Thrill Ride (18 page)

The silence while Wilhelm considered Boss’s decree stretched until it was palpable. Like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point. And Rock’s heart, usually pretty good about keeping a steady beat, began thundering in his chest so loudly he thought it a miracle Wilhelm couldn’t hear it even from thirty feet away. And wouldn’t
that
be the way to blow this whole can of worms wide open?

He fancied he could actually hear the second hand ticking on Boss’s big diver’s watch. Everything hinged on Wilhelm accepting this particular edict.

And just when he was sure the guy was going to balk, Wilhelm yelled, “Dietz, bring me the collection kit! We’ve got samples to take!”

***

He was dead. She’d killed him.

She might not have been the one to pull the trigger, but she’d killed him just the same—and, yes, at any other time she’d have appreciated the fact that those were the exact words Rock had used to describe the deaths of those men and…

Had
used…

She was already thinking of him in the past tense.

Oh, God! She fell to her knees as two words spun around and around inside her brain.

Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

But even though her head knew it was true—she’d seen him take three shots straight to the chest and…oh, sweet Lord…the blood; the blood had been terrible—her heart was another matter entirely. Her heart couldn’t accept the fact that he was really gone. It was throbbing against her ribs, aching, denying what she’d seen with her own eyes.

And there was a part of her, an overwhelming part that wanted to scramble to her feet, run to Rock and gather him in her arms. Just squeeze him and kiss his lips before the warmth of vital, vigorous life left his body forever. Because that part of her, irrational as it may sound, believed that if she could just hold on tight enough, if she could just hold on long enough, he wouldn’t really be gone.

But this stupid CIA agent refused to let her go…

Then, from the front porch, she heard Wilhelm, that sonofabitch who’d let Rock get shot, ask Boss if he could pull a hair from Rock’s head and the tenuous thread that’d held her broken pieces of sanity together snapped.

“No!” she screamed, struggling to her feet, flinging away Becky and Eve’s hands, ignoring the CIA agent who yelled, “Halt!” as she ran toward the house…toward Rock.

She no longer cared if she lived or died. All she cared about was getting to him.

And even when she felt the evil eye of that agent’s machine gun settling between her shoulder blades, she didn’t stop. Her feet flew across the street. “Don’t you touch a hair on his head, you
motherfucker!
I’ll kill you! I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”

Her voice was nothing but a high-pitched shriek. And it was official. She’d completely lost it. But even though she
knew
she’d completely lost it, even though a part of her was standing outside of herself, watching herself do and say these things and not believing it, she couldn’t stop.

Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

The mantra kept time with her boots pounding up the porch steps. And she was amazed she wasn’t already sporting a hot piece of lead between her shoulders, especially when she shoved Agent Wilhelm, who was standing by the front door, watching her in wide-eyed astonishment, aside.

“Ma’am, I—”

But that’s as far as he got before her boots crossed the threshold, and she was immediately stopped by Boss’s big arms. He closed them around her to form of a huge, human straitjacket.

“Let me go!” She sobbed, struggling in his unyielding grip as the fire of remorse and denial scorched through her veins and turned each breath she managed to rake in to hot ash. “Let me go to him!”

“Leave him be, Vanessa,” Boss said in that bearlike growl he’d perfected. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

And that’s when her heart caught up with her head. Hearing those words…
There’s nothing you can do for him
…was the final nail on the coffin of her hope, her…denial.

Rock’s dead.

And right at that moment, darkness consumed her and she knew no more…

“He’s dead.”

They were the two most comforting words Rwanda Don had ever heard, which made up for the fact that R.D. was stuck in a coat closet, having been pulled away from the benefit dinner by the ringing phone. “You’re sure?”

“According to reports, he took three slugs to center mass and one to the head,” the agent relayed without the slightest bit of remorse.

R.D. couldn’t quite feel the same. After years of working with Rock, it was hard to take pleasure in the man’s demise. Especially since that demise would not have been warranted if the high-minded sonofabitch had just left well enough alone.

But Rock wasn’t one to leave things alone.

And now he’d paid the ultimate price.

“The Agent in Charge has collected DNA evidence, and the teams are pulling out, on their way back home,” the agent continued, and R.D. batted away one particular overcoat that smelled like it’d been washed in expensive Burberry cologne. New money. You could always spot them by their overwhelming use of designer fragrance and their need to wave their wealth around with couture labels and excess bling. But, new or old, money was money. And, unfortunately, ever since the dissemination of those funds into the charities, that was something R.D. needed to keep the campaign going. “We’ll have the test results in twenty-four hours, but visual confirmation is at one hundred percent. It’s over.”

Yes,
that
part was over.

“We still have The Cleaner to worry about,” R.D. reminded the agent. “Where
is
he? Why has he suddenly gone AWOL? And, most importantly, do you think it has something to do with those trumped-up charges against Rock?”

“We watch and wait on that front,” the agent said. And though it was extremely aggravating, R.D. had to admit that was probably the right strategy. No need to start jumping at shadows.

“I’m assuming you’re still interested in receiving copies of the intel we acquired from Babineaux’s hideout?” the agent asked.

Yes, and then there was
that.

R.D. needed to see those documents. Needed to make sure none of the information led back to The Project and, by extension, the person code named Rwanda Don…

“Yes. Forward everything to me.”

“The money—”

R.D.’s face filled with blood. “We’ve already agreed on a price! Now get me the goddamned information before everything we’ve
both
worked for goes up in smoke!”

Slamming a finger down on the phone’s
end
button, R.D. took a deep breath, smoothed bunched facial muscles, straightened a seam, and exited the coat closet. Nodding to hotel staff standing at attention along the hallway leading to the Mayflower’s ballroom—one of DC’s most respected hotels—R.D. pushed through the doors just as raucous cheers erupted from the crowd of well-dressed and well-coifed attendees.

Governor Ward was on the podium, having just made a wonderful speech sure to elicit donations from wealthy pockets, and R.D. beamed with approval.

The nomination was nearly in the bag…

***

Eve hadn’t really had the opportunity to get to know Rock before he pulled his Polanski act and quit the country over six months ago. But that didn’t make watching the man get shot to death any less horrific.

As she stood in her foyer, the sound of helicopters revving up and leaping into the air behind her—it was amazing how fast the CIA could load up and get the heck out of Dodge once they’d accomplished their mission—she couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s body. Or what she could see of it, that is. Most of his torso was concealed behind the partition leading into the kitchen, but the back of his head was visible, and there was so much blood. It was everywhere. Spattered against the front door, in a big ugly streak down the hall, and pooled around Rock’s head in a grizzly, sticky puddle.

It had been touch and go for a while there, the CIA insisting on taking the tissue samples themselves, even though Boss had apparently threatened to shoot anyone who tried to touch the body. Then Boss made a call to some general in DC before handing the phone to Agent Wilhelm. Eve thought she heard Wilhelm say, “Yes, sir, General Fuller,” which would make sense since Pete Fuller was the head of the Joint Chiefs and likely the only person on the planet—besides the president himself—who was capable of convincing the CIA agents to simply stand by the front door and watch while Steady carried out the dubious tasks of gingerly plucking a hair from Rock’s head, scooping up some of the spilled blood, and taking a scraping of skin cells before handing all the specimens over to the waiting CIA agents.

Agent Wilhelm had grumbled about still needing to take the body with them to the States, but Boss had threatened at that point to not only call General Fuller back, but also to put a bug in the ear of the Costa Rican government, which, from what Eve could gather, would’ve guaranteed an international dick-measuring contest because the United States wasn’t supposed to engage in covert operations in the Central American country without explicit approval from the host country’s government, which the CIA had
not
obtained.

In the end though, she didn’t think it was legal, political, or job-related worries that had Agent Wilhelm settling for the samples they’d collected. It was the look each Black Knight wore. The look that said,
Over
our
dead
bodies
.

And speaking of dead bodies. There was Rock. So still…so
lifeless…

Oh, geez Louise.
It was too awful to contemplate.

She didn’t realize she was openly sobbing until Billy grabbed the back of her head, pulled her into his arms, and pressed her face into his warm shoulder.

He smelled like leather and sunshine and something faintly chemical. Except for that last thing…he smelled just like Billy. Just like she remembered him smelling all those years ago. During the best and worst summer of her life…

“Shh, Eve,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against the side of her cheek. “It’s gonna be all right.”

His deep voice should have been comforting. But it wasn’t. Because she’d just witnessed a man being gunned down on her front porch. And she was beginning to have her doubts that anything would ever be all right again.

“Why?” she snuffled against his shirt, aware she was probably covering the thing with snot, but she’d be embarrassed about that later. For now, all she could concentrate on was the resounding silence in the house now that the helicopters had flown away. The silence that was broken only by Becky’s soft sobs. And her own, come to think of it. “Wh…why would they d-do that?”

Hadn’t Rock deserved the right to defend himself? Wasn’t he an American, after all? How could his own government just kill him in cold blood? And, yeah, she’d heard that CIA agent claim it was some mysterious shooter—whom they had never been able to find, by the way—but she knew it had to have been them. The men who were supposed to uphold the country’s laws, not crap all over them in the absolute worst possible way.

“Shh, Eve,” Billy soothed again, but it did nothing to console her, especially when she heard Vanessa—the woman had fainted dead away; she’d never seen someone actually
do
that—come to with a horrific shriek.

“Rock!” she screamed, and Eve pushed out of Billy’s arms in enough time to watch Vanessa spring into a sitting position from where Boss had laid her out on the floor. Then she was scrabbling over to Rock, slipping and sliding on her hands and knees in the man’s blood and another hard sob clawed its way up the back of Eve’s throat.

Oh, it was terrible. She couldn’t watch. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away either. Because Vanessa, tears running down her face in a terrible mess, grabbed Rock’s head from the puddle of blood and lifted it, hugging it against her chest before bending to place a gentle kiss on the man’s lips…

And what happened next didn’t make a bit of sense.

Because Billy settled his hard, callused palm over her mouth, and from the corner of her eye she watched Boss do the same thing to Becky. Then, before Eve could begin to struggle, Boss asked, “We clear?”

And that’s when she noticed Ozzie over in the corner tapping away like crazy on a laptop keyboard. “As far as I can tell,” the wild-haired man answered, frowning at the screen and then shooting a pointed look toward the windows of the adjacent living room. “But let’s stay vigilant.”

“Affirmative,” Boss said, then, “Okay, let’s get the body cleaned up and ready for transport.”

And that’s when Rock’s shoulder moved, and Eve saw his wide hand emerge from behind the partition to settle on the back of Vanessa’s head.

Eve understood then why Billy had placed his palm over her mouth, because before she could call it back, a shriek of surprised terror rippled up from the depths of her shaking chest.

“Shh,” Billy whispered into her ear again. “It was all a hoax.”

***

“Vanessa,
chere,
just breathe,” Rock crooned, and the sound of that slow drawl and silken baritone kissed her ears and had another hard sob ripping up the back of her ravaged throat. It felt like she’d swallowed industrial-strength bleach. But she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Rock was alive! He was alive!

But how…?

She’d seen those bullets hit him. She’d seen him go down. Yet, here he was. Sitting at Eve’s dining room table after having grabbed a quick shower and change of clothes, reaching over to run a reassuring hand through her messy hair even as he held a tea towel against his ear.

And in the ten minutes since he’d been lying in that pool of blood, in the ten minutes since he’d pulled her to him and kissed her back with everything he had—probably to keep her from screaming her fool head off at the first sign he wasn’t dead—she hadn’t been able to stop crying.

It was like something inside her had broken and couldn’t be fixed…

Oh, she’d think she had herself under control, the tears would dry up, the shaking would stop and then, suddenly, off she’d go again, proving what an incredibly
un
hardass she really was.

Jesus.

“Done.” Becky walked into the living room, dusting off her hands like she’d been chopping logs instead of putting batteries into an amazing assortment of vibrators before taping them to all the windows in the house—along with Eve’s help. Which was another thing Vanessa had yet to fully process, the sight of Eve Edens, Chicago’s reigning socialite, with huge, ridiculously colored plastic cocks in her hand. “No more optical bugs up in this joint. Bam!” Becky acted like she was spiking a football before she broke into a little victory dance.

“Let me get a look at that ear,” Steady said, grinning and shaking his head at Becky as he sauntered over to Rock, his camouflage Army-issued medical kit held loosely in one tan fist.

“Nothing to be done for it,” Rock said, pulling the tea towel away. There was a shallow, half-inch wide chunk of flesh missing from the outer edge of his ear.

“At least we can stop the bleeding,” Steady muttered, setting his kit on the table and unzipping a pocket. He reached inside and came out with a package of QuikClot.

“
Merde
,” Rock groused, his goatee drooping at the corners. “That stuff burns like the fires of hell.”

“Quit being a baby,” Steady teased, ripping open the pack to shake some of the powder onto Rock’s torn ear. Rock hissed and grimaced and Steady rolled his eyes. “It’s better than losing any more blood and—”

Blood.

There’d been so much blood…

Vanessa couldn’t help it; another loud sob shuddered out of her.

“What’s up with her?” Steady asked, one black brow arched in question.

“I think the dam’s developed a major structural crack,” Rock replied, frowning over at her even as he held still so Steady could tape a makeshift bandage around the wound on his ear. “
Chere
,” he murmured again, grinning and giving her a reassuring wink. “It’s okay
. Je suis bon
.”

Yeah, he might be good, but she was definitely
not
. Because she could have
killed
him. And she could
not
get the image of him taking those shots to the chest out of her head. The gruesome sight of blood spraying in a terrible shower, of watching as he—

Just then, the back door inched open, and Ghost slid into the house, fluid like a shadow, quiet as a whisper.

“We good?” He posed the question to Ozzie, who was at the other end of the dining room table, alternately typing on the keyboards of two humming laptops.

“Seem to be,” Ozzie nodded, never taking his eyes from the screens. “Looks like the satellites have been repositioned, and I’m not picking up any other signs of surveillance.”

“Yeah,” Ghost nodded, approaching the group in order to carefully place his sniper rifle—he called it Sierra, of all things—on the table before lowering himself into a seat opposite Vanessa. “I didn’t see any sign of continued surveillance, and I made two passes ’round the property before enterin’. Maybe we’re good t’go.”

And that’s when Rock leveled Ghost with a hard look. “What the hell, man? Why’d you shoot my ear off?”

“First of all, it’s not off, it’s just missin’ a chunk,” Ghost said.

“Oh, goody. I love it when we argue over semantics,” Ozzie snorted, grinning even as he continued to type and watch his computer screens.

Ghost shot the guy an exasperated look before turning back to Rock, finishing with, “And secondly, I didn’t do it.”

The room fell silent as Ozzie quit typing, his fingers hovering over the keyboards.

“Then who did?” Boss asked from his position in the doorway. The concerned expression he wore made his scars stand out white against his tan skin. Of course, when Becky strolled over to hook an arm around his waist, his face softened slightly before he bent to place a kiss in her hair, next to her temple.

The exchange was so natural it was almost instinctual, and Vanessa, watching with envious eyes, was dismayed when another hard sob threatened. Try as she might, she couldn’t hold it in. But because of her clenched jaw and tightened lips, it came out sounding less like a sob and more like a hysterical little
eep
.