Hell on Wheels (7 page)

However, last night she forgot to charge the sucker, so she was tortured with ’80s rock ballads all morning. Of course, not having her earbuds in allowed her to hear the horrified screech immediately following the cacophonous clang of the fallen rotor blade.

She glanced up to see a woman standing at the rail wearing a gray cat-hat. Only it appeared, by her flailing arms and Peanut’s hissing, the fashion choice was unintentional.

Wait for it. Wait for it…

“Rebecca! Damnit!”

Ah, there it was.

Frank “Boss” Knight had a way of furiously screaming her name followed by that familiar epithet. It made her wince and grin at the same time.

Grin because the Knights liked to joke with her and say Frank might actually be under the mistaken impression her last name
was
Damnit. And wince because, other than her father, Frank was the only one to ever call her Rebecca—which made her feel about six years old, and she’d wondered more than once if Frank did it intentionally, just to drive home the difference in their ages.

That one word virtually screamed,
Yes, I’ve seen the way you look at me, but I’m old enough to be your father.

Which wasn’t really true unless he started his sexual adventures at thirteen—although, since she thought about it, that seemed completely possible. She’d seen pictures. Even at thirteen it’d been beyond obvious Frank would grow into a beautiful man.

Of course he would never admit to being beautiful. On the contrary, she’d heard him mention on more than one occasion, “It’s a standoff who has more battle wounds, me or Peanut.”

And Becky supposed that was true. The slashing scar bisecting Frank’s left eyebrow gave him the look of perpetual skepticism, while the little white line snaking up from the corner of his mouth made his full lips quirk up just a bit. Taken together, it created an incongruent combination.

Okay, so maybe beautiful wasn’t quite the right word to describe him. His face had far too much character to be put in such vapid terms. Unfortunately, it was a face she’d learned to admire from afar, because that was as close as he ever let her. Not surprising considering she seemed to annoy the ever-lovin’ shit out of the man.

“Yes, Frank?” she innocently replied to his having bellowed her name at the top of his lungs.

Frank. Everyone else called him Boss, but not her. Oh no. Not when calling him by his given name made his eyelids twitch.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed,” he roared down at her, “or just give me a flippin’ heart attack?”

Heart attack. Yeah, right. The man had a resting pulse of sixty beats per minute and a cholesterol count that would make a triathlete weep with envy. He was more likely to get hit by a freak bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky than die of a heart attack.

And since she reckoned his last question was rhetorical, she didn’t bother to answer it. But when he yelled, “Get your ass down from there ASAP,” she did as she was told with only a minimal amount of eye rolling.

“I saw that,” he growled once her feet were safely on the ground.

“No way could you’ve seen that all the way up there,” she called back, hands on hips, incredulously chewing the cherry Dum Dum she’d shoved into her mouth before tackling that last bolt. She’d taken to eating the stupid things three years ago in order to help herself quit smoking. Unfortunately, she’d simply exchanged one addiction for another.

“You’re right. I couldn’t. But you just proved my little theory.” The implied
gotcha
basically flew off the second story to land on her head.

She cursed and called him a colorful name beneath her breath.

“I heard that, too,” he barked, and she clamped her mouth shut, just in case he was telling the truth this time.

***

When the explosion ricocheted around the warehouse, Nate instinctively lunged toward Ali while simultaneously reaching for the Para Ordinance CCW .45 he kept concealed in the waistband of his shorts. Luckily, before he could take her to the ground and cover her with his body, he realized what’d happened—namely, Rebecca “The Rebel” Reichert doing what she did best. Making an unholy ruckus.

He managed, just barely, to halt his flying lunge.

It was a good thing, because Peanut was now stuck to Ali’s head like some weird feline version of the Daniel Boon raccoon hat.

“Oh my God, get him off me,” she whispered as a trickle of blood oozed from her left temple where Peanut secured himself to his precarious perch with one sharp claw.

The sight of that crimson drop sliding down her pale, flawless cheek made Nate want to kill someone. At the moment, he figured he’d start with Peanut and work his way over to Becky and then up to Boss, who wasn’t helping to calm the stupid cat by yelling at Becky.

Go figure. The guy was always yelling at Becky.

Man, the list of friends he was ready to murder was mounting at an astonishing rate since Ali minced her sweet ass into the shop. Just before the uproar, he’d been ready to cap Ozzie for his unnecessary interest in her lingerie.

“Be still,” he whispered as he reached for the cat. The animal was foolish enough to lay back his ears and hiss a warning.

“Um, yes,” she said as she tightened her hold on the rail. “Being still is certainly the plan since movement might cause one of two outcomes. One, it’ll unset the hefty Peanut here and break my neck. Or two, it’ll result in a scalping. And though I’ve been thinking for a while now about cutting my hair, I’m seriously considering keeping the roots.”

“Be quiet, too,” he instructed as he made another attempt to reach for Peanut. It was impossible to concentrate when he was this close to her, especially with her jabbering in that adorable way she had.

He spared a glance at her distressed face and knew it to be a mistake instantly.

He was momentarily arrested because…man, six feet away she was pretty.

Up close like this? Total gut-shot.

Of course, having just seen all of her unmentionables didn’t help matters.
Unmentionables?

Whoever came up with
that
ridiculous term? Underwear that fantastic deserved to be mentioned on a regular basis.

Shit, he wasn’t going to think about her underwear. Which, of course, only made him wonder what color she had on under those tight, distressed jeans and that thin T-shirt. Pink? Her shirt was pink. Women often matched their underwear to their outfits. At least that’d been his experience. So…probably pink.

Holy shit! He was
not
going to think about her underwear!

“Being quiet might be too tall an order.” She nervously licked her lips and he couldn’t help but eye the movement. “Y-you see, when I’m nervous or in pain I tend to talk. It helps me not dwell on the fact that I’m…well, n-nervous or in pain. Like right now? I’m both. So it’s best if I just keep talking. So I’m gonna keep talking, okay?”

He watched her slightly frantic eyes swing toward the table where it looked like a panty-bomb had gone off. Ozzie was standing wide-eyed with a bra in one hand and his pocket knife in the other. “I take it there actually was something in my clothes. Either that or Ethan, er, Ozzie has an aversion to purple satin.”

“Yeah,” he told her as he gently reached toward Peanut, determined not to think about pink silk or purple satin. “You’re bugged. Devices in all your underwear.”

“My underwear? My gosh, that’s so sick—”

“No, not sick,” he interrupted and managed to snake an arm around Peanut’s substantial middle. “It’s smart. You always wear underwear, therefore, you’re always bugged. Whoever tagged you knew what they were doin’, not to mention they were able to get their hands on some pretty hard-to-come-by, high-tech gadgetry.”

She shot him a look.

“What?” he asked.

“Where’s my journal? I want to jot this down for posterity.”

Huh?

He lifted a confused brow and she smirked, ornery light glinting in her amber eyes.

“You just spoke, like, what? A whole four sentences? Not to mention there were a few adjectives thrown in there. That must be some sort of record. It should be memorialized accordingly, don’t you think?” She batted her lashes.

Jesus, the woman was too much.

She rolled her eyes at his fierce frown. That is until he tightened his hold on the damned cat.

“Oh, aahhhh!” She shrieked as he swiftly lifted Peanut from her head and unceremoniously dropped the hairy ton of fun to the ground.

Wow, somebody needed to talk to Becky about what she was feeding the beast. Nate was pretty sure the floor actually shook.

“Here,” he reached into his back pocket and handed her the bandana he always kept there. “You’ve got a drop of blood,” he pointed to his own cheek.

“Thanks,” she said as she pressed the cloth to her temple.

“We, uh, need you to give us the underwear you’re wearing,” he muttered and tried not to glance at the multi-colored mountain of lingerie heaped on the conference table. It only made him imagine just what she’d look like in each and every piece and that certainly didn’t do a thing for the semi-wood he was sporting—semi-wood which threatened to turn into a Louisville Slugger with the slightest encouragement.

Was there a particular name for the kind of reaction this woman engendered in him? Compulsive fixation might begin to cover it. Unreasonable horniness certainly did.

Just the thought of her handing him a pair of panties still warm from the heat of her body—and the recollection it invoked—had a shaft of red-hot lust zinging down his spine.

That was immediately followed by a harsh flash of memory…his hand shaking on the handle of the bloody KA-BAR and Grigg’s mutilated, lifeless body going cold in his arms.

He was hit by a crashing wave of guilt.

Uh-huh, yeah, and that pretty much summed it up when it came to his relationship—or
non
-relationship—with Ali Morgan. Lust and guilt. The two were so intertwined it was a wonder he’d ever felt one without the other.

What
a
goatfuck.

And now here she was, standing not a foot from him, probably wearing silky pink underwear, looking half-frightened, half-amused, with almond shaped eyes that titled up at the corners and sparkled like gold bullion.

Shit. Eyes that sparkle like gold bullion? She turned him into a friggin’ poet—and not a very good one at that.

“Right. I’ll uh, just go take care of that underwear issue.” She gathered herself, squaring her thin shoulders, trying somewhat successfully to throw off the weight of her fatigue. She’d been without sleep for over twenty-four hours. He knew as soon as her adrenaline dropped—which, by the slightly glazed look in her eyes was gonna happen pretty soon—she’d hit the proverbial wall and then he’d have to wait for answers until she’d gotten twenty winks.

He didn’t want to do that.

The sooner he figured out just what the hell was going on, the sooner he could fix whatever it was, and the sooner Ali would be on her way back home.

Halfway across the country.

Which sometimes still felt too close. Particularly when he remembered that day at the beach when they—

“Point me to the bathroom,” she said.

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down the hall. Second door on the right.” When she headed in that direction, he added, “Hey, Ali?”

She glanced back at him.

“You’re a kindergarten teacher.” It came out of his mouth before he had a chance to think about it.

“Yes,” she tilted her head and frowned. “So?”

He simply looked at her. Yeah, so? So what? Geez, he was a complete moron. “So what’d’ya need that stuff for?” In for a penny, in for a pound.

Despite the assurances to himself only minutes ago that he wouldn’t think about her underwear, all that sexy silk and see-through lace was really bugging the hell out of him.

Was there a man in her life? Some lucky sonofabitch she wore those titillating scraps of material for? Some unworthy bastard who had the honor of touching all that warm, smooth flesh? Of kissing all those sweet, sensitive spots? Of eliciting that sexy little whimper of longing in the back of her throat?

The thought made him want to shoot someone. The faceless prick she’d purchased all that junk for would be an excellent place to start. And then he could move on to his friends.

Damn, having her around made him undeniably bloodthirsty.

“What stuff?”

He lowered his chin until he was scowling at her from under his brows. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

Her lips quirked and he was reminded how soft they were, how sweet the inside of her mouth—

No.

He squashed the thought as effectively as Grigg had squashed all those orange-spotted roaches that’d been happy to cohabitate with them that time in Colombia.

“Are you actually saying there’s no need for a kindergarten teacher to have sexy underwear?” she asked, shooting a wary glance toward Ozzie. The kid was doing a fairly good impression of a deaf-mute.