In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(78)
Frank, you big wonderful dill-hole, you may love another woman, but I’m gonna kiss you smack on the lips next time I see you.
She’d been totally kerflummoxed two years ago when he presented her with a deadly looking knife with all the pomp and circumstance she was used to seeing when a guy presented her with dozen red roses.
“Ya never know when you’re going to need it,” he’d said after insisting she store it in her boot.
She hadn’t been able to conceive at the time, especially given her propensity to surround herself with highly trained operators, just what horrific course of events could possibly culminate in her needing a USMC “Bulldog” Tactical Combat Knife with a hollow ground 440C high chromium martensitic stainless steel blade.
Well, now she knew. It was the scenario where she was kidnapped and hogtied by a fancy-talking Somali pirate.
Wrestling the knife from its hidden sheath, she hooked the Madagascar rosewood handle between her toes. Folding at the waist, she lifted her feet above her head. Thank God she’d been keeping up with her Pilates, or this little maneuver would’ve been impossible. Still, she needed to start buying bigger jeans if she planned to make a habit of turning herself into a human taco…
Gripping the blade tightly between her toes, she sawed at the rope securing her right hand.
Monkey toes. That’s what Billy called them. Given her short stature, it’d be natural to assume she’d have small, stubby toes, but hers were long and thin. Well, now she thanked the good Lord for blessing her with monkey toes. Because along with Sharif’s bumbling incompetence and Frank’s insistence she always be armed, her toes might just be the key to her making it out of this situation alive and—
Bingo!
The thin rope frayed and snapped under the razor sharp edge of her blade, and she wasted no time palming the knife and putting it to work on the restraints around her bruised left wrist. The rope gave way almost instantly and, blessedly free, she raced to the window, carefully pushing aside the edge of one dusty, smoke-stained curtain. She stumbled back in shocked horror when she saw Sharif’s ugly face through the dirty window.
He was right there. Right at the door. In the process of pulling out an old-fashioned room key.
Time warped and slowed.
She reeled toward the bathroom, her limbs moving as if they were submerged in water.
An out-of-body experience. That’s what she was having. Because she was watching herself from a distance.
She saw herself fling open the bathroom door. Saw herself catalog the moldy shower curtain, stained floor tiles, and chipped toilet. Saw herself dispassionately scan the dripping faucet and used-to-be-white-but-now-sickly-yellow motel towels stacked on the shelf under the sink.
And then she was shot back into her body like an arrow from a bow, her heart plummeting to the bottom of her stomach, because the one thing she wished to see, the one thing that would’ve given her a chance of escape was glaringly absent.
The bathroom had no window.
She refrained from screaming her disappointment only because she didn’t have time for the breakdown she so richly deserved after this hellacious, surely-it-can’t-get-any-worse, oh-wait-it-can day. She didn’t have time because the doorknob rattled as it turned.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh—
Sharif stepped over the threshold and blinked in confusion at the empty bed. Then his dark face contorted into a mask of such horrible rage, she knew she’d see that vicious look on the backs of her eyelids for years to come.
If she lived that long.
And she was determined to live that long.
Just as it slowed to a snail’s pace, time suddenly reversed directions. The next few moments passed in the blink of an eye.
Sharif noticed her standing by the bathroom door and instantly dropped the plastic grocery bag in his hand, fumbling for the matte-black handgun shoved in the waistband of his pants.
She took a loose grip on the rosewood handle of her knife, steadied her breath, and let her USMC “Bulldog” blade fly—just like Frank’d taught her.
***
“Ozzie’s got a lock on her,” Frank said after thumbing off his cell phone and taking a steadying breath lest he pass out. Wild Bill finished screeching around a corner, causing his injured arm to slam against the passenger side door. “Her cell is located on the corner of 109th and South Wentworth,” he managed through clenched teeth.
“That’s only five blocks away. Hang on.”
Yeah, hang on. Easy for Bill to say.
Frank squeezed tight the ol’ peepers and just let the pain wash over him when Bill took another corner on two wheels—Shell’s Elantra was never going to be the same—and his newly repaired arm once more made jarring contact with the car door.
Fuck-f*ck-f*ckety-f*ck!
When he dared to reopen his eyes, the smell of burning rubber wafted in from the vents and added to the prescription soup of narcotics, mind-numbing agony, and gut-twisting fear to have blackness closing in on the edge of his vision. His skin prickled like he was covered in bugs, his whole body flashed hot and cold. Just when he thought he was going to sink into Zzz-Town whether he wanted to or not, just when the blackness began to completely take over, the vibrating of his phone dragged him back from the edge.
“Go,” he barked, listening intently as Zoelner quickly relayed his location and the fact that he’d found the black BMW.