In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(6)
She was supposed to be their cover. Nothing more. End of story.
Of course, she’d become so much more to him. The bane of his existence and the fantasy he didn’t dare allow himself to fully contemplate all rolled into one.
“When I said it’s not really their fault, I was talking about the pirates,” Bill continued.
Say what?
Frank stopped with a couple of pain tablets halfway to his mouth. “What the hell do you mean by that? Of course the pirates are at fault.”
“I’m not giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card, but Somalia hasn’t had a functioning government in twenty years,” Bill explained, keeping his place in the novel with one callused finger. “As a result, its fisheries were nearly poached dry by foreigners. Not to mention that the tsunami in 2004 washed ashore tons of toxic waste.”
“The snot-green sea,” Angel murmured. “The scrotum-tightening sea.”
What the hell? Frank thought.
Bill’s head snapped around, his expression shocked. “Ulysses?”
Angel shrugged. “Seemed appropriate.”
Okay, so they were talking about a book? Now?
“For f*ck’s sake!” Frank roared, incredulous. “Can we all just get back to the point?”
“Yes,” Angel agreed, “Bill’s point is that, because of the pollution and tsunami and overfishing, early episodes of piracy close to the coast were a form of self-preservation. Simple people protecting their only economic resource. The sea.”
“Exactly.” Bill nodded toward the ex-Mossad agent.
“Great! Just f*cking great!” Frank threw the pills in his hand to the back of his throat and swallowed them down without benefit of water. “Of all the Knights who could’ve been between missions, I get stuck with Plato and Aristotle. And I swear to God, if you two keep bobbing your heads like that at each other, we’re going to start buying you matching outfits.”
He could maybe understand Angel’s ability to disassociate himself from the situation long enough to get a good long peekaroo at the big picture, but Bill? The man’s baby sister was in the hands of Somali pirates and had been for nearly a week!
“Not that I won’t happily blast them all into the welcoming arms of Allah if they harm one little hair on my sister’s head,” Bill added, a darkly menacing smile tilting one corner of his mouth.
Frank did a double take, then stared at Bill in astonishment.
Folks thought he was scary with his fiery temperament, but hearing how calmly Bill spoke of killing the pirates after he’d just been proselytizing on the raw deal they’d been handed? Now that was truly bloodcurdling.
It was the difference between holding a live grenade in your hand and stepping on a bag of trash on a roadside in Kandahar. The first was going to go off, no doubt about it, so you throw it as hard as you can and let it do its worst. The second looked totally innocuous until it suddenly blasted you into a hundred bloody bits.
Huh. Well, there you go. Frank was just happy ol’ Billy Boy was on his side.
“And you?” he turned to Angel. “You have a problem killing poor Somali pirates if it comes to that?”
The mysterious Israeli lifted one perfectly shaped brow. “Not in the least.”
Good. At least he could depend—
The door to the briefing room swung open and Commander John L. Patterson ducked inside.
***
“Why do you keep writing those notes?” Eve asked as Becky closed her spiral notebook, shoving a felt-tip marker inside the wire rings at its spine.
“Because,” she craned her neck around to make sure One-Eyed Willie wasn’t within earshot, “the surveillance drones flying overhead have crazy accurate cameras. I’m just letting the guys know what’s up, keeping them informed as best I can. I don’t want Billy or any of the others to worry too much.”
Eve tilted her head back and gazed into the spotless blue bowl of the sky, then slid Becky a skeptical glance.
Until this morning when One-Eyed Willie shoved her down beside Eve, they’d been sequestered on opposite sides of the deck. Which was probably because within six hours of their capture she’d not only tried to sabotage the Serendipity’s engines but also sneak rat poison into the pirates’ food. No doubt the Somalis had thought it best to keep them apart should she attempt to solicit Eve’s help in some new escape scheme.
“Uh, I don’t…I don’t see any surveillance drones,” Eve said, the look on her tired face clearly telegraphing her belief that the Indian Ocean sun finally had baked Becky’s brain to the rubbery consistency of overcooked shrimp.
Becky could only smile. Poor Eve. The last six days would frighten anyone, but for someone with Eve’s pampered and protected upbringing, it had to be truly terrifying.
“It’s long gone,” she explained calmly, trying to infuse her tone with enough confidence to bolster Eve’s waning spirits. “As best as I can figure, it flies by every three or four hours. Only stays in sight for about sixty seconds.”
Eve swallowed convulsively and glanced into the sky again. “I haven’t noticed anything flying overhead.”
“You wouldn’t unless you knew what to look for. They fly so high, the only chance you have of seeing one is when the angle of the sun hits its fuselage, causing it to shimmer like a little point of daytime starlight.”