In Rides Trouble (10 page)

And lastly,
yes
, she thought it was beyond tragic that the whole world thought Patti Currington had died in gang crossfire when the truth of the matter was she’d been taken down by a careless assassin who didn’t give a good goddamn which innocent people he caught with one of his stray bullets, but that’s just how it was in their business. And the fact that some nosy reporter smelled something bigger and was trying like hell to force a few jumbled pieces into some sort of order scared the life right of her, but she’d
finally
managed to find her voice.

“No, I don’t think my life is jinxed. Perhaps plagued by a string of bad luck recently, but that’s only one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is I’m extremely lucky. I’m alive and well, aren’t I?”

Miss Tate had smiled knowingly, the look in her eye enough to curdle Becky’s innards, but the woman thankfully refrained from asking any more probing questions.

“Well, if the press is eating it up,” she told Rock now, “I can only hope that means they’ll soon be full. I just want it to all go away.” She dragged in a deep breath and smiled at the familiar scents of motor oil, bad coffee, and the slightly minty, alcohol aroma that lingered in the brick walls from the building’s previous life as a menthol cigarette factory. “Oh, it’s good to be home.”

Rock smiled as they made their way down the long hall that ended with an entrance to the huge expanse of the shop. “It’s good to have ya home,
chère
.”

“Where are the others?” she asked as they pushed into the strange silence of the shop. She craned her head back to scan the open second floor where the offices and conference room were located, frowning when she found everything to be ghostly quiet.

Then a muted
thump, thump, thump
had her gaze focusing on the metal stairway, and she clapped her delight. “Peanut!” she squealed at the giant, gray cat lumbering down the staircase. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, you fat, mangy furball?”

The tomcat landed with a hard
thud
on the shop floor and meowed a loud welcome before winding his substantial self around and between her legs. He gazed up at her with soulful, yellow eyes in a scarred face only a mother could love.

Bending, she hefted him into her arms and chuckled with happiness when he fired up his motor, purring so loudly it felt like a jet engine rumbled inside his chest.

“He’s missed ya somethin’ fierce,” Rock said, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side, eyes twinkling at the sight of the two of them.

“Oh, I’ve missed him.” She buried her nose in the cat’s patchy fur and grimaced when he afforded her the rather dubious honor of his kneading nails.

“From what I hear, he walked around here for two days after you left, meowin’ incessantly and refusin’ to eat.”

She joggled Peanut, testing his rather
ample
weight. “It doesn’t appear to have had much of an impact.”

“Oh, I think he quickly realized extra helpings of Fancy Feast worked wonders on his depression.”

She chuckled, scratching Peanut under his furry chin until his yellow eyes rolled back in ecstasy. “So where is everybody?”

“Steady, Mac, and Christian are all still on assignment. Ozzie’s at some hacker-fest or geek-fest or somethin’. Ghost just got back from a mission, and when he learned you were safe and sound, he headed down to North Carolina to play househusband—if you can imagine that. Vanessa’s in DC finishin’ up a consulting job for the Agency. God only knows what dingy, disgustin’ rock Dan Man is hidin’ under. And your three heroes aren’t on site yet. They had a delay and landed at Great Lakes about an hour after you touched down at O’Hare. Their ETA is approximately…” He looked at his watch and smiled when a muffled whistle pierced the thick brick of the shop’s west wall, “right now.”

He ambled over to the large, red button mounted high up between her Craftsman ten-drawer rolling tool chest and the metal staircase leading to the second floor. After smashing it with his palm, an alarm briefly sounded, and the west wall began its laborious slide to the right.

No matter how long she worked at Black Knights Inc., she doubted she’d ever get accustomed to the eerie sight. Shades of the House of Usher.

“Why’d they come via the Bat Tunnel?” she asked, referring to the secret bolt-hole that extended from the chopper shop down under the Chicago River. It terminated in a parking garage two blocks away.

“After I saw Miss Tate grill you, I figured it best if our guys didn’t arrive home right after you’d told the story of a group of mysterious men racin’ to your rescue. Ya know, just in case the lovely Miss Tate is keepin’ her eagle eye on things, waitin’ for a juicy story to land in her lap.”

Becky shuddered. “She’s a shark. We’re gonna have to watch out for her.”

“Indeed,” Rock agreed, walking over to the lathe in order to snag the sandwich lying atop the expensive tool’s flat surface. He took a mammoth bite.

“What’ve I told you about keeping your dang sandwiches off my equipment?” she demanded, lowering Peanut to the floor so she could plant her hands on her hips.

Rock shot her a wide-eyed, innocent look that didn’t fool her for a second. She was just about lay into him for the one-hundred-and-first time concerning that particular offense when the west wall opened just enough to admit Frank’s extra-wide shoulders. She swallowed her words as she watched the Black Knights’ fearless leader slowly shuffle into the shop.

Wonderful and terrible. That’s how he looked.

Wonderful because…come on…he was
Frank
. Terrible because the bandage across his forehead was smudged with dirt, his hastily wrapped shoulder and sling were all askew and looked more like a Rube Goldberg machine than a medical device, his hair was a mess, his beard was coming in thick and black, not to mention the fact that he was pasty pale and carrying enough luggage beneath his eyes for a European vacation.

“Goddamn,
mon
frere,
just look at you.” Rock grimaced and then grinned from ear to ear. Wait for it…“You look like warmed-over, day-old dogshit.”

Aaaannnddd, there it was. The first salvo. Some things just never changed.

Nor would she want them to.

“I feel worse,” Frank grumbled, shaking the hand Rock extended to him. “So what have you heard about Sharif? Have they found him?”

Just the sound of the man’s name sent a chill streaking down her spine, and she had to remind herself she was safe. She was
home
.

“Negative,” Rock shook his head. “The ships in the area have reported no sign of the
Serendipity
, nor have they picked up anything on radar. Surveillance drones are doin’ fly-overs, but it’s a little ship out in the middle of a big ocean. It was just plain ol’ luck we were able to locate it the first time around.”

“What about Interpol?” Frank asked.

“They’ve put out an APB and sent a description of the
Serendipity
to all major ports up and down Africa’s western seaboard. Of course, if he makes it to Somalia…”

Rock didn’t need to go any further. If Sharif made the Somali coast, it was game over. They’d probably never find him. She swallowed the hard lump of fear that lodged in her throat at the thought of that man being out there…somewhere.

It
doesn’t matter
, she reminded herself.
You’re home, now. You’re safe.
And the Knights’ compound was more secure than most nuclear missile sites.

Then all thought of Sharif vanished when Frank focused his exhausted but still fierce attention on her.

“So how’d it go with the reporters?” he asked.

And that was Frank. Always on the job.

Just once she wished he’d ask her something benign, like, oh say, “Hi, Becky. How was your flight?”

But then he wouldn’t be Frank…

“It went fine,” she said, finding it incredibly difficult to hold his gaze when images of the two of them down in the
Patton
’s sick bay kept flashing before her eyes. She still thought maybe she could taste him, feel him, and she
so
longed to throw her arms around his neck and repeat the entire sordid experience. But the shuttered expression he wore all but screamed he wasn’t of a similar mind. Like Eve said, he looked less like he wanted a peek at Becky Reichert, Girl On Top Part Deux, and more like he wanted to kill her.

Could she really blame him? She’d taken advantage of him when he was hopped-up on happy pills. What kind of person did that?

Her apparently.

God, she was such an asshole, and she needed to apologize; but she couldn’t rightly do it there, in front of her colleagues and her older brother…

“Now don’t you be humble.” Rock hooked an arm around her neck and knuckled her head until she turned to glare at him. “She did great, Boss. Stuck to the script and didn’t bat a lash, despite some rather probin’ questions from Samantha Tate, I might add. We’ll make an operator outta our little Rebel yet.”

“Rock,” Frank warned, his left eye twitching, “I’m not in the mood to get into that with you right now.”

“You’re not?” Rock did a pretty convincing impression of being crushed. “And after I sat up, night after night, longin’ for the sight of your boyish puss so we could continue the discussion? Well, of all the ungrateful…”

Rock harrumphed, Frank growled, and Becky marked shot number two on the invisible scoreboard of quips she liked to keep in her head.

“Gentlemen, not that I haven’t missed your lively repartee, but I’m in desperate need of a cherry Dum Dum.” She’d run out of the suckers on the transatlantic flight, and her blood sugar had to be dropping to near critical levels. “And a long, hot shower.”

She ducked out from under Rock’s arm to stretch on tiptoe and lay a kiss on her brother’s cheek. “Thank you for coming for me,” she whispered, squeezing his shoulder and flashing him the same smile she’d flashed the day he punched that lying snake Curtis Mitchell for telling the whole school she’d gone down on him in the back of his Ford pickup truck.

“Oh sister mine,” Billy grinned, “like there was really any other option?”

No, she supposed there wasn’t. They’d been coming to each other’s rescue in one way or another their whole lives.

She hugged him tightly, and he kissed her forehead before she moved on to Angel.

“We barely know each other, and yet you risked your life to save mine. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.” She pressed one of his hands between both of hers.

“Like I said back on the destroyer, you are my friend. Aristotle once said, ‘the antidote to a thousand enemies is one good friend.’ I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Blinking back sudden tears, she went with impulse and reached up to kiss his whisker-roughened cheek before she turned to Frank. Forcing herself not to flinch as she met his intense stare, she cleared her throat before whispering. “I’m sorry I caused such trouble. Thank you for coming for me.”

A heavy muscle ticked in his jaw, but he managed a terse nod.

“I uh, I need to talk to you after I get out of the shower,” she told him, resisting the urge to lower her head and shuffle her feet. Instead, she forced herself to hold his gaze, hoping he’d see the regret in her eyes.

Another brusque nod was all the response she received.

Okay.
So, obviously he was biting his tongue lest he give her the verbal lashing she so richly deserved.

She felt miserable about her part in that whole scene down in the
Patton
’s sick bay but…geez, the least he could do was say
something
so she’d know how much groveling was required. Because right now all she could come up with was,
Uh, sorry I was on the verge of raping you, man.
And no matter how many times she turned that sentence over in her head, it just didn’t have quite the right ring.

Frank stood outside the cheery red door of the restored brownstone on North Sedgwick and experienced none of the comfort he usually gained from being there.

But God knew he couldn’t stay back at the compound…

When Becky said she wanted to talk to him after her shower, the only word that registered was
shower
, and his brain had conjured a quick slideshow of erotic images. All of which had included her, gloriously naked, sweet breasts lifted as she raised her slender arms above her head to sluice the water from her long hair. The mental picture of warm, glistening droplets running over her taut belly and sleek hips was so clear that his mouth had watered like one of Pavlov’s damn dogs, and he’d known he was too exhausted to resist the temptation she embodied.

So he’d done the cowardly thing and run here.

He rested his forehead against the cool, wooden surface of the door—the door he painstakingly painted three springs before—and called himself one hundred kinds of prick for what he allowed to happen on the
Patton
and what he wanted to happen over and over again. It went against every fiber of his being, against the very nature of the man he was always convinced he was.

And, worst of all, it was a…
betrayal
—there was just no other word for it—of the woman who lived behind this door.

A cool October wind whistled in off Lake Michigan. Its icy fingers slipped under the collar of his motorcycle jacket, pulling him from his futile thoughts.

Yeah, no matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, there was no way for him to shift the blame for what happened to somebody else.

The fault was all his, which was just fan-fucking-tastic.

Allowing himself one last florid string of curses, he pushed away from the door, pressed the little brass bell, and listened to the happy chime. Its tinkling peal was quickly followed by the squeal of a toddler.

The door swung open to reveal the cherubic face of the three-year-old boy who was Frank’s most precious treasure.

“You’s back!” little Franklin declared gleefully, clapping his dimpled hands together even as he tried to clamber up Frank’s leg.

Frank managed to secure the wiggling little bundle of energy in his good arm, hoisting him up against his chest. The smell of peanut butter, crayons, and warm little boy filled his nose and made his heart ache.

“Franklin,” Shell admonished as she came through the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron and looking so beautiful Frank’s aching heart swelled with pride, “the correct words to use are
you’re
back, not
you’s
back. And how many times have I told you not to open the door without me?”

Franklin ignored her as he pushed back in Frank’s arm, his storm-cloud gray eyes scanning Frank’s scarred face.

“He’s back,” he told his mother seriously, “and he’s got boo-boos.”

Franklin tried to pull the bandage away from Frank’s forehead to get a peek underneath and must’ve been somewhat successful because he quickly followed that up with, “Ooooh, he’s got bwud.”

Franklin placed a sticky hand on each of Frank’s cheeks and regarded him intently. “Does it hurt?” he asked, his eyes wide with worry.

“It did when it happened, but not now,” Frank assured him.

Franklin nodded sagely before wriggling to be let down. Since the initial excitement of his arrival wore off and the mystery of his injuries had been thoroughly examined, the little boy was anxious to get back to whatever he was doing, which, by the looks of the colorful balls of clay on the coffee table, was the construction of a Play-Doh menagerie.

Frank lowered him to the floor and swallowed the sudden lump in his throat as he watched the little guy run back to his play on short, sturdy, denim-clad legs.

“How’s it possible he’s grown an inch since I saw him a week ago?” he asked.

“Because he takes after you,” Shell said as she walked over and placed a cool hand on each of his cheeks—like mother, like son. She quickly scanned his face, the worry in her own obvious.

“Well, I’m glad you’re home in
mostly
one piece,” she observed, and he suddenly wanted to cry. She started pulling him toward the warm, delicious-smelling kitchen. “As it happens, I’m making your favorite.”

Of course, she was…“How’d you know I was coming?”

“I saw the news coverage. The interview of that cute motorcycle designer you have working for you.”

Dear, sweet kee-rist, talk about a dagger through the heart.

“So I figured it wouldn’t be long before you’d come looking for a little peace and quiet. Such as it is.” She made a face and glanced back at Franklin who was in the middle of facilitating a war between a lion and monkey, if the sounds he was making were anything to go by. “I also figured a nice, home-cooked meal wouldn’t go unappreciated.”

He squeezed her with his good arm. “You know me too well.”

“After all these years?” She threw her head back and laughed. “I guess I’d better, huh?”

***

“Where’s Frank?” Becky asked anxiously, standing behind the overstuffed sofa in the media room.

Angel turned down the volume on the big-screen plasma television and twisted off the cap on an extra bottle of Honker’s Ale as he patted the cushion beside him.

Oh gosh. That didn’t bode well. A sick feeling settled in the bottom of her stomach as she rounded the sofa to stand in front of him, hands on hips.

“Rock and your brother have gone to bed,” he said, his dark eyes soft on her face. The fire crackling in the corner grate filled the air with the smoky sweetness of burning pine logs and cast dancing shadows around the room. Still, there was enough light to make out his expression, and was that…?

Yep, that was pity plastered all over his handsome face.

Okay, and now she really felt ill. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.” He patted the seat next to him again.

Swallowing down the sudden urge to yank out her hair and scream, she blew out a frustrated breath and plopped down beside him, absently accepting the beer he handed her.

“He’s gone,” he murmured quietly.

“Where’d he go?” She tried to make her tone sound casual but realized she missed the mark when Angel wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“Where do you think?”

“Well…crap.” She heaved a weary sigh, her shoulders sagging. “I guess that’s about perfect, huh?”

Angel didn’t answer. He just pulled her closer, laying his cheek on the top of her head.

Peanut strolled into the room. And after two failed attempts, he managed to jump onto the sofa, curling up next to her and purring loud enough to drown out the crackle and hiss of the logs burning in the fireplace.

Oh great. Everyone felt the need to comfort poor, foolish Becky.

Inexplicably, tears clogged her throat. She took a hasty sip of beer to try to wash them down.

“It’s kinda funny when you think about it,” she mused after a while, although the last thing she felt like doing was laughing.

“What is?”

“Well, here I was, determined to apologize for what happened, and Frank’s probably up in Lincoln Park doing the same. No doubt trying his best to explain the whole sordid affair to his girlfriend without making me look like a…like a…frickin’
predator
.” She tilted the bottle back and took another healthy swig.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to get drunk. Just get good and wasted…

Of course, her troubles would be waiting for her in the morning.
And
they’d be compounded by a hangover.

“I don’t understand.” Angel pulled back to look at her. “What have
you
got to apologize for?”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and slanted him what Ozzie liked to refer to as her patented
well, duh
expression. “Uh, for forcing myself on a nearly unconscious man? Does that ring any bells?”

“Yes, the scene is still very fresh in my mind’s eye.” She felt her cheeks heat. “But believe me when I tell you he knew exactly what he was doing. All those painkillers did was lessen his inhibitions.”

“Uh-huh,” she curled her upper lip, “that’s what all the college boys claim when the girl wakes up in the fraternity house the next morning and starts yelling rape.
She
wanted
it
at
the
time, your honor. I swear it.
”

He shook his head. “What happened between you and Boss was not like that.”

“Just how do you figure?” she demanded. “You were there. One minute he’s sticking his tongue down my throat, the very next he’s sawing logs like a dadgummed lumberjack. I think that pretty much establishes me as the culprit. After all,
I
was still in my right mind.”

Angel took a slow sip of beer, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “Let me ask you this. Who instigated the kiss?”

“Um…”

“Was it you?”

She screwed up her mouth, replaying the scene in her mind for what had to be the thousandth time.
Frank, looking at her so sweetly, rubbing his face against her hand, reaching up to pull her down…

“No.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t the instigator. I specifically remember him pulling me down, but—”

“So there you go.”

“What?” she sputtered. “That doesn’t change anything. He. Was. Out. Of. His. Head. I should’ve stopped him.”

“
That
we can agree on.”

She made a face and sank back against the cushions.

“What I’m saying is you shouldn’t take on the blame for this. I can assure you, Boss has wanted to kiss you for a long time, and he used the excuse of his inebriated state to do just that.”

“He’s wanted to kiss me? How do you know that? Did he tell you?”

Okay. And that didn’t sound desperate or anything. Geez…

“I know it the same way I know every time you look at him you see him stomping on a wineglass while you stand under the chuppah.”

Huh?

“Um, Angel? I don’t know what a chuppah is, but I get the wineglass reference, and I don’t see him doing that…mainly because we’re not Jewish.” She mumbled the last bit.

“Fine, then you see white doves and orange blossoms. My point is you have happily-ever-after written all over your face.”

She swallowed, sinking farther into the sofa, wanting to just…disappear. “Do you think he knows?” she asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

“He’d be a blind man not to.”

“Aw, geez.” She threw a hand over her eyes, the beer she’d swallowed threatening to reverse directions. “This is a disaster.”

“Only if you let it become one.” He grabbed her hand, forcing her to face him. “You want my advice?”

Advice?

Hell, yeah. She needed all the advice she could get.

“Forget about it,” he told her. When she frowned, he added. “Forget about the kiss, forget about your girlish dreams, forget about
him
.”

“Yeah, well,” she blew out a breath of frustration, “that’s a little hard to do considering I work with the guy.”

“Okay, so use that.”

She lifted a brow.

“He’s your coworker, yes? It’s always bad luck to get involved with a coworker. Believe me, I know. And if that’s not enough to dissuade you, then simply remember he’s already in a relationship. Are you prepared to be the other woman? Because I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”

“Of
course
I’m not. But it can’t be that serious, can it? This thing he’s got going with this woman up in Lincoln Park? I mean, he’s been seeing her for as long as I’ve known him. If it was something serious, he’d have proposed marriage by now, don’t you think?”

“Are you really that naive?”

She groaned and closed her eyes.

“I know how hard it is,” he squeezed her against his side, “to want someone you can’t have.”

She stared at the stark emotion on his face. “Who was she?” she asked quietly.

In answer, he simply shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Like hell. But Becky knew that was guy-speak for, “I don’t want to talk about it.” And she decided it was best not to press him on the issue.

Laying her head on his shoulder, they sat and drank in companionable silence for a long while before she finally snorted. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? A couple of lovesick fools…”

***

“So what’s up with the shoulder this time?” Shell asked him as they sat on the sofa in the living room, enjoying a second glass of Chardonnay and the little fire he’d lit in the fireplace—the fireplace he’d personally restored tile by tile.

Franklin had been bathed and put to bed, his little belly full of Frank’s favorite beef stroganoff.

It was all so very familiar, so very homey, his earlier tension began to dissolve. And with the anxiety of the past week melting away, the pain in his shoulder took center stage.

“Two words,” he told her, adjusting himself to try and relieve some of the ache, “it’s fucked.”

“Surgery?” she asked, oblivious to his potty mouth after all these years.

“Uh-huh. No way around it if I want to keep doing my job.”

“It’ll be different this time,” she told him, patting his arm. “Now that you know you have an adverse reaction to general anesthesia, your anesthesiologist can keep a sharp eye on your levels.”

He grunted in reply. The thought of being put under after what’d happened last time scared the holy hell out of him. Give him RPG-toting terrorists or tweaked-out drug lords any day of the week over a masked man with a shiny needle.

“You
will
be okay,” she assured him, leaning over to smack a kiss on his cheek. “You haven’t survived everything you’ve been through just to have your lights blink out during a miniscule shoulder surgery.”

Lord, let her be right.

The last time he felt this scared was when he’d woken up after the surgery to have his tonsils removed to find out One: that he’d died on the table only to be revived, and Two: that the strain of almost losing a son had been too much for his father, who’d subsequently decided he wasn’t cut out to be a family man.