Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(12)
Uh-huh, he could certainly vouch for the woman’s hotness.
She was smokin’.
“I mean like hot,” Ozzie stressed unnecessarily. “Like she seriously gets my blood pumping, if you know what I mean. Of course, skimpy women’s lingerie has been giving me wood since I discovered my best friend’s older sister’s Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog when I was twelve, so maybe that accounts for my semi. Not to mention I’ve always been a fan of red lace.” The kid held up a red lace bra and wiggled his eyebrows.
Geez. More information than Nate ever wanted to know about the guy.
Plus, the sight of Ali’s underwear in another man’s hands, especially knowing it was turning the little shit on, made him want to chew nails.
Since there were no nails around to chew, he found himself saying something he never in his entire sad life thought he’d say, “Dude, just shut the hell up and sing.”
***
What were they talking about?
Ali flicked a glance in the direction of the two men mangling her underwear and—
Bad move.
Ozzie/Ethan was holding up her red bra and wiggling his eyebrows.
Great. Just…great. This day was going from bad to worse in pretty quick order.
To distract herself, she leaned over the heavy rail and surveyed the wide expanse below.
The distance to the first floor was dizzying, made even more so by the overwhelming fifteen-foot-tall caricatures painted all over the brick walls in colors so vibrant and saturated it would take a mind much more creative than hers to try and put a name to them all. The murals gave the huge space the appearance of some strange cross between a funhouse and workshop. Each of the cartoonishly exaggerated figures was obviously one of Black Knights Inc.’s employees. They looked like something that belonged in a graphic novel, all bulging muscles and straining tendons.
The concrete floor was a fascinating landscape of stains from old and recent oil spills—a giant Rorschach test on speed. The brightly painted brick walls were lined with mammoth, rolling toolboxes, and the main floor was dotted with highly technical-looking machines of various shapes and sizes. She wouldn’t have been able to identify one of them if her life depended on it.
What she could recognize was the line of gleaming custom choppers along one wall, their paint jobs varying in color from dark to vibrant, their designs alternately fierce and whimsical. They were a visual barrage of glinting chrome and sparkling paint, testament to the fact that at least some actual custom motorcycle work went on here.
And she might’ve been fooled into thinking perhaps Black Knights Inc. was exactly as it was purported to be had one entire section of the “shop” not currently housed a…yes, that was a helicopter.
A helicopter with a tiny blond woman straddling the rotor while a guy stood below, yelling up instructions over the din of REO Speedwagon. “You loosen that bolt and the whole goddamned thing’s gonna fall off!”
Ali assumed the woman must be Black Knight Inc.’s brilliant resident mechanic, but for the life of her she couldn’t recall the woman’s name.
Renegade, maybe? It was something like that.
“That’s the whole point!” Renegade, aka Helo Girl, or whatever her name was, called back with a healthy dose of well, duh.
Of course, what put the cherry on top of Ali’s incredulity sundae was the undeniable fact that that black behemoth down there was not your typical civilian helicopter. Nuh-uh, not with those menacing machine guns mounted on both sides. Although, she had to admit the thing didn’t look very scary right now considering major portions of it were pieced out and scattered around on various drop cloths.
It was obvious the bird wasn’t going to take to the air any time soon.
Still, if Ozzie/Ethan’s sidearm and the room behind her—which would make the attendees of DEF CON swoon in the computer geek equivalent of orgasmic bliss—hadn’t already convinced her that her instincts about Black Knights Inc. were spot-on, the sight of that deadly military chopper certainly would have.
There was a certain satisfaction in finally knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, she’d been right all along. Grigg had been up to much more than playing grease monkey in a motorcycle shop. Unfortunately, along with that piece of gratifying knowledge returned the hard wedge of sadness she first experienced when she’d pulled up to Black Knights Inc.’s front gates. The frustration and remorse because Grigg hadn’t felt he could tell her the truth.
What gives, Grigg?
She should’ve asked that question when he was still alive. She should’ve made him share that portion of his life with her. She should’ve insisted she actually get to know him instead of constantly biting her tongue, waiting for the day when he’d finally trust her enough to come clean.
It was too late.
The boulder of remorse, lodged in her throat since Nate walked into her parents’ home and told them they’d never again lay eyes on Grigg’s handsome face, grew until it threatened to choke her. She blinked rapidly and tried to swallow it down.
Which never worked.
Crap.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
She’d never been the stoic type. Far from it. She’d once bawled so hard on a flight to London while watching the movie Marley and Me, the man beside her got up twice to go to the bathroom and come back with a handful of toilet-paper to try and help her mop up the mess. But this bursting-into-spontaneous-tears-without-the-slightest-warning thing had become a recent talent of hers. One she hoped to lose PDQ, but she wasn’t sure that was gonna happen. Not when the loss of Grigg was still so fresh…so unbearable…