Ricochet (10 page)

Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” blasted through the eight-speaker premium Bose surround-sound system in the Chevy Avalanche Ryker was using today, courtesy of his buddy Dune, still stationed in Afghanistan.

After Rachel had abandoned him during peak Twilight Zone hours that morning, Ryker had called his buddy back in Kandahar, who returned to Los Angeles every six months on leave, and Dune had given him the combination to his garage, where his nearly new fifty-thousand-dollar truck awaited, and a key to his apartment was stashed in the glove compartment.

Now, as Ryker skidded around another switchback along the fire road winding up Topanga Canyon, headed toward the ocean, he told himself Rachel’s early departure was a good thing. He hadn’t had to worry about the nightmares that often woke him and was able to catch a couple hours of sleep. The fact that she refused to take his cell phone number before she left was also for the best. He’d tried once more to tell her who he really was, but she hadn’t wanted to hear that either.

Just as well.

Even if it didn’t feel that way.

The truck’s rear wheels slid on gravelly dirt and fishtailed. Ryker corrected. The tires grabbed, and the truck shot forward, driving Ryker up the grade.

“Hoo-ah!” he hooted as a fresh surge of adrenaline filled his veins. Damn that woman had given him one hell of a ride last night. Surprise after sexy surprise that still made him hard with nothing more than a split-second memory.

He’d get the dirt on her from Troy—in a roundabout, subversive way, of course. And if what she’d told Ryker was true—no involvement with his buddy, no involvement with another guy—he’d give her a call at Renegades’ main office, probably somewhere downtown, or maybe get the office address from Troy and stop by to see her in a few days. Ask her out to lunch. Or dinner. Or…something.

He didn’t date, per se, so he didn’t know how to go about it, exactly. He picked up women, took them back to their place or a hotel, and fucked. And, yeah, he wanted that with Rachel again, but the tables were oddly turned on him this time—the woman being the one hitting the door before the sun rose. And he was pretty sure simply calling for another hookup wasn’t going to work with her.

He’d take a few days to figure it out.

Warm wind poured through the open windows. His hair, now shaggy after a month of leave, blew over the top of his Ray Bans. And the California sun beamed through the moon roof, heating his skin. His teammate’s
“If
y
ou break it, you buy it”
over the phone this morning barely whispered in his head now. What his buddy didn’t know eight thousand miles away wouldn’t hurt him. Hell, Dune would be doing this himself if he were here.

And, damn. Ryker wished his teammate were here.

Or, better yet, he wished
he
were back
there
, with his unit.

Guiding the truck into another turn and over another grade, growing closer to his final destination, Ryker forced the melancholy streak out of his head. He wouldn’t get another chance like this for at least a year after he signed away another four to the army. Not exactly a hardship, in his opinion, but since his cocksucking CO had made this leave mandatory prior to extending his commitment, Ryker had decided to use it—to release, to let go, to forget.

As if the mere possibility of forgetting pissed off his psyche, memories crawled in from the corners of his mind.

“No way.” He gritted his teeth and gunned the truck. He wasn’t going to have a mental backslide now, dammit.

The Avalanche rocketed up and over the grade—to what, he didn’t know, he couldn’t see the other side. But he had another five miles until he reached the job site, and with his chest as tight as a grenade ready to explode, he’d drive the hell out of this rig until he reached it.

The front wheels cleared a small rise, and the truck launched into the air. A moment of all-encompassing quiet flooded the interior, all road noise gone, and Ryker’s head filled with nothing but Robert Plant’s shrill,
“I gotta roll, can’t stand still, got a flaming heart, can’t get my fill…”

The tires slammed the ground with Zeppelin’s wild chorus guitar riff rolling through Ryker’s veins like cocaine.

Only the high didn’t last near as long.

Instead of his gaze focusing on the deserted mountain terrain of scrub oak and rolling sandstone, a virtual city opened up before him—a mobile city with people and equipment everywhere.

“S
hit
.” Ryker’s belly flooded with fire. He pounded the brake and skidded again. His hands clenched the steering wheel, and the truck veered sideways. A group of men scattered, leaving behind whatever machinery they’d been clustered around. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck
.”

The equipment came at Ryker fast. He hit the gas. The tires slipped on the sand, but the truck drifted far enough forward to clear it, continuing in a two-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. He finally came to a jerky stop six inches short of slamming his buddy’s fifty-thousand-dollar truck into a massive sandstone formation.

Ryker rocked with the vehicle for long moments. His breath finally broke from his chest in shaky pants, and he couldn’t tear his gaze from the pinkish-tan hue of the rough rock through the driver’s open window.

Zeppelin’s tunes still ripped from the stereo. Ryker’s mind darted in ten different directions—to the almost-incurred cost of repairing his buddy’s almost-crushed vehicle, to the almost-incurred cost of the equipment he’d almost destroyed, to the almost-injured men he’d almost hit…

“Fuuuuuck…” He leaned forward, hitting the power button to the stereo. The sudden silence seemed all encompassing. Seemed to drain all the energy from his body. He exhaled heavily as he rested his forehead against the steering wheel and closed his eyes.

Footsteps crunched outside the car, bringing Ryker’s hearing into full focus, and the sound of voices and machinery flooded in.

“I’d ask if you’re okay, but you’re the fucking man of steel, so I know you’re fine.” The voice was cool, deep, laced with humor. “But you probably just made four grown men shit their pants. Quite an entrance. You always did have to be the center of attention.”

Ryker smiled, sat back, and opened his eyes to the dash. In his peripheral vision, the man he’d come to see and his childhood friend, Troy Jacobs, approached the driver’s window.

“You said the site was
thirteen
miles from the gate. This is only
eight
miles, dumb shit.” Ryker rolled his head on the seat and pinned Troy with a you-idiot glare. “You always did suck at math.”

Troy’s long hair was a curling, wild mess hanging to his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved in at least three days, and his T-shirt and jeans were covered with a film of dirt beneath some crazy-ass harness. Sweat dripped down his face, dampened his hair, and darkened his black tee. Everything about his friend oozed vibrancy and energy and excitement, making Ryker realize it had been quite a while since he’d felt the same in his own life. Jealousy and longing stirred. A restlessness to get back to his unit. His own work.

The weeks remaining of his leave suddenly felt infinite.

“You fucker.” Ryker rested his elbow on the window ledge. “The amount of fun you have in your job ought to be illegal.”

“You’re not one to talk.” Troy planted his palms on the harness at his hips. “Get your ass into that trailer.” He tilted his head toward one of many trailers littering the canyon. The long side had been covered in a stylized Renegades Stunt Company logo, and Ryker’s mind instantly shot back to Rachel. “Sign a release form and come have some fun with us.”

Troy pointed across the roof of the truck. Ryker squinted against the sun to where several people in harnesses like Troy’s scaled the rock face—some with filming cameras hiked on their shoulders. A bevy of others milled at the bottom. “Is that what you want to blow up? The boulder?”

“No, this is a different scene.”

“Troy!” The call drifted to them from a ledge on the face of a massive granite outcropping. “Get up here.”

Troy pull the driver’s door open. “Come on.” He waited for Ryker to stand from the vehicle and walked with him toward the trailer. “The one we need your help on is way bigger. It’s a bridge, located three hours north, and we need a big finale shot. We’ll talk explosives as soon as we shoot this scene. For now, I’ll introduce you to Rachel, get your Hancock on a few—”

Surprise cut along Ryker’s nerves. His feet stopped dead at the base of the trailer’s steps, where Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” poured from the open door at the top. “Rachel?”

Troy turned and looked back at him. “Yeah. Our secretary…manager… She sort of does everything but the stunts, really. You talked to her on the phone a week ago.”

Ryker’s mouth dried up. His belly coiled with…with…shit, he didn’t even know. “What is a secretary doing here? On site?”

Troy turned and gave him a what-kind-of-question-is-that look, and Ryker immediately realized his screw up.

He turned and waved for Troy to follow. “Fuck the paperwork. Let’s have fun.”

Troy smirked with a ahake of his head. “Sorry, buddy. Those days of free adrenaline are over. All risks are now carefully calculated, insured, and contracted. But the worst would be Rachel getting ahold of me if I let you up there without signing a waiver first. She’d chew my ass to nothing.”

“Listen, dude, I don’t really have time to climb today anyway. Can’t we just talk about the blast?”

Troy put his hands on his hips and frowned. “What the fuck else you gonna do?”

Right. He ran a hand over his head as the dread in his chest turned to stone and dropped to the pit of his stomach. “Yeah, okay.”

Ryker turned back to the stairs, where Troy stopped him with a hand against Ryker’s shoulder. “And let me tell you now,” he said, gaze direct and serious, “she’s
off limits
. Don’t even
think
about messing with her.”

His gut took a hit, and acid leaked in. “Why’s that?”

“Because she’s not fuck-and-dump material. She’s as much family to me as you are. Got it?” Without waiting for a reply, Troy jogged up the trailer steps.

Ryker took a deep breath and searched for a strategy to handle the situation. And as the leader of a strategic team who handled life-and-death conditions on the fly every day under the worst possible conditions…

He came up completely blank.

“Come on,” Troy said from the landing.

Ryker climbed the stairs with his mind darting in five different directions, but he couldn’t think of anything to say or do at this point. Best to face it head-on. But, still, he hung back and let Troy enter first.

The inside of the trailer was dim with all the lights off. Only sunlight slanted in through three windows and the open door. As many fans moved warm air around the space.

The minute Ryker spotted Rachel standing near a filing cabinet, her back toward him, his whole body reacted—fire in some places, tightness in others. He shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands into his pockets, trying to stretch some of the sudden tension from his muscles, and feeling ridiculous for all the nerves.

Rachel’s hair was piled into a knot on top of her head that looked as if it would tumble down any second, especially the way she was rocking that sweet little body of hers to the music. The slip of white fabric she probably called a dress was as tempting as her body, with a short skirt and halter top. One that made her skin glow tan and showed every great curve of her toned legs all the way down to where her calves disappeared into…

The sight of the same boots she’d worn the night before made longing, lust, and loss knot in his chest. He closed his eyes and rubbed them a moment. Yeah, he was definitely going to lose all possibility of seeing her again after this.

He sighed, crossed his arms, leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb, and tried to enjoy the sight of her tight little ass shaking to the music—even if he wouldn’t ever touch it again.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Troy asked.

“Because it’s hot,” she answered without turning from the file drawer.

Her voice touched something in his chest.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is to someone with a brain,” she said, her voice sugar sweet, which made Ryker grin.

Troy glanced at Ryker with a
women
shake of his head, then said, “Can’t you play something decent for a change?”

“Can’t you get decent taste in music for a change?”

Troy grinned, and Ryker bit the inside of his lip against a laugh.

He glanced around the trailer. Clean. New paint. New carpet. There were two nice faux wooden desks, a few shelves, sofa, lounge chairs, little kitchen area with a refrigerator. And only slightly cooler without the sun beating down.

The way Rachel’s hips rocked to the music made Ryker remember all her great moves the night before. How those moves had filled him with more pleasure in one night than any one man deserved. Especially him.

He shifted his weight and decided right then—if there were any way to experience her again before he left for sand city, he’d find it.

Rachel dropped her head back and sang along with the song, “Pa-pa-pa-pa-poker face.” She closed the file drawer with a bump of her hip and danced toward her desk. “I wanna roll with him, a hard pair we will be…”