Hell on Wheels (40 page)

Nucking futs, indeed.

“A
month
,” he barked incredulously. “You can’t just leave us for a whole goddamned
month
. We’ve got two theme bikes on order. The first is supposed to be finished in three weeks.”

“Ozzie can come up with the designs. He’s got a good eye, and I’ve been working with him on the CAD. As for the fabrication, Dan can handle it. All he does is work and drink himself stupid anyway. It helps keep his mind off…” she swallowed, “you know.”

When she went to open the front door, he stopped her with a heavy hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath before she turned to face him.

“He’s not keeping his mind off it,” he told her with a look of helpless disgust making the scar at the corner of his lip pull tight. “He’s just avoiding the situation entirely.”

“We all grieve in our own way, Boss,” she replied softly, frowning when he winced. “What?”

“You ever gonna call me by my given name again?”

Ever since the day he’d told her he’d never allow her to achieve her dream of becoming an operator, that he’d go so far as to intentionally sabotage her efforts, she’d stopped thinking of him in such personal terms, instead relegating him to a simple position of authority over her professional life.

At least that’s what she’d tried to do.

Some days it worked. Some days it didn’t. The days he took himself up to Lincoln Park usually fell directly into the
didn’t
category.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, shaking her head, feeling like someone dropped a bowling ball on her stomach.

She just wanted to get the hell away from Black Knights Inc. Away from the piercing pain and the overwhelming grief. Away from all the terrible reminders of what had happened and all the broken dreams of what never would.

A flicker of frustration crossed his beautifully rugged face. “Fine,” he ground out. “Call me whatever the hell you want to call me.”

Would he mind if she called him a complete dill-hole? Because that’s exactly what he was. Two months ago, she would’ve come back with just that. Now, she no longer had the strength or desire to fight with him.

“The fact remains,” he continued, “we can’t afford to lose you for a full month.”

“I haven’t taken a vacation in over two years. I’ve got four weeks coming to me. Like I said, Dan and the others can handle any orders that come in. Plus, this is a good opportunity for our new recruits to start getting their hands dirty. It’ll be good for the Knights to help the new guys come up with some concepts and designs for their own bikes. Maybe it’ll create camaraderie, you know?”

He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand to stop him. “I’m not asking permission. I’m telling you. I’m taking this month. I need a break. There’s a black cloud hanging over this entire operation that’s absolutely suffocating me. I’ll go crazy if I have to spend another hour here, much less another day.”

His hard jaw snapped closed with an audible click, and she watched somewhat detachedly as the muscles in his cheek clenched.

It’s not like he would fire her. Or maybe he would.

Did she even care?

Wow, she honestly didn’t know anymore.

“Where are you going?” he finally asked, eyes sparkling with resigned anger.

“To the Seychelles and then Madagascar,” she told him. “I’ve got a friend who’s doing research for her doctoral thesis there.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“Yepper, and that’s the
whole
point.”

A long, strained silence stretched between them as he searched her face. The molecules in the air separating them began to vibrate.

Where was that frickin’ knife to cut the tension when a girl needed it?

“You’re not running away from…” he ran a hand over his hair and winced when his injured shoulder popped. She wanted to tell him to get the damned thing fixed already but knew it wouldn’t do any good. He didn’t want to be out of commission for however long it would take to recover from the procedure.

Stubborn, that’s what he was. Stubborn as a mule.

But thankfully, for the next month anyway, that wasn’t going to be her problem. “What I mean to say is,” he continued somewhat hesitantly, “that
I’m
not the reason you’re running halfway around the world…Am I?”

“I’m not
running
away from you or anything else,” she assured him, blatantly lying straight to his damnably concerned face. “But I am
getting
away from everything.”

“But you’re coming back, right?”

She suddenly felt unaccountably exhausted.

“I’m coming back. If I didn’t, who’d pay for my weekly mani and pedi? Plus, you know, a girl’s gotta eat.” She tried to smile but by the look on his face, her effort had fallen flat.

“All right,” he jerkily dipped his chin before gallantly opening the front door. The warm September sun spilled in, momentarily blinding them. She used it as an excuse to slide on her sunglasses, hoping it would help hide the fact that for some inexplicable reason there were tears gathering behind her eyes. “Go take your vacation, Rebecca. Relax. Let the sun bake your troubles away.”

As if it would ever be that easy. But maybe, just maybe, she’d meet a nice native boy who could help mend her broken heart.

Sure, and maybe there’d be snow in the Sahara.

“Do you need a ride to the airport?” he asked, taking the handle of her suitcase and walking with her toward the front gates. “According to Ozzie, that new transmission you installed on the Hummer is smooth as butter, and I figure I better give it a test drive before Steady gets his hands on the thing and screws it up again.”

Becky couldn’t help herself, her eyes darted to the spot where Patti had sprawled on the blacktop, breathing her last. Any vestiges of blood had been thoroughly scrubbed away, but she would always know exactly where that spot was.

She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“Nah, I’m taking the Blue Line in,” she told him, referring to the famous Chicago El-track. She inhaled the familiar mix of exhaust from the street traffic and the wet, fishy aroma that wafted up from the Chicago River. The wind was coming in from the direction of the Blommer Chocolate Factory, overlaying everything with the rich scent of cocoa.

She’d grown up close to this neighborhood. These were the smells of home.

But right now she took no comfort in them. She yearned for the sweet scent of suntan lotion and the spicy aroma of thick coconut curry. She yearned for anything to take her mind away from Frank Knight, her broken dreams, and the overbearing despair hanging like a sickness around the compound.

“I’ll see you in a month,” she assured him, taking the handle of her suitcase, barely wincing when their fingers brushed.

“One month,” he echoed, giving her a hard, searching look.

She quickly turned away, unable to stand the worried glint in his eyes.

Without a backward glance, she hurried down Cherry Street. The blocks of gum-pocked sidewalk disappeared under her sneakers, and it wasn’t until she turned the corner onto North Avenue that she released a deep, shuddering breath.

She had one month to try to pull herself together, to try to come up with new dreams to replace the old ones.

But…before she crossed that big blue ocean and started in on her—hopefully—life-altering journey, she had a stop to make on the East Coast.

***

Bam! Bam! Bam!

“Criminy!” Ali squealed and dropped the fresh baked ladyfinger she was about to shove in her mouth. Someone was trying their level best to knock her front door off its hinges.

“Alisa Morgan!” A familiar voice yelled through the solid wood panel. “Open up! I know you’re in there!”

She tripped over her new rug and—“Ow, ow,
ow
!”—stubbed her little toe on the leg of her sofa in her mad dash to wrench open the door.

“What in blue blazes are you doing here, Becky?” she demanded, hopping on one foot while holding her screaming pinkie toe in the palm of her hand.

“I’m here to beat some damned sense into your obstinate, irrational, frickin’…
erroneous
head,” Becky hissed, pushing her way into Ali’s apartment, dragging a small rolling suitcase behind her.

Good heavens, was the woman planning to stay?

“That’s, uh, quite a lot of adjectives,” she declared, eyeing that suitcase like a treed bird eyes a grounded cat, with a sort of puzzled apprehension. Her aching pinkie toe was instantly forgotten.

“Oh don’t get all teachery on me, and quit looking at my suitcase like it’s seconds away from growing fangs and taking a bite out of you. I’m not staying. Consider yourself a minor pit stop on the journey that’s going to change my life.”

“Where are you—”

Becky waved an impatient hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve screwed up royally, and you’re either going to get your ass to Chicago, double-time, and make things right, or I’m going to have to beat the crap out of you. I wasn’t joking about that part.”

Good heavens.

“I don’t—”

“I
know
you don’t,” Becky interrupted her, setting aside her suitcase and actually lacing her fingers together to stretch them out in front of her, popping her knuckles, looking like a fighter about to take the ring as she tilted her pretty blond head from side to side to loosen her neck muscles. “You
don’t
deserve Ghost’s unwavering devotion. You
don’t
know the unimaginable guilt he feels about having to, yes,
having
to
take his best friend’s life. You
don’t
have the right to blame him for Grigg’s death when what he did was a frickin’ heroic act of mercy! You
don’t
—”

“You’re right,” Ali said quietly, grimacing as the ache that’d set up shop inside her chest for the past six weeks expanded until it was hard to draw breath.

God, Nate. Wonderful, loyal, brave Nate.
Why
didn’t you answer any of my calls?

“I am?” Becky stopped bouncing from foot to foot and looked momentarily confused. Then she shook her head like a dog shaking off water. “You’re damned right I am.”

Crapola. Ali was going to start bawling if she didn’t do something to distract herself. Just looking in Becky’s familiar brown eyes made her painfully desperate to see Nate again. To watch his resolute face for those oh-so-brief glimpses of sweet emotion, to listen to his deep voice smash up his few taciturn words, to touch him, to feel the vitality of his tough flesh, even if only in passing.

“I was about to have some ladyfingers and a cup of tea,” she murmured past the hard lump in her throat. “Care to join me?”

“Uh, sure. I guess.” It appeared that Becky didn’t know what to do with herself as she twisted her hands together, glancing around uncertainly. She obviously hadn’t expected Ali to be so obliging.

Beckoning for the woman to follow her to the kitchen, she took a moment to drag in a burning breath and corral her stupid, stupid tears. If she got started now, she wasn’t sure she’d ever stop and wouldn’t that endear her to Becky?

Um, no. Most definitely not.

“Have a seat,” she motioned to the small, wrought iron bistro table in the corner and busied herself arranging the tea tray.

“Wow. Fancy,” Becky murmured as Ali set the antique silver service on the table between them.

She smiled sadly. For such a small, feminine looking woman, Rebecca Reichert was amazingly tough. More times than she could count in the last six weeks, she’d wished for just a drop of Becky’s pluck.

As she poured their tea, she wondered how best to pose her next question without sounding pathetic.

Ah, screw it.

“How is he?” she blurted.

“Who?” Becky asked around a ladyfinger. “Ghost? He’s horrible. It’s bad enough he had to…” she made a rolling motion with what was left of the ladyfinger. “Well, you know what he had to do. But then for you to
blame
him—”

“But I
didn’t
,” she defended herself. “I didn’t blame him or judge him for Grigg’s death. Give me a little credit. I know he…” God, it was almost too awful to voice the words, she couldn’t imagine the horror of the actual act. Frank had given her the file on the whole, terrible incident, telling her she deserved to
finally
know it all.

She’d read the horrific thing while sitting beside the toilet on the cold tiles of her bathroom floor
.
Immediately afterward, she’d burned it and then dumped the ashes down the garbage disposal. As if flushing it away could somehow make the abominable words never exist in the first place. But she still saw them occasionally when she closed her eyes…