Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(13)
Opening the door to the tree house, he motioned for her to precede him.
For a brief instant, she hesitated, waiting for him to answer her last set of questions. And only when it became obvious he had no intention of answering anything did she shrug her shoulders and step over the threshold.
He followed her in while not looking at her butt. Okay, maybe he snuck one quick peek. He was just a man, after all. Once inside, she glanced around curiously, and he knew what she saw. A slap-dash box-framed bed holding a thick blow-up mattress covered in tangled sheets. A rough-hewn table with one chair. A kerosene stove on a stand. Cooking utensils stacked on a shelf. A pyramid of canned food and MREs. A small water barrel…and a shitload of intel.
Every vertical surface of the tree house was wallpapered with the information he’d been able to find out about himself, his missions, and his targets. And, unfortunately, even given all of that, he still felt no closer to discovering the true identity of Rwanda Don than he’d been six months ago. Maybe if he had his files…
But no. Those files were the main reason he was in this mess. He should’ve destroyed them and then he—
“You’ve been busy,” she murmured, walking over to the table to pick up a glossy eight-by-ten photo of Fred Billingsworth. The last man he’d interrogated. The last man who’d died.
The only man who’d been innocent…
A strange expression crossed her face as she studied that photo, and Rock could tell she was struggling with the suspicion that, oui, despite what she thought she knew of him, despite her wanting to believe him innocent, the fact remained that maybe he really had killed all those men.
“Why didn’t you approach me at the cantina?” he asked again. Not that he didn’t believe she’d come to help him. All it took was one look at her wide-open, honest face to know she was telling the truth. But he wanted more. He wanted to ascertain her motives. Because, for one, it was his training to go digging around in a person’s psyche to see what made them tick. And two, it would give him an idea just how much heat the Knights had been exposed to because of him.
“Because I had to be sure.” She dropped the photo back to the table in order to cross her arms and scowl. “If by some miracle I was being tracked, I figured it was best to hang back and see if they trailed you into the jungle.” Okay, so they’d suffered quite a bit of heat if she was having to employ that level of caution. His heart sunk at the thought of what his actions had cost the Black Knights. “When enough time went by and no one took off after you, I followed. But I think maybe I waited too long, because I nearly lost you.”
“If only,” he sighed, pulling his pistols from his waistband and trudging over to the shelf that held his few pieces of cookware. Placing the 9mms inside a pot and securing the lid—capuchin monkeys sometimes snuck in and messed with his stuff, and the last thing he wanted was to get accidently plugged by some light-fingered primate—he turned back around to find Vanessa’s head cocked, her lips pursed.
“And if I had lost you, how long would I have had to wait at that cantina before you made a return appearance?”
“A month,” he admitted. “Maybe more.”
She shook her head in disbelief, blowing out a breath. “Well, thank heavens I brushed up on my Maleku.”
“Huh?”
“It was an elderly Maleku man who pointed me toward the cantina. I guess he’d seen you there a couple of times.”
And he wasn’t surprised the Knights had chosen to send her after him. They had to have figured it would take someone with her particular linguistic abilities to decipher the many Chibchan dialects spoken by the locals around these parts.
Just as he opened his mouth to question her further, a subtle sound, a deep muttering, had every single hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
***
Eve Eden’s vacation house, San Jose, Costa Rica…
“Oh shit!”
Eve’s entire skeleton nearly flew out of her skin at Billy’s roared exclamation. The tension around her place had been riding high until a few hours ago when Vanessa Cordero checked in to say she’d finally located Rock. Since then everything had evened out. Calmed down. Which was probably one of the reasons why Billy’s sudden outburst scared the bejeezus out of her. It was like a gunshot in the middle of a picnic lunch.
The glass of Chardonnay she’d been in the middle of pouring fell victim to the hand that jumped to clutch her throat. Sparing barely a glance at the shattered glass and gold liquid flowing freely across the granite countertop, she watched as Billy—Wild Bill Reichert to those in the spec-ops community—jabbed a hard finger onto the screen of his phone before launching himself over the back of the sofa and racing toward the hall.
Her natural instinct was to stay rooted to the spot. But just last month, her personal defense instructor informed her, in no uncertain terms, that she needed to grow a pair. Which she took to mean when everything inside her yelled at her to get very still and stop breathing—just play the scared rabbit—that’s when she should channel a little of her best friend, Becky Reichert, and kick her characteristic reserve to the curb.
So…WWBD? What would Becky do? Becky would be hot on Billy’s heels, that’s what.
Exhaling a determined breath, she shot out from behind the counter and caught up with Billy just as he was about to throw open the door to the bedroom Boss and Becky were currently in the process of christening.