In Rides Trouble (6 page)

Grinding his jaw hard enough to pulverize his teeth to dust, he listened intently as the two of them shuffled over to where he’d kicked the M4 and his reserve. The automatic made a familiar
clacking
sound as Sharif swung it over his shoulder and the .45 shushed as the fancy pirate shoved it into the waistband of his shorts.

“Now I’m going to count to ten,” Sharif explained quickly, panting slightly.

The guy was panicking.

Not
good. Not fucking good at all.

Panic could easily make a man forget just how much pressure he was applying with his trigger finger.

And the thought of losing Becky like that—

No. He couldn’t even contemplate it without having to suppress the urge to throw up. And right now he didn’t have that luxury. He needed all his senses and wits about him if he was going to get them both out of this clusterfuck of a situation alive.

“If you so much as twitch before I finish,” Sharif sneered, “I’ll splatter her brains all over this engine room!”

And there you go. His worst nightmare put into words. He screwed his eyes shut and prayed to God Becky wouldn’t do anything stupid. The woman had more guts than most men twice her size, and he respected the shit out of her for it, but she didn’t have the reflexes or the training needed to get out of this situation unscathed. Sharif had three weapons to her one, which meant the guy had all the advantages. He only hoped she realized this and acted accordingly.

“One, two…” As Sharif started his countdown, Frank’s heart double-timed it, pounding in his ears so loudly it was difficult to hear the man’s voice as he moved Becky toward the exit. “…five, six…” The sound echoed dully, and he slowed his breathing, visualized his next move. “…eight…” His muscles coiled one last time. “…nine…” The Pentagon Elite II blade strapped to his chest was a comforting weight. “…ten.”

In a lightning-fast series of fluid movements, he burst from the cramped corner, reached under his web gear, unfolded the knife from its Kevlar-reinforced handle with a satisfying
snick
, caught sight of Sharif’s dark head above Becky’s blond one, and sent the stainless steel blade zinging through the air.

A split second before the knife would have embedded itself between Sharif’s villainous eyes, the guy slammed shut the airlock door. The blade bounced off the reinforced glass porthole at the top of the hatchway with a loud
clink
, but inside the engine room the sound was drowned out by his enraged roar.

Becky…no!

***

“Everybody back to the bridge!”

Eve was milling around the deck with the rest of the
Hamilton
’s thirty-some-odd crew members, still trying to absorb the astonishing fact that less than ten minutes ago she’d been liberated by a group of three dripping-wet, black-clad men who’d suddenly appeared like phantoms from out of the darkness of the night. They’d managed to disarm or otherwise incapacitate each and every one of the pirates.

And all in about six seconds.

It’d been a sight to see, that was for sure. Catlike reflexes and precisely choreographed movements. The pirates hadn’t known what hit them.

Eve didn’t know what’d hit
her
.

Because Becky hadn’t been suffering from insanity brought on by heatstroke. He was here…

Billy Reichert was right in front of her, and he certainly wasn’t a mere motorcycle mechanic. Heavens, no. He looked more like the real-life version of Jason Bourne or Ethan Hunt. And he was yelling for everyone to return to the stifling bridge where the pirates had been holding them, shoving those people who didn’t move quickly enough to suit him. He was…well, he was not what she remembered at all.

“You too, Eve.” He barely looked at her, but even his brief glance was enough show his eyes, those chocolaty brown eyes she’d fallen in love with as a girl, were no longer soft and warm. The light shining through them was fierce, almost feral, like a wild animal.

Geez
Louise.

A shiver raced down her spine despite the heat of the night. She’d never been afraid of Billy, not all those years ago when he’d been a bad boy from the wrong side of town. But looking at the hard set of his jaw, at the barely leashed power in the bulging muscles of his shoulders, it occurred to her that the tender boy she’d known was gone, replaced by this hard, callous man…this
dangerous
man.

“Why?” she asked as she tried to still the pounding of her heart. “What’s happening?”

“Becky’s in trouble,” he said, hustling her across the deck. “The guy who was guarding her is missing.”

Eve opened her mouth but didn’t manage to utter a word as Becky’s terrified voice broke through the confusion on deck. “Billy!”

Eve turned, along with the rest of the crowd shoving to get in the door leading to the
Hamilton
’s bridge, and her stomach sunk to her toes. The muttering of the group sputtered to a halt as everyone slowly realized what was happening.

Sharif stood in the center of the deck with one arm around Becky’s throat, keeping her in front of him as a living shield while he pressed the hard barrel of his handgun to her temple.

“Stay back!” he yelled when Billy coiled like a spring, ready to pounce.

“Just let her go!” Billy demanded. But Sharif paid him no mind as he dragged Becky toward the
Hamilton
’s portside railing. The harsh lights shining onto the deck from the top of the bridge spotlighted the two of them like a movie set.

It was totally surreal…and totally terrifying.

“Boss?” Billy said, pressing his thumb and forefinger against the strange black band he wore around his throat while he tracked Becky and Sharif’s movements with deadly end of his big, intimidating gun. “You copy? Our sixth target is topside with Becky in tow.” He paused, listening, then cursed viciously before finishing with a grumbled, “Roger that.”

“Stay back! Stay back! I’ll shoot her!” Sharif screeched, his black eyes darting between the crowd of the
Hamilton
’s crew bunched at the door and the right side of the bridge house. One of the men who’d arrived with Billy stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been slinking around the bridge house, trying to outflank Sharif.

“Eve,” Billy whispered, never taking his eyes off his sister.

“Yes?” she rasped, noting he was beginning to inch to the side, making Sharif split his attention between him and the other guy with a monstrous black machine gun.

“When he’s not looking, I need you to slip back through the crowd, make your way down to the engine room, and unlock the door.”

Gulp.

“O-okay,” she said, even though the very last thing she wanted to do was go crawling around,
alone
, in the bowels of the tanker.

You
can
do
this, Eve Edens. You can do it for Becky.

Her legs were trembling as she waited until Sharif was distracted by the man near the bridge house, then she inched backward and began pushing her way very carefully and very quietly through the
Hamilton
’s gawking crew. “Move, move,
move!
” she muttered beneath her breath as she slithered between the crush of sweaty bodies.

Finally, she made her way to the interior of the ship, ignoring the gloomy corners and dark stairwells as she used her years of yachting to direct her toward the engine room. Racing along the metal gangways, she didn’t make one wrong turn. Of course, she was helped by the fact that once she got close, she heard an unholy clambering and what sounded like a lion’s roar.

The clambering turned out to be the third man who’d arrived with Billy, the
giant
one. He was bashing a huge wrench against the glass porthole on the airlock door to the engine room. And the lion’s roar was coming from him, as well.

Holy
moley!

She swallowed past the dry knot of fear clogging her throat, licked her parched lips, and reminded herself that this wasn’t a monstrous creature but a man. A guy. One of the
good
guys even.

On
three
, she told herself, then did a quick countdown before turning the wheel. No sooner had the lock released than the door burst open, slamming against the bulkhead. She instinctively jumped back, but the giant didn’t spare her a glance. He just barged past her, his soft Neoprene wet suit boots pounding up the metal stairs.

Sharif—
that
asshole
—was a dead man.

No one put a loaded gun to Becky’s head and lived to tell about it.

“Are you in position?” Bill’s low voice rumbled through Frank’s earpiece.

“Affirmative.” He crouched behind a small shipping container located about twenty yards from where Sharif stood with Becky against the
Hamilton
’s portside railing.

When Sharif attempted to step over the top rung, he and his guys would make their moves. He only hoped Becky didn’t try to “help out” before then. If…no, when,
when
he got her out of this, he was going to take her home, lock her inside the Knights’ compound, and throw away the goddamned key.

It was just too dangerous letting Rebel Reichert wander about. And after this night, he figured he’d need, oh, about two years of absolute peace and quiet before his blood pressure dropped back down to levels his doctor wouldn’t blow a gasket over.

“He’s going to do it,” Angel’s ragged voice whispered in his ear. “He’s going to jump.”

“He’ll have to let go of her to step over that railing. When he does, you take him out,” he ordered, his heart thundering in nervous anticipation.

Angel was in the best position to put a bullet in Sharif’s brainpan, and Frank hoped like hell the guy was as good as he promised. It made his balls turn to raisins having to put that much faith in the abilities of an unknown, but what other option did he have? Bill wasn’t in a position to take the shot, and he was without the
means
to take the shot.

Of course, that didn’t mean he was totally unarmed.

He had a pair of French-made throwing knives held loosely in each fist. They had little, hidden vials of liquid mercury that would keep the blades oriented forward when he hurled them at his target.

Now, as a rule, he wasn’t too partial to the French. They tended to be too effeminate for his tastes, and he could not listen to them speak English without thinking of Pepé Le Pew. “I am zee peanut butter; you are zee jelly. Come, cherie, let us make a sandwich of luuuv.”

That being said, he had to give credit where credit was due. They made one helluva set of throwing knives, and if Angel’s shot missed its mark, he was right there ready to replace a lead round with a steel blade.

“Wait for it,” he whispered as Sharif swung one leg over the railing. “Wait until she’s clear…Ah, goddamnit!”

Becky whirled on Sharif like a dervish as soon as he lowered his weapon to balance himself, whipping out Frank’s razor sharp KA-BAR from where she’d hidden it in her shorts and driving all seven inches into the guy’s gun hand. Sharif squealed like the pig he was, dropping his Glock over the side as Becky lunged at him.

Sonofa—

Frank burst from his hiding spot, “Take the shot! Take the shot!” he yelled as he freight-trained it toward the struggling pair.

“She’s not clear!” Angel’s voice blasted into his ear.

Motherfucker!
He didn’t have a shot either. Becky’s blond head kept bopping in the way as she played conquering heroine and valiantly struggled with the guy.

Frank threw every ounce of strength he had into making it those last fifteen yards. Becky managed to land a hard elbow to Sharif’s nose—
that-a-girl—
causing blood to spray in a wide arc that glistened in the bright illumination of the bridge’s spotlights.

Dazed, Sharif stumbled backward, and with one foot already on the ocean side of the railing, it was all the impetus needed to have him slipping right over the edge. He scrambled to grab onto the top rung, but with the KA-BAR skewering his right hand like a shrimp on the barbie, his fingers refused to work.

His left hand found its grip, however…in Becky’s long ponytail.

Frank saw it all happen in slow motion. Sharif windmilling backward over the railing with one arm while he used the other to jerk Becky headfirst after him.

Good
Lord!
Frank couldn’t get his legs to work right.

It felt like he was running through sticky molasses, and no matter how hard he pumped his arms and pleaded with his legs to turn faster, he seemed to be humping it at one-quarter speed. His terrified heart threatened to explode.
Boom!
Lights out!

No, no,
n
o!

This couldn’t be happening. Not to Becky.

And then, like a hiccup in a stop-motion film, he was suddenly there, at the railing, just as her feet slipped over the top rung.

He had only one chance.

Dropping his knife, he plunged one arm through the space between the top rail and the one below it, managing to snag her slender ankle. He was instantly jerked forward by the combined momentum of her and Sharif’s falling bodies, and his head slammed into the top rung.
Bam!
A bright burst of stars circled in front of his eyes as, with a hard thump
,
Becky and Sharif simultaneously crashed against the
Hamilton
’s hull.

That’s when it happened.

He felt it.

His shoulder just…wow, it just…gave way. Bone and muscle and tendons tearing away and snapping. The sharp blast of agonizing pain was quickly followed by burning numbness, and then the weight pulling against him suddenly disappeared.

Oh sweet lovin’ Lord, no!

He’d dropped her! She’d slipped through his numb fingers and…

With a roar of gut-wrenching fury, he managed to blink away the happy stars giddily swirling in front of his vision to peek over the side and—

Oh, thank God.

He still had her. She was flailing and cursing and trying to grab onto the hull, but he still had her. Sharif—
that
asshole
—wasn’t so lucky. He’d lost his hold on her hair and was falling, screaming, into the sea below.

Good
riddance.

With a mighty heave, his wet suit boots scrabbling for purchase on the deck, Frank started reeling her in. And then his feet slipped, jerking him hard against the railing until all he could do was grit his teeth and hang on. Just when he thought he might lose her for real, Bill and Angel were there beside him, reaching over the top rung and grabbing her legs.

Thank
you, thank you, thank you, dear sweet Lord…and Bill and Angel.

Only when Becky was safely in her brother’s arms, Bill crooning, “You’re okay. We gotcha,” did Frank manage to uncurl his fingers from their death grip around her slim ankle.

Interesting. He had absolutely no feeling in that hand.

Staggering back, he glanced up to see Angel quartering the sea below with his M4. After a few moments, the guy turned with a shrug, “I don’t know. Maybe the fall stunned him, and he drowned. I can’t see…oh, um, Boss?”

“Yeah?” Frank frowned at Angel’s strangely apprehensive face.

“That, um, that does not look too good.” He pointed at Frank’s right arm.

Frank glanced down and noticed, with a sort of odd detachment, that his hand was dangling at an unnatural angle against his thigh.

“Dislocated,” he said, not giving a rat’s ass about his arm. All that mattered was Becky. That she was safe…

“I think it’s more than that,” Angel murmured, then suddenly spun on his heel, racing back to the railing.

A grumbling roar managed to split through the loud ringing in Frank’s ears, then Angel was discharging his weapon. The harsh
thump, thump, thump
of the M4 sounded curiously muted, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to remember what the guy was shooting at.

Angel swung around a few moments later, his face fixed in hard lines. “So he didn’t drown. He’s on the catamaran, and I managed to take out one engine, but”—he shook his head—“he’s too far out of range now.”

Ah, yes. Sharif—that asshole.
That’s what Angel was shooting at. Now he remembered…

“Call it in,” he instructed, wondering why it sounded like he was talking through a tunnel.

“That’s a pretty bad bump on your head, Boss,” Bill said, and when Frank turned to glance at him, the guy’s face looked all wonky. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

I
am?

“Frank?” Becky stepped toward him, her gorgeous brown eyes dark with worry inside a face that was as funky-looking as Bill’s.

He didn’t care. She was still beautiful and, more importantly, she was safe. And when she said his name,
Frank
, in that dusky voice, he wanted to whoop with joy. Oh, how he’d missed the sound of her—

Whoa.

Why the hell was the deck suddenly rushing up to meet him?

***

Wowza. Whoever came up with the expression, “falling like a ton of bricks,” must’ve seen something very similar to Frank’s nose dive into the
Hamilton
’s deck. Becky dropped to her knees beside him, calling his name, but he was out cold. Stone cold. The gash along his hairline leaked thick rivulets of dark blood all over his pale face and onto the deck.

This was bad. This was real bad.

Losing consciousness after a head injury was a sure sign of concussion, and she knew from the elementary medical training she’d received from Steady, a concussion could sometimes turn deadly. You could just slip into a sleep from which there was no return…

“Frank,” she whispered his name, gently shaking his good shoulder as anguish burned up the back of her throat like nitric acid. “Wake up now, Frank. You’re too tough to let something like a bump on the head bring you down.”

Nothing. Not so much as a twitch.

Oh God. If he died while saving her, she’d never forgive herself. She’d never—

No. No way. He wasn’t going out like that. Not the legendary Boss Knight.

“Frank,” she nudged him harder, pressing the gauze pad Angel handed her against the deep cut on his forehead. The tears she’d been holding at bay for nearly a week finally burst through the emotional barriers she’d erected, flowing hot and salty down her cheeks as her racing heart threatened to shatter into a thousand little pieces.

Looking at him lying there, so still and pale without the bright vigor that usually animated him, made her more scared than she’d ever been in her life—which was saying something considering mere moments before she took a header off the side of an oil tanker.

Just when she was about to press a finger to his carotid to check for a pulse, his gray eyes fluttered open and lasered in on her. He lifted his good hand to rub at the swelling lump on the side of her cheek where her face had introduced itself to the
Hamilton
’s steel hull.

“Are you okay?” he rasped.

Are
you
okay…

He was bleeding profusely, undoubtedly concussed, and that arm was certainly dislocated if not broken, and he was asking
her
if
she
was okay.

God love the man. She certainly did…

Hiccupping on the tears clogging her throat and running down her cheeks, she managed, “Thanks to you I am.”

He blinked at her, then frowned.

“You’re crying.” He said it like one might say,
I
believe
in
unicorns
, with a heavy dose of incredulity.

“Yep.” She wiped her runny nose on her forearm—gross, but she was without another option. “I do that sometimes.” Way more often than she’d ever admit to anyone, especially him.

“Don’t.”

“You can’t tell me whether I can or can’t cry, Frank. Geez
.
” Although, she was so glad to see him awake and talking, she couldn’t quite imbibe the comment with her usual level of sarcasm.

“Nothing to shed tears over, woman,” he told her, wincing when she lifted the gauze to check on his cut. The bleeding had slowed. Angel handed her another pad, and she pressed the fresh gauze to his forehead. “You lived, didn’t you?”

“I’m not crying over my near face-plant into the ocean, you big, dumb dill-hole. I’m crying because you scared me to death when you fainted.”

His lips twisted. “Men don’t faint. I just…I…uh…lost consciousness.”

“God, whatever,” she huffed, but inwardly she was smiling.

It didn’t matter that he was determined to keep their relationship on a strictly professional level. It didn’t matter that most times she irritated the ever-lovin’ hell out of him and he had no qualms about letting her know it. It didn’t even matter that he kept a girlfriend up in Lincoln Park. What mattered,
all
that mattered, was that he was alive. Because she couldn’t stand the thought of a world without him…

“My point is,” she continued, smoothing some hair back from his forehead, reveling in the fact that she was able to touch him like she’d always dreamed of doing, even if it was only because he’d been knocked silly and didn’t have all his faculties about him, “you went nose first into the deck and were out for nearly thirty seconds. That combined with the fact that you look like a piece of meat that’s been through the garbage disposal frightened me. And
yes
, when I get really frightened, sometimes I cry. Just deal with it.”

He blinked at her for several seconds like he was having trouble focusing. “No need to be scared for me. Imokay.” He crushed the last two words together as he struggled to sit up.

Testosterone. God save her.

“No, no.” She laid a palm on his uninjured shoulder. “Just be still.”

“Can’t,” he said, pushing past her restraining hand and into a sitting position. “Hafta finish the mission. Hafta get going.”

“It’s finished,” she assured him. “You saved us.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head like a dog shakes off water, dislodging the gauze pad and causing little drops of blood to splash across her tank top. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said as he pushed to a wobbly stand—as if a little blood on top of all the grease and grime was anything to worry about. No amount of washing was ever going to get her tank top and shorts clean again. The only logical future for the garments was an up close and personal introduction to an incinerator. “But now we’ve got to ghost it out of here,” he finished, swaying slightly.