Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(83)
He spat bright red blood onto the pavement before he turned to see Ali take the shirt that Ozzie ripped over his head. She quickly pressed it onto the bleeding wound in Manus’s big chest. Manus grimaced and moaned, but his eyes were steady on Ali’s face as she leaned down to say something Nate couldn’t hear over the sirens wailing in the distance.
Unbelievable.
The guy was still alive.
And he might just stay that way if that was an ambulance headed in their direction which, by the look of Boss’s vigorous gesturing and the sound of him barking orders into his cell phone, chances were pretty good it was.
A strangled wail that echoed above the approaching sirens had him glancing back through the gates—which was a mistake. Because the awful sight that met his eyes was one that’d stay with him the rest of his life.
Dan was sitting in that big pool of dark blood, surrounded by that awful arrangement of chocolate chip cookies, his wife’s lifeless body cradled in his arms. The guy was rocking and sobbing, his face wet with tears and contorted with grief.
Patti. God. Nate didn’t want to believe it.
She was the mother of the group. The one who made sure they all ate. The one who made sure they were wearing clean clothes. The one who made sure there was always beer in the fridge and beef jerky in the cabinets. She was the cool voice of rationality when too much testosterone inevitably had heads getting hot and mouths running hotter.
And now she was gone.
In the blink of an eye, and one madman’s careless barrage of bullets, her sweet light was extinguished forever.
“Sonofabitch!” he cursed and scrubbed a hand over his moist eyes.
What the hell was she doing by the gatehouse anyway? Everyone was supposed to stay secured inside until he and Ali and the damned zip drive were safely back in the shop and they—
“Where do’y’think you’re goin’?” he pointed his .45 at Mystery Man as the guy took a step down the road.
“The second gunman is getting away,” Mystery Man rasped as he raised his hands, palm out. Purple bruises were already popping out around the guy’s abused throat.
“He’s already gone, man,” Nate told him, refusing to lower his weapon, still unsure just whose side ol’ Mr. Mystery was playing on. In the gun battle, he’d been on the side of the Knights, but that didn’t mean the man was gonna stay there. “You know that as well as I do.”
“But I might—”
“Nuh-uh. You’re not leavin’ my sight until we figure out just what the hell is goin’ on here, and just who the hell you are.”
Mystery Man’s split, swollen lips twisted into a dark grimace. “Well, I’m Dagan Zoelner, former CIA. And as for what’s going on here? I think I might be able to shed a little light on that.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ali sat on a hard folding chair in the conference room at Black Knights Inc., watching dazedly while Ozzie connected the zip drive to one of his computers.
She felt like she was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.
The past two hours weren’t real, were they?
She hadn’t really been in the middle of an all-out gunfight, lovable Patti wasn’t really dead, the gatehouse guard wasn’t really in the middle of a grueling surgery with very little chance of survival, and the Chicago Police Department wasn’t really covering up the whole thing and calling it a “gang-related” incident—via the strict instructions of someone very high up in the national government.
As she glanced around at the grim faces of Nate, Frank, Ozzie, and Mystery Man/Dagan Zoelner, she shook her head. She couldn’t deny that, yes, this was reality. She had been in a gunfight, Patti was dead, the CPD had covered it all up, and Manus—she’d learned the guard was Big Red’s brother—was having the damage to his chest repaired right at this very moment.
This very real moment.
To make matters worse, if that was even possible, she was about to find out if her brother really had stolen highly classified files to sell on the black market, as former Agent Zoelner claimed.
“We’re in,” Ozzie announced, his broad, agile fingers flying over the keyboard. “Looks like a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and a…wait…there seems to be a video file.”
“Play it,” Frank grumbled, rotating one heavy shoulder and grimacing. “Maybe it’ll tell us just what the f*ck this has all been about.”
She glanced up at the big man. His rough face was lined with grief and worry, but he seemed to be holding it together. Despite the horrific tragedy of the last few hours, despite the fact that there might be more terrible tragedy to come if Manus died on the operating table and they learned Grigg really had turned traitor, he was holding it together remarkably well.
She supposed that’s what hard men like him did in tough situations.
They held it all together so folks like her could go on living the American Dream. Free and peaceful and…so oblivious.
For some reason, the thought struck her as particularly awful and that, combined with a horrid flash of Patti lying pale and lifeless in a huge puddle of blood and chocolate chip cookies, had her suddenly fighting the urge to puke.
She’d never eat a chocolate chip cookie ever, ever again. Just the thought…
“Erp,” she put two fingers to her mouth as she searched the room.