Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(20)
Ozzie instantly stopped typing. In the resounding silence of the room, you could’ve heard the proverbial pin drop.
Becky was the one to break it. Of course.
“Kick ass, sista. Way to keep your head about you.”
Ali blushed prettily and bit her lip. Out of the corner of Frank’s eye, he thought he saw Ghost’s jaw twitch.
“Thanks.” Ali smiled. “But before you congratulate me too much, I’m not sure it’ll be that much help. It’s fuzzy.” She pulled her BlackBerry from the back pocket of her jeans and punched a few buttons. “By the time I grabbed my phone, the vehicle was pretty far away, and I had to zoom way in…”
“Did you give the photo to the Jacksonville Police?” Frank asked, wondering what the local PD had to say about the incident.
“I did.” She made a sound of disgust. “And when I laid out my theory linking the guy who’s been following me and the mugger, they paid me some pretty nice lip service. Secretly, I think they went in the other room and swirled their fingers around their temples. Look, I know the story is crazy, but I’m convinced I’m right. Those two men are linked. Everything that’s been happening is linked.”
She handed her phone to Ozzie who glanced at the screen before his fingers started flying over the keyboard again.
“It’s North Carolina plates. That last digit there,” she tapped her phone with one fingernail, “it looks like either a B or an R…or maybe a 3.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the kid said. “I can work with it.”
“You can?” Ali’s eyes brightened. “The Jacksonville police said it was too blurry to do anything with.”
“The Jacksonville police don’t have my image enhancement software,” Ozzie boasted, the excitement on his face making him look about twelve years old, which made Frank’s trick shoulder start to ache.
Thirty-nine certainly wasn’t headed for the rocking chair, but with the kind of life he’d led, closing out his fourth decade meant that there were aches…and pops…and shit that just didn’t work right anymore. His trick shoulder being the most annoying of all his current ailments.
He reached for the bottle of ibuprofen he kept in his hip pocket and quickly swallowed a couple of tablets without benefit of water before shoving the Dum Dum back in his mouth.
“Good job, by the way, “ Ozzie added.
“Thanks,” Ali accepted his offhand compliment and watched him jump up from the conference table with the same energy a child jumps out of bed on Christmas morning. The kid snagged his laptop along with her phone and scurried over to his domain. Pulling a long cord from a drawer, he attached it to the phone before jacking it into one of the main computers.
“Anyway,” Ali turned her attention back to the group at the conference table, “the whole incident spooked me, especially when the police didn’t believe me. And since I didn’t want to end up strapped to a wheelchair with my eyelids taped open, pumped full of drugs and falling down a staircase while screaming, “He’s flying!,” I immediately hopped in my car and drove straight here.”
“Be still my heart,” Ozzie swiveled in his desk chair, clutching his chest. “Marry me, Ali. Marry me right now.”
“What am I missing?” Dan asked.
“Come on, man. Mel Gibson? Conspiracy Theory? Do you ever go to the movies?”
“Ha!” Dan laughed, cocking his head and smoothing his tightly trimmed goatee. “Unlike some people I know, I haven’t spent the last ten years with my head buried in electronics. I’ve been busting my hump doing man’s work and—”
“Spare me one of your speeches,” Ozzie waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve heard them all before. And I don’t know why you’re always trying to shut me down, anyway. ‘Nobody puts baby in the corner.’”
Ozzie waited a beat and when Dan only raised a skeptical brow, he threw his hands in the air. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Dirty Dancing? How can you never have seen Dirty Dancing? It’s a classic!”
“Yeah,” Dan snorted, “a classic piece of shit.”
“Them’s fightin’ words, mister!” Ozzie howled, jumping up to dance from side to side like a boxer.
Dan snorted so loudly, Frank thought the guy might’ve swallowed his tongue which, considering Dan’s propensity toward slinging bullshit and provoking Ozzie, might not be such a bad thing.
The ex-SEALs on the team, Ozzie and Dan Man included, considered themselves to be the best of the best—which made them all cocky as hell. Of course, truth be told, each member of Black Knights Inc., ex-SEAL or not, was on the team because they were at the very tip-tipity top of their game.
Black Knights Inc. had nine guys—soon to be twelve, with the addition of the Mossad agent and the prospective helo pilot and communications specialist—who could go in, finish the job, and make tracks without a whiff of Uncle’s involvement.
The powers-that-be in the monster otherwise known as the U.S. government absolutely loved all those intricate little layers of plausible deniability. Didn’t matter that each man on the Black Knights’ payroll ultimately reported back to the Grand-Poobah himself, El Jefe, the good ol’ commander in chief. What mattered was that, should any of their missions be discovered, there was no way to trace that mission’s origination to anyone in the U.S. government—which was just fine by Frank. After the clusterf*ck that prompted his decision to part ways with the Navy SEALs, he preferred to run his own show.