by Tara Janzen
“Who's Kid?” she asked belatedly, remembering what he'd said.
“Kid Chaos.” He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “My guardian angel.”
THE blank look she gave him at that explanation was enough to bring a brief, disbelieving grin to Quinn's mouth. Regan McKinney. Sweet Jesus. He couldn't believe it. Who would have ever thought she'd show up in Cisco, Utah?
Not him.
Not in a million years.
He'd seen her naked once, or practically naked. Though truth be told, she'd filled out a bit since then. Quite a bit, from all the curves he'd been pressed up against, but at the time she'd been an adolescent's wet dream come true.
Which was all so far beside the point, he couldn't believe he was even thinking about it.
Whoever those guys were, they were looking for her, and they'd been carrying guns. Shit.
“Come on. We've got to get to the barn.” He took off again, pulling her along with him and taking a path that kept the other shacks between them and the road.
Regan McKinney with her amazingly lush, plum-colored mouth had ferreted him out in Cisco with a couple of mean-looking, .357-Magnum-toting mothers on her tail. He didn't believe in coincidence. Something was going down, and he was damn well going to find out what.
CHAPTER
3
KID? DID YOU GET head shots?” Quinn yelled when they entered the barn.
“Running them through the computer, Captain.”
The voice came from the loft. Regan looked up, wondering what kind of man had a name like Kid Chaos and hung out in haymows, ready to shoot someone.
A young man wearing a tight black T-shirt and camouflage pants walked out to the edge of the upper platform and stared down at them.
My God. He was a kid.
Kid Chaos, boy wonder, the thought went through Regan's mind. He looked like one of the high school students who sometimes interned at the museum's lab. He was tall and well built, with short dark hair, and he barely looked old enough to shave—let alone carry the lethal-looking rifle slung over his shoulder and the black handgun shoved into a holster under his arm.
“They were packing some serious hardware,” Quinn called out as they walked farther inside the barn, where two cars—one nice, one not so nice—were parked.
“And the woman?”
“Regan McKinney. Clean, I think.” Quinn slanted her a glance, and Regan felt her cheeks grow warm in an angry blush.
Whatever these two were up to in Cisco, she doubted she was the one they needed to worry about. Quite the contrary, she was the one with reason to worry. She was in the middle of nowhere with a lot of armed men running around, and she hadn't been able to decide yet which ones—if any—were the good guys.
“Regan McKinney.” Quinn gestured toward the haymow. “Meet Kid Chaos.”
“Ma'am.” The boy wonder didn't smile, but he nodded, and Regan automatically did the same.
Sniper, she thought, the word finally coming to her. That's what they called what he did. The realization unnerved her, and she wondered a little queasily if he'd had her in his sights before the two men had shown up.
Somehow, looking at him, she didn't have a doubt.
“Did you get through to Denver?” Quinn asked the younger man.
“Not yet. The guys in the blue SUV started back just before you entered the shack.”
A double beep coming from the back of the barn had both men moving toward a computer set up on a desk. Kid sprinted down the stairs; Quinn limped between the two cars parked in the middle of the barn. He'd been hurt bad, from the looks of it, and she wondered if it was recent or an old wound.
She did a quick scan of the barn. The rickety exterior hadn't prepared her for the inside. It was spacious and orderly, despite the dirt floor and barnwood walls. It was also stifling.
Besides the cars and a slew of tools scattered on a bench, there was a refrigerator and another laptop set up on a table to her right, and that was about it. As the men huddled over the computer, it crossed her mind to bolt. She just as quickly discarded the idea. She'd come to Cisco on a mission, and by a stroke of luck—good or bad, she didn't know which yet—she'd succeeded. She'd found Quinn Younger. She wasn't leaving without asking him a few questions.
“This sucks,” Kid said, glaring down at the computer screen.
Quinn went up behind him and looked over Kid's shoulder, then swore. “Vince Branson? I thought he was still in Chicago.”
“Yeah, well, looks like he followed Roper to the new neighborhood.”
Quinn swore again. “What's with the white-haired guy?”
“Nothing yet. I get a No Access message.”
“I thought we had access to all the feds' files, good guys and bad guys.”
“Yeah, well, up until last Christmas, I thought there was a Santa Claus, too.” Kid kept tapping keys, his attention on the screen.
“What happened?”
“Superman sat me down and explained the facts of life.” Kid flashed Quinn a grin, but it quickly faded when he returned his attention to the computer. “Look, I can hack through it, but that's going to take time, which we ain't got.” He turned, his dark-eyed gaze locking onto Regan's across the length of the barn. “Whatever the hell those guys are up to, they followed her right to our front door. Which means we've probably been made.”
In an instant Regan understood where he came by his nickname. The boy wonder definitely looked like he could do some seriously chaotic damage to anyone not on his side. From the accusatory glare in his eyes, she'd clearly just fallen into that category.
For a second, she reconsidered bolting out the door. Then she realized just exactly how far she would get, about half a step before Kid Chaos was all over her. Besides, she wasn't sure she had the strength to run very far in Cisco's heat. She needed to get back to her car, back to some air-conditioning.
“I don't think she's the enemy, Kid,” Quinn said, leaning back on the computer desk and crossing his arms over his chest.
Regan felt herself flush again. What came off as a threat from Kid Chaos was pure insult from Quinn Younger. He knew who she was, knew her grandfather.
“I came here looking for Wilson,” she said. “That's the only reason I'm here. I don't know any Vince Branson.”
“But he seems to know you,” Quinn replied, pushing away from the desk. “What makes you think Wilson is here in Cisco?”
Before she could answer, Kid interrupted. “If you want me to get up there and take them out, I should do it before they have a chance to move.”
Take them out? Alarmed, Regan shifted her gaze to the younger man. She knew exactly what he meant, and the words sent a chill down her spine. If ordered, Kid Chaos could become a one-man angel-faced death squad. What in the hell had she walked into?
“No. We'll let them have Cisco, if they can work up the balls to take it.”
“What about her car? Dump it?” the boy wonder asked, and Regan's eyes got even wider.
“Whoa, wait a minute.” She moved toward the two men and the desk, working to control the tremor in her voice. “No car dumping. No way. Not my car. If you want to dump a car, dump this one.” She gestured at the car on her left, the ugliest piece of junk she'd ever seen. It had no paint, just four or five shades of black and gray primer. It had only half a dashboard. The rest was a snake pit of wires, gauges, and gizmos. It had no backseat, just a hold full of junk. What it did have was an engine sitting under the open hood, a lot of engine even to her untrained eye.
On her right was a sleek Porsche, which according to her grandfather had been Quinn's specialty as a juvenile, before he'd gotten busted for stealing one too many. With her next step, another memory clicked into place: Quinn had told her to take his car, the Camaro, if things didn't go down right.
She slowed to a stop and gave the ugly piece of junk a closer look.
Yes, she thought. Beneath all the ugly was the classic styling of a Chevy muscle car. It was definitely before her time,
but not before Wilson's—and the muscle car Wilson had dragged home two weeks ago, a candy-apple-red 1967 Dodge Coronet, for the love of God, had been the start of her worrying that the old man was actually losing his mind. Seventy-two-year-old men did not drive supercharged Dodges. When three days later he'd traded the Coronet in for a late-model silver Porsche, she'd thought it was a dubious improvement.
Then he and the Porsche had disappeared.
She still wouldn't have thought of Quinn Younger if it hadn't been for the entry in Wilson's calendar, but the damning evidence was piling up all around her: muscle cars and Porsches, Cisco and bad guys and guns.
He'd asked what made her think Wilson was in Cisco, but she had a feeling he knew the answer to the question a hell of a lot better than she did.
Her hands tightening into fists at her sides, she turned to face Younger.
“I don't know what's going on here, and I don't want to know. Just tell me what's happened to Wilson.” Her words were a demand, devoid of the fear she'd been feeling since Quinn had grabbed her in the shack. “Where's my grandfather?”
Quinn's eyes narrowed.
“Who's Wilson?” the boy asked, turning to Quinn.
“My mentor.” Quinn said it thoughtfully.
“From the chop shop?”
A brief smile curved Quinn's mouth, and he shifted his gaze to Kid. “No. Wilson was way before Steele Street. Before the Air Force.”
Oh, God, Regan thought, staring at him in disbelief. It was true. After all his glory, Quinn Younger had reverted to stealing cars for a chop shop—which proved the worst of what the note had suggested. She hadn't wanted to believe it. Air Force pilots didn't turn to lives of crime and end up living in ghost towns in Utah.
“You sold him those cars, didn't you?” Her demanding tone was gone, replaced by dreadful certainty. “And whoever you stole them from wants them back and has gone after my grandfather.”
“Okay, you're losing me. I sold him what cars?” Quinn asked, cocking his head to one side, his gaze narrowing again. “And what do you mean someone has gone after Wilson? Who? Vince Branson?”
“I don't know, but he's disappeared. Just disappeared.” She heard the tremor in her voice and hated it, but she couldn't control it, not anymore. “Just gone. Two weeks now. Right after he came home with the Porsche.” What had Wilson been thinking, she wondered, to have dealt with the likes of Quinn Younger? Then she remembered: Wilson believed the man was a national hero. He hadn't known he was dealing with a thief.
“Have you told the police?” the thief in question asked, pushing off the desk and starting toward her.
“Yes.” She took a step back, almost stumbled, and he stopped. “They don't believe me. They say this year is no different from any other time when Wilson's dropped out of sight for a while.”
“But it is different,” Quinn said. His inflection encouraged her to explain.
“Yes.” It was so hot in the barn, she could barely breathe. “He always calls home, and this time . . . this time . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she wiped a trickle of perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand. It was just too hot to move. Too hot almost to think.
She squinted at Quinn Younger. He didn't look like he was buying her explanation. In fact, he looked incredibly skeptical—or terribly concerned. It was hard to read a man you'd only met once under awkward circumstances.
Very awkward, she remembered. She and Nikki had visited the Rabbit Valley dig on and off that first summer Wilson had worked with juvenile offenders. They'd had their own tent. Wilson had been so glad to have them with him, but the boys . . . the boys had been a wild bunch. When one of them had walked in on her while she was undressing, she'd been shocked, and horrified, and embarrassingly mesmerized by his frankly appraising green-eyed gaze.
The same dark green gaze holding hers now.
“Kid, get some ice,” he said, walking toward her. The younger man immediately turned toward the refrigerator against the back wall.
Regan didn't move. She wasn't sure she could without falling over. It was so hot. And so hard to breathe.
Don't panic, she told herself. She didn't have anything to prove to either one of them. But she would have their cooperation, by God—or she would have them in jail.
Unless they dumped her car and she never got out of Cisco alive.
Unless they killed her. They both had guns. Kid Chaos had two and apparently no qualms about “taking someone out.”
Oh, great, she thought, feeling a breathless, dizzying panic flutter back to life in her veins despite herself. Just . . . great . . .
AND there she goes. Quinn caught her as her knees buckled and she swooned in a dead faint. He swung her up into his arms.
“Now, isn't this just the exact complication we need,” Kid said, returning with a bag of ice from the freezer, clearly disgusted with the new turn of events.
“I'll take care of her. Just help me with the car. We've got to get out of here.”
“No shit.” Kid rounded the Camaro and swung open the passenger door just in time for Quinn to lift Regan inside.
“Branson probably has a tracker on her Ford,” Quinn said, buckling her in and setting the bag of ice next to her. “Find it, then dump her car at Wild Bill's. I'll see you back here in five minutes.” He fished her car keys out of her pocket and tossed them to Kid.
“And if they move before then?”
“Then make sure they wish they hadn't.”
Kid nodded and took off. No one could figure lines of sight better than a sniper, and given the angle of Burt's on the highway and where Regan had parked, Quinn figured Kid had a small but significant no-fire zone within which to maneuver. It would be skill, not luck, that eased Regan's car down the road without Branson and his buddy being able to see that it was gone or where it was going.
Quinn touched his fingers to the side of her neck and checked her pulse. She turned toward him with a soft moan, her eyes fluttering open and meeting his—and for a moment, he was lost.
Geezus, she was pretty. And married, he reminded himself, if his memory served—and it damn well did. The circumstances of Regan McKinney's wedding weren't something he was likely to forget. It wasn't something he'd bothered to think about for years, but it wasn't something he would forget.
Still, he couldn't help but look. She was pretty, really pretty. The video camera hadn't done her justice. Besides a golden, silky ponytail, she had the kind of bangs that fell across her eyebrows and down the sides of her face, accentuating her cheekbones.
And that mouth. How long had it been since he'd kissed a woman? Months, at least, but when he looked at Regan McKinney, it seemed like forever.
“You . . . you shouldn't have stared at me like that,” she said, her voice breathless, her eyes darkly glazed.
He knew what she was talking about, and the memory came back in vivid detail: her standing in a pool of lantern light inside the canvas tent, a flowered shirt and a bra in her hands, clutched to her chest, but not covering her breasts. Her nipples had been pink, soft pink like her panties. Her mouth had been in an “O” of surprise, for the first few seconds anyway, and he'd gotten hard so fast it had hurt. God, he'd thought he was going to die right there on the spot.
It had been one of the most intensely sexual moments of his life, and he hadn't even touched her.
The only other thing she'd been wearing was a pair of white socks, and to this day he had a sincere appreciation for the whole bobby-socks sex fantasy. Yeah, he could dig it—especially if his fantasy lover was wearing pink panties and had blond hair and was completely stacked and had a mouth that was begging to be kissed—which of course they always were.
“I couldn't not stare,” he admitted, lifting his hand and sliding a silken strand of hair behind her ear. “You were perfect.”
“Oh.”
Oh was right, as in oh, shit. He had to move away from her before he did something he was guaranteed to regret—like kiss her. He'd gone to see Pro
fessor McKinney four years after that summer, after he'd started college and joined ROTC, after he'd set his life on a path that wasn't going to include lockdown in the state penitentiary. The old man had been pleased to see him, more than pleased, and eager to hear his plans, and a little less eager to explain why the house was in such a state. Quinn remembered there had been dresses tossed all over the dining room in the big old house up on the Hill in Boulder, fancy dresses. His granddaughter was getting married, Wilson had said, not the baby, not Nikki, but Regan, his oldest. Too young at nineteen, the old man had complained, but there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
Quinn hadn't seen the professor since, and he'd refused to admit, even to himself, that he'd gone to Boulder that day hoping to talk with the girl he'd seen practically naked all those summers ago.
His gaze drifted over the woman looking up at him from the contoured depths of the Camaro's bucket seat. That girl had grown into a beautiful woman. Beautiful married woman, he reminded himself.
Her nose was too broad across the bridge for her to be conventionally pretty, her eyebrows too dark of a contrast with all that blond hair and her light gray eyes, but Quinn was no less intrigued than he'd been when he'd first seen her as a teenager. The lavender shirt that had looked so soft and fresh when she'd first stepped into Burt's had long since wilted in the heat. Dampened by her sweat, it clung to her body in a thousand fascinating ways.
In his tried-and-true fantasies, that night in the tent had continued with her dropping her shirt. An event as unlikely to occur now as it had been back then.
Right.
Taking a breath, he broke eye contact with her and tore open the top of the bag of ice.
“Here,” he said, slipping a small cube between her lips. “Suck on this, and when you're done, I'll give you some Gatorade to get your electrolytes back up to speed.”