Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(29)

“Wh—” Grabbing a glass of water from the edge of the desk, R.D. took a quick swallow and tried again, “What sort of intel?”

“Reams of information on his targets,” the agent declared, discomfort in every word. “I’m talking thousands of documents with red strings connecting this piece of information to that. It looked like A Beautiful Mind in that place. Very concerning.”

“I want copies of every piece of intel and—”

“Now, hold on a second,” the voice on the other end of the line sounded alarmed. “You know I like you and I think it’s a shame The Company shit-canned The Project all those years ago. And I’ve been happy to help you out up until now. But this thing we had going is done. It’s over. And I’m only keeping you in the loop now as a favor and because—”

“You’re keeping me in the loop because your ass in on the line just as much as mine is. And you helped me out because you were greedy and wanted the money The Project could provide you with. So don’t try pulling that self-righteous bullshit on me. You forget who you’re talking to.”

“Fine.” The word was spat out like a hunk of rancid meat. “But it’s one thing to keep you up-to-date on our activities. It’s another thing entirely to funnel copies of top secret documents your way. It’s my neck on the line over here.”

R.D. sighed in exasperation. “I understand that ever since we sacrificed the funds we took—”

“Stole,” the agent interrupted. “Have the balls to call it what it is. We stole those funds.”

A blood vessel in R.D’s temple began to pound. “Fine. I understand that after we had to sacrifice the funds we stole from The Project’s targets by anonymously donating them to those charities—”

“A goddamned waste of good money, if you ask me,” the agent grumbled, and R.D. had the urge to reach through the phone and strangle the f*cker.

“Would you stop interrupting me?”

“Why did you have to use that money for the campaign? You know that stuff always gets vetted time and again. It was a stupid—”

Now it was R.D.’s turn to interject. “Shut up! We’ve gone over this. I made sure to cover my tracks. I spread it out over legitimate sources—”

“Not legitimate enough, obviously. Billingsworth smelled the stench and started nosing around.”

Yes, he had. And it was a crying shame.

“What’s done is done,” R.D. insisted with a growl. “Now we just have to clean up the mess. Which brings me back to the point that even though you no longer have monetary incentive to continue helping and sharing information with me, you certainly have a personal one. I need to see that intel. You don’t have time to go through it piece by piece to make sure Rock didn’t find anything that points back at us. I do. Get me the documents.”

“Nothing points back to me,” the agent announced, a chilling sort of certainty in his voice. “It was your twin brother’s murderer who was The Project’s first target. It was your use of the funds for campaign purposes that resulted in Billingsworth needing to die.”

It took everything R.D. had to maintain calm. “Have you forgotten it was you who pointed the CIA to Rock’s post office box after he started nosing around? And, believe me, partner, if I go down for this, I’m not doing it alone.”

“Are you threatening me?”

R.D. leaned forward, sighing heavily. “Just get me that intel, will you?”

“I’ll do what I can,” the agent declared, but R.D. detected a note of indecision.

Shit! It couldn’t fall apart now. “We need to stick together on this. I…” What R.D. was about to do rankled so badly it necessitated a pause. “I have some money left over from my brother’s life insurance policy if that will help you come to the right decision.”

“How much?” the agent asked curiously.

A hard stone of hatred settled at the bottom of R.D.’s stomach. “How much will it take?”





Chapter Eight


Vanessa jerked awake at the feel of a hand on her shoulder. She would have squealed, too, had not a warm palm immediately settled over her mouth.

Who? Where—

And that’s as far as she got before the memories came flooding back. She was in a hollowed-out log, in the middle of a Costa Rican rainforest, being hunted by the CIA with a man who had no qualms telling her that, while he thought she was hot-to-trot and he wouldn’t mind letting her polish his rocket—so to speak—he had absolutely no plans to start anything permanent with her because…and get this…he would never—that would be with a capital N, his tone had made that very obvious—fall in love with her.

When he’d blurted that out the night before, she’d sat in the dark struck completely mute. Because, really, what did one say to a declaration like that? Ow? And, yeah, it had hurt so badly she’d been unable to breathe for long seconds afterward.

But to admit as much to him would’ve only added to her humiliation, so she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’d pulled herself together, bolstered her tattered pride and said, “Well, okay then.” And immediately followed that up with, “Do you have anything to eat in that pack?”