Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(54)
He’d always thought it crazily intriguing that a girl…woman…girl…shit! Woman, she was a woman, he told himself. A young woman. A young woman who was more often than not covered in thick grease. A young woman who was better than any man he knew at rebuilding an engine—any engine. A young woman who could fabricate sheet metal into anything her creative brain could conceive of with the help of a blowtorch and a mallet. And it was strange and enchanting and goddamned beguiling that a woman like that could be so girly as to insist on having a weekly mani and pedi.
“You know, our new…er, guest of the Israeli persuasion,” she said and he yanked his attention away from those fascinating little toes. “That’s the alias Christian picked out for the guy.”
Ah, yes. That goddamned Mossad agent.
Great. That was just great. One more thing he didn’t want to think about.
“He’s not a guest. Supposedly, he’s gonna be an asset to us.”
Becky raised a skeptical brow, and he could only shrug in silent agreement. He was more than a bit leery himself.
“On a separate note,” she continued, “Steady says he’s staying an extra day at the conference, something about a historical lecture on wound excision and early reconstruction in the treatment of compound fractures during the first World War.” She rolled her eyes. “Sounds über-boring if you ask me, but no one ever does.”
She shot him a meaningful look that he responded to with an equally meaningful scowl.
“Anywho,” she continued, “Rock and Billy checked in to say they’d be home at the end of the week, and all’s quiet on the eastern front, as it were. Ghost and Ali are about an hour outside of Jacksonville, and Ghost says he’ll contact us once he has the zip drive.”
It suddenly occurred to Frank, all this should be coming from Ozzie. He narrowed his eyes. “Where’s the kid?”
“He’s elbow deep in the flight control systems of the Hawk,” she said. “He closely resembled a guy with a terminal case of ants in his pants waiting for his turn at the helo. And seeing as how I successfully, and without detection I might add,” she pantomimed doing a little curtsy, “hacked Eyes in the Sky this morning, Ozzie figured it was safe to leave me manning the control center so he—”
“Rebecca! Damnit!” he cursed as he reached into his pocket for the bottle of ibuprofen.
Just the thought of the danger she was courting by trying to involve herself in their work made every single aging bone in his body ache. “That’s not your job. Your job is to do what you do best. Fix things. Maintain our cover, and keep your nose out of our goddamned business.”
She uncrossed her ankles and took up a fighting stance, her slim legs shoulder width apart, her grease-and-paint-free hands—now that was a novelty—fisted and held loosely by her sides. “I can do a hell of a lot more than that, Frank.”
His left eyelid twitched.
“That’s not the point,” he told her, careful to keep his voice calm. One of them needed to maintain some control, or they were going to tear into each other—and God help them then. “We pay you to do a certain job and—”
“And I do that job!” she yelled. “But I’m capable of more. If you’d only—”
“It’s never gonna happen, Rebecca!” he yelled back. So much for control. He was never able to maintain it whenever she was around. “You’re never going to be an operator.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her cheeks were bright red, and it was a good thing eyes couldn’t really shoot fire or he’d be nothing but a smoldering pile of ash. “Says who? You’re not the only outfit out there, Frank. With the training I’ve received from the Knights, there are quite a few firms who’d gladly add me to their roster.”
What? Training? Knights?
He was going to hurl.
Knowing the things his men could teach her made his bowels grumble, like he was suffering a serious case of Montezuma’s Revenge.
“What…training?” he enunciated slowly, precisely. It was either that or he was going to start screaming his head off.
“Ghost is teaching me to snipe,” she said smugly and suddenly all those times she and Ghost disappeared made a whole helluva lot more sense.
“Is that what you two were doing when you snuck away from the compound? I thought maybe Ghost was confiding in you and—”
“Whatever,” Becky rolled her eyes. “Have you met Ghost? He doesn’t tell his troubles to anyone.”
Okay, she had a point. He should’ve known better.
Damn, this was not good.
Crazily undaunted by the fact that his face was turning purple, she continued, “Billy is teaching me about explosives and demolition, and just the other day I—”
“What?” he interrupted. “How the hell can Wild Bill do that?”
Becky was the guy’s kid sister, for crying out loud, and Frank didn’t even want to begin to think about what she might’ve done just the other day. Fucking-A.
“Because I asked him to, that’s how,” her voice dripped disdain. “You know Billy supports all my ambitions and aspirations, just as a good brother should.”
Was she insane? A good brother made damned sure his baby sister didn’t get within two hundred yards of anything that went kaboom!