Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(37)
Then she turned and their eyes clashed—like, seriously clashed; Bill was surprised a loud clink didn’t echo through the room—and, once again, painful memories sliced like a bayonet strike through his brain.
Still, he couldn’t manage to drag his gaze away, and for long seconds they both simply stood and stared. The air between them vibrating with an awareness that was nearly palpable. Or maybe there was no nearly about it, because Ozzie piped up with, “Good God! You two have got to quit that. You’re making my boy parts get bigger!”
With that, the spell was broken.
Bill glanced away, his heart throbbing like an open wound, just as Boss sauntered into the room.
“I thought that was the scent of bullshit I was smelling,” the big guy said, grinning that lopsided grin of his, slapping Steady on the back as he passed him, punching Ozzie on the shoulder, and stopping to shake Ghost’s hand before finally throwing an arm around Becky’s shoulders. “And I sure am glad you guys are here. We’re going to need all the—”
The affable expression on Ozzie’s face disappeared. He made a slicing motion across his throat with one finger, and Boss stumbled to a stop.
Ozzie might be an epic pain in the ass, but he was also one hell of an operator and a veritable whiz with all things technical or electronic. And right now, he was staring at the digital display screen on his camera, and the look in his eye was one of pure, unadulterated disgust.
He made a rolling motion with his finger, indicating they should keep talking and Boss picked up with, “We’re…uh…we’re gonna need all the mouths we can find in order to get rid of this food Eve’s been cooking.”
Ozzie nodded and made another rolling motion with his finger even as he bent to grab a notepad and pen from his duffel. Becky picked up the ball and ran with it. “And speaking of, what’s on the menu tonight, Eve?”
“Um…I,” Eve looked around, baffled. And when her eyes landed on him, Bill nodded and gave her an encouraging wink.
“Please tell me it’s some more of that Mediterranean pasta salad,” he said, widening his eyes to prod her into playing along.
“Oh, well…I…” she stuttered but then seemed to physically pull herself together. Her shoulders straightened, her expression firmed, and she stood just a little taller. “I hadn’t planned on it. I thought maybe I’d start with a green salad, and then some lasagna and garlic bread. What does everybody think?”
Various noises of indecision were made by all as Ozzie hastily scribbled something on the notepad. When he turned the message around, there were exactly two words written there: OPTICAL BUG.
Oh, shit.
For a split second, silence filled the room. Then everyone played the game like a champ and started debating the merits of lasagna over pasta salad. And all the while, the goddamned CIA was listening in…
Chapter Ten
“Aren’t we going to stop and call to let them know we’re coming?” Vanessa shouted over Rock’s shoulder.
For the last three and a half hours, they’d been speeding—first down the rutted-out jungle track and then the pot-holed road—toward San Jose on a rusty old motorcycle that Rock had miraculously produced from thin air.
Okay, maybe not thin air. He’d produced it from out of the jungle. On the opposite side of the road from where he’d picked that leaf for her to chew—which had worked wonders, by the way—he’d scrounged through the shrubs, pulling away vines, and came away pushing what looked like an old dirt bike, but was, in reality, a pile of gears and rusty steel attached to a whining engine that truly belonged in the scrap metal pile at a junkyard.
Compared to the shiny paint and sparkly chrome on the custom choppers back at BKI, this thing would be ashamed to even call itself a motorcycle. And the ride? Holy hell, she’d thought the long skid and bounce down the side of the mountain was hard on the ol’ ass cheeks, but it was nothing like sitting on the back of, what she’d affectionately come to think of as, Sir Rusty RidesLikeATank.
“No,” Rock yelled back at her. “I’m gonna leave you at La Sabana Park. From there, you can either catch a bus or call them to come pick you up!”
What?
After everything they’d been through together over the past day, he was still determined to do this thing without her help? Without the Black Knights’ help?
“You’re kidding me!” she barked, then had to grind her teeth together when he leaned into a tight turn. The way the dirt bike sounded, she expected the poor thing to disintegrate beneath her, just explode in a cloud of oxidized dust. But then Rock straightened out, and old Rusty miraculously held itself together, so she continued, “We can help you, Rock! Come in with me!”
He shook his head before taking another curve, this one in the opposite direction. Once again, she clamped her jaw and tightened her grip around his waist, pressing her face into his back. And she was startled to realize how badly she wanted to plant a kiss there, just push her lips into the shallow divot of his spine so she could feel his hard muscles flex on either side of her face. Just breathe in the smell of him, the warmth of him, the—
And it was official; she was a total goner.
Because it didn’t matter what hurtful things he’d said or that he was mixed up in something likely to get him killed—and maybe the rest of them along with him. It didn’t matter that he was stubborn and willful and altogether too quick to take matters into his own hands or that he was determined to toss her away like last week’s takeout Chinese. It didn’t even matter that he swore he’d never feel for her all the things she felt for him.