by Tara Janzen
He was lying. It was written all over his face.
“I haven’t seen anybody working LoDo since I’ve been back, and that’s been over two months.”
“Robin—”
“Jane.” She cut him off, her hand tightening into a fist at her side. There was no taking control of this situation, not with guns, and Bloods, and Jack lying with every word he said.
“Jane,” he conceded, glancing over his shoulder. “Look, Jane, I . . . I’ve got some things going at the Empire. We’re making money now, real money, and Raymond wants in—or actually, what he wants is me out. But if you were there, it would be different.”
“What kind of things?”
“High-end merchandise,” Jack said cryptically.
“Drugs?” That would be the last straw for her. She and Jack had been that route at Castle Import.
“Play stations,” the boy Jack was holding clarified. “Laptops, digital everything, HD televisions, big ones.”
A slight, self-conscious grin curved across Jack’s face. “I’ve got over a hundred thousand dollars of the stuff at the theater right now, Jane, hidden under the stage. Retail, of course, but there’s still plenty of profit in it for down the line, when we unload it all.”
Jane blinked, then blinked again. A hundred thousand dollars? For the Rats?
“I . . .” She started to say something, then couldn’t figure out what it had been. She was stunned, and terrified for him.
“It’s the big picture, Jane. No more scrounging. I didn’t have time to show you, but we’ve done a lot of work on the Empire. The theater is still a dump, I know, but we’ve cleaned up the rest of it. We’ve got whole rooms upstairs now, call them Rat’s Nests. Get it?” His grin broadened. “I’ve got kids coming to me all the time. They want to be Rats. You’re right, Jane. I’ve got too many. The whole thing is getting too big. I need you. Especially tonight. Let me stash my crew at your place. We can’t let Raymond get to them.”
No, “we” couldn’t. Jane didn’t think Raymond would actually kill one of them. The Rats didn’t exactly qualify as a rival gang. But he could do other things to them. Things she didn’t want to think about.
Jack was a different story.
“He’ll kill you for that kind of money.” It was the truth. “Hell, Jack. He’d kill me for that kind of money. The truce I had with Raymond wasn’t solid. When things didn’t look so good, I just laid low, kept the Rats home for a couple of weeks.”
“We’re just doing what you said, Jane. Old Nick Daley? That’s what we’re doing. Nicking people daily.” It had been their joke, using slang for thieving to make up a name for the lease. The woman who owned the Empire was a nutcase. As long as she got her money every month, Jane doubted if she’d know if it was Raymond or Fast Jack shelling it out.
“My apartment is on the fifth floor,” she said, regretting every word, but she didn’t have a choice, not in this. “They can stay there. You, too, Jack.”
“No.” Jack shook his head, then answered his cell phone when it rang in his pocket. “Yeah. Right. Stay put. I’ll come to you.” He flipped the phone shut, looking back to Jane. “I’ve got four more out there, and Raymond has his fleet of black Escalades out all over LoDo, looking for Rats. I’ve got to go get them.”
Two years ago, that would have been her job, to go get scared Rats. She knew where they’d be, inside one of LoDo’s many bars, by the front door, trying to blend in and not get kicked out, or in one of the restaurants, pretending to be with a couple or a group waiting for a table. They’d avoid the alleys. If there was a cop car, and they were scared enough, they’d be sitting on its bumper, staying out in the open. Rats knew what lurked in the dark, and they knew their size and age put them at a terrible disadvantage. They knew how vulnerable they were, and they knew the Parkside Bloods.
They had reason to be scared tonight.
Jane felt a chill go up her spine, even though the weather was warm. In that one way, she’d been spoiled rotten at the Immaculate Heart School for Young Women. For the first time in her life, she’d been safe, completely and totally safe.
Now she was back in the world, and Raymond the Blood King was cruising the streets, looking for kids like she’d once been, and maybe, God forbid, looking for her.
The chill she’d felt congealed into real fear, and suddenly, she wished she had a gun.
Jack couldn’t keep her safe, no way. He’d be lucky to save his own butt.
Skeeter Bang had a gun. Jane had seen it in a holster at the small of her back last night, under her sweatshirt. Apparently, Skeeter worked with Superman now, and though she hadn’t figured out exactly what it was Christian Hawkins did, she knew it had something to do with law enforcement, and maybe the military.
He could get her a piece, but she doubted if he would.
Oh, yes. Life was definitely taking a dive at light speed. Guns and Rats at Toussi’s in the middle of an art show, with all of Katya’s most important clients in attendance. For one fleeting instant, she considered calling the cops.
And what? she wondered in the next instant. Tell them Fast Jack Spencer was in over his head with a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of electronics to unload, and Raymond of the Parkside Bloods was out to steal his stolen merchandise?
No. That wasn’t her best bet. Fast Jack would scrape through. The same way she’d scraped through last night. Travis James had made it out of the Empire without his head being shaved. Everything had been okay. He hadn’t been hurt—only arrested.
Oh, right, Jane, she thought. He had to be angry about the arrest. Maybe angry enough to have called Katya. Maybe she was already on the way out of her cushy new life and just didn’t know it yet.
But that kiss.
She’d played it over and over in her mind, every nuance. How it had felt to hold him, the softness of his lips, the boldness of his tongue. It had been so achingly sweet. She’d felt cherished—but that had all been before the cops had dragged him away.
Skeeter had saved him, though. Skeeter Bang could probably save anybody—the thought came into Jane’s mind and stuck. Denver’s most notorious tagger would know how to work both sides of this mess, and Jane had seen her talking to a tall, dark-haired man just a little while ago.
“What’s your cell phone number?” Jack asked, catching her attention. “I’ll call you, let you know when to let them go.”
“You’ll have to call the gallery. I don’t have a cell phone.” And no one to call. She’d met a few people at school, but mostly she’d been keeping to herself, laying low—for all the good it had done her.
She needed help. She couldn’t do this street-gang princess thing anymore, skating on the edge by the seat of her pants, always expecting disaster and seldom being disappointed.
Jack looked surprised for a second. “No cell phone? I’ll give you one. We’ve got about a hundred in storage, camera phones. You’ll love it. I can even put you on our family plan.”
The Rats had a family plan—Jane had to keep from rolling her eyes. And a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of camera phones, laptops, and HDTVs hidden in the Empire. God, how things had changed.
“So give me the gallery’s number,” he said.
She gave it to him and watched him enter it into his phone’s database.
Perfect. Now Toussi’s could look forward to getting phone calls from one of the city’s better thieves. What most amazed her about the whole situation was how she’d been blindsided by it. Somewhere, somehow, over the last two years, she’d started to believe her life had taken an irreversible change for the better.
The more fool she.
The catering van pulled into the far end of the alley, and Jack released the boy with a small shove toward the door.
“Thanks, Rob—” he caught himself and grinned. “Thanks, Jane. I’ll give you a call.”
She almost told him to take care of himself, but that would have been a waste of breath. The one thing Jack was good at was taking care of himself
.
FROM the backseat of a rented Cadillac, Juan Conseco watched the city slide past the car windows. He’d been to Denver once before, as a young man with his father, God rest his soul. It didn’t seem so very different from then, gray and brown, snow shoved up into piles here and there, the trees bare, a few buildings of interest. There were more people on the streets at night than he remembered, which he considered an improvement.
His entrance into the United States had gone smoothly, which still had not allayed Drago’s fears. The deed had truly been no more difficult than moving thirty metric tons of cocaine into the country, which he did on a regular basis, a fair portion coming to Denver every month. It had been a long day, with two plane changes, instead of the truck route his merchandise usually took, but the journey had landed him in Denver in plenty of time to take in a gallery opening.
Nicole Alana McKinney’s Web site had showcased the artist’s upcoming events, like tonight’s showing at the Toussi Gallery, where the angel artist herself, it had promised, would be in attendance—Come meet Nikki McKinney!
Indeed.
Toussi’s Web site had given him the map showing its location, and the rest had fallen into place.
God truly was on his side in this, smoothing the way—a point Tío Drago had yet to appreciate, though it was his son they were out to avenge, and Diego, and now Sanchez and Mancos.
Cell phones, the Internet, wireless networks, onboard navigation systems—technology streamlined his business from the fields to distribution. It helped him maneuver his product and his men for the greatest efficiency and profit. It helped him outmaneuver the police and the narcotics agents on two continents, and tonight it had cleared a path for kidnapping and murder, a brutal double murder on American soil so the message would be clear. Nicole McKinney and Peter Chronopolous would not live out the night. Kidnapping the woman was the key. El asesino had already proved he could win mano a mano. Juan had to make it in his best interest not to win—and then he would kill the woman anyway.
“Benito,” he said to his driver, ignoring Drago’s endless mutterings. “How far are we from the gallery?”
“A few miles only, Don Conseco.”
Tío Drago had been right on the plane, of course. It was insanity for him to have left Colombia—but this gringo . . .
His hand tightened into a fist. This gringo’s crimes had been personal affronts and needed to be dealt with personally. It wasn’t just for poor Ruperto and Diego, though their deaths had been hard. Nor was it simply the theft at the airstrip on the Rio Putumayo, though that was bound to cost him dearly. It was the man’s daring, killing Ruperto at breakfast, Diego in Juan’s own home. Such daring could only be met with even greater daring, the kind of daring that had propelled Juan to the top of the deadliest game in the world.
On this playing field, Juan was king. He would prove it again tonight, when the legend known as el asesino fantasma died by his hand.
CHAPTER
18
NIKKI SLIPPED OFF Rocky’s lap, brushed a haphazard kiss across his forehead, and made her escape to the buffet—not that she was going to eat. Her stomach was one giant knot of tension, and it was starting to turn in on itself.
Rocky had waylaid her, and she’d lost Kid. One minute, he’d been by the front door, and the next he’d been gone.
Dammit. He couldn’t have left, not after actually showing up at the gallery, not without at least talking to her. My God, they’d practically died last night.
She made it all the way to the buffet tables, working the room, shaking hands, making chitchat and checking faces without catching sight of him anywhere. She hated admitting it, but her heart was going to break if he’d left. She could already feel the tightness building in her chest, the first flutter of panic.
He couldn’t have left.
“Hi,” someone said.
She turned her head, following the voice, then had to look down.
“Hi.” She was standing next to a young girl who was trying to fit a half dozen shrimp on a plate already piled sky high.
“I like your hair,” the girl said. “The purple parts are cool. Did you see the angels?”
Nikki found herself smiling, despite the lump growing in her throat. “Thank you, and yes, I’ve seen the angels. I painted them.”
The girl’s eyes widened, bright blue and peeking out from under blond bangs.
“All of them? Even the yellow ones?”
“Yep. Even the yellow ones. Do you like them?”
“I like the yellow ones,” the girl said around a mouthful of shrimp. There hadn’t been a place on the plate, so she was eating them, stuffing them in one right after another.
“What’s your name?”
“Blue.”
“Wow. That’s a great name,” Nikki said. “I always wanted to be named after a color.”
The girl beamed. “Which one?”
“Well, two, actually. Violet Green. I thought that would be a really cool name.”
“It is cool.” In went another shrimp.
The crowd shifted, Nikki looked up, and when she looked back, the girl was gone.
It was a little spooky, how fast she’d disappeared, but then it was a strange night all the way around. There were more people in the gallery than she’d ever seen, now including her first child sighting ever in Toussi’s, a skinny little moppet named Blue.
Oops. Make that two. A curly-haired boy with freckles darted out from behind the buffet and disappeared into the crowd, also carrying a plate of food that defied the laws of physics.
A pained sigh lodged in her throat. Everybody was disappearing into the over-capacity crowd. Rocky was a huge draw, and since her Esquire cover, she’d become a lot better known as well. Thus the crush—with more people arriving all the time.
A cool drift of fresh air drew her attention to the rear of the gallery, where the back door opened and Katya’s newest employee, a very quiet, strangely arresting girl named Jane Linden, walked in with the caterer and—of all things—three more kids, teenagers this time.
The girl had a fascinating face, a lot of angles and curves; very distinctive, almond-shaped, feral green eyes; and the silkiest, straightest, sable-colored hair Nikki had ever seen. She was beautiful in a unique way. Intriguing, and Nikki had wanted to photograph and paint her with Travis since the first time she’d seen her—painted angels together, two light-infused beings on the same canvas. She’d seen it in her mind, how all the wings would curve, the shape of Jane’s shoulder. She knew Travis so well, the planes and angles of his body, every muscle, how the light caught the colors of his hair and shaped his cheekbones. It would be exciting to work with someone new, and a challenge for Travis, too, to bring someone else into his space.
Nikki made another sweep of the room with her gaze.
Gallery openings were usually fairly sedate affairs, at least in Denver, but this one was going over the top, way over, becoming a real crush. It wasn’t just that so many of Rocky’s avant-garde friends had flown in. It was that there were so many of everybody “in,” Katya’s regular clients, a lot of local artists, society people who supported the arts, especially when a senator’s daughter was involved, and Katya was certainly that. She’d lost sight of Rocky in the crowd, too, but she wasn’t worried about him. He always had a posse of people ready and willing to do his bidding.
Rocky and his posse—it was part of his charm, to be welcomed into his inner circle, taken in and coddled. He was kind, and wryly funny, and in a lot of ways, undemanding, a lot of important ways.
But it was Kid she wanted. Kid she needed, and he was gone, nowhere to be found
Damn. Damn. And double freaking damn. She should have grabbed him on her way by the kitchen this afternoon in his apartment and dragged him into the shower with her. Naked, she seemed to hold his interest just fine. Honestly, naked seemed to be the only way she held his attention.
She needed to remember that, remember it and use it.
Her hand
came up to her chest, to ease the sudden ache there. Hindsight was so perfect, but what she wanted now, what she needed now . . . was the man standing in the shadows on the far side of the room, the man looking up at the paintings hanging from the catwalk.
Kid. Relief flooded through her, weakening her knees. She gripped the edge of the table for a moment, then started across the gallery.
THERE was a reason Kid had not wanted Nikki to paint Christian Hawkins naked—and he was looking right at it. All eighteen inches of it. Of course, the painting Nikki had done of Superman was super-size, over twelve feet high, but still, it was a pretty damn big dick.
Geezus. He really hadn’t needed to know that.
And what Nikki had done with Hawkins’s tattoo, taking it all the way to his groin, bringing it around low on his hips in two openwork, stylized lines and giving him a real “caged cock” look. He hoped to hell she hadn’t actually drawn that on Superman’s body. But knowing Nikki, hell.
The painting was still exactly what she’d promised, though—beyond his ability to regret, dark and fierce, ruthless, beautiful. Christian Hawkins was no Travis James. There wasn’t an angelic cell in his whole body, and not even giving him wings could change the fact. What had changed was the concept of “angel.”
Hawkins wasn’t ascending to heaven or descending to hell. He was the angel who brought hell with him. It was in his eyes. It was in every hard line of his body, in every “wound” she’d inflicted on him. He was the dark angel, the darkest, skirting the edge of demonic intent, but not crossing over—not yet.
And Nikki was a genius to have made it all so absolutely clear with nothing more than a photographic image painted over on a piece of canvas.
Rocky Solano had nothing on her in the brilliance department. She more than held her own.
Next to the painting of Hawkins was a triptych of Travis descending, and man, the boy was going to hell fast. So fast, it almost gave Kid vertigo. More than one person stopped and raised their hand a bit as if to catch him—talk about “interactive art.” Nikki had surpassed herself with the piece. The triptych also made it clear why Travis was her favorite model. Kid didn’t think it would matter how many times she painted Hawkins, she would always get the dark angel, and if she’d found any “feminine mystique” in Christian Hawkins, Kid would eat his socks.