by Tara Janzen
At Steele Street, a “Sheila” was any of the highly maintained but completely nondescript cars they used when a low profile was important.
Skeeter had given him Adeline, who was anything but nondescript, but Travis knew she’d done it for a reason, and as long as Travis got Addy home in one piece, there wouldn’t be a problem. Quinn would never begrudge the death of a car to save a teammate—but Quinn did love his cars.
“Roger,” he said to Hawkins, keying his mic. Then he looked at Gillian. She didn’t know Royce was in the neighborhood. She didn’t know Hawkins had been on his tail since he’d landed in Denver—and part of Travis wanted to keep it that way.
But that option really wasn’t available. They were in this fight together, whether he liked it or not. There was no way to leave her behind, no safe way.
Looking at her, he was still so angry he could hardly see straight—but that was all going to have to wait. They had one job right now, a job made up of two very specific tasks: Kill the bad guys, and survive.
CHAPTER
27
HE HAD A TATTOO.
It was the last thing Honey would have expected, that C. Smith Rydell would have a tattoo, especially a cosmic tattoo, but there it was, a fiery, blazing sunburst on his left shoulder. He was asleep on his stomach, which was giving her the absolute best view she’d ever had of a naked man.
Most men were not built like C. Smith, not even close. Even the guys she knew who worked out were a bit lacking. Their muscles were as big, which meant they were very big, but the guys she knew could not be classified as rugged, except possibly her oldest brother, who managed to get out in the world and take it on a bit.
Rydell took it on a lot. The truth was in every line of his body, in the truly impressive curve of his biceps, in the beard-stubbled angle of his jaw, in the hard, muscular length of his legs. He was beautiful, possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, and she’d actually dated a Calvin Klein underwear model once.
The tattoo fit him. God knew, she felt like she’d been dipped in fiery, blazing sunlight—and that was just the sex. The way he’d held her afterward had been a whole other level of comfort and warmth, and definitely of cosmic proportions. It all made her wonder if she should have tried a one-night stand earlier in life. He was her first, and for sheer, mind-blowing, orgasmic power, he’d gone straight to the top of her very short list of lovers.
She was going to be thinking about him in the years to come, she could guarantee it, and maybe he would think about her. She finished signing her copy of The Sorority Girl’s Guide to Self-Help Sex: To C. Smith Rydell, with love and fondest memories. Honoria York-Lytton.
Possibly the “fondest memories” part was a little overdone, but she didn’t want him to think she hadn’t enjoyed their time together—enjoyed it the way she enjoyed breathing and dark-chocolate-dipped cherries.
She brought her fingers to her temple, closed her eyes, and took a breath. One-night stand. God, what a shame. She would love to make love with him again, oh, maybe a few hundred times.
She took another breath and shook the feeling off. Being sad for something that never should have been and had the cosmic probability of a gnat’s chances in hell of ever happening again was ridiculous. She knew what people thought when they first met her, that she was cute, and possibly, probably vacuous, that the York-Lytton money negated any necessity of her ever using her brain. She knew what she looked like, especially in her girly-girl couture. She spent a helluva lot of money to look the way she did. For her to leave the house without at least five hundred dollars’ worth of whatever hanging off of her had never happened, ever, and a thousand or more was more usual. She was expensive, high-maintenance, and worth every penny. She didn’t doubt it for a second.
And she’d just made love—had sex, she corrected herself—with a guy whose most expensive accessory was his gun.
The gun he’d left on the nightstand.
Oh.
She was headed out the door into the scary night, and lo and behold, there was a gun.
He had bullets. Tons of them.
Of course, it was wrong to steal his gun, but faced with necessity, she could be very practical—criminally practical.
She fished a bundle of fifties out of her tote and peeled off a thousand dollars’ worth. She owed him five for the bodyguarding, the best five hundred dollars she’d ever spent. He was very good at it. The clothes she was taking couldn’t possibly have cost a hundred dollars, but she was paying him a hundred for them anyway.
And now she was stealing his gun. He’d probably paid quite a bit for it, but she didn’t have a clue how much. She’d leave him the four hundred and either send the gun back to him or send him more money when she found out how much a weapon like his cost.
So maybe she should go through his wallet, so she’d know how to contact him.
Sure she should, she thought, looking over at him.
It was all so obvious now, she wondered that she hadn’t thought of it right off the bat. If nothing else, she’d like a confirmation on his name. “Smith” just didn’t set right. Who named their child Smith? And what did that C stand for?
He let out a soft snore, but without moving another muscle on his entire body, so she wasn’t too worried. The man was practically out cold. Sex had that effect on men sometimes. A lot of the time.
Without an ounce of guilt, she searched his pants until she felt his wallet, but when she stuck her hand in his pocket, the wallet wasn’t there. It seemed to be in another pocket altogether. So she felt around some more, until she figured out that there was a secret pocket inside his pocket, and there was a secret zipper under a secret flap.
Who was this guy? she wondered—but not for long.
Once she pulled his wallet out and opened it up, she knew he hadn’t lied to her about his name, unless he was traveling under a very well put-together false identity. Every piece of identification he had, and he had a bunch, said he was C. Smith Rydell, including his Colorado driver’s license.
She liked Colorado, especially Aspen and Vail, which were the only two places she’d ever been in Colorado, the only two places anybody she knew had ever been. He was from Denver, which she was sure was very nice, and his address was 738 Steele Street, which she memorized in a heartbeat.
That was really all she needed.
But she’d just had the most amazing sex of her life with this guy, and she was never going to see him after she left the Hotel Palacio, so she just went ahead and pried—big-time.
He snored again, and she looked over at him. God, he’d felt so good inside her. She hadn’t known a man could feel that good. Maybe it was the way he’d been kissing her at the same time, or the way he’d been holding her, or the way he’d smelled, or the way he’d tasted. It had all been so good.
Or maybe it was just the heat, and the night, and the danger making him so fascinating.
She let out a sigh and went back to going through his wallet, flipping through one piece of paper at a time. He had some interesting stuff. Money, of course, U.S. dollars and Salvadoran colones. He also had a VIP pass to the Hotel Panama, a guest receipt to the Palacio, and a TACA boarding pass from Panama City to Ilopongo, the airport in San Salvador.
So the whole Panama thing hadn’t been a lie, either.
He had a couple of other official-looking IDs, one from something called IRIS, the Institute for Regional and International Studies, with his photo on it, designating him as a Public Safety Instructor for Central America, and requesting that all local authorities honor his permission to carry a concealed firearm for his personal defense.
With all the traveling she did, she needed one of those, to keep from ever having to buy a gun from some guy off the street named Hector ever again. She really did have a lot of friends at the State Department. Maybe one of them could get her an IRIS. ID.
Another minute of searching revealed a U.S. State Department Visitor’s Pass, but no employment ID, which didn’t surprise h
er. He’d changed his story to the Department of Defense, but there wasn’t anything in his wallet so far that identified him as working for the DOD either, and there was no military ID. He did have two business cards, both for women, one at the embassy in Guatemala City, the other at the Sheraton in San Salvador, which she really had no business even thinking about, let alone wondering about, like wondering if they knew how good he was in bed, too.
Don’t, she told herself. Just don’t. He was a one-night stand, whose wallet she was going through like he was an unfaithful husband.
She ought to be ashamed, and as soon as she saw Julia and knew her baby sister was as safe as she was likely to be, considering the company she kept, and the convictions she had, and as soon as Honey got home, and everything was back to normal, she’d be as ashamed as necessary.
Until then, she was looking, and what she found next was possibly the most interesting thing he had, a hand-sketched map showing the location of an airstrip outside San Luis. Yessirree, everybody needed one of those, right along with permission to carry a weapon in a foreign country.
My, oh my, Mr. Rydell truly was mysterious, which just made him all that much more fascinating. But she had a name and an address, and that was all she needed. It was time for her to leave, past time.
Tucking his wallet back into his secret pocket, she allowed her gaze to go over him one more time. She wished she could kiss him good-bye, but that was out of the question. She needed to sneak off, and kissing was not sneaking.
Two miles, that’s all she had to do: get two miles through a riot-torn city from the Hotel Palacio to the sacristy at St. Mary’s.
Scooting off the bed, she grabbed her tote and, as quietly as possible, made her way to the door. The locks slid smoothly out of place, and wearing baggy boy clothes and white platform heels, she slipped out onto the veranda and into the night.
CHAPTER
28
WHO’S ON the radio?” Gillian asked, reloading her Contender out of her cartridge cuff.
The rain was increasing in strength, turning colder, and there’d been some lightning off to the east.
She knew Royce’s men, knew them all by heart, their faces, their crimes, the way each of them worked. She knew their vices, and knew none of them had any virtues, and she’d just killed two of them—Johnson and Graham.
The world was suddenly a better place.
“Superman,” Travis said.
“Good.”
He was still angry. She could feel it pulsing off of him, but they had a job to do, and everything else was put aside until it was done. That was professional, and they’d always made a good team professionally.
A better team personally, she’d always thought, and maybe she’d ruined that forever. All these years, all the crap they’d been through, and she really hadn’t known he could be pushed to fury, not Angel.
She’d been wrong, and the fact brought her up short, made her think.
“Why are we meeting him at Geiss?” The fastener company had been out of business for years, but something was obviously going on over there.
“Royce is there, in a black Expedition, waiting for his guys to bring you in. Zane Lowe is with him.”
For a second, she didn’t hear anything beyond Royce.
He was here.
In Commerce City, within reach.
Everything in her stopped for an instant, then started up faster. The monster was here.
Here.
A sick, winding rope of fear twisted in her gut, and her skin suddenly felt cold.
Here.
“You don’t have to go,” Angel said.
Yes, she did.
There was no other way.
But a tremor had just slid up her arm, and her breath was becoming a little short.
“Gillian?”
“I’m fine. Really.” She closed the action on the Contender and slid it back in its holster.
“We’ve got to move. We can’t stay here.”
She didn’t want to stay at the Fort. She wanted to run in the opposite direction of Geiss, but there was no hope for her that way.
A short burst of subgun fire had them both dropping even closer to the freight container, keeping their heads down. The rounds hit a Dumpster a good twenty yards to the north of them, the ping of the bullets telling them both that Royce’s men were firing blind.
“We can wait and take them,” she said.
He shook his head. “Royce is going to know he’s losing men. We either go get him now, or we risk the chance of him running.”
“So how many of his guys are out there?”
“We’re down to two here, and Lowe and Royce at Geiss.”
“And we’ve got Hawkins with us. Anybody else?”
“Skeeter and Dylan are at Steele Street.”
And it was time for them to go, past time.
“Enright?” she said, and he nodded.
“We’ll take it east out of the creek bed and come in right on top of them. Hawkins is coming up Burgess Street.”
It was a clean plan, a good plan. Angel would be with her, and Hawkins would be on her right when they hit Enright Street.
The rattling of a chain-link fence up ahead of them became the signal to go. Keeping low and in line with the steel shield, Angel moved to the back of the freight container and dropped to the ground.
She was right behind him, and together they took off up the creek bed, weaving a well-known path through a landscape of abandoned cars and containers. Thirty more yards to the south, the junk and cars created a funnel, a three-yard-wide opening along the front of a Dumpster shoved up against a pile of junk, tires, and old washing machines too dense to get through.
Angel signaled her, and she took up a guard position next to the Dumpster as he quickly rigged a trip-line with a length of parachute cord.
There was a lot of trash, spills, broken glass, and just plain bad stuff in the creek bed, and landing in it face first was guaranteed to be either toxic or bloody.
He tied off the cord, the whole process taking mere seconds, and they took off again at a run.
“GRAHAM?”
“Yes, sir.”
Royce didn’t want to hear it.
“You guys are smarter than that. You’re better than that.” That’s why he paid them what the hell he paid them. They were not supposed to drop like flies.
He had a pretty good record against SDF. Informing the National Revolutionary Forces, a narco-guerilla group in Colombia, about the CIA’s impending actions against them and the incursion of a pair of Special Defense Force operators into their territory had gotten J. T. Chronopolous massacred and netted Royce a guaranteed foothold in their cartel-connected cocaine pipeline, a purely business transaction that had been the basis for his independent launch into the worldwide drug trade.
The kidnapping and subsequent torture of Dylan Hart on the island of Sumba in Indonesia by Royce’s former heroin trade associate, Hamzah Negara, had been one of the highlights of his career.
Watching Dr. Souk terrify and torture Gillian Pentycote had paled in comparison to the show Hart had put on. The man had suffered, and Royce had relished every moment, every spastic twist of his body, every strangled scream.
But tonight was Pentycote’s night, the bitch, and she was killing his men like they were Cub Scouts.
And Superman was out there, somewhere.
“Have you seen Hawkins?”
“No, sir.”
“And who is this other guy Peters told me is with her?”
“We think it’s Travis James.”
“The asshole who waxed that pair of Colombians on the coast last year?” It hadn’t been a hit. It had been a deal that had gone bad, where the suppliers involved had screwed up, then tried to salvage an unsalvageable mess by going after the SDF guys who had fucked them over in the first place. It was the last hunting trip either of them had ever taken.
“Yes, sir.”
Royce knew things. He was connected. His
twenty-five years with the CIA had given him a network of informants, government officials, criminal bosses, warlords, drug lords, and English lords who sent information his way from every corner of the earth.
Royce knew things, but he did not know how these goddamn SDF women kept kicking his ass.
He lifted his hand to his face and felt the scar that ran from his forehead down to his jaw. His eye hurt, the one that wasn’t even fucking there.
Sometimes he thought about retirement. Not the kind the Feds would like to give him, but a real retirement, with a beach and a boat. San Luis was the beginning of that dream. A villa to make other men pant with envy, a quiet town, tropical weather. Maybe he’d grow coffee beans. The Salvadoran government had just made coffee growing a profitable business venture, if a man’s business was big enough.
Royce’s business was very big.
And he was going to give Orlin and crew about another half an hour to tie this thing up, and then he was leaving. He was not hanging around a potential disaster just to see how it turned out, or on the off chance that his men might accidentally pull out a victory.
One more dead guy, and Royce was leaving.
GILLIAN’S blood was running hot and fast, pumping through her veins. She could feel it. The night was getting clearer to her, even through the rain, brighter, starker, turning black and white at the edges if she moved her head too quickly.
It was all new, unprecedented, unlike any of the other symptoms she’d suffered through over the years. Most intriguing of all was that it wasn’t disturbing. She felt stronger, faster, even though she could tell Angel was slowly outdistancing her.
Royce, the monster, was up ahead, lying in wait, and she knew exactly what he wanted: more of what he’d already gotten out of her—terror and pain.
She was going to give him both.
So she ran with the Angel toward doom.
The night slid by her on either side, the blacks and whites streaking into gray. It didn’t matter.