Julie Walker - Hell for Leather

Yes. From the beginning, she’d loved him.

And now I have to live with it being…over.

She glanced wearily at her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were red and shiny, her hair a rat’s nest of tangles. The skin around her mouth was pink from Mac’s whiskers and…what was that? She pushed away from the doorjamb, leaning against the sink as she turned her head to the side, examining the skin on her neck. A love bite. Just a small one. But it was a reminder of how well, how thoroughly he’d taken her. Made her his in every which way.

A reminder… A memory…

It was all she had now. And it would have to do.

She was Delilah Fairchild, after all. The ass-kicking, Harley-riding, shotgun-toting beer-slinger-from-hell. What was a little heartbreak to a woman like her?

“Everything,” she admitted to her reflection, wiping at the tears slipping down her cheeks and dropping from her chin. “It’s everything. But you can’t let him know.”

Because she’d promised there would be no strings, no hurt feelings. And if she couldn’t keep her word, the least she could do was never show him how much she suffered.

So toughen up, buttercup, she scolded herself, sniffling and pressing a hand to the ache in the center of her chest. Shaking out her hair, she forced herself to take a deep, cleansing breath, and turned on the faucet. In the middle of splashing cold water on her face, she jumped when the CIA agent tasked with guarding the rear of the motel tapped on the large frosted window positioned behind the toilet.

“May I have a glass of water?” he called, his voice hoarse and slightly muffled.

Poor guy. He’d been out there in the sun all afternoon. He was probably about to shrivel up and die.

Out there all afternoon…

Her cheeks flamed when it occurred to her that he might have heard everything that been happening inside the motel room, that whoever was positioned at the front had probably heard it, too. She wasn’t known for being a quiet lover, after all. And Mac had been nearly as vocal. Growling, groaning, yelling in triumph during orgasm like he’d just won an Olympic race or something.

“Well that’s just great,” she muttered to herself, embarrassed, wondering how she’d ever look any of these people in the eye again. I mean, really. What must they think of her? Her uncle was missing. Nuclear warheads were about to fall into the hands of terrorists. And what was she doing? Yep. You guessed it. She was getting her groove on. Getting her groove on and getting her heart broken all at the same time.

Pathetic. Deplorable. Unfor—

Tap. Tap. She could just make out the shadow of a hand knocking against the glass. “Just a second!” she called, bending to grab one of the plastic drinking cups from the shelf beneath the sink. Unwrapping it from its hygienic covering, she filled it with cold water before reaching to unlatch the window. It was a bit tough. The windowpane having been painted a few times. But it finally gave way and she threw up the sash.

“Here you g—”

That’s all she managed before a hand grabbed her wrist, yanking her forward. Her forehead slammed into the window sash, causing stars to dance in her field of vision. She was half hanging out the window, her knees atop the toilet tank, the cup having fallen from her hand to bounce on the ground below. In confusion, she watched it land atop Agent Wallace…

He was lying in the dirt beneath the window, his lifeless gaze staring vacantly into the sky above—a look that chilled her to the bone as it instantly reminded her of Buzzard—blood pooling beneath his head from the giant gash flaying his throat open in a gruesome, macabre smile. His foot was twitching. She didn’t know why she should notice such a thing in the split second it took her to open her mouth to scream, but she did. She saw it. That awful, twitching foot. She heard it. That terrible scuffling sound it made against the ground.

Then…pain. White-hot agony. It exploded at the base of her skull. From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a familiar set of brown Timberlands, felt the brutal bite of terror as it sank its sharp fangs into her galloping heart. The second blow to her head cut off the cry lodged at the back of her throat. And then…lights out…

Mac was a coward.

That’s all there was to it. Because he’d wanted to stay with her while she slept. Hold her in his arms. Pet her. Kiss her. Watch her dream…

But he couldn’t. He had fallen…just a little. And he didn’t dare risk it. He was too afraid to risk it.

On the other hand, it’d been nearly three hours since he slunk from her room like the lily-livered cur that he was, and that probably meant she’d be waking up soon. He couldn’t stand the thought of that, of her rolling over to discover his dastardly desertion.

Yes, he was determined to stick to his guns, to let their dalliance end here, today. But that didn’t mean she deserved to be treated like some nameless, faceless hook-up. Like some woman he’d taken home from the bar only to ghost out on her in the middle of the night. Because she wasn’t that. She was so much more. She deserved so much more, so much better from him.

Christ almighty, what the hell was I thinking?

“Ozzie!” he barked. The guy was down at the end of the building, filling a bucket with ice from the machine. “Come take my place, will you? I need to talk to Delilah.”

“Talk?” Ozzie snorted, sauntering toward him. “Yeah. By my count, this will be the, uh, fifth time you guys have…talked.”

“I’m serious,” Mac growled. “And remember what I told you I’d do to you if you tell her you heard us?”

“Oh, I remember,” Ozzie said, eyeing him askance. “The imagery of your description is sure to give me nightmares for years.”

“Excellent.” Mac winked, lifting his hand to the knob of the Noel Motel’s room number four. He was stopped from turning it when Agent Duvall burst from her room, running to rap hard knuckles against Steady’s door. She turned and pounded on the door of the room Fitzsimmons and Wallace shared before marching over to Mac. Instantly, his operator senses were on high alert.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Let’s wait until…ah,” she said when Fitzsimmons poked his head out of his room followed quickly by Steady down the way. “Good. Come join us, gentlemen.”

“What’s going on?” Zoelner said, wrenching open the door beside them, wiping sleep from his eyes.

“We’ve got a lead,” Agent Duvall announced, her gaze bright with excitement. Mac felt all the cells in his body slow down and come to attention. A lead… Those two beautiful words still spoke to his Federal Agent heart. “We found footage of Hasan and al-Hallaj buying cell phones from a store up near Thunder Bay, Ontario. We got the model and product numbers from the receipt. Now we’re talking with the phone company to try to determine which wireless numbers are assigned to those particular phones.”

“And once you know the numbers, you can monitor when that device pings local cell towers, thereby allowing you to triangulate their locations,” Ozzie said.

“Exactly.” The agent nodded.

“And now?” Mac asked, his eyes darting to Delilah’s door.

“And now we wait for the numbers.”

Wait. He was usually a patient man, but when it came to an op, he hated the word wait. Huffing out a sigh, he immediately thought, oh, sweet Jesus. Because he could still smell her on his breath, still taste her on his tongue. Swallowing, he glanced around, wondering if anyone else noticed that he was absolutely covered, head-to-toe, in Delilah Fairchild. Delicious, delightful, delectable Delilah Fairchild…

“You want to be the one to tell her?” Chelsea asked, nodding toward the baby-blue door. “While you’re doing that, I’ll run around back and alert Wallace to the progress.”

Dipping his chin in acknowledgment of Chelsea’s plan, he stepped up to Delilah’s door, waiting to push it open until the group dispersed. He’d left her naked, sated, and sprawled atop the mattress, her plump ass—and that wonderfully kissable tattoo inked above it—there for all the world to see. And, call him crazy, or territorial, or…yeah, just crazy, but he wanted what they shared, the glory of her nudity, to be his and his alone.

Can you say dangerous thinking, boys and girls?

Shaking his head at himself, he stepped into the room, blinking against the gloom in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the setting sun outside. The instant his eyes adjusted, he noted her absence from the bed. The sheets were rumpled and messy, proof of her presence, of their presence—Lord almighty, what an afternoon. But she was gone.

Shit. She had woken up to find him missing. He had subjected her to that particular humiliation. Someone should definitely kick his ass. And, no joke, he volunteered to be first in line.

“Delilah,” he called, marching toward the bathroom. “We’ve got some good news. Agent Duvall—”

A loud gasp sounded from the bathroom, followed by a whimpering kind of squeak. He threw open the door, only to find the space…empty.

Huh? Then where had the sounds—

The window. It was open.

He was across the bathroom in two steps, placing his palms on the windowsill in order to lean out. The first thing he saw was the pint-sized CIA agent. She was holding one hand to her mouth, her eyes trained on the ground in front of her.

Mac glanced down. “Son of a goddamned bitch!” he roared, instinctively reaching into his waistband for his sidearm, his heart growing teeth and trying to gnaw its way through his breastbone. Wallace’s inert, bloody form lay in the dirt, staring unseeingly at the sky above. And Delilah was…gone.

* * *

Qasim stood at the entrance to the cave, his eyes searching the twilight gloom of dense woods beyond. “Where are you, Haroun?” he said into his cell phone. “I do not see you.”

“I am coming, habibi,” Haroun grunted. “Almost there. The woman is heavier than she looks.”

Qasim’s heart beat with wild anticipation. When Haroun called earlier to tell him he’d captured the woman, Qasim tempered his excitement. Much could happen on the hour-long drive from Delilah Fairchild’s motel to the spot they’d chosen as their secondary location. And he’d learned over the years not to get his hopes up.

But now Haroun was calling to say he’d made it, and Qasim allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief, to experience this crystalline moment of joy. Because, finally, finally, after all these years, it was beginning to look like he would have his revenge. It was beginning to look like he would, indeed, discover the location of the nuclear weapons. And then, he would sit back and watch American cities burn…

The anticipation sent a thrill skittering along his nerves, heightened his senses, intensified his breathing. People liked to believe love was the strongest of human emotions. But Qasim knew better. It was hate. Hate was the strongest. It was hate that had fueled him for more than a decade. He felt its powerful pull much more than he ever felt the pull of love for his wife and children. And someday, hopefully someday soon, he’d sit by his television and watch as all his hatred was made real by the countless deaths of the wives and children and brothers and sisters and husbands of capitalist pigs. He’d sit and—

There. Through the trees…

Qasim blew out his pent-up breath when Haroun stepped into the small clearing in front of the secluded cave. Even in the waning light, he could see that the man looked terrible. Blood stained Haroun’s Western-style T-shirt. His hair was a mess. His face filthy with dust and sweat. But there was a smile curving his lips when he slapped a hand against the panty-clad bottom of the unconscious woman draped over his left shoulder.

“Did I not tell you this was our chance?” Haroun said. Qasim could hear his voice through the cellular connection but also across the short distance. He thumbed off the device and shoved it into his pants pocket. “Did I not say trust in Allah and all would be well?”

“You did indeed, brother.” He squeezed Haroun’s shoulder when his second-in-command pulled even. He glanced down at the limp, scantily dressed woman and spotted the small patch of blood matting the back of her head. He raised a brow. “You hit her?” he asked as they carefully made their way inside the cave, moving toward the lamplight dancing at the back.