Hell on Wheels (11 page)

“So
that’s
why you’ve been acting so…so surly and disagreeable all these years?” she asked in disbelief. “Because you
want
me?”

Surly and disagreeable? He hadn’t been surly and disagreeable. He’d been noble and honorable.
Jesus
. Couldn’t she tell the friggin’ difference?

Deciding she wasn’t going to budge unless he prodded her, he tried to push her away. With lightning reflexes, she locked her thin arms around his neck and clung like a barnacle on the hull of an aircraft carrier.

“Ali,” he warned, grinding his teeth together against the pleasure/pain throbbing inside his pants. This was getting worse by the minute. Or better, maybe? Christ, he wasn’t sure anymore. His brain was only half working—which he figured was still pretty good considering it was likely being deprived of most of its blood supply. “Back off.”

“Not until you answer me,” she declared with that pointy little chin of hers lifted defiantly.

His patience snapped along with his control. “Yes, damn you! Yes, that’s why I always keep you at arm’s length. Because anytime I get near you, all I wanna do is peel away your clothes, lay y’down on the nearest horizontal surface, and plunge balls-deep inside you until your squirmin’ beneath me like a worm on a hook and beggin’ me to never stop. There! Y’happy now?”

***

Nate expected a number of things from Ali after that rather insensitive and vulgar outburst. The mind-blowing sensation of her lips opening over his was certainly not one of them.

Oh buddy.

Her tongue.

It was sweet and supple and darting in and out, and licking and laving and making him lose his mind.

His wickedest fantasies had nothing on reality. For all their crude, raw carnality, he generally didn’t spend a lot of time kissing Ali in his dreams. Usually choosing to skip ahead to the really steamy parts.

Which he now understood had been a huge mistake. Gargantuan.

Because the hard suction of Ali’s mouth was the steamiest thing he’d ever known—which was saying something considering he’d lost count of the number of lovers he’d had over the years. And some of those gals had had more than one novelty packed away in their big bag of bedroom tricks.

The feel of her skin…

It was hot and satiny smooth beneath his rough hands. Her robe split wide when she shimmied up him like a logger climbs a pine and wrapped her slim legs around his waist. Instinctively, he caught her hips.

Good! Lord!

Hips that were undulating against him in a most infuriating and satisfying way.

“Ali,” he wrenched his mouth away. His lungs were going to burst. “Stop this.”

“No,” she trailed a string of wet kisses across his jaw and down to his earlobe, pausing to suck it into the moist heat of her mouth. His eyes literally crossed. “I want this. You want this. We’re both adults, and there’s been this…this overwhelming chemistry between us from the very beginning. So there’s nothing to stop us.”

For a moment, every reason why she shouldn’t be in his arms sprouted feathers and flew right out of his mind. For one delicious instant, he knew only the sensation of her body moving against him. Her arms around his shoulders, her fingers tunneling through the hair at his nape until goose bumps erupted along his skin.

Before he realized what was happening, he was kissing her back with all the passion and hunger that had been building inside him since that time he walked into the Morgans’ kitchen on a cool May morning and watched her swing a Pearl Jam backpack over her shoulder.

He remembered it like it was yesterday…

Because beyond all reason—she’d been just a girl, a senior in high school and he’d been a twenty-one-year-old man of the world by that point—he’d wanted her. With a force that had knocked him senseless. So much so he’d only been able to stare in narrow-eyed wonder and blink at her when he was introduced.

Then she’d bestowed on him her bright smile and laughed her sunny laugh, and he’d fallen in…
lust
. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but something had certainly happened right then and there.

Grigg had instantly recognized the hot hunger gleaming in his eyes and had leaned in to whisper a phrase he’d repeated too many times to count over the long years to follow.
Lay
a
finger
on
my
baby
sister
and
die, asshole.

And that was just the bucket of ice water Nate needed…memories of Grigg.

Shit! What am I doing?

“This can’t happen again,” he told her as he unwrapped her legs and set her feet on the floor before pulling away. Was that his voice sounding like gravel rolling around in a dump truck?

“What? Why?” She blinked up at him.

He had to turn away. He couldn’t look at her kiss-swollen lips or the color riding high in her cheeks and know he was responsible for both. “It just can’t.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“There are things you don’t know about me, Ali.” Things she’d hopefully never know…

“Okay,” she walked to the leather La-Z-Boy he kept in the corner and plopped down. Good Lord, they were baby blue. Baby blue panties. He got just a glimpse before she closed the edges of her robe and crossed her legs. “So, are you gay?”

He coughed. “Uh, what d’you think?”

She eyed the bulge behind his zipper and shook her head.

Yeah, that’s a big negative, little lady.

“Do you have some incurable STD?” she asked, head canted just so, like she was a loan officer interviewing a potential borrower.

This was getting out of hand. “
No.
Ali I—”

“Do you have a girlfriend or wife I’m unaware of?”

“Course not. If you’ll just—”

“Then there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t continue doing exactly what we were just doing.” She stood up to make good on her word, and he nearly stumbled backward when his heel caught on the rug.

He held up a hand to ward her off like she was some hungry jungle cat instead of one small woman.

One small,
determined
woman. Oh, yes, he recognized
that
look, as well.

He was losing the battle here. Time to quit jacking off and lay it all on the line. “I’ve done horrible things, Ali. Unforgivable things. You don’t want anything to do with me.”

“No,” she shook her head, her face softening. Christ, he was going to bust out crying if she continued to look at him with those softly sincere eyes. “I don’t know exactly what you’ve done, and I probably never will. But one thing I do know is there’s no shame in answering the call of duty and doing what must be done to protect the freedom and the way of life of all the people you love. You’ll never convince me otherwise. I’ll never see you as anything other than what you are, Nate, a hero.”

And that did it. Because,
Jesus
, she had no idea. Not one friggin’ clue.

Just how heroic would she think him if she knew he’d been the one to end Grigg’s life?

The first, soft pink rays of dawn spilled between the wooden slats of the blinds, and Frank tossed aside the covers. It was barely past oh-five-hundred, but it was beyond obvious he’d get no more sleep.

Too much to worry about. Starting with the fact that one of his men had involved them all in a situation absolutely reeking of foul play, and ending with the fact that Becky was under the hugely mistaken impression he’d let her join the team if she could prove herself Ozzie’s equal.

To put it mildly, no fucking way. Over his dead body.

He rotated his trick shoulder and grimaced when it clicked into place and set up a steady throb like a bad toothache.

Getting old not only sucked, it suckety-suck-suck-sucked. Grabbing the bottle of ibuprofen from the nightstand, he threw two tablets to the back of his throat and swallowed.

Come
on, you little chemical wonders, work your magic.

Twenty minutes later he was showered, shaved, and down in his office with a glazed donut in one hand, his telephone in the other.

Nearly oh-six-thirty DC time, which meant General Fuller was due for a little wake-up call. One the ol’ hard-ass would probably rather not take, but life’s a bitch and then you die.

Interrupting the General’s beauty sleep rated real low on Frank’s list of things not to do today, way under
don’t kiss Becky
and
don’t start a war with the FBI or the CIA
. And getting General Fuller up and cranking away on his end of this rank-ass deal would go a long way to allowing Frank to put big red checkmarks next to some items on his list of things to do today. Hopefully, right beside
find
out
just
what
the
hell
Agent
Delaney
was
investigating
and
find
out
why
the
hell
there’s a spook on Grigg’s little sister’s tail.

“Frank?”

He ended his call before it got a chance to go through and glanced at his open office door.

He wasn’t the only one who’d gone without sleep last night. Alisa Morgan had dark bruises under her eyes. It also—
kee-rist
—looked like she’d been crying.

From fear? Because of her brother? Man, either reason made him want to wrap her in cotton and keep her safe on a shelf. Women, those adorably soft creatures, should never wear that particular expression. He felt partly responsible, because he should’ve known one of his men had gone off reservation. Should’ve sensed something in Grigg to warn him.

He hadn’t, and now Alisa Morgan was paying the price.

She held Peanut in her arms, her pert nose sunk deep into the cat’s patchy fur, looking like a little girl seeking comfort.

“Come on in, Ali,” he said and then realized she might not hear him over the loud purring of Sir Eats-a-Lot. He motioned to the set of chairs in front of his desk.

She hurriedly took a seat and arranged a contented Peanut on her lap. “I thought of something. I don’t know if it’s anything, but it might be…”

He motioned for her to continue.

“The memory box.”

Was that a new band? Man, he really
must
be getting old. “Pardon me?”

“Growing up, our parents were always so wrapped up in—” she shook her head. “Forget it. None of that matters. Crap. My brain feels all spongy…full of holes, you know?”

“I’d offer you a cup of coffee…” She made the facial equivalent of
I’d rather be tarred and feathered.
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “I didn’t think so.”

“That stuff is motor oil,” she declared, her tone full of disgust.

“Mmm hmm, but it works wonders for mental acuity.” And for helping a guy resist the lollipops some tiny temptress insisted on shoving into his shirt pockets. It was hard to enjoy the taste of root beer when your tongue was wearing a caffeine sweater.

“I’ll pass,” Ali replied dryly. “I value my stomach lining too much to—Ouch!”

She gingerly pulled Peanut’s kneading nails from the denim of her jeans. “They say love hurts. I never knew they meant it literally until I met Peanut.”

Funny. The woman was funny. Add that up with cute as a button, smart as a tack, and surprisingly tough underneath that cupcake exterior, and Frank understood why Ghost went all Cro-Magnon around her.

“Anyway, back to the memory box,” she said, scratching Peanut under his scarred chin until his yellow eyes rolled back in abject feline ecstasy. “It’s something Grigg and I started when we were kids. Putting little keepsakes inside. You know the kind of stuff I mean, his little league baseball glove, my first Barbie, our good report cards, things like that.”

Yes, Frank had a memory box himself. Filled with childhood memorabilia and stored in his sister’s attic. But what did that have to do with Grigg’s work for the FBI or the fact that Ali herself was now being ghosted by some man oozing CIA training in every calculated move like a snail oozes a slime trail?

“As we got older,” she continued and once more grimaced as she gently withdrew Peanut’s painfully loving claws, “we started keeping copies of more important documents in there. Wills, employment contracts, that kind of thing.”

Now
they were getting somewhere. Frank sat forward.

“About once a year, Grigg would send me a zip drive filled with all the pictures he wanted to keep copies of, and I’d add it to the memory box,” she explained. “Usually, they were photos of him and Nate. Sometimes there were shots of the rest of you guys and the bikes you were working on.”

A little niggle of excitement stirred in the bottom of his stomach.

“So,” she made a motion with her hand and Peanut meowed his displeasure at the interrupted chin scratching. Ali dutifully resumed her task. “I guess it was about a week before we found out about Grigg, I received a zip drive from him in the mail. I opened it up, found a set of pictures just like always, so I put it in the memory box and forgot about it. When you asked if I’d received anything from Grigg that was out of the ordinary, I didn’t even think twice about the zip drive. Especially since I’d opened it and glanced through the pictures. But there was something else on the drive besides the pictures: a file I couldn’t access. It was secured with a password. Knowing Grigg, I figured it might be racy photos of him and some woman, or women,” she rolled her eyes. “But maybe it was secret files or something?”

Or something…hot damn! This could be the break they were all waiting for.

“It might be nothing, but the timing is awfully coincidental, don’t you think?” she asked hopefully.

He certainly
did
think. “Yes. Have you told Gho—ah, Nate about this?”

Her face fell, and she grabbed up Peanut to once more burry her nose in the cat’s patchy fur. In response, the stupid feline ratcheted his motor into overdrive.

Hello
.

So something had obviously happened between Ali and Ghost last night. Something to make her eyes all wounded and wary.

Frank never thought he’d say it, but Nathan Weller was a goddamned moron. Couldn’t the man see this woman adored him? Didn’t he notice the catch in her breath every time he entered the room, the way she instinctively gravitated toward his side even though he was about as welcoming as a prickly pear cactus?

Probably. Ghost was nothing if not observant. So, yeah, he no doubt saw all of it. Which was probably exactly why the guy was always careful to keep her at arm’s length.

Ghost had some serious issues. No doubt starting and ending with Grigg and what happened in that filthy, stinking hut in Syria. It didn’t take a genius of Ozzie’s caliber to figure out Ghost’s feelings for his dead friend’s kid sister must fall directly into a category appropriately titled It’s Complicated.

“No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t tell Nate. I wanted to run it by you first. I didn’t want to look like a fool if you thought it was nothing.”

Ah yes, not wanting to look like a fool in front of the one person you wanted more than you wanted your next breath? Frank could relate.

And speaking of fools…Dan poked his head into the office followed by his much prettier, much better half.

“Whadup, kiddies?” he asked as Patti pushed by him to glare at the donut in Frank’s hand.

Busted.

“I thought you said you were gonna start cutting sugar from your diet,” she harrumphed, hands on hips.

Ho-kay, he’d made that grandiose statement in front of the Knights in the hopes Becky would leave off stuffing those ridiculous suckers in his pockets.

The ruse hadn’t worked. Either Becky was determined to undermine his alleged new diet, or she simply reveled in the fact that he was a total wuss when it came to resisting root beer-flavored suckers.

If he had to lay down money, he’d bet on the latter.

Now, looking at Patti’s perturbed face, he figured maybe it was better to actually
go
on the sugar-free diet.

But, shit, he really loved his morning donuts.

Sometimes the best defense, especially in the face of an agitated woman, was evasion and diversion. “Ali just remembered something that might help us figure out just what in the world is going on here,” he replied, neatly sidestepping Patti’s looming lecture.

“She has?” Ozzie asked, appearing in the doorway dressed in his pajama bottoms. Did they…? Yes, they did. They had tiny Starship Enterprises all over them.

The kid absently scratched his smooth, bare chest while simultaneously trying to pat down his hair—which was wild on a good day. This morning it was out of control. Frank never knew hair could actually stand on end. He’d always thought that was just an idiom.

“Yes,” he replied, for once happy for Ozzie’s interruption. “She has, and we need to—”

“We need to what?” Ghost shouldered Ozzie aside and cast a wary glance over Ali.

The poor woman tried to disappear behind Peanut. That it was actually kind of working spoke to the salient fact that Becky needed to put the damned cat on a diet…yesterday.

“As I was saying,” Frank’s patience started to shred. “Ali received a zip drive from Grigg about a week before you gave them the news of his death. And she—”

“Jesus, woman! You’re just now tellin’ us this?” Ghost’s face was enough to give small children nightmares.

“You misunderst—” Frank tried and was immediately cut off by Ali.

“I didn’t remember until this morning, you big jerk!” she shouted and Peanut turned cold, warning eyes toward Ghost.

“How can you forget somethin’ like that?” Ghost shot back, taking a step toward Ali. Peanut hissed menacingly. “I swear I’m gonna have to kill that cat,” he spat, his fists clenched at his sides, his nostrils flaring.

“Ghost,” Frank tried again, “if you’d just shut the hell up and give me a chance to expla—”

“Don’t forget I know where you sleep, Ghost Man,” Becky threatened, pushing into the office.

Oh, good. The gang’s all here.
Now if everyone would just stop interrupting him, maybe, just
maybe
they could come up with a game plan to retrieve that zip drive.

He opened his mouth, then snapped it closed and decided to see just how this little scene would play out when Becky stomped over to stand toe to toe with Ghost.

Funny, considering toe-to-toe put Becky’s nose on level with Ghost’s chest.

What? Did the woman think she could shin-kick the guy to death?

“You harm one hair on Peanut’s head,” she stuck a stiff finger in Ghost’s flexing left pectoral muscle, “and I’ll change you from a rooster to a hen one night when you least expect it.”

Ho-kay. No shin-kicking for Rebel. When she plotted revenge, she knew to keep the timeline abstract
and
aim for a man’s most prized possessions.

Duly noted.

***

“Is this really necessary? It’s eighty degrees out there.”

“Uh.” Becky eyed Ali as the woman dubiously pinched at the butter soft leather chaps Becky’d loaned her. “Yeah, but only if you’d like to keep the top three layers of your skin should you guys get in a wreck.”

“You think we’ll get in a wreck?”

Lord, help me to not strangle this prissy little woman.
“No,” she sighed. “But in life there are no guarantees.”

“Don’t get philosophical with me while I’m wearing leather.” Ali complained as she slid her arms into the equally soft, summer-weight leather jacket.

“Ha! Like leather and philosophy are mutually exclusive? I bet Plato and Aristotle wore leather while pondering life’s elemental questions. Leather sandals, for sure.”

“Hmm.” Ali bent to pick up Peanut who was busy winding his substantial self around and between her legs. When she managed to struggle to a stand and pull him to her chest, the traitorous animal—come on, Becky was the one to scoop his massive cat turds out of the litter box and keep him nose deep in Fancy Feast; was a little loyalty too much to ask?—started purring loud enough to drown out the sound of Pat Benatar wailing “Heartbreaker.”

Thank God she’d remembered to charge her iPod last night. One more day of ’80s music and she’d have to schedule a lobotomy.

“Well, I hate thinking about the poor animals that lost their lives so I could fashionably sit on the back of a motorcycle.” Ali changed tactics.

“Excuse me, but are you the same woman who ate not one, but two all-
beef
hotdogs last night? So you’re saying you have no issue with animals on your plate, but can’t stand the idea of one strapped across your back?”

“Oh!” Ali dropped Peanut to the ground, and the stupid cat had enough nerve to start slithering around her legs again. Even mistreatment didn’t seem to negate his misplaced adoration. That was the last straw. He was going to be on dry food from now on. No more pampering the furry little Judas. “Stop starting arguments with me I can’t possibly win,” Ali demanded, looking kinda kickass in all that leather with her hands fisted on her hips.

Becky shook her head and laughed. The poor woman would do anything to take her mind off the fact that she was going to be snuggled up to the back of Ghost for the next fifteen hours. Whatever had happened between the two of them last night, whatever had caused them to circle each other like wary lions this morning, would no doubt only be exacerbated by the close confines of a shared motorcycle seat.