Crazy Love

by Tara Janzen

  It was clean, quick—bloody, but not the mess of a gunshot killing.

  The jungle boy didn’t let the pirate fall, but rather lowered him to the floor. Then he wiped his knife across the pirate’s shoulder and put it back in its sheath—a night’s work well done, but not finished. There had been another bit of nontranslatable information on the dead pirate they’d left up on the fifth floor—an address in Prince William County, Virginia, across the state line from the nation’s capital, where Skeeter and Dylan just happened to be stealing the Godwin file from Senator Whitfield.

  Hawkins didn’t believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, or coincidences of any kind, and he needed to run the address through his computer and call Dylan and Skeeter while he did it. Something was definitely up with the damned Godwin mission.

  Travis should have arrived in Washington, D.C., an hour ago, so at least they had another SDF operator on their side. Hawkins just hoped the three of them would be enough. He didn’t care what Dylan had said, the boss was not at his best, not by a long shot. There was one other hope, though. It was possible that the number of good guys was four. There was a new girl at Grant’s office, a Gillian Pentycote, code-named Red Dog by Skeeter, and he knew the general ran his staff through a training program. Hawkins hadn’t gotten any evaluation reports on her, but maybe, just maybe, Red Dog could kick butt.

  If Negara had set his men loose in Washington, Hawkins hoped so, for everybody’s sake.

  GILLIAN swiped the key card through the hotel suite’s lock, watching to see if the light turned green, all the while humming. She’d been humming since she’d gotten on the elevator down in the parking garage—humming and smiling.

  Oh. My. God. Sex was incredible, especially angel boy sex. So incredible, she wasn’t sure she would ever be quite the same again—and she loved it. “Being the same” had been her third greatest marital crime, according to Ken. She’d always had her nose in a book, always been too serious, always been only about half put together with her clothes, and her glasses had always been broken, a phenomenon she hadn’t understood any more than Ken. It was just one of those things. She’d no sooner get her glasses fixed in one spot than some other little part would let go.

  Kimberly was a fashion plate, a clotheshorse, a shopaholic who spent more money on her haircuts than Gillian spent on groceries—which had been another point against her. Kimberly could cook, really cook. It had come down to a choice between a life of tuna casserole or baked sole, Ken had said, in what Gillian considered one of his more uninspired moments.

  Kimberly had that effect on him, bringing out his least-inspired side, reducing him to an endless litany of clichés and shopworn opinions, and Gillian had warned him that uninspired clichés weren’t going to do his career any good. They both knew he needed to be pushed to do his best work, and nobody pushed him more than Gillian—which had been her second greatest marital crime. He had his book now, and he was ready to slide into tenure. He didn’t want to be pushed anymore, and he didn’t want the competition of having a wife who was a little more brilliant at her worst than he was at his best. And that had been her greatest crime of all, being better than Dr. Kenneth Pentycote—even with her still being half a dissertation short of a doctoral degree of her own.

  She swiped the card again when the light flashed red instead of changing to green.

  Well, she was brilliant, all right, brilliant enough to change directions and try something new. Brilliant enough to get a job working for a man her father considered one of the great unsung heroes of America, a job where she got to load UMP magazines with .45 caliber cartridges, the kind of job where she picked exotic angel boys up at airports and ended up more than half naked in the backseat of her Honda.

  Good Lord. Her smile broadened into a grin. What she’d done made her feel incredible, but that she’d actually done it made her head spin. What in the world had she been thinking? What in the world had Travis James been thinking?

  And what, she wondered, were the chances of him thinking it again?

  A small laugh escaped her. She felt so good—which elicited another soft laugh, because that’s exactly what the angel boy had told her.

  The light finally turned green on the third swipe. She grabbed the handle and opened the door, humming again. The door closed behind her as she dropped her purse on the entryway table. Then she looked up and realized, truly, just how incredibly brilliant she was—brilliant enough, she realized, seeing the three men coming at her with their weapons drawn, to get herself into more hot water than she would ever have dreamed possible.

  SITTING in the front seat of the broken-down Impala, Dylan wanted to kiss Skeeter so badly, it hurt, but if he kissed her, he was going to devour her again, take her from the top down and drown himself in her. God, he was such a selfish bastard. He should never have let the situation get so far out of hand, especially since it didn’t look like he was going to die.

  Oh, yeah, that had been his bottom line.

  Geezus, he was so fucked up, and yet it was the god’s truth, impending death and certain doom were the only two justifications he would accept for what he’d done. Unfortunately, he felt great, like he was going to live at least another fifty or sixty years, plenty of time to nurse his regrets into a colossal case of guilt. Not that it was going to take anywhere near that long. Five minutes out and he already had a good jump on it.

  He’d fallen off the edge, and that unnerved him almost as much as what he’d done. It wasn’t like him to lose control, to break one of his own rules. He’d been breaking the rest of the world’s rules since he’d been fifteen, but not his own, never his own.

  Until now.

  She was melted on top of him, totally relaxed, about half undressed, her head resting on his shoulder, her breathing deep and even, but she wasn’t asleep. He could tell.

  He dragged his hand back through his hair and just held her with his other arm around her waist, his fingers gripping her tighter than they should. He knew it, but he couldn’t help it. Geezus. It was Skeeter, Baby Bang, and he’d had amazing sex with her in the front seat of a Chevy that probably qualified as a toxic waste dump.

  Someone should shoot him.

  And yes, he knew the name of the exact someone who would be only too glad to do the job—Christian. Cristo. Hawkins. Superman.

  The whole situation made him feel a little wild, a little wildly crazed. Fuck. He let his gaze drift over the baby soft curve of her cheek, down the side of her neck, back to her shoulder, then lower, down the sleek, silky length of her upper arm.

  Whitfield’s had been a grade A disaster, complete with Negara’s bastard pirates, and they were still out there, gunning for him, and for Skeeter, which was tearing him up. They shouldn’t even know she existed, let alone have caught her with him.

  It was going to go down as one of the best shots of his life, the one he’d used to kill that guy in Whitfield’s office. His eyes had been crossed, he’d been so fucked up, and his arm had still been on fire, but he’d made the shot.

  He let out a breath, and with an act of pure will kept himself from smoothing his hand down her arm, or up her leg and that amazingly erotic lightning-bolt tattoo. He’d been running with the wrong women if lightning-bolt tattoos turned him on—and they did. At least Skeeter’s did.

  But he kept his hand to himself. He needed to think, not start feeling her up again. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. He could tell by the edge of faintness he felt skirting the borders of his brain—or maybe that was postcoital craziness. He felt that, for sure.

  Ah, Skeeter. What in the hell had he done?

  Honor, Loyalty, Duty. Those were the tattoos inked down her arm. Her whole hip-hop crew had been tagged with the same symbols. Honor among thieves, he understood all too well, and he knew they’d been thieves as well as wallbangers. Loyalty he understood even more, especially for a crew of graffiti artists trying to paint the city without getting busted by the cops or capped by the gangs. Duty he understood best of all. It
was the mantra his father had given him.

  Honesty would have been another good one to add. He always was with himself, no matter what it cost. Tonight was no different in that respect, and he knew the problem wasn’t that he couldn’t love her. He did. The problem was that he didn’t want to love her, and try as he might, he couldn’t see his way around that one inviolate fact.

  He didn’t want this sick pain in his heart that said he’d put her in danger. He didn’t want the heartache of knowing he really couldn’t have her, not forever, if only because he knew himself, and he knew he would move on.

  Oh, yeah, kissing her now, making love to her now was so perfect, but it wouldn’t last. Nothing ever lasted for him, except the friendships he’d forged with the chop-shop boys. It’s what he should have tried harder to have with her—friendship.

  But, man, a friend didn’t whisper your name when you pushed up into her, didn’t melt you with a sigh when you took her breast in your mouth. A friend didn’t get wet when you touched her, and didn’t hold on to you when she came—hold on to you like you were the last solid thing in the universe.

  Geezus, he’d felt her tighten around him, and he’d come all the way from the soles of his feet. The sides of his neck were hot, and the place at the base of his throat, just north of his heart and south of his brain, was pulsing. He’d just had her and his balls were still tight. He still wanted her.

  He knew her down to the taste of her mouth and the scent of her skin, and everything about her said she was his. The soft place on the underside of her arm? His. The silky feel of her hair sliding over him as he’d thrust into her? His. The sound she’d made deep in her throat when she’d come undone? Most definitely his. Only his.

  But she was so damn young, it was mind-boggling—and his mind was boggled enough, thank you.

  CHAPTER

  23

  WITH A pocket full of underwear and a pair of taped-together glasses in his hand, Travis got off the elevator on the fourth floor of the Hotel Lafayette and headed down the hall to room 418. He didn’t get too far before he noticed something unusual. Gillian had left the door ajar.

  Or someone else had.

  He didn’t pause in his stride, but suddenly every warning signal he had went off. Continuing down the hall, he slipped the glasses into his jacket pocket, then reached behind his back and pulled the Springfield 1911 out of the paddle holster Skeeter had gotten for him.

  Walking faster, every one of his senses on high alert, he racked a cartridge into the chamber. At the door, he stopped for a couple of seconds, listening and checking his line of sight.

  The lights were on inside the room, but no one was talking, and there was no sound of movement.

  Leading with the muzzle of the 1911, he slipped through the door. It took him all of ninety seconds to clear the three-room suite, including bathrooms, and it was clear. No one anywhere.

  She could have gone for ice, but somehow he didn’t think that’s what was going on. Nothing in the suite was disturbed or particularly out of place, but it didn’t feel right. Then he turned and saw the back of the door. A large circle had been drawn on the panels, with three long lines running through it. The message was clear, and it made his blood run cold.

  Hamzah Negara’s Jai Traon pirates had taken Red Dog.

  SKEETER wanted to sigh, and she wanted to groan. Of all the damn things to have done, making love with Dylan Hart in the front seat of a broken-down 1985 Chevy Impala had to rank as one of the all-time bonehead moves of the century. Without all the heat and sex, and sex and heat, and all the sex absolutely frying her brain cells, she could see the incident for what it was—a mistake.

  Colossal.

  King Kong.

  And she’d do it again in a heartbeat—which didn’t address their current dilemma.

  Somewhere between “Oh, my God, Dylan,” and “Dylan, my God,” Doreen had died, stone-cold-death died. She’d given her last, but not before she’d dumped them in a Washington, D.C., ghetto. Of course, all Skeeter had to do was call a cab, if there was a cabbie fearless enough to pick up a fare at George’s Gas & Grub, smack-dab in the middle of the kind of no-man’s-land where a different gang owned every street corner.

  Even a moment’s consideration of the fearless-cabbie possibility made it seem damned unlikely, which left her with only one place to go for help, the place she’d been going all day and getting everything she needed, the amazing Red Dog.

  But before she could call Red Dog, she had to get herself off Dylan.

  Right.

  She didn’t want to.

  She wanted to stay where she was, plastered to him, lying on top of him, cradled around him. He was holding her pretty damn tightly, too, like he didn’t want to let go of her, either.

  I love you. That’s what he’d said to her. I love you so much.

  Well, she wasn’t going to fool herself. Those particular words could mean a lot of things when a guy was inside a woman—and he’d definitely been inside her when he’d said them.

  Dammit. How could she have been so addle-brained as to let things get that out of hand? And what were her chances, really, of them getting out of hand again, later at the hotel?

  Slim, she decided. Except for holding on to her like he was never going to let go, he had hardly moved since they’d finished.

  Plus, if she remembered correctly, and she did, they had another problem she didn’t dare forget.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, and the question was neither polite nor rhetorical.

  “Normal,” he said, proving that he understood exactly what she’d meant. “Except…except I’m, uh, a little rattled.”

  “Rattled” was one way to put it, she guessed. Practically paralyzed with guilt was probably another way.

  Double dammit. She knew him, too well, and he wasn’t going to like himself for this.

  Hell.

  “Not too hot?”

  “No.”

  “Not too cold?”

  “No.”

  “Then we need to get moving,” she said without moving so much as a millimeter.

  This was it, her one chance to be with him, and it was hard to let him go. He was going to come to his senses, and her party would be over.

  Honesty required her to admit that if her phone hadn’t started ringing, she might have stayed exactly where she was for at least another week.

  She pushed herself to more of a sitting position and pulled her cell out of her uniform jacket.

  “Skeeter,” she said, meaning to slide off his lap, but geez, he felt so good, all naked beneath her.

  His gaze immediately fell to her breasts, which were at best only about half covered by her lace demi-bra, and suddenly she was all hot again—everywhere.

  “Uh, Hawkins, hello, yes, good to hear from you, fine, sure.” And then just as suddenly, she wasn’t so hot anymore. She was cold, and focused, and listening to every word. “Prince William County. Yes.”

  She repeated the address out loud, nodding at Dylan, who was watching her with the same intensity she was giving Superman.

  “Yes,” she said, and repeated a series of directions aloud.

  Dylan was getting it, understanding every word. She could see it in his eyes.

  “I agree,” she said. “I’ll wait for Creed and Quinn, and then we’ll go take a look. Just a second.”

  Another call was coming in.

  She put Hawkins on hold, and fifteen seconds later knew there was going to be no waiting for anybody. It was Travis, and his message was succinct: Jai Traon pirates had been waiting at the Hotel Lafayette, and they’d taken Red Dog.

  Suddenly, Skeeter’s night was lying out before her just chock-full of opportunities for using that Knight Match SR-25 sniper rifle with the Litton Aquila 6X starlight scope attached.

  CHAPTER

  24

  THEY’D BROUGHT him the wrong goddamn girl. Tony Royce could hardly believe it.

  How in the hell, he wondered, could anyone poss
ibly mistake this little bit of myopic, auburn-haired fluff for a street-tough, blond-haired Amazon like Skeeter Bang?

  These idiots had seen the photograph. Negara had passed it around to everyone in his office before he’d deployed them for the night’s work.

  And they’d brought him Gillian Pentycote.

  He tossed her wallet back into her purse.

  He was disappointed, but Dr. Souk wasn’t. The doctor was carefully checking all his metal clamps and leather straps, making sure each one was tight on her body, but not too tight. Each device needed to be capable of restraining her, but not likely to cause any unforeseen damage.

  Foreseen damage was the calling card here tonight.

  They’d gagged the woman, but Royce knew that particular leather strap would be removed, and soon. Dr. Souk’s whole program of meticulously administered drugs and torture was designed to make people talk—and talk, and talk, and talk. Royce had heard people give up parts of their past they couldn’t have consciously recalled to save their souls.

  Not that he expected much of interest out of Gillian Pentycote, formerly of the University of Arizona Environmental Laboratory, and currently living in a condo in Arlington, Virginia.

  Disappeared. That’s all her family would ever know. That she’d disappeared one night, never making it home from whatever she’d been doing at the Hotel Lafayette. No one would ever guess that she’d ended up strapped to a dental chair in a secret clinic housed on one of Virginia’s most luxurious estates, tortured to death by one of the world’s most demented medical minds.

  She knew, though. She was wild-eyed with the knowledge, and he took some hope in the fact. He’d love to see her fight for her life, even a little, rather than roll over and die without giving any show whatsoever. He’d never completely given in to his fantasies of terrorizing women, and he had to admit that he was more than a little excited to see what Dr. Souk came up with. In truth, he’d hardly given in to his misogynistic fantasies at all, making do at best with knocking a few women around, and a couple of times a little knife work. But mostly just knocking them around.