Hell for Leather: Black Knights Inc. Read Online Free

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