by Tara Janzen
Looking around, he carefully noted the other two doors he could see, the two men besides Danny and Brad who had come with Roper, and the exact location of the small canvas bag full of diamonds.
REGAN couldn't take it. She couldn't sit still and hope for the best while Quinn was in Roper's clutches and his only hope was Hawkins.
Her glance strayed to Jeanette's ignition and the keys dangling from the steering column.
Did she dare?
Hawkins knew what he was doing, she was sure, but Hawkins was outnumbered, and though she kept looking, she hadn't seen sign one of the FBI.
And she couldn't just sit there. She just couldn't, not with Quinn's life on the line.
Quickly, before she changed her mind, she slid over the gear console and into the driver's seat. It felt different from the passenger side, distinctly, profoundly different. The driver's side had all the power. This was the side that made the decisions. This was the side that took the risks.
She reached for the keys—and hesitated. She knew what was going to happen when she turned the key. Jeanette was going to roar to life and eat her alive. The Camaro was going to shake and tremble with barely suppressed violence. She was going to want to eat, and what Jeanette ate was asphalt.
Regan looked out through the windshield at the old airport, at the runways and parking lots, and at all the pavement in between the hangars and the warehouses, all the pavement tying together the terminal and the old concourses.
There was more than enough asphalt, even for Jeanette.
“Okay, baby, be gentle. Don't hurt me, and I'll try real hard not to hurt you.” Before she could change her mind, she turned the key—and lurched forward with a growl and a scream and an instantly dead engine.
“Clutch, clutch, clutch,” she ground out between her teeth, mentally kicking herself for being so stupid. She knew about the clutch. She seldom used one herself, but she knew about them.
With the clutch in, she tried again and felt Jeanette come to life in all her growling glory, rising up around her like a phoenix from the ashes. Regan stepped on the gas, with the clutch still firmly in, and the Camaro shook like a wet dog, all over from her hood to her tail—and she roared.
Yes! Regan thought. She could do this. She could save Quinn.
Carefully, she let out the clutch while stepping on the gas, and went through another teeth-jarring lurch, complete with growl and scream and a dead engine.
She almost cried in frustration. Quinn needed her. She had to do this.
Twice more she got the car going, only to fail with the clutch, before she finally got Jeanette moving in first gear. She'd been told it only got easier after that.
HIDING behind a crate close to where Roper held Quinn, Hawkins knew exactly what he was hearing. He couldn't believe it, but he knew exactly what it was: Regan McKinney committing suicide the hard way. God forbid, if she accidentally got all the way to sixth gear, she was going to end up dying in Utah before she even knew she'd left the ground and gone airborne.
Why hadn't he taken the keys?
He was afraid that was going to be a question that haunted him for years to come. Right along with why in the hell hadn't he run faster to get back to the hangar?
Quinn had been cut. Roper had cut him with his fucking knife, which Hawkins was personally going to bury in his throat, and Quinn was bleeding from a long gash down the side of his face, bleeding like a stuck pig.
Son of a bitch. Where was the fucking FBI? The best Hawkins could do on his own was to take out three, maybe four guys before one of the remaining guys decided to take out Quinn.
The truck had rolled in carrying the guns, and Roper's men were busy unloading them. And what amazing guns they were, assault rifles for the new millennium, with Buck Rogers styling and the firepower to blow away terrorists or anybody else right through a brick wall. Roper himself had taken one of the guns out and was breaking it down. Hawkins was impressed. The OICW was a double-barreled weapon with the top barrel shooting 20mm high-explosive fragmentation rounds, and the second barrel shooting 5.56mm ammunition. It had a bayonet, a laser range-finder, and even a video camera mounted on top.
But what Hawkins needed now was another shooter, not another gun. And for God's sake, he did not need Regan behind Jeanette's wheel, hell-bent on turning this into the biggest cluster-fuck of the century.
He could hear her lurching closer outside the hangar. Hell, he could smell Jeanette's clutch burning. Down below him, he saw Roper gesture for Tommy Jenkins, one of his guys from the Jack O' Nines and Roper's whoring buddy, to go check it out. Everyone else grabbed an OICW, some ammo, and locked and loaded.
Perfect.
Running along the tops of the crates, he followed Tommy Jenkins to the hangar door. The minute Tommy stepped outside, out of sight of the others, Hawkins dropped him with a silent burst from the suppressed HK MP5.
Looking farther out, he could see Jeanette struggling to be set free, inching her way across the parking lot, heading for the hangar, straining to get into second gear.
And suddenly he thought, hell, this could actually work. As long as Regan didn't get herself killed. He raced back along the tops of the crates to cover Quinn.
Damn, Regan was a long, desperate minute away from him. If she could just find second, or God, please, third, she could have Quinn sitting in Jeanette's lap in under fifteen seconds. Less than ten, if she didn't choke. In five, if she'd had any idea of what in the hell she was doing. One, if she'd been Quinn.
But she wasn't Quinn, and she didn't know what in the hell she was doing. She was going to be too late.
Even the truck drivers had armed themselves and were ready for a shootout. There was no place for everything to go but downhill fast, and Hawkins quickly picked his best line of fire to cover both Quinn and Regan, thinking this would be a good time for Leeder to show up with his FBI buddies—and then the miracle happened.
He heard it coming straight at him. He heard it in the sudden surge of power. He heard it in the headers and the big block and the exhaust. Either Regan had found her way into second gear, or Jeanette had dragged her there. Third followed with a squeal of tires, and when she hit fourth, Hawkins was already screaming, “Brakes!”
By then, it was already too late for brakes, but that didn't stop her from hitting them—hard.
SWEET Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Jeanette. Quinn had heard the Camaro coming, heard the low throaty growl he had fine-tuned to within a decibel of perfection, heard someone mangling her gears and her clutch—and he knew Regan had taken on the beast and was getting eaten alive.
Then she got lucky and started climbing her way through the gears. There wasn't a guy in the hangar who didn't stop what he was doing and turn to see what in the hell was heading his way in a rolling cloud of smoke and thunder.
But it was already too late.
Jeanette roared through the open hangar door, wheels spinning, smoke clinging to her tires, heading straight for disaster. Then Regan hit the brakes, and all hell broke loose—in slow motion.
Quinn watched the whole disaster unfold frame by frame, even as he dove for the desk. Jeanette went into a tail-spinning turn that plowed her rear end into a rack of barrels, breaking one open and spewing liquid fuel over a wide swath of the hangar, including the desk, which she'd barely missed.
The smell of gasoline filled the air, potent, breath-stealing. To Quinn's left, he heard a man scream. One of Roper's goons had been pinned in the wreckage. Roper had been knocked out cold and was lying facedown on the hangar floor, blood running from his head, gasoline pooling around his prone form. The dogs had disappeared in a flash of black tails and flying paws. Jeanette roared in fury, her tires smoking, but she didn't budge, not so much as a foot. Her tail end was buried under the twisted rack and the remaining barrels, the power of her engine making the whole thing rock, and shake, and grind together.
Quinn dragged himself to his feet, his mind racing, trying to catch his breath.
Geezu
s. He ran toward the Camaro, slipped on the slick floor, and fell in a heap. Swearing, he scrambled back to his feet. Shit. He could smell the heat coming off Jeanette, heat off her tires, heat off her screaming engine—and the whole fucking place was doused in gasoline.
Ripping his cuffs off, he slid up the side of the Camaro and tore open Jeanette's door. Regan stared at him wide-eyed, trembling, a cut across her forehead. Gas was pouring down on the Camaro from the punctured barrels above.
Pulling her free of the car, Quinn took her hand in his and ran like hell.
Hawkins joined them at the hangar door, covering them.
They'd cleared the hangar and were skidding around the corner of a freight office building when Avatrix blew. The three of them hit the ground in a pile, forced down by the concussion of the explosion.
Looking up, Quinn saw a ton of debris go flying into the air, and a ton of it come flying down.
Behind them, half a dozen cars came to a screeching halt. He heard people piling out of the vehicles, and in the next minute they were surrounded by the FBI.
It was a zoo after that.
Fire crews were on the scene within fifteen minutes of the explosion, and the police weren't far behind.
Leeder, the Special Agent in Charge, secured the place for the FBI. Leeder and Hawkins had a brief conversation while the medics cleaned up Quinn and Regan. Quinn hadn't let go of her hand, not once, since they'd run out of the hangar, but she hadn't said a word to him. He'd asked her a few questions—“Are you okay? Do you hurt anywhere? Do you need some water?” But all he'd gotten was either a nod or a shake of her head.
It worried him. Like him, she had to be exhausted. She smelled like gasoline; her clothes were torn. She had a small white bandage on her forehead where the EMT had cleaned her cut. Dirt smudged her face, her arms, her legs. He knew she still didn't have any underwear, and for the first time, he felt bad about it. Real bad. He wanted to protect her, make her feel secure, keep her from harm—and all he'd done was lose her underwear and practically get her blown up.
Hell. This had to be the absolute worst first date of her life.
He looked back to the hangar, or what was left of it. The fire crews had gotten the fire out, and the wind had picked up, blowing the smoke off to the south. Slowly, the blackened, shadowed remains inside the blown-out shell began to take on distinct shapes, the most distinct being the burned-out chassis sitting in the middle of the hangar: Jeanette. There was nothing left of her, nothing at all but a smoldering pile of iron and smoking tires.
Damn, Quinn thought. Damn.
FROM the safety of her perch, sitting on the hood of Christian Hawkins's car—he called the car Roxanne—Regan took in the sight and saw the whole wild night replay in her head, from the minute she'd strapped herself into the Camaro in Cisco, until Jeanette had given her all in the Avatrix hangar. Behind her, dawn stained the eastern horizon, signaling the break of day, and by default, the end of night.
It was over. She hurt in every cell of her body, from all her cuts and bruises to the awful ache in her heart. But she'd survived. The night was over.
The greatest paleontology find of the century had just gone up in smoke and debris—but at least the night was over.
She was holding Quinn's hand tight, looking at poor Jeanette, watching the fire crews douse her in water and foam.
As she watched, nearly too tired to breathe, an inexplicable sadness came over her, and she wondered if she was really holding on to anything at all—or if she should even try.
CHAPTER
28
BY THE TIME they drove up to the house in Boulder, Regan felt like she'd been gone a hundred years. Everything in her world had been tossed up for grabs, and she wasn't sure what was left.
Wilson was home, and that had been her goal when she'd set out yesterday morning. Nikki was safe, half in love and half heartbroken—which made Regan wonder what had happened between her and the boy wonder—but safe.
As for herself, she was overwhelmed on overload. She needed time to think, to sort, to organize and catalogue, and somehow put the last fifteen hours in perspective.
She needed to sleep, have a cup of tea, take a breath, and ask herself some serious questions about what had happened between her and Quinn.
Quinn pulled Betty to a stop in the driveway just as the paperboy lofted a paper up onto the porch. Light was barely breaking over the eastern horizon. Birds were waking up in the trees.
In the backseat, Nikki grumbled, and Wilson woke with a start. Neither had been too happy with Regan's insistence on them coming home at the crack of dawn. But she'd been adamant. She needed everything back to normal, if that was even possible after the night they'd all had.
Everyone piled out of the car and headed up to the house. A police car was already parked outside, a protection detail called in by Hawkins, and Quinn went over to talk with the officers for a couple of minutes.
Inside the house, Wilson went straight through the kitchen, up the stairs, and directly into his bedroom, grouching about darned fossil thieves, and the quality of Siberian diamonds or the lack thereof, and why in the hell had the darn thing gotten blown up? Didn't anybody have any sense anymore? And what in the heck had some guy in Denver thought he was going to get away with by stealing dinosaur bones and stuffing them with stolen diamonds?
Guns, Regan could have told him, if he'd stopped long enough to listen. A bunch of guns stolen from the American military that had gone up in a ball of smoke and flame along with Jeanette and a couple of rottweilers she feared would haunt her dreams for years to come. The dogs hadn't been anywhere to be found after the explosion, though Quinn had told the police he thought they'd gotten away.
Roper hadn't gotten away, but a few of the men working for him had escaped the explosion and been picked up by the FBI.
A wave of heat and nausea rolled through her, almost bringing her to her knees. It had all been awful, just too awful, and she didn't want to think about it anymore. She had her family back. That's what she'd wanted. The only thing she'd wanted.
Dylan Hart, whom Regan didn't think she would ever forgive for involving them in this mess, had been able to confirm the theft of the Tarbosaurus nest from Ulan Bator's State Central Museum in Mongolia with his overseas connections. He'd also worked a deal that granted Wilson sole access to all the data the Mongolian paleontology team had come up with on the Cretaceous carnivore nest. It was a stunning coup, and one Regan knew her grandfather would hold over Dr. Houska's head for years to come—if he ever got over the loss of the fossil itself.
Regan stopped halfway across the kitchen when she realized Nikki hadn't followed her inside. Retracing her steps, she stopped in the open doorway and saw her little sister talking to Quinn. Nikki's face was very somber, an anomaly in itself, but Regan couldn't hear what she was saying.
She heard Quinn's answer, though, and it hit her like a blow.
“I can't promise you anything, Nikki, other than that I'll tell you if something happens to him.”
Nikki said something else, her beautiful face growing even more serious, and Regan's heart tightened in her chest.
There weren't going to be any easy answers with the guys from Steele Street. No promises, and probably no future. Every one of them had almost died tonight—her, Nikki, Wilson, Quinn, Kid, Hawkins. She'd finally heard the details about Kid and Nikki's ill-fated attempt to reach the Southern Cross Hotel, and they had made her blood run cold. They'd all been in mortal danger tonight, and it was more than Regan could bear.
More than she could bear, even for love.
Love. Was that what this was? This wonderful, awful, almost painful ache she felt inside? Or was it exhaustion? Sexual overload? Quinn overload? Everything overload?
“No, Nikki. I can't tell you where he went, or when he'll be back.” Quinn's voice carried much farther than Nikki's, and every word hurt. It hurt her, and it hurt Nikki. Regan could see her sister's mouth softening with pain.
Love,
she thought again, watching his face. How could she afford to let herself love him when he would go, too, just like Kid, disappear in the middle of some night, and it would be one of the other Steele Street guys saying the same words to her—unless she stopped it now. Before the pain of losing him cut too deeply. Before she let herself decide that loving him, no matter what, would be enough.
Nikki turned then and, without a backward glance, headed toward her studio, her refuge.
Regan wanted to cry for her, and she wanted to shake Kid Chaos and demand to know what had gone on between the two of them. She had a feeling it wasn't something Nikki was going to feel like talking about for quite a while.
So, great. Wilson and Nikki had both deserted her and left her to face Quinn alone.
“Hey,” Quinn said, coming up the steps. He dropped a quick kiss on her cheek, then took her arm and guided her back inside the kitchen. “The cops will be here for as long as we think necessary, or as long as you want them—whichever comes last.”
He closed the door behind them, and Regan felt so powerful and so keen a need to let him fold her in his arms that she knew she had to do this quickly, or not at all.
“I'm really tired, Quinn,” she said, before he could even begin to get comfortable in the house. “I'd like to just go to bed now.”
“Sure,” he said, but the wary look in his eyes told her he was picking up on what she was trying so hard to say without coming straight out and asking him to leave.
“Alone.” There, she'd said it.
His mouth tightened at the corners. He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was so soft she could hardly hear him. “Do you want me to stay in the house?”
Okay, he wasn't going to be casually polite. So neither was she.
