Hell on Wheels (30 page)

Read on for a sneak peek at Julie Ann Walker’s

Available September 2012 From Sourcebooks Casablanca

“We’re definitely changing the name.” Frank “Boss” Knight pulled the Hummer up in front of the sad little pre-fab building and glanced at the hand-painted wooden sign screwed over the front door: Becky’s Badass Bike Builds.

“Too much alliteration for you?” Bill Reichert snickered from the passenger seat while unbuckling his seatbelt and throwing open the door. The frigid winter wind whipped into the interior of the vehicle, prompting Frank to grab his black stocking cap from the dashboard and tug it over his head and ears before zipping his parka up to his chin.

If this thing actually worked out, Chicago winters were definitely going to take some getting used to. Of course, freezing temps were a small price to pay for a good, solid cover for his new defense firm. And joining Bill’s kid sister in her custom Harley chopper business, posing as mechanics and motorcycle buffs, promised to be a freakin’ phenomenal cover for all the guys he’d recruited away from the various branches of the armed services. Especially considering most of them were bulky, tattooed, and—without regulation military haircuts—just scruffy enough to pass for their own chapter of Hell’s Angels.

He pushed out of the Hummer and had to lower his chin against the gust of wind that punched him in the face like an icy fist. Shoving his hands deep in his coat pockets, he trudged up to the front door through the path someone had shoveled in the thick blanket of snow.

Bill applied a gloved thumb to the buzzer, and five seconds later, a familiar noise sounded from the behind the metal door, making the hair on the back of Frank’s neck stand up.

How do you know you’ve been in the business too long? When you recognize the sound of a .45 caliber being chambered from three feet away, that’s how.

“Who is it?” a deep, wary voice inquired from within.

“I thought you said she knew we were coming,” Frank hissed over Bill’s shoulder.

“She does.” Bill grinned. “But she also knows she can never be too careful in this neighborhood.”

And that was no lie. The graffiti tagging every vertical surface for six blocks in each direction announced that they were smack dab in the middle of some very serious gang territory. The Vice Lords ruled the roost, and they wanted to make damned sure everyone knew it.

Raising his voice above the shrieking wind, Bill yelled, “Open the damned door, you big ape! We’re freezing our dicks off out here!”

And that was no lie either. Frank couldn’t even begin to explain to his family jewels why he hadn’t jumped into a pair of thermal underwear this morning and instead opted to go commando.

Big mistake.
Huge
.

One he sure as hell wouldn’t be making again.

The front door swung open with a resounding clang, and they were met by a giant, red-headed man who looked like he should be wearing a face mask and leotard while smashing a folding chair over some guy’s back.

Frank could almost hear Michael Buffer shouting,
Arrrrre you ready to ruuumbllle?

“Manus,” Bill said, stepping over the threshold and motioning Frank through, “this is Boss. Boss, meet Manus. He and his brothers work security for my sister.”

Frank waited until Manus tucked the .45 into the waistband of his jeans before cautiously stepping into the small, tiled vestibule. The walls were covered in rusted motorcycle license plates, and as soon as the door closed behind him, the aroma of motor oil and burning metal assaulted his nostrils.

“You the guy who wants to partner with Becky? Invest some money and learn to build bikes?” Manus asked while pumping the hand he offered, a smile splitting the big man’s ruddy face and making all his freckles meld together.

Yeah, that was the story they were tossing around until he could get a look at the set-up…

“I haven’t decided yet,” he answered noncommittally, and Manus’s smile only widened.

“That’s only because you haven’t seen Becky’s bikes,” he boasted. “Once you do, you’re gonna want to give her all your savings and have her teach you everything she knows.”

Frank lifted a shoulder as if to say
we’ll see
and watched as Bill opened the second set of glass doors.

His ears were instantly assailed by a wall of sound.

The pounding beats of hard-driving rock music competed with the hellacious screech and whine of grinding metal. He resisted the urge to reach up and plug his ears as he followed Bill into the custom motorcycle shop, skirting a few pieces of high-tech machinery.

And then he wasn’t thinking about his bleeding eardrums at all.

Because his eyes zeroed in on the most beautiful, outlandish motorcycle he’d ever seen.

It was secured on a bike lift. The paint on the gas tank and fenders was bright, neon blue that sparkled iridescently in the harsh overhead lights. It sported a complex-looking dual exhaust, an outrageous stretch, and intricate, nearly whimsical front forks. It also had so much chrome it almost hurt to look at it.

In a word:
art
.

It made the work he’d done restoring his vintage 1952 Harley-Davidson FL look like amateur hour.

And just when he thought he couldn’t be any more blown away, the sound of grinding metal slowly died down and a young woman emerged from behind the bike with a grinder in one hand and a metal clamp in the other.

He nearly swallowed his own tongue.

This couldn’t be…

But obviously it was. Because the instant the woman caught sight of them she squealed, clicked off the music pouring out of the speakers of an old-fashioned boom box, and dropped both tools on the bike lift before jumping into Bill’s arms, hugging him tight and kissing his cheek with a resounding smack that sounded particularly loud in the sudden silence of the shop.

This was Rebecca “Rebel” Reichert, Wild Bill’s little sister.

Little
being the operative word. If she stood two inches over five feet Frank would eat his biker boots for dinner.

He didn’t quite know what he’d expected of a woman who ran her own custom chopper shop, but it wasn’t long, blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, intense brown eyes surrounded by lush, dark lashes, and a pretty, girl-next-door face that just happened to be his own personal weakness when it came to women.

Something about that wholesome, all-American thing always managed to bring him to his knees.

Well, hell.

Bill finally lowered her to the ground, and she came to stand in front of Frank, small, grease-covered hands on slim, jean-clad hips. For some inexplicable reason, he felt the need to stand up straighter.

It was probably because she had the same unyielding look in her eye that his hard-ass drill sergeant always had back when he’d been in Basic.

“So.” She tilted her head until her ponytail hung down over her shoulder in a smooth, golden rope. “You must be the indomitable Frank Knight. Billy has told me so very
little
about you.”

And that voice…

It was soft and husky. The type that belonged solely in the bedroom.

“Everyone calls me Boss,” he managed to grumble.

“I think I’ll stick to Frank,” she said with a wink. And for some reason, his eyelid twitched. “After all, there can be only one boss around here, and I’m it. Now, I hear you want to get into the business of building bikes?”

“I’m considering it.” He couldn’t help but notice the way her nose tilted up at the end or the way her small breasts pressed against the soft fabric of the paint-stained, long-sleeved T-shirt she wore.

Kee-rist, man, get a grip.

“Well, then.” She nodded, pushing past him as she made her way toward the front door, “let’s go take a look at that bike you brought with you and see if you have any talent at all.”

For a split second, he let his eyes travel down to the gentle sway of her hips before forcing himself to focus on a point over her head as he followed her back through the various machinery. Bill was right behind him, which helped to keep his eyes away from the prize… so to speak. Because the last thing he wanted was to get caught ogling the guy’s kid sister.

Talk about a no-no of epic proportions. Especially if he didn’t fancy the idea of finding one of Bill’s size-eleven biker boots shoved up his ass.

Once they reached the first set of glass doors, she pulled a thick pair of pink coveralls off a hook on the wall. Balancing first on one foot then the other, she stepped into the coveralls and zipped them up before snagging a bright purple stocking cap from a second hook and pulling it over her head.

She looked ridiculous. And feminine. And so damned cute.

He gritted his teeth and reminded himself of three things. One, she was way too young for him. Two, if things worked out, then despite what she thought now,
he
was going to be
her
boss. And three, he’d made a promise not to—

“How much money are you thinking of investing?” she interrupted his thoughts as she pushed through the double doors and into the vestibule.

As much as it takes…
“We’ll talk more about that later.” He held his breath, waiting to see how she’d respond to both his authoritative tone and his answer. It was a test of sorts, to determine if they had any hope of working together.

She regarded him for a long second, her brown eyes seeming to peer into his head. Then she shrugged, “Suit yourself.”

When she opened the outer door, he once again had to dip his chin against the icy wind. The three of them slogged through the snow to the small, enclosed cargo trailer hitched to the back of his Hummer, and he fished in his pocket for the keys with fingers already numb from the cold. Once he opened the trailer’s back door, she didn’t wait for an invitation to jump inside.

He and Bill were left to follow her up and watch as she walked around his restored bike before squatting near the exhaust.

“You do all the work yourself?” she asked.

The bike he’d been so proud of thirty minutes before seemed shoddy and unimaginative by comparison.

“Yes,” he admitted, amazed he actually felt nervous. Like maybe
she
wouldn’t want to work with
him
.

“Your welding is complete crap,” she said, running a finger along a weld he’d thought was actually pretty damned good. “But it’s obvious you’re a decent mechanic, and that’s really what I need right now, more decent mechanics. Plus,” she stood and winked, “it might be nice to have a big, strong dreamboat like you around the place day-in and day-out. Something fun to look at when my muse abandons me.”

He opened his mouth…but nothing came out. He could only stare and blink like a bewildered owl.

Holy hell, was she
flirting
with him?

He was saved from having to make any sort of answer—
thank you, sweet Jesus
—when Bill grumbled, “Cut it out, Becky. Now’s not the time, and Boss is definitely not the guy.”

“No?” She lifted her brows, turning toward Frank questioningly.

And now he was able to find his voice. “
No
.” He shook his head emphatically, trying to swallow his lungs that had somehow crawled up into his throat.

“Well,” she shrugged, completely unflustered by his overt rejection, “you can’t blame a gal for trying.” She offered him a hand. “I’m in, partner. That is, once I know exactly how much you’re thinking of investing.”

“Bill will get back to you with the specifics,” he hedged, taking her hand only briefly before releasing it, more eager to get the hell out of there than he’d care to admit.

Again she did that head-tilt thing. The one that caused the end of her ponytail to slide over her shoulder. She regarded him for a long moment during which time he thought his heart might’ve jumped right out of his mouth had his lungs not been in the way. Then she shrugged and said, “Fine. Go ahead and do that whole mystery-man thing. I don’t really give a rat’s ass as long as you’re good for the green.”

And with that, she hopped down from the back of the trailer.

He moved to watch her traipse through the snow to the front door of her shop. Only once she disappeared inside did he turn to Bill. “You sure she’s trustworthy enough? She seems a bit impulsive to me.”

Impulsive and arrogant and bold and…way too cute for her own good.

Bill smiled, crossing his arms. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, Becky’s as steady as they come. We can depend on her to keep our secrets. You have my word.”

“And what about the hierarchy? How’s she going to react once she realizes I’m the one calling the shots?”

Bill clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and chuckled. “I have no doubt you can handle her, Boss.”

Uh-huh
. He wished he shared Bill’s certainty. Because there was one thing he could spot from a mile away, and that was trouble.

And Rebecca Reichert?

Well, she had trouble written all over her…

Three and a half years later…

Pirates…

Wow. Now there’s something you don’t see every day.

That was Becky’s first thought as she ducked under the low cabin door of the thirty-eight foot catamaran named
Serendipity
and stepped into the blazing equatorial sun. Her second thought, more appropriately, was
oh hell
.

Eve—her longtime friend and owner of the
Serendipity
—was swaying unsteadily and staring in wide-eyed horror at the three dirty, barefoot men holding ancient AK-47s like they knew how to use them. Four more equally skinny, disheveled men were standing in a rickety skiff tethered off the
Serendipity’s
stern.

Okay, so…
obviously
they’d been playing the oldies a little too loudly considering they’d somehow managed to drown out the rough sound of the pirates’ rusty outboard engine motoring up behind them.

“Eve,” she murmured around the head of a cherry Dum Dum lollipop as her heart hammered against her ribs and the skin on her scalp began crawling with invisible ants. “Just stay calm, okay?”

Yep. Calm was key. Calm kept a girl from finding herself fathoms deep beneath the crushing weight of Davy Jones’s Locker or under the more horrifying weight of a sweaty man who didn’t know the meaning of the word
no
.

When Eve gave no reply, she glanced over at her friend and noticed the poor woman was turning the color of an eggplant.

“
Eve
,” she said with as much urgency as she could afford, given the last thing she wanted was to spook an already skittish pirate who very likely suffered from a classic case of itchy-trigger-finger-syndrome, “you need to breathe.”

Eve’s throat worked over a dry swallow before her chest quickly expanded on a shaky breath.

Okay, good. Problem one: Eve keeling over in a dead faint—solved. Problem two: being taken hostage by pirates—now
that
was going to take a bit more creativity.

She wracked her brain for some way out of their current predicament as Jimmy Buffet crooning, “Yes I am a pirate. Two hundred years too late,” wafted up from inside the cabin.

Really, Jimmy? You’re singing that now?

Under normal circumstances, she’d be the first to appreciate the irony. Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances.

The youngest and shortest of the pirates—he wore an eye patch…
seriously?
—flicked a tight look in her direction, and she threw her hands in the air, palms out in the universal
I’m
unarmed and cooperating
signal. But a quick glance was all he allotted her before he returned the fierce attention of his one good eye to Eve.

She snuck another peek at her friend and…oh no. Oh
crap
.

“Slowly, very slowly, Eve, I want you to lay the knife on the deck and kick it away from you.” She was careful to keep her tone cool and unthreatening. Pirates made their money from the ransom of ships and captives. If she could keep Eve from doing something stupid—like, oh, say flying at the heavily armed pirates like a blade-wielding banshee—they’d likely make it out of this thing alive.

Unfortunately, it appeared Eve had stopped listening to her.

“Eve!” she hissed. “Lay down the knife.
Slowly
. And kick it away from you.”

This time she got through.

Eve glanced down at the long, thin blade clutched in her fist. From the brief flicker of confusion that flashed through her eyes, it was obvious she’d been unaware she still held the knife she’d been using to fillet the bonito they’d caught for lunch. But realization quickly dawned, and her bewildered expression morphed into something frighteningly desperate.

Becky dropped all pretense of remaining cool and collected. “Don’t you even think about it,” she barked.

Two of the men on deck jerked their shaggy heads in her direction, the wooden butts of their automatic weapons made contact with their scrawny shoulders as the evil black eyes of the Kalashnikovs’ barrels focused on her thundering heart.

“You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” she whispered, lifting her hands higher and gulping past a Sahara-dry knot in her throat. “Everyone knows that.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched Eve slowly bend at the waist, and the unmistakable
thunk
of the blade hitting the wooden deck was music to her ears.

“Look, guys,” she addressed the group, grateful

beyond belief when the ominous barrels of those old, but still deadly, rifles once more pointed toward the deck.
That’s the thing about AKs
, Billy once told her,
they buck like a damned bronco, are simpler than a kindergarten math test, but they’ll fire with a barrel full of sand. Those Russians sure know how to make one hell of a reliable weapon
—which, given her current situation, was just frickin’ great.
Not
. “These are Seychelles waters. You don’t have any authority here.”

“No, no, no,” the little pirate wearing the eye patch answered in heavily accented English. “We
only
authority on water. We Somali pirate.”

“Oh boy,” Eve wheezed, putting a trembling hand to her throat as her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me, Evelyn Edens!” Becky commanded, her brain threatening to explode at the mere thought of what might happen to a beautiful, unconscious woman in the hands of Somali pirates out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Eve swayed but managed to remain standing, her legs firmly planted on the softly rolling deck.

Okay, good.

“We have no money. Our families have no money,” she declared. Which was true for the most part as far as she was concerned. Eve, however, was as rich as Croesus. Thankfully, there was no way for the pirates to know that. “You’ll get no ransom from us. It’ll cost you more to feed and shelter us than you’ll ever receive from our families. And this boat is twenty years old. She’s not worth the fuel it’ll cost you to sail her back to Somalia. Just let us go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“No, no, no,” the young pirate shook his head—it appeared the negatives in his vocabulary only came in threes. His one black eye was bright with excitement, and she noticed his eye patch had a tacky little rhinestone glued to the center, shades of One-Eyed Willie from
The Goonies
.

Geez, this just keeps getting better and better.

“You American.” He grinned happily, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Wowza, she would bet her best TIG welder those chompers had never seen a toothbrush or a tube of Colgate. “America pay big money.”

She snorted; she couldn’t help it. The little man was delusional. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s the policy of the U.S. government not to negotiate with terrorists.”

One-Eyed Willie threw back his head and laughed, his ribs poking painfully through the dark skin of his torso. “We no terrorists. We Somali pirates.”

Whatever.

“Same thing,” she murmured, glancing around at the other men who wore the alert, but slightly vacant, look of those who don’t comprehend a word of what was being said.

Okay, so Willie was the only one who spoke English. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“Not terrorists!” he yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “
Pirates!
”

“Okay, okay,” she placated, softening her tone and biting on her sarcastic tongue. “You’re pirates, not terrorists. I get it. That doesn’t change the simple fact that our government will give you nothing but a severe case of lead poisoning. And our families don’t have a cent to pay you.”

“Oh, they pay,” he smiled, once again exposing those urine-colored teeth. “They always pay.”

Which, sadly, was probably true. Someone always came up with the coin—bargaining everything they had and usually a lot more they didn’t—when the life of a loved one was on the line.

“So,” he said as he came to stand beside her, eyeing her up and down until a shiver of revulsion raced down her spine, “we go Somalia now.”

And she swore she’d swallow her own tongue before she ever even thought these next words—because for three and a half very long years the big dill-hole had refused to give her the time of day despite the fact that she was just a little in love with him, okay
a lot
in love with him—but it all came down to this…she needed Frank.

Because, just like he always swore would happen, she’d managed to step in a big, stinking pile of trouble from which there was no hope of escape.

She absolutely hated proving that man right.