In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(22)
Her brother spun and slapped a hard palm over her mouth, his eyes bright with fury. He nodded for Boss and Angel to continue when they stopped to glance at him over their shoulders.
“I’m right behind you,” he assured them and once they were out of earshot growled, “This is how it’s done, sis. You wanna be an operator? Well, an operator protects his cover, through injury, through torture…hell, he’ll even die to protect it. So you go on back to Eve, impress upon her just how important it is that she keep her damn mouth shut, and I’ll see you on board the Patton. Do you understand me? Nod if you understand me.”
What could she do? She nodded.
Billy gave her one last probing look before he raced to catch the others, and she could only watch helplessly as, one by one, they disappeared over the side of the tanker and into the starlit night.
***
“Aahhhh!” Sharif screamed as he pulled the big knife from the center of his right palm, biting his cheek against the mind-bending pain until the bright coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.
He threw the blade over the railing with a vicious curse and ripped off his wet shirt, clumsily trying to secure it around his useless hand.
“That bitch,” he whispered, managing to use his left hand and his teeth to tighten the makeshift bandage. The maneuver ignited a flame of hot agony that exploded up the length of his arm and detonated at the base of his skull.
That bitch…
Staggering, swallowing down the urge to vomit, he grabbed the smooth wooden steering wheel and squeezed his eyes closed, sucking in ragged breaths and praying for the weakness to pass.
When it finally did, finally, he blinked open his eyes and turned to glance behind him. The smoke from the ruined engine parted for a brief moment and in the blackness of the nighttime ocean, he saw the bright lights of the Hamilton on the far horizon. It was a shining, taunting beacon heralding the position of the prize that would have allowed him to leave this distasteful business once and for all.
“That bitch! That bitch! That bitch!” he yelled over and over, pounding his fist against the wheel and imagining it was her pretty American face.
If she had not stalled, if she had not had the audacity to ignore his repeated threats to blister her soft hide for every minute she dawdled at tasks he knew she could have accomplished in moments, she would have had those big diesel engines repaired, and he would have been sailing back toward the Somali coast aboard a multimillion dollar trophy instead of this ridiculous sailboat.
“I will kill her,” he vowed, grinding his teeth as he tucked his ruined right hand up into his armpit. With a shriek of vitriolic agony, he applied, what he hoped, was enough pressure to stop the bleeding. “I will find her,” he panted through the pain. “I will find her and show her what a woman’s true place is in this world…and then I will kill her.”
***
“So does this pass muster?” Becky asked Billy and Angel as she held out her arms and pirouetted. “Am I allowed to go see Frank now?”
The wait for the USS Patton’s arrival after the guys disappeared over the side of the tanker had seemed interminable, and she knew her pacing made everybody onboard the Hamilton, especially Eve, nervous, but she wasn’t able to help it. All manner of horrific scenarios had flashed through her brain, not the least of which being Frank eaten by a huge great white shark because he’d been bleeding into the water.
She kept seeing that mammoth shark from Jaws, and that creepy da-da…da-da…da-da-da-da music circled endlessly through her brain. Add in the horrific picture show of those last seconds with Sharif at the rail, the certainty she’d felt that they were her final moments, and it was an understatement to say she was going nuts. Just when she was on the verge of screaming and pulling out her hair, the big destroyer arrived on the black horizon, its sparkling lights like a lodestar in the night.
She and Eve were the first to transfer aboard where they were met by Billy and Angel. Both men looked rather guileless in their civilian clothes and anyone seeing their innocent, freshly scrubbed faces wouldn’t believe they’d just frogmanned a pretty spectacular rescue.
Oh, but they had.
“Hello, Miss Reichert, Miss Edens,” Billy shook their hands. “I’m Vinnie, and this is Bruce,” he said as he nodded to Angel. “We’re here to negotiate your ransom, but uh,” he shuffled his feet and grinned—he stopped just short of aw shucks-ing it, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes—“I guess that’s a moot point now, isn’t it? Still, your father is paying us hourly, Miss Edens, so we’ll do our best to see to your comfort until we can get you both home.”
Under the watchful eyes of the destroyer’s crew, she and Eve carefully played their parts, shaking hands with the men and feigning unfamiliarity. But as soon as the four of them were alone, trudging down a metal gangway, she snorted, “Vinnie and Bruce, is it? And is Mark down in sick bay?”
Billy glanced at her over his shoulder, his eyes widening in feigned surprise. “As a matter of fact, he is. How in the world did you know?”
She shook her head and chuckled. Leave it to her big brother to come up with aliases that all just happened to be the names of the transient band members of KISS.
“How is he?”
“He’s fine,” Billy answered.
“He’s fine,” Angel echoed from behind.