Crazy Kisses

by Tara Janzen

  She still had her underwear on, and her stiletto heels, and he was grateful for both those things—but not enough to spare anybody’s life. They’d doused her in water from her head to her toes from a pump that drained into the floor, and she was shivering all over, her teeth chattering.

  Savage, she’d called him this morning and again tonight.

  She’d been right.

  The boy who had phoned the gallery from the trunk of Conseco’s Cadillac was next to her, hanging by another length of rope. A Rat, Travis had called him, Fast Jack Spencer, but obviously not fast enough to escape Conseco. A soaking wet Rat; he’d been doused, too.

  Kid looked around the rest of the room. There were two guys watching the hostages, both Colombian, neither of them Juan Conseco or his right-hand man, his uncle Drago Conseco. A third man was standing by the stairs, a local guy. The clothes the men were wearing and their demeanors gave their different nationalities away in an instant. All three were armed.

  He checked the far corners of the basement. If there was a loose narco-terrorist in the dark somewhere, and Kid started this rumble without knowing where, the guy might get off a shot before Kid could take him out. So he waited, and he watched, and he tried to hear over the loud music and the bar crowd packing the club upstairs. Nikki was the bait, and they weren’t likely to kill the bait before they got what they wanted: him. But there was no reason for the boy to die by a stray bullet tonight, and Kid was going to do his damnedest to make sure Fast Jack didn’t. The boy’s phone call had been the advantage Kid had needed.

  A force of local DEA and FBI agents was forming somewhere in Denver, and Lieutenant Bradley had gotten authorization to use the SWAT team, but they hadn’t arrived yet, and Kid wasn’t waiting. The authorities wanted Conseco. He wanted Nikki, and the setup sucked for a hostage rescue.

  There were three ways into the basement, and three ways out: the stairs, the service lift, and the elevator. Groceries, supplies, and booze were delivered to the Aztec’s basement storeroom from the alley, via the service lift. He’d come down the stairs from inside the club. A small elevator on the west wall had to be how the supplies were hauled upstairs to the bar.

  The service lift wasn’t the best setup for a SWAT team takedown. Narrow, and surrounded by a virtual landscape of crates and boxes, it would be damn difficult to breach with the lightning-fast speed necessary for a successful rescue. The elevator was an absolute no-go, and the stairs weren’t much better. He’d made it with a beer in his hand, a shit-eating grin on his face, and a line of bullshit ready to go.

  He needed to get Nikki out, before things got complicated.

  The sound of feet clattering on the rickety stairs had him shifting slightly to see who was coming down from the club on the main floor.

  “Baby Duce headed your way,” Skeeter said in his ear, her voice coming through the earpiece of his radio. “Shot-caller for the Locos. Guaranteed badass. He looks nervous as hell, like he could crap a kilo any second.”

  Crap a kilo?

  Somebody needed to wash Skeeter’s mouth out with soap.

  But she was right. When the Latino came into view, he was pale, twitchy, looking like somebody who was trying way too hard to keep his cool, and he, too, was packing a piece.

  Skeeter was upstairs in the Aztec bar with Travis, blending in with the crowd and watching the stairway door. Kid didn’t know where Conseco was, but the Cadillac was parked at the front entrance to the club, so he was guessing the crime lord was upstairs somewhere. Not on the main floor with the band, and the booze, and the crowds of people, but probably higher up in the building. Skeeter said at one time there had been apartments for rent at the Aztec.

  Juan Conseco in Denver. Smith was going to crap a dozen kilos when he heard. The feds were in a frenzy over the news. Kid could hardly believe it himself. The guy must really hate him to have followed him all the way to Denver.

  Drago Conseco, if he was with Juan—and Kid’s money said he was—had plenty of motive for leaving the safe confines of the Conseco compound in Medellín. Revenge.

  Relatively safe compound, Kid amended. He hadn’t had any trouble breaching the walls of Conseco’s fortress to kill Diego Conseco, and he hadn’t had any trouble tapping Drago’s son, Ruperto, at his breakfast table.

  “This is going from bad to worse,” Skeeter said in his ear. “Here comes another Loco heading your way.”

  Five to one. The odds were piling up against him, but with the thirty-shot magazine on his .45, Kid knew he could take them all out and still have twenty-five shots left.

  One of Conseco’s guys was talking to Baby Duce. Kid couldn’t hear what was being said, but neither of them looked happy. Conseco’s guy was grim-faced and angry, and Duce looked scared and angry, like he’d screwed up. Baby Duce kept pointing at Fast Jack Spencer, which made Kid wonder just how much trouble the Rats had gotten themselves into. The girl at the gallery, Jane, had said the Parkside Bloods were looking to take the Rats down tonight, but that wasn’t Kid’s problem.

  Nikki looked terrified, and almost blue from the cold. That was Kid’s problem, and he was damn close to letting it make him do something stupid. Fast Jack was shaking with the cold, too, and he looked plenty scared, but he wasn’t terrified, far from it. He’d been watching everybody and everything, his gaze narrow and calculating, and Kid knew if he gave the boy half a chance, Fast Jack would take it and run.

  He scanned the room one more time. There weren’t any other narco-terrorists in the basement. They would have come out into the light at the start of the argument, especially when the odds had started shifting in the Locos’ favor.

  With an abrupt gesture, Baby Duce backed off, and he kept backing off, all the way to the stairs, taking his homies with him.

  In less than a minute, Kid was left with just the two Colombians. It took him far less than that to lean out from behind the tower of boxes and squeeze off four silenced shots, less than two seconds, two body shots apiece. The Colombians dropped to the floor.

  And kee-rist, there he was, killing people in front of Nikki again.

  In five steps he had her in his arms and was reaching up to cut her free.

  “K-kid.” She was shivering uncontrollably, her voice raw with fear.

  “Shhh, baby. I’m getting you out of here.” His knife went through the rope, and she collapsed into his arms.

  Without letting go of her, or taking time to cut the bindings on her wrists, he stepped over to the boy and cut him free. Fast Jack dropped like a cat to the floor and, just as Kid had predicted, took off for the service lift to the alley, working the knots on the rope around his wrists with his teeth. With Nikki in his arms, Kid was right behind him.

  The boy scrambled onto the lift and hit the UP button, but the doors no sooner opened above him, out into the alley, than somebody yelled, “It’s Fast Jack!” and all hell broke loose with a burst of automatic fire careening into the basement.

  Geezus. Kid dove with Nikki behind a tower of crates and hoped to hell they were full of something that would stop an automatic round. Almost immediately, Jack landed on top of them, a pile of fast-moving arms and legs.

  Kee-rist. What kind of trouble was the kid in that everybody wanted to grease his ass?

  The service lift was grinding its way up, but he could hear the guys in the alley already jumping down onto it, not waiting for it to come to a stop. With one swift cut, he freed Nikki’s hands, held on to one of them, and took off running for the stairs.

  “Five Locos coming down the stairs, heading your way,” Skeeter’s voice echoed through his earpiece.

  Fuck. He made a fast right at the next tower of boxes and sprinted with her to the elevator. Fast Jack, the little bugger, was already inside and reaching for a floor button. Kid slammed into the door before it could close, then shoved Nikki inside, behind him.

  “Main floor, Jack,” he said to the kid, now praying for the damn doors to shut. It sounded like the guys from the alley were invading. “And
if you ever try to cut me out again, I’ll be the one who takes you down.”

  Jack at least had the decency to look remorseful. “You were headed for the stairs, not the elevator.”

  “The stairs got busy.” He shrugged out of his jacket and put it on Nikki, making sure she got her arms inside the sleeves. The boy was shivering, too, but he was a guy, and he was on his own. Besides, he looked tougher than snot—wiry, fierce, even a little wild-eyed, but still not terrified.

  “So’s the damn main floor gonna be busy in about thirty seconds,” Jack said.

  “So where are you going?”

  “To the roof,” Jack said.

  Well, they sure as hell weren’t going to get there very damn fast. The elevator was moving at a crawl.

  Kid pulled Nikki under his arm and squeezed her, trying to impart some warmth, while still keeping his gun hand free.

  “What’s on the roof?”

  “A fire escape that runs all the way down the north side of the building,” the boy said.

  Sounded good to Kid.

  “Talk to me, Nikki,” he said, shifting his attention to the woman shivering in his arms. “Are you okay?”

  “Y-yes.” She nodded, her teeth chattering.

  He’d have to take her at her word for now. They were far from out of this mess.

  “You need to get her out of here, man,” the boy said. “Before the Bloods and Locos and the rest of those badass uptown barrio boys chew up the Aztec Club. They ain’t gonna like that you capped two of their guys.”

  “Who was shooting at you from the alley?” Kid asked. The gunmen had yelled the boy’s name.

  “Parkside Bloods.”

  Of course. The Parkside Bloods had Fast Jack at the top of their menu tonight. “What about the Locos?”

  “All upstairs.”

  “Badass uptown barrio boys?”

  The boy shrugged. “You left two dead ones in the basement, man. I don’t know where the rest of them are.”

  “Do you know how many there were?”

  “Five got out of the Cadillac with the woman.”

  That left three from the kidnapping crew, and depending on where Conseco was in the building, the cocaine king might or might not know that his whole night had just gone straight to hell.

  “Skeeter,” he said into his mike. “Two Colombians down. At least three more still alive. I’ve got Nikki and the boy. We’re in a service elevator that runs up the west wall. Can you see the elevator door?”

  The sound of a woman screaming delayed her response. He knew it wasn’t Skeeter. Skeeter did not scream.

  Then shots sounded.

  “Holy shit, Kid. I’ve got Bloods coming in the back, and Locos pouring in the front, and a whole bunch of people trying to get out of the middle.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Behind the bar with my head down, cowboy. Do not get off on this floor. I repeat, do not get off on this floor.”

  “Where’s Travis?”

  “AWOL. On his own. I lost him.”

  “Looks like your plan wins,” he said to the boy. To Skeeter he said, “Any sign of the feds or Lieutenant Loretta?”

  “Not down here in the slopped beer and old cigarette butts, and that’s about as far as I can see, until the shooting stops. This is bad, Kid. Turf war galore.”

  “We’re headed toward the top floor and will come down the fire escape on the north side of the building.”

  “Roger.”

  He had Nikki, and he was taking her out of there. The feds could have Conseco.

  CHAPTER

  23

  THE HIGHER THEY ROSE in the building, the quieter it became, eerily so. Then the indicator lights on the control board flickered and died, and the elevator shuddered to a stop.

  “Wh-what happened, Kid?” Nikki’s hand tightened in his. The boy swore under his breath.

  “I don’t know.” Dammit. “Skeeter,” he said into his mike, but got no response. “Skeeter.”

  Her radio was either dead or turned off, and he couldn’t imagine that she’d turned it off. He wasn’t going to freak, though. Skeeter knew how to take care of herself. He hoped to hell Travis did.

  He reached inside his jacket pocket for his cell phone, but couldn’t get any reception—nothing. No one could hear him now.

  “Are we trapped?” Nikki asked, huddling closer to him. She was shaking like a leaf.

  “No, honey. I can get us out of here.” Guaran-fucking-teed. There wasn’t a goddamn elevator in the world he couldn’t take apart. He had Nikki, and she was alive, and that was all that mattered. Everything else was merely incidental—but he still needed a plan.

  A tiny red dot of light appeared inside the elevator and started moving over the walls. He followed it to its source—the boy.

  “Night vision flashlight?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I always keep one with me. I work in the dark a lot. It’s handy for seeing what the hell you’re doing.”

  No shit.

  “Give me a hand,” he said, digging the tips of his fingers into the break between the doors. Between him and Fast Jack, they pried the doors open, but there was nothing but wall on the other side.

  “Show me the ceiling.” That was their next best bet for making their escape.

  The ceiling panels were screwed in, the screws exposed through age, not design, with the inside of the elevator stripped down to basics.

  The boy proved invaluable again, when he produced a knife. Not a street fighter’s knife, but a handy-dandy, twenty-function Swiss Army knife.

  “You keep this with you all the time, too?”

  “Just in case,” the boy said.

  Yeah, Kid usually had a whole lot of “just in case” stuff, too, but tonight he mostly had guns, and they sure as hell couldn’t shoot their way out of an elevator.

  Once they got one of the ceiling panels off, Kid boosted himself on top of the elevator; finally, a bit of luck. With Fast Jack’s flashlight, the beam of which was hardly bigger than a quarter, he could see they weren’t very far from a floor.

  “Jack, get your butt up here,” he said, reaching his hand down.

  Jack took hold, and Kid swung him up. Geez, he doubted if the boy weighed a hundred and twenty pounds, but he was strong. When Kid put him on his shoulders, Jack didn’t have any trouble prying the doors to the floor open all by himself. Light flooded into the elevator shaft, and like the Rat he was, Jack scrambled off Kid’s shoulders into the hall, and disappeared from sight—instantly, without a backward glance.

  Hell. Kid wasn’t going to worry about him. The boy obviously knew how to take care of himself in a bad situation. He just hoped Jack didn’t blow everything and get them all in more trouble than they were already in.

  “Come on, babe.” He reached down for Nikki and pulled her onto the top of the elevator, and then, for a couple of seconds, no more, he just quit—quit worrying, quit fighting, quit thinking. All he did was hold her, and bury his face in her hair, and breathe her in, and thank God that she wasn’t hurt.

  “Oh, Kid,” she sighed, melting against him. “I knew you’d find me. I-I just didn’t know if it would be in time. They were going to . . . going to . . .”

  “Shhh, Nikki.” He tightened his arms around her. He knew even better than she did what Conseco would have done to her, and he didn’t want to hear the words spoken out loud. He didn’t have the strength for that. He’d been in Colombia for too long. He’d seen too much.

  “How did you get to the club so fast?” she asked. “How did you know?”

  “The boy,” he said. “Fast Jack. He called from the trunk of the Cadillac and told us exactly where you were being taken.”

  “He called you from the trunk?”

  “Yeah. Crazy, huh?” It was crazy. “He was hiding in there and ended up in the middle of your kidnapping.”

  She let out another heavy sigh. “God, Kid. It’s been crazy since you showed up at Sandovals’ last night.”

  He knew
that, too, and he wasn’t too proud of it.

  “Don’t worry, Nikki. This is the last of it. I swear. I’ll get you out of here, and you’ll be out of trouble, forever.” Because he was going to hunt Conseco down and kill him—no matter how far he had to go, no matter what he had to do. Conseco had made one big-ass mistake leaving Colombia, and if Kid didn’t get him tonight, someday, the bastard would make another. When he did, Kid would be there.

  “Come on. Let’s keep moving.” Revenge would have to wait. Right now, he had to think about Nikki.

  Standing up, he boosted himself up into the hall, and then reached down for her. The sign next to the elevator showed a number three. They were on the third floor. The Aztec was five stories high.

  Once she was up, he had them on the move. She started to speak, but he put his finger to his lips. He didn’t know who was on the floor with them.

  The elevator was on the west wall, and the fire escape was on the north, so he checked all the rooms on the left side of the hall, dragging her with him, moving fast, but none of them had the fire escape. It had to be all the way to the east, near the northeast corner, but when they got back out into the hall, there was nothing but a blank wall to the east. He had to find another way.

  Shit. He was starting to feel like a rat in a maze.

  At the first intersecting hallway, he saw a red exit light at the far end. Holding her hand, he took off, heading that way. They could get to the second floor from the stairwell, avoiding the firefight on the first, and still get out of the building. Climbing down from the third floor was too risky with Nikki on his back, not when she was shivering and might be too cold to hold on.

  Jack, the little Rat, really had disappeared, and Kid wished he knew how and where. Disappearing was exactly what he wanted to do with Nikki. Dead Colombians in the basement, gang war in the bar, and Juan Conseco somewhere up here on the upper floors—Kid wanted the fuck out of the Aztec Club.

  The instant they entered the stairwell, he heard gunfire, and it sounded a lot closer than three floors down. Shit. The gang war had made it to the second floor. He wasn’t going to run a gauntlet of bullets with Nikki in tow, so he took them up, but didn’t get more than a couple of steps before a door banged open below them, and all hell broke loose. It sounded like dozens of people were fighting their way up the stairs. It only took him a second to figure out why.