by Tara Janzen
“Very funny, Jack. You make me so … so damn …”
Words seemed to fail her, but Jack had a few, starting with furious, as in “you make me so damn furious.” It seemed to be his specialty. And for him, he would have picked horny, as in “you make me so damn horny.” Because she did, flat out.
Or maybe it was this damn room. It was made for decadence. Geezus. The ceiling was twelve feet high, and all the walls were covered in baby blue wallpaper with a lot of ornate stuff everywhere. The bed was huge and piled high with brocade pillows, and the whole thing looked about as silky, sexy, and soft as she did.
Who had skin like hers, he wondered, besides her? Not most girls, he knew that much. Scout’s skin was so smooth and creamy. He figured she must taste delicious—like he was ever going to find out.
“Steak,” he said, heading past her for the phone. “I’m ordering one.” And under any other circumstances, he would have added a bottle of Patrón. “If you want to stay mission-ready, Pansy, I suggest you order—”
“What did you call me?” she cut him off in midsentence, her voice sharp.
“Pansy,” he said, daring all and damn the torpedoes. “Pansy Louise Leesom, baby, that’s you.”
“Nobody calls me Pansy.”
“Well, I’m starting,” he said, on the move again, heading toward the phone and his steak. It was time to set a few things straight between them, and Pansy was one of those things.
But the girl was quick. She grabbed hold of his arm as he passed and held him where he stood—and he let her.
She opened her mouth to say something smart-ass and probably mean, then changed her mind and came out with the truth. “Nobody’s called me Pansy since my mom died. It was my dad who always called me Scout. He said he needed me to be strong.”
And that just tore him up.
Jack could just imagine her as a little girl, with her hair all wildly curly. She’d have been the cutest little Pansy Louise ever.
“The people at Steele Street,” she said. “They knew about my mom, and they knew a lot about my dad being a Marine, but they don’t know what happened to him in the end. They didn’t know that, Jack. Con does, I’m sure, but it’s one of those things he won’t talk about ever, so I think the worst, and I look at Con, at how he’s scarred, and I wonder what happened to my dad.”
Oh, man, he couldn’t go there. She was tough, but she wasn’t that tough.
Hell, he wasn’t that tough, and he’d seen it.
“Do you want me to go back in there and see what I can find out?” He would, and she knew it, and maybe he would find something he could tell her, something bearable that would fill in the empty places for her. No matter how much they fought, she knew she could count on him, that he would go straight into the fires of hell for her. That was how they rolled, together, a team.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and looking away, releasing him. “I don’t want you going back into Steele Street, but God, I wish Con was here.”
Yeah, he did, too.
“So what about this Dutch guy you met in London?” He didn’t really want to know, but he could be polite. What he wanted was to pretend she would always just be with Con, taking care of the boss, while Jack ran around the world taking care of business. “Con said his name was Karl.”
“Karl is—”
“Wait a minute,” he cut her off, and was damned grateful for the excuse. “Look at this.” He directed her attention to the television.
Geezus. Two guys had been torn apart over on the west side of Denver. The news stations weren’t identifying them, but from what Con had told him, Jack figured it was King Banner and Rock Howe—but they were dead. Con had left them alive.
Fuck.
Now, who in the hell had dropped them? he wondered. King and Rock had been two of the most skilled scumbags on the face of the earth.
And the hostage Con had talked about was a woman named Jane Linden. The station kept her picture up in the corner of the screen, asking people to call in if they saw her. The rest of the screen was full of cop cars and an ambulance, lights flashing, and lots of uniformed people running around.
“Cripes, Jack. There’s a manhunt going on out there,” Scout said. “These people think Con killed King and Rock and that he kidnapped that woman, and they’re out for blood.”
It didn’t look good, and then the night really went to hell.
His phone rang.
He took it out of his pocket and keyed the receive button. “Go.”
“Are you at the hotel?” Con asked.
“Yes.” Jack still had his eyes on the television. “We’re watching the news, and your party over on the west side is all over it. Everybody out there covering the story is pretty wound up. I hope you’re watching your ass.”
“I am. Stay put at the hotel. I’ll be there in an hour, maybe two.”
An hour? Two? What the hell was the boss going to be doing for an hour or two?
“Why so long? What’s up?”
“Complications.”
“The girl?” Jack was looking right at Ms. Jane Linden, and, yeah, she looked plenty complicated to him.
There was a brief pause before Con spoke again.
“We got what we came for. You keep Scout safe. That’s the job, your only job. I’ll contact you, if I need you.” And he signed off.
Well, hell. Jack looked over at Scout, who was looking at him like she wanted to know what was going on—and all he could think was that so the hell did he.
Standing inside the India Gate suite at the Kashmir Club, Con hung up the phone. There had been no forced entry here, not by him or anybody else, but there had been a struggle.
A streak of blood on the wall looked like somebody had been slammed into it with a fair amount of force. The painting above the smear was hanging crookedly. One lamp had been knocked over in the suite, and a chair had been pulled off center, as if someone had grabbed on to it or been knocked into it.
Con had a good idea of who that someone had been—Randolph Lancaster—and he didn’t need Jack or Scout for what happened next. Where he was going, their presence was a complication, not a help. He knew who had taken Lancaster, and he knew where they’d taken him: 738 Steele Street.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Cool and smooth in the gusting rain, hard and hollow like his heart, Monk climbed hand over hand up the old freight elevator at 738 Steele Street, an old-style contraption of iron and steel, of I-beams and bolts, a beast from the machine age. He’d seen the cameras trained on the alley below and had crawled the wall to avoid them. The building was old brick with lots of handholds for the strong.
The girl was out cold.
Balancing on a strut, he wiped the rain from his face and looked up to see lightning crackling across the sky. He’d taken a sheet off a clothesline on Secaro Street and wrapped it around Jane, securing her in a cotton cocoon. Slung over his shoulder, sodden wet and limp as a rag, she wasn’t giving him any trouble.
Somewhere inside the building there would be a safe place to stash her, a hidey-hole no one would ever find, a private place where he could come back to her when he finished with Farrel and Lancaster. She would be his prize then, his gift to himself, his warrior’s tribute.
Thunder rolled in after the lightning, and he kept climbing. At the seventh floor, the old elevator ended, and light shone from every window. With one blow, he could break the glass and enter, but when he swung over and looked inside, his breath caught for a suspended moment, and he stayed his fist.
Three—he counted the people in the high-tech office. Two for killing, the men, both dark-haired and heavily armed, and one for stealing and keeping, the one on the communications console—Skeeter Bang-Hart.
She was more beautiful in real life than in her photographs, unexpected, like the woman over his shoulder, a fantasy vision of long-ago nights, of rough city streets and the men who ruled them, and of the women who ruled those men. She was one of those women, pale of skin with a sc
ar on her face and a Glock tucked under her arm in a shoulder holster. Her hair was long and silvery, her body lithe and strong. He could see the supple movement of her muscles beneath the thin material of her dress, and he was riveted by the sight.
He wanted her, the same way he wanted the girl in the golden dress, viscerally, like a heated need in his blood, and in an instant, he made his decision. If nothing else this night, she, too, would be his tribute, his by right of victory and plunder.
Tonight, he ruled the world.
The truth welled up inside him and filled his heart with desire and his throat with a howl he dared not give voice to—not if he was to fulfill his mission.
She would be his, though. He promised himself.
Grasping the sill and leaning back, he looked up the side of the building. The floors directly above him were dark and had balconies. He would enter from up there, secure both of the women, and go hunting for Farrel and Lancaster.
He took one more look into the office, at the woman, then swung himself over to the next handhold and began climbing higher up the side of the building, moving toward the balcony a few yards above him.
* * *
Skeeter stood in front of the comm console in the main office at Steele Street, frozen in place, listening to Hawkins on the radio. Zach and Quinn were with her, hearing the same damn bad news, and she’d routed it to Dylan down in the basement. Kid was scheduled to return to the office any minute to relieve Quinn—but Skeeter doubted if anyone was going to get relieved tonight.
“It was Monk. We’re sure of it.” Hawkins’s voice was calm and steady, but Skeeter’s pulse was racing. “Creed saw him cut through the neighbor’s yard. MNK-1 is fast, faster than Red Dog.”
Lancaster’s beast, the one who had twisted King Banner’s arm off and taken a bite out of it—geezus, it made her blood run cold, and the bastard had snatched Jane and taken off with her just seconds after J.T. had disappeared from Alazne Morello’s. SDF was losing on every front.
Jane. Skeeter had to fight a desperate urge to hit the streets and find her friend.
“Have you called Gillian?” Dylan asked, his voice terse. No one else could track like Gillian, not even Creed.
“Yes, and the Jungle Boy is with her at Alazne’s,” Hawkins said.
“How far out are you?” Dylan asked.
“Five minutes.”
“Call me when you get here,” Dylan said. “We need to be ready to deploy the instant we get word on Jane.”
Hawkins no sooner signed off than the hairs along the back of Skeeter’s neck suddenly rose straight up.
She whirled toward the window at her back and saw a pale flash of something slip off to the side. Geezus. A bolt of lightning crashed in the night sky, and for an instant, she wondered if that’s what she’d seen, a precursor of the lightning strike.
Bull, she decided. She’d never been afraid of lightning in her life, and no matter how bad the night had become, she wasn’t a girl who jumped at shadows.
Striding over to the window, she drew her Glock .45 out of her shoulder holster.
“Do we have a problem, Skeeter?” Zach asked, drawing his own semiautomatic pistol.
“I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all.” And she knew that was enough for him. It was enough for everybody at Steele Street.
At the window, she threw open the sash and started to look out, but Zach stepped in front of her.
“Let me do this,” he said, then carefully checked out the edges of the opening before venturing a bit farther out to see all around.
Skeeter held her tongue, knowing nothing was going to keep these boys from trying to rein her in.
Quinn had taken up a position on the east wall, where he could see out his side.
A loud roll of thunder bellowed and rumbled above the city, and when Zach ducked his head back inside, he was wiping rain off his face.
“I’m heading upstairs, going to check things out.”
“Did you see anything?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t. Is Kid on his way up here?”
“Should arrive any minute,” she said, checking the time on her computer screen.
“Good. When he gets here, we’ll—”
The sound of breaking glass and a scuffling thump came from the floor above them, and the three were off like shots, weapons drawn, heading for the stairs. They cleared the single flight in seconds and came out onto Steele Street’s state-of-the-art shooting range, a large open area that took up half the eighth floor. The other half housed the armory workshops and weapons rooms.
Quickly, one by one, they cleared the range and the rooms, working their way back to the workshop directly above the office, only to find it empty save for the wet footprints leading out of it and the broken glass on the floor below the window.
Skeeter reached the glass and bent down to pick up a blood-smeared piece. When she brought it to her nose, every “Spidey” sense she had red-lined with the smell and weight of the intruder. Sweet geezus. Dread coursed through her veins. Then came the cry, a muffled sound of panic and fear coming from the floor above them.
Jane. She knew it down to her bones.
“Get back to the comm. Call Creed and get him here,” Zach said, running for the stairs that led to the ninth floor. Quinn was already hitting the first step.
Skeeter dropped the bloody shard and ran back through the firing range, heading toward the stairs leading down to the office. She didn’t question Zach’s orders—and she didn’t see MNK-1 drop out of the rafters and land silently in a crouch behind her, ready to spring.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“I’m scared, Jack.”
Yeah, so was he.
“Are you going to order a steak?”
It wasn’t at the top of his list anymore, not after talking to Con.
What he wanted to do was get over to the Kashmir Club. He had a feeling that’s where Con had gone—but that meant leaving Scout alone at the Armstrong, and that was not going to happen, and he sure as hell was not going to take her anyplace he might run into trouble, like the Kashmir Club.
Con had tied his hands, and the boss damn well knew it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea to get some food. If you can, Scout, it would be good for you to eat something, too.”
“Sure, I guess I—” She stopped abruptly when the phone in her pocket rang.
It could be only one person, Red Dog, and he quickly reached out and took her hand before she could pull the phone out.
“Not yet, Scout,” he said. “It may get to that before the night is over, but not yet … please.”
And there they stood, the two of them in the middle of the room, holding hands while the phone rang and rang. She didn’t try to answer it, and he didn’t let go of her, and when it finally quit ringing, he was still holding her hand.
Unable to resist, he smoothed his thumb across her skin—and he reveled at the softness. She wasn’t like other girls, not like any other girl he’d ever met.
“Pansy,” he said, and let out a short laugh. “I couldn’t believe it when Con told me. You, of all girls, named Pansy.”
“Pansy Louise.” She was holding his hand, too, and Jack was very aware of the fact.
“So what does this Karl guy call you?” He was giving himself away. He knew it, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“Ms. Leesom.”
“Ms. Leesom?” He looked at her, not quite sure what she meant.
“Dr. Karl Reynder is the man teaching me to speak Dutch.”
“He’s your teacher, not your boyfriend?” Oh, man, was Con going to get it—if they all got out of here.
“Teacher, sixty-four years old if he’s a day,” she confirmed.
He’d be damned.
“So why did Con—” He cut himself off. So why did Con make it sound like she was in love with the guy—that’s what he’d been about to ask.
But he knew the answer.
>
Con was tying up loose ends, getting ready for the endgame. Jack had been played.
And rightly so.
He was going to need Scout as much as she needed him by the time this was all over.
He smoothed his thumb across the back of her hand again. He was paler than she, his skin rougher, his hands a lot bigger. Hell, the veins in his arms were bigger than her fingers—okay, not quite, but he was a big guy, and Pansy Louise “Scout” Leesom was everything he’d ever dreamed of, everything he’d ever wanted but had just been too damned chicken to try to get. Rejection from her would have thrown him for a loop. The only thing worse would have been her falling for another guy—and Con had known it.
He’d never known the boss to meddle in anybody’s personal life—except for raising Scout. He’d taken that job on because of her father, but he’d stayed on the job because of Scout. Con loved her, and the boss wasn’t alone in those heartfelt feelings.
“I love you, Scout.” The words slipped out so easily, words he’d never dreamed he would dare to say—words he’d never said to another woman. “I love everything about you, even the way you get mad at me.”
He kept smoothing his thumb over her hand and marveling at the softness of her skin. She was so beautiful, so much more than he deserved, but she was meant to be his. He knew that for certain, but he also knew things didn’t always work out the way they should.
Looking up, he met her gaze. “I love you, Scout. I’ve loved you since forever.”
She was gorgeous, her hair still all tied up with the scarf, dark curls tumbling down every which way, her eyes so green and so focused on him with a look that said she didn’t quite believe him. “You’ve done a darn good job of hiding the fact, Jack.”
He was a jerk. He knew it. But the truth was out now, and he was going to run with it.
“You’re the only thing on the face of the earth that scares me, Scout. I figured if I never told you how I felt, then I could keep cruising on, thinking there might be a chance. But if I stepped up and you turned away, then it was over, no coming back.”
“So you’re stepping up now?”