Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(63)
“I’m assuming you’re still interested in receiving copies of the intel we acquired from Babineaux’s hideout?” the agent asked.
Yes, and then there was that.
R.D. needed to see those documents. Needed to make sure none of the information led back to The Project and, by extension, the person code named Rwanda Don…
“Yes. Forward everything to me.”
“The money—”
R.D.’s face filled with blood. “We’ve already agreed on a price! Now get me the goddamned information before everything we’ve both worked for goes up in smoke!”
Slamming a finger down on the phone’s end button, R.D. took a deep breath, smoothed bunched facial muscles, straightened a seam, and exited the coat closet. Nodding to hotel staff standing at attention along the hallway leading to the Mayflower’s ballroom—one of DC’s most respected hotels—R.D. pushed through the doors just as raucous cheers erupted from the crowd of well-dressed and well-coifed attendees.
Governor Ward was on the podium, having just made a wonderful speech sure to elicit donations from wealthy pockets, and R.D. beamed with approval.
The nomination was nearly in the bag…
***
Eve hadn’t really had the opportunity to get to know Rock before he pulled his Polanski act and quit the country over six months ago. But that didn’t make watching the man get shot to death any less horrific.
As she stood in her foyer, the sound of helicopters revving up and leaping into the air behind her—it was amazing how fast the CIA could load up and get the heck out of Dodge once they’d accomplished their mission—she couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s body. Or what she could see of it, that is. Most of his torso was concealed behind the partition leading into the kitchen, but the back of his head was visible, and there was so much blood. It was everywhere. Spattered against the front door, in a big ugly streak down the hall, and pooled around Rock’s head in a grizzly, sticky puddle.
It had been touch and go for a while there, the CIA insisting on taking the tissue samples themselves, even though Boss had apparently threatened to shoot anyone who tried to touch the body. Then Boss made a call to some general in DC before handing the phone to Agent Wilhelm. Eve thought she heard Wilhelm say, “Yes, sir, General Fuller,” which would make sense since Pete Fuller was the head of the Joint Chiefs and likely the only person on the planet—besides the president himself—who was capable of convincing the CIA agents to simply stand by the front door and watch while Steady carried out the dubious tasks of gingerly plucking a hair from Rock’s head, scooping up some of the spilled blood, and taking a scraping of skin cells before handing all the specimens over to the waiting CIA agents.
Agent Wilhelm had grumbled about still needing to take the body with them to the States, but Boss had threatened at that point to not only call General Fuller back, but also to put a bug in the ear of the Costa Rican government, which, from what Eve could gather, would’ve guaranteed an international dick-measuring contest because the United States wasn’t supposed to engage in covert operations in the Central American country without explicit approval from the host country’s government, which the CIA had not obtained.
In the end though, she didn’t think it was legal, political, or job-related worries that had Agent Wilhelm settling for the samples they’d collected. It was the look each Black Knight wore. The look that said, Over our dead bodies.
And speaking of dead bodies. There was Rock. So still…so lifeless…
Oh, geez Louise. It was too awful to contemplate.
She didn’t realize she was openly sobbing until Billy grabbed the back of her head, pulled her into his arms, and pressed her face into his warm shoulder.
He smelled like leather and sunshine and something faintly chemical. Except for that last thing…he smelled just like Billy. Just like she remembered him smelling all those years ago. During the best and worst summer of her life…
“Shh, Eve,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against the side of her cheek. “It’s gonna be all right.”
His deep voice should have been comforting. But it wasn’t. Because she’d just witnessed a man being gunned down on her front porch. And she was beginning to have her doubts that anything would ever be all right again.
“Why?” she snuffled against his shirt, aware she was probably covering the thing with snot, but she’d be embarrassed about that later. For now, all she could concentrate on was the resounding silence in the house now that the helicopters had flown away. The silence that was broken only by Becky’s soft sobs. And her own, come to think of it. “Wh…why would they d-do that?”
Hadn’t Rock deserved the right to defend himself? Wasn’t he an American, after all? How could his own government just kill him in cold blood? And, yeah, she’d heard that CIA agent claim it was some mysterious shooter—whom they had never been able to find, by the way—but she knew it had to have been them. The men who were supposed to uphold the country’s laws, not crap all over them in the absolute worst possible way.
“Shh, Eve,” Billy soothed again, but it did nothing to console her, especially when she heard Vanessa—the woman had fainted dead away; she’d never seen someone actually do that—come to with a horrific shriek.
“Rock!” she screamed, and Eve pushed out of Billy’s arms in enough time to watch Vanessa spring into a sitting position from where Boss had laid her out on the floor. Then she was scrabbling over to Rock, slipping and sliding on her hands and knees in the man’s blood and another hard sob clawed its way up the back of Eve’s throat.