In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(76)
Oh, Becky Reichert was going to beg for death before he was finished with her. Beg for it!
“We’re going to have some fun, you and me,” he promised her, tightening the last rope around her slim wrist. Having her unconscious had made the process of tying her, spread eagle on the bare, stained mattress, just that much easier as well.
So it’d all worked out for the best, except…
He frowned at her T-shirt and heavy jeans. This little endeavor, this waiting for her to wake-up so he could revel in the fear and pain and anger in her dark eyes, would be so much more enjoyable if she were naked, if he could gaze at her pale breasts and supple thighs.
But he didn’t dare untie her, and even if he did, he still wouldn’t be able to undress her one-handed.
Looking around the room, he realized he’d forgotten one crucial piece of equipment. Something he could use to cut away her clothes.
Bollocks! He usually wasn’t so absent-minded, usually made sure to cross all his Ts and dot all his Is before he embarked on any assignment, but he’d been feverish and weak and obviously both had interfered with his mental processes.
Well, what was done was done. He needed to figure out a way to rectify the situation.
Scissors would be his best bet. Less gratifying than a knife maybe, but so much easier to wield one-handed.
With a frustrated shake of his head, he moved to the dingy window and pulled back the dusty blinds. Eyeing the rundown petrol station across the street, he wondered what the odds were on them carrying a pair of scissors.
Fifty-fifty he decided as his eyes pinged over to the group of hoodlums lounging on the chipped curb.
He needed to go score some blow, anyway. A little angel dust to keep his cock hard and his mind bright so he could enjoy every last minute of Beck Reichert’s delicious misery. And while he was out doing that, he’d swing by the petrol station and find something he could use to cut away her clothes.
Glancing one last time at his pretty little hostage, he smiled.
This was going to be such splendid fun.
***
“What do you mean you’ve lost her!” Frank’s heart jumped into the back of his throat and pounded there like a bad toothache. His roar filled the small interior of his sister’s Hyundai Elantra. After Shell realized trying to keep him in the hospital bed was about as futile as pissing in the wind, she did the smart thing—she’d always been a smart girl—and tossed him her car keys.
The doctors had been a bit more difficult to convince, shouting how they’d have security come strap him down if he didn’t return to his room.
He wasn’t sure, but it might’ve been his murderous face, along with his thunderous description of just how the CPD would find their dismembered bodies at the bottom of Lake Michigan should they attempt any such maneuver, that eventually managed to overcome their objections.
“They exited off I-94 onto South Vincennes Avenue about six minutes ago, but I’ve lost them on the side streets,” Zoelner replied, and Frank would worry later about what the ex-CIA agent was doing hanging around Chicago and more specifically Red Delilah’s. For right now, he was grateful as hell the guy had been on the scene—even if he had lost sight of the vehicle in which Becky was being held hostage.
“Keep looking,” he barked, cussing and slamming a fist into the little car’s roof when Bill, who was doing his best impression of Mario Andretti over in the driver’s seat, hit a particularly vicious bump that caused Frank’s injured arm—kept stabilized in a diabolically awkward position by his bright blue spica cast—to knock against the front windshield.
“I’m going to sign off and call Ozzie,” he told Zoelner after he could unclench his teeth against the pain eating at his shoulder and the base of his skull like a starving sewer rat. “I’ll see if he can ping her cell phone. In the meantime, if you spot that vehicle, you call me on the double. Our ETA is fifteen minutes from your last position at the Vincennes Avenue exit.”
“Roger that.”
Sweet Jesus, honey, just hold on. Stay tough. Stay strong. Stay smart. Don’t let—
“I can’t believe that goddamn pirate had the cojones to come take her right out from under our noses!” Bill slammed a palm against the steering wheel, even as he whipped around a slow-moving Comcast van, garnering him a single-finger salute from the pissed-off driver. “Where the hell was Interpol when that bastard was going through immigration? And what the hell does he want, anyway? He has to know he can’t hold her for ransom here in the U.S. without us finding—”
“Come on now,” Rock interrupted from the small back seat. “He probably got through immigration with a fake passport, and I’d bet my bottom dollar it’s not ransom he’s after. The only thing that would bring ’im here is revenge.”
“Yeah, I know. Shit,” Bill hissed, taking one hand off the wheel to reach into his jacket pocket. Snagging a little bottle of Pepto, he unscrewed the cap with his teeth and knocked back half the bottle as Frank punched number nine on his speed dial.
Yeah, Bill’s stomach wasn’t the only one giving him fits. Frank’s was doing loopty loops like he was on a goddamned roller coaster, and despite the coolness of the Chicago day, he was pouring sweat. His jeans were chockablock full of nut soup. He wished he could blame it on the meds, but he was pretty sure he’d be experiencing these same symptoms stone-cold sober because the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was, according to Zoelner’s reports, drunk, unconscious and stuffed in a filthy pirate’s trunk and—