In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(36)
Wonderful and terrible. That’s how he looked.
Wonderful because…come on…he was Frank. Terrible because the bandage across his forehead was smudged with dirt, his hastily wrapped shoulder and sling were all askew and looked more like a Rube Goldberg machine than a medical device, his hair was a mess, his beard was coming in thick and black, not to mention the fact that he was pasty pale and carrying enough luggage beneath his eyes for a European vacation.
“Goddamn, mon frere, just look at you.” Rock grimaced and then grinned from ear to ear. Wait for it…“You look like warmed-over, day-old dogshit.”
Aaaannnddd, there it was. The first salvo. Some things just never changed.
Nor would she want them to.
“I feel worse,” Frank grumbled, shaking the hand Rock extended to him. “So what have you heard about Sharif? Have they found him?”
Just the sound of the man’s name sent a chill streaking down her spine, and she had to remind herself she was safe. She was home.
“Negative,” Rock shook his head. “The ships in the area have reported no sign of the Serendipity, nor have they picked up anything on radar. Surveillance drones are doin’ fly-overs, but it’s a little ship out in the middle of a big ocean. It was just plain ol’ luck we were able to locate it the first time around.”
“What about Interpol?” Frank asked.
“They’ve put out an APB and sent a description of the Serendipity to all major ports up and down Africa’s western seaboard. Of course, if he makes it to Somalia…”
Rock didn’t need to go any further. If Sharif made the Somali coast, it was game over. They’d probably never find him. She swallowed the hard lump of fear that lodged in her throat at the thought of that man being out there…somewhere.
It doesn’t matter, she reminded herself. You’re home, now. You’re safe. And the Knights’ compound was more secure than most nuclear missile sites.
Then all thought of Sharif vanished when Frank focused his exhausted but still fierce attention on her.
“So how’d it go with the reporters?” he asked.
And that was Frank. Always on the job.
Just once she wished he’d ask her something benign, like, oh say, “Hi, Becky. How was your flight?”
But then he wouldn’t be Frank…
“It went fine,” she said, finding it incredibly difficult to hold his gaze when images of the two of them down in the Patton’s sick bay kept flashing before her eyes. She still thought maybe she could taste him, feel him, and she so longed to throw her arms around his neck and repeat the entire sordid experience. But the shuttered expression he wore all but screamed he wasn’t of a similar mind. Like Eve said, he looked less like he wanted a peek at Becky Reichert, Girl On Top Part Deux, and more like he wanted to kill her.
Could she really blame him? She’d taken advantage of him when he was hopped-up on happy pills. What kind of person did that?
Her apparently.
God, she was such an *, and she needed to apologize; but she couldn’t rightly do it there, in front of her colleagues and her older brother…
“Now don’t you be humble.” Rock hooked an arm around her neck and knuckled her head until she turned to glare at him. “She did great, Boss. Stuck to the script and didn’t bat a lash, despite some rather probin’ questions from Samantha Tate, I might add. We’ll make an operator outta our little Rebel yet.”
“Rock,” Frank warned, his left eye twitching, “I’m not in the mood to get into that with you right now.”
“You’re not?” Rock did a pretty convincing impression of being crushed. “And after I sat up, night after night, longin’ for the sight of your boyish puss so we could continue the discussion? Well, of all the ungrateful…”
Rock harrumphed, Frank growled, and Becky marked shot number two on the invisible scoreboard of quips she liked to keep in her head.
“Gentlemen, not that I haven’t missed your lively repartee, but I’m in desperate need of a cherry Dum Dum.” She’d run out of the suckers on the transatlantic flight, and her blood sugar had to be dropping to near critical levels. “And a long, hot shower.”
She ducked out from under Rock’s arm to stretch on tiptoe and lay a kiss on her brother’s cheek. “Thank you for coming for me,” she whispered, squeezing his shoulder and flashing him the same smile she’d flashed the day he punched that lying snake Curtis Mitchell for telling the whole school she’d gone down on him in the back of his Ford pickup truck.
“Oh sister mine,” Billy grinned, “like there was really any other option?”
No, she supposed there wasn’t. They’d been coming to each other’s rescue in one way or another their whole lives.
She hugged him tightly, and he kissed her forehead before she moved on to Angel.
“We barely know each other, and yet you risked your life to save mine. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.” She pressed one of his hands between both of hers.
“Like I said back on the destroyer, you are my friend. Aristotle once said, ‘the antidote to a thousand enemies is one good friend.’ I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Blinking back sudden tears, she went with impulse and reached up to kiss his whisker-roughened cheek before she turned to Frank. Forcing herself not to flinch as she met his intense stare, she cleared her throat before whispering. “I’m sorry I caused such trouble. Thank you for coming for me.”