Crazy Cool

by Tara Janzen

  “We’re friends.” Not lovers, he could have added, but he didn’t.

  He didn’t know how, but even from behind her sunglasses, he could tell she was weighing his answer, checking him out, like it could possibly be any of her business.

  “He was worried about that, while he was gone.”

  Well, that explained her interest, and Travis guessed he wasn’t surprised.

  “He never said it, actually,” she continued, “but I could tell he was worried about you stealing his girl.”

  “So why didn’t he call her?” That seemed a fair enough question. Certainly Nikki had asked him it a hundred times.

  Skeeter Bang shrugged and sucked another hit off her cigarette. “He was in a bad place . . . very bad.” Her voice broke a little in the cloud of smoke she exhaled, and she glanced away toward the floor. “Look, I’m just here to make sure he’s okay.”

  “Sounds like you think he might not be.”

  She shrugged again. “I was with him earlier tonight, at his dad’s, and I . . . I couldn’t help him. I was hoping Nikki could. If you’ll just tell me where he is.” She glanced back up, and though all Travis could see was himself reflected in her glasses, he got the impression she was on the verge of tears, which, unlike some guys, didn’t make him panic. It just made him feel badly for her.

  “Well, he and Nikki kind of disappeared into that closet over there.” He gestured toward the door on the west side of the gallery. “And though I’m just as concerned about Nikki as you are about Kid, I guess I figured the two of them would work things out without me interfering.”

  She followed his gesture. “Yeah,” she said, stabbing the end of her cigarette into the plate. “I’m sure you’re right.” But she went ahead and started over to the door anyway, without giving him a backward glance.

  Travis followed, not sure if he meant to stop her from going in, or if he just wanted to be there if she did. Either way it was a moot point. She didn’t even touch the knob when she got there, just laid her ear up against the door and listened.

  As an invasion of privacy, Travis figured there were worse, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to put his ear to the door. At least that’s what he thought, until she reached for him, her hand closing around his wrist in a gesture he didn’t misinterpret for a second. Whatever she heard, it made her need somebody to hold on to; it made her feel the need for support.

  Moving closer to her, he, too, put his ear to the door, and it didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to understand her distress.

  Ah, Christ. The guy was crying, breaking up.

  He stepped back, looked down at her, and swore again. She was crying now, too. Big tears running down her soft little cheeks, and suddenly he was in the middle of Kid’s brother dying, too. In it up to his neck.

  “Nikki is the best thing for him right now,” he said, hoping to reassure her. “She knows all about guys crying.” Right, he thought dryly. Nikki knew how to take a perfectly normal guy and deconstruct him, until he was in tears. She’d done it more than once. Never to him, though. For all he gave her, he knew better than to let her have everything her way.

  “Will she take care of him tonight?” Skeeter Bang asked, and on that point, Travis could be one hundred percent positive.

  “She’s crazy in love with him. If it was up to Nikki, she’d never let him out of her sight again. Come on, let’s get you something to drink.” Turning his hand around in hers, he led her away from the door. Neither Nikki nor Kid needed them hanging around.

  “I don’t drink,” she said, following him nonetheless.

  She shouldn’t smoke, either, but that hadn’t stopped her.

  “I was thinking orange juice.”

  “Oh, that would be nice.”

  Yes, nice and healthy, a shot of antioxidant to counteract that damned cigarette.

  “So you know about Kid’s brother?” she asked.

  Travis nodded. “I know he was killed, somewhere in South America.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t really know J.T. that well.” She wiped at her cheek with her free hand. “He only came home a couple of times in the last couple of years, since I’ve been at Steele Street. The rest of the time he was in Colombia or Panama. But he was cool. Cool to me. He invited me down to Panama, said to have Kid bring me down with a couple of friends, and we could use his house, even if he wasn’t there.”

  Travis knew J.T. was Kid’s brother, and Steele Street was where they worked. Quinn Younger, Nikki’s new brother-in-law, the man who had stolen the fantasy love of his life, the eminently brilliant and luscious Regan McKinney—now Regan Younger—worked for Steele Street, too. Now what work they all did was apparently some big secret, but it had gotten J.T. killed, and he’d seen where Kid had been injured—a couple of stitches to his head. The guy had lost a lot of weight, too, which made Travis wonder just how much jungle-running he’d been doing in the last seven to eight weeks, before disaster had struck.

  “Johnny and Gabby and I were going to take him up on it, but I guess we won’t be going now. Not that it’s important. It’s just, I guess I wish I could have known him better. Kid is such a mess over this.”

  At the bar, he got her an orange juice on ice and sat her down in a quiet corner, where he could keep an eye on the closet door. He had no idea what in the hell might happen next, but the night had definitely taken a turn—for better or worse, he didn’t have a clue.

  The party was starting to break up, though, people leaving in pairs and small groups, most of them heading out to one or another of LoDo’s rightly famous clubs or bars.

  “So what happened to Kid’s brother?” he asked. Nikki hadn’t known, only that he’d been killed.

  “I don’t know exactly. I haven’t gotten a clear picture of it yet—maybe I won’t, but I’ve been getting the feeling it was awful. I’ve been getting that feeling for a couple of days now . . . and all Kid brought home was a bag of bones.”

  The last bit of information shocked him, as did her delivery. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of vengeance in that tightly controlled tone of voice. “And he hasn’t said what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Only that there was a fire. He’s been pretty messed up since he got off the plane this afternoon. He hasn’t talked to anybody, not even his dad. I was hoping he would talk to Nikki.”

  “He will.” Everybody talked to Nikki, sometimes as a form of self-defense, if nothing else. He’d seen her go into a chatterbox mode under stress that almost defied the laws of nature.

  “Hey,” she said suddenly, swiveling around in her chair, her gaze going to the alley door as if she’d heard something. “Just a sec.”

  She got up to leave, and he was right behind her, not about to “just a sec” while she walked out the back door.

  There were a dozen cars parked in the alley, but she went straight to an older-style Porsche painted an odd, flat black.

  “Hey, Nadine,” she said, and he could only assume she was talking to the car, because there was no one else in the alley with them. She was digging in her purse, and after a minute, her hand emerged with a small electronic device that easily fit in the palm of her hand. She licked the bottom of it, rubbed it on her shirt, then grabbed on to the Porsche’s door handle and swung herself a little ways under the car. When she came back up, her hand was empty.

  Next, she pulled what looked like a PDA out of her purse and coded in a series of numbers and letters. A small flash of red light burst from underneath the car, just one flash, and she put the handheld computer back in her purse.

  “Did you just put a tracking device on that car?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to lose him, and if he needs help, I want to be able to find him.”

  So the car was Kid’s.

  “I thought you already tracked him here.”

  “Sure,” she said, pulling another cigarette and a match out of her skirt pocket. “But that was . . . well, that was just following my nose. If he leaves downtown, I want
to have a better lock on him.”

  She struck the match, lit the cigarette, then stuck out her hand. “Thanks a lot.”

  And what? She was leaving? Just like that? He didn’t think so.

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “I don’t have a car, not tonight anyway. I’m walking. It’s just a few blocks.”

  Walking? Alone? On a Saturday night at eleven o’clock through the alleys of lower downtown? He wanted to ask her if she was nuts, or if she really wasn’t old enough to drive.

  On the other hand, a walk sounded good. He’d been cooped up in the gallery for over four hours, and he’d be damned if he’d let a little kid wander around out here alone.

  And she was a little kid, despite the cigarettes and the French exhales, despite the chain mail and her way too savvy comprehension of what was going down with Kid Chaos.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You don’t have to, really. I’ll be fine,” she protested.

  “Probably,” he said, though he didn’t believe it for a minute. “But I wouldn’t be. Come on.”

  TAKING a drag off her cigarette, Skeeter gave him a quick once-over. She knew she was safe on the streets, but she wasn’t so sure about him, and if he walked her home, she’d probably have to trail him back to the gallery or give him a ride to make sure he was okay.

  Stifling a sigh, she flicked her cigarette into the alley and squished it with her boot.

  “Okay. Sure,” she said. “It’s not far.”

  She hadn’t had any trouble picking Travis James out of the crowd. Besides the dozens of paintings of him hanging all over the gallery, he practically glowed—just like Kid had said. He was all golden skin and golden hair and Caribbean blue eyes, and way too pretty for anybody’s good, even in a starkly black suit and a blue silk shirt, which was all beside the point.

  In the low light of the gallery and the alley, he looked like Creed—a lot. She was surprised Kid hadn’t mentioned it, but maybe a guy might not notice. Creed was taller, his hair the same length, to his shoulders, but not so blond, his eyes a stone-cold serious gray, and Creed looked as bad as he was, too tough to fuck with, but the resemblance was there. Skeeter bet there wasn’t a woman in the gallery who hadn’t been thinking about fucking this guy—and probably half the men had been thinking the same thing. He was that beautiful.

  Which was still beside the point.

  She’d found Kid. That had been the point. She’d tagged Nadine. That had been the point. And she’d reassured herself that Kid was with someone who cared enough to take care of him.

  That had been the point.

  Quinn and Regan had gone back to Stavros’s, but like Kid, Skeeter couldn’t take any more of the older man’s pain, not tonight. She’d spent most of the day with him, and yesterday she’d been down in Colorado Springs at the hospital with Creed, holding his hand, praying for him to wake up. They had him so drugged.

  She’d driven Betty, a 1967 Dodge Coronet with a 327 under the hood, which was always a risk. The cops tended to notice bright red cars, and she’d lost her license a couple of weeks ago for street racing at the Midnight Doubles. She’d won, but geez, without her license, driving around just got a bit too damn risky.

  She was more than licensed to walk herself home, but she couldn’t say the company was bad. Travis seemed like a nice guy, and like Nikki McKinney, Skeeter could really appreciate the sheer artistry of his face and body.

  She’d like to draw him, though she could guarantee he wouldn’t come out looking like one of Nikki McKinney’s high-art angels in her hands. She’d pump him up a little, get him a little more stark, put him in tights and Lycra and call him . . . hmmmm. What would she call him?

  The Avenger, yeah, that’s what he’d be, maybe the Scarlet Avenger, except he’d look better in blue. Maybe she could call him Kenshi the Avenger, give him his own Star Drifter story line.

  “So how far are we going? Where do you live?” he asked.

  “At Steele Street with the guys.”

  “Not with your folks?”

  It was an unexpected question. She wasn’t sure why he would think she lived with her parents, but she went ahead and answered it. “I have parents, yeah, but they’ve got . . . problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  She didn’t have to tell him any more. She knew that, but there was something really nice about him, something warm, like when he’d held her hand, something she trusted, which was weird. She didn’t trust too many people outside of the Steele Street regulars.

  “Drugs, mostly, and alcohol, and poverty, and my dad had real issues with anger management, so I kind of moved out one day a few years ago, and a while later, I kind of moved in to Steele Street. I don’t hold anything against my mom so much. I was kind of a weird kid, like a changeling or something, and Steele Street is a whole lot better place for me to live.”

  “A changeling?”

  “I’m smart,” she told him with a short laugh. “Really smart. Weirdly smart.”

  He stopped, and pulled her to a stop beside him. The look he was giving her was very thoughtful, and very curious. “How weird?”

  “Well,” she started, taking a moment to consider just how much to tell him. Surprisingly, she decided to tell him more than most. “To begin with, in about thirty seconds, Kid and Nikki are going to leave the gallery.”

  They’d crossed the street, but were still in line with the alley, and he turned to look back.

  It took more than thirty seconds, more like a minute, but there was no denying when Nadine roared to life and eased out of the alley heading up Wazee.

  He turned back to her, his gaze still so very thoughtful. “You do that often?”

  “Often enough to freak some people out.”

  “Like your parents.”

  “Like my parents,” she agreed.

  “But not the guys at Steele Street.”

  “Hell, no.” She laughed aloud. “It takes more than a slightly clairvoyant teenage girl to rattle the guys’ cage.”

  Looking down at her, Travis wished he could say the same, but he felt like his cage was getting rattled but good, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with her clairvoyance.

  It had everything to do with what she was making him feel, and how god-awful young he was afraid she might be.

  CHAPTER

  20

  ALEX HAD FOUND the cigarette. After everyone had gone, and there’d been nothing left but him and the party trash, he’d found it in a plate on the Lewis table—a cigarette butt.

  He drained his glass of champagne and poured another. The culprit would ever remain a mystery, though he’d seen a rather punk-looking rocker chick in the gallery toward the end of the show.

  Kids. Hell.

  He slumped further down in his chair and passed his hand over his face.

  The night had actually been a roaring success. They’d sold over half the paintings and booked two more showings for Nikki McKinney, who had finally shown back up, right at the very end—shown up just long enough to whisk one very gorgeous and very distraught young man out the back door.

  The night had just been seething with angst, no small measure of it his own. Damn it. Marilyn Dekker. He didn’t have the strength for it. Really, he didn’t.

  Facing the Dragon required balls of steel, and his balls felt like raisins—old raisins.

  How in the hell was he going to tell the senator that he didn’t have any idea where her daughter was, except possibly she was with the man who’d gone to prison for killing Jonathan Traynor III, was beyond his ability to imagine. It was just too awful.

  He drained his glass again and was reaching for the champagne bottle for a refill, when the small snick of a door closing upstairs froze him solid in his chair.

  Oh, fuck.

  It wasn’t a good sound, like maybe one of the gallery guests who was just getting around to leaving. Oh, no. It was a sly sound, a dangerous sound, faintly murderous from where he sat like a s
itting duck on the main floor.

  Well, hell. That’s why he carried a gun.

  Swinging out of the chair, he pulled out his Colt and headed for the back wall, his gaze strafing the upstairs balcony.

  No one was in sight, but the balcony was dark, low lit, with plenty of shadows for hiding.

  If he’d had a choice, he would have called for backup. As it was, he was just grateful that wherever Katya was, it wasn’t with him.

  Moving as stealthily as possible for someone who had to have been sighted, he slid up the inside rail of the stairway. He saw nothing, heard nothing, which made him think whoever it was had been going into his and Katya’s apartment, not coming out.

  At the door, he listened carefully, then moved in, his gun at the ready. The lights were all on, which he’d done deliberately at the beginning of the evening. A small package tied with a pink bow was waiting just inside.

  Shit.

  Somebody had been there and made another delivery. Ignoring the package, he cleared the rest of the apartment and found Katya’s window open, but no perpetrator.

  Hell. He was really starting to hate that window.

  Sheathing his pistol, he went back to the package. He might have called Lieutenant Bradley, but she hadn’t exactly been all that helpful to him. So, being very careful to check for wires, he slowly opened the box.

  What was inside made his heart sink way down deep into his stomach, where the whole mess of his insides churned in a nauseating knot.

  It was another part of the dress, the dress, and it was covered in blood—rusty, dried-out, thirteen-year-old blood.

  Shit.

  Sitting down on the floor, he dropped his head back to rest on the door and pulled his cell phone out of his front pants pocket. There was only one number to call, the number on Dylan Hart’s business card. He’d tried it earlier and gotten an answering machine, but at least it picked up and he could leave a message—which was more than Katya was letting him do. It was time for somebody to let him into the game.