Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(38)

“Frank?”

He ended his call before it got a chance to go through and glanced at his open office door.

He wasn’t the only one who’d gone without sleep last night. Alisa Morgan had dark bruises under her eyes. It also—kee-rist—looked like she’d been crying.

From fear? Because of her brother? Man, either reason made him want to wrap her in cotton and keep her safe on a shelf. Women, those adorably soft creatures, should never wear that particular expression. He felt partly responsible, because he should’ve known one of his men had gone off reservation. Should’ve sensed something in Grigg to warn him.

He hadn’t, and now Alisa Morgan was paying the price.

She held Peanut in her arms, her pert nose sunk deep into the cat’s patchy fur, looking like a little girl seeking comfort.

“Come on in, Ali,” he said and then realized she might not hear him over the loud purring of Sir Eats-a-Lot. He motioned to the set of chairs in front of his desk.

She hurriedly took a seat and arranged a contented Peanut on her lap. “I thought of something. I don’t know if it’s anything, but it might be…”

He motioned for her to continue.

“The memory box.”

Was that a new band? Man, he really must be getting old. “Pardon me?”

“Growing up, our parents were always so wrapped up in—” she shook her head. “Forget it. None of that matters. Crap. My brain feels all spongy…full of holes, you know?”

“I’d offer you a cup of coffee…” She made the facial equivalent of I’d rather be tarred and feathered. “Yeah,” he chuckled, “I didn’t think so.”

“That stuff is motor oil,” she declared, her tone full of disgust.

“Mmm hmm, but it works wonders for mental acuity.” And for helping a guy resist the lollipops some tiny temptress insisted on shoving into his shirt pockets. It was hard to enjoy the taste of root beer when your tongue was wearing a caffeine sweater.

“I’ll pass,” Ali replied dryly. “I value my stomach lining too much to—Ouch!”

She gingerly pulled Peanut’s kneading nails from the denim of her jeans. “They say love hurts. I never knew they meant it literally until I met Peanut.”

Funny. The woman was funny. Add that up with cute as a button, smart as a tack, and surprisingly tough underneath that cupcake exterior, and Frank understood why Ghost went all Cro-Magnon around her.

“Anyway, back to the memory box,” she said, scratching Peanut under his scarred chin until his yellow eyes rolled back in abject feline ecstasy. “It’s something Grigg and I started when we were kids. Putting little keepsakes inside. You know the kind of stuff I mean, his little league baseball glove, my first Barbie, our good report cards, things like that.”

Yes, Frank had a memory box himself. Filled with childhood memorabilia and stored in his sister’s attic. But what did that have to do with Grigg’s work for the FBI or the fact that Ali herself was now being ghosted by some man oozing CIA training in every calculated move like a snail oozes a slime trail?

“As we got older,” she continued and once more grimaced as she gently withdrew Peanut’s painfully loving claws, “we started keeping copies of more important documents in there. Wills, employment contracts, that kind of thing.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Frank sat forward.

“About once a year, Grigg would send me a zip drive filled with all the pictures he wanted to keep copies of, and I’d add it to the memory box,” she explained. “Usually, they were photos of him and Nate. Sometimes there were shots of the rest of you guys and the bikes you were working on.”

A little niggle of excitement stirred in the bottom of his stomach.

“So,” she made a motion with her hand and Peanut meowed his displeasure at the interrupted chin scratching. Ali dutifully resumed her task. “I guess it was about a week before we found out about Grigg, I received a zip drive from him in the mail. I opened it up, found a set of pictures just like always, so I put it in the memory box and forgot about it. When you asked if I’d received anything from Grigg that was out of the ordinary, I didn’t even think twice about the zip drive. Especially since I’d opened it and glanced through the pictures. But there was something else on the drive besides the pictures: a file I couldn’t access. It was secured with a password. Knowing Grigg, I figured it might be racy photos of him and some woman, or women,” she rolled her eyes. “But maybe it was secret files or something?”

Or something…hot damn! This could be the break they were all waiting for.

“It might be nothing, but the timing is awfully coincidental, don’t you think?” she asked hopefully.

He certainly did think. “Yes. Have you told Gho—ah, Nate about this?”

Her face fell, and she grabbed up Peanut to once more burry her nose in the cat’s patchy fur. In response, the stupid feline ratcheted his motor into overdrive.

Hello.

So something had obviously happened between Ali and Ghost last night. Something to make her eyes all wounded and wary.

Frank never thought he’d say it, but Nathan Weller was a goddamned moron. Couldn’t the man see this woman adored him? Didn’t he notice the catch in her breath every time he entered the room, the way she instinctively gravitated toward his side even though he was about as welcoming as a prickly pear cactus?