Hell for Leather

by Julie Ann Walker

  “Dagan?” When she used his given name, he realized two things. First, it made his skin prickle. And next, it was the second time she’d tried to get his attention.

  “What?” he demanded, feeling as if his head should be spinning around atop his shoulders à la Linda Blair in The Exorcist. See…Ozzie wasn’t the only one quick with the horror movie references…

  “I asked if there was a specific grid you’d like me to start with,” she said, frowning up at him. “My technician,” she pointed to her earpiece, “is telling me it’ll take about two minutes to reroute the satellite and begin uploading the scans.”

  “Tell him to start with downtown and make his way back toward our current location,” he said, irked that she’d somehow managed to take over the situation without first coming clean about her mysterious arrival. Diversion and avoidance. Yeah, he’d learned that pretty little trick in spy school, too.

  Chelsea relayed the information, simultaneously tapping on her iPad. Then she grinned up at him. “Has anyone ever told you when you get pissed, your voice gets all raspy? I can’t imagine how you handled that out in the field. It’s a tell that—”

  “And has anyone ever told you that your observations are about as welcome as an itchy asshole,” he cut her off.

  “Yeesh.” She suppressed a grin. “You’d be the first.”

  “And don’t think just because I’m agreeing to your help right now that it means I’m swallowing that load of hogwash you’re dishing.”

  “First it was horse crap and now it’s hogwash?” She wrinkled her nose. He did not make note of how cute it was. “None of that is very appetizing, is it?”

  “I mean it. The minute we find Delilah’s uncle,” he pointed a finger at her, “I’m going to be all over your ass like a bad rash until you come clean with whatever it is you’re hiding from me.”

  “A bad rash, huh? I’ve heard calamine lotion works wonders for that.”

  “I’m dead serious,” he warned.

  “Ooh.” She shivered dramatically. “I love it when you bring out the sound and fury.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Spoken like a true scholar.”

  He scowled down at her. She grinned up at him. And the Black Knights appeared to have been stunned into silence. The air around them vibrated like a yawning black hole of complete conversational failure. Then Chelsea’s iPad dinged and a set of real-time infrared scans appeared on her screen.

  The Knights gathered around her as the first image took shape and Mac leaned in close, whispering, “Well, I tell you one thing, she’s got some snap in her garters.”

  Yeah, Dagan thought uncharitably, that’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it would be to say she was a serious pain in the ass.

  ***

  The Knights were eyeing the CIA agent with differing levels of curiosity and suspicion, and Delilah had to admit that Chelsea Duvall was not what she imagined in a government spook. Short, slightly plump, and adorably cute with her mixed heritage and smattering of freckles, Chelsea looked more like she should be teaching kindergarteners their ABCs and 123s and less like she should be chasing bad guys around the globe.

  Then again, perhaps that was the whole point. A spy wasn’t supposed to look like a spy, right?

  Mac’s knuckles brushed the back of her hand when he stepped up to get a closer look at the screen on Chelsea’s iPad, and Delilah would swear she felt the touch somewhere much more intimate. A slight shiver convulsed her muscles, and she just barely held back a gasp as she glanced into his big, square, unfairly attractive face.

  Oh, goody-goody-gumdrops. So the Mask of Inscrutability has returned!

  And how he could manage to look completely unfazed when mere minutes ago he’d been sucking her nipple and grinding the hard, hot length of his erection against her she’d never know. For her part, she couldn’t seem to come down from the high. Her body was still piano-wire tight, the blood rushing through her veins as sharp and warm as the hot toddies she liked to serve when a nor’easter blew through Chicago.

  She now knew what it meant when those historical romance novels she liked to read claimed the heroes “ravaged” the heroines. Because, really, considering the way Mac had held her, stroked her, kissed her, tongued her, there was no other way to describe it. And if she was going to call it a ravaging, then she also had to call Mac completely, deliciously beastly. He’d been growling and groaning and—for the love of tequila—to say it’d been hot would be like calling lukewarm bathwater hot. Because enigmatic, self-disciplined, Bryan “Mac” McMillan losing control of those reins he usually kept such a tight hold on had been way beyond hot. It’d been volcano-hot, surface-of-Mercury-hot, exploding-star-hot. So hot she was still feeling singed, and he was…

  Well, he was ignoring her and watching the CIA agent’s screen with concerted interest.

  Ugh. She didn’t know if she should be depressed or impressed.

  “Yorp!” Fido sang from his position by the back door, wagging his tail enthusiastically. Obviously, he had no interest in what Agent Duvall was showing them, and Delilah sort of envied the big yellow dog. How nice would it be to have no worries except for when your next meal or game of fetch would be?

  Then again, that wasn’t necessarily true. Because poor, sweet Fido had lost his master as surely as she’d lost her uncle. And, okay, so that was one way to take the edge off the lust still zinging through her system. Thoughts of Uncle Theo…

  “Check that out,” Ozzie said, pointing a finger at the screen. “Why are there four people in that building downtown?”

  Delilah couldn’t help herself, she moved in closer so she, too, could see what Ozzie was motioning toward. To her utter consternation, she couldn’t understand the information on the agent’s iPad. It just looked like vague gray outlines in a series of geometric shapes with four green dots moving around inside one of them.

  “Squatters?” Mac supplied. “Or kids in there havin’ a toke?” When her arm brushed against his, he took a small step back. She glanced up at his face and was rewarded for her effort with an expression that was no longer the Mask of Inscrutability. That was the good news. The bad news? Well, now he’d reverted back to his second most favorite look. Disapproval.

  Oh, you’ve got be kidding me! Her feelings must’ve been evident on her face because disapproval quickly morphed into dismissal.

  Wahoo! We’re three for three, folks! And, oooh, where was a rock when she needed one? Something small and hard that she could zing toward his stubborn head? Just whack! Knock some sense into him with one blow. She was stopped from glancing around the room in search of a serviceable item when Ozzie replied, “Mmm. Yeah, you’re probably right. Ask for the next scan, Agent Duvall.”

  Chelsea repeated the request into her Bluetooth device, and the screen dissolved to black a second before another image appeared.

  “Yorp! Yorp!” Fido caught sight of his own wagging tail and decided to chase it.

  “That dog is a wonder of stupidity,” Mac observed.

  “Yorp! Yorp!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Irritation was evident in his tone. “Delilah, will you let the damned dog out so he’ll stop makin’ that racket?”

  A part of her—a larger part than she’d like to admit—wanted to tell him to take his orders and shove them somewhere extremely uncomfortable. She deserved to stay here and look at these scans just as much as they did. It was her uncle they were looking for, after all. At least that’s what the petulant, ego-sore, just-got-summarily-rejected-by-way-of-a-glance woman in her wanted to shout. But then logic, that little bastard, intervened and reminded her that for one thing, she didn’t know what the heck she was looking at. And for another thing, they were here helping her, so a little patience and forbearance, not to mention cooperation, on her part wasn’t too much to ask.

  “Fine,” she hissed before spinning on her heel. She marched through the kitchen toward the back door, and all along the way, beneath her breath, sh
e called Mac unsavory—if somewhat creative—names. Her favorite was booby-licking, jerk-faced bastard. But shit-talking, lug-headed butt-monkey came in a close second.

  “Yorp! Yorp! Yorpyorpyorp!” Fido sang happily, spinning in delight upon her arrival.

  “Okay, okay,” she soothed as her shins took a beating from his tail. She bent to grab hold of the thick, whip-like monstrosity lest she need a set of crutches, and Fido took this to be a wonderful new game. He nipped at her fingers playfully, stepping on her bare toes.

  “Geez, you’re a menace,” she laughed when he panted up at her happily.

  “Yorp!”

  “Yes, you are,” she crooned, unable to stop herself from using that sing-songy voice. “You’re just a big ol’ pain in the patoot, you know that?”

  “Yorp!”

  “Delilah! Goddamnit!” Mac thundered from the living room. “We can’t hear ourselves think!”

  Turning, she placed her hands on her hips and made the supremely wise decision to stick her tongue out at him. His adorably dimpled chin jerked back. Then he blinked and shook his head in exasperation.

  Yeah, okay. So, that wasn’t necessarily my smoothest move. But, goddamnit! He irritated and confused the hell out of her, all while making her so hot under the collar she couldn’t think straight.

  Sighing dejectedly, she pushed the back door open and watched Fido shoot out of the house like a rocket. The yellow dog launched himself from the top of the steps, barking excitedly all the while.

  Daring one final glance over her shoulder, she was amazed to discover Mac’s eyes not on the iPad screen as she’d expected, but instead glued to her butt. When his gaze jumped to her face, she curled her lips in a grin that was the facial equivalent of caught ya! Feeling instantly better, she followed Fido into the yard…

  Chapter Twelve

  “Who’s a good boy?” Delilah called to Fido, skipping down the three steps leading from the back porch to the fenced-in yard. The hungry look on Mac’s face when she busted him ogling her booty was clear in her mind’s eye. And, considering everything she was dealing with right now, it made her unaccountably happy.

  She did a little victory dance complete with a hip shake and finger snaps while watching Fido thunder down the long expanse of lawn—Delilah would bet it was thirty yards if it was an inch. He latched on to something behind the whitewashed doghouse near the back fence. She could see his furry butt protruding from the little structure, his hind legs bent forward as he growled and tried to wrestle out whatever he’d found.

  “Ow!” she cursed as she stepped onto the lawn, lamenting the fact that she hadn’t taken the time to put on her biker boots when the sharp blades of dry grass poked into the soles of her bare feet. Hopping over to a patch of dirt, she called out, “What is it, boy? What’ve you got?”

  Oh, and brilliant. What did she expect? The dog to stand up and start talking? Sheesh. She glanced around, glad for once that the neighborhood was empty as the proverbial drum. “Grrrr! Yorp!” Fido intensified his struggle, his back legs scrabbling against the dry lawn, kicking up little puffs of brown dust.

  Please don’t let it be a squirrel or a rabbit, she thought as she once again hopped from her relatively safe patch of dirt onto the needle-like lawn. She may be the ass-kicking, Harley-riding, shotgun-toting beer-slinger-from-hell, but she was also a big softie when it came to fuzzy things. She didn’t know what she’d do if Fido was mauling something—

  Uh, was that a shoe clamped between Fido’s jaws? She broke into a run, uncaring now about the blades of grass stabbing into her feet. She drew closer. Ten yards. Twenty.

  Yes, yes, that’s definitely a shoe.

  For a moment, she thought perhaps she’d found the infamous pot-growing Charlie Sander. Maybe Mac had been wrong. Maybe the guy hadn’t been attacked and dragged from his kitchen but instead had a heart attack out here in the backyard. But, then…no. Because she thought she recognized that shoe, or boot, actually. It was a brown Timberland and—

  “Arp!” She saw the blade on the big hunting knife flash in the rays of the rising sun and could do nothing but watch helplessly as it imbedded itself into Fido’s furry chest. She stumbled back when the dog’s yelp of pain and confusion echoed in her ears, a scream of gut-wrenching anguish building like a tidal wave at the back her throat. She opened her mouth to let it loose, but in that instant the dark-skinned man launched himself at her, hands curled into claws, an ugly snarl plastered on his face.

  Oomph! All the air exploded from her lungs when his weight slammed her to the ground. Bam! Her head bounced against the dirt and grass, stunning her, making her ears buzz and her vision narrow until it appeared as if she was stuck inside a dark tunnel.

  It was a strange thing, but during that moment when she lay still, unable to move, unable to draw breath, unable to think, she noticed the sky above her was pink and purple and orange. The rays of the early morning sun glinted off the clouds in a brilliant display at the end of the dark shaft that was her vision. Then, seemingly from a place very far away, a hand came up to cover her mouth, just as it had the first time.

  The first time…

  In an instant, the ol’ cerebral cortex jump-started its synapses and her muscles immediately came to life. She wriggled and writhed, bucked and heaved, trying to scramble out from under the unbearable weight pressing her into the yard. But nothing she did seemed to dislodge her attacker.

  She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe her would-be abductor had followed her here. To this place. And he was going to try to take her. Again!

  Oh, hell no!

  Even as her mind raced with questions—Who is he? Why is he here? Is he just after me, or is he mixed up in Uncle Theo’s disappearance? What does he want?—she fought with everything she had, opening her mouth to try to bite at the hand. But it was to no avail. And, inexplicably, no matter how hard she punched and kicked and tossed about, she couldn’t unseat her assailant. And then he placed an arm against her throat. Instantly, her brain became starved for oxygen. Her movements began to feel sluggish, weighted, as if her limbs were no longer her own…

  She tried to shake her head, to jolt loose the hand over her mouth, but all she managed to do was to turn her chin.

  It was overtaking her now. The darkness. The emptiness. She struggled to drag in a breath as her bleary gaze alighted on Fido, lying on his side. The dog’s wonderful brown eyes were bright with misery and bewilderment, his tongue hanging out as he panted in what had to be his death throes.

  I’m so sorry, she thought, watching Fido’s bright red blood leak from around the blade of the knife still imbedded in his chest, matting his fur and staining the grass beneath him. This is all my fault. I brought this man here. And I’m so, so sorry.

  Even terribly injured, the brave dog sensed her desperation and attempted to drag himself closer. But it was too much. Every move resulted in a loud, soul-tearing yelp that rang sharply in her ears and felt like a hatchet strike to her heart. Hot tears burned up the back of her throat, pouring from her darkening eyes to slide across her cheek and nose and drip into the earth beneath her.

  Shhh, shhh, she wanted to tell Fido. Don’t fight it. You’re a good boy. Be still. Be quiet…

  But death wasn’t something a body—be it man’s or beast’s—did gracefully. It struggled and strained against the inevitable end with everything it had. She should know. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen the specter of the Great Beyond hovering close. The blood. The fear. The all-out battle to draw one last, shuddering breath of life. It’d happened before…

  Just like with Buzzard. Just like…had it been this way for Uncle Theo? Will it be this way with me?

  The thoughts whispered through her sluggish mind as white stars danced before her eyes. Her under-oxygenated brain begged her to draw a breath. Her chest burned like she’d swallowed a box of fireworks. But she blinked off the encroaching darkness, holding on a second longer. If she could just hold on a second longer…

/>   Locking gazes with poor Fido, she wanted nothing more than to take the dog’s agony and anguish and confusion into herself. To reach out to him and offer him comfort in these last miserable moments. And maybe she could. Maybe if she could just reach—

  Letting go of her assailant, she strained toward the whimpering, suffering animal with one arm, her fingers outstretched, her diaphragm quaking with her muffled sobs and her body’s intense desire to suck in a huge, glorious lungful of oxygen.

  Please, God! Let me help him! Let me touch him!

  But her prayer went unanswered. The big yellow dog was too far away. Too far away, and she was fading now. Her vision dimmed to nothing more than faint, barely intelligible shadows. And, then, to her astonishment, the dying canine dragged himself forward another inch, enough to allow her fingertips to reach the soft pad of his nose. As her eyes rolled back in her head, she gently rubbed that warm, dry nose, giving what small measure of peace she could until the darkness consumed her…

  ***

  “Okay. Bring up the next one,” Ozzie said as they all watched the screen on the CIA agent’s iPad fade to black while the satellite changed the angle of its lens. Mac was more than happy to let the boy wonder take the lead in this particular endeavor. Ozzie was the most qualified among them, after all. And someone needed to keep an eye on Agent Duvall’s keystrokes. You know, make sure she wasn’t feeding them a big bunch of hooey for…whatever reason.

  Because talk about something…er…someone to make Mac’s Spidey sense jump up and down while waving semaphore flags. Zoelner was right. Chelsea Duvall wasn’t here out of the goodness of the CIA’s black heart. Something more was going on. Something she was refusing to tell them. But whether it had anything to do with the disappearance of Charles and Theo, or if it was just The Company’s way of keeping tabs on the Knights themselves, Mac didn’t know.

  “Jesus. This place is even more deserted than I thought,” Ozzie murmured, implying with a rolling finger that Agent Duvall should ask for the next scan.