by Tara Janzen
“Nothing. Oh, Kid.” She sighed, kissing his face, his mouth, her hands sliding over his chest.
Yeah, he thought, understanding dawning on him. He was just lucky he wasn't crying, too. He'd never felt anything like what had just happened between the two of them. Never. She was hot and sweet and soft and smart, funny and tender and wild, and he was in love. Crazy in love.
He kissed the top of her head where she was snuggled up against him, relaxing into sleep, the movement of her hand slowing into a lazy caress.
He should tell her about being in love. Feeling what he was feeling, there was no way to keep it inside. Yeah, he needed to tell her, and he would—tomorrow.
CHAPTER
21
NO GUNS. Just bones. Nothing but bones. Quinn stood in the middle of the Lafayette warehouse and couldn't believe he'd almost gotten himself killed over a pile of old bones that even Regan seemed to find disappointing.
“It's not here,” she said again, examining one of the fossils for the second time. She'd been through them all in a quick search for the Cretaceous carnivore nest Wilson had thought he'd found. They'd been at the Lafayette warehouse for more than half an hour, and her time was up. She knew it, he knew it, and all they needed now was for Hawkins to show up so they could bait the trap.
“Wilson seemed so sure,” she said, walking down the side of a long table, her fingers sliding from one fossil to the next, some still half plastered, some with their jackets removed. Most of the fossils were crated on pallets on the floor, the ones that positively weren't the Tarbosaurus nest.
Neither were they the Pentagon's OICW assault rifles, he thought with disgust, trying to remember exactly what it was that had made General Grant so damn sure this was the shipment to steal.
“Maybe it was all just wishful thinking on Wilson's part,” Quinn said to her, getting carefully down off the forklift he'd been using. His knee was starting to hurt like hell. He'd spent his half hour organizing the “reject fossils” for easy loading. Hell, he'd practically gift wrapped the damned things. When Roper did finally show up—and Quinn knew he would—Quinn wanted things to move fast and smooth. He wanted the bad guys in, and he wanted the bad guys out. No screwups. Not when Regan was going to be there—a risk he should have known better than to take.
Damn it.
“You think he's delusional?” she asked, looking up from the table.
“Your grandfather? I haven't seen him in years, but from what you've said, it's possible.” He didn't want to add to her worries, but here they were, and there wasn't a damn dinosaur nest in sight, or anything else that changed their situation. “What do you think of the rest of the fossils?”
“They're a mess.” She looked around at the crates she'd checked and the few fossils still on the table. “No two bones seem to be from the same species, let alone the same animal. They weren't jacketed very carefully. There aren't any skulls, no teeth, no vertebrae. You seem to have somebody's discard pile of bone fragments without the map to tell you where they were found and how they were laid out.”
Great. He'd dragged her into this for nothing.
“What's wrong?” she asked, coming around the side of the table.
“Nothing,” he lied, making an effort to get the scowl off his face. “Look, I guess I should have told you this before, but you can have another chance at these bones if you want it.”
“What do you mean?” Confusion marred her features.
“We're going to let Roper have the fossils tonight, but we won't let him keep them if that's not in our best interest.”
Her brows furrowed even deeper.
“You'll steal them back,” she said after a moment. A small smile threatened the corners of her mouth. “You haven't changed at all, have you?”
He smiled, too. “No.”
He hadn't changed, not one iota, from the shaggy-haired sixteen-year-old juvenile delinquent she'd first seen all those years ago. Neither had Hawkins changed, or Dylan or any of the guys her grandfather had taken under his wing. After all the years, and all the miles, in their hearts and by trade, they were still thieves. Only now they stole for the government.
“So you stole a hundred cars before you got caught,” she said, settling back against the table and crossing her arms over her chest. “Why?”
He'd been seeing that one coming all night, since he'd first confessed to her up on that dirt road above Denver, and he'd already decided to tell her the truth.
“Stress.”
“Stress?” Her brows lifted. “What stress?”
“Going-hungry stress, freezing-your-ass-off stress, and getting-kicked-out-of-the-house stress. We had it all.”
All traces of her smile faded away, and her eyes went dark and serious. “Who's we?”
“Me and my mom.”
“What about your dad?” It was a fair question, or would have been if his father had had any bearing on their situation, which he hadn't.
“You know,” he said, walking over to her and pressing a brief kiss to her mouth. “He's not such a bad guy. Guess he actually turned out pretty good when you consider that he was a father at fourteen. I never knew him, until he looked me up a few years ago. Has a nice family, two more boys, Jesse and Eric, and runs his own tire shop. Steele Street gets all their tires from him. We've been a real good account.” And wasn't that sweet how it had all worked out. Hell. He'd given up being angry a long time ago. How in the hell did you stay angry at a fourteen-year-old kid who'd just gotten lucky one night?
His jaw tightened just a bit, and inside he admitted it was probably still all too easy to get angry, not for himself, but for how casually that boy had used his mother, who obviously hadn't known any better either.
Well, he'd sure as hell kept his pants on at fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen, and seventeen, which was probably just one more reason he'd become so incredibly fixated on Regan McKinney—whose face, he noticed, had paled.
“Fourteen?” she said, her voice rising in disbelief.
Yeah, it was pretty damn young.
“How old was your mother?”
“Fifteen,” he said, telling her that unvarnished truth as well. “I used to tease her about going for younger guys, until I realized that making her cry was just too damn easy, and that even when I was at my absolute worst, she still loved me. It's the only thing that saved me, that she loved me no matter how rotten and wild I was.”
He'd shocked her, he could tell. His parents' ages certainly hadn't been in any of the newspaper articles about him. He'd made damn sure of that, for his mom's sake.
“I didn't know.”
God, she was sweet, her voice trembling for a little boy who had obviously turned out pretty well.
“If you cry, I'm not going to tell you any more.” He lightened the threat with a smile, but he meant it. There was one more box of fossils to crate up, the smaller ones on the table, and he picked up the closest and moved it over to the last wooden crate.
“I'm not going to cry,” she said, swiping the heel of her hand across her cheeks, then reaching for a hand-sized bone encrusted with rock. She followed him over to the last crate. “So go ahead and tell me everything. It's not like I haven't wondered a million times how you ended up on Wilson's work crew. Who kicked you out?”
“My mom's dad. He was always kicking us out of the house. It was either his way or the highway, and at about thirteen, I started choosing the highway every time.”
“Where's your mom now?” she asked, going back for another load.
“In Boulder. She married a dentist when I was sixteen. I've got two half sisters, Jessie and Lynne, sweet kids.”
“Two Jessies?” She gave a little laugh, stopping and turning back to look at him.
“Yeah.” He grinned with her. “My mom and dad didn't exactly keep in touch. Funny how that turned out, both of them naming a kid Jessie.”
“What about your grandfather?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? I don't keep track, and I d
on't ask Mom.”
He knew how that must sound to someone who adored her grandfather, but Bart Younger had not been Wilson McKinney, not by any stretch of the imagination. He'd been an alcoholic asshole who'd beaten Quinn's mother, but Regan didn't need to know all that, not tonight.
The sound of Roxanne's 426 Hemi pulling up outside brought both their heads around.
“Hawkins,” he said, relieved. He started for the door, but she caught his hand and held him back.
“Thanks,” she said, rising up to kiss his cheek.
He kissed her fingers, before taking her hand in his. “Let's get Hawkins and get this show on the road.”
Regan's memories of Christian Hawkins were very clear in her mind as she and Quinn stepped out of the warehouse, and at first sight of him getting out of a sleek green muscle car with a black racing stripe running up the hood, she realized she would have recognized him anywhere.
He hadn't changed, except for being taller and broader through the shoulders. His hair was still so dark as to be almost black. He still had the most intense gaze she'd ever seen, and a face made up of angles, not curves. Amazingly, he still dressed in worn-out jeans with a worn-out T-shirt, though he'd added a long-sleeved, striped cotton dress shirt that undoubtedly hid a shoulder holster and gun. The lines in his cheeks when he smiled were deeper and longer than they'd been, and she remembered thinking he was cute, too experienced for his age, and dangerous in a way she couldn't quite pin down.
Well, cute didn't begin to encompass the man he'd become. Handsome wasn't the right word either, not if it conjured up images of pretty-faced, square-jawed, shaving-cream models. Christian Hawkins was not pretty. He was striking, serious even when he smiled, and looked like he'd been to hell and back since she'd last seen him, and that he might have enjoyed the trip, or at least learned plenty along the way.
The air of danger was still there, along with an animal magnetism she'd known better than to succumb to even at fifteen. At thirty, she had a much better idea of where all that animal magnetism was coming from and where it could take a girl, and the knowledge made her grip Quinn's hand a little tighter.
“Regan,” Hawkins said, reaching out to shake her hand, his smile broadening.
She responded automatically, and when their hands clasped, she felt not only his warmth and strength, but his subtle awareness of her as a woman. It was in the ease of his grip, the light pressure of his fingers, and the unspoken appreciation in his eyes. As a greeting, it was both unnerving and charming, and she got the impression that she was very much in the company of a gentleman—and a rake, a description she wouldn't have quite thought was even in her vocabulary.
“Christian,” she replied with a smile, surprised at how glad she truly was to see him.
After releasing her hand, he glanced at Quinn and lifted one eyebrow a fraction of an inch.
“An hour, tops,” Quinn said, “unless you want to call Roper with a personal invitation.”
In reply, Hawkins rattled off a phone number beginning with the Denver area code.
“Yeah, that probably works better,” Quinn agreed, but Regan didn't know to what. It was obvious, though, that the two of them worked together a lot.
That impression was only confirmed as they went through the warehouse together. Quinn set the tracking device Kid had taken off her car, and placed it in one of the crates. That was for Roper Jones to follow to Lafayette. The device he'd picked up at Steele Street was turned on and placed in a different crate. That was for Quinn and Hawkins to follow to wherever Roper took the bones. The idea, she assumed, was that the bones would lead them to whatever they were really after. He still hadn't told her what that was.
The two of them spoke in a virtual shorthand, but Regan did understand how disappointed Hawkins was about the Tarbosaurus nest or something similar not being a reality. Apparently, Roper Jones was berserk about the bones, and not even the great Wilson McKinney had been able to give them a reason why.
Maybe Wilson had gotten a little delusional, she thought. Especially if he'd known how badly Hawkins and Dylan had wanted him to find something special.
Hawkins's arrival had bought her a little more time, and she was working her way back up the table while they loaded the remaining fossils, hoping she'd missed something. She wasn't trying to be quiet, and she certainly wasn't trying to eavesdrop, which didn't make what she heard any less startling.
“He wants your fucking head, Quinn. Just your head, and I told him I could get it, especially for the fifty grand he's ponied up.”
“And the rest of me?”
“You know him. To the dogs. Hell, he'll probably sell tickets.”
“We could—” Quinn turned suddenly, warned, she was sure, by her quick intake of breath.
She couldn't believe what she'd heard, and yet she did, every word.
“You've got a price on your head? Just your head?” The thought was so awful, she could hardly breathe.
Quinn looked back at Hawkins and, with a silent exchange, apparently laid a course for the rest of the evening. She didn't know how they did it, but neither did she protest when Quinn took her by the arm and led her outside to Christian's car.
“I know what Hawkins said sounded bad, but it's nothing to worry about.” He opened the trunk and pulled out a very dangerous-looking gun. She didn't know what it was, but it wasn't a pistol. It was bigger, more deadly, like something she'd seen in the movies, with a big clip of bullets curving out of the bottom—and it looked like exactly what they might need.
“How can you say that?” she asked, and damn him, he actually chuckled.
“Somebody is always out to get me, or get Hawkins, or Kid or J. T. or Creed. That's just the way it is. Steele Street only gets sent out on the tough jobs. We do them, and then we move on,” he said, leading her around to the back of the warehouse, slinging the gun's strap over his shoulder.
They were making their way around piles of metal scrap with the day's heat still radiating off them. When they'd first arrived, she'd been filled with excitement about the bones, but now the whole place looked depressing and run-down, like an awful place to meet someone who would pay money to have someone else decapitated.
She glanced over at him and felt her anger shift into dread.
What had she done? She'd had no business falling in love with a man whose work put him in such danger. No business at all.
“And where do you move on to?” Her voice was tight, but she couldn't help it.
They rounded the corner of the warehouse, and in the next step, he backed her up against the wall, his body just inches from hers, his hands on her waist, holding her.
“Nowhere without you,” he promised, moving the last step closer. “Ever,” he added fiercely, his mouth coming down on hers.
She gave in to it, was helpless against the longing he incited with his kiss.
Lifting his head, he kissed her once more, then said, “Come on.”
Taking her hand, he led her up a back stairway. It was built like a fire escape, and he pulled the last section of stairs up behind them before they ascended to the top. Inside, they walked along a catwalk to a narrow room hidden in the shadows of the rafters.
“We'll wait here. Hawkins will come up in a minute from the other side and wait over there. After the bones are picked up, I'll take you back to Steele Street. Okay?”
“Where are you going to go?”
“To meet Hawkins. He'll follow Roper and let me know where they take the fossils.” He opened the door into the room. There was a long desk inside, a couple of chairs, and a filing cabinet. There wasn't any glass in the windows, only louvered steel blinds that were open.
He sat down on the desk, and she sat down beside him. Taking his cell phone out of his pocket, he punched in a number with his thumb.
After a moment, he spoke. “Tell Roper to check his receiver. I want the fifty K off my head.” He hung up before anyone would have had a chance to answer, his message brief and to the poin
t.
So that's what the phone number was for, she thought.
“I'm scared for you,” she confessed, when he'd repocketed the phone.
“You don't have to be.” He slid off the desk and walked over to the windows to look out through the louvers. The main floor of the warehouse was brightly lit, as was the front outside, but the upper level was all in shadows. They could hear Hawkins moving the forklift, and when the sound stopped, Quinn came back to the desk.
He stood in front of her, his hands on either side of her arms. “I can take care of myself. I promise.”
She looked away from him, wrapping one arm around her waist, and covering her face with her other hand. This was awful.
What kind of sick person would put a bounty on somebody's body parts? And how in the world had she gotten into this thing up to her neck? God, she was in a broken-down warehouse in Lafayette, in the middle of the night, waiting for a bunch of horrible criminals to steal a bunch of Class B fossils, which she could absolutely guarantee were not worth somebody's life. Anybody's life.
But especially Quinn's.
“Hey,” he said, moving in closer.
A tremor went through her, and she prayed, Please God, don't let me cry.
“Hey, everything's going to be okay,” he promised. “I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”
“It's not me I'm worried about.” Her voice came out as a whisper.
“Shhh. It's okay, Regan. I'm here.” He kissed her forehead, and then each of her cheeks, and finally her mouth, and even with that awful gun lying on the desk beside her, and the whole night going to hell around her, she felt herself start to melt for him.
She'd never known a man could taste so good.
“You've already been hurt once,” she reminded him, between kisses.
“Bad judgment on my part, I admit, but I always learn from my mistakes.” With his hands sliding up from her knees, he opened her legs enough for him to slip between her thighs, and she wondered just how far it all could go—in a warehouse, on a stakeout, in the middle of the night, and her with no underwear.
