Hell on Wheels (20 page)

“Where are you?” Aldus demanded, maybe he could talk the idiot into—

“On I-90, heading south.”

“You’re coming back to DC?”

“Maybe, but I doubt it.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That’s no longer any of your business…sir.”

Aldus heard the faint roar of a motorcycle in the background, and the top of his head felt like it was lifting away. “You’re following them, aren’t you, you asshole? Where are they going?”

“Good-bye, senator.”

Fuck!

He smashed the cheap, plastic pre-paid cell phone against the dashboard twice, but even when the device splintered into pieces in his hand, his rage wasn’t satisfied. The only thing that kept him from jumping from the car and stomping the remaining bits of the phone to hell and back was the young mother who carried a toddler on her hip. She was eyeing him with blatant apprehension as she scurried up to the restrooms.

Not good. She might recognize him. Because of his position, his face wasn’t a stranger to national television.

Okay, okay. Get a handle on yourself, Aldus.
He took a couple of deep breaths and forced himself back under control.

This wasn’t the end of the world. He had another option.

An option he hadn’t wanted to employ, but now he was left with no choice. His back was to the wall. So just like always, and despite his personal feelings on the matter, he’d make the tough decision.

Looking at the broken pieces of plastic in his hand and littering the gray pinstripe of his suit pants, he silently cursed his earlier burst of temper.

He needed that goddamned phone.

His personal cell phone wasn’t useful in this particular situation, because the call he was about to make could never be traced back to him.

***

She’d finally fallen asleep.

Leaning heavily along his back, Ali’s slim, leather-clad thighs rested softly against the outside of Nate’s legs, and he could detect the heavy rise and fall of every breath she took.

For the first three hours of their trip, she’d been studiously careful to keep a handful of inches between their bodies, her knees angled
way
out.

Wouldn’t want to get too personal now, would we?
Wouldn’t want to touch him anymore than was
absolutely
necessary.

Geez, he’d handled last night all wrong, literally tossing her out of his bedroom when he couldn’t stand having her look at him with such sweet compassion and desperate longing. So he had no one but himself to blame for the hurt look on her face today, for those dark smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes.

Someone should kick his ass.

Unfortunately, as he looked in his side mirror and again caught a glimpse of that silver Escalade way back there, he was starting to think someone just might try.

If he had to guess, it was Ali’s Mystery Man on their six. Their shell game obviously hadn’t worked. Which left them with two options.

One: Given Mystery Man had tailed Ali for months, knew where she lived and worked, the dude had to surmise from their current trajectory that they were headed back to Jacksonville. So what was the point of trying to shake him?

Or
…Nate could go with option numero dos. Namely, lose the fucker.

Given he didn’t particularly care to have an unknown at his back for the next six hundred miles, there was really no question which option he’d choose.

“Wake up, Ali,” he said into his helmet mic. He hated having to do this. Riding on the back of a bike was exhausting for those not accustomed to it and, man, she needed the z’s. Unfortunately, there was no other way.

“Uh.” He felt her move against his back. “Wh-what?”

Even through the tinny-sounding communications system, he could hear the huskiness of her sleepy voice. His gut tightened in response.

“Y’needa wake up, sugar.” Crap. That little endearment just slipped out. He’d always thought of her as such, considering she was about the sweetest person he’d ever known, but he’d never dared say it her face. He comforted himself with the fact that he hadn’t really done so now, either. She was at his back, after all. “I’m gonna need you to hold on tight.”

She stiffened against him and pulled her thighs wide.

Yeah, she was fully awake now.

“What? Why?” she asked.

“We got company, and I’m gonna need t’employ a few escape and evasion tactics. It may get fairly hairy for a few klicks.”

“What kind of company?” Her arms tightened on his waist as her thighs snapped securely around his.

Hey now, how about that?

Had he known that’s all it would take to get her to stop twisting herself into a pretzel, he’d have played the whole
escape
and
evasion
card a long time ago.

“I’ll give you two guesses and the first one doesn’t count,” he replied dryly.

“The CIA agent?” she asked, her hand crawling up to lay over his heart, as if the rock-steady beat somehow comforted her.

“If that’s indeed who Mystery Man is workin’ for.” He covered her small hand with his gloved palm, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze.

Shit, he should’ve insisted she stay back at headquarters. The woman was a kindergarten teacher, for Christ’s sake. She wasn’t cut out for escape and evasion tactics employed from the back of a tricked-out Harley. Of course, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it now. She was here, and it was his job to make sure nary a hair on her pretty little head sustained so much as a split end.

“I need to call headquarters,” he told her. “See if Ozzie can’t do us a huge favor and find us a nice little hidey hole.”

“Uh, okay…”

He pulled his secure, encrypted cell phone from his jacket pocket and thumbed two on the speed dial. There were a series of clicks. He stated his password.

“Go ahead, Ghost,” the voice came clear as a bell through his headset. Ozzie rigged all their helmets with Bluetooth technology. Kid was an asset; no bones about it. Only that wasn’t Ozzie on the other end of the line.

“Rebel?” he asked.

“The one and only,” she answered proudly. “Ozzie’s in the can. What can I do ya for?”

“I’ve got company,” he told her, quickly glancing into his rearview mirror only to find the silver SUV nowhere in sight.

He took no comfort in the fact.

“Can you access our location—we’re on I-65 just past Lexington, Kentucky—and find me a place to lie low for the next few hours?”

“No luck with the shell game, huh? That sucks.”

Yep, and then some.

“Okay, I’m mapping your location via Phantom’s tracking device,” Becky said, all business, “but in order to view your company I’m gonna need….” Nate heard the rapid clicking of a keyboard. “Yepper,” Rebel came back. “Hold please while I access Eyes in the Sky.”

Eyes in the Sky, huh? Ozzie had obviously schooled Rebel on temporarily hijacking a few key military surveillance satellites.

Handy.

Not to mention
very
difficult.

“Okay, Ghost, I’ve got you on my screen,” Becky quickly related. “Looking for viable escape routes and cover.”

Wow, that was fast.

He couldn’t help but think,
way
to
go,
chica. The girl was obviously gettin’ good and not just at the techie stuff. She could also handle a bolt-action rifle better than most seasoned soldiers.

Boss was going to blow a gasket when he realized just how hard baby girl was trying to turn herself into a full-blown operator. Nate could only hope he was out on assignment when the shit hit the fan…

“Our tail is drivin’ a silver Escalade,” he told her. “I can’t see him now, but at last visual he was ’bout half a klick back.”

“Got him on my screen, too,” Becky quickly confirmed. “He’s still trailing, back farther now, a little over a klick. All right, Ghost, local real estate listing has an empty house in Winchester. Old one. Been on the market a long time, so no real danger of some enthusiastic realtor barging in on you. Its detached garage doesn’t have a garage door opener, so you won’t have any trouble accessing. In two klicks, you’re gonna see your exit.”

Nate didn’t slow as he zoomed down the exit ramp. Ali squeaked and he wished to God he didn’t have to do this. She’d been frightened enough recently without entertaining the very repulsive thought of acquiring a terminal case of road rash.

“First right.” Becky’s voice was steady in his headset. “End of the block, head left until you hit Magnolia Street.”

The little wood-sided houses flying past them had basketball hoops in their driveways. There was a forgotten blue tricycle in the yard on the corner, and across the street a red Radio Flyer was abandoned with its cargo of stuffed animals.

Thank goodness it was lunchtime and most of the kiddies in the neighborhood were inside eating bologna sandwiches, or this little maneuver would’ve been much trickier.

“Silver Escalade just exited. He’s slowing,” Becky informed him.

“Yep, probably trying to listen for us,” Nate said through clenched teeth. One of Phantom’s little drawbacks.

“Turn left on Magnolia. Tenth house down on the right. Off-white siding, crimson front porch railing—”

“I see it.”

“Garage is in the back. If there’s a lock—”

“I got my bolt cutters,” he interrupted her.

But when he cut his engine and coasted up to the old, rickety, one-car garage, he quickly noted its lack of even an attempt at security.

Small towns. Geez, you just gotta love ’em.

“Hop off, sugar, and…” Shit. He winced. There he went with the whole
sugar
thing again, “lift that door for us, would ya?”

“Well I would,
honey
,” Becky drawled through his headset, “but I’m a little busy right now. Not to mention three hundred miles away.”

Nate ignored Rebel as he watched Ali stagger toward the garage door. Uh-huh, over four hours on the back of a bike tended to bowleg anyone not used to it. She bent to grab the bottom of the door and—

Jesus. No one should look that good in worn jeans and a pair of leather chaps. A brief image of her wearing nothing but those leather chaps flashed hotly through his degenerate mind.

Oh…great. Talk about one piss-poor time to spring an erection. Here they were, hundreds of miles from the nearest trustworthy help, with a mysterious operator on their trail and God-only-knew-what waiting for them in Jacksonville, and what do you suppose he was doing? He was reaching down to inconspicuously rearrange himself because his pecker had decided now was a dandy time to snap to attention.

Obviously, he was in need of some serious psychological analysis, because the possibility of imminent death coupled with the sight of Ali in those jeans and chaps shouldn’t cause this intense physical reaction. That it did only solidified the fact that there was something really wrong with him. Of course, if growing wood in the middle of battle was any indication of mental deficiencies, then every guy he knew needed to go in for some head-shrinking. Something about the punch of adrenaline tended to work on the male anatomy the same way a Playboy centerfold usually did—and that was one strange evolutionary phenomenon he would never understand.

Once the door slid up with a cranky screech, he quickly walked Phantom into the cool, dusty interior of the garage. Old paint cans rusted on the back shelves, and the place smelled like mildew and mothballs. Dust motes hung heavy in the stale air.

It certainly wasn’t the local Hilton, but it’d do in a pinch.

“Close ’er up,” he instructed Ali, and she reached up to pull the garage door down. Her shirt lifted above her navel, and that goddamned red jewel in her belly button ring caught the light and taunted him.

Super, now his balls ached in time with his dick. Could this day get any more perfect?

“Silver Escalade is searching the neighborhood,” Becky informed him.

Yep, and there you had it. He should know better by now than to ask rhetorical questions.

“Let him search,” he replied as he swung himself off the bike and performed the typical squat and shuffle every guy on the planet perfected in order to better situate dangly bits that were no longer so dangly. “He won’t like what he finds. Switching to handset,” he informed Rebel as he pulled off his helmet and attached a Bluetooth device to his ear. “Mic check. Mic check.”

“You’re coming through loud and clear, Ghost Man,” Rebel chirped happily. This was her first time to man command central, and the position obviously suited her just fine.

Boss was gonna have a conniption.

“Good.” Nate lifted a case from his saddlebags and quickly began assembling his long-range weapon. “I need you to monitor the local police bands. We made an almighty ruckus the likes of which they’re probably not used to around here. I wouldn’t want the local five-oh getting nosy. They’d give away our position in a heartbeat.”