Hell on Wheels (27 page)

They
drew
first
blood, not me
…She tried it out in her head and decided Ozzie was probably a lot more convincing.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Nate glanced up, black eyes piercing the darkness like lasers. He nodded his head, never relaxing his steady grip on his matte-black weapon. Despite his reassurance, she gave the surroundings one more solid scan before she scrambled down the rope ladder.

She barely touched good ol’ terra firma before he was urging her forward across the lawn.

“What is it?” she whispered, nervously trying to peer into dark corners and through the dense foliage of her parents’ hedges.

By way of answer, he merely shook his head, eyes darting around the same corners and bushes.

A chill rushed down her spine like the cold fingers of a wraith. It was the only warning she received before the subtle creaking of the gate’s hinges was broken by a strangely harsh spitting sound.

Nate grunted and yelled, “Run!” as he pushed her through the opening.

She didn’t need to be told twice.

She bolted across her parents’ front yard, her legs doing a fairly good impression of the Roadrunner when the frighteningly loud
boom
boom
boom
of Nate’s .45 split the serene silence of the night and the comfort of the sleepy, middle class neighborhood. Turning just in time to see a large black shadow stumble backward into her parents’ side yard—
Hey! That looks a lot like my mugger!
—she was once more propelled forward as Nate grabbed her by the elbow.

“Don’t stop,” he hissed.

Was he kidding?

Stopping was the dead last thing on her mind.

Porch lights were snapping on, and the neighborhood dogs were barking their canine heads off by the time the two of them skidded to a breathless stop beside Phantom. In one smooth move, Nate swung astride the mean looking motorcycle and started its enormous engine with a grumbling roar.

Ali clambered up behind him and in the next instant they were zooming down the no longer sleepy, suburban street, struggling into their helmets as they headed for the highway and the relative safety of the open road.

***

Dagan scrambled around the corner of the little clapboard house and stood over the man Nathan Weller had shot mere seconds before.

No mistaking it: the dude was dead.

The two neat holes centered over the guy’s heart and the one smack-dab between his eyes—Mozambique style—were evidence enough without the repulsively permeating aroma of shit. As if being dead wasn’t humiliating enough, it wasn’t unusual for one to suffer a final indignity and fill the ol’ drawers.

Mmm, lovely. Just lovely.

Dagan breathed through his mouth as he bent to quickly search the corpse’s pockets.

Nothing.

No surprise there. Only a two-bit idiot would bring identification to a hit. And that’s certainly what it had been.

Dagan had been sneaking around the corner of the Morgans’ house just in time to see a big black shadow pull a Walther P22 with a six-inch silencer from behind his back. The hard spit of the silenced bullet had sounded obscene in the quiet solitude of the quaint little backyard.

Dagan dove for cover and missed Weller’s split second reaction, but there was no mistaking the hard bark of an angry .45. Nor was there any mistaking the fact that Weller was a much better shot than ol’ No Name here.

Bleck. What a stench.

Breathing through his mouth only made matters worse. He was starting to
taste
the fetid air seeping up from the lifeless body, and what he wouldn’t give for a nice shot of Scotch right about now.

He used his penlight to lift Stinky’s ski mask and cataloged the Italianesque features it revealed. Tan skin, black hair, brown eyes that’d yet to lose their brilliance in death. A nose that’d been broken a time or two and one front tooth that was pure, fourteen-carat gold.

Stinky looked like a hoodlum, that was for sure. But a well-paid hoodlum if the sparkly two-carat diamond in the guy’s ear was anything to go by.

Taking his cell phone from his breast pocket, he snapped the dead man’s picture and then quickly slunk back into the shadows.

What
the
hell
is
going
on?

Flaming hell, he
still
hadn’t a clue.

Although there was one thing he was now 100 percent convinced of, if this was an old Western, Aldus would be the one black-hatting it. There was no mistaking this guy was the same man who’d attempted to mug Ms. Morgan—he’d recognize that no-necked sonofabitch anywhere—and he’d take two to one odds that whoever this reeking dead dude was, his paycheck was signed by one Alan Aldus.

Which meant the good senator was now desperate.

And there was nothing scarier than a desperate man with the power and resources of the U.S. government at his disposal.

The sound of one badass Harley firing up down the block had Dagan hurrying to his rented SUV.

***

“What about my parents? That guy…that guy could go in there and…” She couldn’t even finish the thought much less the sentence. They’d been on the highway for five minutes with Ali’s stomach firmly lodged in the middle of her throat before continuous swallowing finally got the sucker back down to where it belonged and she was able to ask the question.

“No. He won’t,” Nate assured her.

“But if he’s after the zip drive, he might think Mom and Dad—”

“He’s not thinkin’ ’bout anything anymore, Ali. I promise y’that.”

“Oh,” she said, then “
Oh!
” when realization dawned.

Okay, so the man was dead.

Nate had killed a man right in front of her…er, right behind her.

Good heavens, she didn’t even know how to feel about that. What in the world was happening? How had her life spun so far out of control?

“Who…who was it? He-he looked a lot like the guy who tried to mug me,” she said, refusing to think of the wife or kids who might be waiting at home for the man. If she started down that path, she’d go crazy.

“I don’t know who it was. Never seen him before, but I wouldn’t doubt he’s the same dude who tried to snatch your purse,” his voice was even more gravelly than usual. “Only this time, he wasn’t after your handbag.”

Her stomach began a steady climb back up into her throat, so she swallowed and tried again. “Was he…was he working for the government, do you think? Did we just kill a…” she choked.

“No,” he assured her firmly. “I know a trained operative when I see one. This guy was nothin’ more’n a two-bit hit man.”

“A hit man?” she squeaked. “How do you know?”

“The big gun he pointed at us with its six-inch suppressor was my first clue.”

“Suppressor?”

“Silencer.”

Good.
Heavens
.

A silencer. People really used silencers.

Well, of course they do
, she chided herself. Especially if those people were
hit
men. “Who would send a hit man after us?”

Her question was met with stony, resounding silence. All she could hear was the harsh sound of her too-fast breathing and the rhythmic rush of blood pounding through her ears.

“Nate?” she finally prodded, squeezing her eyes closed as they leaned into a hairpin turn.

“Don’t know,” he finally replied, shifting gears until Phantom was literally roaring, eating up the asphalt like a two-wheeled demon. And not knowing was obviously causing him some concern if the labored tone of his voice was anything to go by. “But one thing’s certain,” he added, “someone wants us dead.”

“
Dead?
” she screeched.

Of course, she should’ve made the connection before. Hit men didn’t generally pass out snow cones and helium balloons, now did they? But her mind was working a little slowly, and the thought of someone actually trying to kill her was so foreign she was having trouble grasping it.

“But…but…” she was shaking her head and fighting not to panic.

This was not her life. This couldn’t be her life.

“How do you know he was trying to kill us?” she beseeched him, willing him to tell her it was all a horrible joke. “Maybe…maybe he was just sent to scare us or something. After all, that CIA guy had a chance to kill us at Delilah’s, and he didn’t. How do you know this guy wasn’t going to do the same? How do you know he wasn’t—”

Her stomach was no longer in her throat. Heck no. Now it was spinning around like a whirligig, and…yeah…she was going to hurl. No stopping it this time.

A gurgling sound emanated from the back of her throat.

“Goddamnit!” Nate swore. “Can y’puke while in motion, or do we need t’pull over?”

She couldn’t answer him. Not when she was busy leaning over the side of the speeding bike, lifting her visor, and projectile vomiting.

Well huh, what do you know? It appeared she
could
puke while in motion.

And lucky for her—if anything about this whole disastrous situation could be considered lucky—she managed to miss both her leg and Nate’s. She couldn’t speak for the fate of the back tire, though.

Saliva pooled thick and hot in her mouth as she watched the guardrail zoom past.

“You okay?” Nate asked, his voice strangely discordant.

Right about now he was probably
really
regretting giving in to her demands to come along on this mission.

Oh, who was she fooling? She herself was regretting it with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.

“Y—” she spit—gross—and tried again. “Yes. I…I think so.”

Sucking in a deep breath, she licked her parched lips and straightened.

Okay. Okay, she could do this. She could deal with the fact that not only was the CIA after them, but now a hit man as well. She could deal with the fact that…

“Erp,” she ground her jaw when her stomach turned over again.

All right, maybe
deal
with
was too strong a phrase.

She wasn’t dealing with anything except trying to combat the urge to toss her cookies. Problem there being there weren’t any cookies to toss, which meant dry heave time. And she really,
really
hated dry heave time.

“Ali, do y’need me to pull over?”

“No,” she assured him. “I’m…I’m fine.” She sucked in another cleansing breath and willed herself to be so.

He snorted, the sound loud and particularly disbelieving through the Bluetooth headset.

“Okay, I’m not fine,” she admitted shakily. “But I’ll live.”

His only response was a grunt.

Yeah, she’d live, because Nate was back to his oh-so-verbose self, which meant things must be okay, or as okay as they could be…considering.

She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Her stomach settled…a little. Then something hot and wet slid over her fingers where they wrapped around Nate’s waist. Daring to loosen her grip, she held on with one arm as she brought her hand close to her face.

Something oily and black met her eyes.

What
in
the
world?

She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it could be. Then they zoomed beneath a glowing yellow street light, and the black oil turned bright, horrible crimson.

“You’re bleeding!” she yelled, fresh panic making her voice break on a hard edge.

“Yep,” he grumbled, “that’s what happens when y’get shot.”

“Shot!” she howled. “He shot you?” So much for the
just
sent
to
scare
them
theory.

“Ali, stop screamin’. You’re gonna burst my eardrums.”

Was he crazy? He was worried about burst eardrums when he was
shot
?

“Where are you going?” She suddenly realized they were flying down the highway, heading away from Jacksonville at a speed that would’ve scared her to death had she taken the time to think about it. “We have to get you to a hospital!”

“No,” he ground out. “It’s nothing. Barely a scratch.”

“A scratch?” she screeched incredulously, once more glancing down at the sticky blood staining her trembling hand. “A bullet does not leave a scratch, you big dumb idiot. It leaves a
hole
. Where were you hit?”