Hell on Wheels (19 page)

But someday. Someday he’d let her lay her hands on ol’ Sierra.

Ghost shot her an amused look before leaning in to hook a heavy arm around her neck and knuckle her head. That was her, everyone’s kid sister.

“We’ll be back by tomorrow night,” he told her. “Try not t’give Boss a heart attack between now ’n’ then.”

“Whatever,” she cuffed him on the arm. “And you try not to shoot anyone between now and then.”

They both glanced to the bulging saddlebags.

“How much you wanna bet I hold up my end of that bargain better than you hold up yours?”

“Smartass,” he growled with fondness, then swung one long leg over the bike.

“It’s now or never, sista,” Becky turned to Ali as Ghost started Phantom.

“Can I choose never?” Ali yelled above the motorcycle’s guttural roar.

Becky just smiled and plopped a helmet into Ali’s trembling hands. “Excuse me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you demand this assignment? Wasn’t it you who refused to give up the location of that zip drive unless you were allowed to go along?”

Becky had to give the woman snaps for tenacity. Had Nate focused that black-laser gaze on her, she’d have probably folded like a poker player with a bad hand, but Ali had simply thrust up her chin and dared everyone in the room to nay-say her.

Now the poor woman wasn’t looking so sure of herself. Her next words confirmed it. “Is it too late to change my mind?”

It was a good thing Ghost hadn’t heard that above Phantom’s loud rumble, or he’d jump at the chance to leave Ali behind. Becky, however, thought this little journey was going to be good for the both of them.

“Just hang on,” she told Ali, giving the worried woman a quick, sisterly hug. “That’s the only advice I’ll give you.”

Ali made a face before slipping the helmet over her head and gingerly mounting up behind Nate. She adjusted herself, then adjusted herself again.

Uh-huh. Now Ali was beginning to get the picture. Riding backseat on a bike like Phantom was better than Mr. Blue any day. Not to mention the highly erotic act of wrapping one’s legs around the man you loved.

Becky secretly grinned at the thought of the very
long
ride Ali had ahead of her.

Ghost gave a thumbs-up, and Becky whistled. Dan Man, Ozzie, and Patti jogged down the metal stairs to the shop floor at the shrill sound of her summons.

Wow. Becky had to admit, Patti looked pretty frickin’ hot in her long, blond wig. And by the way Dan kept shooting steamy glances over his shoulder at his wife, she assumed the guy wholeheartedly agreed with her assessment.

She watched Dan and Patti mount up before shoving her helmet into place and swinging up behind Ozzie.

As the motorcycle rumbled to life beneath her, through her visor she watched Frank step off the stairway and amble toward the big, red button beside the ten-drawer rolling Craftsman tool cabinet. Smashing it with his wide palm, the red warning light blinked, and she turned to see one whole section of the shop wall slide back and to the left until there was nothing but a gaping black hole. It was the beginning of a tunnel dug down under the north branch of the Chicago River that would terminate in a parking garage two blocks west.

The smell of damp concrete and stale air drifted inside her helmet as she watched Ali lean past Ghost’s broad back to get a better look. She smiled when she imagined the woman’s surprise.

Holy secret tunnels, Batman!

Yepper, sometimes working for a group of clandestine government operators had its perks.

They’d decided to play the classic shell game. If whoever was watching—namely Ali’s mystery man—managed to somehow catch them even after they’d exited through their secret tunnel, he’d still only have a one in three chance of being able to follow the correct couple. Their plan was to take three bikes, three men, and three blond women covered head to toe in identical black leather out on the highway. Once there, each couple would quickly veer off in a different direction. Their tail, if they even had one, would have to choose. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but it was better than nothing.

“Rebecca!”

What had she said about working for a group of clandestine government operators having its perks? Well, it had its drawbacks, too.

“Damnit!” Frank’s voice vibrated with frustration, loud enough to be heard over the three roaring bikes.

She winced as she glanced over her shoulder and saw him holding two fistfuls of suckers. Okay, so she could totally explain why she’d filled his jacket pockets with root beer Dum Dums this morning, and it had nothing to do with getting a little revenge for the hissy fit he’d thrown yesterday when she’d been forced to come clean about Ozzie’s techie lessons.

Okay, maybe it had a little bit to do with that…Okay, so it had
everything
to do with that, but the dill-hole deserved it.

She felt devilish delight knowing that big Frank Knight, the man with unshakable will, couldn’t resist those little suckers.

Just went to show, even
he
had a weakness.

Unfortunately, his weakness wasn’t her.

Chapter Ten

Whoa. What the hell?

Dagan threw some folded George Washingtons on the counter, grabbed his double-shot espresso from the startled barista, and scrambled out the door of the little coffee shop on the corner of Noble and West Division just in time to see three of the Black Knights’ monster bikes fly past.

The three leather-clad figures clinging to the men’s backs were all petite, all blond. And, unfortunately, any one of them could’ve been Alisa Morgan.

Damn.

He fished inside his pocket and pulled out a small device. Jumping into his newly rented SUV, he started the engine and swerved into traffic amidst the blaring horns of pissed-off Chicago cabbies. Glancing down at the device in his hand, he frowned at the glowing green light.

So…

They hadn’t exited the Knights’ compound by the front gate.

He’d planted a sensor there last night to alert him whenever the gates were opened, and his reconnaissance revealed no other way in or out of the grounds, which left only one thing…

Black Knights Inc. came equipped with a bolt-hole.

He’d figured they might have one, because those guys would never allow themselves to be put in a situation where there was only one avenue of escape.

Battle Strategy 101.

And, honestly, didn’t he understand that life? Never relaxing your guard, always having a contingency plan for every minor thing, and most importantly, always having a way out if discretion was the order of the day or if, more importantly, things went from sugar to shit, as they so often had the tendency to do?

And that only proved you could take an operator out of the field, but you could never un-program a man who’d been programmed.

Dagan himself was a bitter, shining example of that unsavory fact.

The CIA didn’t want him anymore after the unhappy little goatfuck in the Sandbox, but he hadn’t been good for anything besides this…this
work
. This skulking about in shadows, gathering Intelligence, abstaining from the women and the scotch he so loved because there was always a national security secret to be uncovered and he was the goddamned best at making sure no one uncovered them.

Case in point: he chose that particular coffee shop because it was across from the only highway access for fifteen blocks in any direction and he determined it was his best bet for catching them if and when they emerged from their compound via any route other than the front gate and, like usual, following his instincts had paid off.

Now the question became, where the hell were they all going?

As he tailed the trio up the onramp onto southbound I-94, he figured he had a pretty good idea. They were going to retrieve the files.

If
the damn things even existed. He was really beginning to wonder…

“
Sonofa—
”

He blinked in disbelief as two bikes peeled off. One took the nearest off-ramp, a big loop that would swing them back north. The other motorcycle veered onto westbound I-290, while the third continued heading south.

He had a split second to make his decision.

Swiveling in his seat, he cursed and squinted a look at the bike on the off-ramp. Nope. That wasn’t the ghostly gray beast he’d seen Nate Weller mount last night outside Red Delilah’s, and he would lay odds there wouldn’t be anyone but Grigg’s best friend tasked with this particular mission. Craning his head to the right, he got a quick glimpse of the bike heading west. Another negative.

So that left the southbound chopper.

Back to Jacksonville?

***

“What the fuck do you mean you’re out, Zoelner?” Senator Aldus shouted into his cell phone as he pulled his government issue black sedan into the parking lot of a rest stop off I-95.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Could not
fucking
believe it. He was going to have that insubordinate cretin deleted. That’s all there was to it.

“Like I said, you aren’t paying me enough to go head to head with former sergeant Weller. And I’ve been made, sir. Weller is onto me. So I’m out.”

Dagan Zoelner’s voice didn’t sound the least bit contrite, nor the least bit frightened. And that wouldn’t do. It simply would not do.

Aldus felt his head threaten to explode. It was going to burst through his skull and discharge gray matter all over the cream leather interior of his car, because he was SOL if Zoelner quit. There was no one else who could do the job. No one else he trusted to quietly snatch Alisa Morgan and shake the location of those files out of her.

“What about the money, Z? You need that money. Or have you forgotten about your brother and that spot of trouble he’s in?”

Christ, families were nothing but weakness and misery.

Lucky for him, he’d learned long ago how to prey on that weakness in others and had worked damned hard not to allow himself the same Achilles heel. His wife thought they were childless because he’d had a bad case of the mumps as a young boy. The real truth was he’d known right from the start he never wanted to have someone who could be taken from him, held for ransom, or used as blackmail. So he’d gotten a vasectomy two weeks before he’d said his “I dos,” and he hadn’t regretted that decision in all the years since.

He was untouchable, his reputation unblemished, a man destined for great things. That is, if he could ever get out from under the dark shadow of Grigg Morgan and those fucking missing files.

Things were getting complicated. He absolutely hated when things got complicated. Of all the loose ends on this deal, he had only one left to tie up, and it was proving to be so much harder than it should’ve been.

She was one small woman, for Christ’s sake. She should’ve been taken care of months ago along with everything else.

It’d been easy to drop a bug in the ear of those bloodthirsty Hezbollah quacks, giving them the whereabouts of the covert operatives who’d killed their esteemed leader, Hassan Kassim, in exchange for them torturing the whereabouts of a certain set of files out of the pair. It’d been just as easy for him to alert the local Syrian militia to the Hezbollah operatives working in their backyard once those same operatives were of no more use to him. And, likewise, it’d been a piece of cake to make sure that nosy-ass Delaney and that shithead Morgan were crucified after they’d had the audacity to break into his secret computer files…or at least they’d tried to.

It was a bit of tragic irony who’d done the
actual
crucifying in Morgan’s case. Christ, when he’d read that report detailing Grigg Morgan’s death, even
his
hardened stomach had shriveled at the horror of it.

So…he’d managed all of that, but somehow he couldn’t manage to get his hands on one untrained, uninformed woman?

It was absolutely beyond the pale, and he’d reached the limit of his patience, especially when Zoelner quietly informed him, “There are other ways for me to get the money.”

Aldus ground his jaw so hard his eye sockets ached. “Is that so? Who’s going to hire you, Z? Who wants a washed up ex-CIA agent who managed to get his whole team and two civilians killed? No one, that’s who. No military, no government body, not even one of those contractor outfits. Because they’re not going to trust you, Z. No one’s going to trust you. So your best bet to get that cash to poor, misguided Avan is to stick with me.”

There was a long pause, and Aldus held his breath. He
needed
Dagan Zoelner and,
goddamnit,
he hated needing anyone.

“I don’t think you’ve been playing straight with me, sir,” Zoelner finally said. “I think you orchestrated that mugging, and I know for a fact there’s more going on here than you’ve led me to believe. Both of those things make me decidedly uncomfortable. So, thank you for the opportunity, but I’m out.”