Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(90)

“Mac,” she said, or at least tried to say. Her throat was so restricted by the presence of her heart that it came out sounding more like a wheezing Mahhh. She swallowed and tried again. “Is he okay? Is he hurt? Do you—”

“Relax,” Zoelner said, grabbing her elbow and steering her back into the bar. “Mac’s fine.” A whooshing sigh of relief gushed from her, and it was then she realized her knees were shaking like the overhead fixtures tended to do on Wednesday nights when a troop of local line-dancers took over the place. When Zoelner spotted her uncle sitting at the bar, he dipped his chin. “Theo. You’re looking well. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see that.”

“Thanks to you and the boys of BKI,” her uncle said.

Zoelner waved off his comment. “No need for thanks. Just doing our jobs.”

And Delilah still couldn’t quite believe how blasé her uncle had been when she explained to him in the hospital—after getting the go-ahead from Frank “Boss” Knight, of course—what exactly the Black Knights were and why exactly they’d been there assisting in his rescue.

Yeah, that makes sense, was all he’d said in answer to her revelation. Then he’d gone back to eating pudding while watching the Cardinals trounce the Cubs on the television hanging from the hospital ceiling.

Makes sense? Makes sense? she’d thought at the time. In what world? But then she figured it made sense in the covert government mission world her uncle had been a part of back in the day. And, go figure, they’d not mentioned a word of it since.

Men, she thought with an eye roll. Then she decided to narrow that down to super-secret former and/or current government men… They were seriously exasperating.

“When does the cast come off?” Zoelner asked her uncle, bending to scratch Fido behind the ears. The dog was sitting in front of him, holding a paw up for a shake.

“Next week, thank goodness,” her uncle said. “I’ve had an itch I haven’t been able to get to for six days now.”

“Sounds awful.” Zoelner grinned, rubbing Fido’s belly when it was presented to him. The big goofy canine was on his back, thick tail swooshing across the floorboards, head thrown back so his upper jowls sagged and made him look like he was smiling maniacally. Delilah could only shake her head and grin, wondering how she’d ever lived without the dog’s daily antics to make her laugh. Then Zoelner glanced up at her. “You got a couple of minutes? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Sure,” she said, brow puckering. “You want some coffee?” She glanced at her watch. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but the look on Zoelner’s face told her he could maybe use something a little stronger. “Or a beer, perhaps?”

“Coffee’s fine,” Zoelner said, standing and walking with her over to the bar. He grabbed a stool while she skirted the long mahogany length. This time she took the time to lift the hinged section at the end before slipping in behind.

While she poured him a cup of joe, her uncle folded his newspaper, grabbed his crutches, and said, “I’m gonna head outside to smoke a cigar.” He shot her a meaningful look. “And I don’t want to hear a word about it.”

“The doctors say you should stop smoking those things.” She placed her hands on her hips, completely ignoring his second sentence.

He rolled his eyes. “The doctors also say I’ve got the cholesterol levels of a twenty-year-old.” He began hobbling toward the door at the back of the bar, the one leading to the alley. “So I figure I’m ahead of the curve. Besides, a man my age has to enjoy what pleasures he can.”

“And speaking of pleasures,” she called to him, “stop sharing your stogies with the agents in the surveillance cars. You’re a bad influence!”

He simply lifted a hand to wave her off.

“He’s a tough old coot,” Zoelner observed.

“And stubborn,” she agreed, smiling after her uncle. “He insists there’s no reason for the CIA to keep an eye on him even though the head honchos in that al-Qaeda group know he’s now the only living person with the exact coordinates of five missing nuclear warheads.”

“Three,” Zoelner said.

“Huh?”

“It’s only three now,” he told her. “Given this most recent development, the DOD decided it behooved them to allocate a portion of their healthy budget to the retrieval of the nukes. Two have already been raised from the sea floor. The salvage of the remaining three is underway.”

“About damn time, if you ask me,” she said, wondering, not for the first time, at the idiocy of a government that would not put the recovery of nuclear weapons at the very top of its to-do list.

Zoelner shrugged, and there was that look again. The one that made her wonder if she should renew her offer of a beer. She tilted her head. “You’re not here at the bequest of Agent Duvall, are you? Was I wrong? Did the Intel I gave them on the ghost accounts Winterfield set up in Argentina not pan out? Does she want me to—”

“I don’t want to talk about Chelsea Duvall,” Dagan spat the name like one usually spits out rancid meat. “She was a pain in the ass while I worked for The Company, and now, thanks to her spiffy new title, she’s a pain in my ass again.”