Hell for Leather

by Julie Ann Walker

  The three of them fell quiet for one moment. Then two.

  “But anyway.” Brendan brushed a hand through the air, as if he could wave off the cloud of discomfort hanging over them. “She’s on a road trip with her uncle. Something about a visit to an old friend of his, and—”

  “Oh, I figured she was down there working her woo-woo magic on the budget of some two-bit municipality,” Zoelner said.

  Her woo-woo magic…

  Zoelner wasn’t talking about Delilah’s ability to hypnotize a man with her cat-eyed stare or the bewitching way her hips swayed when she walked across the room. He wasn’t referring to her talent for whipping up an alcoholic concoction that could taste sweet as candy one minute and knock a man flat on his ass the next or how she could cast a spell over the entire bar simply by tossing her head back and letting loose with that low, throaty laugh of hers. Huh-uh. The guy wasn’t talking about any of that, though it could all certainly count as woo-woo magic, witchcraft, or, in Mac’s not-so-humble opinion, straight-up voodoo sorceress shit. What Zoelner was referring to was the fact that Delilah Fairchild, the sex-pot owner of a down-and-dirty biker bar, happened to spend her free time working as a…wait for it…freakin’ forensic accountant.

  Sweet Lord almighty, sometimes Mac still had trouble believing it.

  Though, truth be told, he had no trouble whatsoever imagining it. He’d spent more than an hour or two daydreaming about her sitting at a desk somewhere, hair twisted up in a bun, reading glasses perched on the tip of her prim nose. In fact, for the last six months—ever since he’d learned what her second gig was—it’d been his favorite go-to fantasy. Something like the tried-and-true naughty librarian dream set on overdrive, because, you know, that whole one-part-proper-lady-and-two-parts-sex-goddess shtick had been a male spanktrovision standard since the beginning of time and—

  The front door burst open, slamming against the inside wall. Mac turned to see who was in such an all-fire hurry to get inside the bar. One look had his lungs playing the part of Michael Jordan. They attempted to leap right out of his throat.

  Speak of the devil…

  Even if he hadn’t recognized the long auburn hair cascading from beneath a motorcycle helmet and tumbling around a set of leather-clad shoulders, the shouts of gleeful greeting and the lifted mugs of beer would’ve told him the woman of the hour had made her way home.

  See… Beautiful and vivacious and able to command the attention of every man in the room…

  He swiveled back toward the bar, but the hairs on the back of his neck almost instantly alerted him to the fact that That Woman had marched up behind him.

  Slowly, with what he hoped wasn’t a patently false look of unconcern, he turned around. But before he could open his mouth, she whipped off her helmet and shook out her hair. He was accosted by the spicy-sweet scent of her perfume and the earthier aroma of the open road. Inexplicably, and to his utter horror, Little Mac, the idiot in his pants, defied all convention—not to mention the amount of liquor he’d imbibed—and lifted to half-mast.

  Well, for God’s sake, he thought with disgust, mentally calling himself and Little Mac ten kinds of fool just as Delilah blurted, “Thank goodness you’re here.”

  “Huh?” Okay, and even in his scotch-muddled state, he recognized his response for the gleaming bit of witticism it was not.

  Delilah frowned. “Are you drunk?” She placed her hands on her hips. Her round, curvy, delicious hips. Her lovely hips that just begged for a man’s hands and—

  Ah, hell…

  “Maybe,” he told her, holding his forefinger and thumb an inch apart. “Just a little.”

  “Goddamnit!” she growled, then immediately yelled for Brendan to bring over two cups of coffee.

  “Hey, now. Don’t do that,” Zoelner objected. “I’ve been working all evening on this buzz and I—”

  “Can it,” Delilah cut him off. Mac lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Not that Delilah wasn’t a speak-her-mind, in-your-face kind of broad, because she was. But this was something different. The tone she’d taken with Zoelner bordered on rude.

  “I need you.” She pointed a red-tipped finger at Zoelner’s nose, causing the man to go cross-eyed when he attempted to focus on it. Whoa. What? She needed…Zoelner? Then she turned to include him in that stomach-churning statement. “I need both of you.”

  Zoelner’s face pulled down in a considering frown. “Just to be clear, I’m not usually the kind of man who likes to share his pleasures.” Okay, and just the thought had a lurid emotion—not jealousy, definitely not jealousy—buzzing at the back of Mac’s head like a swarm of angry Texas yellow jackets. “But if you’ve a mind to—”

  “Not like that,” Delilah hissed, color climbing in her already flushed cheeks.

  All right. Something…Mac tilted his head, blinking…isn’t right here. Unfortunately, the discombobulating combination of scotch and Delilah’s nearness ensured he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then she saved him the trouble of trying to figure it out when she blurted, “My uncle is missing. And I need you guys to help me find him.”

  Well…hello, sobriety.

  Chapter One

  Outside Theo Fairchild’s Brownstone

  Thirty minutes later…

  Don’t panic…

  Delilah Fairchild had been repeating those two words to herself for hours. She said them when her uncle wasn’t back at the motel when he said he’d be. She breathed them the first—and the thirtieth—time she called his cell phone only to be transferred straight to voice mail. She muttered them after a half-dozen inquiries to the area’s hospitals turned up exactly nada. She combined them with a rather poetic curse when the local police told her she had to wait twenty-four hours before the missing person’s report she filed would get any real attention—her uncle being an adult and all, and possibly just holed-up in a hotel somewhere getting his knob polished. For the record, the policeman hadn’t actually said that, but his intent had been clear. And she echoed them over and over inside her motorcycle helmet the entire four-and-a-half-hour, hell-bent-for-leather ride back to Chicago.

  But the truth was…she was starting to panic.

  Big time.

  Of course, it didn’t help matters that two of the guys she’d been depending on to assist her in finding her uncle happened to be drunk as the proverbial skunks. When she stormed into her bar, intent on running upstairs to the apartment she lived in above the place in order to grab the spare keys to her uncle’s new townhouse, she’d been beyond relieved to see two of the Black Knights occupying center barstools.

  That relief had lasted all of about ten seconds.

  Because the only thing more exasperating than dealing with drunks was dealing with drunks when you desperately needed them to be sober.

  And speaking of drunks…

  A yellow taxi pulled up behind her motorcycle, its headlights bathing her in sharp white light. She raised a hand and squinted against it as she toed out her kickstand and hooked her helmet over the chrome handlebars of her Harley chopper. Bryan “Mac” McMillan and Dagan Zoelner, each wearing faded jeans, summer-weight leather jackets, and T-shirts advertising the custom motorcycles of Black Knights Inc., climbed out of the vehicle. Silhouetted against the light, they both looked big and mean—Mac much more so, with hulking muscles and a perpetual scowl—and, wouldn’t you know? They were just what she needed right now.

  If only they were sober…

  Of course, as her Uncle Theo liked to say, she could wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one filled up faster. Which in this case meant drunk or sober, she was taking Mac and Zoelner any way she could get them.

  “So, what are we looking for here?” Zoelner asked, coming to stand beside her. The guy stumbled slightly when he tipped his head back to take a sip of the coffee she’d made Brendan pour into Styrofoam cups. He swayed again when he glanced up at the three-story brownstone her uncle was in the middle of restoring to its former glory. The dimly glow
ing streetlamps cast the building’s warm rock facade in sharp planes and dark shadows. And for some reason, perhaps it was nerves or maybe it was the adrenaline that had been flooding her system all day, but it struck her as slightly…foreboding. Perhaps even…malevolent?

  Okay, and now you’re being ridiculous, she scolded herself. “We’re looking for an address book, a phone number, anything that might tell me where Charlie lives or…or even something that has his last name written on it would be helpful.”

  “Charlie?” Zoelner inquired.

  “The friend my uncle went to see.”

  “Ah.” Zoelner nodded, taking another slightly unsteady sip of coffee as Mac passed loose bills to the cab driver through the open window. She was gratified to discover his path to sobriety seemed considerably farther along than Zoelner’s. As the taxi drove away, he strode forward on legs that appeared remarkably steady, his big square face drawn in a set of harsh lines made more severe by the shadowy light of the city street. Between the two men, Zoelner was the more classically handsome, with slate-gray eyes, high cheekbones, and wavy brown hair.

  But there was just something about Mac…

  Maybe it was the intensity of his piercing blue gaze, or the character in his slightly crooked nose. Perhaps it was the stubborn jut of his substantial jaw or that too-damn-sexy dimple in the center of his chin. Or it could be that he seemed to emanate danger in a sort of testosterone-laden cloud, something felt but not seen. Although, in all honesty, it probably had much more to do with the fact that to meet him was to fear him. Just a little. Or a lot. And she’d always kind of had a thing for bad boys.

  Mac was definitely a bad boy. The guy had an alpha male swagger that could be spotted a hundred yards away. And when you combined that with the mystery of him—he was an ex–FBI agent turned secret agent who was now working undercover as a motorcycle mechanic—it drove her absolutely nuts. We’re talking barely-able-to-keep-her-hands-to-herself, panty-dropping nuts.

  Unfortunately, Mac had made it abundantly clear her feelings weren’t returned. The big jerk. Of course, the silver lining here—if such a thing could exist in this god-awful situation—was that the sting she usually felt when thinking about his repeated rejections was completely eclipsed by the far more pressing fact that, you know, her uncle seemed to have vanished into thin air. Poof! Houdini couldn’t have done a better job had he tried.

  Damnit, Uncle Theo! Where the hell are you?

  She mentally hurled that question into the ether. But like it’d been doing all day, the ether chose to ignore her, refusing to point her in the direction of the man who, after her parents died in a terrible car crash, gave up his bachelor lifestyle in order to settle down and raise a brokenhearted seven-year-old girl. The man who was father, friend, and confidant all rolled into one. The man who was the one person on the entire face of the planet she could call her own…

  The tears she’d been holding at bay burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. One, because she wasn’t a crier, damnit! And two, if she let them fall, it would be like she was admitting the possibility that the worst might actually come to pass. That she might never see Theo again and—

  “So, fill me in on what you know so far,” Mac commanded in his slow-as-molasses drawl, yanking her from her thoughts. It was just as well. Those thoughts had been heading down a gloomy path. One she wasn’t willing to tread. Not yet, anyway.

  “What I know so far?” she asked with a snort that was far too close to a sob for comfort. “Well, that’d be a big ol’ helping of jack with a nice side of squat.”

  Okay, and that sounded slightly more petulant and decidedly more ungrateful than she’d meant it to. She was glad they were here with her. She really was. Because waiting the prescribed amount of time for the Marion police to do something wasn’t an option. Not when she figured the first twenty-four hours after a person went missing were the most critical. Not when she knew that enlisting the help of the bad-to-the-bone boys over at Black Knights Inc. could give her a leg up. Which meant she should be falling to her knees and thanking them for hopping-to without a second’s hesitation instead of answering what was a rational, straightforward question with a mouthful of biting sarcasm.

  Damn. She hated feeling vulnerable. It turned her into quite the bitch. Double, triple, quadruple damn…

  Shaking her head at herself, she made a face. “Sorry,” she mumbled, biting the inside of her cheek. “I’m just…I can’t…” She stopped, rolling in her lips. Then all she could do in her own defense was shrug.

  The look on Zoelner’s face was one of sympathy. But Mac?

  Well, Mac was tougher to read. The high king of inscrutability. And, man-oh-man, on the list of things that annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her, that usually ranked right up there close to number one. As a dyed-in-the-wool bartender, having seen and served drinks to every kind of man from the fanciest-schmanciest big city politician to the simplest, down-home shift worker, she liked to think she was pretty good at getting a bead on people.

  She’d never been able to get a bead on Mac.

  Thankfully, his next words provided the reassurance his familiar stony expression did not. “It’s okay, Delilah.” His low, rumbling voice always reminded her of Sam Elliott’s. “You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for.”

  She had nothing to be sorry for? Could that be true? She sure as hell didn’t feel like it.

  “If I’d taken the time to ask Uncle Theo just a few simple questions this morning before he took off…” She stopped, squeezing her eyes closed, and replaying the scene in her head. “If I’d asked him to tell me exactly where he was going instead of rolling over to pull the covers over my head, I might’ve—”

  “Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Zoelner interrupted. “There’s nothing you can do to change this morning.”

  “He’s right,” Mac added. “You can’t go beatin’ yourself up for things you had no way of knowin’. After all, there’s that whole hindsight and 20/20 thing.”

  Stop beating herself up… It was good advice. And even though this was one of those situations that fell under the heading of Easier Said Than Done, she figured she better do her damnedest to take it. Because agonizing over what she could have done, what she should have done, was only pushing her closer and closer to the brink of a total mental and emotional breakdown. And that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Not her. Not these fiercely capable—even if slightly drunk—guys who were trying to help her. And certainly not her uncle.

  Squaring her shoulders, she jerked her chin in a sharp nod. “You’re right.” Then, hoping she was demonstrating far more aplomb than she was feeling, she marched up to the tall, wrought-iron gate surrounding the front of her uncle’s newest property. The same gate she’d watched him lock only the evening before.

  Holy crap… One day? Really? Had it really been just over twenty-four hours since she agreed to the road trip that landed her here? Now? Her uncle God-knows-where and her entire world turned upside down?

  Jesus, she felt like she’d lived a lifetime…

  “It all started yesterday afternoon when my uncle got a text from his old Marine buddy, Charlie…something. I don’t know the guy’s last name, and that’s part of the problem. Truth is, I’ve never met the man even though Uncle Theo usually makes a trip out to see him at least once a year.” She was determined to oblige Mac’s request to fill him in on what she knew so far, this time without the sarcasm. Sheesh. “Anyway, Charlie invited Uncle Theo down for a visit. But Uncle Theo told me he didn’t really feel like making the ride by himself. I convinced him to go. Told him I’d go and we’d make a road trip out of it. I said it’d be fun.”

  And it had been fun. Up until the point when her uncle didn’t show up when he was supposed to. She lifted the key ring only to discover that, despite her best efforts at composure, her hand was shaking as badly as an alcoholic’s after twenty-four hours locked away in the drunk tank.

  Don’t panic. The two words flitted through her h
ead for the millionth time. Only now it appeared her psyche was fed up with the mantra because it quickly answered back with Yeah right, sister. Not gonna happen.

  Okay, and great. That’s just what she didn’t need, her own subconscious mutinying.

  Mac crumpled his empty coffee cup and lobbed it toward a nearby trash can before gently taking the keys from her hand. And with far more dexterity than she would’ve thought possible given the amount of scotch she suspected he’d consumed—she didn’t know if it was him or Zoelner or the two of them combined, but the air around them reeked so strongly of whiskey she feared what would happen if they chanced by an open flame—he neatly inserted the key in the lock, twisted his big wrist, and pushed the gate open. It squeaked on its hinges, and the eerie sound streaked up her spine like the tip of a steel blade, further abrading her already raw nerves. What the hell is wrong with me?

  And either she winced, or Mac simply used those superpowers of deduction he’d been bequeathed upon his graduation from the FBI Academy, because he frowned fiercely. “Take a breath, Delilah,” he instructed sternly. “You look like you’re either about to toss your cookies or faint.”

  And that made sense, since she felt like she was either about to toss her cookies or faint. Or maybe she’d toss her cookies, then faint.

  For crying out loud, get it together!

  “I didn’t know your uncle was a Marine,” Zoelner said, supporting himself against the gate and sipping noisily at his coffee.

  “He doesn’t like to spread that particular bit of information around,” she admitted.

  “Why the hell not?” Zoelner asked. “What happened to the proud part of The Few, The Proud, The Marines?”

  “Because of his age.” Just breathe, Delilah. Just…breathe. “When he tells people he was a Marine, they all assume he did a tour in Vietnam.”