Crazy Cool

by Tara Janzen

  “Hawkins!” she yelled. “Superman!”

  Inside Hawkins’s loft, Katya watched in amazement as Christian burst from pure somnolence to action figure in the space of seconds. He literally hit the floor running.

  “Get your clothes on,” he shouted back at her from the door.

  At first all she could think was that the world was coming to an end, and she didn’t have any clothes. She’d left her dress in the car. By the time she remembered her suitcase was in the bathroom, and figured out it wasn’t Armageddon, just one person pounding, he’d swung open the door and dragged a girl inside, a girl wearing a ball cap pulled low on her face, a pair of black leggings, and a white sport bra.

  He was still buck naked, but the girl didn’t even bat an eyelash.

  “Who else is here?” he snapped, sliding a big bolt home on the door.

  The girl was frantically entering code on what looked like a PDA keyboard, and every couple of seconds, a different-colored light flashed. “Johnny left for Commerce City about five o’clock this morning. Quinn spent the night in Evergreen. Kid is still in Boulder. That means it’s just us.” The girl looked up from the tiny screen, her gaze landing on the bed, where Kat was still stuck in nonmotion mode. “Just the three of us. Hi.”

  “Hi,” Kat managed, trying hard to even think as fast as these two, let alone move as fast. But Hawkins was right. Whatever was happening, she wanted to face it dressed.

  She slipped off the bed, wrapped in one of his sheets, and padded her way down the hall. Partway to the bathroom, she heard a truly crude curse escape him, and she stopped long enough to turn around and see what was going on. He’d grabbed his pants from last night and was shucking into them next to the windows.

  “Kee-rist, there must be ten cop cars out there.”

  “Double Christ,” the girl breathed. “Marines. Where in the hell did they get Marines?”

  “Buckley Air Force Base would be my best guess. Well, hell . . . a fucking stretch limo just pulled up.”

  “Shit,” they both swore at once.

  Even before everything they’d just said could fully sink in, an unmistakable sound rattled through the building. The old freight elevator was going down.

  The man and the girl both looked at each other.

  “Nobody has that kind of authorization,” Hawkins growled between his teeth. “Raise Dylan. Tell him we need General Grant on board now.”

  He raced back toward his spare room, passing Kat by, but the girl took a moment to stop and notice her.

  “Superman, we’ve got a bunny in the headlights here.”

  He came back out, took three long strides to her, kissed her hot and solid, and then pushed her toward the bathroom. “Get your clothes on, Kat. I’ve got a real bad feeling that your mother is coming to call, and I’d sure hate for her to find you naked when she gets here.”

  That was enough to galvanize her, enough to almost make her sick. Alex had called her mother—how could he have done this to her? He knew. He knew everything.

  As she slipped by the girl into the bathroom, Hawkins handed out a gun. The girl took it and slipped the holster over her shoulder, while punching numbers into her cell phone.

  “Geezus, Hawkins. Don’t tell me we’re going to shoot it out with the cops?”

  “Hell, no,” he said from inside the spare room where he was picking up a pistol and some ammunition.

  “Double geezus, not the Marines?”

  He gave her a look that said Are you nuts?

  “Then we’re firing on the limo?” An idea that, judging by her voice, didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Damn straight.”

  Kat shut the door and dove for her suitcase, her blood racing. She not only didn’t want to be naked, if her mother showed up, she did not want to look like she’d been rolled over and tumbled in his bed all night. That was none of her mother’s business. Absolutely none of her business.

  HAWKINS came out of the closet with his Glock loaded and headed straight for Katya’s purse. “Skeet . . . I just want you to look all twitchy and unreliable and armed.” He turned Kat’s phone on and hit the redial. The number for Toussi Gallery came up.

  Skeeter shot a glance toward the door. “I am twitchy and unreliable.”

  “Yeah, right.” He put the phone to his ear and heard it ring. “Just play it up. Buy us some time, if we need it. Make them nervous.”

  “I’m not drawing on a Marine.” She was adamant.

  “You won’t be drawing on anybody. You don’t have any ammo.”

  Skeeter started to sputter, but he cut her off with a raised hand. “Get Dylan. Get General Grant. Get us somebody. Okay?”

  A guy on the other end of Kat’s cell phone picked up, and he took a good guess. “Zheng?”

  “Yes!”

  “Hawkins.”

  “Yes! Thank God! Why didn’t you guys pick up the phone yesterday! She’s on her way. On her way. Do you copy? You have to get Katya out of there!”

  “Too late for that, and I’m guessing you mean the senator? Your boss?”

  “Boss, my ass. Yes, Marilyn Dekker hired me to watch out for her daughter, but hell, you know Kat. How long do you think I held out before I was her man? Figuratively speaking . . . of course.”

  “Of course. So you didn’t rat her out to the senator two nights ago?”

  “Hell, no. If I had, she would have been here this time yesterday. You’ve got to know that.”

  Yeah. Hawkins guessed he did.

  “So what happened? Or was it just the newspaper coverage that brought her to Denver?”

  “I wish.” Alex let out a big sigh. “Senator Dekker had a campaign stop already planned for Denver this morning, but . . . Look, where are you? I’ve got some stuff you really need to see. A lot of stuff.”

  “You know the alley called Steele Street? Four blocks north of the gallery?”

  “You’re right here? In the neighborhood? All this time? Hell.” He sounded so dejected.

  “Halfway up the alley is a door. Key in nine-three-seven-one-eight, and I’ll have Skeeter override the biometric reader. We’re on the eleventh floor. Watch out, we’re covered on the street side with cops and Marines.” Hawkins hung up and looked to Skeeter. “Well?”

  She shook her head, and punched in another set of numbers. After about five seconds, a big smile split her face. She tossed the phone to him.

  “Dylan, it’s Christian,” he said. “All hell is breaking loose here. I think somebody wants my ass pretty bad. Did General Grant ever come up with a name on our last assignment?”

  “He got as far as a company called Western Armament Corporation, before he got stonewalled. What do you mean all hell? Senator Dekker?”

  “And a platoon of Marines I’m guessing she pulled out of Buckley for a morning drill around Steele Street.”

  “She brought the Marines?” Dylan didn’t sound like he believed it. Hell, Hawkins didn’t believe it, and he was looking right down at them on the street below.

  “And ten police cruisers.”

  “Shit. I’ll call Lieutenant Bradley first. At least you won’t end up in jail—for very long.”

  “I don’t want to end up in the friggin’ brig for very long, either.”

  “General Grant can get them pulled off. That just leaves you with the senator.”

  “The hell it will.”

  “Christ, Hawkins. It’ll take me half a day to get a senator off your ass.”

  “Then get on it, please.”

  “Just stay put. They can’t get into Steele Street.”

  “Dylan. They are in Steele Street. They commandeered the old freight elevator. Any minute now, we are going to hear the Corps storming up the stairs singing ‘From the halls of Montezuma,’ and unless I figure out a way to chain myself to the plumbing, I don’t think staying put is going to be an option. The few, the proud, and the brave are here to haul my ass away, and judging by the size of the detachment, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.�
��

  Silence, then, “Where’s Skeeter?” Dylan was definitely concerned now, and frankly, Hawkins was glad to hear it. Steele Street was supposed to be friggin’ impregnable—and it was, unless somebody had the codes and was able to bypass or compromise the scanners. It was an inside job. The only question was—inside what? And the answer to that had to be the Department of Defense. No one at Steele Street would compromise their security. No one.

  “She’s with me.”

  “Do you still have Ms. Dekker?”

  Have her, had her, going to have her again—at least he’d planned on it until the troops had arrived.

  “Yes.”

  “Kid and Quinn?”

  “I’ll get to Kid, but let’s keep Quinn on the outside. He’ll be more help there.”

  “Okay. I’ll do what I can on this end. Either way, I’ll be back tonight.” Dylan hung up, and a few minutes later, Hawkins saw about half the cops get back in their cars and leave.

  He punched in another number. Yes, it was eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, but he wanted his lawyer.

  “Francesca?” he asked when she answered.

  “This had better be good, Christian. It’s Sunday.”

  “I need a house call. Immediately.”

  It took her all of two seconds to decide. “Sure. I could use a couple of grand. I’m starting my clock.”

  A couple of grand. Hell. But yes, he could easily see that racking up today.

  There was some good news. Skeeter had managed to access the freight elevator through the computer connection to the main office on the seventh floor, and it was now stuck between floors, but given its age and condition, she wasn’t sure how long her freeze would hold.

  In one of the spookier moves of the morning, Alex Zheng showed up about three minutes after Hawkins had called him, making both him and Skeeter wonder if Alex should be called The Flash.

  So approximately fifteen minutes into their whole ordeal, they’d cut the enemy in half, gotten an ally on board, had two reinforcements heading into the city, and were just getting down to the stuff Alex had brought, when the bathroom door opened.

  Geezus, Hawkins thought, picking his jaw up off the floor. How did she do that?

  She was all sleek and lovely, and hot, and perfect again. All “don’t touch my mouth” and “don’t touch my hair,” when he knew he’d done nothing but touch her all night long. She was dressed in black slacks and a sleeveless black top, her black spike-heeled sandals, and big silver hoop earrings.

  He hadn’t packed any silver hoop earrings. Where did she come up with this stuff?

  She looked cool and creamy, like that double-dark-chocolate, triple-whipped-cream mocha latte she’d spilled all over Roxanne, and it was all he could do not to tell her to lock herself back in the bathroom and not come out until the whole thing was over.

  He didn’t want her mother anywhere near her, and he’d bet his first million that her mother felt the same way about him.

  CHAPTER

  23

  THE FIRST THING to give way was the old freight elevator. They actually heard it break free and drop half a floor, before the cables caught and saved all within from certain death—which wasn’t really a bad thing. It was just damned inconvenient.

  Alex—who had not been kidding when he’d said, “I’ve got some stuff you really need to see. A lot of stuff.”—had already shown him and Kat and Skeeter the bloody piece of prom dress, which had made Kat almost faint, and quite honestly, had almost done the same thing to him. It had a lot more blood on it than the first piece. He’d forgotten, over the years, just how badly she’d been hurt.

  “You were a prom queen?” was all Skeeter had said, but she’d said it half a dozen times, at least. “An actual prom queen? So that crown last night was yours?” A question that, for some reason, had prompted her to hit him on the shoulder, and Skeeter never pulled her punches, figuratively or otherwise. “You should have told me, Superman. A friggin’ prom queen.”

  “Friggin’ prom queen” sounded more like an expletive than a compliment, or like what Bobba-Ramma would have been, but Katya seemed to know the girl was impressed.

  Hell, who wouldn’t be. Ten minutes in a bathroom to go from emotionally exhausted, wild-woman lover to cool downtown chic chick? That had to be some kind of a record.

  “Now here’s the strange stuff,” Alex said, emptying an envelope out on the kitchen table. “A man named Ray Carper gave these newspaper clippings to Travis James last night on the street. Travis brought them straight to me.”

  “Who’s Travis James?” Hawkins asked.

  “Nikki McKinney’s model,” Skeeter said, surprising him. “He walked me home from the gallery last night. Ray must have heard we were looking for him and come up to Travis on his way back to Toussi’s, thinking he was Creed.”

  “Why would Ray think this guy was Creed?” Hawkins asked at the same time as Katya said, “Creed Rivera? I remember him being a lot . . . well, tougher looking than Travis. Bigger.”

  “Yeah,” Skeeter said to Katya. “He is.” Then she turned to Hawkins. “He’s a dead ringer, though, Superman.”

  “Creed’s blond now?” Katya asked.

  “No,” both Hawkins and Skeeter said.

  “For God’s sake . . . It doesn’t matter,” Alex finally interrupted. “That is not the point here, people. The point is what the old man gave Travis. Look.”

  He spread the articles out on a table.

  “Now, I’d guess you all know the case as well as I do, maybe even better, though it’s about all I’ve been working on for two days—besides the McKinney show,” he quickly amended. “Which went beautifully, by the way.”

  He hadn’t won Katya back over yet, but she at least gave him a nod.

  “Anyway, there are some interesting connections here, if everything else the old man said is true.”

  “What else did he say?” Hawkins asked, skimming the articles. He remembered most of the ones about the Traynor murder, but there were also some about the Jane Doe that summer, and then yesterday’s headlines about Ted Garraty. There was even a clipping about Lost Harold.

  Alex pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, snapped it open. “This is what Ray Carper told Travis. We went over it and over it, and I think he did a pretty good job of remembering.” He looked at the paper, starting at the top. “‘That whore shouldn’t a died like she did. The boys were just damn rough with her. I saw it, saw the whole thing, but nobody wanted to listen to old Ray. They called her Jane Doe, but her name was Debbie Gold. She’s been six feet under for thirteen years, her and that Traynor boy, and old Lost Harold. The same damn wild ones did them all in, but it looks like one of ’em got their own back last night at the Gardens.’ ”

  Alex looked up from the paper. “I was able to get a copy of the coroner’s report on the Jane Doe they pulled out of the river on July first that summer. Don’t ask,” he said, before Hawkins could even get the question out. “It states that the body had been decomposing between three or four weeks, the best estimate he could come up with, given the corpse’s waterlogged condition. So sometime between June third and June ninth, approximately, a group of guys who’d been hanging around LoDo, these ‘wild ones’ Ray was talking about, roughed up a whore who was turning tricks for them. She died, and they threw her in the South Platte. And if Ray is right, one of those guys was Ted Garraty, good friend of Jonathan Traynor the third.”

  “Jonathan would never have killed anyone,” Katya said, coming to her friend’s defense. “And he would never have had sex with a prostitute . . . or . . . or any girl.”

  Well, that was a new twist she hadn’t shared before, Hawkins thought.

  Alex’s eyebrows had risen. “The senator’s son was gay?”

  Katya nodded.

  “And he never came out?”

  She shook her head.

  “Prom night was June fifth that year,” Hawkins said. “Well within the time frame for the night of the whore’s murde
r.”

  “You think the same guys who were after Katya in the parking lot did the whore instead?” Skeeter asked.

  It’s what Hawkins was beginning to think, but all he said was “We need to find Ray Carper.” All those years ago, when he’d talked to Ray, Hawkins had thought he was talking about Katya and her struggle in the parking lot—a girl getting worked over by a group of boys, the one who died, he’d said—but Katya hadn’t died. Ray hadn’t shown him any newspaper clippings back then. He’d never mentioned Debbie Gold or Jane Doe, just a girl in a pretty dress.

  “If he was between Toussi’s and Steele Street last night, he’s probably still in the neighborhood,” Skeeter said. “He doesn’t get too far from Coors Field.”

  “We need to bring him in—except right now, we can’t get out.”

  “Quinn knows him. Let’s have him pick up the old guy and take him over to the Oxford Hotel.”

  “Make it so, Skeeter.”

  The girl started punching more numbers into her phone.

  “There’s more,” Alex said. “Jonathan Traynor was murdered just four days after the dead prostitute floated to the surface of the river—something that could spook any boy into a bad case of the guilts, if he was guilty of murdering her, or knew the people who had murdered her, like maybe a group of boys whose first attempt at a gang bang didn’t go so well on prom night.”

  “Quinn—” Skeeter started to say, when they heard it: the Marines, marching up the stairwell.

  Hawkins turned to Katya. He very much wanted to tell her how much he loathed her mother, for everything she’d done, for everything she was doing, but he didn’t.

  He looked back to Alex. “Do we let them in? Or make them go through my Tomás Alejandro doors?”

  “They get in either way, and if we let them in, we can save the doors.”

  He was right, but Hawkins didn’t have to like it. “Skeeter, finish up with Quinn. I want you in the back, up against a wall; pull up a chair, stay out of trouble. Kat—”

  God, Kat. Your mother is coming in here like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and I want you anyplace else but here.