Hell on Wheels (18 page)

He loved her.

Bam!
as Emeril would say.

He loved her like he’d never loved anyone or anything in his whole sorry life and wasn’t that a giant
fuck
you
from the universe?

Because it changed nothing.

She could never be his. Not in a million years. Because, and it was as simple and as horrible as this, nothing could change the fact that he’d killed her brother.

Goddamn
fucking
sucking
hell!
He wanted to scream at the injustice of it all, give the morbidly unfair universe a double middle-finger salute. Instead, he shook his head and muttered, “I wish…I wish…”

He wished so many things he didn’t even know where to start.

“Yeah,” she saved him from having to finish, “me too.”

And as he stared into her soft, luminous eyes, he thought maybe he believed her. “Let’s do this thing, huh?” she murmured, and for a moment he was arrested.

Do what? Finally admit they…

“Let’s get the zip drive and get the heck out of here.”

Yep. Right. Good idea, lest he break down in tears and declare his love.

And wouldn’t that shock the hell out of her? Nate “Ghost” Weller, or as Ozzie liked to call him, Mr. Emotionless, losing it, sobbing like a baby, and professing undying amour?

She’d probably think he’d gone completely crazy, and she wouldn’t be far off the mark. That was the really sad thing.

He took a deep, steadying breath as he watched her reverently lift the lid to the trunk.

He just had to keep it together for a few more minutes and then they’d be out and on their way. The sooner the better. Not only was he moments away from blubbering like a baby and pouring his heart out, but his unease was growing with each ticking second.

And then the ticking seconds no longer mattered because time stood still.

Grigg…

The first thing to meet Nate’s eyes was the picture taped to the inside lid of the trunk.

“God, I miss him,” she breathed, running one slender finger down Grigg’s photographed face.

Riiippp.
His heart split right down the middle. He was surprised the sound didn’t rent the air.

Sweet. Jesus. This was hell. Forget his irradiated blue balls. Forget his unease about this whole goddamned, goatfucked situation. Forget he was in love with the one woman on the entire planet destined to never be his, because…there was Grigg. Looking like Grigg usually looked.

Even pinned down in the middle of a godforsaken jungle, enemy fire shredding the foliage around them, Grigg’d worn that same devil-may-care expression. Face split wide in a silly grin as infectious as the common cold. The stupid sonofabitch had loved life. All aspects of it.

“Do you miss him?” Ali asked, her voice husky. “Sorry that’s a stupid question. You were closer to him than any of us. Of course you miss him.”

“I knew ’im better than any of you, perhaps,” he was quick to correct her. “But he was closest to you, Ali. You were his heart. And I miss him every goddamned day.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, giving Grigg’s photographed face one last caress. “Yeah, me too.

Ali couldn’t breathe.

It had nothing to do with the heavy Kevlar vest she wore beneath her jacket and everything to do with the air inside the tree house. It was stiflingly close. Filled with too many memories, too much grief and regret.

She had to get out. Now.

Quickly digging to the bottom of the trunk, she pulled out a plastic bag filled with zip drives. Indelible ink listed the dates she’d received them. She found the one dated one week before her life was changed forever and handed it to Nate.

He stared blankly at the thing for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe everything they’d been going through could actually come down to this innocuous little piece of plastic. Then he carefully slipped the zip drive inside his deep jacket pocket.

She turned to push the trunk back into place, frantic to get out, but he stopped her, taking her hand and curling his warm fingers over hers.

Whatever differences they had, whatever hurts and humiliations had passed between them, nothing changed the fact that they’d both loved Grigg like crazy. They were both still bleeding out from the deep, ragged wound of Grigg’s death.

She glanced up into his handsome face and saw understanding and compassion there…and something more. Something she didn’t understand.

Whatever it was, it made her hopeful and scared and…and…

Oh cripes. She had to get out. She couldn’t think straight anymore. Maybe it was the exhaustion or the fear, but she thought…just for a second…

She shook her head. She didn’t know what she thought.

Giving him a tight smile, she slipped her hand from his, and hastily pushed the trunk back into place. She scrambled toward the trapdoor, but before she got there she stopped and turned.

Here, in this safe place of childhood dreams, she had to know one more thing. “Were you with him? In the end?”

Nate’s agonized gaze snapped to her face, and there was such bleakness there it stole away her breath.

Yeah, she may’ve been Grigg’s heart. But Grigg had been
Nate’s
heart
.

Closer than brothers, her mother once remarked. And now, seeing his tortured expression, she believed it.

“Yes.” His voice was gritty as sandpaper, the muscle in his jaw working overtime.

“Was there a lot of pain? Did he suffer?” God, she didn’t know why she was asking
that
.

Of
course
there was pain.
Of
course
he suffered. He’d been
tortured
.

“Yes,” Nate whispered and the flinch of one eyelid was the only indication of what it cost him to admit as much to her.

It was only one word, harshly spoken, but when she thought about it, she realized that one word revealed a hundred things. A hundred terrible, horrible things.

Good
heavens, Grigg, I’m so sorry. So incredibly sorry.

She’d always known her brother wouldn’t go easy, but to hear it confirmed was almost more than she could bear. Dragging in the musty, familiar smell of the tree house, she blew out a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay.”

She dipped her head again when Nate hesitated, giving her a hard, searching look. “Let’s go. I’m all right.”

He ground his jaw, obviously unsure what to do, then he sighed heavily and turned to lift the trapdoor.

She watched him quickly and dexterously clamber down the rope ladder, and furiously dashed away a rebellious tear. She would not saddle him with a blubbering woman when he’d done the one thing she’d asked of him…namely, he’d given her the inexplicably, horrendously, unvarnished truth.

Then his big black biker boots silently hit the soft earth beneath the oak, and she no longer had to dash away tears. They dried quicker than a desert wind when he held up a fisted hand.

Even if she hadn’t been trained by Grigg, she’d watched enough movies to know what that particular hand gesture meant. It meant hold still and stay absolutely quiet. It meant something had spooked Nate “Ghost” Weller, and that really scared the crap out of her.

Awful seconds ticked by like hours, and her already frayed nerves wound as tight as a metal spring.

She never thought she’d say it, but right at this moment she actually
missed
the comfort of Nate’s reserve weapon in her hands. As soon as they got back on Phantom, she’d ask him to hand over the little Colt.

And wow, would you look at what a turn her life had taken?

Thirty-six hours after running to Nate, and she was downright itchy without the solid weight of a handgun in her waistband. Maybe by tomorrow morning she’d be sporting bandoliers and a red bandana. She could give Ozzie a run for his money in the Rambo impersonation department.

They
drew
first
blood, not me
…She tried it out in her head and decided Ozzie was probably a lot more convincing.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Nate glanced up, black eyes piercing the darkness like lasers. He nodded his head, never relaxing his steady grip on his matte-black weapon. Despite his reassurance, she gave the surroundings one more solid scan before she scrambled down the rope ladder.

She barely touched good ol’ terra firma before he was urging her forward across the lawn.

“What is it?” she whispered, nervously trying to peer into dark corners and through the dense foliage of her parents’ hedges.

By way of answer, he merely shook his head, eyes darting around the same corners and bushes.

A chill rushed down her spine like the cold fingers of a wraith. It was the only warning she received before the subtle creaking of the gate’s hinges was broken by a strangely harsh spitting sound.

Nate grunted and yelled, “Run!” as he pushed her through the opening.

She didn’t need to be told twice.

She bolted across her parents’ front yard, her legs doing a fairly good impression of the Roadrunner when the frighteningly loud
boom
boom
boom
of Nate’s .45 split the serene silence of the night and the comfort of the sleepy, middle class neighborhood. Turning just in time to see a large black shadow stumble backward into her parents’ side yard—
Hey! That looks a lot like my mugger!
—she was once more propelled forward as Nate grabbed her by the elbow.

“Don’t stop,” he hissed.

Was he kidding?

Stopping was the dead last thing on her mind.

Porch lights were snapping on, and the neighborhood dogs were barking their canine heads off by the time the two of them skidded to a breathless stop beside Phantom. In one smooth move, Nate swung astride the mean looking motorcycle and started its enormous engine with a grumbling roar.

Ali clambered up behind him and in the next instant they were zooming down the no longer sleepy, suburban street, struggling into their helmets as they headed for the highway and the relative safety of the open road.

***

Dagan scrambled around the corner of the little clapboard house and stood over the man Nathan Weller had shot mere seconds before.

No mistaking it: the dude was dead.

The two neat holes centered over the guy’s heart and the one smack-dab between his eyes—Mozambique style—were evidence enough without the repulsively permeating aroma of shit. As if being dead wasn’t humiliating enough, it wasn’t unusual for one to suffer a final indignity and fill the ol’ drawers.

Mmm, lovely. Just lovely.

Dagan breathed through his mouth as he bent to quickly search the corpse’s pockets.

Nothing.

No surprise there. Only a two-bit idiot would bring identification to a hit. And that’s certainly what it had been.

Dagan had been sneaking around the corner of the Morgans’ house just in time to see a big black shadow pull a Walther P22 with a six-inch silencer from behind his back. The hard spit of the silenced bullet had sounded obscene in the quiet solitude of the quaint little backyard.

Dagan dove for cover and missed Weller’s split second reaction, but there was no mistaking the hard bark of an angry .45. Nor was there any mistaking the fact that Weller was a much better shot than ol’ No Name here.

Bleck. What a stench.

Breathing through his mouth only made matters worse. He was starting to
taste
the fetid air seeping up from the lifeless body, and what he wouldn’t give for a nice shot of Scotch right about now.

He used his penlight to lift Stinky’s ski mask and cataloged the Italianesque features it revealed. Tan skin, black hair, brown eyes that’d yet to lose their brilliance in death. A nose that’d been broken a time or two and one front tooth that was pure, fourteen-carat gold.

Stinky looked like a hoodlum, that was for sure. But a well-paid hoodlum if the sparkly two-carat diamond in the guy’s ear was anything to go by.

Taking his cell phone from his breast pocket, he snapped the dead man’s picture and then quickly slunk back into the shadows.

What
the
hell
is
going
on?

Flaming hell, he
still
hadn’t a clue.

Although there was one thing he was now 100 percent convinced of, if this was an old Western, Aldus would be the one black-hatting it. There was no mistaking this guy was the same man who’d attempted to mug Ms. Morgan—he’d recognize that no-necked sonofabitch anywhere—and he’d take two to one odds that whoever this reeking dead dude was, his paycheck was signed by one Alan Aldus.

Which meant the good senator was now desperate.

And there was nothing scarier than a desperate man with the power and resources of the U.S. government at his disposal.

The sound of one badass Harley firing up down the block had Dagan hurrying to his rented SUV.

***

“What about my parents? That guy…that guy could go in there and…” She couldn’t even finish the thought much less the sentence. They’d been on the highway for five minutes with Ali’s stomach firmly lodged in the middle of her throat before continuous swallowing finally got the sucker back down to where it belonged and she was able to ask the question.

“No. He won’t,” Nate assured her.

“But if he’s after the zip drive, he might think Mom and Dad—”

“He’s not thinkin’ ’bout anything anymore, Ali. I promise y’that.”

“Oh,” she said, then “
Oh!
” when realization dawned.

Okay, so the man was dead.

Nate had killed a man right in front of her…er, right behind her.

Good heavens, she didn’t even know how to feel about that. What in the world was happening? How had her life spun so far out of control?

“Who…who was it? He-he looked a lot like the guy who tried to mug me,” she said, refusing to think of the wife or kids who might be waiting at home for the man. If she started down that path, she’d go crazy.

“I don’t know who it was. Never seen him before, but I wouldn’t doubt he’s the same dude who tried to snatch your purse,” his voice was even more gravelly than usual. “Only this time, he wasn’t after your handbag.”

Her stomach began a steady climb back up into her throat, so she swallowed and tried again. “Was he…was he working for the government, do you think? Did we just kill a…” she choked.

“No,” he assured her firmly. “I know a trained operative when I see one. This guy was nothin’ more’n a two-bit hit man.”

“A hit man?” she squeaked. “How do you know?”

“The big gun he pointed at us with its six-inch suppressor was my first clue.”

“Suppressor?”

“Silencer.”

Good.
Heavens
.

A silencer. People really used silencers.

Well, of course they do
, she chided herself. Especially if those people were
hit
men. “Who would send a hit man after us?”

Her question was met with stony, resounding silence. All she could hear was the harsh sound of her too-fast breathing and the rhythmic rush of blood pounding through her ears.

“Nate?” she finally prodded, squeezing her eyes closed as they leaned into a hairpin turn.

“Don’t know,” he finally replied, shifting gears until Phantom was literally roaring, eating up the asphalt like a two-wheeled demon. And not knowing was obviously causing him some concern if the labored tone of his voice was anything to go by. “But one thing’s certain,” he added, “someone wants us dead.”

“
Dead?
” she screeched.

Of course, she should’ve made the connection before. Hit men didn’t generally pass out snow cones and helium balloons, now did they? But her mind was working a little slowly, and the thought of someone actually trying to kill her was so foreign she was having trouble grasping it.

“But…but…” she was shaking her head and fighting not to panic.

This was not her life. This couldn’t be her life.

“How do you know he was trying to kill us?” she beseeched him, willing him to tell her it was all a horrible joke. “Maybe…maybe he was just sent to scare us or something. After all, that CIA guy had a chance to kill us at Delilah’s, and he didn’t. How do you know this guy wasn’t going to do the same? How do you know he wasn’t—”

Her stomach was no longer in her throat. Heck no. Now it was spinning around like a whirligig, and…yeah…she was going to hurl. No stopping it this time.

A gurgling sound emanated from the back of her throat.

“Goddamnit!” Nate swore. “Can y’puke while in motion, or do we need t’pull over?”

She couldn’t answer him. Not when she was busy leaning over the side of the speeding bike, lifting her visor, and projectile vomiting.

Well huh, what do you know? It appeared she
could
puke while in motion.

And lucky for her—if anything about this whole disastrous situation could be considered lucky—she managed to miss both her leg and Nate’s. She couldn’t speak for the fate of the back tire, though.

Saliva pooled thick and hot in her mouth as she watched the guardrail zoom past.

“You okay?” Nate asked, his voice strangely discordant.