In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(35)
And lastly, yes, she thought it was beyond tragic that the whole world thought Patti Currington had died in gang crossfire when the truth of the matter was she’d been taken down by a careless assassin who didn’t give a good goddamn which innocent people he caught with one of his stray bullets, but that’s just how it was in their business. And the fact that some nosy reporter smelled something bigger and was trying like hell to force a few jumbled pieces into some sort of order scared the life right of her, but she’d finally managed to find her voice.
“No, I don’t think my life is jinxed. Perhaps plagued by a string of bad luck recently, but that’s only one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is I’m extremely lucky. I’m alive and well, aren’t I?”
Miss Tate had smiled knowingly, the look in her eye enough to curdle Becky’s innards, but the woman thankfully refrained from asking any more probing questions.
“Well, if the press is eating it up,” she told Rock now, “I can only hope that means they’ll soon be full. I just want it to all go away.” She dragged in a deep breath and smiled at the familiar scents of motor oil, bad coffee, and the slightly minty, alcohol aroma that lingered in the brick walls from the building’s previous life as a menthol cigarette factory. “Oh, it’s good to be home.”
Rock smiled as they made their way down the long hall that ended with an entrance to the huge expanse of the shop. “It’s good to have ya home, chère.”
“Where are the others?” she asked as they pushed into the strange silence of the shop. She craned her head back to scan the open second floor where the offices and conference room were located, frowning when she found everything to be ghostly quiet.
Then a muted thump, thump, thump had her gaze focusing on the metal stairway, and she clapped her delight. “Peanut!” she squealed at the giant, gray cat lumbering down the staircase. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, you fat, mangy furball?”
The tomcat landed with a hard thud on the shop floor and meowed a loud welcome before winding his substantial self around and between her legs. He gazed up at her with soulful, yellow eyes in a scarred face only a mother could love.
Bending, she hefted him into her arms and chuckled with happiness when he fired up his motor, purring so loudly it felt like a jet engine rumbled inside his chest.
“He’s missed ya somethin’ fierce,” Rock said, crossing his arms and cocking his head to the side, eyes twinkling at the sight of the two of them.
“Oh, I’ve missed him.” She buried her nose in the cat’s patchy fur and grimaced when he afforded her the rather dubious honor of his kneading nails.
“From what I hear, he walked around here for two days after you left, meowin’ incessantly and refusin’ to eat.”
She joggled Peanut, testing his rather ample weight. “It doesn’t appear to have had much of an impact.”
“Oh, I think he quickly realized extra helpings of Fancy Feast worked wonders on his depression.”
She chuckled, scratching Peanut under his furry chin until his yellow eyes rolled back in ecstasy. “So where is everybody?”
“Steady, Mac, and Christian are all still on assignment. Ozzie’s at some hacker-fest or geek-fest or somethin’. Ghost just got back from a mission, and when he learned you were safe and sound, he headed down to North Carolina to play househusband—if you can imagine that. Vanessa’s in DC finishin’ up a consulting job for the Agency. God only knows what dingy, disgustin’ rock Dan Man is hidin’ under. And your three heroes aren’t on site yet. They had a delay and landed at Great Lakes about an hour after you touched down at O’Hare. Their ETA is approximately…” He looked at his watch and smiled when a muffled whistle pierced the thick brick of the shop’s west wall, “right now.”
He ambled over to the large, red button mounted high up between her Craftsman ten-drawer rolling tool chest and the metal staircase leading to the second floor. After smashing it with his palm, an alarm briefly sounded, and the west wall began its laborious slide to the right.
No matter how long she worked at Black Knights Inc., she doubted she’d ever get accustomed to the eerie sight. Shades of the House of Usher.
“Why’d they come via the Bat Tunnel?” she asked, referring to the secret bolt-hole that extended from the chopper shop down under the Chicago River. It terminated in a parking garage two blocks away.
“After I saw Miss Tate grill you, I figured it best if our guys didn’t arrive home right after you’d told the story of a group of mysterious men racin’ to your rescue. Ya know, just in case the lovely Miss Tate is keepin’ her eagle eye on things, waitin’ for a juicy story to land in her lap.”
Becky shuddered. “She’s a shark. We’re gonna have to watch out for her.”
“Indeed,” Rock agreed, walking over to the lathe in order to snag the sandwich lying atop the expensive tool’s flat surface. He took a mammoth bite.
“What’ve I told you about keeping your dang sandwiches off my equipment?” she demanded, lowering Peanut to the floor so she could plant her hands on her hips.
Rock shot her a wide-eyed, innocent look that didn’t fool her for a second. She was just about lay into him for the one-hundred-and-first time concerning that particular offense when the west wall opened just enough to admit Frank’s extra-wide shoulders. She swallowed her words as she watched the Black Knights’ fearless leader slowly shuffle into the shop.