Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(53)

“I sh-shouldn’t have—” she sputtered, wiping at her wet cheeks, but it was useless. The tears just kept on coming. “I shouldn’t have done this,” she finally managed, choking on a hiccup, grabbing onto the door handle when Boss sped into a turn as they raced out of the city. Concernedly, she glanced out the back window to find Bill lying in the truck bed beside Rock, his arms and legs wrapped around the man, obviously trying his damndest to keep him from bouncing around too much since he was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

And all of this was happening because she’d betrayed him…

Him. The man she loved. The man who’d saved her life, helped her conquer her nearly debilitating fear, and sacrificed his own safety in order to bring her back here where she’d be safe. The man who’d trusted her…

Oh, good God, what have I done?

“Bullshit,” Boss spat, shifting down when they started to climb the mountain road that led to Eve’s vacation house. “You did what was right. He may not think so now, but in the end he’s gonna thank you.”

Even through the dirty back windshield, she could see the tears mixing with the blood on Rock’s face.

Tears. Holy shit, she wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. But it was true. Tough-as-nails, big-balled, take-no-guff Richard “Rock” Babineaux had lost it. And it had nothing to do with his busted nose. Nope. No way. Because in the time they’d worked together, she’d seen him shrug off two broken fingers, a knife wound through his side, and a hairline fracture to his shinbone.

Thank her? Boss thought he was going to thank her?

“He’ll never forgive me for—” She was interrupted when Bill reached up to slap a hand on the window. Frowning, she watched as he held up his cell phone. Or, should she say, what was left of his cell phone. The thing was cracked right down the middle, an obvious casualty of that scuffle with Rock.

Scuffle?

Jesus, it hadn’t been a scuffle; it’d been an all-out brawl. And for a minute there, she’d been sure Rock was going to come out the victor, even against three very skilled, very big, very determined operators. He’d fought with everything he had, and it’d been heartbreaking to watch when he was finally brought down. Almost like witnessing the death of a heavyweight in the ring. All that courage and valor and determination just suddenly…beaten.

New tears gathered in her eyes, but she managed to hold them in long enough to inform Boss, “Bill’s phone is broken. Does that—”

“Fuck!” Boss cursed, checking his rearview mirror to make sure Ghost and Steady were still keeping pace in the pickup truck behind them. “You need to call Becky. Tell her we’re running late. Tell her to keep those goddamned spooks away from the house for a little while longer.”

Vanessa was in the process of pulling her phone from her cargo pants when Boss’s cellular buzzed in his pocket. “Goddamnit! First get that for me, would you?” he said, grinding his jaw as he flew into another turn, using both hands to control the speeding vehicle on the narrow mountain pass.

Gingerly—because, come on, this was Boss; she wasn’t sure she’d ever actually touched the guy and now she was about to go rooting around in his pocket—she used her thumb and forefinger to pull his jeans pocket wide. Then she slipped her hand inside and snagged the vibrating phone.

“Speak of the devil,” she said after seeing Becky’s coded number on the screen. Thumbing on the device, she bounced into the passenger side door when Boss swerved around another bend, hitting her funny bone in the process. She cupped her screaming elbow, grimacing in pain, as she held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Vanessa?” Becky’s voice sounded harried. “Are you guys back at the house?”

“No. We’re on the mountain road right now and—”

“Damnit!” Becky yelled that one word so loudly Vanessa was hard pressed not to yank the phone away from her ear—her likely bleeding ear. “Tell Frank to gun it! The spooks lost interest in us, and we think they’re on their way back to you guys. We lost track of them when we got cut off by this goddamned train!” As if on cue, the high, lonely wail of a train whistle echoed through the receiver. “And why isn’t Billy answering his phone?”

Ignoring that last question, Vanessa turned to Boss. “Becky says to punch it,” she quickly relayed. Adding, even though she didn’t know exactly what it meant, “She says the spooks lost interest in them,” What interest? “and are heading our way.”

“Perfect,” Boss grumbled sarcastically as he slammed his boot down on the gas. But they’d only gone another 100 yards when Ghost began laying on the horn behind them.

“What in the world?” Vanessa asked at the same time Boss let loose with a string of curses so blue they blistered her ears. He was glaring at his rearview mirror, the hard muscle of his jaw twitching spasmodically. And when she turned in her seat to look behind them, she caught a glimpse of a plain white van blazing up the hill behind Steady and Ghost.

Oh, shitburgers.

That looked suspiciously like the van that’d been parked outside Eve’s house before she made her trip to Santa Elena, and it didn’t take a genius of Ozzie’s caliber to figure out these were the spooks Becky was talking about.