Crazy Sweet (8 page)

CHAPTER

9

G
ILLIAN HAD PUT the boy to bed, drugged with sex and all but knocked out. Jet lag from
Thailand
hadn’t hurt the cause, and was probably what had actually pushed Travis over the edge into such a deep sleep. Either way, she was afraid he wasn’t going to get to rest for long. His phone was going to ring in about twenty minutes, and after he took the call she’d programmed to his number, he was going to be busy the rest of the night—busy someplace else.

And she would be on her own, which was the way things had to be.

She crossed the loft again, heading toward her gun safe and letting her gaze slide over him where he lay naked on top of the sheets. He was so beautiful, his face almost sweet in sleep, like the angel he was, but there was nothing sweet about his body. Six feet of raw power and testosterone roped with muscle and sinew, he was a force to be reckoned with, a force of destruction when he so chose—and a force of near unbearable pleasure when she chose.

She let her gaze run back over the length of him and hardened herself against the easy way, against her own weakness. She had a job to do, and he couldn’t be any part of it, not if she was to live with herself afterward.

And she
would
live with herself. She always did, no matter what she’d done—and she’d done things in the last two years that other people, so-called normal people, couldn’t even imagine, let alone carry out.

They didn’t need to, because guys like Travis, and Creed, and Hawkins were there, doing it for them. Guys like Kid and Quinn were there, watching their backs. Guys like Rydell were there, working in
Central America
against odds he knew he would never beat.

She was there.

And Dylan Hart was there.

She slowly came to a stop, only partway to her destination.

Dylan Hart
—now, there was a name to give a girl pause, to make her think.

Hart.
Yeah, definitely a name to get a girl’s attention, and maybe make her break out in a sweat, a cold sweat, because that’s what Hart was: cold.

Hart knew about the white room. He’d been in an identical place on the
island
of
Sumba
,
Indonesia
, on the receiving end of one of Dr. Souk’s psychopharmaceutical concoctions, a drug known as NG4, but the NG4 hadn’t changed him the way XT7 had changed her. Hart had been a ruthless son of a bitch before he’d been messed with, and he was still ruthless, still cold, still hard. He only had one soft spot in his life, and it wasn’t her. Not by a long shot.

The only reason Grant let her operate through SDF was because Dylan Hart had taken personal responsibility for her, and Hart had made it very clear where the lines on his responsibility lay, and he’d made it absofuckinglutely crystal clear where her responsibilities lay.

She glanced down at the ring of keys in her hand.

She was getting ready to cross one of Hart’s lines, and there were going to be repercussions. Big ones. Maybe deadly.

Her gaze went back to Travis. She loved him too much to drag him down with her into this, to have him hunted by Hart, and Hawkins, and Creed, to have General Grant sic Kid Chaos on him, to ever put him in danger of being in Kid’s sights.

It could happen.

Depending on how successful she was in her quest, it
would
happen. She knew it. Hart hadn’t candy-coated the facts of her employment or of her termination, and SDF would not tolerate a rogue operator. The chop-shop boys broke a lot of rules, most of the rules, but the few they kept, they held dear. Their survival depended on it, and vigilantism had no place in their operating procedures or in their hearts. They were the good guys, and not a one of them doubted it, because not a one of them had ever killed outside the law. They’d all rattled the chain of command, but none of them had ever broken it. They acted under orders, and only under orders.

She knew all this. She’d watched SDF in action. She’d read all the files. She knew the inviolate rules.

And yet…and yet…
she closed her hand around the keys, so tightly she could feel the sharp edges pressing into her skin, but not so tightly that they cut. She needed her hands tonight, to hold her guns, to hold her knives, the tools of her trade. The line had already been crossed. She’d crossed it when she’d tagged Royce’s walls with
Red Dog 303,
and there was no turning back.

None. Not when everything inside her pushed her on. Not when she’d been forced to her knees more times than she could bear by the monster in her mind.

If Hart wanted her after the deed was done, he was going to have to find her, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. Once she started running, no one would ever find her—no one, not even the angel, and he would look.

Oh, God, he would look, except in the one place he wouldn’t want to find her.

Shifting her attention back to the keys, she slipped them around on the ring. There was no other way. When she found the set she needed, she started forward again. The door on her safe was made of heavy steel, and after releasing the locks, she swung it open to reveal enough weapons and ordnance to pull off a small island coup.

Her gaze instinctively went to her sniper rifle first. The Knight SR-25 semiauto was the most powerful and longest-ranged weapon she owned, but it wasn’t appropriate for the battle she saw shaping in her mind, the same battle she always saw, the one she’d war-gamed half a dozen times on the surrounding rooftops and in the alleys and the creek bed where she and Johnny Ramos, one of SDF’s mechanics, paintballed.

The ACOG-scoped M4 carbine wasn’t going anywhere tonight either. She’d be facing a superior force in both numbers and firepower, and she couldn’t afford to get in a protracted firefight, where she could get “fixed” in position by opposing fire, flanked, and overrun. It was going to be “shoot and scoot” all night long, until she took a prisoner.

Then things were going to get serious.

Royce wouldn’t come himself. He’d send his men to capture her if they could, and kill her if they had to, and one of those men was going to tell her where Royce was waiting. The ex-CIA agent truly was a sick bastard, with a misogynistic rap sheet a mile long, and she knew his first choice would be to have a little fun with the woman who’d screwed five of his deals.

Fine with her. He could want whatever his heart desired. All she needed was his location…all she needed was to be right tonight.

She hated to doubt herself, tried to shake it off, but prescience was a tricky thing. She’d geared up twice before, thinking Royce had found her, that the bastard had finally figured out who and what Red Dog was and was coming for her.

She’d been wrong both times.

But not tonight, she thought. Tonight felt different. Tonight she was afraid.

Reaching up, she pulled a tan, innocuous-looking briefcase off the top shelf. In a world of functional but ugly combat weapons, the pistol in the case stood apart. Perfectly balanced, finely finished, and as exquisitely crafted as a century-old Japanese
katana
blade, the TC Contender was a work of art.

She set the case on her workbench, turned the cipher lock to its combination, and popped open the top. Two scoped barrel assemblies occupied half the case, a .44 Remington Magnum threaded for a sound suppressor, and a fourteen-inch .223 Remington, both set into custom-formed green felt recesses. The frame and forestock of the pistol occupied the lower right corner of the case, with the remaining recesses filled with cleaning supplies and a hand-tooled leather cartridge cuff she wore cinched around her right forearm for fast reloads.

She gently ran her fingers over the polished ebony grip and traced the silver-inlaid dragon scrollwork etched into the frame. The Contender was pure Buck Rogers, black and beautiful, blued steel with a long sensual curve on the trigger guard, its grip custom-raked to fit her hand. And its purpose—its only real purpose—was to kill things; more specifically, in her line of work, to kill people.

Like Anthony F. Royce.

The weapon’s only disadvantage was its break-open, single-shot action—only one round could be loaded and fired at a time. But Gillian could fire, load, and fire again in less than six seconds, and she could do it with dead-on accuracy, hitting a silhouette’s center chest ring ten out of ten times at 150 meters with her .223 barrel and a 69-grain match bullet loaded to 2,820 feet per second.

Kid had trained her well, and so had Superman. With the Contender for offense, and her Trijicon .40 caliber long-slide Glock for defense, she had the lightest, most compact package possible for the night ahead.

All she needed was for her enemy to come to
Denver
, for Royce to finally come after her.

CHAPTER

10

F
ROM THE DEPTHS of a cast-iron tub that had seen better days, Honey searched through her tote bag. She needed a smoke. Honest to God, and if she couldn’t find one of those little cigarillos she’d dropped in there this afternoon, she just might—

Oh, hell, she didn’t know what she’d do. Do without, that was for damn sure, but other than that, her options were damn slim.

Dress casual,
Julia had said.
Bring the money to the church, St. Mary’s. Father Bartolo will be there at
eight o’clock
.

Honey checked her watch and swore under her breath. She was going to be late, as usual. But my God, a bomb had just gone off in the street.

Her hands were still shaking. She wasn’t sure, but she thought her heart was shaking, too, inside her chest. Her ears hurt. Her shin hurt where she’d hit it diving into the bathtub, and her butt hurt for no reason other than she was sitting in a bathtub with no water, no bubbles, no scented oils, no—

Oh, thank God. She’d found a cigarillo.

More rummaging produced a book of matches. That had been good thinking, she told herself, to grab the matches off the reception desk this afternoon before she’d left the Royal Suites Hotel to begin her big awful adventure. Much more good thinking like that and she’d probably end up dead.

She stuck the cigarillo between her lips, struck a match, then held the trembling flame to the small cigar. A couple of puffs later, she was in business: smoking, in a rusty bathtub, with plaster falling off the walls and landing on her dress.

Gripping the cigarillo between her teeth, she brushed at the bits and flakes of gold-painted plaster. The whole situation was tawdry in the extreme, and to think she could have been on St. Bart’s with maid service and a live-in cook—and no bombs.

Julia Ann-Marie needed her bottom paddled, but Honey didn’t think the church allowed anyone to paddle a nun’s bottom.

A nun. Good God, the
York
family was still reeling: a papist in their midst, and even more amazing, a woman sworn to virginity.

Honey inhaled, choked a bit, got it all back under control, and started looking for one of those little bottles of booze she’d snagged off the plane this morning.

She needed her gun back, and Mr. You Don’t Need to Know My Name could either give it to her or give her two hundred dollars—but she wanted the gun. It wasn’t safe to be in San Luis without a gun, certainly not where she was going. Anything could happen on her way to the bakery, and she needed to be prepared with something besides a book of matches, a small cigar, and a shot of bourbon under her belt.

Though, truth be told, things could be worse. Things could always be worse, but they weren’t, so she wasn’t going to think about it.

Her next breath was a little ragged on the end, and she started searching harder for the bourbon. She remembered “worse.” She would never forget “worse,” no matter how long she lived, so what in the hell was she doing in
Central America
again? Anywhere in
Central America
?

Saving Sister Julia’s orphans, was the answer. Good little WASP that she was, she’d taken on a painfully compelling mission of mercy for the Catholic Church, and all she needed was a smoke and a bottle of bourbon, or vodka, or gin, or whatever came up first, to steady her nerves.

Oh, hell, yes, Honey York knew exactly what she was doing, which was not freaking out in a bathtub.

Maybe a Xanax was in order.

Sure it was, and the bottle of tiny white pills had to be in her damn tote bag somewhere, probably rolling around with the booze, which she finally found. Her hand had barely closed around a bottle, though, when the lights went out.

“Fuck.” That came straight out of Mr. You Don’t Need to Know My Name’s mouth, and she couldn’t have agreed more.

She heard him crunching across the broken glass on the far side of the room. When the beam of his flashlight hit her full in the face, it darn near blinded her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No.” She instinctively lifted her hand in front of her eyes.

“You’re drinking.” It was a flat statement, not a question, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected just the slightest amount of censure in his voice. “And smoking.”

“Yes.” She was having a drink, and a smoke, or at least trying to have a drink, and if he didn’t like it, he could suck eggs.

Then the lights came back on—thank God.

She checked the bottle in her hand. She’d gotten one of the gin bottles, which really wasn’t a good idea. She always got a little excitable on gin. It was a family trait. She dropped it back in her tote and rustled around some more.

“Great. Lights,” he said. “That’s better.”

It would be, if she could find the bourbon.

“Come on out of there, Ms. York,” he continued, putting his flashlight back in one of the cargo pockets on his pants, “and I’ll get you back to your hotel.”

“No.”

“No?”

Aha
—bourbon. She lifted the small bottle out of her tote and twisted off the lid, but before she could get it to her mouth, another explosion rocked the room, a big one, from farther up the street, and all the lights went out again.

“Fuck.”

Exactly, and then some. She was frozen in the tub, every cell in her body trembling. All the air in the room had just pushed in on her, hard, like a shove, then released. Big chunks of plaster were falling off the walls. She could feel them landing on her, and she’d actually bounced. Just a little, but enough to scare her spitless. She could die here, for the love of God.

One lousy day in San Luis, one lousy plane hop from her beach cabana in
Puerto Vallarta
, and she could die.

She’d have to skip the Xanax, goddammit. Dying
calmly
was completely out of the question.

He flipped his flashlight back on and beamed it in her face, the jerk. “What hotel are you staying at, Ms. York? I’m not going to ask again.”

Good.

“I—I want my g-gun back, and my bullet.”

That got her a dose of stone-cold silence.

“I’ll return them to you when you’re back at your hotel,” he finally said.

“I-I’m not going back to my hotel.” She pressed the bottle to her lips and tilted it back.

Oh, God, that felt good, a warm stream of bourbon running down her throat.

“Why not?”

She choked once, then caught her breath and let out a little cough. “I’m—I’m on a mission of mercy.” Not that it was any of his business.

Whatever he said to that, and he said quite a bit, he said it in Spanish, which was just as well. She didn’t need his opinion, or his approval, and she did not need a translation. His tone had said it all, and quite frankly, she was offended.

He turned and headed back into the bedroom. She heard him crunching around on the broken glass, prowling while he went through his sotto voce tirade. When a small flame flared up in the bedroom, she realized he’d been looking for a candle.

Then he was back, looming over her and anchoring the candle on an iron shelf bolted into the wall behind the bathtub.

“
Mission
of mercy,” he said, straightening up, his voice so cold, he could have owned the patent. “Explain what you mean by a mission of mercy.”

Screw him.

“I owe you five hundred dollars, not an explanation,” she said in a voice that, despite the tremor in it, she thought was cool enough to put him in his place.

She was wrong.

“THE price for my services just went up, then. You want to stay in my bathtub? Great. It’s going to cost you two grand to get out.”

Mission
of mercy, his ass. Smith wasn’t buying it for a split second. In that dress, the only mercy she was dishing out was to that rich old guy who’d lost her, and that guy was going to be looking for her, looking hard, him and whoever else he could pull in on the search, beginning with the police. Smith bet a dozen people had seen her run into the Palacio, and he’d be damned if he let her be found in his room.

Like it or not, she was going back where she’d come from.

“B-but that’s—that’s…” She looked up at him, words failing her.

Just as well. He wasn’t in the mood to hear any dissent.

“And every minute you stay in my bathtub is going to cost you another thousand dollars.” This could be his best “get rich quick” scheme yet. Not that he’d had many.

“I am
not
paying to stay in your bathtub.”

Perfect.

“Then you better start setting up house, sweetheart, because you ain’t getting out.”

“The hell I’m not.” She clamped her cigarillo between her teeth and started to struggle to her feet, a pretty good trick in platform heels inside a cast-iron tub. “You…you can’t make me—”

“Oh, yes, I can.” He reached for her, his hand closing on her waist, the other grabbing for her tote before the whole kit and caboodle of her toppled back into the tub.

What in the hell,
he thought, hefting the tote in his hand. It weighed a ton.

Still holding her around the waist, he lifted the bag away from her, and wondered why he hadn’t just thought of that in the first place.

“You…you—” She made a grab for it, but it was no contest. He just held it higher.

“Yeah, yeah, me.” Her hotel key was bound to be in the bag, along with all her identification and anything else he might like to know, and he should have figured all that out about two minutes ago. The only possible excuse he’d accept was the car bomb and whatever else had been blown to smithereens out on the street. Explosives had a way of riveting a guy’s attention.

“You can’t.” She made another small lunge for the tote, and rather than let her fall on her face, he used her forward momentum to help swing her over the side of the tub—and he checked his watch.

“You owe me three thousand dollars.” He knew women, and this one was small, a hundred and ten, a hundred and fifteen pounds max—and just about ready to come out of that dress. The whole polka-dotted wonder of it had gotten a bit twisted around in the tub, and her jacket had slipped off one shoulder.

Geezus.

“You can go to hell.” She pulled the jacket back up, for all the damn good that did. It was teeny, and covered up exactly nothing.

“Been there, done that.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said, taking the cigarillo out from between her teeth and exhaling a cloud of smoke. “You can’t try to rescue me one second and steal my bag the next. It doesn’t make sense.”

“The only thing that doesn’t make sense is you, in San Luis, on the wrong side of town, in that dress.”

“There is nothing wrong with my dress,” she said, using both her hands to pull the dress down and smooth it into place—adjusting the halter top, kind of shaking herself back into it, a move that all but froze him to the floor. “It’s off the rack, that’s all. I was
told
to dress casual.”

Finishing up, she slid her palms over her hips and tugged at the hem.

Off the rack.
Right.
Casual.

“Who told you to dress casual?”

“None of your business.” She finished her adjustments, looked up at him, and took a long drag off the cigarillo. “Give me back my bag.”

Her hands were trembling, the cigar was trembling, and she was standing there in a pair of bow-tied platform heels, not even close to reaching his shoulder height, trying to hold her own against him.

She couldn’t do it. Not on a bet. Not on any day of the week.

“No.” Hell, she couldn’t even hold her own against her hairdo. The curls had won, big time, a riot of them. They were all topsy-turvy, going every which way, with the polka-dot bows stuck here and there, looking ridiculous.

But she didn’t look ridiculous. No way. She looked tumbled.