Thrill Ride (21 page)

But it still sat like a bitter pill in the bottom of his stomach, even all these years later, that the only thing the families of the victims of Halsey’s carelessness and malfeasance had to show for their lost loved ones were some old photographs and a little pile of money that’d surely run out by now.

“Anyway, I thought everything was settled with Halsey,” he continued, shaking away the memory of Lacy’s red hair and blue eyes. The love they’d shared had been young and green as an unripe strawberry, but it’d been true nonetheless. And her death had changed him, made him into the man he was today. A hard man. A…
ruthless
man. Vanessa might even call him heartless, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to argue to the contrary. “But, come to find out, Halsey hadn’t stopped dumpin’ their chemicals. My father caught onto to what they were up to and approached Martin Halsey himself. The man acted all shocked and outraged, assuring my father he’d look into it. ’Course it wasn’t until two days later that my father and mother were dead, their boat wrapped around a cypress tree, their bodies lost in the waters of the bayou for nearly a week.”

And sweet Lord have mercy, by the time they’d been discovered, there was hardly anything left that was recognizable. Had DNA not proven their identities, Rock would
still
be wondering what had really happened to them….

“Martin Halsey,” Boss murmured, flipping to the first page in his packet. He lifted a brow when he read the name that was second to the top of the list.

“
Oui,
” Rock nodded. “He was the second man who confessed his sins to me, which I can promise you were far more prolific and grandiose than orderin’ the deaths of my parents. You see, along with knowingly and willfully poisoning the people of Terrebonne Parish, he was also runnin’ drugs in from the Gulf…and girls.” He shook his head, remembering the disgusting spark of excitement that’d lighted Martin’s eyes when the man confessed about the girls. “Thirteen-, fourteen-year-olds… He’d sell them on the black market for a pretty little penny. And I can assure you, Halsey wasn’t just pond scum; he was the muck that lived on the filth that grew on the sludge at the
bottom
of pond scum.”

“What happened to him?” Becky asked.

Rock shrugged. “Don’t know. I turned in my interrogation tape. Time passed. Then I heard scuttlebutt that local PD were investigating him on charges of kidnappin’ and child molestation.”

“Says here,” Boss pointed at the dossier, “that he got drunk, fell overboard on his fan boat, and found himself in the path of an alligator.”

“Yeah,” Rock mused. “And even though I was pissed at the time because he hadn’t been brought to trial before he died, I satisfied myself with the knowledge his death was appropriate.”

“How so?” Becky asked.

“The man
was
cold-blooded, after all.” Although in hindsight, maybe prison would’ve been preferable. Inmates did have a very unsavory way of punishing child molesters…

There was silence around the conference table as that little bit of logic sunk in. “And, of course,” he continued, “it wasn’t too long after that, Halsey’s company got pinched for dumping chemicals
again
—that second trial Ozzie mentioned—and got shut down. I always kinda assumed my interrogation was used to help in that endeavor somehow.”

“So, in the end,” Ozzie said, “it was a win for the good guys.”

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Eve said, and it occurred to him he’d completely forgotten she was listening in. It was one thing for the Knights to know what he’d done, but Eve? What would
she
think of all this? He held his breath as he waited for her to finish. “I don’t get how you can’t know who you were working for within the CIA?”

Seriously? After all he’d just admitted to, kid-napping, forced interrogation, false imprisonment,
that
was her question?

He made a face and shrugged. “Sometimes in the government-engineered secret interrogator/spy world, there are no clear associations. You see, durin’ all my years of trainin’, when I’d get leave from SEAL work, the only people I ever came into contact with—outside of office administrative types, that is—wore black masks.
I
wore a black mask. At the time, I reckoned it was supposed to help protect everybody involved with The Project. I mean,
come
on,
I was being trained to kidnap and interrogate U.S. citizens. If that story ever leaked…” He whistled between his teeth, shaking his head. “And then, after the training was over, I received a message saying The Project had been put on hold, and I was to await further instructions. A few months later, Rwanda Don contacted me, tasking me with interrogating the first man on that list, and Rwanda Don’s been my only connection to Langley ever since.”

“So how’d you get paid?” Ozzie asked. “Surely there’s a way to trace the money back to its source, to the specific department within The Company…”

Rock looked at the kid and smiled. “I didn’t get paid,
mon
frère
.”

“
What
?” Ozzie wasn’t the only one to squawk the question. Rock heard at least three distinct versions of it.

“It was my understandin’ that because the work I was doing was technically illegal, there was no way to compensate me for my time. Not that I’d have taken payment for my services in this particular endeavor anyway.”

“Why you?” Vanessa asked. “Why did they choose you?”

“Why’d they choose to burn me?”

“No,” she shook her head, her dark hair swishing against her shoulders, which caused one long, inky lock to curl invitingly around her right breast. Her perfect,
perfect
right breast. And,
merde,
there went the brainless wonder again, stiffening up like a reprimanded corporal. “Why did they choose to recruit you in the first place?”

“Like I told you,” he said, “I studied psychology in college, but more than that, it was criminal psychology. So I already had a pretty good idea of how a corrupt mind worked. Plus, the psych tests I took while applying for BUD/S training probably showed I was keen on justice and not averse to personally playing a part in handing out that justice when the occasion called for it. Of course, I’m sure it helped that I’d come from a town decimated by exactly the type of man The Project intended to go after. Add to that the fact that I had no family left, nothin’ to keep me from going in as deep as it gets, and I was the perfect candidate for the job.”

“And everything was going along fine until Fred Billingsworth,” Boss mused.

“
Oui,
” Rock nodded. “Out of everyone on that list, he was the only one who was innocent. And I
knew
he was innocent. After interrogating the guy for only thirty minutes, that much was clear.”

“So why is he dead like the other nine men on this list?” Ozzie queried.

Rock shook his head, the kernel of bitterness that’d taken root in his belly over six months ago and had since grown to the relative height of a cornstalk, threatened to choke him. “If I knew the answer to that, I think I’d know the answer to who burned me. See, after I interrogated Fred and determined his innocence, I tried to get in touch with Rwanda Don. Fred was different. He wasn’t guilty like the rest. And I wanted to make sure I hadn’t screwed up somehow. But, no sooner had I started trying to find a way to contact Don, to make sure he understood Fred was innocent, than I hear Fred is dead. Supposedly from falling asleep at the wheel and running off the road. Which got me to thinking about those
other
two men I’d interrogated whom I knew were
also
dead, presumably by natural causes. I began to wonder if this thing, The Project, wasn’t simply a means of gathering information and evidence against these guys, but also a way of having them deleted. You all know what I discovered.” He nodded toward the dossier still clutched in Boss’s big hand. “That document there says it all. Of course, after I found out about the deaths, then I
really
started to ask questions. I mean, this wasn’t what I’d signed on for, right?” He made a face, shaking his head. “Less than four hours after my first phone call to Langley, my Burn and Delete notice came over the wires.”

“So then the question becomes,” Ozzie mused, “what was Billingsworth investigating that made this Rwanda Don character, or whoever Don works for, so nervous that they’d turn their backs on everything The Project had previously stood for—deleting high-class criminals—and go after an innocent man?”

“My information says Billingsworth was investigating the candidates for the upcoming election,” Boss said.

“So you think his murder was politically motivated?” Ozzie posited. “You think he found something on one of the candidates, and whoever was running The Project from within the CIA commanded this Rwanda Don person to take Billingsworth out? And then when Rock got nosy they decided to take him out, too?”

“I’d say that’s a good possibility,” Boss said, and Rock couldn’t help but agree. That was the avenue he’d been trying to investigate on his own, but he’d run out of leads weeks ago…

For a long moment no one said a word, all of them digesting the ramifications of everything that’d been discussed. Then, once again, Eve broke the silence, quietly asking, “If you don’t know who Rwanda Don is, then how did you get the tapes of your interrogations back into his hands?”

And out of all the questions posed today, this was the easiest one to answer. “Before each mission, I’d receive a phone call where Rwanda Don, always with that disguised voice, would give me the address and number of either a PO box or a train station locker or some such thing. I’d go there, pick up one of the files, and then it was up to me to secure the confession. After doing so, I’d drop the confession tape back at the spot where I picked up the files and redial the phone number—which was different every time, by the way. After two rings, I’d hang up, and my part was over.”

“So you can’t find this Rwanda Don that way,” Eve mused, her smooth brow beetled.

And that was the whole problem. As far as Rock could figure, there was
no
way to find Rwanda Don.

“I say we look harder at everyone Billingsworth was investigating,” Ozzie said, frowning in consideration. “That seems to be the key.”

“Agreed,” Steady nodded. “And, Rock, if you could get me the locations of those train station lockers, and anything else you can remember, I can start making calls to see if we can find whoever rented them. Can anyone think of anything else we could try?” he asked the group.

There was silence while everyone considered options, but after a couple of minutes, when no one offered more ideas, Boss slapped a hand down on the conference table. It was his standard signal the sit-rep had come to an end. “Well,” he boomed, “I’d say we’ve got a couple of good threads to pull. So let’s start yanking and see what unwinds.”

As the Knights pushed up from the conference table, each intent on helping him get clear of this whole, sordid mess, Rock couldn’t help but shake his head in wonder. He may’ve lost his parents and Lacy down in Louisiana, but the Black Knights were his family as surely as if they’d shared a womb together, bonded not by the blood running through their veins, but by the blood they’d spilled together in the field.

When he pushed up from his chair, there was a hard lump of affection and gratitude throbbing in his throat.

Vanessa lifted the pillow she’d thrown over her head and glanced at the glowing red numbers on her digital alarm clock.

Oh-two-hundred.

And Rock had yet to stumble up to bed. She knew this because for the last three-plus hours she’d been listening for the telltale
clank-clop
of his cowboy boots on the metal stairs. But if she’d counted pairs of footsteps right, everyone
except
for Rock—and Ozzie—had hit the hay long ago, gone to get a little shut-eye after one hellaciously frustrating day. Between the lot of them, they’d been unable to help Rock come any closer to clearing his name. So, the plan was to tackle the problem again tomorrow, with fresh eyes.

But, first, Vanessa had something to settle with Rock.
Tonight.
If the uncooperative sonofagun would just come up and go to his room and—

The sound of footsteps stopped her mid-thought, and she cocked an ear.

Nope. That wasn’t Rock. That soft plodding sounded like Ozzie’s Vox sneakers, not the hard wooden heels of cowboy boots. Still, Ozzie might have news…

Vaulting from the bed, she padded barefoot across the room before throwing open the door and catching Ozzie just as he was about to stroll past. A startled hand jumped to the Springfield Armory XD-45 he always had strapped to his side, but as soon as he saw her, he relaxed and leaned a hand against the doorjamb, one blond brow winged up his forehead.

“Well, finally,” he grinned. “I’ve been waiting for you to come to your senses and invite me into your bedroom for—”

She rolled her eyes and shoved a finger over his mouth. “Can it,” she said, shaking her head. Ozzie hit on everything with two legs. He absolutely
personified
the term man-whore.

“What did you find out about the folks Billingsworth was investigating?” she asked impatiently. Since they’d hit a brick wall concerning Rock’s pick-up and drop-off locations—apparently whoever rented the lockers and such had paid in cash and used an alias, go figure—Ozzie’d been trying to found out everything he could about Billingsworth’s investigation. It was now their only hope.

A hope that was squashed when Ozzie shook his shaggy head. “Not much. I know Billingsworth was hired to find dirt on the candidates, but other than a messy divorce, one child born out of wedlock, and an arrest made during a pro-life demonstration outside an abortion clinic, none of the candidates seem to have gotten their noses dirty. I certainly don’t believe any of the stuff I just listed would warrant one of them having Billingsworth killed. “

“Shit.”

“You said it.”

“Have you told Rock?”

“Just now,” he nodded

“How’d he take it?”

“About how you’d expect. Seems the guy can’t catch a break. Did you know about all that stuff with his family?”

She shook her head. No. She hadn’t known. But she should’ve guessed. Because it all made sense. Those moments when he thought no one was watching and he’d get that thousand-yard stare. Or those times when he’d be joking and carrying on and then, suddenly, go quiet. Then, of course, you had his assertion that he’d never love her…

And though a small part of her worried that was because his heart was still with his dead fiancée, a much larger part suspected he’d simply built a wall around the organ in order to protect it. And could you really blame him? Everyone he’d ever loved was dead, so why would he want to open himself up to that kind of heartbreak again?

She could certainly understand that kind of thinking. After all, she’d suffered despair and loss, too. And, yes, there had been times since her parents’ deaths when she’d contemplated the notion that it would be easier if she just never allowed herself to get close to anyone again.

“But don’t you worry,” Ozzie assured her by laying a hand on her shoulder just as a flash of lightning blazed through her bedroom window and a crash of thunder sounded overhead. Instantly the sky opened up and the steady
thrum
of rain against the roof tried to muffle Ozzie’s next words. “We’ll figure something out. After all, there isn’t anything the Black Knights can’t do once we put our heads together.”

That seemed to have been the case in the past…but in this instance? Well, suffice it to say, she was beginning to have her doubts. Which meant
Rock
had to be having
his
doubts, and that just sucked so hard.

“Now,” Ozzie continued, wiggling his eyebrows enticingly and raising his voice above the sound of the rain. “You gonna invite me in or what?”

“Um,” she cocked her head, grinning up at him. It was impossible not to like Ozzie. “I think I’ll go with
or
what
.”

He clutched his heart like she’d shot an arrow straight through it, stumbling back dramatically. “Selfish, hard-hearted woman.”

“Goodnight, Ozzie,” she said pointedly.

“Goodnight, beautiful,” he winked. “But if this ol’ thunderstorm scares you, you know where to find me.” She snorted and watched as he sauntered toward his bedroom at the end of the hall. Once he closed the door, she turned back into her room and raced toward her bedside table. Ripping open the box she’d stored there, she peeled off some of its contents and turned to check her reflection in the mirror above her dresser.

Um, not good.

Because, for one thing, her hair was a mess—thanks in part to the haphazard, cut-and-go trim job she’d received from Rock out in the jungle. And, for another, it looked like she was carrying enough luggage beneath her eyes to keep herself geared up for an around-the-world vacation…

Running a hasty brush through her hair, she tamed what flyaway locks she could. The under-eye baggage? Nothing to be done for that, so she waved an exasperated hand at her reflection and tiptoed out of her room and down the stairs to the second floor.

It was dark, the stygian blackness breached only by the dangling florescent lights hanging down from the three-story ceiling, illuminating the shop floor below. But, amazingly, the darkness no longer held any fear, even when a crack of thunder rattled the windows and rumbled deep in her chest. And she had one man to thank for that. Rock.

But first…

Walking to the rail, she leaned over, and her eyes immediately snagged on his ass, hugged ever-so-snuggly in his faded Levi’s as he bent over his Harley, using a shammy to polish a bit of chrome. The bike was simpler than many of custom choppers in the shop. Not a lot of flash and gizmos, just one fantastically intricate red, white, and blue paint job—the beast was appropriately named Patriot—a long stretch, and a whole hell of a lot of chrome.

Of course there was the occasional flare here and there. Like the leather seat made out of alligator hide and the lid covering the battery box styled with the words
Laissez
les
bons
temps
rouler! Let the good times roll!
It was a nod to his Cajun heritage, as were the little crawfish emblems carved into the chrome exhaust.

Then there were the hydraulics…

Patriot didn’t lean on a kickstand like some bikes. Oh, no. With the push of a button, it lowered to the ground, supporting itself on its sturdy chassis, which resulted in a motorcycle that was almost impossible to push over. And with a paint job as intricate as that, one could totally understand why Rock would want to ensure nary a scratch marred the surface.

Vanessa loved that bike.

The clean lines and sparkling paint had spoken to her on such a visceral level that when it’d come time to sit down with Becky to conceptualize her own motorcycle, she’d taken a page from Rock’s book. Designing something that was as beautiful for its simplicity as it was for its artistry.

You
better
do
this
thing
before
you
lose
your
nerve
, that annoying voice whispered through her head, punctuated by a flash of lightning that briefly illuminated the second-floor loft. This time, she chose to heed its advice. After all, too much more standing here, gawking, and she’d need someone with a shovel to scoop of the puddle of estrogen-y goo she’d melted into because…Oh. My. God…the way Rock’s shoulders filled out that T-shirt, the way his large, western-style belt buckle lay flat against his washboard stomach, and the way his dark goatee drooped at the corners when he skirted the bike in order to wipe down the gleaming front forks, was just too much.

Patting the packages she’d hidden in her bra, she made her way toward the staircase and quietly descended to the shop floor as thunder echoed overhead. The smell of motor oil and freshly ground metal assaulted her nostrils, but she’d become accustomed to the odors after all these months working at BKI and, more than that, she’d actually grown to
like
them. They reminded her of everything she loved…her job, the Knights…Rock…

The stained cement was cold beneath her bare feet when she stepped off the stairway, but it did nothing to mitigate the fire in her heart. She now knew why he’d been holding her at arm’s length, knew why he maintained he could never fall in love with her. And seriously? It was all a giant load of crap.

She was determined to make him
see
it was all a giant load of crap. Tonight. Tonight she was going to push past his defenses, shove all her chips on the table, and go all in.

“Rock?” When she whispered his name, he leaned around the front of the motorcycle, his eyes sparkling in the overhead light, his short hair sticking up from the fingers he’d undoubtedly run through it, and, oh crud, was he hot.

Hot and stubborn and so, so,
so
much in denial.

“What’s wrong,
chere
?” His tone was concerned. “Couldn’t you sleep? Did the storm wake you?”

She shook her head, her tongue feeling like it’d swelled to ten times its normal size. He stood—a series of bunching muscles and fluid movements—and walked around the side of Patriot.

“You’re not having nightmares about that run through the jungle, are you?” His brows angled down toward his perfect nose. “I knew I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” she interrupted him, surprised to find she could actually
talk
with that swollen tongue. “It’s not that.”

Then
what
is
it?

She expected him to ask the question, which would give her a lead-in to her proposition. But he remained frustratingly mute, lifting a dark brow in question as a flash of lightning screamed through the tall windows, highlighting the colors of the tattoos on his arms, delineating the hard lines of his biceps.

Well, fine.
Fine.
She’d just do this the hard way—or the easy way, depending on how you looked at it.

“I want to make love you,” she blurted just as thunder cracked nearby.

And it was obvious by Rock’s narrowed eyes, by the way he cocked his head, that her statement was completely drowned out by the racket.

Crud. To work up the
cojones
to utter those words once was one thing, but to have to repeat it? Good grief, it was like Mother Nature was playing the world’s cruelest joke on her. Mentally flipping the bee-yotch the bird, Vanessa took a deep breath and tried again. “I want to make love to you, Rock.”

And, yep, he definitely heard her this time…

Oh, how she wished she had a camera, because the expression on his face was priceless. If she’d told him she wanted him to smear himself in motor oil, roll around in glitter, and then let her spank his ass with raw fish fillets, he couldn’t have looked more dismayed.

“You know what we discussed in the jungle,” he said, his deep voice even lower than usual, rippling up her spine, a form of thunder in and of itself. “About you havin’ stars in your eyes and about me not wantin’ to hurt you.”

“It’s bullshit,” she spat. “Because no matter what you
think
you know about me, the truth is I don’t expect this thing to end in a white wedding and orange blossoms. It’s simply this…I want you. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not true.”

His square chin jerked back on his neck, and a little grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Now doncha go holdin’ back on my account,
ma
belle
.”

“Hey,” she planted her hands on her hips, “you’re not one to lecture me on how to sugarcoat things.” Because she remembered what
else
he’d told her in the jungle.
I’ll never fall in love with you…
“The
real
fact of the matter is, I haven’t wanted you since the first moment I
saw
you; I’ve wanted you since the first moment I heard you
speak
.” She caught her lip between her teeth before grinning and wiggling her eyebrows. “
Your
voice, it’s like butta,
” she said, doing her best impression of Mike Myers’s
Saturday
Night
Live
Coffee Talk character.

She could tell that, despite the seriousness of the conversation they were having, he was having trouble holding back a chuckle. Which was what she’d aimed for. To inject a little levity into the electric atmosphere.

Rock was easier to coerce—which, yeah, that’s totally what she was doing—when he was feeling amiable. “You
kill
me woman,” he said, his eyes sparkling.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to kill you. I want to make love to you. And I’m tired of your excuses.”

With that, she threw caution to the wind and took a step in his direction. Followed by another. And another…

***

Mon
dieu
, she was stalking him like a hungry lioness and if he didn’t do something quick, he was screwed. Metaphorically and
literally.

And,
oui,
it was getting harder and harder to dissuade her—and himself—especially since the brainless wonder had swelled to let’s-get-it-on proportions the minute he saw her standing barefoot on the shop’s cold concrete in that lipstick-red T-shirt and those tight black yoga pants that were enough to give him an eye-gasm.