Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(10)
Could he have been wrong?
But, no. If Weller had been in on it, he would have already gone to the authorities with his information.
No one knows about the deal, he assured himself and heaved a calming breath. The people who had known were all dead…which brought him back to his current predicament. Namely, getting those pain-in-the-ass files from Alisa Morgan.
“I’m tired of waiting for you to befriend the woman, Z. Now we’re going to do this my way,” he instructed firmly. “Wait until she leaves and then take her. Find those files.”
Christ, this was turning into a bigger mess day by day, and he was quickly becoming sick and tired of dealing with it.
It would probably be easier and certainly more expedient to just get rid of her, he thought as he rolled up his window to block out the fumes from the gas pumps. Instead of hiring Johnny and his boys, those three ham-handed guys out of Las Vegas he liked to employ to take care of his more…violent needs, to mug Ms. Morgan, he could have them contrive a fatal car crash like the one that’d befallen that FBI agent who’d gotten too curious.
It was certainly tempting…
But in situations like this, it never paid to be hasty. And killing American citizens on American soil could be tricky, particularly when he wasn’t sure her death would result in the destruction of the files.
So…he’d just keep that contingency in his back pocket.
For now.
“Sir,” Zoelner sounded restless, “I’ve got a question.”
“What is it?” he growled, growing more and more impatient with Dagan Zoelner each passing day.
“Did you authorize yesterday’s mugging?”
“What?” he sputtered, feigning incredulity. “I can’t believe you’d accuse me of such a thing. I never condone violence. You know that.”
“Then what do you call your idea to kidnap Ms. Morgan?”
“I call it necessary, Z. Plus, I trust you to handle her with kid gloves.”
The silence coming through the receiver was telling. Zoelner wasn’t comfortable with the plan, the aggravatingly high-minded bastard.
Well, tough. He was finished waiting for Zoelner to come around to his way of thinking.
“Look, Z” he spat into the phone, blood rushing to his face to make his ears and cheeks tingle with rage. “I pay you quite an exorbitant amount to do this f*cking job. I would think that much money would buy me the benefit of having you choke down your misgivings. Am I wrong? Shall I find someone else who shows a little more gumption, a little more intestinal fortitude?”
“No, sir.”
Zoelner’s response was immediate, but the tone coming through the receiver didn’t sound particularly conciliatory, and that had Aldus’s already frayed nerves screaming. He was one of the most powerful men in the whole goddamned country, and no one took that tone with him. He wanted very badly to reach through the phone and strangle the impertinent little prick.
Perhaps when this was all over, when he was president, he could have the fool deleted. The thought was gratifying enough to decrease his blood pressure from a rapid boil to a slow simmer.
“Good,” he sniffed and adjusted his silk Brioni necktie. “Keep me informed.”
***
“…But I know the neighborhoooood, and talk is cheap when the story is goooood…”
The place was a madhouse.
There was just no other way to describe the scene playing out around Ali as she stood by the railing on the second story of the warehouse with its cacophony of sights, sounds, and smells.
She’d learned from the handsome man currently going through her luggage with some strange, black wand thing—while singing along to the pounding beats of REO Speedwagon—that the place used to be a Spud Menthol Cigarette Factory. Which accounted for the slightly minty, alcohol aroma still lingering in the air despite the more overpowering smells of oil, grease, and coffee strong enough to burn all the hair from one’s nostrils.
She could account for this last observation personally, having been immediately given a cup of said coffee by a cute, slightly matronly shaped woman named Patti.
In his correspondence, Grigg described Patti as Black Knights Inc.’s receptionist/secretary extraordinaire. The woman certainly showed superwoman promptness with the beverage cart, appearing from out of nowhere before Ali even had the opportunity to set down her purse. Unfortunately, what Patti gained in hostessing prowess, she obviously lacked in the culinary arts, because after one sip of the toxic waste that passed as coffee at Black Knights Inc., Ali was forced to set her cup aside in order to concentrate on keeping her eyes from tearing up.
Luckily, before Patti could witness her struggle, someone yelled, “Patti! We’re out of alpha whiskey in the head,” and Patti disappeared down the hall, presumably to replace the bathroom’s alpha whiskey—otherwise known as ass wipe or the much-less-colorful toilet paper in the civilian world.
The things Ali learned having Grigg as an older brother…
“Take it on the run, baby!” The man going through her things—he’d introduced himself as Ethan Sykes, but Grigg had always referred to him as Ozzie—belted out in a surprisingly clear tenor. “If that’s the way you want it, baby, then I don’t want you around!”
The guy was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Mr. Spock’s favorite hand gesture and the slogan 100% TREKKIE, which was slightly incongruous when compared to the shoulder holster and the mean-looking, matte-black gun secured to his side. He looked like some strange combination of geek and warrior. The man you’d call if you needed to invade a small country or translate a message written in Klingon.