Born Wild bki-5, page 26
part #5 of Black Knights Inc. Series
“I need to go out and reef the sail,” she cut him off. “With the force of these winds, I think we’re running too heavy.”
“Let me—”
“No.” She shook her head, her sopping hair swishing across the thick orange fabric of the life vest. “I’m the one who knows how much sail to bring in. You need to stay here and man the wheel.” She pointed at the compass. “Try to keep it at this heading. That should ensure we’re still going in the right direction for Ludington, but it will also keep up from sailing directly into the waves or having them hit us abeam.”
“Eve, I—”
“You got this?” she asked, taking a step back, indicating he should take control of the vessel.
What could he say but, “Yeah, I got this.”
When he grabbed the wheel, he was surprised by the way it bucked in his hand. It took strength to hold them on the correct course.
Strength…
Not something he’d ever really equated with Eve. But he was learning just how misguided and misinformed he was in that department. Still, the knowledge that she was one hell of a tough lady behind that delicate, fancy, cupcake exterior did nothing to mitigate his anxiety as she exited the wheelhouse and began inching her way across the slippery deck toward the mast. He realized he was holding his breath, trying to squint through the gray haze of rain to watch her every little movement, when his brain began to buzz.
Forcing himself to rake in much needed oxygen, he sent a prayer of thanks skyward when she quickly furled a tiny bit of sail before turning to make her way back to the cockpit.
Boooooommmm!
A blinding flash of bright white light accompanied a bone-rattling, ear-splitting crash that rocked the boat. The main mast lit up like a roman candle, and the hair on the top of Bill’s head and the back of his neck lifted in warning. The metallic smell of electricity burned through the air and tasted like a new penny when he dragged in a harsh breath.
Jesus Christ! They’d been struck by lightning!
“Eve!” he yelled, turning toward the starboard side of the boat where he’d last seen her. But she was…gone.
* * *
Cold…
That was the first thing Eve noticed when she blinked open her eyes to find herself staring up into a frightening canopy of cruel, gray clouds. She was cold right down to the marrow of her bones. The second thing she noticed was a feeling of weightlessness, of being born up into the air and sinking back down again.
And then, suddenly, her stunned synapses began firing, and she realized she was adrift. She was adrift in the lake and—
A huge cross-wave rolled over her head, filling her mouth with acrid-tasting water, trickling down into her lungs before her life vest bobbed her to the surface.
“Uhhhhh,” she raked in a breath, coughing and sputtering, trying to orient herself in the water, trying to keep her head above the swells that lifted her aloft before slamming her down.
Oh, God. She was going to die. People set adrift in the vastness of Lake Michigan in the middle of a storm didn’t survive. They just didn’t.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh—
“Eve!”
At first she wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly. She thought it was the wind howling and screaming and playing trick on her ears.
“Eve!”
Okay, and that was no trick. She turned—struggling to tread water—just in time to see Billy throw an arm over her shoulder. He hooked his fingers into her opposite armpit in the traditional lifeguard’s hold.
“B-Billy!” she choked, coughing up gritty water from her lungs. She’d never been so happy to feel the weight of another human pressing against her back as she was right at that very moment.
“Don’t worry,” he yelled, sputtering as a wave slapped him in the face. “I’ve got you!”
Yeah, he had her. But…but who had him?
And then she saw he was using his free hand to pull on the safety line he’d wrapped around himself, trying to haul them through the heaving waters back toward Summer Lovin’. The sailboat bobbed atop the waves some forty feet away.
Turning in his embrace, she grabbed the line. And, hand-over-hand, they managed to slowly, so frustratingly slowly, halve the distance to the boat as the wind and waves tossed them about like waterlogged scraps. In less than a minute, hypothermia was setting in. Eve could feel it in the stiffness of her muscles, in the numbness of her limbs, in the way her strength was ebbing, drifting out of her with each crashing wave.
“Hurry, B-Billy,” she sputtered. “W-we…” Her teeth were chattering so hard, her jaw was locking down. “We h-have to get o-out of th-this water.”
“I know,” he coughed. “Wrap your arms around m-my neck and hang on. I can get us there f-faster—” Another wave rolled over their heads, filling their ears and mouths. And Eve wondered, as the frigid water swirled above her, whether or not they could actually make it. Any relief she’d felt upon seeing Billy beside her leaked from her to sink down to the pitch-black bottom of the lake. If he died while trying to save her, she’d never forgive herself…
Of course, she’d be dead, too. So yeah. There was that…
They bobbed to the surface, buoyed by their life vests, hacking up lake water. “I’ll get us there f-faster on my own!” he yelled.
And though she hated the fact that he was right—because he was right—hated the fact that, in this instance, she really did need saving, her ego wasn’t so big that she let it keep her from doing as he instructed. Releasing the lifeline, she wrapped her frozen, numb arms around his neck. In the next instant, they surged through the chop, his big shoulder muscles and sleek back muscles working beneath her as he pulled them through the turgid water toward the rolling boat.
She didn’t know how long he worked as she did nothing but hang on. It felt like hours but could’ve only been a minute. And then, suddenly, Summer Lovin’ rode the swell directly in front of them. And with a strength Eve would later marvel at, Billy hauled them the last few feet, managing to hook an arm around her waist and boost her up onto the swim ladder bolted to the back of the sailboat.
“Climb up!” he bellowed. And, yep, that should’ve been easy. There were just three measly rungs, after all. But her entire body was frozen.
He must’ve seen her trouble as she clung to the back of the boat, unable to move, unable to feel the fingers wrapped around the top wrung. With a curse, he grabbed the sides of the ladder when the boat sank into the bottom of another swell. Then, somehow he managed to climb over her and into the vessel. Hooking his hands under her armpits, with a grunt and mighty heave, he hauled her aboard.
And the only thing better than feeling Billy pressed against her in all that freezing water? Feeling the slick slats of the sailboat beneath her feet. Well, in all honestly she couldn’t actually feel them. But when she glanced down at her pink, polished toenails, she knew they were there.
Holy moly! We actually made it!
She couldn’t believe it!
“Come on!” Billy yelled, half dragging/half stumbling with her into the covered cockpit just as the rain picked up in intensity. “Sit!” he ordered, pushing her into the captain’s chair and tossing a towel over her shoulders, chafing her arms until her skin began to sting. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Stinging skin was reheating skin.
“W-w-what happened?” she asked through chattering, clenched teeth.
“The main mast was struck by lightning,” he told her, moving his chafing to her sides. “The force of it knocked you off the deck into the water.”
“Lightning?” She couldn’t believe it. Boats weren’t often struck, but when they were, it was usually catastrophic to the electronics on board.
“The navigation system?” she asked, and he moved slightly to the left so she could see the electrical panels on the console. The dark electrical panels. Not one light glowed on the entire vessel when she glanced around.
“The radio is shot, too,” he informed her, raising his voice above the driving sound of the rain on the roof. “And I’m assuming…” He peeled up the Velcro on the pocket of his swim trunks and pulled out his iPhone. Pressing the power button, she didn’t need to see the darkened screen to know the cell phone was a dead stick. The information was written all over Billy’s scowling face. “We’re on our own here,” he muttered. Which was true. Because her phone was shoved in an evidence locker somewhere back in Chicago.
And though her mind should’ve been filled with all sorts of logistics—like the tricky business of navigating the boat without the electronics, like the danger of riding out the storm when the waves and wind seemed to be getting worse and worse—she instead found herself occupied with one and only one thought. This was the fifth time she’d almost died in less than three months, and if things kept going like this, chances were pretty good she might not survive the sixth.
And she’d never told Billy she loved him.
It seemed such an easy thing to say, such an easy thing to admit, so why hadn’t she? Was she still, deep down, that cowardly eighteen-year-old? Was she still—
“Hey.” He pulled her into his arms, pressing her against his warm, wet chest, palming the back of her head. When she sucked a breath in through her nose—a deep breath that brought the crisp smell of lake water combined with the burnt rubber aroma of fried electrical wire casings—she realized her lips were trembling and hot, salty tears were pouring over her lower lids. “It’s all right, now. We’re going to be all right. I know you’ve been through hell, sweetheart. I know it must seem like the world is out to get you. But you just need to hold on for a little while longer, okay? Just hold on for a little while longer, and I promise you—”
“I’ve been holding on by sheer force of will these last f-few days,” she whispered against his shoulder. “H-holding myself together, so you’d see I’m not that same cowardly girl from twelve years ago.”
“Eve—”
“But I can’t h-hold myself together anymore.” She talked over him, her voice rising with every word out of her mouth. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t stop. “And I c-can’t hold it in anymore. I love you, Billy. I’ve always loved you. And it’s okay if you don’t love me back. Because if these last few days have taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to live with regrets anymore. And I regret not telling you right from the very start that I still love you. And I will always love you.” She felt him still against her. The hands that’d been rubbing up and down her back stopped on her shoulders. “And it’s a love with no strings attached. No expectations. Just a one-way love. F-freely given.”
That’s what she said. And she meant it when she said it. She really did. But, naturally, there was a part of her, a really big, really hopeful part of her, that wanted Billy to reiterate her words, to return her love. So when he gently pushed back, his brown eyes searching her face, his expression somewhere between anguish and sadness, a monster wave of grief threatened to overwhelm her as all that hope was washed away like the water washing over the hull of Summer Lovin’.
“Eve, I—”
“Shh.” She pressed a cold finger over his lips. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“But, I—” Just then, the boat was pulled off course by the power of the current, the mainsail lost the wind, and the vessel rolled violently.
Cursing, Billy turned to grab the wheel.
She watched the muscles in his back and shoulders bunch as he wrestled the vessel back into the face of the storm, as the mainsail once again snapped tight. Then she blew out a shaky breath and thought, It’s done.
She’d gone all in. Put all her chips on the table. Played her last hand. Unfortunately, this time, the cards hadn’t gone her way. Not that she should be surprised, really. The cards hadn’t gone her way in a very long time.
But at least you had last night, a voice whispered through her head. And at least you finally told him the truth…
Yes. She could find comfort in those things, she supposed. She could find comfort in them because they were the only things she still had left to hold on to…
Chapter Twenty-four
Red Delilah’s Biker Bar, Second Floor Apartment
8:34 a.m.
The notes of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” woke Delilah from a deep sleep, and she fumbled for her cell phone on the cherrywood nightstand. She’d been too exhausted to scrub off her mascara in the shower last night, and in the intervening hours between then and now, it’d turned into some sort of industrial-strength adhesive. She had to use her thumb and forefinger to pry her left eyelid open. Blearily reading the number on her phone’s screen, for a moment she forgot why Brenda, the office assistant extraordinaire at McClovern and Brown, would be calling her. Then, everything came back in a rush.
The shoot-out in the bar. Buzzard’s death. That scene with Eve’s father and ex-husband. The long minutes inside an interrogation room reliving it all. The coffee shop. Mac’s refusal to take her to the chopper shop. And, finally, her decision to use her contacts at McClovern and Brown to see if she could find out anything about Keystone Property Development.
She’d shot off an email to Brenda last night before crawling into bed to cry herself silly—perhaps, along with her crusty mascara, her dried tears had a little to do with the whole eye-goop-glue thing she had going. Then, shockingly, because she hadn’t really thought she would or could, she’d fallen into an exhausted, nearly catatonic sleep.
Unfortunately, instead of feeling better this morning, she just felt worse. Her limbs weighed a cool thousand pounds each. Her head was one giant throbbing ache. Her right nostril was completely clogged with…something she didn’t want to think about. And, to top it all off, she’d forgotten to brush her teeth before bed. So now, her mouth tasted like a combo of used kitty litter and fresh road kill. Blech…
“Heh—” Okay, used kitty litter and fresh road kill all wrapped up in cotton, because she had to swallow twice, her dry throat sticking both times, before she could talk without sounding like Joe Cocker. “Hey, Brenda. That was quick.” She blinked at the glowing red numbers on her digital alarm clock.
“When I got your email last night, I decided to head to the office early this morning. Personal business, eh?” Brenda’s voice sounded perky, as always. And Delilah could not understand people who were cheerful in the morning. It’s like they were aliens that came down from planet Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed. “That sounds interesting. Although,” Brenda’s tone darkened, “if you’re thinking of investing with these guys or something, I’d think twice. They’re in it up to their eyeballs.”
“No, no,” Delilah assured the woman. “It’s not that. It’s—” And then she stopped herself. Because how the hell was she supposed to explain all of yesterday in two sentences? Which was really about the uppermost limit of any conversational energy she had in her. So, she finished lamely with, “It-it’s something else.”
“Mmm,” Brenda purred. “More and more intriguing. Color me curious.”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Delilah promised, because she really did like Brenda despite the whole evil-alien-morning-person shtick. “But right now, I need to know what you found.”
“The usual,” Brenda said. “Three rich guys go into a highly speculative business together and then lose their pants.”
“Wait…” Delilah sat up in the bed, throwing the autumnal-colored comforter aside and realizing she’d put her polka dot pajama bottoms on both inside out and backward. Maybe it was a good thing Mac hadn’t let her go home with him. She’d obviously been a wreck last night, not fit for company. “Three rich guys? I thought the business was founded by two men, Patrick Edens and Blake Parish.”
“Nope,” Brenda said just as Delilah caught sight of her reflection in her dresser mirror. Sonofa— She looked like she was the fresh road kill. Lifting a hand, she tried unsuccessfully to pat some of her hair into place. “There was a third guy, a minor partner, and a silent one at that. I can’t remember his name, but it’s in the files I emailed you. I think it’s spelled out somewhere in the articles of incorporation.”
Another partner? Perhaps another man who’d have reason to see Eve dead? Delilah’s hand halted mid-pat then she lowered it shakily to her throat.
“Brenda,” her heart was a hammer in her chest, “I’ve got to go. But I owe you. Big time. Next time you come into the bar—” the bar where Buzzard had died, the bar she needed to get back up and running, the bar she wasn’t going to think about right now, “—drinks are on me. All night.”
“Deal,” Brenda said, adding, “and toodles,” before clicking off.
Delilah opened up her email account straight from her phone. Quickly scrolling through the files Brenda sent her, she stopped on the one titled “Articles of Incorporation.” Her brain buzzing with curiosity and a weird sense of dread, she opened the document. One name jumped off the page.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed, the room around her dissolving into a blur as she stared down at the email for one heartbeat, then two.
Then she shook herself, shook off the momentary shock, and dialed Information. After impatiently going through the rigmarole of saying what city and state she was in and which business’s phone number she was looking for, she listened as the connection was made. A series of rings sounded. “Come on, Mac,” she growled. “Pick up the damned phone.”
No such luck. She was forwarded to a voice mail explaining that if she was interested in speaking to someone about a custom bike, she should email them at blah, blah, blah.
“Damnit!” She stabbed a finger onto her phone’s screen, catapulting herself from bed and stumbling over to the dresser. Hopping out of her PJs, she wrenched open a drawer, dragged on a pair of jeans, shrugged into a sports bra, and pulled an old KISS T-shirt over her head. Slipping her feet—sans socks—into a grungy pair of red Converse sneakers, she hesitated in front of the mirror, contemplating whether to take the time to wash her face and comb her hair.
Whatever, she decided, waving a hand at her reflection before grabbing her purse and her keys. She wrenched open the back door only to run face-first into a curtain of driving rain. Cursing, she instinctively threw an arm over her head. But then she realized she was trying to protect…what? Her crazy, uncombed hair? Muttering obscenities to herself, she lowered her arm and raced down the metal stairway. Splashing through the puddles of water that’d gathered in the alley and the bar’s tiny parking lot, she skidded to a stop at the corner, hand lifted in an attempt to hail a taxi.
