Hell on Wheels (5 page)

The guy waved the black wand-thing over her panty case and it buzzed, sounding like a giant, angry bee.

Nate sighed resignedly and swung back to her. “Sorry. It’s gotta be done.”

“Yeah,” she said, trying a smile that must’ve looked kinda sick because Nate’s hard expression morphed into one of apprehension. “I mean it. It’s fine. I’m just going to stand over there and check on the goings-on down below.”

Before he could say anything else—because, really, what more could he say about rooting around in her delicates?—she made good on her decision to excuse herself from their company.

***

“Jesus, the woman’s got quite a collection,” the kid murmured while using his knife to snip the tiniest stitch in order to pull out the filament-thin tracking device secured in the hem of yet another pair of Ali’s panties.

Correction. Another one of Ali’s
thongs.

“Mmph,” Nate grunted, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It appeared the woman was the proud owner of the entire Victoria’s Secret catalog.

Plus, he detected the slightest aroma of honeysuckle emanating from the pile.

Sure, it was probably just fabric softener or lotion or something, but his wayward dick started to stiffen in response to the smell combined with the feel of the satin and silk he clutched in his fist. It brought back memories of that day on the beach. A deep, visceral recollection of soft panties brushing against his searching fingers and the even softer sensation of the warm, wet flesh beneath—

No, goddamnit! He wouldn’t think of that now.
Couldn’t
think of that now. Not with her standing so close. He didn’t trust himself not to go all caveman and—

No!

Somehow he managed to wrangle some superhuman effort to pry open his reluctant fingers and throw the entire mess back down on the table.

“Did you know Grigg’s sister was so hot?” Ozzie pressed.

Uh,
yeah.

Ali’d been the feature starlet in his personal spanktrovision for the last dozen years, and after that day on the beach? After first-hand knowledge of what it was like to have her lithe arms tight around his neck, her soft breasts pressed firm and snug against his chest, her agile tongue personally introducing itself to his tonsils?

Uh-huh, he could certainly vouch for the woman’s hotness.

She was smokin’.

“I mean like
hot
,” Ozzie stressed unnecessarily. “Like she seriously gets my blood pumping, if you know what I mean. Of course, skimpy women’s lingerie has been giving me wood since I discovered my best friend’s older sister’s Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog when I was twelve, so maybe that accounts for my semi. Not to mention I’ve always been a fan of red lace.” The kid held up a red lace bra and wiggled his eyebrows.

Geez. More information than Nate ever wanted to know about the guy.

Plus, the sight of Ali’s underwear in another man’s hands, especially knowing it was turning the little shit on, made him want to chew nails.

Since there were no nails around to chew, he found himself saying something he never in his entire sad life thought he’d say, “Dude, just shut the hell up and sing.”

***

What
were
they
talking
about?

Ali flicked a glance in the direction of the two men mangling her underwear and—

Bad move.

Ozzie/Ethan was holding up her red bra and wiggling his eyebrows.

Great. Just…great. This day was going from bad to worse in pretty quick order.

To distract herself, she leaned over the heavy rail and surveyed the wide expanse below.

The distance to the first floor was dizzying, made even more so by the overwhelming fifteen-foot-tall caricatures painted all over the brick walls in colors so vibrant and saturated it would take a mind much more creative than hers to try and put a name to them all. The murals gave the huge space the appearance of some strange cross between a funhouse and workshop. Each of the cartoonishly exaggerated figures was obviously one of Black Knights Inc.’s employees. They looked like something that belonged in a graphic novel, all bulging muscles and straining tendons.

The concrete floor was a fascinating landscape of stains from old and recent oil spills—a giant Rorschach test on speed. The brightly painted brick walls were lined with mammoth, rolling toolboxes, and the main floor was dotted with highly technical-looking machines of various shapes and sizes. She wouldn’t have been able to identify one of them if her life depended on it.

What she
could
recognize was the line of gleaming custom choppers along one wall, their paint jobs varying in color from dark to vibrant, their designs alternately fierce and whimsical. They were a visual barrage of glinting chrome and sparkling paint, testament to the fact that at least
some
actual custom motorcycle work went on here.

And she might’ve been fooled into thinking perhaps Black Knights Inc. was exactly as it was purported to be had one entire section of the “shop” not currently housed a…yes, that was a helicopter.

A helicopter with a tiny blond woman straddling the rotor while a guy stood below, yelling up instructions over the din of REO Speedwagon. “You loosen that bolt and the whole goddamned thing’s gonna fall off!”

Ali assumed the woman must be Black Knight Inc.’s brilliant resident mechanic, but for the life of her she couldn’t recall the woman’s name.

Renegade, maybe? It was something like that.

“That’s the whole point!” Renegade, aka Helo Girl, or whatever her name was, called back with a healthy dose of
well, duh
.

Of course, what put the cherry on top of Ali’s incredulity sundae was the undeniable fact that that black behemoth down there was not your typical civilian helicopter. Nuh-uh, not with those menacing machine guns mounted on both sides. Although, she had to admit the thing didn’t look very scary right now considering major portions of it were pieced out and scattered around on various drop cloths.

It was obvious the bird wasn’t going to take to the air any time soon.

Still, if Ozzie/Ethan’s sidearm and the room behind her—which would make the attendees of DEF CON swoon in the computer geek equivalent of orgasmic bliss—hadn’t already convinced her that her instincts about Black Knights Inc. were spot-on, the sight of that deadly military chopper certainly would have.

There was a certain satisfaction in finally knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, she’d been right all along. Grigg had been up to much more than playing grease monkey in a motorcycle shop. Unfortunately, along with that piece of gratifying knowledge returned the hard wedge of sadness she first experienced when she’d pulled up to Black Knights Inc.’s front gates. The frustration and remorse because Grigg hadn’t felt he could tell her the truth.

What
gives, Grigg?

She should’ve asked that question when he was still alive. She should’ve made him share that portion of his life with her. She should’ve insisted she actually get to
know
him instead of constantly biting her tongue, waiting for the day when he’d finally trust her enough to come clean.

It was too late.

The boulder of remorse, lodged in her throat since Nate walked into her parents’ home and told them they’d never again lay eyes on Grigg’s handsome face, grew until it threatened to choke her. She blinked rapidly and tried to swallow it down.

Which never worked.

Crap.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry.

She’d never been the stoic type. Far from it. She’d once bawled so hard on a flight to London while watching the movie
Marley
and
Me,
the man beside her got up twice to go to the bathroom and come back with a handful of toilet-paper to try and help her mop up the mess. But this bursting-into-spontaneous-tears-without-the-slightest-warning thing had become a recent talent of hers. One she hoped to lose PDQ, but she wasn’t sure that was gonna happen. Not when the loss of Grigg was still so fresh…so unbearable…

“Heard it from a friend whooo…heard it from a friend whooo…heard it from another you been messin’ arounnnddd,” Ozzie/Ethan finished with dramatic vibrato.

The sudden silence caused by the end of the song was shattered when the opening bars to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” blasted through the speakers. Obviously Ethan/Ozzie was a big ’80s music fan, although the guy didn’t look old enough to have lived through much of that decade.

“Meerreow!” Ali nearly jumped out of her skin when something warm and furry brushed against her calves—which didn’t do a thing to steady her jittery nerves or assuage the feeling of having suddenly fallen down the rabbit’s hole. But it did succeed in keeping her stupid tears at bay.

“Well, hello,” she murmured to the biggest, ugliest cat on the planet.

She crouched down to stroke patchy, ash-colored fur. The tom was the size of a small horse, with enough scars around his face and notches in his ears to earn him the look of a battered warrior. When his big, yellow eyes blinked up at her in weary, feline sympathy, as if to say,
I
understand. I’ve seen the ugly side of life, too,
the tears hovering behind her eyes threatened to spill all over again.

Oh, double crap.

To comfort herself, she pulled the mammoth cat into her arms and stood.

Or tried to…

It was a bit difficult given he seemed to weigh as much as a St. Bernard. Finally, she was able to pull herself up by the railing, only to have to spread her feet in order to balance under her furry load.

She heard a deep rumble and thought someone started up one of the Harleys down below. She chuckled when she realized it was the deeply contented, terribly unattractive gray bundle in her arms causing the racket.

“Now you’ve done it! Peanut will expect everyone to carry him around, and I, for one, don’t have the strength for it,” Frank Knight, a giant of a man who, contrary to his words, looked strong enough to bench press a Volkswagen, yelled over the booming music as he appeared from one of the side doors to come and lean on the rail beside her.

“Peanut?” She pulled her chin back and glanced down into a furry, gray face only a mother could love. The cat’s golden eyes were half-closed in satisfaction, and she was blessed with the rather dubious honor of his kneading nails pricking through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. “He looks more like a Goliath, or Brutus. Peanut? Really?”

“Yeah,” Frank laughed as he ran a hand through his curling mop of brown hair and watched the progress down on the shop floor. His smile quickly faded as his eyes zeroed in on the woman doing a pretty fair version of a bronco rider—only her steed was made of steel instead of flesh and blood.

Ali thought she heard him mutter “sonofabitch,” before he physically forced himself to look away. “When we moved into this building, it was home to rats and this guy here,” he reached out a giant mitt of a hand and scratched under the cat’s chin, eliciting a resurgence of purring that vibrated through Ali’s chest like a lawnmower, “who’d made his bed on a pile of old peanut bags—hence the name. We managed to get rid of all the rats, and we shipped Peanut off to live with a sweet local lady who takes in strays, but within two days he’d found his way back to us. I’m Frank Knight, by the way. I’d shake your hand except both of them appear to be full.” He winked and a delightful web of wrinkles gathered at the corner of his eye.

“I know who you are. Grigg spoke very highly of you. He had a great deal of respect for you.”

The big man’s face contorted. “The respect thing went both ways. Grigg was…well,” he ran that giant paw back through his hair again and grimaced slightly, flexing his shoulder as if the motion hurt, “…there’s just no words. He was the best. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. We were all devastated.”

And…triple crap. The tears were threatening again.

Just when she thought she’d have to turn away or lose it right on the spot—she’d turned into the Queen of Blubberingtown today—all hell broke loose in the madhouse.

“Got it!” Becky Reichert crowed as the last bolt finally twisted loose and the bent rotor fell to the floor with a resounding
Boom!
The sound bounced and echoed around the warehouse like a cannon explosion.

Deafening silence ensued, sufficiently informing her the earsplitting ruckus had resulted in the switching off of ol’ Ricky Springfield—which was fine by her. Ozzie had deplorable taste in music. She’d tried to enlighten the man to the salient fact that quite a lot of really fantastic stuff had been written in the last twenty years, but he seemed immune to her attempts at musical edification. That he
occasionally
allowed her to pipe in The Killers was about the only victory she’d ever won, which meant she usually had her iPod earbuds screwed in tight, blasting her own music into her brain to drown out Ozzie’s less than discerning taste.

However, last night she forgot to charge the sucker, so she was tortured with ’80s rock ballads all morning. Of course, not having her earbuds in allowed her to hear the horrified screech immediately following the cacophonous clang of the fallen rotor blade.

She glanced up to see a woman standing at the rail wearing a gray cat-hat. Only it appeared, by her flailing arms and Peanut’s hissing, the fashion choice was unintentional.

Wait for it. Wait for it…

“Rebecca! Damnit!”

Ah, there it was.

Frank “Boss” Knight had a way of furiously screaming her name followed by that familiar epithet. It made her wince and grin at the same time.

Grin because the Knights liked to joke with her and say Frank might actually be under the mistaken impression her last name
was
Damnit. And wince because, other than her father, Frank was the only one to ever call her Rebecca—which made her feel about six years old, and she’d wondered more than once if Frank did it intentionally, just to drive home the difference in their ages.

That one word virtually screamed,
Yes, I’ve seen the way you look at me, but I’m old enough to be your father.

Which wasn’t really true unless he started his sexual adventures at thirteen—although, since she thought about it, that seemed completely possible. She’d seen pictures. Even at thirteen it’d been beyond obvious Frank would grow into a beautiful man.

Of course he would never admit to being beautiful. On the contrary, she’d heard him mention on more than one occasion, “It’s a standoff who has more battle wounds, me or Peanut.”

And Becky supposed that was true. The slashing scar bisecting Frank’s left eyebrow gave him the look of perpetual skepticism, while the little white line snaking up from the corner of his mouth made his full lips quirk up just a bit. Taken together, it created an incongruent combination.

Okay, so maybe beautiful wasn’t quite the right word to describe him. His face had far too much character to be put in such vapid terms. Unfortunately, it was a face she’d learned to admire from afar, because that was as close as he ever let her. Not surprising considering she seemed to annoy the ever-lovin’ shit out of the man.

“Yes, Frank?” she innocently replied to his having bellowed her name at the top of his lungs.

Frank. Everyone else called him Boss, but not her. Oh no. Not when calling him by his given name made his eyelids twitch.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed,” he roared down at her, “or just give me a flippin’ heart attack?”

Heart attack. Yeah, right. The man had a resting pulse of sixty beats per minute and a cholesterol count that would make a triathlete weep with envy. He was more likely to get hit by a freak bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky than die of a heart attack.

And since she reckoned his last question was rhetorical, she didn’t bother to answer it. But when he yelled, “Get your ass down from there ASAP,” she did as she was told with only a minimal amount of eye rolling.

“I saw that,” he growled once her feet were safely on the ground.

“No way could you’ve seen that all the way up there,” she called back, hands on hips, incredulously chewing the cherry Dum Dum she’d shoved into her mouth before tackling that last bolt. She’d taken to eating the stupid things three years ago in order to help herself quit smoking. Unfortunately, she’d simply exchanged one addiction for another.

“You’re right. I couldn’t. But you just proved my little theory.” The implied
gotcha
basically flew off the second story to land on her head.

She cursed and called him a colorful name beneath her breath.

“I heard that, too,” he barked, and she clamped her mouth shut, just in case he was telling the truth this time.

***

When the explosion ricocheted around the warehouse, Nate instinctively lunged toward Ali while simultaneously reaching for the Para Ordinance CCW .45 he kept concealed in the waistband of his shorts. Luckily, before he could take her to the ground and cover her with his body, he realized what’d happened—namely, Rebecca “The Rebel” Reichert doing what she did best. Making an unholy ruckus.

He managed, just barely, to halt his flying lunge.

It was a good thing, because Peanut was now stuck to Ali’s head like some weird feline version of the Daniel Boon raccoon hat.

“Oh my God, get him off me,” she whispered as a trickle of blood oozed from her left temple where Peanut secured himself to his precarious perch with one sharp claw.

The sight of that crimson drop sliding down her pale, flawless cheek made Nate want to kill someone. At the moment, he figured he’d start with Peanut and work his way over to Becky and then up to Boss, who wasn’t helping to calm the stupid cat by yelling at Becky.

Go figure. The guy was always yelling at Becky.

Man, the list of friends he was ready to murder was mounting at an astonishing rate since Ali minced her sweet ass into the shop. Just before the uproar, he’d been ready to cap Ozzie for his unnecessary interest in her lingerie.

“Be still,” he whispered as he reached for the cat. The animal was foolish enough to lay back his ears and hiss a warning.

“Um, yes,” she said as she tightened her hold on the rail. “Being still is certainly the plan since movement might cause one of two outcomes. One, it’ll unset the hefty Peanut here and break my neck. Or two, it’ll result in a scalping. And though I’ve been thinking for a while now about cutting my hair, I’m seriously considering keeping the roots.”

“Be quiet, too,” he instructed as he made another attempt to reach for Peanut. It was impossible to concentrate when he was this close to her, especially with her jabbering in that adorable way she had.

He spared a glance at her distressed face and knew it to be a mistake instantly.

He was momentarily arrested because…man, six feet away she was pretty.

Up close like this? Total gut-shot.

Of course, having just seen all of her unmentionables didn’t help matters.
Unmentionables?

Whoever came up with
that
ridiculous term? Underwear that fantastic deserved to be mentioned on a regular basis.

Shit, he wasn’t going to think about her underwear. Which, of course, only made him wonder what color she had on under those tight, distressed jeans and that thin T-shirt. Pink? Her shirt was pink. Women often matched their underwear to their outfits. At least that’d been his experience. So…probably pink.

Holy shit! He was
not
going to think about her underwear!

“Being quiet might be too tall an order.” She nervously licked her lips and he couldn’t help but eye the movement. “Y-you see, when I’m nervous or in pain I tend to talk. It helps me not dwell on the fact that I’m…well, n-nervous or in pain. Like right now? I’m both. So it’s best if I just keep talking. So I’m gonna keep talking, okay?”

He watched her slightly frantic eyes swing toward the table where it looked like a panty-bomb had gone off. Ozzie was standing wide-eyed with a bra in one hand and his pocket knife in the other. “I take it there actually was something in my clothes. Either that or Ethan, er, Ozzie has an aversion to purple satin.”

“Yeah,” he told her as he gently reached toward Peanut, determined not to think about pink silk or purple satin. “You’re bugged. Devices in all your underwear.”

“My underwear? My gosh, that’s so sick—”

“No, not sick,” he interrupted and managed to snake an arm around Peanut’s substantial middle. “It’s smart. You always wear underwear, therefore, you’re always bugged. Whoever tagged you knew what they were doin’, not to mention they were able to get their hands on some pretty hard-to-come-by, high-tech gadgetry.”

She shot him a look.

“What?” he asked.

“Where’s my journal? I want to jot this down for posterity.”

Huh?

He lifted a confused brow and she smirked, ornery light glinting in her amber eyes.

“You just spoke, like, what? A whole four sentences? Not to mention there were a few adjectives thrown in there. That must be some sort of record. It should be memorialized accordingly, don’t you think?” She batted her lashes.

Jesus, the woman was too much.

She rolled her eyes at his fierce frown. That is until he tightened his hold on the damned cat.

“Oh, aahhhh!” She shrieked as he swiftly lifted Peanut from her head and unceremoniously dropped the hairy ton of fun to the ground.

Wow, somebody needed to talk to Becky about what she was feeding the beast. Nate was pretty sure the floor actually shook.

“Here,” he reached into his back pocket and handed her the bandana he always kept there. “You’ve got a drop of blood,” he pointed to his own cheek.

“Thanks,” she said as she pressed the cloth to her temple.

“We, uh, need you to give us the underwear you’re wearing,” he muttered and tried not to glance at the multi-colored mountain of lingerie heaped on the conference table. It only made him imagine just what she’d look like in each and every piece and that certainly didn’t do a thing for the semi-wood he was sporting—semi-wood which threatened to turn into a Louisville Slugger with the slightest encouragement.

Was there a particular name for the kind of reaction this woman engendered in him? Compulsive fixation might begin to cover it. Unreasonable horniness certainly did.

Just the thought of her handing him a pair of panties still warm from the heat of her body—and the recollection it invoked—had a shaft of red-hot lust zinging down his spine.

That was immediately followed by a harsh flash of memory…his hand shaking on the handle of the bloody KA-BAR and Grigg’s mutilated, lifeless body going cold in his arms.

He was hit by a crashing wave of guilt.

Uh-huh, yeah, and that pretty much summed it up when it came to his relationship—or
non
-relationship—with Ali Morgan. Lust and guilt. The two were so intertwined it was a wonder he’d ever felt one without the other.

What
a
goatfuck.

And now here she was, standing not a foot from him, probably wearing silky pink underwear, looking half-frightened, half-amused, with almond shaped eyes that titled up at the corners and sparkled like gold bullion.

Shit. Eyes that sparkle like gold bullion? She turned him into a friggin’ poet—and not a very good one at that.

“Right. I’ll uh, just go take care of that underwear issue.” She gathered herself, squaring her thin shoulders, trying somewhat successfully to throw off the weight of her fatigue. She’d been without sleep for over twenty-four hours. He knew as soon as her adrenaline dropped—which, by the slightly glazed look in her eyes was gonna happen pretty soon—she’d hit the proverbial wall and then he’d have to wait for answers until she’d gotten twenty winks.

He didn’t want to do that.

The sooner he figured out just what the hell was going on, the sooner he could fix whatever it was, and the sooner Ali would be on her way back home.

Halfway across the country.

Which sometimes still felt too close. Particularly when he remembered that day at the beach when they—

“Point me to the bathroom,” she said.

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down the hall. Second door on the right.” When she headed in that direction, he added, “Hey, Ali?”

She glanced back at him.

“You’re a kindergarten teacher.” It came out of his mouth before he had a chance to think about it.

“Yes,” she tilted her head and frowned. “So?”

He simply looked at her. Yeah, so? So what? Geez, he was a complete moron. “So what’d’ya need that stuff for?” In for a penny, in for a pound.

Despite the assurances to himself only minutes ago that he wouldn’t think about her underwear, all that sexy silk and see-through lace was really bugging the hell out of him.

Was there a man in her life? Some lucky sonofabitch she wore those titillating scraps of material for? Some unworthy bastard who had the honor of touching all that warm, smooth flesh? Of kissing all those sweet, sensitive spots? Of eliciting that sexy little whimper of longing in the back of her throat?

The thought made him want to shoot someone. The faceless prick she’d purchased all that junk for would be an excellent place to start. And then he could move on to his friends.

Damn, having her around made him undeniably bloodthirsty.

“What stuff?”

He lowered his chin until he was scowling at her from under his brows. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

Her lips quirked and he was reminded how soft they were, how sweet the inside of her mouth—

No.

He squashed the thought as effectively as Grigg had squashed all those orange-spotted roaches that’d been happy to cohabitate with them that time in Colombia.

“Are you actually saying there’s no need for a kindergarten teacher to have sexy underwear?” she asked, shooting a wary glance toward Ozzie. The kid was doing a fairly good impression of a deaf-mute.

Nate crossed his arms. Watching. Waiting. He just had to give her time. Soon, with no more encouragement than drawn out silence, every thought in her pretty head would tumble from her succulent, peach-colored mouth. A mouth that was—