Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(64)
“I just went out on a limb for you guys,” she said, addressing the Knights. “And believe me when I say my boss knows how to handle a chainsaw. So, cut the shit. All of you. But especially you, Ozzie.” She skewered BKI’s computer guru with a look sharp enough to run him clean through.
“As for you guys,” Chelsea turned to the Men in Black, “I’m in charge. Fitzsimmons and Wallace,” two of the men stepped forward, “you’re with me. Jacobs, you’re to report back to your team. They’re converging downtown.”
When MIB III, er…Jacobs, slung his gnarly looking machine gun over his shoulder, nodded to his two compatriots, and slipped out the front door, Chelsea made no effort to disguise her sigh of relief. “Morales is renting rooms for us at a motel outside the town of Olive Branch.” She snorted. “And, yes, I fully appreciate the irony in that name given our current situation. It’s only a few miles away. It’s clean. It’s secure. It’ll work quite nicely as a base of operations while we continue to search for al-Hallaj, Fairchild, and Sander. And it means we’ll each have a bed to sleep in when we aren’t taking a shift guarding Delilah. If I’m not mistaken, every single one of you could use a nap.”
“Yeah,” Lead SWAT Guy spoke up. “You all look like hammered shit.”
Ozzie answered back with a colorful rejoinder about the guy’s lack of paternity.
“Oh, yay,” Delilah said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “I can tell this is going to be tons of fun.”
Chapter Sixteen
Noel Motel, Outside Olive Branch, Illinois
Thirty minutes later…
“Well, hi there,” the scrawny, greasy-haired guy manning the front desk said to Delilah’s boobs after Mac watched her tiredly prop a hip against the wobbly piece of furniture. If the dickhead noticed the little drops of blood on her T-shirt or the dirt still smudging her cheeks, he sure didn’t show it. “Need something for the day? Or just for an hour or so?” Greasy wiggled his wiry eyebrows, smiling licentiously. His crooked teeth were stained a disgusting shade of baby-shit brown.
Probably from years of chewin’ Copenhagen and drinkin’ cheap whiskey, Mac thought. Because even now, even from four feet away, and even though it was barely oh-nine-hundred in the morning, he could smell the dude’s breath. As his father used to say, it’s so strong you could hang the washin’ on it.
Behind Greasy, sprawled in a green faux-leather recliner, was a woman. Greasy’s sister? Girlfriend? Wife? Whoever she was, she sported a stringy mop of platinum-blond hair with two-inch black roots. Dressed in a faded muumuu, she was watching reruns of the Maury Povich show on an old tube television and smoking Parliaments. Chain-smoking Parliaments, if the overflowing ashtray beside her was anything to go by.
Taken as a pair, the two were incongruous. What with Mac estimating Greasy didn’t weigh in at over a buck and a quarter soaking wet while Mrs. Greasy had to be pushing the scales at close to four hundred pounds.
This is the clean, secure place Morales reserved for us? he thought, glancing around the wood-paneled office with its row of dusty tchotchkes in the window and the lone gumball machine by the front door. The ceiling fan whirled drunkenly overhead, off balance and doing little to cut through the smoke floating near the ceiling.
The flickering neon sign outside proclaimed the place was the Noel Motel, but from the looks of Mr. and Mrs. Greasy—not to mention the hourly rates, the rickety row of doors leading to no-doubt questionably cleaned rooms, and the off-street parking located in the back of the place—Mac figured it might as well have been named the No Tell Motel. And if Delilah hadn’t looked as though she was about to collapse in her tracks, like her giddy-up-and-go done got up and went, he might have insisted they go somewhere else.
“My boss called and reserved some rooms for us,” Agent Duvall announced as she shouldered through the front door, Zoelner, Ozzie, and the SWAT guys—now dressed in civilian garb—ambling in behind her. Quick as a cricket, the CIA had replaced the agent’s car while simultaneously supplying Fitzsimmons and Wallace with new duds. Mac had to give it to the spooks. They were grade-A number ones when it came to pulling rabbits out of hats.
“You’re the Land Management folks who’re in town to check on our water quality?” Greasy asked, dragging his eyes away from Delilah’s breasts in order to assess the newly arrived group. He grinned again when he got a load of Agent Duvall’s rack.
Talk about ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag, Mac thought uncharitably, moving slightly in order to draw Greasy’s attention away from the women. It worked. When Greasy saw his unfriendly expression, the guy’s smile faltered.
“That’d be us,” Chelsea concurred, pushing her way up to the desk.
“You come to find out why the water outta the tap smells like swamp ass some days?” Mrs. Greasy inquired, never taking her eyes off the television screen. Smoke curled from her nostrils as she used the butt of one cigarette to light the tip of another.
“Sure did.” Chelsea reached into her carryall to whip out a credit card stamped with a picture of a pine forest and the words Land Management.
See… Rabbit out of hat. Mac shook his head, then narrowed his eyes and stepped over to Delilah when she swayed slightly. She lifted a hand to her temple and squeezed her eyelids closed.