Hell on Wheels (3 page)

“Get his legs!” Rugby Jersey yelled, and Mr. French Bread dove at the mugger’s knees, tackling him and sending the three of them sprawling onto the sidewalk in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs.

Somehow her assailant managed to disentangle himself from the pile. He pushed his substantial bulk up off the concrete only to dart across the street, dodging traffic and nearly getting hit by a speeding UPS truck in the process. For such a
large
man, he was surprisingly agile. The UPS driver slammed on his brakes with a squeal of melting rubber and leaned from his doorless truck in order to shake a fist at the fleeing man’s back.

Ali dragged in a ragged breath and tried to keep sight of her assailant as he zigzagged around people and parked cars. Then she stopped breathing entirely, more stunned than if she’d been hit by lightning, when her elusive shadow suddenly emerged from Swanson’s Deli across the street.

At least she
thought
it was him. She could never tell for sure because he always wore a baseball cap that effectively shielded his face. Still…this man had the same solid build, the same square jaw…

Okay, it was getting too weird.

“Hey!” she yelled at the guy as both Mr. French Bread and Rugby Jersey picked themselves up off the pavement.

The man in the baseball cap gave no indication he heard her.

“Hey, you!” she called again, stepping off the curb. She was gosh-darned sick and tired of every day feeling this sense of…
paranoia
. If she could just get a look at him, she might—

The mysterious man took off like a shot.

What?
Was he really running away from her?

When he hopped into a big, tough-looking SUV, quickly gunning the engine, she had her answer.

He
was
running away from her.

What
the
h-e-double-hockey-sticks?

Just when she would’ve taken off after him, she was jerked back onto the sidewalk by Mr. French Bread. “Whoa, there,” the guy said, still trying to catch his breath. “The dude’s long gone. Don’t go getting yourself run over trying to catch him.”

Mr. French Bread gave up attempting to appear collected and bent at the waist to put his hands on his knees and drop his head between his shoulders, panting like a dog in the summer heat.

He thought she was going after her attacker, of course, which yeah, probably made a lot more sense than running after some elusive man whom she was sure had been shadowing her every move for the past three months.

Laying a comforting hand on her savior’s sweaty shoulder, she reached into her purse—the mugger had
not
succeeded; score one for Alisa Morgan and her two unlikely heroes—and pulled out her BlackBerry. Zooming in, she snapped a quick photo of the SUV’s license plate right before it careened around the corner. Then she bent to peek into Mr. French Bread’s red, perspiring face.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, glancing up to include Rugby Jersey. The guy was also blowing like a winded racehorse, leaning limply against the front window of the hardware store. Obviously neither of them was accustomed to much physical activity, which only made their actions all the more heroic. “You both risked an awful lot—”

Rugby waved a hand, cutting her off. “Damsel in distress and all that,” he chuckled, wincing and grabbing his side.

Great. Just what she’d always dreamed of being. Not.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, dismayed by the thought of him getting injured while trying to save something as insignificant as a purse.

“Nah. I think I just bruised a rib.”

She opened her mouth to thank him again when the piercing cry of a siren interrupted her.

“Looks like the cavalry’s almost here,” Mr. French Bread observed.

***

Black Knights Inc. Headquarters on Goose Island

Chicago, Illinois

The next day…

“Yeah, right. This is a chopper shop. Just a little ol’ custom motorcycle business…and I’m the queen of England,” Ali muttered beneath her breath, as she glanced through her front windshield at the expanse of the…
compound
was the only word to describe it.

No wonder Grigg had always insisted she stay at a hotel whenever she managed to make it to Chicago to visit him. He’d claimed the loft he lived in atop the “shop”—which would heretofore be referred to as Fort frickin’ Knox—was too small to sleep a guest comfortably, but she’d suspected he was feeding her a line of bull even then. And now?

Now, she
knew
it was bull.

Most folks would look through the huge iron gates at the multitude of small brick structures tucked around an immense factory building and dismiss it for simply what it claimed to be on its website, a top-notch custom motorcycle shop. Most folks would disregard the ten-foot-high brick wall topped by huge rolls of razor wire and the 360-degree pivoting cameras as the necessary precautions taken by savvy businessmen who had a small fortune in tools, bikes, and equipment, and who knew this wasn’t Chicago’s nicest neighborhood.

Yes, that’s what
most
folks would do.

She wasn’t most folks.

She’d had a Marine for an older brother who’d taught her a thing or two about security, and Black Knights Incorporated had it out the wazoo.

Unwelcome tears suddenly pooled in her eyes, because here was the proof that Grigg hadn’t trusted her. He’d died and she’d never really gotten the chance to—

“You’ll have to leave your vehicle at the gate, ma’am,” instructed the redheaded giant manning the gatehouse. He had a thick Chicago accent, turning the word
the
into the more percussive sounding
da
. “We don’t allow unsecured vehicles on the premises,” he went on to explain. “Someone will be down to escort you to the main shop momentarily.”

“Uh…oh-
kay
,” she said as she pulled her lime-green Prius to the side and parked, shaking her head. She glanced in the rearview mirror and dabbed at the tears still clinging to her lashes before pocketing her keys and slinging her beloved purse over her shoulder. Exiting the vehicle, she strolled back toward the gatehouse and the behemoth inside.

“So,” she said as she leaned an elbow on the sill of the window and eyed Big Red, “have you worked for the Black Knights long?”

“Long enough,” he grunted, never taking his gaze from the series of TV screens showing different angles of the grounds around the compound.

Ah, a talkative one. Wouldn’t it figure?

God, what was she doing here?

Nate Weller certainly wouldn’t welcome her. For Pete’s sake, he didn’t even
like
her. Always eyeing her with such cold calculation. Those fathomless black eyes of his following her like she was some strange bug, and he was the dispassionate scientist charting her activities.

Sheesh.

Okay, so maybe she had the tendency to talk too much. But that was partly his fault because he
never
talked, instead remaining constantly and aggravatingly aloof, which was a state so totally foreign to her that she, in turn, started jabbering like her mouth was attached to a motor.

Which was lovely, just lovely.

So fine. He didn’t like her. As far as she was concerned, he could just take his opinion of her and stuff it where the sun never shined. He didn’t have to like her in order to help her.

And why she was even mentally chewing over the state of his rather glaring lack of regard was beyond her. Because to tell the truth, she didn’t particularly like
him
either.

He was too solemn, too remote, too…
something
.

She could never determine just exactly what that something was—which was extremely irksome. But she’d have to deal with it, or ignore it, because she’d made her decision. She was here.

And speaking of here, where the heck was her escort? She tapped her fingers and glanced around impatiently. “Do you own one of their custom bikes?” she asked, just to have something to talk about because, yeah, waiting to see Nate was driving her crazy.

Big Red made a noise vaguely reminiscent of the bellow a mildly annoyed grizzly bear might make, and she didn’t know whether to take that as a
yes
or a
no
.

Great. Just great. This is turning out even worse than I imagined.

***

“So we got our very own helo. Guess now we need our very own helo pilot.” Frank “Boss” Knight, boss of Black Knights Inc., said as he glanced across the scarred expanse of his desk at Nate “Ghost” Weller.

He couldn’t help but search the guy’s impassive face for any signs of PTSD. Frank had been doing that a lot in the past three months, but no matter how hard he looked…

Nada.

No fidgeting hands or darting eyes or tapping toes.

But he knew, just because the guy didn’t show any of the more obvious outward signs of the disorder didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t have it. Nate had been tagged Ghost because he was so damned stealthy in the field. But ever since Grigg Morgan, Nate’s all-time best friend and ace spotter, died—especially considering the
way
Grigg died—and wasn’t
that
just one more happy thought Frank would rather not have today? Nate’d given new meaning to the nickname. Now he was Ghost because he was a walking dead man. No emotion. It wasn’t like the guy had been a big bowl of jolly to begin with, but now?
Damn
…

“What about Colby Ventura?” Ghost said. “He’s not with the Army anymore.”

“Really?” Frank lifted a brow, jotting down a quick note on his legal pad, excited by the prospect. “Yeah, man, Ace would be a
great
replacement.”

And as soon as he said the words, he winced and glanced at Ghost. Gone was the detachment. Now the man’s eyes were bright and his jaw so hard Frank wondered if, when he finally opened his mouth, there would be anything left but nubs and stumps where his teeth had been.

Grigg had been licensed to fly helos, and this was just one more tough reminder that Grigg was gone. He wished like hell they hadn’t lost him, but they had. Because despite all the precautions they took against it, the possibility of violent death came part and parcel of the job.

Still, that knowledge didn’t make the loss any easier. Not for any of them. But especially not for Ghost. Those two had been connected at the hip since graduating together from Marine Scout Sniper School in Quantico. The dynamic duo or, in certain circles, the
deadly
duo.

Ghost had barely given himself time to heal from the wounds he’d sustained during his torture by those Lebanese militants before he’d gone back and tried to hunt down every last man who’d dared to lay a hand on him and Grigg—and hadn’t that been a pretty mess for Frank to clean up?

He shuddered, remembering all the fast talking he’d had to do.

Kissing ass certainly wasn’t his forte and it always left a decidedly foul taste in his mouth, but he’d done it for Ghost—the best damned sniper on the planet.

Fortunately, Ghost’s search was for naught, because someone had beaten him to the punch. Those Hezbollah boys had been dead to a man—not surprising, really, considering the Syrians didn’t take too kindly to Lebanese militants operating on their soil. And the fact that the fuckers met messy ends didn’t break Frank’s hardened heart one little bit, and not just because they’d deserved it for what they’d done to Grigg and Ghost, but because it’d saved Ghost from perhaps making one of the greatest mistakes of his life.

The Knights broke, bent, and flagrantly ignored most rules, with the exception of one. Pure and simple, revenge had no place in their operating procedures. Should they ever kill outside a sanctioned mission, they’d be no better than the men they hunted. “We should also probably start the search for a communications specialist,” he added quickly, hoping to wipe that killing look off Ghost’s face. As frightening as his stony detachment could be, this was even worse. “That last job in Brazil would’ve gone a whole helluva lot smoother had any of us spoken Portuguese.”

“What about the ex-Mossad agent?” Ghost managed.

The Mossad agent…Great. One more thing for Frank to worry about today. Usually when General Fuller asked him and his boys to do something, they hopped-to with a salute and a resounding
Hoo-ah
! But hiding this Israeli had required a few negotiations. And, all in all, it wasn’t such a bad deal. Because now they found themselves the proud owners of a slightly less-than-new UH-60 Black Hawk.