Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(62)

***

He was dead. She’d killed him.

She might not have been the one to pull the trigger, but she’d killed him just the same—and, yes, at any other time she’d have appreciated the fact that those were the exact words Rock had used to describe the deaths of those men and…

Had used…

She was already thinking of him in the past tense.

Oh, God! She fell to her knees as two words spun around and around inside her brain.

Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

But even though her head knew it was true—she’d seen him take three shots straight to the chest and…oh, sweet Lord…the blood; the blood had been terrible—her heart was another matter entirely. Her heart couldn’t accept the fact that he was really gone. It was throbbing against her ribs, aching, denying what she’d seen with her own eyes.

And there was a part of her, an overwhelming part that wanted to scramble to her feet, run to Rock and gather him in her arms. Just squeeze him and kiss his lips before the warmth of vital, vigorous life left his body forever. Because that part of her, irrational as it may sound, believed that if she could just hold on tight enough, if she could just hold on long enough, he wouldn’t really be gone.

But this stupid CIA agent refused to let her go…

Then, from the front porch, she heard Wilhelm, that sonofabitch who’d let Rock get shot, ask Boss if he could pull a hair from Rock’s head and the tenuous thread that’d held her broken pieces of sanity together snapped.

“No!” she screamed, struggling to her feet, flinging away Becky and Eve’s hands, ignoring the CIA agent who yelled, “Halt!” as she ran toward the house…toward Rock.

She no longer cared if she lived or died. All she cared about was getting to him.

And even when she felt the evil eye of that agent’s machine gun settling between her shoulder blades, she didn’t stop. Her feet flew across the street. “Don’t you touch a hair on his head, you motherf*cker! I’ll kill you! I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”

Her voice was nothing but a high-pitched shriek. And it was official. She’d completely lost it. But even though she knew she’d completely lost it, even though a part of her was standing outside of herself, watching herself do and say these things and not believing it, she couldn’t stop.

Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead. Rock’s dead…

The mantra kept time with her boots pounding up the porch steps. And she was amazed she wasn’t already sporting a hot piece of lead between her shoulders, especially when she shoved Agent Wilhelm, who was standing by the front door, watching her in wide-eyed astonishment, aside.

“Ma’am, I—”

But that’s as far as he got before her boots crossed the threshold, and she was immediately stopped by Boss’s big arms. He closed them around her to form of a huge, human straitjacket.

“Let me go!” She sobbed, struggling in his unyielding grip as the fire of remorse and denial scorched through her veins and turned each breath she managed to rake in to hot ash. “Let me go to him!”

“Leave him be, Vanessa,” Boss said in that bearlike growl he’d perfected. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”

And that’s when her heart caught up with her head. Hearing those words…There’s nothing you can do for him…was the final nail on the coffin of her hope, her…denial.

Rock’s dead.

And right at that moment, darkness consumed her and she knew no more…





Chapter Seventeen


“He’s dead.”

They were the two most comforting words Rwanda Don had ever heard, which made up for the fact that R.D. was stuck in a coat closet, having been pulled away from the benefit dinner by the ringing phone. “You’re sure?”

“According to reports, he took three slugs to center mass and one to the head,” the agent relayed without the slightest bit of remorse.

R.D. couldn’t quite feel the same. After years of working with Rock, it was hard to take pleasure in the man’s demise. Especially since that demise would not have been warranted if the high-minded sonofabitch had just left well enough alone.

But Rock wasn’t one to leave things alone.

And now he’d paid the ultimate price.

“The Agent in Charge has collected DNA evidence, and the teams are pulling out, on their way back home,” the agent continued, and R.D. batted away one particular overcoat that smelled like it’d been washed in expensive Burberry cologne. New money. You could always spot them by their overwhelming use of designer fragrance and their need to wave their wealth around with couture labels and excess bling. But, new or old, money was money. And, unfortunately, ever since the dissemination of those funds into the charities, that was something R.D. needed to keep the campaign going. “We’ll have the test results in twenty-four hours, but visual confirmation is at one hundred percent. It’s over.”

Yes, that part was over.

“We still have The Cleaner to worry about,” R.D. reminded the agent. “Where is he? Why has he suddenly gone AWOL? And, most importantly, do you think it has something to do with those trumped-up charges against Rock?”

“We watch and wait on that front,” the agent said. And though it was extremely aggravating, R.D. had to admit that was probably the right strategy. No need to start jumping at shadows.