Hell on Wheels (37 page)

Dan took advantage of his momentary shock to ram into Mystery Man just as the guy was pushing himself to his feet. They hit the pavement with a sickening thud, Dan retaining his superior position. Only this time Dan wasn’t punching Mr. Mystery. Oh, no. This time he wrapped is hands around guy’s throat and squeezed so hard the tendons in his forearms stood out like garden hoses.

“He’s…get…ting…a…way,” Mystery Man choked, his face turning crimson as his eyes began to bulge out of their sockets.

Dan couldn’t hear the guy above his own horrible choking sobs, nor could he see Mystery Man struggling to speak through the tears and snot running in a terrible mess down his contorted face.

“Dan,” Nate ignored the blood flowing into his mouth as he squatted beside the two men. “You’ve gotta listen to me now, buddy. This guy didn’t shoot Patti. He was helpin’ us,” Nate glanced down at Mystery Man to see the guy’s eyes start to roll back in his head. “Let go, now.” He placed a heavy hand on Dan’s shoulder. The guy was shaking so hard Nate thought he might just rattle his bones to dust.

Then Dan sucked in a tortured breath and met Nate’s eyes, clarity slowly returning through the haze of temporary madness.

“Let go,” he repeated. “You’ve got the wrong guy.”

Dan glanced down at Mystery Man, whose fingers were clawing at his wrists, leaving deep, bloody furrows.

“You hear me talkin’ to you, soldier?” Nate yelled, shaking Dan’s shoulder, because he had to get through now, like,
right
now
or Mystery Man was toast. “You’re killin’ an innocent man!”

Dan suddenly unclenched his hands, rolling off Mystery Man to scramble to his feet. He stumbled back over to his dead wife, hoarsely wailing his agony the entire way.

Jesus.
Jesus.

Nate blew out a ragged breath and wiped the back of his arm over his mouth and chin. Mystery Man was lying in the middle of the street, sucking in great gulping lungfuls of sweet, life-giving O
₂
.

Well, at least Nate’d been able to save one life today.

He spat bright red blood onto the pavement before he turned to see Ali take the shirt that Ozzie ripped over his head. She quickly pressed it onto the bleeding wound in Manus’s big chest. Manus grimaced and moaned, but his eyes were steady on Ali’s face as she leaned down to say something Nate couldn’t hear over the sirens wailing in the distance.

Unbelievable.

The guy was still alive.

And he might just stay that way if that was an ambulance headed in their direction which, by the look of Boss’s vigorous gesturing and the sound of him barking orders into his cell phone, chances were pretty good it was.

A strangled wail that echoed above the approaching sirens had him glancing back through the gates—which was a mistake. Because the awful sight that met his eyes was one that’d stay with him the rest of his life.

Dan was sitting in that big pool of dark blood, surrounded by that awful arrangement of chocolate chip cookies, his wife’s lifeless body cradled in his arms. The guy was rocking and sobbing, his face wet with tears and contorted with grief.

Patti.
God.
Nate didn’t want to believe it.

She was the mother of the group. The one who made sure they all ate. The one who made sure they were wearing clean clothes. The one who made sure there was always beer in the fridge and beef jerky in the cabinets. She was the cool voice of rationality when too much testosterone inevitably had heads getting hot and mouths running hotter.

And now she was gone.

In the blink of an eye, and one madman’s careless barrage of bullets, her sweet light was extinguished forever.

“Sonofabitch!” he cursed and scrubbed a hand over his moist eyes.

What the hell was she doing by the gatehouse anyway? Everyone was supposed to stay secured inside until he and Ali and the damned zip drive were safely back in the shop and they—

“Where do’y’think you’re goin’?” he pointed his .45 at Mystery Man as the guy took a step down the road.

“The second gunman is getting away,” Mystery Man rasped as he raised his hands, palm out. Purple bruises were already popping out around the guy’s abused throat.

“He’s already gone, man,” Nate told him, refusing to lower his weapon, still unsure just whose side ol’ Mr. Mystery was playing on. In the gun battle, he’d been on the side of the Knights, but that didn’t mean the man was gonna stay there. “You know that as well as I do.”

“But I might—”

“Nuh-uh. You’re not leavin’ my sight until we figure out just what the hell is goin’ on here, and just who the hell you are.”

Mystery Man’s split, swollen lips twisted into a dark grimace. “Well, I’m Dagan Zoelner, former CIA. And as for what’s going on here? I think I might be able to shed a little light on that.”

Chapter Eighteen

Ali sat on a hard folding chair in the conference room at Black Knights Inc., watching dazedly while Ozzie connected the zip drive to one of his computers.

She felt like she was dreaming. She
had
to be dreaming.

The past two hours weren’t real, were they?

She hadn’t really been in the middle of an all-out gunfight, lovable Patti wasn’t really dead, the gatehouse guard wasn’t really in the middle of a grueling surgery with very little chance of survival, and the Chicago Police Department wasn’t really covering up the whole thing and calling it a “gang-related” incident—via the strict instructions of someone
very
high up in the national government.

As she glanced around at the grim faces of Nate, Frank, Ozzie, and Mystery Man/Dagan Zoelner, she shook her head. She couldn’t deny that,
yes
, this
was
reality. She
had
been in a gunfight, Patti
was
dead, the CPD
had
covered it all up, and Manus—she’d learned the guard was Big Red’s brother—
was
having the damage to his chest repaired right at this very moment.

This very
real
moment.

To make matters worse, if that was even possible, she was about to find out if her brother really had stolen highly classified files to sell on the black market, as former Agent Zoelner claimed.

“We’re in,” Ozzie announced, his broad, agile fingers flying over the keyboard. “Looks like a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and a…wait…there seems to be a video file.”

“Play it,” Frank grumbled, rotating one heavy shoulder and grimacing. “Maybe it’ll tell us just what the fuck this has all been about.”

She glanced up at the big man. His rough face was lined with grief and worry, but he seemed to be holding it together. Despite the horrific tragedy of the last few hours, despite the fact that there might be more terrible tragedy to come if Manus died on the operating table and they learned Grigg really
had
turned traitor, he was holding it together remarkably well.

She supposed that’s what hard men like him did in tough situations.

They held it all together so folks like her could go on living the American Dream. Free and peaceful and…so oblivious.

For some reason, the thought struck her as particularly awful and that, combined with a horrid flash of Patti lying pale and lifeless in a huge puddle of blood and chocolate chip cookies, had her suddenly fighting the urge to puke.

She’d never eat a chocolate chip cookie ever,
ever
again. Just the thought…

“Erp,” she put two fingers to her mouth as she searched the room.

There was a plastic trash can over by the door to Frank’s office, wasn’t there? So if she had to spew, she thought she could just about make it to…

Oh, crapola.

She wasn’t thinking of blood or chocolate chip cookies or plastic trash cans or
anything
any longer, because her lovable brother’s face popped up on Ozzie’s huge monitor and the breath froze in her lungs like two solid blocks of ice. The blood in her veins ran cold as goose bumps pebbled her skin.

“Hey, Ozzie,” Grigg said, the sound of his wonderfully familiar voice choking her.

“Breathe, Ali,” Nate’s strong fingers squeezed her trembling shoulder. “Just breathe, sugar.”

Yeah, breathing was good, especially so that
something
would continue to function while her heart was breaking all over again and bleeding out onto her already unreliable stomach.

“Good job on breaking my code,” Grigg continued, his marvelous face looking just as she remembered it. Handsome, dependable, a little bit ornery…Okay, a
lot
ornery. “Not that it was too much of a stretch for you, I’m sure,” he chuckled, and the sweet sound was like a sharp arrow to her aching heart and crumbling control.

“So,” Grigg’s video image leaned closer to the screen and she caught her breath, “if you’re watching this, it means Ghost is there with you. Hi, buddy,” he waved.

“Jesus,” Nate muttered, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“And I’m probably dead.” Grigg’s image grimaced, his nose doing that wonderful wrinkly thing Ali so loved. “Sorry about that.”

“Christ, man,” Nate choked and turned away, and that was the last straw for Ali. The tears that’d been hovering spilled over to streak, hot and salty, down her cheeks.

A handkerchief suddenly appeared in her hands. She used it to assert a small measure of control over her leaking face.

“Anyway…” Grigg persisted. “I guess that means the shit has hit the fan, you’ve found out about my little off-the-books assignment, and Ali remembered this zip drive that arrived at her house at an unusual time.

“So, let me see if I can clear some things up. I got a call yesterday from Special Agent Delaney of the FBI. I, uh, I met him a while back when Wild Bill and I infiltrated that loony religious sect that was cooking more meth than a thousand-unit trailer park. You remember, Nate? He’s the one I told you about. The one who liked to wear Prada sunglasses and Gucci loafers?”

“Shit,” Nate spat, and Ozzie hit pause on the video as the group gathered around the monitor turned toward Nate. He raked an agitated hand over his face, the bristles on his chin sounding like sandpaper against his rough palm. “I didn’t remember the name Delaney ’cause Grigg always referred t’the guy as GQ.”

“What do you remember now?” Frank urged, gray eyes bloodshot but fiercely alert.

“Nothin’ much,” Nate shook his head regretfully, cursing under his breath. “Just that Grigg was as impressed with the guy’s skill as he was with his fashion sense.”

“Hmph,” Frank grunted, obviously supremely
un
impressed with any man who gave a fig for fashion. As a group, they turned back to the computer screen. Ozzie restarted the video.

“…So Delaney calls me and says he’s got a job only I can do since he can’t trust anyone in his own office or any of the other alphabet soup outfits. He says it’s crucial I don’t reveal the mission to anyone, even to you guys. Claims it’s highly dangerous and there are elements at play he can’t control and he wants to restrict the danger to as few folks as possible. Now,” Grigg shook his head and grinned his wonderful, devil-may-care grin, “I know you’re all cursing me right now, but Delaney wouldn’t have tapped me if he wasn’t in a real bind, which,” Grigg’s grin twisted into another grimace, “turns out he is…uh,
was
. Shit, I’ll get to that part later.

“So anyway, I agreed to the job and met Delaney yesterday evening in DC. There he tells me he suspects a certain senator, a Mr. Alan Aldus, has been selling illegal weapons to some pretty extreme Pakistani tribesmen—big no-no in anyone’s book. Only up to this point, Delaney hasn’t been able to get the evidence he needs to have the good senator arrested. Long story short, Delaney got his hands on Senator Aldus’s computer password and the codenames for the files of the weapons sales. He needed me to go in during the senator’s shindig last night under the guise of a bullet-catcher and copy the files. And no, Ozzie, the senator’s system couldn’t be hacked from the outside. I specifically asked Delaney that question. I also asked him why he didn’t just do it himself, and he started acting all spooked and shit, said he was convinced the senator was on to him and there were folks within his own agency who knew about the deal and were covering for Aldus. Delaney said he was being watched, followed. You know, your typical government-employee paranoia. Still, I was impressed with the guy’s skills in New Mexico, so I agreed to help him and we shook hands and parted ways.

“The job was simple, went off without a hitch. Then, after the party, Delaney failed to show at the drop, and what do you know? Come to find out, the guy’s dead. Supposedly fell asleep at the wheel and dunked his car in the river,” Grigg rolled his beautiful brown eyes.

“Now here I am stuck with my thumb up my butt. I have no clue who I should send these files to. Obviously this thing goes deep and is dangerous as hell, considering Delaney’s convenient sleep apnea episode. I don’t know who’s involved, but it’s gotta be some folks pretty high up. On top of all that, Ghost, you and I are tasked to fly out to Istanbul at oh-three-hundred, which is,” Grigg glanced at his watch, “in exactly two flippin’ hours.