Crazy Sweet

by Tara Janzen

  Okay.

  He knelt by the side of the bed, where he’d left his pack, and pulled out his Medkit.

  “Do you have another bottle of alcohol?” he asked.

  The question got another sob and some rustling around through her junk. After a few seconds, she lifted a little bottle over her head.

  “Vodka, the good stuff. Great. Thanks.” He was rambling, and that was a first, too. He opened the kit and pulled out some gauze bandages. Then he pulled his folding knife out of his pocket and thumbed it open.

  “I-I heard that,” she said, lifting her head out of her hands and looking over her shoulder at him—her bare shoulder. Her face instantly fell. “A knife?”

  “I’m going to need to make a small incision,” he said, and she started to tremble.

  Just like that.

  Like somebody had plugged her in.

  “Do you want to reconsider the meds?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You have about a three-inch sliver of glass just under the skin. I’m going to make a small incision at the top of it and—”

  “N-no.”

  “No?” What did she mean no?

  “I want a doctor.”

  As if to punctuate his next thought, another explosion sounded out on the streets of San Luis, coming from the east. Not close, just close enough to be heard for what it was: trouble.

  “No,” he said. There was no doctor in her future, not tonight. It wasn’t going to happen. “It’s just a long sliver, Ms. York-Lytton. I’m not a doctor, but I have had some training, and I have taken care of much worse wounds than this without losing anybody.” There had been a night up on the Rio Putumayo when his partner, Kid Chaos Chronopolous, had been hurt real bad, a couple of gunshot wounds and various other superficial traumas, not to mention they’d had to swim the friggin’ Putumayo to catch a boat, and he’d gotten Kid through that just fine.

  A terrible, ragged sigh left her, and she buried her face back into her hands.

  “Just do it,” she said, the words barely audible.

  “Can you stop shaking?” His knife was razor sharp, and he’d just as soon not end up autographing her butt with it.

  “No.”

  “Breathe.”

  “I am breathing.”

  Hell. He’d known it was a long shot.

  “C. Smith Rydell,” he said. “And that’s the truth, the whole truth.”

  And that got her attention.

  She turned to look over her shoulder.

  “C. Smith Rydell?”

  “Yes,” he said, and handed her the flashlight. “Shine this on your butt—as best you can.”

  “With two Ls?”

  “Two.” He poured vodka on a piece of gauze and very carefully wiped it over her skin. Then he poured a bit on the edge of his knife.

  “What’s the C stand—ahh.” She gasped, but it was done.

  He took the flashlight from her so she could bury her face back in her hands and cry a little. There was blood, but he got the glass out, and washed out the wound, and used a towel he’d brought from the bathroom to keep from getting the bed wet, and she sobbed a little more, and then a little more.

  And he did what he did best—evaluate situations and solve problems.

  He started by brushing off the rest of her butt, and yes, that was a medical procedure, using the pads of his fingers to carefully feel for more glass.

  There was none—and yes, she had an incredible ass, one he wasn’t likely to forget, not in his current life, and probably not in the next one, either. But all told, she’d gotten the two minor pieces and the one big sliver in her, and her amazingly flimsy dress and almost nonexistent underwear had saved her from the rest.

  Satisfied, at least in one sense of the word, he put some antibiotic cream on her and bandaged her up with a folded piece of gauze and a few strips of surgical tape, and was careful not to run his fingers over the tape any more than necessary. And there it was: her ass, soft curves, incredible skin, a tan line that could only be called Brazilian—which gave him another crazy, hot thought—and a small square of perfectly white gauze.

  It was amazing really, the turns a life could take. Five days ago, he’d been in another hotel room with another woman, in another Central American city: Colón, Panama.

  He tilted his head to one side, surveying his handiwork for about half a second before he let his gaze drift lower, into the shadowy area between her legs. He couldn’t see anything. He’d been too careful with her underwear, only pulling them down the absolute minimum amount he needed to get the job done.

  Another inch would have been great.

  Another two, and he’d probably have gotten himself in trouble.

  He’d seen Red Dog in her underwear, her work underwear, which could best be described as sports underwear. Still, she looked damn good in it. The girl was ripped.

  But there was nothing about Red Dog in her underwear that broke his heart. Sometimes he got a little turned on. She was gorgeous, and gorgeously fucked-up, but she didn’t really flip his switches.

  Cupcake did.

  He tilted his head the other way, and wondered if there was any way on earth to have her tonight. He was already about half hard, and there wasn’t much he wouldn’t give to play a few rounds of Shameless Sorority-Girl Sex Games with her—the more shameless the better.

  “Y-you’re staring at my ass,” she said, and hiccupped.

  “No, I’m not,” he lied.

  He saw her wipe at her tears before she turned her head to look at him. He met her gaze straight on, without an ounce of guilt.

  “Yes, you are.”

  In Colón, he’d watched Red Dog take out two bad guys, smoke them right on the street.

  The only person getting slain here tonight was him.

  “Your underwear has to go, probably the dress, too,” he said. “Or at least you have to take them off long enough for me to shake them out and make sure there isn’t any more glass in them.”

  Practicality was practically his middle name, and his suggestion was purely practical. The byproduct of so much practicality—having her completely naked in his bed—really wasn’t part of the equation. Really, it wasn’t. His heart couldn’t take it, not if he couldn’t have her.

  “I have some clothes you can wear,” he added, and when she warily dropped her gaze down the length of him, he added a little more. “Clean clothes.”

  He had a camera in his pack. He just wished to hell he had the balls to use it, because he was never going to see the likes of her again. There was a reason she’d been on the cover of a magazine, and he didn’t think it was just because she’d written a book.

  He’d been calling her cute, and in a way, he’d been right. He’d been thinking she was the poster girl for the ditzy blondes of the world, and in a way, he was probably a little bit right about that, too.

  But looking at her now, in the Palacio, by candlelight, with a piece of gauze on her butt, bourbon on her breath, and an AK-47 chattering on the street, he knew there was more.

  He knew it down to his bones.

  The look she was giving him was so considering, so clear, so utterly guileless, it unnerved the hell out of him. Whatever she was seeing in him, he had a feeling it was way too much. He was a guy with secrets he kept, and she was taking off his top layer with her green-eyed gaze.

  “I’ll put the clothes in the bathroom. You can go in there.” Maybe a little distance wasn’t such a bad idea. She wasn’t going anywhere out of the bathroom. The window was high and small.

  Not that it was his job to contain her.

  He just wanted to contain her. Keep her out of trouble. Make sure she was safe. Take her to bed.

  Right.

  He just wanted to keep her in sight until he could get her on a plane out of El Salvador, and whether she knew it or not, or wanted to accept it or not, that’s exactly what she needed to do: Get out.

  “You haven’t stolen my money.”

 
“No.”

  God, did she have any idea what she looked like? Raised up a little on one side to better see him, her dress pushed up around her waist, her shoes falling off, her hair completely wild, and her panties down around her thighs, not even the word “sex” quite covered it.

  “And you didn’t manhandle my butt.”

  “No.” He was a professional, and he was always in control, especially of himself. Without fail. Always. No matter what he was thinking. Guys like him survived by being in control, and if they ever lost it, they survived by taking it back, hard and fast and with whatever amount of force necessary. It was jungle law, and it was ingrained in him down to the cellular level. Go, fight, win—every time.

  Sure, he had a helluva imagination. But he never let it get in the way of reality, or of his being in control.

  Great. He was so glad he had all that completely straight in his head. Now all he had to do was take his eyes off her.

  “Why are you here?” he asked, still holding her gaze, holding it steady, like a rock.

  “Because she’s mine. Since the day she was born, she’s been mine.”

  Her sister.

  “Sister Julia.”

  She nodded.

  “Your bio on the book jacket says besides a sister, you have four brothers. Why didn’t one of them bring the money?”

  “Because El Salvador doesn’t have a club scene.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And she really is a nun?”

  She nodded again.

  “And there really are orphans?”

  “Yes.”

  He believed her.

  Hell. He let his gaze slip past her to the bundles of money piled on the bed. Dammit.

  Reaching down into his pack, he pulled out his extra pair of cargo pants and his second-favorite parrot shirt, the green one.

  “Go get dressed,” he said, tossing the clothes on the bed. “And when you’re decent, we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  FUCK.

  Travis stood next to Skeeter, quietly, steadily, listening to Dylan, listening to every fucking word that came out of his boss’s mouth, and with every one, he felt his heart harden.

  She’d done this to him.

  “We don’t know that Royce is in Denver because of her. We haven’t heard from Rydell yet,” Dylan said. “But if she’s baited a trap and kills him, we’ve got a major problem.”

  She’d baited the trap all right. Travis knew it in his heart. It was all she’d been doing for two goddamn years, playing him for a fool, and trolling the underworld for the man who had destroyed her.

  The call he’d gotten hadn’t come from Steele Street. It hadn’t come from Skeeter or Dylan. Gillian had done it. She’d gotten him out of her way, cut him loose, and he was bleeding all right, deep, where it hurt.

  She should have known better. Goddamn her. She should have known better.

  “Hawkins is headed out to Denver International,” Dylan continued. “Loretta has a team in place to tag Royce and his boys as they get off their flight from Las Vegas. Superman will pick them up from there and follow them in.”

  “How many men are with Royce?” He needed to know.

  “Five, so it’s a full party of six.”

  Six.

  Travis nodded.

  That was more than enough to send the night straight to hell.

  “The DEA has confirmed that Royce has opened a new base of operations in El Salvador, and that’s where Red Dog flew in from today.”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t let her turn this town into a bloodbath tonight,” Hart said, and Travis didn’t doubt him for a second. “None of us will survive the repercussions of her killing six people in cold blood without orders. It doesn’t matter that he’s the scum of the earth; somebody with more pull than Grant wants Royce alive, and I can’t have her going through his men like matchsticks until she gets him. We don’t make the rules, we follow them, or we’ve got nothing here.”

  And nobody doubted that Red Dog could kill Royce and however many of his men she needed to until she got what she wanted, not when she’d had time to set an ambush. Killing people is what she did. Walking the line is what they all did. Crossing it was unacceptable.

  He saw Dylan’s gaze shift to Skeeter for a heartbeat—and he understood.

  Leavenworth. That was the threat hanging over Dylan’s head. SDF was the only thing that stood between him and his enemies, not the bad guys out on the world stage, but the ones in Washington, D.C. He had a past that wouldn’t hold up under too much scrutiny; a long-ago deal in Moscow, especially, could and would be used against him if the powers-that-be decided they needed to clean up a mess and find a scapegoat. He could go to prison for treason, or he could run, but there was no middle ground for him. There never had been, not from the inception of Special Defense Force, when someone high up at the State Department had saved him from the CIA and a prison cell and given him to General Grant.

  Hart would just take his millions and run, and Skeeter would be with him every step of the way. Skeeter would never do what Gillian had done. Betrayal wasn’t part of her, any part of her.

  “Call Superman,” Travis said, turning to her. He knew what he had to do. “Tell him I’m headed back to Commerce City.”

  “Maybe,” Dylan said, the one word simple, direct, and loaded with enough freight to stop him in his tracks.

  Travis turned back to Dylan and met his gaze straight on. He knew what was coming, and it pissed him off.

  “If you go back out on the streets tonight, it’s going to be as my agent, not as her boyfriend.” The words were cold, the orders clear, the threat guaranteed.

  Travis didn’t say a word at first, because the only two he had were “fuck you.” It took every goddamn thing he had and a good thirty seconds before he could come up with, “Yes, sir.”

  At Dylan’s nod, he turned and headed for the stairs. The Steele Street armory was one floor above them, and he needed to gear up before he went hunting for Red Dog. If she ended up with half of the goddamn Damn Dirty Dozen on her tail, it was going to be a bloody night no matter what Dylan wanted or didn’t want. Nobody was going to get out of this unscathed.

  Goddamn her.

  He took the stairs two at a time, because there was no time, not now, not tonight. It had taken him half an hour to get to Steele Street from the Commerce City garage. Dylan had spent the next fifteen minutes reading him the fucking riot act, and it was going to take him at least that to get back to her apartment—if he took the interstate and burned the tires off something a helluva lot faster than his Jeep.

  He heard Skeeter come up behind him.

  “I’m going to need a car,” he said, grabbing his assault vest out of his locker. It was already loaded with everything he needed for a night on the town, including flash bangs and magazines for both his Glock 21 and his HK UMP45 subgun. The only other thing he needed was—exactly what Skeeter handed him out of her locker: a tactical shotgun loaded with double-ought buck. While he was shrugging into his vest, she shoved a handful of breaching loads into one of his pouches.

  Nothing was getting between him and Red Dog tonight. Wherever she was, he was going to find her. Wherever she was, he was going to get to her—so help him God and a breaching 12-gauge.

  “About that car?” he asked, and Skeeter handed him a key.

  “Adeline.”

  He knew Adeline, Quinn’s black, 1968 Yenko Super Camaro. She had a white bumblebee racing stripe hugging her grille and 427 cubic inches of pure rat under her hood putting out 450 horses. She was classic, one of a kind, and off-limits.

  “Quinn is going to have your ass, when he finds out you gave me this key.”

  “He’ll have to catch me first,” the punk baby rocker girl said.

  And with Dylan Hart standing between her and the rest of the world, that was unfuckinglikely.

  He’d been standing there for Gillian,
for Red Dog, for all the goddamn good that had done him. Shit.

  Three minutes later, he was running Adeline up through her gears, the beast in her doing what he needed her to do. He hit the ramp onto I-25 and gunned her up to ninety. By the time he slid through the infamous highway intersection at I-25 and I-70 called the Mousetrap, he’d broken a hundred, and Adeline was hitting her stride.

  “CAN you locate her, Skeeter?” Dylan would take her down himself, if she’d gone so far over the edge that she was operating outside of the law and killing people while she was on his shift.

  “I’ve been working on it, and I think I’ve come up with something that might help us find her. Her phone is basically a standard civilian PDA with a few refinements,” Skeeter said, regarding her computer screen. “But she’s probably disabled her GPS locator chip.”

  “If she hasn’t, she doesn’t have any business working for us,” he said.

  “Right,” Skeeter agreed, tapping a sequence into her keyboard. “I’ve been hacking deep to see if I can use her provider’s law enforcement override and trick her phone into making an emergency call, and I think I’ve got it working. I’ll terminate the call at my computer, and her PDA should keep transmitting her coordinates until the battery dies, or until she tries to use it.”

  “Or until she gets rid of it,” Dylan said. “That’s quite a few ‘ifs.’”

  “It’s what we’ve got,” she said, continuing to work her keyboard.

  Several more keystroke sequences later, her screen displayed a flashing red triangle superimposed on a large-scale map of Commerce City.

  “Okay, I’ve got it. I’m showing a signal on top of a three-story building close to the SDF garage,” she said.

  Goddamn it all to hell.

  That was it.

  “She didn’t get very far from home,” Dylan said, tight-jawed, looking over his wife’s shoulder.

  “And she picked a helluva IFP. The girl has the high ground.”

  No shit.

  “And she’s got a sniper rifle in her arsenal,” he said.

  “She won’t need the SR-25 for such short range.”

  Skeeter was right, but somehow, Dylan didn’t take much comfort in the fact. There was only one reason for Gillian to be on the rooftops of Commerce City: She was expecting company.