Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(13)
“Heard it from a friend whooo…heard it from a friend whooo…heard it from another you been messin’ arounnnddd,” Ozzie/Ethan finished with dramatic vibrato.
The sudden silence caused by the end of the song was shattered when the opening bars to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” blasted through the speakers. Obviously Ethan/Ozzie was a big ’80s music fan, although the guy didn’t look old enough to have lived through much of that decade.
“Meerreow!” Ali nearly jumped out of her skin when something warm and furry brushed against her calves—which didn’t do a thing to steady her jittery nerves or assuage the feeling of having suddenly fallen down the rabbit’s hole. But it did succeed in keeping her stupid tears at bay.
“Well, hello,” she murmured to the biggest, ugliest cat on the planet.
She crouched down to stroke patchy, ash-colored fur. The tom was the size of a small horse, with enough scars around his face and notches in his ears to earn him the look of a battered warrior. When his big, yellow eyes blinked up at her in weary, feline sympathy, as if to say, I understand. I’ve seen the ugly side of life, too, the tears hovering behind her eyes threatened to spill all over again.
Oh, double crap.
To comfort herself, she pulled the mammoth cat into her arms and stood.
Or tried to…
It was a bit difficult given he seemed to weigh as much as a St. Bernard. Finally, she was able to pull herself up by the railing, only to have to spread her feet in order to balance under her furry load.
She heard a deep rumble and thought someone started up one of the Harleys down below. She chuckled when she realized it was the deeply contented, terribly unattractive gray bundle in her arms causing the racket.
“Now you’ve done it! Peanut will expect everyone to carry him around, and I, for one, don’t have the strength for it,” Frank Knight, a giant of a man who, contrary to his words, looked strong enough to bench press a Volkswagen, yelled over the booming music as he appeared from one of the side doors to come and lean on the rail beside her.
“Peanut?” She pulled her chin back and glanced down into a furry, gray face only a mother could love. The cat’s golden eyes were half-closed in satisfaction, and she was blessed with the rather dubious honor of his kneading nails pricking through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. “He looks more like a Goliath, or Brutus. Peanut? Really?”
“Yeah,” Frank laughed as he ran a hand through his curling mop of brown hair and watched the progress down on the shop floor. His smile quickly faded as his eyes zeroed in on the woman doing a pretty fair version of a bronco rider—only her steed was made of steel instead of flesh and blood.
Ali thought she heard him mutter “sonofabitch,” before he physically forced himself to look away. “When we moved into this building, it was home to rats and this guy here,” he reached out a giant mitt of a hand and scratched under the cat’s chin, eliciting a resurgence of purring that vibrated through Ali’s chest like a lawnmower, “who’d made his bed on a pile of old peanut bags—hence the name. We managed to get rid of all the rats, and we shipped Peanut off to live with a sweet local lady who takes in strays, but within two days he’d found his way back to us. I’m Frank Knight, by the way. I’d shake your hand except both of them appear to be full.” He winked and a delightful web of wrinkles gathered at the corner of his eye.
“I know who you are. Grigg spoke very highly of you. He had a great deal of respect for you.”
The big man’s face contorted. “The respect thing went both ways. Grigg was…well,” he ran that giant paw back through his hair again and grimaced slightly, flexing his shoulder as if the motion hurt, “…there’s just no words. He was the best. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. We were all devastated.”
And…triple crap. The tears were threatening again.
Just when she thought she’d have to turn away or lose it right on the spot—she’d turned into the Queen of Blubberingtown today—all hell broke loose in the madhouse.
Chapter Three
“Got it!” Becky Reichert crowed as the last bolt finally twisted loose and the bent rotor fell to the floor with a resounding Boom! The sound bounced and echoed around the warehouse like a cannon explosion.
Deafening silence ensued, sufficiently informing her the earsplitting ruckus had resulted in the switching off of ol’ Ricky Springfield—which was fine by her. Ozzie had deplorable taste in music. She’d tried to enlighten the man to the salient fact that quite a lot of really fantastic stuff had been written in the last twenty years, but he seemed immune to her attempts at musical edification. That he occasionally allowed her to pipe in The Killers was about the only victory she’d ever won, which meant she usually had her iPod earbuds screwed in tight, blasting her own music into her brain to drown out Ozzie’s less than discerning taste.
However, last night she forgot to charge the sucker, so she was tortured with ’80s rock ballads all morning. Of course, not having her earbuds in allowed her to hear the horrified screech immediately following the cacophonous clang of the fallen rotor blade.
She glanced up to see a woman standing at the rail wearing a gray cat-hat. Only it appeared, by her flailing arms and Peanut’s hissing, the fashion choice was unintentional.