heart exploding inside his chest a split second after the hard bark of a .45 rent the cool Chicago air and a muzzle flash briefly illuminated the dingy window of Lazy Suzanne’s room six.

  He took two lunging steps, planted his size-sixteen biker boot in the center of the door, and used his momentum and every bit of his two hundred forty-five pounds like a human wrecking ball. The already-warped door flew off its hinges, landing inside the dim room with a splintering, teeth-rattling crash. Frank stumbled in right behind it.

  And he saw it all in an instant.

  He saw Becky blowing like she’d run a race, standing with her bare feet shoulder width apart, her left hand supporting the edge of her right palm, her head tilted slightly so that her eye lined up with the Glock’s sights. He saw Sharif lying in an expanding pool of sticky, crimson blood, the top of his head completely gone, his left leg twitching like a beheaded snake.

  “Frank,” Becky panted, barely giving him a look as she continued to draw down on Sharif. What did she think? That the bastard might jump up and come after her again despite the fact that a good portion of his skull was missing and most of his brains were slowly sliding down the opposite wall? “You should be in the hospital.”

  If he hadn’t been on the verge of breaking down and crying like a goddamned baby, he would’ve laughed.

  She was alive, wonderfully, gloriously alive, and she was issuing opinions in that dusky Demi Moore voice of hers and…sweet, sweet, Jesus!

  He did two things then. He dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, barely able to hold back the hard sob of relief building in his chest.

  That-a-girl, was all he could think. That’s my tough, wonderful girl.

  “Becky!” Wild Bill cried as he charged through the door, stumbling to a halt when he took in the gruesome scene. “Oh, thank goodness, sis. Thank goodness,” he repeated as he slowly made his way past Frank’s kneeling form and over to Becky’s side, gently removing the .45 from her trembling hands and shoving it in the waistband of his jeans.

  Bill had to take her by the shoulders and physically turn her away from the horrific sight of Sharif and that twitching leg, and even then she kept glancing back, her beautiful eyes huge and filled with shock.

  Yeah, Frank was somewhat of an authority on terminal ballistics. They were never pretty. And head shots? They were the ugliest of all. The movies always portrayed them as a nice, neat hole smack-dab between some sorry bloke’s glassy, sightless eyes. What Hollywood usually failed to include was the mess that bullet made upon exiting.

  The skull was like a melon, hit it with a hard object, and it tended to just bust apart into a terrifying hash of blood, bone, and gray matter. And when you added in the lovely little electrical pulses that continued to manipulate muscles like strings animating a marionette, yeah, it was pretty much the stuff of nightmares.

  The distant wail of sirens was the just the sound Frank needed to pull himself out of Nadaville. With a hard shake of his head and a big, steadying breath, he managed to get his brain and his legs moving again. Pushing to his feet, he screwed his eyes shut when a bout of dizziness almost had him taking a header.

  A hard hand on his shoulder steadied him.

  After a brief moment, when he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to pass out or puke, he turned to face Zoelner. “What the fuck are you doing ghosting around Chicago?” he demanded, even as stars skipped happily in front of his vision.

  Rock poked his head into the room from his position guarding the door and reported, “Local PD comin’ in hot. ETA is two minutes.”

  Frank nodded before turning back to the mysterious ex-CIA agent.

  “Johnny Vitiglioni, that greasy Las Vegas mobster, has put a price on all of your heads in retribution for Ghost killing his boys,” Zoelner said. “I figured the least I could do was keep a close eye on your backs. You know,” he shrugged and holstered his weapon under his arm, “just a little reparation for getting involved in that whole mess in the first place.”

  “Goddamn. If it’s not one thing it’s another.”

  On top of everything else that’d happened today. Frank was going to have to deal with Johnny Vitiglioni.

  Of course, that’d have to wait. Because, for now, he had to take care of something else.

  Like the not-so-insignificant fact that Becky was ghost white and staring in abject horror at Sharif’s dead body. The guy’s leg had stopped dancing around like it was full of Mexican jumping beans, but the stuff oozing out of his ruined skull just kept getting worse and worse.

  It was obvious that now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the enormity of what she’d done, namely killing a man, was setting in.

  His heart lurched at the sight of her huge eyes and quivering lower lip. It made him want to scoop Sharif’s brains back into his shattered cranium and shock the bastard back to life just so he could kill him all over again.

  “Get her out of here, Bill,” he commanded as he reached in his pocket for his cell phone. He had to make a call into Chief Washington and beg the guy for another favor. Lawrence P. Washington was a former marine sergeant turned CPD police chief. He was solid as a rock, cranky as a wet cat, and the only man in the city who had even a slight inkling—very slight—as to the truth behind Black Knights Inc. Which put him in the inconvenient position of having to cover the Knights’ tracks when their activities intersected with the mean streets of Chicago.

  “No, I’ll, uh,” Becky swallowed convulsively, “I’ll stay. The police are going to need a statement.”

  She glanced back at Sharif and shivered.

  Frank wanted nothing more than to grab her up, press her head against his shoulder, and make it all go away. Just turn back the clock so he made it to the motel thirty seconds earlier. If he had, if he’d had that extra half-minute, it would’ve been his bullet ending Sharif Garane’s malicious existence and not hers.

  Sharif Garane. Oh yeah, Interpol had finally been able to identify the guy, thanks in large part to Becky’s sketch. Fat lot of good it did them in catching him before he got the chance to strike.

  “The police are going to need a statement,” he told her, “but not from you. You were never here.”

  Her wide eyes jumped to his face. “But I…I,” she pointed to Sharif, unable to go on.

  “Listen to me, Rebecca. For weeks your face has been splashed across the evening news. If this incident gets out, the press will be on us like flies on a shit-wagon. And you know as well as I do, we can’t afford that, not so soon after Patti and the whole piracy incident. If people find out you were here, they might start to wonder why you and Black Knights Inc. are always slam-bam in the middle of trouble. And if they start to wonder, then they’ll start to investigate. Lord.” He ran his hand through his hair, all manner of horrific paparazzi scenarios swirling through his head. “Can you imagine what Samantha Tate will do? You thought she was a nuisance before? Well, if she gets wind of this, you’re going to need a restraining order to keep her away.”

  “Okay, but Frank I—”

  “Just go, Becky!”

  She flinched, but he hadn’t time to console her like he wanted, he hadn’t time to wrap her in his arms and tell her he loved her, because the sirens were closing in and he needed to put in that call to Chief Washington two minutes ago.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Becky sat in her favorite lounge chair in the dim courtyard, a blanket over her shoulders and a hot cup of cocoa clutched between her shaking hands. There was a fire roaring in the fire pit but, strangely, she cou
ldn’t feel its heat.

  Maybe it was because her hair was still a little wet from the extra scrubbing she’d given it in the shower. The shower where all she’d been able to think, over and over again, was I killed a man.

  “You did good, sis,” Billy told her, chafing her arm as he sat on her left.

  Yeah, he could probably tell by her chattering teeth, she was having trouble getting warm. She was beginning to wonder if she’d ever get warm again. Perhaps killing someone chilled a person down to the very depths of their soul.

  “I did what Ghost taught me,” she mumbled, watching a mini marshmallow slowly melt into her hot cocoa. “Slow, smooth, straight, steady, squeeze.” They were the five S’s of marksmanship. She’d obviously learned them well considering she’d hit the bull’s eye, or the fatal t-zone as Ghost called it.

  “We’re gonna make an operator of you yet,” Ozzie said from across the way, stoking the fire until it rumbled and snapped and the fragrant pine logs glowed bright orange.

  She gulped, looking around the courtyard at the supportive expressions on all the Knights faces and wondered why the concept of becoming an operator didn’t sound nearly as appealing as it had just that morning.

  She’d done the right thing. Sharif would’ve killed her if she hadn’t killed him first. It was self-defense. Self-preservation. But she just couldn’t get that image out of her head. That horrific slideshow of bullet leaving barrel, head shattering, fluid and flesh spraying, body crumpling, leg twitching…

  Sweet Mother of Mercy. No matter how many reports she’d read on the Knights’ missions, nothing had prepared her for the actual carnage of a .45 bullet impacting a human skull.

  She shivered, and Billy chafed harder. She’d be lucky to have any skin left on that arm after he finished…

  “What happened to Eve?” she asked, suddenly remembering the poor woman she’d been made to abandon at Red Delilah’s.

  “When Bill called and said he was bringing you home, I went and fetched her from the bar. I took her back to her apartment,” Angel, who was sitting in the lounge chair beside hers, explained.

  “Was she okay?”

  “She was shaken and still very drunk. But once I explained that you were fine, once she realized Sharif had not managed to harm you, she seemed okay. The last I saw of her, she was curled on her sofa with an afghan, a bottle of water, and two aspirin.”

  “Thank you so much.” She reached over to squeeze his hand.

  “Anytime.”

  She smiled sadly, took another sip of cocoa and thought, Let’s hope there’s not a next time.

  Why couldn’t she get warm?

  “Becky?” Angel murmured softly, and she glanced up into his beautiful face. “I once heard it said that one man can change the world with a bullet in the right place. The same applies to one woman.”

  She shuddered at the thought of her bullet in the right place.

  “You saved lives today by taking his. Next time you are doubting yourself, doubting the rightness of what you did, you remember that.”

  Hot tears stung the back of her throat and filled her eyes. She reached for his hand again, holding it tightly.

  Rock’s phone jingled to life, and all heads turned in his direction, giving her the opportunity to casually wipe away the wetness threatening to spill down her cheeks.

  “Are you pullin’ my leg, Manus? He…he said his name is Snake?” Rock sputtered into his phone. “Yeah. Hell, yeah. Send him on in.”

  “Who’s Snake?” Becky asked, but Rock just waved her off as the back gate opened and a tall, movie-star handsome man with shaggy, golden hair and a really bad Hawaiian shirt strode into the courtyard.

  “Mon Dieu,” Rock said, grinning as he stood to take the mystery man’s hand. “It’s good to see your face again, mon ami.”

  “I’m here for Shell,” the man said, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  Huh? Who was this guy Rock allowed to stroll so casually into their compound? And who the heck was Shell?

  Then she forgot all about ascertaining the answers to those questions, because the mumble of male voices sounded from around the corner and she closed her eyes. She’d managed to push the thought of what was about to happen to the back of her mind, but now there was no more avoiding it.

  The shit, as they say, was about to hit the fan.

  Because she’d gone and done it again. Despite trying her level best to avoid it, trouble had found her. And that trouble once more threatened to shine a spotlight on the Knights—a group of men whose very lives depended on anonymity.

  And for the past hour, instead of lying in a hospital bed being fed a nice little cocktail of intravenous painkillers, Frank had been out cleaning up her mess, insuring the Knights and their covers remained intact.

  So add all that up with the fact that she’d seduced him on the one night when he was at his most vulnerable because he thought he was going to die, pretty much insured that, yepper, he’d had it right all along. Rebecca Reichert was the bane of Frank Knight’s existence.

  Apologize.

  First and foremost, that’s what needed to come out of her mouth. An apology. Not explanations, not words of defense, just a straight-up, no-holds-barred, “I’m sorry.”

  Frank, I’m sorry. Frank, I’m sorry. Frank, I’m sorry.

  She practiced it over and over as she set her coffee mug on the little wrought-iron table beside her chair and stood, slowly making her way toward the gate so she could address Frank face-to-face as he deserved. She wasn’t going to cower behind Billy or Angel or any of the others.

  Frank, I’m sorry. Frank, I’m sorry.

  Although, considering how much trouble and heartache she’d caused him over the last twenty-four hours, those three words sounded feeble at best, downright vapid at worst.

  She could hear his big boots clomping against the blacktop.

  Twisting her hands together, she practiced tactical breathing just like Ghost had taught her. Three short breaths in, one long breath out. It was supposed to steady your nerves before you squeezed the trigger on a target. She wasn’t fingering a trigger, and she sure as heck didn’t have a target, but she needed steady nerves.

  Lord knew she needed steady nerves…

  Just when she was about to give it another go, because the first bout of tactical breathing hadn’t done anything but make her dizzy, Frank rounded the corner.

  “Zoelner’s out front,” he said. “Make him at home, Ozzie.”

  Ozzie took one look at Frank and jumped to do as commanded, rushing past Becky where she stood awkwardly by the gate.

  “Christian, I’m gonna need you to call General Fuller and fill him in on what’s happened,” Frank continued. “Rock, you’ll have to…” He stopped when his weary eyes alighted on their newest arrival. “Well, I’ll be damned, Snake” he said, shaking his head, a tired smile playing at his lips. “You picked one helluva time to make an appearance, but it’s good to see you again.”

  “You might not feel that way after I tell you what I’m here for.”

  “Oh?” Frank’s smile faded.

  “I’m here for Shell,” the mysterious man announced again, and Becky watched Frank take a deep breath before slowly blowing it back out.

  “Okay then.” He ran a hand through hair that looked liked he’d already run his fingers through it a hundred times before. “I guess I’ll deal with that later. Don’t think I’m rude, but there’s something I gotta do right now.” He turned to her then, and her heart started pounding.

  Because even though he was white as a ghost, that didn’t detract from the expression on his face. The one that held her rooted to the spot.

  Oh, geez, this was so much worse than she expected. He looked like he wanted to kill her…

  “Frank, I—” That’s all she got out
before he scooped her up in his good arm and pushed her back against the shop’s back wall, slamming his mouth over hers.

  …or kiss her?

  Eve was right. It was hard to know which he had in mind when he wore that particular expression.

  For a second she was frozen, her eyes blinking and crossed as she tried to see his face. Then his hot tongue plunged between her lips, and he pressed his big body up against her and all thought flooded right out of her ringing ears as she wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back with everything she had.

  Too soon he pulled away, his gray eyes fierce as a winter storm. “Come with me,” he growled at her. “Now.”

  ***

  Bill smiled as he watched Boss drag Becky out of the courtyard. And when he turned back, he was surprised to find Angel mirroring his expression.

  “What the hell are you grinning about?” he demanded. “The big Boss Man just made off with your girl.”

  Not that Bill was complaining, of course. It was about damn time Boss and Becky acted on the love that’d been growing between them for years. And he wanted nothing more than to see his little sister happy.

  That being said, he figured he could’ve gone the rest of his natural life without bearing witness to the gut-turning spectacle of Becky getting body-slammed and lip-locked. Then again, if some guy was going to grind his sister against a brick wall, he could think of much worse options than Frank Knight.

  Angel Agassi being one of them.

  “We were never anything but friends,” Angel mused, taking a sip of the cocoa Becky’d left behind, absently watching as Rock escorted their visitor through the back door of the shop. The rest of the Knights followed the pair, no doubt keen to find out who the mystery man was. Bill was curious about the guy as well. But he was even more interested in Angel’s response.