Crazy Cool

by Tara Janzen

  That’s what Grant’s orders had said anyway, but Hawkins would be damned if either he or Dylan had been able to find any VIPs on the local police’s priority list or in the rest of the crowd of upper-class Denverites. Unlike what the policemen they were working with tonight thought, having a big fat stock portfolio or owning a company that supported the Denver Police Department’s Benevolence Fund wasn’t enough to get a person ranked as Very Important—not by SDF standards. For that designation, a political connection was needed, and the only politically connected person he’d seen all night was Katya Dekker, walking out on the auction stage.

  He glanced over his shoulder, still not quite believing it was her.

  But it was.

  This couldn’t be good. It couldn’t possibly be good. The orders for tonight had come down directly from General Grant, but now Hawkins wanted to know just exactly who had made the special request.

  No way in hell should he have ended up at a garden party, let alone one that included Katya Dekker.

  With her connections she should have been at the top of the cops’ list, or at least in their top ten. She was at the top of his list, all right, his “avoid at all costs” list.

  Dragging his hand back through his hair, he looked at his empty glass again, then back to Kat.

  Son of a bitch.

  She hadn’t changed. She still looked like trouble with a capital T—wild blond hair, sea green eyes, clothes so expensive it used to make his teeth hurt, all of it wrapped around a small bombshell package set to explode. That was Kat Dekker, one big bang for the buck, big enough to blow a man’s life to hell.

  Maybe this was all one huge coincidence, the two of them showing up at the same place at the same time, but he doubted it. She certainly couldn’t have been the one to get him and Dylan called back from South America. She didn’t have that kind of power, and she sure as hell hadn’t bothered herself anytime in the last thirteen years to look him up. She especially hadn’t bothered herself when he’d been arrested and thrown in jail, when he’d needed her the most.

  Swearing again, he started across the lawn, skirting a string of canopied platforms decked out like jungle huts and working his way closer to the caterer’s tent and Dylan, who was also working this cakewalk.

  Hell. If this was a coincidence, it was one of the worst badass mojo coincidences he’d ever heard about. She was obviously part of the art auction, helping some guys move a painting, hanging around down by the stage, which was all decked out with fake palm trees and twisted vines, like a rain forest. She belonged here.

  He didn’t.

  Dylan looked over and caught his gaze as he neared the caterer’s tent.

  “You saw our problem?” Dylan asked, the coldness of his gaze telegraphing his mood—royally pissed off verging on ballistic. Everyone’s emotions were scraped raw from the likelihood of J.T.’s death, but for Dylan it was worse: He was the boss. J.T. and Creed had been his responsibility.

  “Yes.” Problem was a good way to put it.

  “Do you think she’s the reason we’re here?”

  Hawkins hated to think so. He really hated to think so.

  “She wasn’t named in our orders,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Dylan, who knew the orders as well as he did.

  “She’s the highest-ranking civilian here,” Dylan said, his glacial gray gaze going to the woman on the amphitheater stage and giving her a cool once-over. “She hasn’t changed at all.”

  Without wanting to, Hawkins found himself looking at her again.

  “No. She’s changed.” He’d been wrong earlier, real wrong, the way he’d always been about her. She’d changed. Plenty. She wasn’t scared, alone, and eighteen anymore. She wasn’t the prom queen or the poor little rich girl tonight—two acts she’d had down pat—and she wasn’t naked in bed with him. She’d been most of those things, most of the time, that whole crazy month they’d spent together.

  Then the earth had opened up and swallowed him whole. He’d spent two years in the state penitentiary, thanks to Katya Dekker and her crowd of too-rich, too-fast, too-frickin’-dumb-to-stay-out-of-trouble friends.

  And thanks to her mother, the mighty Marilyn Dekker. What a piece of work that woman was. Christian had been steamrolled, hog-tied, and locked up before he’d even known what had hit him.

  “She wasn’t on the cops’ list, and none of these guys seem to appreciate who she is, so maybe we better keep an eye on her. I’m going to put in a call to General Grant, in case there’s something else going on here and this isn’t as simple as it was supposed to be,” Dylan said.

  Hawkins slanted him a dry look. “There is nothing simple about you and me being at a friggin’ garden party.”

  Dylan conceded the point with a grim smile.

  Geezus, what a mess. Hawkins looked back at Katya Dekker and felt something cold harden in his chest. She’d cost him. Loving her had cost him.

  If it hadn’t been for Dylan and his Seventeenth Street lawyer working their asses off to get the case reopened, Hawkins knew he might still be in prison. What had clinched his pardon was the deathbed confession of a downtown vagrant named Manny Waite. In and of itself, the confession might not have been enough. Manny had been a lush whose grip on reality had been tenuous at best, but with one helluva lawyer and Dylan pushing hard to get him a pardon on one end, and poor old Manny giving it up on the other, Hawkins had been set free.

  He’d been tough when he’d gone in, but not as tough as he’d thought, and not tough enough, not at nineteen years old. By the time he got out at twenty-one, he had killed a man, and his whole world had changed—all thanks to Katya Dekker.

  Down on the stage, the auctioneer stepped up to the podium as Katya finished directing the placement of the first painting. The piece was at least six by eight feet of bright, oversize flower petals in a thickly ornate gilt frame. He recognized it as an Oleg Henri, nothing he’d want in his own collection, but a beautiful piece and one sure to appreciate in value once the artist became better known.

  The irony of the night wasn’t lost on him. Thirteen years ago, he wouldn’t have gotten within a hundred yards of a place selling an Oleg Henri or any piece of collectible art. Thirteen years ago, no one would have let him. Back then, he’d looked exactly like what he was, a street kid on the take and one of the most successful car thieves to ever give the Denver cops a run for their money. Dylan had always had a way of looking innocent no matter what crime he was committing, but Hawkins knew he and the rest of the guys at the chop shop on Steele Street had always looked like trouble.

  Just the way this damn garden party looked like trouble. Either he needed a Scotch, or he needed to be back on a plane to Colombia. What he didn’t need was to be hanging around an art auction with a bunch of socialites—like Katya Dekker.

  His gaze followed her as she crossed the amphitheater stage and went down the steps. There had to be a bounty on the dress she was wearing: a little black nothing, slit to the hip. With her mane of blond hair, her golden tan, and a pair of spike heels, she should have looked cheap.

  But she didn’t. She looked sleek and expensive. A California wet dream come true. Barbie with an attitude.

  She had a tattoo, which, oddly enough, unnerved him. She hadn’t had a tattoo at eighteen. It wasn’t discreetly hidden on a hip or an ankle, or twined around her navel, and it wasn’t a butterfly, or a rose, or a unicorn. Nothing sweetly banal for Kat; she’d decorated herself with a shooting star at the top of her arm, just below the curve of her shoulder.

  Kee-rist. He shook his head. Kat Dekker was back in town.

  He looked back out over the rest of the crowd, then heard Dylan swear softly next to him.

  “I’ll be a sonuvabitch.”

  “What?” he asked.

  In answer, Dylan lifted his chin toward the last cabana. Hawkins followed the gesture, and what he saw sent a cold chill pumping through his veins.

  “Garraty,” he said. “Ted Garraty.”

 
The fat boy who had testified against him at the murder trial had turned into an even fatter man, but Hawkins instantly recognized him. Garraty was talking on a cell phone, walking away from the cabana toward the caterer’s tent.

  “Yeah,” Dylan confirmed. “This party is really starting to suck.”

  “Or get weirdly interesting,” Hawkins said, not taking his eyes off Garraty as the man got closer and closer. He was completely absorbed in his conversation, his face flushed, his expression angry as he toiled up the slight incline, heading away from the rest of the crowd.

  Hawkins didn’t want a thing to do with Katya Dekker, but he wouldn’t mind having a few minutes alone with Ted Garraty. No, siree, he wouldn’t mind that at all.

  “You keep your eye on Ms. Dekker,” Dylan said. “I’ll see what Garraty is up to.”

  The hell he would, Hawkins thought. “No, I’ll take Garra—” he started to protest, but Dylan cut him off.

  “We are not here to kick ass and take names. We’re here to protect these people, not spook them into next week.”

  Hawkins didn’t give a damn if Garraty spooked. As a matter of fact, he’d like to spook the hell out of the guy, give him a real heart attack, but Dylan was right, and if Garraty was up to something, Dylan could find out what it was as well as he could. Then he could spend his time making sure Katya Dekker didn’t sneak up on him, which he could guarantee would give him a heart attack. Even at forty yards, she was too damn close for him to take an easy breath—a fact he definitely wasn’t going to be analyzing anytime soon.

  CHAPTER

  2

  KATYA WAS FROZEN in the shadows on the west side of the stage, her gaze riveted by the two men standing and talking just outside the caterer’s tent. Her chest was tight; she could hardly catch her breath.

  Oh, God. Her heart was pounding.

  That was Christian Hawkins, and every mistake she’d ever made in her life was roaring up behind her and threatening to take her down.

  Hired muscle? God help her—Alex didn’t know the half of it. Christian Hawkins had saved her life once, and he’d saved her virtue, and for the wildest month of her life, he’d taken her for his own. Not even thirteen years was enough to disguise the lean angles of his face, the coal black silk of his hair, or the midnight eyes that had promised her heaven—and delivered.

  And not even thirteen years was enough to assuage her guilt, or her doubts, or the way she’d felt about him. Her pulse was racing with an awful mixture of shock and wariness, and a truly horrible excitement at just seeing him again.

  She must be crazy.

  Marilyn. Oh, sweet Jesus, her mother couldn’t have any idea who she’d hired. This was insane—and with that thought, Katya’s headache won, hands down, with a flash of pain.

  Suddenly, her decision to expand her business by buying a gallery in her hometown was looking extremely shortsighted. What in the world had she been thinking? Toussi’s was right smack dab in the middle of LoDo, only a few blocks from the alley where Jonathan Traynor had been found murdered.

  Alex had warned her to have her stars read before she rearranged her whole life, and now she wished she had. Something this cataclysmic must have been splashed all over her personal cosmos like a supernova.

  Had Hawkins seen her? she wondered, and then could have kicked herself for being stupid. Of course he’d seen her. She’d been up on the stage for the last fifteen minutes. Everybody in the whole damn garden must have seen her.

  So what was she going to do?

  Get Alex. Yes, that was right. She needed to find Alex, who had disappeared God only knew where, and tell him he’d been absolutely right: Her mother’s paranoia was extremely well-founded, but her meddling, as usual, had only made things worse.

  Much, much worse.

  The bidding on the Oleg Henri was still going on. She could hear the auctioneer’s voice behind her on the stage, cool, calm, and collected—the way she would be, she swore, in just a minute. She just needed a minute to adjust, to catch her breath and breathe her way through the pain ricocheting between her temples.

  If Hawkins had seen her, what must he be thinking? Maybe he hadn’t recognized her. She’d changed a lot since she was eighteen. Or maybe seeing her didn’t make any difference to him one way or the other, because from where she was standing, it was clear he was not having the same heart-palpitating reaction she was having.

  Which made her wonder if she and Alex had read the situation all wrong. Maybe her mother hadn’t hired him—but if Marilyn hadn’t, who had? Maybe he and the other man weren’t there to protect her.

  What if he’d come for revenge?

  The alarming thought took hold for all of half a second. Then she told herself to calm down and get a grip. He deserved better of her. He always had. No one took revenge for idiocy—and that had been her biggest crime against him, being a weak-willed coward who, no matter how hard she’d tried, hadn’t been able to make her voice heard over the hue and cry for his conviction.

  Katya had never doubted that her mother and Senator Jon Traynor II, Big Jon, had both come down hard and heavy on the judge in the case—Marilyn for a quick resolution that did not involve her daughter, and Big Jon for swift and terrible justice. That his son had been revealed as a drug addict had drawn a lot of attention to his failure as a father, and he’d been hell-bent on finding someone else to blame. Christian Hawkins, a street kid with no visible means of support, no family, and a record had been all too easy to put away.

  And then he’d been pardoned. Two years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed—he had to be angry about that. Very angry.

  The Prom King Murder, as the media had dubbed the whole horrible affair, was thirteen years old, with poor Jonathan long dead and buried, but the prom queen from that fateful, awful year was still alive and well.

  Though, so help her God, she’d been a lot better before she’d seen Hawkins.

  The boy she’d known would never have hurt her, but he’d had those two awful years in prison since then, and—

  She never got a chance to finish the thought. The explosion that rocked the stage knocked her down with a blast of heat and noise and sparks, throwing her hard onto the lawn.

  HAWKINS and Dylan reacted instantly, running toward the amphitheater, while everyone else in the gardens was either scrambling to get away, or frozen by shock where they stood. Hawkins headed straight to where he’d last seen Katya and found her just a few steps from the stage. He dropped to his knees, with Dylan right behind him. A quick check proved she had a pulse.

  High above them, another explosion ripped the sky. He threw himself over her body and looked up. The rocket that had exploded out of one of the palm trees on the side of the stage had set the tree on fire and burst into a cloud of showering, shimmering sparks that hung in the air. In the next second, another rocket exploded out of another palm tree, starting another fire and shooting into the sky.

  Fucking fireworks? he thought, watching colorful streamers and sparks explode out of the second rocket.

  “Get her out of here,” Dylan said. “And yes, that’s an order.” He rose to his feet and took off at a run.

  Neatly done, Hawkins thought grimly. He couldn’t remember the last time Dylan had pulled rank, and he couldn’t help but think that if he’d been thinking even a split second faster than his boss, he could be the one racing across the gardens, drawing his gun, figuring out what the hell was going on while fireworks exploded out of the scenery.

  But Dylan had beaten him to the punch, and now he was stuck with Bad Luck Dekker.

  “Alex . . . what . . . oh, wh-what in the hell? I—” Panic and exasperation edged her voice as he did a quick pat-down. She slapped at his hand and a grin flitted across his mouth. She could talk and move, and didn’t have any broken bones. They were good to go.

  Another rocket exploded with a concussive boom, and she curled up beneath him, putting both of her hands over her ears.

  Geezus, the whole place was coming
apart.

  When she tried to roll over and push herself up, Hawkins didn’t let her. He held her down for another second, covering her until he finished a quick scan of the gardens.

  “Please . . . stop. No—” Her voice ran out on a breath, and she went a little limp.

  Beneath the fireworks display, pandemonium had taken over the party. The lights in the trees and on the huts had gone out, plunging the gardens into darkness. People were running everywhere, women screaming, men shouting, as one by one the forest of palms rimming the stage exploded and draped the night sky and the gardens in showers of hot, colorful sparks. Boom. Boom. Boom. The explosions kept coming, faster and closer together. Nobody was in charge of the situation yet, but he could see the cops here and there, doing their best to keep people from trampling each other.

  Deciding the coast was nominally clear of shooters looking for a target, and having no intention of hanging around for the grand finale, Hawkins dragged Katya to her feet and did a quick assessment of her ability to run: not so good—she was swaying, and she looked a little stunned. So he scooped her into his arms and was gratified to feel her molding herself to him. She wrapped one arm around his neck and used the other to cover her ear as she buried her head against his jacket. He could have moved faster by throwing her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, but just because he didn’t see any shooters didn’t mean they weren’t out there, and in his arms, she was a smaller target.

  And she was small. He’d forgotten how small. In his memories, she’d more than held her own with him, but carrying her, he had to wonder how.