Hell on Wheels (16 page)

Come
on Ali,
he’d once said when she accused him of being a total hound dog,
a
guy
like
me
works
hard
and
plays
hard. If you’d move that damned bed away from the wall, you wouldn’t even know I was there.

Um, yeah right. ’Cause it was so easy to ignore
Oh, Grigg, yes! Oh, Grigg. Oh, Grigg. Yes
,
yes
, yes!

She smiled sadly, missing her big, stupid, lusty brother like crazy. What she wouldn’t give to wake up tomorrow morning to make pancakes for him and whatever barfly he’d managed to lure home with his masculine wiles.

“Yeah,” she told Nate now, “I do make good pancakes. At least, his lady friends always seemed to like them.”

He cocked his head.

“You know Grigg. He was always with
someone
. Plus…” she frowned and glanced down at the menacing looking gun in her hand. She knew how to handle the weapon—Grigg had made sure of that—but the thing still looked foreign with her pink-tipped fingers curled around the handle. Whose life was she living? Certainly not hers. She was a kindergarten teacher, for Pete’s sake.

“Plus,” she shook her head and set the gun on the paint bucket beside her, wiping her sweaty palm on the fine leather of Becky’s borrowed chaps. “After their…uh,
excursions
, they were always hungry. And I figured it was a better send-off than Grigg would give them. He usually just kissed them at the door and made some asinine noises about calling them when he was next in-country.” She rolled her eyes. “For some reason, it made them feel better to hear it and Grigg knew that, so he said it. I gave him hell about it, the lying, but he said it wasn’t a lie so much as an altruistic misrepresentation of the truth. Which, if you ask me, is just a bunch of hooey. Still, those women never complained, so I always figured they were as much to blame as my brother who seemed to have a perpetual pilot light going behind his zipper. Not that he was so different from other handsome, single men of his age, but a baby sister always expects more from her big brother. I’ll be the first to admit I suffered a little hero worship where Grigg was concerned and I—”

“Ali,” Nate interrupted softly, “it’s gonna be all right.”

Crapola.

She beat back the burn of tears.

There went her mouth again. Put her in a stressful situation, add a nice dollop of rejection and humiliation along with a big ol’ spoonful of Nate Weller—stir until frothy—and she suddenly couldn’t stop yammering.

It was a problem, but for the life of her, short of biting her tongue in half, she didn’t know how to solve it.

Swallowing, she released her pent-up breath and met his steady gaze.

“How do you know it’ll be all right?” she asked him, not even caring about the pleading edge to her voice.

“’Cause I won’t let it turn out any other way.”

God help her when he said things like that.

“ETA on Christian, Mac, and Jamin is forty-eight hours,” Becky reported as she stood leaning a slim shoulder against the metal doorjamb to Frank’s office.

The sight of her there, so negligent and unknowingly sexy and so, so…
young
made Frank grit his teeth as he reached for the one thing that would keep him from jumping down her perfectly lovely throat just for being her. For being the one thing on the face of the planet he craved more than those damned root beer Dum Dums, or that new shipment of thermal imagery optics they’d all been waiting on for the last two weeks, or…or his next stinking breath, come to think of it.

“Jamin?”

“Yeah,” she crossed one bare foot over the other. Her little toenails were painted a bright, do-me-big-boy red.

He’d always thought it crazily intriguing that a girl…woman…girl…
shit!
Woman
, she was a
woman
, he told himself. A
young
woman. A young woman who was more often than not covered in thick grease. A young woman who was better than any man he knew at rebuilding an engine—any engine. A young woman who could fabricate sheet metal into anything her creative brain could conceive of with the help of a blowtorch and a mallet. And it was strange and enchanting and goddamned beguiling that a woman like that could be so girly as to insist on having a weekly mani and pedi.

“You know, our new…er, guest of the Israeli persuasion,” she said and he yanked his attention away from those fascinating little toes. “That’s the alias Christian picked out for the guy.”

Ah, yes. That goddamned Mossad agent.

Great. That was just great. One more thing he didn’t want to think about.

“He’s not a guest. Supposedly, he’s gonna be an asset to us.”

Becky raised a skeptical brow, and he could only shrug in silent agreement. He was more than a bit leery himself.

“On a separate note,” she continued, “Steady says he’s staying an extra day at the conference, something about a historical lecture on wound excision and early reconstruction in the treatment of compound fractures during the first World War.” She rolled her eyes. “Sounds über-boring if you ask me, but no one ever does.”

She shot him a meaningful look that he responded to with an equally meaningful scowl.

“
Anywho
,” she continued, “Rock and Billy checked in to say they’d be home at the end of the week, and all’s quiet on the eastern front, as it were. Ghost and Ali are about an hour outside of Jacksonville, and Ghost says he’ll contact us once he has the zip drive.”

It suddenly occurred to Frank, all this should be coming from Ozzie. He narrowed his eyes. “Where’s the kid?”

“He’s elbow deep in the flight control systems of the Hawk,” she said. “He closely resembled a guy with a terminal case of ants in his pants waiting for his turn at the helo. And seeing as how I successfully, and without detection I might add,” she pantomimed doing a little curtsy, “hacked Eyes in the Sky this morning, Ozzie figured it was safe to leave me manning the control center so he—”

“Rebecca! Damnit!” he cursed as he reached into his pocket for the bottle of ibuprofen.

Just the thought of the danger she was courting by trying to involve herself in their work made every single aging bone in his body ache. “That’s not your job. Your job is to do what you do best. Fix things. Maintain our cover, and keep your nose out of our goddamned business.”

She uncrossed her ankles and took up a fighting stance, her slim legs shoulder width apart, her grease-and-paint-free hands—now
that
was a novelty—fisted and held loosely by her sides. “I can do a hell of a lot more than that,
Frank
.”

His left eyelid twitched.

“That’s not the point,” he told her, careful to keep his voice calm. One of them needed to maintain some control, or they were going to tear into each other—and God help them then. “We pay you to do a certain job and—”

“And I do that job!” she yelled. “But I’m capable of more. If you’d only—”

“It’s never gonna happen, Rebecca!” he yelled back. So much for control. He was never able to maintain it whenever she was around. “You’re
never
going to be an operator.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her cheeks were bright red, and it was a good thing eyes couldn’t really shoot fire or he’d be nothing but a smoldering pile of ash. “Says who? You’re not the only outfit out there, Frank. With the training I’ve received from the Knights, there are quite a few firms who’d gladly add me to their roster.”

What? Training? Knights?

He was going to hurl.

Knowing the things his men could teach her made his bowels grumble, like he was suffering a serious case of Montezuma’s Revenge.

“What…training?” he enunciated slowly, precisely. It was either that or he was going to start screaming his head off.

“Ghost is teaching me to snipe,” she said smugly and suddenly all those times she and Ghost disappeared made a whole helluva lot more sense.

“Is
that
what you two were doing when you snuck away from the compound? I thought maybe Ghost was confiding in you and—”

“What
ever
,” Becky rolled her eyes. “Have you met Ghost? He doesn’t tell his troubles to anyone.”

Okay, she had a point. He should’ve known better.

Damn, this was
not
good.

Crazily undaunted by the fact that his face was turning purple, she continued, “Billy is teaching me about explosives and demolition, and just the other day I—”

“
What?
” he interrupted. “How the hell can Wild Bill do that?”

Becky was the guy’s kid sister, for crying out loud, and Frank didn’t even want to begin to think about what she might’ve done just the other day. Fucking-A
.

“Because I asked him to, that’s how,” her voice dripped disdain. “You know Billy supports all my ambitions and aspirations, just as a good brother should.”

Was she insane? A
good
brother made damned sure his baby sister didn’t get within two hundred yards of anything that went
kaboom
!

“I’m also learning rudimentary field medicine from Steady, and Mac has loaned me all his textbooks from the Academy,” she announced with no small measure of pride. “I figure in a few more months I’ll have more training than…”

He stopped listening because he was really,
really
busy devising inventive ways to kill the Knights.

Sniping? Explosives? Field medicine? FBI investigative techniques? Next, she was going to tell him she was perfecting her own nuclear weapon.

He couldn’t let her continue on this path. It led to nothing but sorrow and death, and he’d sooner gouge out his own eyes with a dull stick than see her put herself at such unnecessary risk.

“Never, Rebecca,” he told her, cutting her off from whatever the hell it was she was saying now. “I’ll never allow it.”

“Allow it?” Her brown eyes widened in astonished disbelief, then narrowed as dark fury contorted her pretty face. “Allow it! Screw you, Frank! You’re not my husband, and you’re not my father. It’s not your place to allow or disallow anything. I’m a grown woman, and I’ll do whatever the hell I want!”

He wasn’t her husband because he was too old, and he wasn’t her father because he was just a smidge too young. But he was her boss, sort of, and he was in a position to make sure she didn’t go on with this foolish plan to turn herself into an operator.

Fuck, an
operator
. His heart couldn’t even countenance the thought.

“You think anyone will hire you once I advise them against it?” he asked coolly, throwing a couple of pills to back of his throat and swallowing them down. It was a hell of a lot more difficult than usual, considering this conversation turned his mouth into a desert.

Her jaw dropped open. “You…you’d do that? You’d keep me from—”

“In a heartbeat,” he promised gravely. If it meant keeping her safe, he’d do anything.

Her face froze in shock. Then she blinked rapidly as if trying to fight tears, and he dug down deep in order to steel himself against them. Feminine waterworks were usually the kryptonite to his Superman, but he’d be damned if he’d let a few tears sway him this time. What he did was for her own good. He knew it even if she didn’t.

But she didn’t cry, didn’t let a single teardrop fall. Nope. Not Rebecca “The Rebel” Reichert. Instead she drew in a deep, quivering breath. Then she stared at him, wearing an expression he’d never forget even if he lived to be a hundred years old.

It was a look of complete disillusionment.

Yeah, now you’re starting to get the picture, sweetheart.

Seeing that look on her face made his chest tight as a cocked bowstring, but he wasn’t about to take anything back.

This
was
for her own good.

“You’re an uncompromising sonofabitch, you know that, Boss?” she whispered, nostrils flaring. The pulse in her neck beat a rapid tattoo he could see from five feet away.

Boss.

Never in his wildest dreams had he thought hearing that name on her lips would cut him to the fucking bone. He nearly winced as unexpected pain lanced through him like a saber strike, somewhere in the region of his heart.

No matter. If it meant adiosing her plan to become an operator, he could withstand anything. Even her hatred.

“Now you’re starting to get the picture, Reichert,” he whispered softly.

***

And just like that, it was game over.

Becky dipped her chin toward Frank, a choppy little motion of defeat, before she turned and marched stiffly from the doorway of his office.

She would not cry. She would
not
cry.

She’d already shed far too many tears over the bastard in the three-plus years they’d worked together. But as of this second, no more. No more pining and self-flagellating. No more waiting for the day when he’d stop thinking of her as an annoying little sister type and start realizing she was a
woman
, a woman with quite a bit to offer a guy like him. A woman with quite a bit to offer an organization like the Black Knights.

But no. He’d just made it abundantly clear that day would never come. He’d
never
see her as anything more than a convenience. A female grease-monkey capable only of ensuring their civilian cover remained steadfastly in place.

Oh, she’d deluded herself into thinking their constant bickering and banter was all in good fun. That maybe, just maybe he felt for her a tiny smidgen of what she felt for him. That perhaps, like her, he was waiting for the day when they could drop all the artifice and bullcrap and finally get around to telling each other how they really felt.

Boy howdy, what a loser she’d turned out to be.

“I’m a frickin’ idiot,” she whispered miserably to the empty conference room. The quietly humming computers seemed to mockingly agree with her assessment.

Frank didn’t harbor any secret pining.

Hell no.

After what just went down, it was readily apparent he didn’t even
like
her. Worse than that—oh, yes, there was a worse—he held not the slightest bit of respect for her. And that was just so…so…
awful.

Damn.

Hot tears burned up the back of her throat until it felt like she’d swallowed battery acid. As she fled up the stairs to her room, her bare feet slapped against the metal risers. The sound was as dreadful and hollow as the gaping hole that’d just been blown through her heart.

“Whoa! Hey, what’s wro—”

She gave Patti, who’d been coming down the hall with a set of fresh towels, a frantic
not
now
wave and darted into the quiet solace of her bedroom. Slamming the door behind her, she slid down the metal surface and covered her face with shaking hands. Hard sobs wracked her.

“Goddamn him!” she yelled into the silence. The heavy brick walls absorbed the sound, denying her even that small bit of victory. “Goddamn him,” her voice broke as waves of defeat washed over her.

She wasn’t crying for him, she assured herself as she let the hot tears fall into her palms and drip down her wrists.

Hell no.

She was crying for the loss of her idealism…the loss of her dreams.

***

“We’re not going to visit your parents,” Nate said as he cut Phantom’s growling engine about a block from the Morgan household.

No use waking up the entire neighborhood.

“That’s fine.” Ali’s voice was strangely intimate through the Bluetooth receiver inside his helmet.

The last six hundred miles had been a test of endurance and willpower, because she’d finally allowed herself to totally relax against him, all soft female curves encased in warm leather along his back and outer thighs. He’d had to listen to her soft breathing in his ear the entire journey…and
goddamn!

Bright, neon blue.

He was sure that’d be the color of his poor balls if he took the opportunity to give them a peek.

“They’re asleep by now anyway. Besides,” she sighed and it caused a delicious little chill to snake up his spine despite the warmth of the night, “I don’t want to explain to them what’s been going on. It’ll only cause them to worry.”

“Mmm,” he murmured, trying to beat down the boner that’d plagued him since…well, since forever, it seemed. Was it unhealthy to have an erection that lasted longer than four hours if it was caused by the nearness of a woman as opposed to tossing back a handful Viagra? Something to ask his doc next time he went in for his yearly physical.

“So,” he cleared his throat when it came out all strangled. Not enough blood reaching his vocal cords, no doubt. “Are ya gonna tell me where the drive is now that we’re here?”

“No,” she replied, not even trying to hide the smugness of her tone. The zip drive was hidden somewhere in her and Grigg’s childhood tree house, that much she’d deigned to reveal. The exact location she was keeping to herself. The confounded woman remained crazily convinced he’d dump her in a safe place quicker than she could say, “double-crossing bastard,” if she gave up that last little bit of info.