Crazy Love

by Tara Janzen

  Creed had thought that was a hoot.

  His wife, Cody, hadn’t thought it was quite so funny. “Kids,” she’d said.

  Old married people, Skeeter had thought.

  She didn’t have anything quite so creative in mind for Whitfield’s safe. Using her own fingerprints was out of the question, of course, but she had the vice president’s, a little souvenir Grant had sent her a few months back, and since Whitfield and the veep were in the same political party, she figured the deed would create a lot of private conversation but not much press, which was just the way they liked things at SDF—media free.

  Cripes. She wished Travis were already here. Her “spidey sense” was humming.

  She wanted him on the inside, watching out for Dylan, since she’d been banned from the party and told in no uncertain terms not to budge her butt from the car.

  Screw uncertain terms. She’d budged big-time, and she was ready to budge again. She couldn’t afford to wait for backup. She wanted to wrap this thing up and get the hell out of there—and the time to start was now. She’d “cased the joint,” and the party looked exactly the way it was supposed to look, like well-controlled chaos. Everybody was moving in the right direction, everybody doing their job, including the guests she’d been checking out since she and Dylan had first pulled up.

  So this was it.

  Pushing off the Town Car, she did a quick check of her pockets to make sure she had her B&E—breaking and entering—tools, and her handy-dandy interference remote for messing with the camera honed in on Whitfield’s office door.

  Her suppressed Para .45 was concealed in a shoulder holster under her uniform jacket, her Tac II combat knife was in a sheath on her belt, and she knew for a fact that she wasn’t the only chauffeur in Whitfield’s driveway packing heat and a seven-inch blade. Some of these “drivers” had necks as big as her thighs.

  She could think of a lot of ways she would have preferred to cross the huge expanse of open lawn from the driveway to Whitfield’s office, like invisibly, on her belly, in camo cream and a balaclava, but given that there was damn little hope of stealth in her cheesy outfit and amid the crowd of chauffeurs, valets, and caterers milling around the grounds, she was sticking with a full-out frontal approach. She’d just walk past all of them and then blend into the scenery at the back of the house. Yes, sir, she’d take all the gold braid and black satin piping Dylan had stuffed her into and pretend to be a tree—like maybe a Christmas tree. She wasn’t even going to mention the red fringe.

  He’d done it on purpose. She knew it. There was no way to get a uniform this gaudy by accident. But if he thought it was going to clip her wings, he was wrong. Her biggest problem was the guard patrolling the back of the mansion, but even dressed like a Christmas tree, she had enough skill to make sure he didn’t see her.

  DYLAN had a bad feeling.

  It wasn’t new.

  He’d gotten this bad feeling ten days ago at the exact instant that he’d been snatched off the street in Jakarta, and though it had alternately gotten much, much worse and somewhat better, it had never gotten close to going away. It was clinging to him, like a giant leech with its sucker locked onto his skin.

  Interestingly enough, there had been actual leeches attached to him on Sumba. Not torturously, just naturally, a few dozen hugely fat, free-range leeches that had made him their home for a few days, and since he’d been shackled to the wall, they’d pretty much had their way with him.

  Fuck.

  He hated leeches, and there was absolutely no reason for him to be thinking about them while he was going through the contents of Arthur Whitfield’s safe, looking for the Godwin file and breaking out in a sweat while he did it. The air-conditioning in the rest of the mansion didn’t seem to reach back into this cubbyhole of a vault room behind Whitfield’s bookcases—and he wasn’t out of there yet.

  Dammit.

  That was the thing about going through a lot of papers—trying to find the right one, and Whitfield had a boatload of documents in his safe. Shelves of them, and the likelihood of a clearly stamped name on the envelope containing the file he needed was damn slim, especially in the case of something like Godwin, where even the best of it would be couched in acronyms and double-speak. Ordering the assassination of two fellow countrymen had a way of making people obscurant.

  That had been the rumor—assassination of a legally appointed ambassador from within, decided by a secret committee who had answered to no one except themselves and a member of the president’s cabinet. The orders had been processed through the most clandestine channels. The hits planned and executed by a group of shadow warriors whose names had never been revealed, not even to the men who had signed the orders.

  Shadow warriors like him, Dylan realized, not taking much comfort in the fact.

  Finally, a date at the top of the next folder caught his eye. Twelve years ago was about right.

  He broke the seal on the envelope inside the folder and ran the blue light from his diode flashlight over the top page. By page three, he knew he’d hit pay dirt. He quickly flipped to the last page and checked the signatures on the orders. In spite of himself, he was impressed and, in one instance, downright amazed. He hadn’t thought the guy whose signature he was looking at had those kind of balls. Grant had been right. The Godwin file was a political dirty bomb, well worth the effort of getting it. Satisfied, he packaged the papers back into their envelope and slid the folder inside his jacket.

  He’d been inside the vault room for five minutes—five overheated, get-your-ass-busted minutes. When everything was put back in place, he closed the full-length door on the vault and ran his flashlight over the inside of the small room housing it, assuring himself that nothing had fallen off the shelves or been inadvertently left outside the actual safe.

  One quick check and he was good to go.

  He flipped off his flashlight before easing out of the closet-sized room and around the swing-open bookcase, where “Chaucer” held the key—or rather, in this instance, the keypad. With the miracle of impeccable engineering, the whole section of the bookcase swung closed without so much as a snick of sound, but he’d barely put his foot on the first step of the circular staircase when something set off his internal alarm system.

  He went instant mannequin, all his senses on alert. He couldn’t see or hear anyone, but he knew without a doubt that there was another intruder in the room—someone who smelled like cinnamon. The spicy scent of it was faintly, but indelibly, in the air.

  Stepping back into the shadows of the loft, he angled himself to watch the staircase and the bookcase, and he waited. This was not the first time he’d run into another thief during a heist. It was actually the third time, and like the other two times, this guy was too late. The deed was done. Godwin was his. Unless they were after something else, and considering all that he’d seen in Whitfield’s vault, that was a distinct possibility, especially if the thief was looking for cash, jewelry, or one or more of the art pieces Dylan had been surprised as hell to see in the senator’s possession. He’d been tempted by the small Picasso himself.

  If it hadn’t been for the cinnamon, the intruder would have been nearly undetectable. His moves were silent, like a wraith’s, yet Dylan could feel his presence and sense his movement up the stairs. As soon as the other guy was inside the vault room, Dylan would descend to the main floor and let himself out of the office. The other man would never know he’d been there.

  No one would…

  Except for her.

  The thief suddenly came into view, and Dylan’s jaw clenched, like a vise.

  Unfuckingbelievable.

  She slid up the last few stairs and into the loft, no more than a shadow, nearly imperceptible except as an eddy of darkness—with the glint of a gold epaulet.

  He couldn’t believe it. He’d been absolutely unequivocal in his orders, so what part of “stay in the car” hadn’t she understood?

  Four lousy words, and she couldn’t do as she’d
been told?

  That was it. Her career was toast. She was a rogue, a renegade, and she’d just bought herself a one-way ticket to the Commerce City garage and Johnny Ramos’s broom. He wouldn’t tolerate this kind of insurrection. SDF had been built on teamwork. He needed team players. Not someone he couldn’t count on to hold her position, and her position had been the two square feet of Cordovan leather that made up the driver’s seat in the Mercedes. Automotive leather plus her butt. It was all so simple.

  And she’d blown it.

  Why?

  What could possibly have compelled her to disobey a direct order?

  She was past him now, looking for Chaucer on the shelves of books, and he reached up and wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip. Even outside the vault room, the loft was still hot, typical August in the nation’s capital.

  He could have moved then, gone over and cut her party real short in a damn hurry, but something held him where he stood—good, old-fashioned curiosity.

  Professional curiosity.

  He’d automatically started a clock in his head the instant she’d reached the loft, and the seconds were ticking down. How long to breach the bookcase? And could she possibly open the safe?

  He couldn’t imagine her coming this far without a plan in mind, and he was damned curious to see what it was. He’d put Whitfield’s fingerprints back in the case in his pocket. She was on her own there. Grant had only sent one set.

  The bookcase opened, and she moved inside.

  Okay. Ten seconds to find the book, key the code, and disappear behind the shelves. That was A+ work by anybody’s standards. But the cinnamon, damn, that was flunk-your-ass dangerous. He’d have to tell her to forgo the mints on a heist, before he let her out of his sight again.

  Which, of course, was a moot point. Not only was she not going to be in his sight for him to let her out of it, but she wasn’t going to be out of the sight of whoever’s sight she was in, like Johnny Ramos’s, or Superman’s—or something like that. Suddenly, it wasn’t very damn clear in his head, because it was getting just a little too damn hot in the loft to think.

  And the leeches.

  He looked down at the big one that had just dropped from out of nowhere onto his shoe.

  Jesus.

  Another one almost instantly landed next to the first, splatting onto his laces.

  Double Jesus.

  This wasn’t right. Pink phosphorescent leeches should not be falling from out of nowhere, or the ceiling, or wherever, and landing on his shoe.

  He shook them both off, and they disappeared, which was not necessarily a good sign. As a matter of fact, as far as signs went, that one sucked. He lifted his gaze and refocused on the bookcase.

  He was in trouble.

  There wasn’t a heat wave in the loft. There were no leeches dropping off the ceiling, and even if there had been, they would not have been Day-Glo pink, like the image of Skeeter’s bra, which suddenly seemed to be indelibly inked on his brain in the shape of a butterfly, like the one floating a few inches in front of his face, gently flapping its wings—dammit. His wires were crossed—the hard way, with the XTNWO, whatzit 7, 8, 9, 10 crap Negara had injected him with back on Sumba.

  He took a breath, steadied himself. He knew what to do here. He had a plan.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver case, took one look inside, and told himself not to panic—but his Syrettes had melted. There was nothing left of them except a thin gel sheet.

  Then it hit him—wrong case.

  Checking his other pocket, he pulled out the second case and popped it open.

  Still in trouble, he thought.

  He was supposed to have three Syrettes: red, blue, and yellow. And he did have three, but they were all Day-Glo pink and wiggling around in the case like leeches.

  Fuck.

  Everything was starting to wiggle around, including the floor, where he was standing in a small but growing pile of Day-Glo leeches.

  God, he hated leeches, and if they started inching their way up his pants legs, imaginary or not, he was going to freak.

  He looked back at the case in his hand and knew the odds were not in his favor. He couldn’t just grab one of the slippery things and try to inject himself, hoping he’d picked the red Syrette.

  He needed help.

  He needed Skeeter.

  He slowly lifted his gaze to the far end of the loft, peering across a small sea of pink phosphene leeches and pink flapping butterflies, and goddamn, it suddenly looked like a very long way to the vault room.

  CHAPTER

  13

  DYLAN HART was here. The sense of satisfaction Royce felt was almost overwhelming. He knew his enemy and had predicted his moves with commendable accuracy.

  From the backseat of a black Land Rover, he watched the girl, Skeeter Bang, make her way across the grounds of Whitfield’s estate, and if she was here, Hart was here. The party was complete. There were people everywhere, inside and outside the mansion: the hundreds who had been invited; the dozens it took to serve them; plus one thief, one mechanic in a chauffeur’s uniform, and five pirates, including him.

  Yes, tonight he counted himself among the Jai Traon, at Negara’s request and by his own choice, and so he would remain, until Dylan Hart was dead. He was hoping the commitment didn’t last much beyond noon tomorrow. Of course, if the retrieval of Negara’s money required Hart’s physical presence at any stage, the man would not be killed tonight. Dr. Souk would take him to the edge of life, the very edge, but would be careful not to take him so far that he couldn’t be brought back.

  It was a fascinating thing to watch—Dr. Souk manipulating scalpels and syringes like a maestro of destruction. It never failed to amaze Royce just how much damage could be done to a man’s body before a fatal level was reached. He’d never watched a woman being tortured, but if pressed, he would put his money on a man lasting longer. With luck, he’d know the truth of that within the week.

  Negara had made it clear that he wanted Skeeter Bang alive and untouched to begin with, and Royce couldn’t imagine that his interest in the girl wouldn’t last at least a few days before he gave her to Dr. Souk. If nothing else, she would make a fine gift to the pirates—not including him. He thought the girl was disgusting, a piece of street trash who should have stayed in the alleys of Denver where Christian Hawkins had found her. SB303—that was her tag, and it summed up what he hated most about SDF, Special Defense Force. They were a bunch of misfits, psychos, ex-cons, and juvenile delinquents who ran wild on Uncle Sam’s dollar. They didn’t play by the rules. They didn’t follow protocol. Rumor had it that they’d stolen half a million dollars’ worth of rough-cut diamonds out of a shipment of dinosaur bones a year or so ago and used the money to supplement their budget and top off their slush fund.

  It was no way to run a government operation, and the government who sanctioned them was no place for Tony Royce. They wanted rogues? Well, he’d made himself one of the best, or one of the worst, depending on a person’s point of view. All he had to do was look at the men with him in the Land Rover and see the company he was keeping. Fucking pirates, every one. He knew two of them from Sumba, the men named Kota and Garin. Kota was the only one who spoke English in the group, and he was obviously the leader. Royce hadn’t seen the other two men before this afternoon at Negara’s Virginia estate. He didn’t know their names and wasn’t interested in finding out. In his mind they were Jai One and Jai Two, and both of them looked capable of delivering whatever mayhem the night required. Royce didn’t have a doubt in his mind that every pirate Negara had deployed for the evening’s activities was similarly skilled, though he had serious doubts about how much good any of that skill was going to do the Jai Traon assigned to the attack on Steele Street.

  He let out a small dismissive sigh, still watching Skeeter Bang. The men in Denver were doomed, but that wasn’t his problem. His problem was Hart and the girl, and neither one of them should be too difficult to handle. Hart mu
st still feel about half dead. He’d been used and abused on Sumba, and if Royce wasn’t mistaken, some of the drugs Dr. Souk had injected him with should still be causing him problems. Once he had them restrained and in the Land Rover, he’d call Negara and have him call off the men waiting at the Hotel Lafayette. Then everything on his end would be cleaned up. They could all go over the border into Virginia and, as Negara had put it, let “the festivities” begin.

  “It is her?” Kota asked, pointing out the window at the long-legged blonde in the dark suit making her way toward the back of the house.

  “Yes,” Royce said. “Once you have her, Hart shouldn’t be too hard to capture. He’ll come for her. Remember, she’s just a girl, and your boss wants her unharmed, so don’t get any rougher than necessary. Negara won’t appreciate you making a mess out of her.” It was always a good idea to reinforce mission priorities with this group. Jai Traon pirates had a tendency to get carried away once they were set loose. “As far as Hart goes, the only limit is death. Don’t kill him. If you do, don’t bother coming back.” And that just about covered the night’s rules of engagement—keep the girl in one piece, keep Hart breathing.

  Kota relayed the instructions in Indonesian, along with the plan of attack he and Garin had worked out between them. Royce listened carefully, but felt no need to add anything. These boys had been kidnapping people since they’d all been in short pants. It was second nature, along with violence of action. They always hit hard and fast, as the girl would find out soon enough, much to her dismay.