Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(85)
“So,” he puffed out a breath. “Here’s the deal. I’m sending this zip drive along with all the information to Ali. She’ll think it’s just the same-ol’-same-ol’. I’m hoping I come back from this job to nab the zip drive and figure out just what the hell I’m supposed to do with it. But like I said in the beginning, if you’re watching this, I’m probably dead, the shit has hit the fan, and I couldn’t be more sorry about the whole stinkin’ mess.
“That’s it,” Grigg frowned, his usually grinning face lined with harsh worry, “except for one last thing…Ghost, Nate, brother of my heart, I’m gonna need you to watch over Ali. Just…make sure she’s all right, okay?”
They all watched breathlessly as Grigg’s video image leaned forward, and then the screen dissolved to blackness.
“Fuck me,” Frank cursed as Ali quietly sobbed into the soggy handkerchief.
Oh, Grigg. My sweet, crazy, dauntless brother.
“So, I guess that blows your theory of Grigg trying to sell black-market files right out of the water,” Ali heard Ozzie say to the CIA guy, Zoelner.
She lifted her head—the thing weighed about a million pounds—and sniffed back her tears in time to see Zoelner make a face.
“Yeah well, like I said, I’d already determined Aldus was completely full of shit.”
“What was in it for you?” Frank asked, his craggy face particularly harsh. “Money?”
“Look,” Zoelner spat, wincing when it stretched his split lip. Dan Man had really done a job on the guy’s face. One eye was swollen almost completely shut while the other sported a pretty nasty gash right below the eyebrow. The ruined skin was hastily closed with a butterfly bandage but not cleaned. Crusty blood clung to the wound. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Yes, Aldus hired me to track down and secure files for him. Files he told me were highly classified and in danger of being sold to the highest bidder. Yes, I ghosted Miss Morgan here for months, no doubt scaring her to death. Yes, I hung around here, trying to find out just what the hell was going on. But the minute, I mean the very minute I became convinced the senator was full of shit, I stopped taking his money. So f*ck you and that high horse you’re riding on!”
Zoelner jumped from the metal folding chair he was sitting in, sending the thing toppling over with a loud clang. Without another word, he started toward the stairway leading down to the first floor.
“Hold it,” Frank barked at the guy’s retreating back. Zoelner swung around to face the group, blowing like a winded bull.
“Calm down, for f*ck’s sake!” Frank bellowed, doing a pretty good raging bull impression himself. “I’m not accusing you of anything, you sensitive prick. I’m just trying to figure out everyone’s motives here.”
Zoelner pinned his one semi-good eye on Frank’s angrily flushed face. “My motives are my own,” he growled.
“Fine,” Frank threw his wide palms in the air. “Whatever. Keep your damned motives to yourself. But you’re not leaving here. You’re coming with us.”
Zoelner’s jaw sawed back and forth, but he managed to ask calmly, “Going with you where?”
“DC,” Frank informed him, his tone sufficiently broadcasting there would be no ifs, ands, or buts. “The president and his Joint Chiefs are going to be awfully interested in the information on this zip drive, and they’re going want to talk to you about your association with Aldus.”
“How do you know the Joint Chiefs aren’t part of Aldus’s little party?” Zoelner demanded. “You could be leading us all into the lion’s den.”
“Experience,” Frank said, his tone absolute. “And the fact that I personally know the Joint Chiefs. They’re a bunch of *s on a good day, but there’s not a one of them who’d be involved in this.”
“Shit!” Zoelner spat, then winced again and lifted a finger to wipe at the drop of blood that welled on his lower lip.
Oh, crapola, they were leaving. They were going to leave her here as they jetted off to Washington and she…
Well, there was only one thing she was going to do.
“I’m coming with you,” she declared, sniffing back her tears and thrusting out her chin as she glanced around at each of their hard, weary faces. Oh yeah, she was daring any of them to tell her otherwise, because if they did…well, she’d just make sure they didn’t. “I deserve to see this through to the end.”
“Ali—” Nate began but was interrupted by Frank’s harsh tone.
“All right, Ali,” the big man growled, accurately reading her adamant, no-way-I’m-capitulating expression or, more likely, he was simply unwilling to take the time to argue. “Grab whatever you need. The military transport we’re hopping out of Great Lakes Naval Station departs in ninety minutes.”
She nodded and slowly stood from the chair, studiously avoiding Nate’s worried, belligerent gaze. She knew he wanted to argue, bully her into staying where it was safe. But she wasn’t in the mood to be bullied. And right now, she didn’t give a darn about safety.
***
“Their lobbyists say they’ve only got to swing two more votes and then we’ll be on the mark to take—”
Whatever Ron Dunn, the senator from New Jersey, was about to say got cut off when two guys in severe black suits burst into Senator Alan Aldus’s office, closely followed by his harried secretary of twenty years.