Hell on Wheels (12 page)

Chapter Six

“I’ve had no opportunity, sir.”

The impertinent tone coming through the phone made Senator Aldus’s blood pressure threaten to shoot through the roof like Old Faithful.

His doctor warned him to cut his stress levels. How the hell he was supposed to do that when he was surrounded by imbeciles was anyone’s guess. If he looked in the mirror right now, his face would probably be the same burgundy color as the dress his wife decided—after much hand-twisting and hem-hawing—to wear to tonight’s charity ball.

His wife…

He’d married her almost twenty years ago for her political connections and bourgeois status. And he’d grown to hate her more and more each day since.

Just thinking of her made the thick vein in his forehead pulse in time to the beat of his heart.

“What the fuck do you mean you’ve had no opportunity? She’s been there nearly twelve hours!” The plastic casing of his cellular phone crackled in warning, and he took a deep breath in order to make himself release the death-grip he had on the device before he crushed it in his hand.

“Miss Morgan hasn’t left Black Knights Inc.’s premises.”

“So?” Aldus couldn’t help it; he once more tightened his grip on the phone and wished like hell it was the stupid shit’s neck. What good did it do to hire an ex-spook when the sonofabitch couldn’t do something as simple as a little snatch and grab? Obviously the CIA was losing its touch if this was the caliber of agent it was churning out nowadays.

“Pardon my saying so, sir, but you’re not paying me enough to break into Black Knights Inc. It might look like nothing more than a high-tech, highly secured custom motorcycle shop from the outside, but I’ve studied the schematics of the place, and it’s a goddamned fort. If all they’re doing is building bikes in there, I’ll eat my jockey shorts for dinner.”

Aldus’s wife poked her head into his home office, her ice-blond hair arranged to perfection, the diamond clusters he’d bought her for their tenth wedding anniversary—because he had to keep up appearances, even with the missus—glinting in her ears.

Christ! What now?

“Sweetheart,” she said in her nasally, upper-crust Boston accent. It screeched down his spine like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Hurry or we’re going to be late.”

“Just another minute, dear.” He pasted on a smile when he really wanted to throw his lead paperweight at her pretty, insipid face. Just thinking of the snap of those delicate bones and the bright burst of blood had his inauthentic smile turning genuine.

She nodded regally and backed out of his office. He listened until he heard the delicate click of her Prada slingback pumps echoing down the tiled hallway before he hissed into the phone, “I don’t give a fuck how you do it. Find a way to grab her. And do it now. Tonight. I want those missing files on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

He punched the end button on the cell phone so hard he chipped the manicure he’d received just this morning.

Fuck!

***

What
am
I
doing
here?

It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours Ali had the thought. Only
here
happened to be Red Delilah’s.

Not necessarily a quintessential biker bar name, but this was certainly a quintessential biker bar. Peanuts littered the floor, Metallica blasted from the jukebox but still couldn’t drown out the loud continuous click of a cue ball making contact with its target at the felt-covered table in the back, and the musty smell of spilled draft beer and old cigarette smoke lingered in the air.

Yes, this was certainly a quintessential biker bar. One that just happened to be run by
the
most intimidating, stereotypical, ’50s pin-up girl on the planet.

As if her day could’ve gotten any worse.

But wait. It had. Because she was here. In this god-awful place, wearing these god-awful clothes, finishing up her last bite of this…well, in truth the dinner was far from god-awful.

She’d woken up from her nap—if you could call eight hours of near comatose sleep after a good solid hour of crying herself sick, something as simple as a nap—totally ravenous.

Becky’d spotted her as she’d stumbled down the stairs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Without preamble or prudence, Becky demanded, “Get changed. We’re all headed over to Delilah’s. We’ll order dogs from the joint next door.”

Uh, what? “Dogs?”

“Yeah,” Becky eyed her with a sly grin. “You
have
had a traditional Chicago-style hotdog before, haven’t you?”

“Ugh. Processed mystery meat. No thanks,” she said, even though her stomach was busy gnawing a hole through to her backbone. She’d take a pass.

“Oh!” Becky grabbed her chest as if shot. “Bite your tongue.” She hooked a friendly arm around Ali’s shoulders and herded her back upstairs. “A traditional Chicago hotdog is an all-beef frankfurter with a boat load of toppings. We say it’s a dog that’s been dragged through the garden. You’ll love it. I promise.”

Ali had her doubts, but they were totally assuaged as she licked the last bit of celery salt from her fingers. No joke, there was only one word to describe the concoction she’d just wolfed down. Delicious.

Her outfit was another matter entirely. She warily glanced down at her bare midriff for about the thousandth time.

If the faculty and students of Ridgeline Elementary could see her now…

They’d probably run screaming in the other direction. Sheesh.

A ragged AC/DC tank top that did humiliatingly little to hide the lacy straps of her red bra combined with a skintight pair of Becky’s low-riding Guess jeans—which had more holes than material—to have her tugging once more at the cropped hem of her shirt in a vain attempt to conceal her belly button ring. Obviously Becky approved of that little item of jewelry because it was the one thing of her own the woman allowed her keep.

Pfft
. Really,
Ali
was the one who needed advice on fashion?

Glancing around at the other patrons, she scowled. No. Absolutely not. Not unless it was fashionable for a guy who closely resembled Santa Claus to squeeze himself into leather pants and a holey white T-shirt with a slogan that read FREE MUSTACHE RIDES
.

Ugh. Her hotdog started to reverse direction at the thought as the constant rumble of motorcycles coming and going echoed through the building over the sound of the jukebox. A group of businessmen, whom Becky described as “weekend warriors,” looked completely out of place in the rough-and-tumble joint, especially since they were bellied up to the bar beside a handful of burly looking guys wearing leather jackets with patches depicting a fearsome-looking angel holding a cigar in one hand and a handgun in the other and the words DARK ANGELS stitched across the top.

This place was surreal. Scratch that. Ever since Grigg’s death, her entire
life
was surreal.

And it didn’t lessen her foul mood in the slightest when the sky-high, red patent leather pumps that’d been foisted on her began killing her toes, even while sitting down.

How was that even possible?

Obviously the shoes were designed by some sadistic man who liked to cripple women…probably so they’d be unable to scamper away while he tried to give them free mustache rides.

“Stop fidgeting. You look great,” Becky assured her while absently scanning the bar. Patti had gone to use the ladies’ room, and the men of Black Knights Inc. were huddled around the jukebox in the corner, presumably to pick out more music.

Anything besides Metallica would work, Ali thought.

Or
not.

Pantera started screaming from the speakers, and she supposed next time she needed to be more specific when asking for small miracles.

Funny how the Knights were supposed to be plugging in new tunes, but not one of them was digging in his jeans for change. Neither were any of them actually
looking
at the jukebox.

They must consider her to be a real moron if they thought they were fooling her for a second.

They weren’t over there for the music. Oh no. They were over there discussing what options they had concerning her “situation.”

Over dinner, Frank told her General Fuller was unable to contact the director of the FBI. The Director was supposedly in closed-door meetings all day and wouldn’t be able to return Frank’s inquiry into what Agent Delaney was investigating until tomorrow.

Frank tried to give Ali the impression he intended to leave it at that, at least for the night. But one look at his frustrated expression and she quickly surmised he wasn’t the kind of man to simply wait around for answers to fall in his lap.

“I feel like a fool,” she groused as she toed out of Becky’s ridiculous shoes.

Becky shot her a sharp look. “What? You look fantastic. Very mysterious. Smoldering. So stop fidgeting.”

Ali snorted.

“You do,” Becky insisted. “Didn’t you see the look on Ghost’s face when you stepped into the shop?”

Yes, she saw it. And again she thought perhaps something hot flashed behind his eyes. But then when they’d all fired up the engines on their Harleys—which was a sound and sensation Ali would never forget for the rest of her natural life—she moved to hop up behind Nate, but he waved her off with a muttered, “You’re ridin’ with Ozzie.”

Okay
, she thought.
I
don’t even
know
Ozzie
but…whatever.

She supposed she really shouldn’t have been so surprised. Nate always went out of his way to avoid touching her. Not everyone. Just her.

“Stop pulling at that shirt,” Becky demanded now, giving her the evil eye. Not hard to do with a quarter inch of jet black eyeliner smeared around her lids. Alice Cooper was somewhere applauding and biting the head off a chicken. “You’re going to stretch it out and then I’ll have to trim the hem again.”

Trim the hem? If Becky trimmed the hem any more, it’d be nothing but a cotton collar attached to a couple of arm holes.

“I should’ve just worn my own clothes,” Ali sighed in resignation as it became apparent no amount of maneuvering would lengthen the hem of the tank top.

“Yeah, ’cause a pink, sparkly bebe T-shirt would’ve fit in so well here,” Becky stated dryly.

Okay, the woman had a point.

Red Delilah’s sported more leather than a herd of Texas cattle. All black, all shot through with silver studded detailing. All very intimidating—and that was before one started to read the T-shirt slogans.

And then there was Delilah. The bar’s proprietress.

She made the patrons look shockingly under-leathered. Ali couldn’t begin to guess the woman’s age. She had a sort of timeless quality about her. Like an old film star. And like those old film stars, her figure would make an hourglass weep with envy. Of course, it helped when all those curves were on display beneath a black leather cat-suit whose top must’ve come from a Victoria’s Cleavage catalog.

Sometimes God giveth and then he just keeps on giveth-ing.

Ali glanced in the woman’s direction as she sashayed—there was really no other way to describe the dramatic sway of those dangerous, leather-clad hips—out from behind the bar and over to the group of men by the jukebox.

If the Knights were dogs, they’d be panting.

She decided right then she didn’t particularly like Delilah—if that was really the woman’s name. Not because she was gorgeous. No, no. Ali objected to her existence because she managed to do the impossible.

Looping long arms around Nate’s neck, Delilah kissed him full on the mouth and leaned in to whisper something in his ear.

That’s when it happened. The impossible, that is.

Because that’s when Nathan Weller, former sergeant of the Marine Corps, current government defense contractor, and all-time Ice Man—as in cold as ice, heart like ice—laughed.

And not your regular ol’ tehehe-that-was-funny laugh.

Oh, no.

A big booming roar rose above the pounding rock ’n’ roll. His whole body was overcome by it. His head thrown back, thick throat working, big shoulders shaking.

It was the most amazingly…
bizarre
thing Ali’d ever seen.

Which was saying something given the clientele inside Red Delilah’s.

And for some reason she absolutely refused to think about, it…well…it rankled. She’d known the man for twelve years, and she’d never seen him laugh like that, which just proved she didn’t really know him at all. Case in point: she’d always considered him to be a little limited in the vocabulary department and then he goes and whips out a word like autoschediastic. What in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks did autoschediastic mean?

It was disconcerting to think she could’ve been so wrong about—