Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(57)

Was it just her? Or did the temperature in the room drop twenty degrees?

“It doesn’t matter!” he hissed through clenched teeth, frosty daggers shooting from his eyes, his tone glacial.

“Of course it does,” Boss asserted at the same time Ozzie said, “Uh, yeah, dude. It kinda does.”

“We have you surrounded!” That deep voice sounded over the loudspeaker once again, and Vanessa was astonished to see Ghost—the man whose face was usually fixed in unreadable lines—actually roll his eyes.

“Are they kiddin’?” he asked, shaking his head. “There are, what? Six guys in that van at the most, and they think they’ve got us surrounded?”

“They’re CIA,” Steady replied completely deadpan. “Full of their own pomp and circumstance. If there were only two of them, they’d think that was enough to do us in.”

“But that won’t be the case for long,” Boss added. “They’ve got to be calling in backup, so what’s our plan? Any ideas?”

“Boss,” Rock said, then implored, “Frank.” And, oh, hell no. Nobody called the big man by his Christian name save for Becky and his sister. Vanessa turned to the Black Knights’ leader and, yep, sure enough. The muscle in Boss’s square jaw ticked out a hard rhythm, and there was actual fear in his eyes. Fear that Rock might say something to change his mind. “You have to let me go, mon frere. It’s the only way to keep everyone alive.”

And that would be the something…

She held her breath as she watched Boss consider Rock’s statement, then the big man shook his head “I…I refuse to believe that.”

That’s what he said, but Vanessa wondered if Rock could hear the uncertainty in Boss’s tone. To her, it was as clear as a struck bell.

“It’s true,” Rock whispered, stepping forward to lay a hand on Boss’s big shoulder, nodding in that way a person does when they’re trying to convince someone to agree with them and, yes, obviously he had picked up on Boss’s kernel of doubt.

“Rock—” Boss began, but he was cut off by Ozzie swearing loudly.

“What the hell is the f*cking matter with you?” Steady asked the question they were all thinking.

“Cell phone jammer,” Ozzie said, looking ready to throw his phone on the ground and stomp it to smithereens. Of course, with his love of technology, he only glared at the offending piece of equipment like it had personally betrayed him, before shoving it back in his pocket. “So what now? How do we keep Eve and Becky hell and gone from here?”

And, suddenly, all eyes turned to Vanessa.

A deep foreboding throbbed in her chest before deciding to make like a Canadian goose and migrate south to the pit of her stomach.

“What? What am I supposed to—”

“You need to go out there and keep them away from the house,” Boss said, and she was shaking her head even before he finished. “Those spooks wouldn’t dare shoot an unarmed woman.”

“No way. I’m not tucking tail and running.” At this, she turned to Rock, stuck out her chin, and glared. He might hate her guts, but she loved him and she damned sure wasn’t going to leave him right when the CIA was poised to blow him and everyone with him to Kingdom Come—wherever that was.

“Go, Vanessa,” Rock nodded, and…was she imagining it? Or did something in his eyes soften, just for an instant.

She decided to pretend that was the case even if it wasn’t, and she stepped forward, placing a tentative hand on his arm. His lean muscles bunched beneath her fingers, reminding her of how hard he’d been against her, how knowledgeable he’d been when giving her pleasure. Reminding her of…too much. “No,” she whispered. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he hissed. His jaw was clenching so hard, she marveled he could speak at all. And, yessir, she obviously had been imagining that softening of his eyes. “You’ve doomed us, so the least you can do now is go save Becky and Eve.”

She flinched like he’d hit her, but, in truth, his words—and specifically his hard, cutting tone—felt more like a knife, slicing her to the bone.

Ozzie frowned at Rock, “Hey, that’s not fair. She only—”

“Save it, Ozzie,” she interrupted, stepping back and shaking her head, a deep sadness pervading her body and weighing down her limbs. “He might be right.”

In Black Knights vernacular, she might’ve f*cked them all. Her love for Rock, her desire to have him back with her, back with the Knights, might’ve blinded her. Kept her from seeing what was really the right move. Which was probably leaving him the hell alone to try to figure out and clean up this mess by himself.

Rock was nothing if not capable of dealing with his own problems. But despite what he’d told her time and again out in that jungle and on the long ride to San Jose, she thought she’d known better. She thought she’d known what was best.

What an * she’d turned out to be…

“But—” Ozzie tried again.

“No buts. If I need to go out in order to keep Becky and Eve from barging in here and making the situation worse…” If it was possible to make this situation worse, considering her decision to betray Rock had backfired so fantastically that he was now cornered by the same group of people he’d managed to elude for the last six months. And, oh yeah. She’d simultaneously managed to put all the Knights in the middle of the CIA’s crosshairs, too. “…Then that’s what I’ll do.”