Hell on Wheels (28 page)

Oh,
no
.

Frank pushed away from the wall, but he was too late the stop the awful garbage spewing from the senator’s traitorous mouth.

“I didn’t kill you brother, Miss Morgan.” The damned man looked almost gleeful when he swung his beady eyes toward Ghost. He tipped his pointy little chin. “That would be the handy work of one Nathan Weller and his big, sharp knife.”

Ghost actually roared, lunging toward the senator.

“Get him out of my sight,” President Thompson shouted above the ruckus, and the Secret Service agents dragged a cursing, screaming Aldus from the room, but not before one of them handed General Fuller a cellular phone.

“Found it in his pocket,” the guy said and Fuller nodded.

Oh man, Frank didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t help himself. He swung his gaze in Ali’s direction and his stomach instantly curdled. She was furiously blinking back tears as she zeroed in on Ghost’s ravaged face. The poor guy was standing in the middle of the room with his eyes screwed shut, as if that could somehow make it all go away.

“Nate?” she whispered. “Is that true?”

When Ghost opened his black eyes, there was enough unspeakable anguish in them to have Frank’s own hardened heart threatening to explode into a thousand sympathetic pieces.

“Yes,” Ghost whispered, his voice a terrible parody of its usually smooth timbre.

Ali choked, then immediately leaned over and puked all over the Oval Office’s fancy antique rug.

Holy hell.

As if Ali hadn’t already humiliated herself enough over the past couple of days, now she’d gone and done the unthinkable.

Was it against the law to vomit in the Oval Office?

Sure, it was probably okay for the president. Even the leader of the free world had to succumb to an occasional stomach bug, but for a civilian to blow chunks?

She peeked at the pair of solid doors through which the Secret Service agents had just manhandled the screaming senator and waited for them to burst back inside, handcuff her, and throw her into Gitmo for defacing private property or…or dispersing biohazardous material in a government building or whatever.

But no.

No severe looking men in black came to haul her away.

Thank goodness. She wasn’t prison material. Plus, you know, the whole eight-by-ten issue.

She blew out a hard breath and glanced once more in Nate’s direction, but he was gone. She rubbed a shaking hand over her trembling lips, swallowing the bitter-tasting bile that stuck to her tonsils.

“Nate?” She turned to Frank. “Where did he—”

“It’s best if you let Ghost have a few minutes,” he advised gravely.

Choking on tears, she could do nothing but nod.

A few minutes.

She could give him that.

And when he came back, she’d tell him how she couldn’t begin to imagine the unfathomable strength it must’ve taken to mercifully end her brother’s life. And it
must
have been mercy. There was just no other explanation.

She’d tell him how she couldn’t begin to fathom a world without him. How the thought of going back to her staid, boring old life after what’d happened, after what’d passed between them made her want to curl up and die.

She’d tell him the one thing that mattered most. She’d tell him she loved him…

But the seconds stretched to minutes and the minutes stretched to an hour as the men around her discussed the fate of Senator Aldus.

When Frank finally turned to her, the look on his face told her everything she needed to know.

Nate wasn’t coming back.

***

Black
Knights
Inc. Headquarters

Six
weeks
later…

“Taking a vacation?” Frank grumbled from the open doorway.

Becky glanced up and quickly back down to the suitcase she was in the process of zipping.

“Yes,” she said, spinning the numbers on the lock before setting the bag on the floor and popping up the telescoping handle.

“Had you planned on telling me,
your
boss
, anytime soon?”

“Just as soon as I made it down the stairs, Boss,” she said, pushing past Frank and heading down those aforementioned stairs. She could hear his big boots pounding down the metal treads behind her. Each percussive step matched the heavy beat of her weary heart.

She hadn’t wanted to do it like this. She’d hoped to have a few precious minutes to come up with a little departure speech, something breezy and urbane, but he’d caught her before she had anything prepared.

Wouldn’t it figure?

He always seemed one step ahead of her. Possessing some sixth sense when it came to a disturbance inside the realm of his finely tuned little world.

And it was that little world she had to eighty-six herself from immediately or she was going to go
nucking
futs—
as Ozzie liked to put it.

“For how long?” he asked, still dogging her heels as she made her way down the long corridor toward the front door.

“A month,” she replied, fighting the sudden urge to burst into tears. She’d been doing that a lot since Patti’s death. Every time she walked by the little brick house on the north end of the Black Knights’ property—the one Dan and Patti had shared. Every time she witnessed the miserable shell of a man that Dan had become. Every time she saw Ghost staring down at his hands as if they were the most obscene instruments he’d ever seen. Every time her big brother cast her a worried look and asked if she was okay. The answer she always gave was yes, but everyone really knew it was a resounding, unspoken hell no. And certainly, every time Frank took another one of his mysterious trips to Lincoln Park—

Yepper. Those had certainly increased over the past six weeks.

And it didn’t take a Fulbright Scholar to figure out that he was going up there to get a little comfort.

Heck, they all needed comforting after what happened. So she couldn’t really blame him for seeking solace in some woman’s arms, but then again, she did. Because it tore her up inside to think of it.

Nucking futs, indeed.

“A
month
,” he barked incredulously. “You can’t just leave us for a whole goddamned
month
. We’ve got two theme bikes on order. The first is supposed to be finished in three weeks.”

“Ozzie can come up with the designs. He’s got a good eye, and I’ve been working with him on the CAD. As for the fabrication, Dan can handle it. All he does is work and drink himself stupid anyway. It helps keep his mind off…” she swallowed, “you know.”

When she went to open the front door, he stopped her with a heavy hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath before she turned to face him.

“He’s not keeping his mind off it,” he told her with a look of helpless disgust making the scar at the corner of his lip pull tight. “He’s just avoiding the situation entirely.”

“We all grieve in our own way, Boss,” she replied softly, frowning when he winced. “What?”

“You ever gonna call me by my given name again?”

Ever since the day he’d told her he’d never allow her to achieve her dream of becoming an operator, that he’d go so far as to intentionally sabotage her efforts, she’d stopped thinking of him in such personal terms, instead relegating him to a simple position of authority over her professional life.

At least that’s what she’d tried to do.

Some days it worked. Some days it didn’t. The days he took himself up to Lincoln Park usually fell directly into the
didn’t
category.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, shaking her head, feeling like someone dropped a bowling ball on her stomach.

She just wanted to get the hell away from Black Knights Inc. Away from the piercing pain and the overwhelming grief. Away from all the terrible reminders of what had happened and all the broken dreams of what never would.

A flicker of frustration crossed his beautifully rugged face. “Fine,” he ground out. “Call me whatever the hell you want to call me.”

Would he mind if she called him a complete dill-hole? Because that’s exactly what he was. Two months ago, she would’ve come back with just that. Now, she no longer had the strength or desire to fight with him.

“The fact remains,” he continued, “we can’t afford to lose you for a full month.”

“I haven’t taken a vacation in over two years. I’ve got four weeks coming to me. Like I said, Dan and the others can handle any orders that come in. Plus, this is a good opportunity for our new recruits to start getting their hands dirty. It’ll be good for the Knights to help the new guys come up with some concepts and designs for their own bikes. Maybe it’ll create camaraderie, you know?”

He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand to stop him. “I’m not asking permission. I’m telling you. I’m taking this month. I need a break. There’s a black cloud hanging over this entire operation that’s absolutely suffocating me. I’ll go crazy if I have to spend another hour here, much less another day.”

His hard jaw snapped closed with an audible click, and she watched somewhat detachedly as the muscles in his cheek clenched.

It’s not like he would fire her. Or maybe he would.

Did she even care?

Wow, she honestly didn’t know anymore.

“Where are you going?” he finally asked, eyes sparkling with resigned anger.

“To the Seychelles and then Madagascar,” she told him. “I’ve got a friend who’s doing research for her doctoral thesis there.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“Yepper, and that’s the
whole
point.”

A long, strained silence stretched between them as he searched her face. The molecules in the air separating them began to vibrate.

Where was that frickin’ knife to cut the tension when a girl needed it?

“You’re not running away from…” he ran a hand over his hair and winced when his injured shoulder popped. She wanted to tell him to get the damned thing fixed already but knew it wouldn’t do any good. He didn’t want to be out of commission for however long it would take to recover from the procedure.

Stubborn, that’s what he was. Stubborn as a mule.

But thankfully, for the next month anyway, that wasn’t going to be her problem. “What I mean to say is,” he continued somewhat hesitantly, “that
I’m
not the reason you’re running halfway around the world…Am I?”

“I’m not
running
away from you or anything else,” she assured him, blatantly lying straight to his damnably concerned face. “But I am
getting
away from everything.”

“But you’re coming back, right?”

She suddenly felt unaccountably exhausted.

“I’m coming back. If I didn’t, who’d pay for my weekly mani and pedi? Plus, you know, a girl’s gotta eat.” She tried to smile but by the look on his face, her effort had fallen flat.

“All right,” he jerkily dipped his chin before gallantly opening the front door. The warm September sun spilled in, momentarily blinding them. She used it as an excuse to slide on her sunglasses, hoping it would help hide the fact that for some inexplicable reason there were tears gathering behind her eyes. “Go take your vacation, Rebecca. Relax. Let the sun bake your troubles away.”

As if it would ever be that easy. But maybe, just maybe, she’d meet a nice native boy who could help mend her broken heart.

Sure, and maybe there’d be snow in the Sahara.

“Do you need a ride to the airport?” he asked, taking the handle of her suitcase and walking with her toward the front gates. “According to Ozzie, that new transmission you installed on the Hummer is smooth as butter, and I figure I better give it a test drive before Steady gets his hands on the thing and screws it up again.”

Becky couldn’t help herself, her eyes darted to the spot where Patti had sprawled on the blacktop, breathing her last. Any vestiges of blood had been thoroughly scrubbed away, but she would always know exactly where that spot was.

She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“Nah, I’m taking the Blue Line in,” she told him, referring to the famous Chicago El-track. She inhaled the familiar mix of exhaust from the street traffic and the wet, fishy aroma that wafted up from the Chicago River. The wind was coming in from the direction of the Blommer Chocolate Factory, overlaying everything with the rich scent of cocoa.

She’d grown up close to this neighborhood. These were the smells of home.

But right now she took no comfort in them. She yearned for the sweet scent of suntan lotion and the spicy aroma of thick coconut curry. She yearned for anything to take her mind away from Frank Knight, her broken dreams, and the overbearing despair hanging like a sickness around the compound.

“I’ll see you in a month,” she assured him, taking the handle of her suitcase, barely wincing when their fingers brushed.

“One month,” he echoed, giving her a hard, searching look.

She quickly turned away, unable to stand the worried glint in his eyes.

Without a backward glance, she hurried down Cherry Street. The blocks of gum-pocked sidewalk disappeared under her sneakers, and it wasn’t until she turned the corner onto North Avenue that she released a deep, shuddering breath.

She had one month to try to pull herself together, to try to come up with new dreams to replace the old ones.

But…before she crossed that big blue ocean and started in on her—hopefully—life-altering journey, she had a stop to make on the East Coast.

***

Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Criminy!” Ali squealed and dropped the fresh baked ladyfinger she was about to shove in her mouth. Someone was trying their level best to knock her front door off its hinges.

“Alisa Morgan!” A familiar voice yelled through the solid wood panel. “Open up! I know you’re in there!”

She tripped over her new rug and—“Ow, ow,
ow
!”—stubbed her little toe on the leg of her sofa in her mad dash to wrench open the door.

“What in blue blazes are you doing here, Becky?” she demanded, hopping on one foot while holding her screaming pinkie toe in the palm of her hand.

“I’m here to beat some damned sense into your obstinate, irrational, frickin’…
erroneous
head,” Becky hissed, pushing her way into Ali’s apartment, dragging a small rolling suitcase behind her.

Good heavens, was the woman planning to stay?

“That’s, uh, quite a lot of adjectives,” she declared, eyeing that suitcase like a treed bird eyes a grounded cat, with a sort of puzzled apprehension. Her aching pinkie toe was instantly forgotten.

“Oh don’t get all teachery on me, and quit looking at my suitcase like it’s seconds away from growing fangs and taking a bite out of you. I’m not staying. Consider yourself a minor pit stop on the journey that’s going to change my life.”

“Where are you—”

Becky waved an impatient hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve screwed up royally, and you’re either going to get your ass to Chicago, double-time, and make things right, or I’m going to have to beat the crap out of you. I wasn’t joking about that part.”

Good heavens.

“I don’t—”

“I
know
you don’t,” Becky interrupted her, setting aside her suitcase and actually lacing her fingers together to stretch them out in front of her, popping her knuckles, looking like a fighter about to take the ring as she tilted her pretty blond head from side to side to loosen her neck muscles. “You
don’t
deserve Ghost’s unwavering devotion. You
don’t
know the unimaginable guilt he feels about having to, yes,
having
to
take his best friend’s life. You
don’t
have the right to blame him for Grigg’s death when what he did was a frickin’ heroic act of mercy! You
don’t
—”