Crazy Hearts

by Tara Janzen

  Whether his brother showed up or not, anything their dad had left with the lawyer belonged to Dylan Hart, not Liam. Their dad hadn’t even known another kid was on the way – a fact his mother had impressed upon him many times over the years, trying to convince him he needed to treat Big Jack more like a father, show him some respect.

  Not very damn likely, not then, and sure as hell not now.

  Cripes. He hated to think he’d gotten the crap beaten out of him for nothing. But he was only giving this party another fifteen minutes, then he was out of here, calling a cab and moving his sorry ass to the Four Seasons Hotel. He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that Christian Hawkins could be counted on to deliver the letter and a message.

  He glanced down at the pack lying on the floor next to his chair.

  Tommy had torn through the backpack in Grand Island, bitching about all the stupid junk stuffed inside, bitching about not finding any money, or a check, and completely missing the envelope in a secret inside pocket, and totally dismissing the real prize – half a dozen old paperback books, their covers worn and dog-eared. Disgusted, Tommy had shoved all the “junk” back into the pack and tossed it into the Porsche.

  God, all these years, he’d been holding onto the name, hoping he had a brother who might still be alive, a brother who had out-run and out-foxed Big Daddy Jack Dunstan across the whole of Europe.

  Ten more minutes. That was it. Then he was out of here.

  He gave the woman sitting at the other end of the table a quick glance. Just as quickly, he looked back at his plate, keeping his head down. Yeah, just ten more minutes of driving himself crazy.

  Skeeter Bang Hart. She was tearing him up – so gorgeous he could barely look at her.

  And that was a first. Gorgeous women threw themselves at him from one end of the globe to the other.

  But not this girl.

  She was no groupie. The scar across her forehead spoke of tough times, or a bar fight that hadn’t gone her way. She was sleekly muscled, built like a centerfold, and had a folding knife clipped inside her front pocket.

  She was also wearing a big diamond ring on her left hand.

  Married. To his brother. A sister-in-law – and that, baby, could never work.

  He at least had enough brains left to know that.

  “Anybody ready for cake?” she asked, and he heard her chair slide away from the table.

  He looked up – he couldn’t help himself – and watched her cross the full length of the kitchen to the counter, his gaze glued to her ass the whole way. High heels, long legs, sinfully tight jeans - he felt a little like he was dying.

  And Hawkins had seen enough. Time to call the boss before somebody blew a fuse.

  Dylan answered on the first ring. “Yo, Cristo.”

  Hawkins was brief and to the point. “Get up here asap and bring a bucket of water.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bucket of water, my ass, Dylan thought, coming to a stop when he opened the door into the apartment. Baby brother needed a fire hose turned on him.

  Not that Dylan didn’t understand the boy’s problem. Skeeter was a knock-out. She was also his, but she could hardly keep her eyes off the rock and roll boy any better than the rock and roll boy could keep his eyes off her.

  He stood in the doorway for another moment, observing the situation unfolding in the dining room – until he’d seen enough.

  Hell. He was too old for this.

  The only person completely unfazed, the only person eating their cake, was Hawkins, who, unlike the other two people at the table, had noticed him the instant he’d walked in the door.

  With a quick glance at the two “youngsters” at the table, Hawkins gave him a slight shrug and took another bite of cake.

  He got the message. He was on his own here.

  Hell – and he hated to say it, but he understood Skeeter’s reaction. Even beat up, the kid was good-looking, exceptionally, like a high-end model, which he had been a year ago for some Italian designer’s “rock stars wear my men’s cologne” advertising campaign.

  Dylan had Creed to thank for that bit of information, along with the photos the Jungle Boy had found on the internet of the guitar hero rising from the sea like a tattooed god with the cologne’s name circling him in golden, sun-kissed letters.

  Honestly, Dylan was damn glad he was none the worse for wear, but the kid had been a helluva lot easier to look at when he’d been asleep in the hospital bed. Finding him sitting at the dining room table made the situation far more real – seismic-shift real. A brother.

  “Skeet,” he said, giving her a head’s up, in case she’d like to help him out by at least trying not to stare at the kid.

  Two heads turned toward him, but it was Skeeter’s gaze he met first. To his surprise, and odd sense of relief, she looked rattled, not infatuated.

  Alright, he thought, even more curious. It took a lot to shake his bad girl.

  “Babe,” she said, rallying with a small smile. “Plenty of food left, if you’re hungry. Is Creed coming up?”

  “After he checks on a couple of things.”

  He shifted his gaze to Liam, who’d taken Dylan’s instant of inattention to sit up straighter, to square his shoulders, to ready himself.

  Nice try, kid, Dylan thought, but this was no contest, no matter how much Italian cologne the guy had sold.

  And yet, looking at the rock and roll wonder face-to-face was enough to set Dylan back a few more degrees. While nobody was ever going to ask him to model anything other than a .45 or a combat knife, the resemblance between him and his brother was uncanny, including the dark-eyed, calculating gaze he was getting in return.

  Oh, yeah, he knew that look. There was a definite “throw down” in the younger man’s eyes, and behind the challenge, a shade of uncertainty.

  Well, little brother, that makes two of us, he thought.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Good,” Liam said.

  Dylan nodded. “Glad to hear it.” And yes, that was him at his nurturing best. And yes, he knew it was pathetic and probably made him some kind of heartless bastard, and he was pretty sure if he asked around, he could get a “Yes, boss,” on that point from just about everybody he knew – except Skeeter.

  She knew where his heart was.

  He ran his gaze over the younger man again, noting the stitches on the left-side of his face, the bruising under his right eye, the long-healed scar along his jaw, and the bandage peeking out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt, where Tommy had cut him with a knife.

  That really pissed him off.

  And don’t even ask him about the gunshot wound on the kid’s leg.

  He took a breath and moved forward.

  Sitting down at the table, he reached into his pocket for his antacids – then stopped. He already felt ancient compared to the guitar hero. No need to go ahead and prove the point.

  What he needed was to take control, figure the kid out.

  Right.

  He needed to set the kid straight and move forward.

  Right.

  And protect him.

  At all costs.

  Put a bodyguard on him.

  Someone who could take down guys like Tommy Dunstan, Nate Martell, and Bobby Lee Raynor with one arm tied behind his back.

  Dylan knew a lot of guys like that, had known most of them since he was sixteen.

  Okay, it was settled then. The kid was getting a bodyguard.

  “Dunstan, Martell, and Raynor are all in custody for felony assault and half a dozen other charges,” he said. “Chances are they’ll all be doing time for what happened last night at the truck stop.”

  “Well...maybe not all of them.” The kid shook his head. “Nate and Bobby Lee, yeah, but Daddy Jack will never let Tommy go to prison. He’ll do whatever it takes, pay whatever it takes, to save Tommy.”

  Dylan didn’t get second-guessed very often, if ever, and truthfully, he liked it that way.

  “Well,
Jack Dunstan’s luck has been running out all day” - he checked his watch – “and in another hour or so, it’s going to hit rock bottom in a gutter so deep, he’ll never dig his way out.He won’t be able to save his own ass, let alone Tommy’s.” Cool, calm, collected, that was him, taking care of business.

  The kid shook his head again, tilting it to one side with a very doubtful grin curving his mouth, and Dylan’s whole supply of cool and calm went up in flames.

  “There’s nothing I’d love to see more than that sonuvabitch go down,” Liam said, “but he’s got two congressmen in his pocket, and he runs them pretty hard.”

  Dylan had seen that grin before, that tilt of the head, and suddenly he was fifteen again, being his father’s righthand man for the Geneva trip. In a dozen ways he hadn’t noticed when the kid had been out cold in the hospital bed, Liam looked more like their father than Dylan had at any age. The kid’s smile had slammed the news home in a heartbeat.

  And man, that hurt like a bitch, in all those dark places Dylan thought he’d put long behind him.

  Maybe he needed that antacid after all.

  Taking a breath, he took the pathetic roll of antacids out of his pocket and threw a handful into his mouth. Then he gave Hawkins a quick glance, tapped the table with two fingers, and said, “Stranahan’s.”

  A cry for help, if he’d ever given one.

  Hawkins rose from the table.

  Dylan turned his attention back to Liam, knowing something a little stiffer than fifteen-year-old Scotch was on its way, a little liquid courage to help him sort through this unfuckingbelievable situation and the kid’s smile.

  Hawkins had already filled him in on last night’s sequence of events and how it had all come down according to Liam. The whole night had been damn crude and disturbingly violent, and all of it had been corroborated by Tommy Dunstan.

  Proving to have the backbone of an invertebrate, the backwoods boy had blubbered all the way from the Corvette to Steele Street’s basement, confessing everything he could think of, from last night to his notable rap sheet of misdemeanors, another possible felony or two from a few years back unrelated to Liam, the passcode to his phone, and all about Big Daddy Jack telling him this was the best chance he’d ever had to get the five million dollars stolen from him by Dylan and his “daddy” – a newsflash that had raised Creed’s eyebrows damn near to his hairline with a clear look of What the fuck, kemo sabe?

  Tommy said the inheritance and the law stuff was all laid out in a letter a New York City law firm had sent to Liam, and that Liam had wrestled Tommy’s copy of the letter off him in Chicago, then flown the coop.

  Wrestled? Dylan had thought, eyeing the backwoods boy. The kid he’d seen in the hospital bed hadn’t looked like he could wrestle anything off two-hundred-plus pounds of backwoods mean with a grudge.

  But Tommy wasn’t worried about losing his copy, he’d said, because Big Daddy had the original, and that’s the one they would take to New York to get the money from the lawyers.

  “So you and your father think the money is in New York with the lawyers who sent the letter?” Dylan had asked, knowing damn well it wasn’t.

  “Yes, sir.” Tommy had nodded. “It’s right in the letter – inheritance. They’ve got the money.”

  Well, they’ve got something, Dylan had thought. But it sure as hell isn’t the money.

  He knew where every dollar of the initial five million had gone over the years. He also knew the portfolio had more than tripled in value, and that a good-sized chunk of it was still in Geneva, Switzerland, securely stashed at Credit Suisse in an investment account. The rest of it was securely invested in the thirteen floors rising above them at 738 Steele Street, a prime piece of Denver real estate gaining in value every month for well over a decade, and now jointly owned by him and Skeeter. He’d put her on the deed within a week of getting married, swearing to her that she would never be without a home.

  He'd also put her on the account at Credit Suisse. The work they did was dangerous. If anything happened to him, he didn’t want there to be any doubt about who owned the account.

  “All we need is little Liam to go with us to see those damn lawyers and get that damn money,” Tommy had said.

  Not gonna happen, Dylan had thought.

  At that point, Creed had held up Tommy’s phone, showing him a pair of texts, and Dylan’s night had been complete. Jack Dunstan was headed to Denver and had the Steele Street address along with a photo of the building. Perfect.

  “And Big Daddy gave me the job of goin’ and gettin’ Liam,” Tommy had said. “And we was to drag his ass back to Georgia any way we could. That’s what Big Daddy said – any way we could.”

  As far as Dylan knew, the “my daddy told me to do it” defense had never kept anybody out of jail, and he could guarantee it hadn’t tonight. Officer Weisman had picked up Tommy an hour ago.

  Jack Dunstan didn’t know it yet, but his world had already started crumbling. His son was sitting in the slammer, and a couple of phone calls Dylan had made earlier in the day had unleashed a rolling tide of inevitable destruction headed in the bastard’s direction.

  But Liam was still getting a bodyguard. Dylan needed to be able to sleep at night.

  A double shot of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey appeared next to him on the table, along with the rest of the bottle. Hawkins laid a piece of paper next to the bottle, then sat back down to his cake.

  Dylan glanced down at the note – Panama a no-go. V.N. an asset. Langley has their own guy on it.

  Well, that beat all, he thought. Vasily Nikolayevich was working with the CIA. The spooks had done a damn good job of keeping that information to themselves. Dylan was only grateful to have found out before he and Hawkins had landed in Central America.

  Thank God for little favors.

  He emptied half the glass of whiskey in one swallow before levelling his gaze at his brother.

  “So, you ran into George Peterson at the Calhoun Auto Auction.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah. The boys and I were down there looking for cars, and then I hear some guy yelling Hey Dylan...Dylan Hart! So naturally, I turn around, looking for you, because” – Liam paused, his gaze glancing off Hawkins before returning to Dylan – “because, man, I’ve been looking for you my whole life.”

  Dylan didn’t budge, not a muscle, just sat there calmly, listening. But his mind was racing. The kid had been looking for Dylan Hart, for his whole life? How in the hell was that even possible?

  “But then the guy gets closer,” Liam was saying, “and he’s looking straight at me, and I see him realize” - the barest flicker of a grin curved his mouth again – “I see him realize I’m way too young to be Dylan Hart, too young to be Old Man Hart.”

  Old Man Hart?

  Geezus. Dylan almost laughed out loud – but didn’t. The kid had balls. He had to give him that. But what he’d said? That didn’t make sense. No one from his past had known his name, except, apparently, his little brother – who hadn’t even been born the night Liam Dylan Magnuson III had become Dylan Hart. So what the hell?

  “Old Man Hart?” he prompted, curious to hear what else the kid had to say.

  “Yeah,” Liam nodded, his grin widening. “I didn’t know exactly how old you’d be, but with Big Jack bitching about you and the money you stole from him every time he got drunk, I eventually put the dates and numbers together enough to figure you must have been about fifteen or so when Dad died in Geneva and you disappeared off the map. I’d sure as hell like to know how you did it. I never got farther than the Florida Keys. But you...man, you fucking disappeared. Must have been amazing.”

  It was the oddest damn thing, Dylan thought. The people sitting at the table knew him better than anyone else on the planet. Then along comes a total stranger, a family member who he hadn’t even known existed, and his entire life’s secrets come spilling out like water out of a breached dam.

  He looked over at Hawkins, whose steady, unflinch
ing gaze was sending a very clear message – We need to talk, boss.

  Yeah, Dylan had some explaining to do, except to Skeeter. She knew everything – the money, his father, his mother, Geneva, Jack Dunstan. She knew everything except how rough and deadly the situation in Geneva had actually been. But his crew didn’t know any of it. Hell, Tommy Dunstan was at best a step-family member, and he’d shocked the bejeezies out of Creed with his “you and your dad stole five million dollars” accusation down in the basement.

  Liam was right about his escape, though, it had been amazing. Amazingly awful – a dying father, a piece of paper pressed into his hand, and his father’s last word, Yours.

  He reached for the glass of whiskey and finished it off.

  A piece of paper with a string of numbers scrawled across it - Dylan had known exactly what it was, an account number at Credit Suisse, the bank his father had deposited money into just hours before he’d died. His share of the business Big Jack Dunstan was trying to sell out from under him, he’d said.

  The one thing that wasn’t surprising in all of this, was that Dunstan had not forgotten about the money, not in all these years, not for one minute, for all the good it was going to do him. He didn’t owe Jack Dunstan anything.

  Not so with his father’s youngest son.

  “If I’d known about you, Liam, I’d have gotten you out of Georgia a long time ago.” That was the best he could come up with, but he meant every word. Even at fifteen, he would have burned Georgia to the ground to save his brother from Margot and Big Jack Dunstan.

  “I managed,” the kid said.

  “According to Tommy, you managed quite a few times.”

  “I gave him a run for his money,” the kid agreed, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Until last night,” Dylan said.

  Another smile curved the boy’s mouth. “Last night I gave him a run for your money, big brother. Five million dollars of your money sitting in a bank account at Credit Suisse with my name on it.”