Hell on Wheels (23 page)

“No buts,” he cut off her protest as his palmed the globes of her ass and tilted her pelvis forward. “Just relax and enjoy.”

Soon, she was mewling and swinging her hips helplessly. When he caught the hot knot of her clitoris between his lips and stabbed it repeatedly with the point of his tongue, her buttocks clenched in his palms before she ground down into him and keened, “Nate!”

Yeah, baby, it’s Nate
, he thought with deep, male satisfaction.
It’s Nate giving you this wild pleasure. It’s Nate making you melt.

And it was a melting, a sweet feminine dissolve.

When the last vestiges of orgasm shivered through her, she pushed up, caught her lower lip between her teeth, and grinned down at him.

Uh-oh. There was that look again.

Before he had time to protest, she scooted down, straddled his hips, and sank onto him in one hard stroke that had his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. She leaned forward to brace her palms on the bed above his shoulders and dipped her tongue between his lips.

“Mmm, I taste good on you,” she purred, and he couldn’t help but wholeheartedly agree. “And you’re going to taste good on me, too.” He groaned at the thought of her sucking him into the hot, wet world of her mouth. “But for right now, I have something different in mind.”

She gave his lips one final nip before she pushed up from his chest, and he could see the wickedly mischievous light shining in her slumberous eyes. Then she reached back, cupped his heavily aching balls, and swiveled her hips back and forth in a vigorous stroking that brought new meaning to the word
pleasure
.

Groaning and grinding his jaw hard enough to pulverize stone, he simply held on for the ride.

“General Fuller just got off the horn with the Jacksonville PD. The FBI has taken over the case of the dead guy in the Morgans’ yard. The Bureau is spreading around the story it was a mob hit,” Ozzie informed Frank while leaning against the same doorjamb Becky had leaned against not six hours earlier.

“Hmph,” Frank shook his head, idly spinning his KA-BAR in a circle on his desk. It was a destructive habit, one that’d worn a smooth spot in the varnish beside the coaster he used for his coffee mug—which sort of made the coaster superfluous, given there was really no need to protect the finish on his already wrecked desk. “At least the FBI is proving to be valuable for something. Any idea who the guy was?”

“Not yet. They’re running his prints as we speak. As soon as they know something, they’ll contact the General, and he’ll forward on the Intel.” The kid angled his head and took a hesitant step into Frank’s office. He shuffled back and forth on the balls of his feet, looking like he was about to burst.

“Spit it out,” Frank grumbled, giving the knife another spin and watching the overhead lights glint off the long blade.

“What’d you do to Rebel?”

Well
that
had his eyes pinging up to Ozzie’s youthfully obdurate face.

Great. Just…grrrreat
.
This was exactly what he didn’t need tonight. One more person questioning him about what he’d done to Becky. Patti had already nearly flayed him alive with her surprisingly sharp tongue. It was a wonder he had any skin left.

“Who says I did anything to her?”

The kid straightened his lean shoulders and took another step inside the room. If Frank wasn’t mistaken, Ozzie looked like he really wanted to offer him an ol’ fashioned five-finger sandwich.

He lifted a brow in warning. “You’re gonna want to reconsider whatever it is you’re thinking about doing, kid.”

“You made her cry,” Ozzie accused, puffing himself up like a goddamned peacock. Frank suddenly felt every single one of his hard-lived years. “She tried to hide it when she came down to finish up the electrical on the Hawk, but I could tell. She’d been bawling her head off. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened.”

Shit, he didn’t want to know that. It only made him feel guilty, which, in turn, pissed him off. He was doing this for Becky’s own good. Couldn’t anyone but him see that?

“Well, sometimes life’s a bitch and then you die,” he snarled, mad at himself for feeling guilty, mad at Rebel for putting him in this goddamned situation to begin with, and mad as hell at Ozzie for questioning his decisions. Because that only made
him
start to question his decisions…

No.
No
. In this instance he was right, damnit!

Slapping his palm on his spinning knife, he stopped it mid-twirl and lifted his shirt to slide the wickedly sharp blade into the custom-made sheath attached to his waistband. “She needs to toughen up if she’s going to keep working with us. I can’t be pussyfooting around her all the time, scared I’m going to hurt her feelings.”

“Pussyfooting?” Ozzie raised an incredulous brow and sometimes Frank missed the discipline of military rank. At least in uniform he hadn’t had to worry about insubordinate facial expressions, especially ones that really,
really
chapped his ass. “Boss, you don’t pussyfoot around anyone, especially Rebel. If anything, you’re hard as hell on her. And you don’t even begin to give her the credit she deserves. She’s good at the techie stuff. Really good. You should give her a chance to—”

“I’ve made my decision about that,” he cut the kid off. “We all have our jobs here. She needs to remember what hers is and stick to it.”

“But if you’d just—”

“Enough!” he barked. “This conversation is over, Ozzie. I don’t want to hear another word until you have an updated status report.”

The kid’s jaw worked like a chipper chewing up bark, but the little shit was smart enough to recognize a command when he heard one. Ozzie turned and stiffly marched toward the door. Frank heaved a weary sigh.

“You’re wrong about this, Boss,” the kid had the audacity to hiss, turning back to cut him a dark look. “Dead wrong.”

Okay, so maybe he’d been a little premature about the kid’s smarts regarding the situation.

“Well, then, it’s my mistake, isn’t it?” he asked, unaccountably tired all of a sudden.

Ozzie eyed him long and hard before he shook his head and stepped outside the office, none-too-gently closing the door behind him.

Frank dropped his pounding cranium into his hands. He really didn’t need this shit.

He had men in harm’s way, what with Rock and Wild Bill still doing duty in the Sandbox, and Christian and Mac in the company of a man whom Frank knew nothing about except for the not-so-reassuring fact that the guy was on a lot of folks’ “Most Wanted” lists. Not to mention what’d happened with Ghost.

The ol’ plate was full up to the tip-tippity-top, which meant he certainly didn’t have room for regrets about Rebecca Reichert, but that’s sure as hell what he was having. Regrets.

“Goddamnit!” He jerked his top drawer open, pulled out a root beer Dum Dum, ripped off the wrapper and shoved it in his mouth.

***

The
iron
taste
of
blood
filled
Nate’s mouth as he frantically gnawed through thick ropes caked with sand and God only knew what else. He had to get out of this six-by-ten and find Grigg.

Sweet Jesus, he’d almost gone crazy listening to Grigg’s screaming.

Now
everything
was
quiet. Too quiet.

Previously, when their captors left to tie on their daily drunk, he and Grigg whispered through the thick mud walls of the hut, giving each other encouragement, trying to determine why they were here, wracking their brains and their beaten bodies to figure out a way to break free. But he’d bellowed Grigg’s name over and over for ten long minutes with no reply before beginning on his ropes in frantic earnest, all gnashing teeth that were no longer careful about what was rope and what was skin.

“Grigg!” he screamed again. “Answer me, goddamn—” He bent over, ravaged by an attack of deep, wet coughing.

Their
captors
delighted
in
waterboarding
him. “The American Way,” or so they laughingly claimed. And yep, Nate was pretty sure he had a corresponding “American” case of pneumonia setting in.

When
the
coughing
finally
subsided
and
he
could
suck
in
a
tortured
breath—goddamn, it felt like he swallowed fire—he spit bright red blood into the powdery sand at his feet.

Shit. He hoped that blood was just from his shredded gums and not coming up from the sickly depths of his lungs.

That
would
be
bad.

Not
as
bad
as, say, being abducted by a group of tangos and tortured for three days for no apparent reason other than the guys were a bunch of sadists bent on taking out their hatred for America on two of its citizens, but it would still be bad. The pickle on top of this shitburger of a situation.

“Grigg!” he yelled again and was wracked by another bout of soggy coughing. More blood ended up in the sand at his feet.

Okay, that’d definitely come up from his lungs.

So…Pneumonia. No doubt about it.

Oh, happy happy, joy joy and a double fuck.

He
went
back
to
work
with
his
teeth
on
the
tough
ropes
securing
his
hands
together
in
front
of
him…and
Yahtzee!
His
left
binding
unraveled
into
a
frayed
mess. Quickly freeing his right hand, he attacked the ropes tied around his ankles. The knots were swollen from his blood seeping into the fibers—the tattered things had soaked up the red stuff like a strand of vampires—and they were so tight he nearly ripped off a fingernail trying to loosen them. After much cursing and praying, they finally came free. Hallelujah.

He
stood…

Whoa.

The
world
went
all
weird
and
wacky.

He
screwed
the
old
peepers
drum
tight
and
swallowed, forcing himself to breathe deep. It helped, if only a little, considering the room—his lovely prison for the last three days—was pretty ripe with the metallic scent of freshly spilled blood and the far more foul perfume of his own excrement.

Finally, after a few more steadying breaths, he was able to move forward without the walls going all Tilt-a-Whirl. Grabbing his KA-BAR from the rickety wooden table where his captors had left it, he grimaced. Oh, buddy, how they’d exulted in using his own knife to skewer his thigh to the chair. Twice.

He
glanced
down
at
his
swollen, bloodied leg and felt his stomach heave. If he didn’t get some medical attention and a robust infusion of antibiotic on the double, he’d be lucky to keep that leg. It was already oozing smelly, green puss in a slow, thick river down to his knee.

Shit, shit,
shit!

He
wanted
very
badly
to
yell
Grigg’s name again, but he knew he’d crash headlong into another coughing fit, so he kept his big trap shut, instead using his strength to shuffle over to try the door.

Locked.

Of
course. He couldn’t be that lucky.

He
tried
prying
the
lock
open
with
his
knife, but the sucker was made from inch-thick, pre-World War II industrial strength iron and wasn’t about to budge.

“Fuck!” he yelled, stabbing his knife into the wooden door and immediately doubling over to hack up more bright blood.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he was in bad shape.

When
he
was
finally
able
to
stand, he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, and—
Hello.
What
a
happy
sight
to
meet
his
watering, bloodshot eyes. His knife was wedged in the aging wood, the deadly sharp blade protruding all the way to the other side.

Well, sometimes miracles do happen
, he thought.

Grabbing
the
knife’s hilt, he pulled the blade free and examined the wood.

Dry
rot.

“Okay, Grigg,” he whispered, taking a limping step back, “I’m coming, buddy.”

He
dug
his
toes
into
the
loose
sand, got some good traction, and lurched forward with everything he had, slamming his shoulder into the door.

Sweet lovin’ Lord!
He
felt
some
ribs
give
way.

Luckily, that wasn’t all that gave way. The wood up by the door’s hinges splintered heavily upon impact—giving up the ghost with a satisfying crack.

He
held
on
to
his
fractured
rib cage
until
he
could
breathe
without
wanting
to
die, then, grimacing, he stepped back only to run and throw himself against the door again.

Blam!
The
whole
goddamned
dry-rotted thing flew off the hinges, and he and it landed with a hard crash out in the hall.

He
didn’t wait to catch his breath—he was a bit afraid to, afraid a deep breath might send one of those loose ribs slam-bam into his lung. Scrambling up, he ignored the pain and dizziness and ran to the room next door, quickly twisting the lock. When he burst in, he stumbled to a shocked, sickened halt.

Oh God. Grigg.

He
almost
fell
to
his
knees.

Swallowing, shaking his head, refusing to believe what his heart was telling him, refusing to believe the truth of the matter—that he was too late—he dragged himself forward.

Grigg
was
strapped, spread-eagle, to a rough-hewn table. There was blood everywhere.

Far
too
much
blood
and—

Nate
turned
and
wretched
into
the
sand
when
he
got
close
enough
to
see
the
large
gash
in
Grigg’s sunken abdomen and the big bundle of bloody bowels looped around a long stick and sitting on the table beside Grigg’s waxy body.