Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(2)
Luke Winterfield was a rogue CIA agent who leaked information about the number and location of the U.S. government’s black sites to the press. Some called Winterfield a whistleblower. Mac called him a traitor. And just this morning, splashed across the headlines, was news that the bastard had found a country to grant him asylum. It had to be a major blow for every CIA agent out there—even an ex–CIA agent like Zoelner.
“Pssshht.” Zoelner made a face. “I stopped caring about The Company and its shenanigans years ago. As for Winterfield, I never met the ashhole.” Zoelner frowned and rolled in his lips before trying again. “Asshole.”
“Then what on God’s green earth is tonight all about?” Mac demanded. “Because I gotta be honest. This whole sittin’-here-in-silence-while-we-drink-ourselves-good-lookin’ thing has just about run its course with me.”
Zoelner tipped his glass of scotch toward the opposite end of the bar. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Actually, I don’t want to talk about anything other than that brunette over there, and the fact that she’s been eyeing the two of us like we’re tall drinks of water and she’s been lost in the desert for days.”
Mac glanced down the polished length of mahogany and…sure enough. There was a bird in a tight top and buttery-soft biker jacket sitting near the end. She looked like she might’ve stepped off the cover of a motorcycle magazine—having that whole sexy-without-being-overly-pretty thing going. And when she caught him staring, she licked her ruby-red lips and seductively lowered her thick, sooty lashes.
Can you say invitation, ladies and gents? Even in his scotch-addled state, Mac recognized the blatant come-and-get-me-big-boy look in her eyes.
Sorry, darlin’. But you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree.
“No, thanks,” he told Zoelner, sitting back and lifting his glass of scotch to his lips. “She’s not my type.”
Zoelner hooted with laughter, slamming down his empty tumbler. “Type? Dear God, it’s not like you’re looking for a blood donor or anything. Type hasn’t got a damned thing to do with it. She’s hot. She’s obviously horny. And one of us should do something about that.”
“Be my guest.”
Zoelner cocked his head. “You remind me of a giant black hole, sucking all the light and fun out of the evening.”
“Me?” Mac turned on the man incredulously. “I’m not the one who decided to spend the night sitting at this…this sausage-factory of a bar, quietly getting stone-cold shit-faced.”
“Hmm.” Zoelner narrowed his eyes. “Sausage-factory of a bar, eh? Meaning there are too many swinging dicks and not enough soft and sexies around tonight? Do I detect a hint of melancholy?”
“That’s a big word for a drunk man.” Mac chuckled.
“I’m not that drunk,” Zoelner insisted, and Mac grabbed his stomach, laughing out loud. “Okay, so maybe I am that drunk,” Zoelner admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. My point is, I think you’re not interested in the brown-haired Betty over there because you’re pining away… Is that how you Texans would put it? Pining? For a certain redhead who’s suspiciously absent from the bar tonight.”
And that strangled Mac’s laughter into a cough. He lifted his glass to suck down a drop of scotch. Carefully placing the tumbler back on the bar, he ran his tongue over his teeth and said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“The hell you don’t.” Zoelner snorted. “Anyone with eyes in their head knows you’re hot-to-trot for our usual bartendress. And if all her come-ons are anything to go by, she’s hot-to-trot for you, too. Which begs the question…what are you waiting on? Why haven’t you hit that, like, a thousand times by now?”
“Hit that?” Mac pulled a face. “What are we? Fifteen?”
“Dodging the question?” Zoelner countered, and Mac didn’t know whether to applaud the man’s astuteness or strangle him right where he sat.
Deciding neither scenario would be all that satisfying, he shrugged his shoulders in what he hoped was a gesture of supreme unconcern. “That Woman,”—Mac always thought of Delilah Fairchild, proprietress and namesake of the bar they were currently sitting in, that way, in capital letters—“isn’t my type either. And you know why.”
“Bullshit.”
Just the one word. Spoken with complete conviction.
Mac gifted Zoelner with a dirty look and reached for the bottle of Lagavulin. Upending it, he poured the last few drops into his glass, then slowly lifted the tumbler, taking a leisurely sip.
“You know what I think of that whole thing, right?” Zoelner asked. Mac ignored him, wishing like hell he’d never opened his big mouth after that goddamned mission in Somalia. But sitting in a bar in South Africa, basking in the glow of a successful operation—and after having downed a half dozen beers—the whole sorry story had come tumbling out. “Oh, and what? Now you’re a mute?” Zoelner inquired after it became apparent Mac wasn’t going to rise to his bait.
But what could Mac say? The truth was, he did know what Zoelner thought. The guy had flat-out told him he was an idiot to compare one woman to another. Horseshit was the word Zoelner used if Mac remembered right. But the guy just didn’t understand. He didn’t know what—