In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(80)
Yeah, Frank was somewhat of an authority on terminal ballistics. They were never pretty. And head shots? They were the ugliest of all. The movies always portrayed them as a nice, neat hole smack-dab between some sorry bloke’s glassy, sightless eyes. What Hollywood usually failed to include was the mess that bullet made upon exiting.
The skull was like a melon, hit it with a hard object, and it tended to just bust apart into a terrifying hash of blood, bone, and gray matter. And when you added in the lovely little electrical pulses that continued to manipulate muscles like strings animating a marionette, yeah, it was pretty much the stuff of nightmares.
The distant wail of sirens was the just the sound Frank needed to pull himself out of Nadaville. With a hard shake of his head and a big, steadying breath, he managed to get his brain and his legs moving again. Pushing to his feet, he screwed his eyes shut when a bout of dizziness almost had him taking a header.
A hard hand on his shoulder steadied him.
After a brief moment, when he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to pass out or puke, he turned to face Zoelner. “What the f*ck are you doing ghosting around Chicago?” he demanded, even as stars skipped happily in front of his vision.
Rock poked his head into the room from his position guarding the door and reported, “Local PD comin’ in hot. ETA is two minutes.”
Frank nodded before turning back to the mysterious ex-CIA agent.
“Johnny Vitiglioni, that greasy Las Vegas mobster, has put a price on all of your heads in retribution for Ghost killing his boys,” Zoelner said. “I figured the least I could do was keep a close eye on your backs. You know,” he shrugged and holstered his weapon under his arm, “just a little reparation for getting involved in that whole mess in the first place.”
“Goddamn. If it’s not one thing it’s another.”
On top of everything else that’d happened today. Frank was going to have to deal with Johnny Vitiglioni.
Of course, that’d have to wait. Because, for now, he had to take care of something else.
Like the not-so-insignificant fact that Becky was ghost white and staring in abject horror at Sharif’s dead body. The guy’s leg had stopped dancing around like it was full of Mexican jumping beans, but the stuff oozing out of his ruined skull just kept getting worse and worse.
It was obvious that now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the enormity of what she’d done, namely killing a man, was setting in.
His heart lurched at the sight of her huge eyes and quivering lower lip. It made him want to scoop Sharif’s brains back into his shattered cranium and shock the bastard back to life just so he could kill him all over again.
“Get her out of here, Bill,” he commanded as he reached in his pocket for his cell phone. He had to make a call into Chief Washington and beg the guy for another favor. Lawrence P. Washington was a former marine sergeant turned CPD police chief. He was solid as a rock, cranky as a wet cat, and the only man in the city who had even a slight inkling—very slight—as to the truth behind Black Knights Inc. Which put him in the inconvenient position of having to cover the Knights’ tracks when their activities intersected with the mean streets of Chicago.
“No, I’ll, uh,” Becky swallowed convulsively, “I’ll stay. The police are going to need a statement.”
She glanced back at Sharif and shivered.
Frank wanted nothing more than to grab her up, press her head against his shoulder, and make it all go away. Just turn back the clock so he made it to the motel thirty seconds earlier. If he had, if he’d had that extra half-minute, it would’ve been his bullet ending Sharif Garane’s malicious existence and not hers.
Sharif Garane. Oh yeah, Interpol had finally been able to identify the guy, thanks in large part to Becky’s sketch. Fat lot of good it did them in catching him before he got the chance to strike.
“The police are going to need a statement,” he told her, “but not from you. You were never here.”
Her wide eyes jumped to his face. “But I…I,” she pointed to Sharif, unable to go on.
“Listen to me, Rebecca. For weeks your face has been splashed across the evening news. If this incident gets out, the press will be on us like flies on a shit-wagon. And you know as well as I do, we can’t afford that, not so soon after Patti and the whole piracy incident. If people find out you were here, they might start to wonder why you and Black Knights Inc. are always slam-bam in the middle of trouble. And if they start to wonder, then they’ll start to investigate. Lord.” He ran his hand through his hair, all manner of horrific paparazzi scenarios swirling through his head. “Can you imagine what Samantha Tate will do? You thought she was a nuisance before? Well, if she gets wind of this, you’re going to need a restraining order to keep her away.”
“Okay, but Frank I—”
“Just go, Becky!”
She flinched, but he hadn’t time to console her like he wanted, he hadn’t time to wrap her in his arms and tell her he loved her, because the sirens were closing in and he needed to put in that call to Chief Washington two minutes ago.
Chapter Nineteen
Becky sat in her favorite lounge chair in the dim courtyard, a blanket over her shoulders and a hot cup of cocoa clutched between her shaking hands. There was a fire roaring in the fire pit but, strangely, she couldn’t feel its heat.