Hell for Leather: Black Knights Inc. (22 page)

Her pale lids fluttered open. Her eyes impossibly green in the lamplight spilling across the bed.

He wasn’t sure she was fully awake, but she turned in his arms, eagerly offering her lips. He took them like the heartless, ravenous bastard he was…

***

Delilah would say this for the man, he was certainly thorough.

She’d fallen asleep on him twice, and twice he awakened her to wild positions and mind-blowing sex that shattered her psyche and decimated her body. He’d bent her over the bed, forcefully thrusting into her from behind while his fingers did things to her clitoris that made her scream. He’d had her on her knees, murmuring titillating commands to her on just how she should suck him, stroke him, cup him. He’d even taken her up against the wall, heaving into her over and over and
over
again until she shattered into a million tiny pieces and couldn’t remember her own name, much less his.

What wonderful delights would he show her next?

Without opening her eyes, she reached for him, her outstretched fingers searching the rumpled sheets next to her. The linens were cool, and…empty…

She bolted upright, pushing her hair from her eyes. A quick glance told her two things. One, she’d been asleep for a while because the sun was sliding toward the western horizon, sending tendrils of golden light through the slats of the aluminum blinds, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the air. And two, Mac wasn’t in the room.

“Mac?” she called quietly, her heart giving her rib cage a quick kick. She ignored it. He was just in the bathroom.

Mmm.
Sex in the shower. That was one they hadn’t tried yet. Water, slippery soap, their bodies slapping together. Yes. She could go for some of that.

Sliding from the bed, she smiled at the little twinges and aches that were proof her body had been well-used, well-loved. Bending to grab her panties and T-shirt from where they’d fallen to the floor—fallen? More like been
hurled
—the memory of his fervor caused a shiver to race up her spine. She hoped he’d be just as anxious to undress her again. With a little giggle, she shimmied into the garments.

“Mac?” she called again, padding to the bathroom, knocking hesitantly on the partially closed door. It squeaked open under the pressure of her knuckles, revealing…nothing. Just the standard motel shower, sink, and toilet. But no Mac.

No Mac…

It was then she realized. True to his word, he’d given her one gloriously decadent afternoon. And that was it. Done. Finished.
Over.

She slumped against the doorjamb, biting her lip as tears instantly filled her eyes. Thoughts spun through her head like tornados, threatening to destroy everything in their path. That ball of broken glass was back, tearing at her lungs, scraping against her heart, shredding her until the sob she held at the back of her throat broke through.

The sound was pathetic, even to her own ears. Desperate. Devastated.

You
made
the
bargain
, the voice whispered.

But
that
was
before
I
realized
I
loved
him!
she argued in her own defense, then covered her mouth with a shaky hand because she knew that wasn’t true.

She’d known she loved him. Hell, if she was honest with herself, she’d known she loved him for years…

In fact, she’d fallen in love with his chin dimple and crooked nose the very first time she laid eyes on him. A few months later, when Ozzie told some raunchy joke and he tossed back his head, belly laughing, she’d fallen in love with the crinkles at the corner of his eyes. Then there was the day he valiantly came to the rescue of a woman whose husband was pushing her around out in the alley behind the bar, and she’d fallen in love with his courage. Fast forward to just a few months ago, when he held her close after she lost Buzzard, and she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with his compassion.

Yes. From the beginning, she’d loved him.

And
now
I
have
to
live
with
it
being…over.

She glanced wearily at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were red and shiny, her hair a rat’s nest of tangles. The skin around her mouth was pink from Mac’s whiskers and…what was that? She pushed away from the doorjamb, leaning against the sink as she turned her head to the side, examining the skin on her neck. A love bite. Just a small one. But it was a reminder of how well, how
thoroughly
he’d taken her. Made her his in every which way.

A reminder… A memory…

It was all she had now. And it would have to do.

She was Delilah Fairchild, after all. The ass-kicking, Harley-riding, shotgun-toting beer-slinger-from-hell. What was a little heartbreak to a woman like her?

“Everything,” she admitted to her reflection, wiping at the tears slipping down her cheeks and dropping from her chin. “It’s everything. But you can’t let him know.”

Because she’d promised there would be no strings, no hurt feelings. And if she couldn’t keep her word, the least she could do was never show him how much she suffered.

So
toughen
up, buttercup
, she scolded herself, sniffling and pressing a hand to the ache in the center of her chest. Shaking out her hair, she forced herself to take a deep, cleansing breath, and turned on the faucet. In the middle of splashing cold water on her face, she jumped when the CIA agent tasked with guarding the rear of the motel tapped on the large frosted window positioned behind the toilet.

“May I have a glass of water?” he called, his voice hoarse and slightly muffled.

Poor guy. He’d been out there in the sun all afternoon. He was probably about to shrivel up and die.

Out there all afternoon…

Her cheeks flamed when it occurred to her that he might have heard
everything
that been happening inside the motel room, that whoever was positioned at the front had probably heard it, too. She wasn’t known for being a quiet lover, after all. And Mac had been nearly as vocal. Growling, groaning, yelling in triumph during orgasm like he’d just won an Olympic race or something.

“Well that’s just
great
,” she muttered to herself, embarrassed, wondering how she’d ever look any of these people in the eye again. I mean, really. What must they think of her? Her uncle was missing. Nuclear warheads were about to fall into the hands of terrorists. And what was she doing? Yep. You guessed it. She was getting her groove on. Getting her groove on and getting her heart broken all at the same time.

Pathetic. Deplorable. Unfor—

Tap. Tap.
She could just make out the shadow of a hand knocking against the glass. “Just a second!” she called, bending to grab one of the plastic drinking cups from the shelf beneath the sink. Unwrapping it from its hygienic covering, she filled it with cold water before reaching to unlatch the window. It was a bit tough. The windowpane having been painted a few times. But it finally gave way and she threw up the sash.

“Here you g—”

That’s all she managed before a hand grabbed her wrist, yanking her forward. Her forehead slammed into the window sash, causing stars to dance in her field of vision. She was half hanging out the window, her knees atop the toilet tank, the cup having fallen from her hand to bounce on the ground below. In confusion, she watched it land atop Agent Wallace…

He was lying in the dirt beneath the window, his lifeless gaze staring vacantly into the sky above—a look that chilled her to the bone as it instantly reminded her of Buzzard—blood pooling beneath his head from the giant gash flaying his throat open in a gruesome, macabre smile. His foot was twitching. She didn’t know why she should notice such a thing in the split second it took her to open her mouth to scream, but she did. She saw it. That awful, twitching foot. She heard it. That terrible scuffling sound it made against the ground.

Then…pain. White-hot agony. It exploded at the base of her skull. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a familiar set of brown Timberlands, felt the brutal bite of terror as it sank its sharp fangs into her galloping heart. The second blow to her head cut off the cry lodged at the back of her throat. And then…lights out…

Mac was a coward.

That’s all there was to it. Because he’d wanted to stay with her while she slept. Hold her in his arms. Pet her. Kiss her. Watch her dream…

But he couldn’t. He
had
fallen…just a little. And he didn’t dare risk it. He was too
afraid
to risk it.

On the other hand, it’d been nearly three hours since he slunk from her room like the lily-livered cur that he was, and that probably meant she’d be waking up soon. He couldn’t stand the thought of that, of her rolling over to discover his dastardly desertion.

Yes, he was determined to stick to his guns, to let their dalliance end here, today. But that didn’t mean she deserved to be treated like some nameless, faceless hook-up. Like some woman he’d taken home from the bar only to ghost out on her in the middle of the night. Because she
wasn’t
that. She was so much more. She
deserved
so much more, so much
better
from him.

Christ
almighty, what the hell was I thinking?

“Ozzie!” he barked. The guy was down at the end of the building, filling a bucket with ice from the machine. “Come take my place, will you? I need to talk to Delilah.”

“Talk?” Ozzie snorted, sauntering toward him. “Yeah. By my count, this will be the, uh,
fifth
time you guys have…
talked
.”

“I’m serious,” Mac growled. “And remember what I told you I’d do to you if you tell her you heard us?”

“Oh, I remember,” Ozzie said, eyeing him askance. “The imagery of your description is sure to give me nightmares for years.”

“Excellent.” Mac winked, lifting his hand to the knob of the Noel Motel’s room number four. He was stopped from turning it when Agent Duvall burst from her room, running to rap hard knuckles against Steady’s door. She turned and pounded on the door of the room Fitzsimmons and Wallace shared before marching over to Mac. Instantly, his operator senses were on high alert.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Let’s wait until…ah,” she said when Fitzsimmons poked his head out of his room followed quickly by Steady down the way. “Good. Come join us, gentlemen.”

“What’s going on?” Zoelner said, wrenching open the door beside them, wiping sleep from his eyes.

“We’ve got a lead,” Agent Duvall announced, her gaze bright with excitement. Mac felt all the cells in his body slow down and come to attention. A lead… Those two beautiful words still spoke to his Federal Agent heart. “We found footage of Hasan and al-Hallaj buying cell phones from a store up near Thunder Bay, Ontario. We got the model and product numbers from the receipt. Now we’re talking with the phone company to try to determine which wireless numbers are assigned to those particular phones.”

“And once you know the numbers, you can monitor when that device pings local cell towers, thereby allowing you to triangulate their locations,” Ozzie said.

“Exactly.” The agent nodded.

“And now?” Mac asked, his eyes darting to Delilah’s door.

“And now we wait for the numbers.”

Wait. He was usually a patient man, but when it came to an op, he hated the word
wait
. Huffing out a sigh, he immediately thought,
oh, sweet Jesus.
Because he could still smell her on his breath, still taste her on his tongue. Swallowing, he glanced around, wondering if anyone else noticed that he was absolutely covered, head-to-toe, in Delilah Fairchild. Delicious, delightful, delectable Delilah Fairchild…

“You want to be the one to tell her?” Chelsea asked, nodding toward the baby-blue door. “While you’re doing that, I’ll run around back and alert Wallace to the progress.”

Dipping his chin in acknowledgment of Chelsea’s plan, he stepped up to Delilah’s door, waiting to push it open until the group dispersed. He’d left her naked, sated, and sprawled atop the mattress, her plump ass—and that wonderfully kissable tattoo inked above it—there for all the world to see. And, call him crazy, or territorial, or…yeah, just crazy, but he wanted what they shared, the glory of her nudity, to be his and his alone.

Can you say
dangerous
thinking
, boys and girls?

Shaking his head at himself, he stepped into the room, blinking against the gloom in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the setting sun outside. The instant his eyes adjusted, he noted her absence from the bed. The sheets were rumpled and messy, proof of her presence, of
their
presence—
Lord
almighty, what an afternoon
. But
she
was gone.

Shit.
She
had
woken up to find him missing. He
had
subjected her to that particular humiliation. Someone should definitely kick his ass. And, no joke, he volunteered to be first in line.

“Delilah,” he called, marching toward the bathroom. “We’ve got some good news. Agent Duvall—”

A loud gasp sounded from the bathroom, followed by a whimpering kind of squeak. He threw open the door, only to find the space…empty.

Huh?
Then where had the sounds—

The window. It was open.

He was across the bathroom in two steps, placing his palms on the windowsill in order to lean out. The first thing he saw was the pint-sized CIA agent. She was holding one hand to her mouth, her eyes trained on the ground in front of her.

Mac glanced down. “Son of a goddamned
bitch!
” he roared, instinctively reaching into his waistband for his sidearm, his heart growing teeth and trying to gnaw its way through his breastbone. Wallace’s inert, bloody form lay in the dirt, staring unseeingly at the sky above. And Delilah was…
gone
.

***

Qasim stood at the entrance to the cave, his eyes searching the twilight gloom of dense woods beyond. “Where are you, Haroun?” he said into his cell phone. “I do not see you.”

“I am coming,
habibi
,” Haroun grunted. “Almost there. The woman is heavier than she looks.”

Qasim’s heart beat with wild anticipation. When Haroun called earlier to tell him he’d captured the woman, Qasim tempered his excitement. Much could happen on the hour-long drive from Delilah Fairchild’s motel to the spot they’d chosen as their secondary location. And he’d learned over the years not to get his hopes up.

But now Haroun was calling to say he’d made it, and Qasim allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief, to experience this crystalline moment of joy. Because, finally,
finally
, after all these years, it was beginning to look like he would have his revenge. It was beginning to look like he would, indeed, discover the location of the nuclear weapons. And then, he would sit back and watch American cities burn…

The anticipation sent a thrill skittering along his nerves, heightened his senses, intensified his breathing. People liked to believe love was the strongest of human emotions. But Qasim knew better. It was hate.
Hate
was the strongest. It was
hate
that had fueled him for more than a decade. He felt its powerful pull much more than he ever felt the pull of love for his wife and children. And someday, hopefully someday soon, he’d sit by his television and watch as all his hatred was made real by the countless deaths of the wives and children and brothers and sisters and husbands of capitalist pigs. He’d sit and—

There. Through the trees…

Qasim blew out his pent-up breath when Haroun stepped into the small clearing in front of the secluded cave. Even in the waning light, he could see that the man looked terrible. Blood stained Haroun’s Western-style T-shirt. His hair was a mess. His face filthy with dust and sweat. But there was a smile curving his lips when he slapped a hand against the panty-clad bottom of the unconscious woman draped over his left shoulder.

“Did I not tell you this was our chance?” Haroun said. Qasim could hear his voice through the cellular connection but also across the short distance. He thumbed off the device and shoved it into his pants pocket. “Did I not say trust in Allah and all would be well?”

“You did indeed, brother.” He squeezed Haroun’s shoulder when his second-in-command pulled even. He glanced down at the limp, scantily dressed woman and spotted the small patch of blood matting the back of her head. He raised a brow. “You hit her?” he asked as they carefully made their way inside the cave, moving toward the lamplight dancing at the back.

“I had to act fast. But, rest assured, she isn’t too badly hurt. We can revive her with the smelling salts.” Smelling salts…a standard component of any torture arsenal. After all, pain didn’t work nearly as well when the one being tortured was unconscious.

Haroun grunted when his ankle turned on a loose stone. Qasim reached out to steady his second-in-command. In doing so, his hand brushed against Delilah Fairchild’s soft hip. Curiosity…and lust…stirred at the contact. His lips curved into an anticipatory smile as it occurred to him that perhaps his initial plan of holding a gun to Miss Fairchild’s head in order to get Theo to talk wasn’t necessarily the most expedient course of action. After all, forcing someone to watch the rape of a loved one was not only a tried and true method of information gathering, but also there were times when it was
more
powerful and motivating than the promise of death…

They made their way into the small circle of light cast by the kerosene lanterns and Qasim found everything just as he’d left it. Theodore was on the ground, his back propped against a wet boulder, his broken leg stretched out in front of him. With his hands tied behind his back and his head bent forward—he’d been losing consciousness often from shock and loss of blood—the old Marine couldn’t see their approach. But soon…soon he’d understand Qasim was a man of his word.

Sami and Jabbar stood on either side of Theodore. Jabbar munched on an apple, his blackened eye having turned an angry purple, and Sami sucked down a can of Coca-Cola through a striped straw. Both smiled widely when they laid eyes on the nearly naked woman. It was obvious that they, too, had ideas about how the interrogation should proceed from this point on.

Haroun bent to carefully lay the redhead on the ground and Qasim sucked in a startled breath. Because she was even more beautiful from the front. Ripe, round breasts. Even, lovely features. His cock swelled inside his trousers.

Yes
, he rubbed his hands together,
this
could
be
quite
fun.

Jabbar tossed away his apple, stepping forward to hand Haroun a handkerchief to be used as a gag and a plastic zip tie to be used on the woman’s wrists. Haroun applied both, then glanced up at Qasim. “Shall we begin?”

Oh, yes.
Qasim was very,
very
ready to begin. With his blood running hot, he smiled at his men and nodded. “Let us enjoy this first step, my friends, on the journey that will see our names immortalized…”

***

Delilah jolted from the darkness to discover her heart pounding, her brain buzzing, her lungs heaving, and her head…

Ow!

With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she reached up to touch the tender spot—

No. No, she did
not
reach up, because something was tied around her wrists. Something was tied around her wrists, and something was tied around her mouth, and—

Timberlands! The terrorist!
It all came back to her in a flash.

Her eyes flew open, but she could make no sense of her surroundings. Darkness? Dancing light? Craggy shapes?

She blinked. Trying to focus beyond the splitting ache of her head. Eventually the world snapped into view, and she could see a low rock ceiling hanging above her. Flickering yellow light created macabre little shadows in its crevices and glinted on the droplets of water occasionally falling from it. Beneath her was cold, wet stone, but she could hardly feel the chill for the hot terror burning through her blood. The smell of wet earth and bat guano filled her nose just as the dark faces of four men filled her vision.

She recognized one of them. Al-Hallaj… He’d taken her. Against all odds, against four Black Knights and three CIA agents, he’d managed to take her. It seemed impossible. And she might have thought she was in the middle of a nightmare had not the excruciating pain in her head been so unmistakably real.

Crying out when two of the men reached down to grab her shoulders, she absently noticed how the noise was muffled against the salty-tasting gag pulling the corners of her mouth tight.
Crunch!
The sound of her kneecaps slamming into the rock floor echoed in her ears a split second before her central nervous system registered the agony.

Somebody screamed. Was that her?

Her face felt hot. Were those tears?

She knew she was on her knees. Knew there were hands supporting her. Knew the air inside the cavern was cold. But she could feel none of these things. Not when her body was inundated with pain signals from every direction. Her head pounded. Her knees throbbed. Her shoulders ached from having her hands wrenched behind her back.

But all of that was nothing compared to the agony in her heart when her eyes fell on her uncle. This time she
knew
the scream that echoed around the cavern was hers. It was her uncle’s name, garbled by the gag.

Oh
God, Uncle Theo
… Her mind tried to make sense of it all, to claw through the thick, sticky cobwebs the pain and disorientation had stitched through her mind.
Uncle
Theo…

She couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive. There was so much blood. It matted his white hair and stained his shirt, dripping onto the stone floor from a cut near his temple. She couldn’t see his face. His chin was touching his chest. But the blood. So much blood. Just like that awful afternoon with Buzzard…

She screamed again, struggling against her captors, her heart like a flame, her lungs on fire. And now she knew the wetness on her face
was
tears, rivers of them. They poured from her burning eyes as she screamed over and over again, despite the sledgehammers bashing away at the back of her skull. Trying to wake Theo. Praying she
could
wake him.