Hell for Leather: Black Knights Inc. (5 page)

“But they are not,” Haroun said, instantly piquing Qasim’s interest.

“No?” he asked, his lip curling with disgust as his men carted the remains of the old Marine by him. When the light from the low-burning kerosene lanterns revealed a drop of coagulating blood falling from the body to the dusty floor, barely missing the toe of his shoe, he frowned at Sami and Jabbar.

“Idiots,” he growled, jumping from the cheap plastic chair they’d managed to scrounge up from the wreckage of this sad, forsaken town, “mind where you are going with that lump of filth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry, sir.”

After Charles Sander died of a heart attack within hours of beginning his interrogation and torture, Qasim had wondered if perhaps he’d been sent on a fool’s mission. If perhaps Allah himself wasn’t laughing down at him for thinking he could accomplish what so many of his brethren over the years had not. But then, just as he was howling over his lost leverage—he’d intended to use Charles and Theodore against one another, torturing one to make the other talk—he’d opened Theodore Fairchild’s wallet to discover what would undoubtedly be the ultimate chink in the man’s armor. Photographic evidence of a girl—a
niece
Qasim had discovered after a quick Google search—whom Theodore had raised as a daughter.
She
was just the bargaining chip Qasim needed to make the old Marine give up the information stored inside his head. And it was at that moment that he began to think that
qadar
, or Fate, had once more swung in his favor…

Praise
Allah!
This
might
actually
work!

“Shall we just drop the body next door?” Jabbar asked, straining under the weight of Charles Sander and looking peculiar in his Western-style clothing.

“Take him far enough away so that his stench does not reach us,” Qasim instructed his men. Then he turned back to the phone conversation. “What were you saying?” he asked Haroun, lamenting the fact that Jabbar had inadvertently smashed Theodore’s cellular phone during the struggle to apprehend the man. Because how much simpler would this whole situation have been had they been able to send Delilah Fairchild a text message from her uncle’s phone instructing her to come to Cairo. After all, that exact plan had worked so well using Sander’s phone in order to get Theodore here…

Such
is
life,
he sighed pragmatically.
Allah
gives
us
obstacles
to
overcome
in
order
to
make
the
victory
that
much
sweeter.
And just as soon as he had his hands on Delilah Fairchild, he
would
be victorious. And it
would
be very,
very
sweet.

“It was the woman herself who interrupted me,” Haroun explained. Qasim’s heart beat faster as hope bloomed in his chest.
Could
it
be
so
easy?
“I would simply have grabbed her there, but she was not alone. Two men were there with her. I was forced to abandon the premises.” Qasim resumed his seat, his shoulders slumping in disappointment.
No, of course it could not be.
“I hid until they left the old Marine’s house. Then followed them to some sort of motorcycle repair shop. The place has high security, so I will wait to grab her when she exits. I do not know how long that could be.”

Qasim glanced over at Theodore. The aging, white-haired man was tied to a chair, and the blood dripping from his broken nose stained the gag they’d secured over his large, bushy mustache and mouth, turning the cream-colored material a dingy, repugnant crimson. That shade would always remind Qasim of the bloody sheets he wrapped his wife and two sons in after a drone strike leveled his village in Pakistan.

It’d been barely a year after the towers were destroyed on September 11th. And the United States had told the media the attack was necessary due to the presence of a high-level al-Qaeda operative in the town. But Qasim didn’t know anything about an al-Qaeda operative, high-level or not. And all he found when he returned home to search through the rubble of his life were the mutilated bodies of his friends and neighbors…the shredded corpses of his wife and children.

Before the drone strike, he’d never been tempted to join the groups of bewhiskered men who occasionally came through his village, ranting and raving about justice and the need to perpetrate revenge on all the infidels. But that all changed the night an unmanned plane, flown by a soldier sitting in front of a computer screen thousands of miles away, dropped an AGM Hellfire air-to-ground missile on everything Qasim held dear.

AGM Hellfire air-to-ground missile… He would always remember the name of the ordnance that obliterated his family.

Hellfire…

The newspapers had printed it without thought to what that word would mean to those who’d survived the massacre.

Hellfire…

It was exactly what he and so many others were going to rain down on American mothers and fathers, wives and children, in the weeks and months to come.

Filthy
American
pigs
, he thought again. Though, as he let his gaze once more travel over Theodore Fairchild, he had to give the man credit for his strength. Even after the beating Sami and Jabbar had given him, and even after watching his friend die a wheezing, eye-bulging death, Theodore remained upright, his chin held high, his aging blue eyes bright with fury.

But that strength would only last so long. And Qasim knew just how to strike fear into the hardened heart of a man like Theodore.

Smiling to himself, he tilted his head at his hostage. Theodore was listening intently to his phone conversation. Not that Qasim was concerned. It was unlikely Theodore was able to understand the stilted Arabic he was speaking—stilted because Punjabi was his native tongue and he’d only learned to speak Arabic after joining The Cause. Still, not being able to understand the words Qasim spoke did not stop the old soldier from straining to hear any recognizable phrase. Which was why Qasim winked before saying, “Excellent, Haroun. I look forward to meeting
Delilah
Fairchild
,” he emphasized the name, “very soon.”

Theodore jerked against his restraints, yelling behind the gag, and Qasim allowed a grin to tilt his lips. “I’m going to bring your beloved niece here, Mr. Fairchild,” he said in English, infusing his voice with the promise of death and retribution. “And then you and I are going to make a deal…”

Delilah was mortified.

She could not
believe
she’d done exactly what she’d promised herself she’d never do…which was break down like a lily-livered ninny in front of these people. These fearless guys who put their lives on the line each day, and these brave women who stood by, dry-eyed, and watched them do it.

How pathetic was she by comparison?

Pretty
damned
pathetic
, a little voice whispered at the back of her head, to which she immediately replied,
Oh, fuck off
.

Because, seriously? If a gal couldn’t rely on her own subconscious to have her back, then she couldn’t rely on anyone.
Hmph.
Her inner twelve-year-old crossed her arms and scowled.

Okay, now anger… Anger is good.
Anger could fuel the fire that burned inside her. You know, as opposed to the fear that had left her weak and spent and falling apart in the circle of Mac’s strong arms. And, yeah, so she could admit the strong arms thing was the bright spot in an otherwise humiliating little display. But, seriously, even
they
weren’t enough to overcome
all
her embarrassment.
Some
, certainly. A girl would have to be dead from the waist down not to be comforted by the feel of Mac’s embrace—not to mention the warmth of his firm lips on her brow. But not all of it.

And, hey, since she was on the topic, what was
with
him and the forehead kisses, anyway? He’d broken—more like smashed through—his four-year moratorium on touching her only to grant her the lowliest form of affection? Because, come on, the forehead kiss, while sweet, was sort of like the kiss of death when it came to romance, placing the recipient of said kiss firmly in the friend zone. So was all Mac’s touchy, feely, forehead-kissy stuff an indication that he suddenly wanted to be friends? Was it an indication that—

“…warm up?” Ali, Ghost’s wife, dragged Delilah away from her spinning thoughts.

She looked up from her seat at the long, rectangular conference table to find the heavily pregnant blonde holding a carafe of coffee. At least Delilah
assumed
the black sludge sloshing around inside the glass container was coffee. Truth was, after having taken a sip of the foul stuff, she couldn’t be quite sure. It smelled like burned rubber and tasted about the same.

“What did you say?” she asked. Eighties music filled the cavernous space that was the Black Knights’ second floor…uh…what exactly would one call this area? The command center?

“I asked if you wanted a warm up,” Ali repeated.

“Uhhhh…” She shook her head, covering the top of her mostly full Styrofoam cup. “No, thanks.”

“You sure?” Ali asked, hoisting the carafe higher, looking very cute in a flowered maternity sundress studded with rhinestones around the collar and hem. But no matter how well Ali played the part of Vanna White, there was nothing that could force Delilah to take one more drink of that sludge
.

“Yeah.” She nodded vehemently, then narrowed her eyes when a little smile tugged at one corner of Ali’s lips. “Hey, are you screwing around with me? What
is
this stuff?”

Ali’s tawny eyes flashed. But before she could answer, her husband whisked the pot from her hands.

“What d’ya think you’re doin’?” Nate “Ghost” Weller demanded in that strange mashed-up way he had of speaking. It was almost like he talked in cursive. “The doctor said you’re not s’posed to lift heavy things.” Pulling out a chair, he gently, as if Ali were a fragile piece of antique china, maneuvered her into it despite her repeated swatting of his hands.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Nate,” the blonde groused, scowling up at her handsome, black-eyed husband. “I don’t think a coffee pot constitutes a
heavy
thing
.” She made the quote marks with her fingers, fingers Delilah noticed were pudgy with retained fluid. She’d been around enough pregnant women in her day to know Ali Weller was about to burst. Or as Uncle Theo liked to say,
primed
to
pop
.

Uncle
Theo
… And just like that, she felt the blood drain from her face.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, were those tears burning up the back of her nose?

“A coffee pot doesn’t constitute a heavy thing?” Ghost asked, his expression dubious. “Mmmph,” he finished, shaking his head until his black hair brushed against the collar of his white, 110th Anniversary Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

“Mmmph?” Ali parroted, lifting her brows before turning to Delilah. “I thought I was making progress with him. You know,” she fluttered her hands dramatically, “getting him to speak in actual sentences and stuff. But ever since that double pink line appeared on the pee-stick test, he’s reverted back to his former caveman vocabulary.”

“Mmmph,” Ghost grunted again, plunking down in the seat beside his wife.

“See what I mean?” Ali asked, and Delilah was eternally grateful for the distraction from her own self-pity. She opened her mouth to agree with Ali but closed it again when the sound of Steady’s heavy biker boots clomping down the metal stairs from the third floor snagged her attention.

From what she’d been able to gather the other two times she’d been in the old menthol cigarette factory that now housed Black Knights Inc., the third floor was the living quarters for the operators, those who still resided onsite, anyway. She’d heard a few of the married guys had moved out—no doubt in an effort to gain a little privacy from what she’d come to understand was basically just a big frat house stocked with hand grenades, guns, and all manner of other ruthless, deadly things that went
boom
.

The first floor, with its soaring ceiling, brightly painted brick walls, and gleaming line of custom choppers, was the state-of-the-art motorcycle shop where all the bike building occurred—and where the cover for the clandestine nature of BKI was maintained.

And
then
there was this second floor…

As far as she could tell, it was the heart of the operation. The large conference area was open on one side to the motorcycle shop below. Off to her right, a row of metal doors stood ajar and revealed the interiors of half a dozen private offices. And lining one wall, top to bottom, was a set of computers and monitors fancy enough to drive home the fact that, yes, indeed, she really
was
sitting smack-dab in the middle of a super-secret spy shop.

“Let me check your head,” Steady said. “Make sure that pop you received didn’t leave you with a concussion. And Mac,” he said as he dropped a camouflage duffel bag on the end of the conference table. It landed with a muted
thud
. “Come over here and take your shirt off.”

Okay…
Mac? Shirtless?
Talk about
one
way to rip her mind away from heavy, heartbreaking thoughts of her uncle. She had to concentrate incredibly hard in order to answer the rather simple questions Steady peppered her with as his fingers pressed around on her skull. Not because of any brain injury, mind you. But because Mac was two seconds away from becoming shirtless. And when Mac did as Steady suggested, sauntering over to the conference table from his previous position by the bank of computers, snagging the seat beside her before reaching over his head to grab the collar of his bloody T-shirt and whip the garment off in one fell swoop, she completely forgot her own name. Thankfully, Steady had already finished questioning her and pronounced her sound.

Oh, for the love of tequila…

Tan… Mac’s skin had that I-grew-up-in-the-Deep-South, sun-kissed look about it.

Hard… The thick muscles bulging in his chest and shoulders appeared solid enough to withstand a hatchet strike.

Manly… Hair grew in a patch between his impressive pectoral muscles and arrowed down to disappear beneath the waistband of his faded jeans, screaming
male
as loudly as a shot glass full of straight testosterone.

Mouthwatering… The corrugated muscles of his stomach bunched when he bent to the side to allow Steady to swipe an antiseptic cloth over his slowly weeping wound.

Delicious… Soap lingered on his skin, and the smell of it was a seductive combination of cool mint and warm vanilla. It made her think of hard Christmas candies and sugar cookies fresh from the oven.

Ink… Around his bulky biceps twined triple links of black barbed wire. A lone fist-sized red, white, and blue outline of the state of Texas with a star in the center covered the hard muscle over his heart. And maybe it was because she’d been raised around a bunch of rowdy bikers, but she always got a little weak in the knees when confronted with badass tattoos inked into tough, tan skin.

Put it all together, add a pinch of I-haven’t-been-laid-in-
way
-too-long, and what did you come up with? A big ol’ dollop of
yeehaw, cowgirl!
with a side of
wanna
take
a
ride?

And,
yes
. She’d been wanting to do exactly that for a very,
very
long time now. In fact, she’d been—

Really, Delilah
, that pesky little voice piped up again,
we’re back to that? Back to swooning over an emotionally unavailable man? And have you forgotten about your uncle?

Well, sonofa
—No, no…
of
course
she hadn’t forgotten about her uncle. In fact, now that the adrenaline had worn off, now that she’d gotten past the part where she was running around—as Mac would say—like a chicken with her head cut off, she was horrified to discover that deep down, down where she didn’t want to look, down where things got dark and scary, she had a very
bad
feeling that she was never going to see Uncle Theo again.

And just skirting around the very
edges
, the thinnest, farthest borders, of that possibility made her heart contract so hard it sat in her chest like a black stone of terror. She didn’t realize she’d spoken her fear aloud until Mac threw an arm around the back of her chair and dragged her close to his side. It was also then that she realized her blood was running colder than the dry ice she used in the zombie cocktails she mixed up each year around Halloween. Because Mac’s big body felt hotter than the surface of the sun where it touched the freezing skin on her arm, and his sudden nearness chased away the chill and instantly started a fire burning low in her belly. Despite the fear strangling her heart, a soft ache pulsed between her legs.

Yup. Way too long since I’ve been laid…

“That’s not true, Delilah. You’re gonna see him again,” he told her, his blue eyes flashing fiercely, as if the sheer force of his will alone could make her believe his words. And honestly, looking at him stoically sitting there while Steady shoved a two-inch needle filled with some sort of numbing solution into his other side, she had to admit, it kind of, sort of,
maybe
worked. Because if anyone could find her uncle, it was Mac. The former all-star FBI agent with a backbone of iron and a mind like a steel trap.

Then, of course, there were all the rest of the Knights…

Sucking in a deep, bracing breath, she glanced around the conference room. Ozzie, Becky, and Zoelner were seated at the computer bank, typing furiously, scouring phone records and military archives for any clue that might lead them to her uncle and this Charlie guy. They were also combing through city surveillance footage for a glimpse of Mr. Timberlands. And,
Jesus
, how in the world was she ever going to pay them back for this?

How in the world was she ever going to pay
Mac
back for this?

He’d been the one to set the others on their tasks, and he’d done it all with the calm authority of a man who’d been down this road countless times before, a man who had the situation well in hand.

She wasn’t used to having to depend on anyone for anything. But she was glad she could depend on the Knights and, more precisely, Mac, for this. And since she
didn’t
know how she was ever going to pay him back, she reached beneath the table to squeeze his knee and gave him the one thing she could…

Leaning forward, she went to place a soft kiss of thanks, a
friendly
kiss of thanks, on his whiskered cheek—holy hormones he smelled good—but at the last second, he turned his head and her lips landed directly atop his.

Sweet
sonofa
—This was a mistake. Not what she’d planned at all. But even so, she didn’t want to pull back. Mostly because she’d been waiting
years
to find an excuse to get her lips on Mac, and now that she had one, she wanted to milk the moment for all it was worth. And also because, right then, his mouth softened. Just a little. Just enough to allow his hot breath to whisper across her lips.

And that fire he’d started low in her belly? It exploded into an inferno. And that ache between her legs? It shot up into her center, making her womb pulse. For a split second, she considered opening her mouth to him. But before she could work through all the ramifications of that action, he gently pulled back. And the look on his face when she opened her eyes? It wasn’t…well, to put it quite honestly, it wasn’t what she expected.

When it came to her, Mac’s expressions usually fell into three categories. One was simple dismissal. His patented
I
don’t have the desire or inclination to give you the time of day
look. Another was flat-out disapproval. The one that said
why
do
you
have
to
be
so
loud, so bossy, so brash?
And his last go-to expression was what she liked to call his Mask of Inscrutability. The facial equivalent of a blank page.

But to her utter astonishment, he wore none of those tried-and-true looks.
Huh-uh
. In fact, if memory served—and that was taking a giant leap, since it’d been four long years since she’d allowed a man to seduce her—that particular gleam in his eye was the guy equivalent of twenty minutes of foreplay. Instantly her nipples furled, her womb contracted for the second time, and her heart raced until her blood we all fizzy, like a lime dropped in tonic water.