Free Hell on Wheels by Julie Ann Walker Page B

watched him jump up from the conference table with the same energy a child jumps out of bed on Christmas morning. The kid snagged his laptop along with her phone and scurried over to his domain. Pulling a long cord from a drawer, he attached it to the phone before jacking it into one of the main computers.
    “Anyway,” Ali turned her attention back to the group at the conference table, “the whole incident spooked me, especially when the police didn’t believe me. And since I didn’t want to end up strapped to a wheelchair with my eyelids taped open, pumped full of drugs and falling down a staircase while screaming, “He’s flying!,” I immediately hopped in my car and drove straight here.”
    “Be still my heart,” Ozzie swiveled in his desk chair, clutching his chest. “Marry me, Ali. Marry me right now.”
    “What am I missing?” Dan asked.
    “Come on, man. Mel Gibson? Conspiracy Theory ? Do you ever go to the movies?”
    “Ha!” Dan laughed, cocking his head and smoothing his tightly trimmed goatee. “Unlike some people I know, I haven’t spent the last ten years with my head buried in electronics. I’ve been busting my hump doing man’s work and—”
    “Spare me one of your speeches,” Ozzie waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve heard them all before. And I don’t know why you’re always trying to shut me down, anyway. ‘Nobody puts baby in the corner.’”
    Ozzie waited a beat and when Dan only raised a skeptical brow, he threw his hands in the air. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Dirty Dancing ? How can you never have seen Dirty Dancing ? It’s a classic!”
    “Yeah,” Dan snorted, “a classic piece of shit.”
    “Them’s fightin’ words, mister!” Ozzie howled, jumping up to dance from side to side like a boxer.
    Dan snorted so loudly, Frank thought the guy might’ve swallowed his tongue which, considering Dan’s propensity toward slinging bullshit and provoking Ozzie, might not be such a bad thing.
    The ex-SEALs on the team, Ozzie and Dan Man included, considered themselves to be the best of the best—which made them all cocky as hell. Of course, truth be told, each member of Black Knights Inc., ex-SEAL or not, was on the team because they were at the very tip-tipity top of their game.
    Black Knights Inc. had nine guys—soon to be twelve, with the addition of the Mossad agent and the prospective helo pilot and communications specialist—who could go in, finish the job, and make tracks without a whiff of Uncle’s involvement.
    The powers-that-be in the monster otherwise known as the U.S. government absolutely loved all those intricate little layers of plausible deniability. Didn’t matter that each man on the Black Knights’ payroll ultimately reported back to the Grand-Poobah himself, El Jefe, the good ol’ commander in chief. What mattered was that, should any of their missions be discovered, there was no way to trace that mission’s origination to anyone in the U.S. government—which was just fine by Frank. After the clusterfuck that prompted his decision to part ways with the Navy SEALs, he preferred to run his own show.
    Then again, by running his own show without the benefit of military hierarchy and the inherent discipline therein, it meant he very often had to put up with these kinds of antics.
    And not to be all Danny Glover cliché, but he was getting too old for this shit.
    “Cut it out you two,” he growled and Ozzie flashed him a wink before retaking his seat.
    “I wasn’t kidding about that proposal.” The kid wiggled his blond eyebrows at Ali.
    “I’ll take it under consideration,” she said, smiling sweetly, and Frank noticed Ghost’s fists clench. “So anyway, like I said before the conversation took a crazy turn, I drove straight here. I only stopped to fill up on gas and caffeine. But I uh, God this is so crazy…I think maybe I saw the guy at a Phillips 66 along the way. Not my mugger. The other one. The shadowy one.”
    “So for the question