Crazy Sweet

by Tara Janzen

  “So it was just sex?”

  Geezus.

  “It was none of your business.”

  “I think it’s cool that you know you’re a jerk. Most guys aren’t that aware of their shortcomings,” she said, digging back into her tote bag.

  He grinned. She was such a piece of work.

  “I’m not most guys,” he said, which got him another roll of her eyes.

  His grin broadened.

  “What about the other woman you mentioned? Red Dog? The one who doesn’t know her own name? What’s her story?”

  He held her gaze but didn’t say anything.

  “That’s a pretty interesting name, Red Dog,” she said, undaunted.

  “You might want to forget you ever heard it.”

  “Betcha I don’t.”

  “Betcha you should.”

  “You don’t scare me anymore.”

  He could, in about half a second flat. He’d actually had quite a bit of training in how to scare the holy fucking crap out of anybody in less than half a second flat. It was considered a basic skill in his line of work. A guy had to have it, or he couldn’t do the job.

  But Honey wasn’t a job. She was an accident, a wondrous, fluffy-haired, green-eyed, barefoot accident with soft pink shimmery lips.

  “What happened to your red lipstick?”

  “Makeup remover,” she said, showing him a small, wadded-up tissue with candy-apple-red smears on it. “I changed my outfit, so I changed my lipstick.”

  Well, well, well, who would ever have believed it? His green parrot shirt and khaki cargoes had been elevated to the status of “outfit.”

  He honestly hadn’t thought he owned any “outfits.” But he could see it. Sure. She’d rolled up the pants legs, which gave the trousers a certain esprit de something or another. She’d tied the tails of the shirt, to better accent her waist, which was something he had never, ever, ever done with his green parrot shirt. Or the blue one. Or with any shirt he owned.

  She wasn’t wearing a bra with the shirt, which he never did either, but somehow, the whole braless thing looked really enticing on her, whereas he’d bet his ass nobody had ever noticed it on him.

  And then there were the buttons. He was a casual kind of guy, but that last button she’d left unbuttoned? He usually kept it buttoned. It was button number three. Nonetheless, he was awfully glad that she’d left it undone. It was just enough to tease him, without pushing him straight over the edge.

  “You smell good.” Really good. Not that she hadn’t smelled good before, but now she smelled good in a different, really riveting way.

  “Thank you. It’s Paradise,” she said, lifting a tiny bottle out of her makeup bag to show him.

  It was very pretty, all blue and pink and green, with the glass all swirly.

  “If you like, we could spritz a little under your shirt. It’ll sort of warm up on your chest and be very comforting.”

  Yes, he could see how that might work, maybe—but maybe not. For the sure shot, he needed to be the one doing the spritzing, as in spritzing a little more under her shirt, warming himself up on her chest, and just letting the whole night sink into the paradise of having his face buried between the soft mounds of her bodacious—

  Geezus! The phone rang in his hand and damn near gave him a heart attack.

  He snapped it open, felt like a fool, and said, “Rydell.”

  “Buenas noches, pendejo,” Grant growled. “I understand you’re in El Salvador. Care to fill me in?”

  CHAPTER

  23

  GILLIAN HEARD Adeline long before she saw the rat-powered Camaro pull up in the alley bordering the Commerce City garage. Nobody tuned headers like Quinn. Nobody did it better.

  Damn. She wiped the rain off her face and rose to her feet. The last thing she needed was for one of the SDF operators to show up at the garage tonight.

  But she was in more trouble than that, way more trouble. It wasn’t Quinn Younger who got out of the classic piece of muscle.

  It was Travis, and he was definitely in Vengeful Angel mode, packing enough firepower to do some real damage—and he knew exactly where she was hiding in the shadows.

  He came around the back of the Camaro, slinging a shotgun across his front, carrying a subgun, and raking the warehouse’s rooftop with his gaze. At the end of the alley, he stopped, and she saw him say something into the headset he was wearing.

  With a steadiness that unnerved her all the way down to the middle of her gut, he brought his gaze back across the rooftop and stopped dead on her. She saw his mouth move again, saw his short nod, and then he sent her a message, loud and clear. He raised his arm and pointed his finger straight at her: Stay put, baby. I’m coming for you.

  She was frozen in place for all of two god-awful seconds, frozen by the fear of what she’d done, cutting him out of her private mission.

  Then her brain kicked back in.

  The hell he was, she thought, and the hell she would. This wasn’t his fight, and she wasn’t staying put anywhere.

  She holstered her Contender back inside her vest and pulled a coil of 7mm climbing rope out of a pocket. Dropping low onto the roof, she peered over the short wall to the street below—and he’d already disappeared.

  Goddamn. They’d played this game too many times, war-gamed this game too many times, for him to be anything except damn near unstoppable. The key was in the “damn near.”

  If he was coming up, she was going down. The best anchor points for her rope were on the other side of the building, but if she was quick, damn quick, she thought one of the cutouts in the wall would hold long enough for her to double her rope through it and slide down three stories to the street. She could retrieve the rope by pulling on one of the free ends.

  She had one of her fast-rope gloves on and was getting ready to slip into the other one, when her phone signaled her that she had a text message.

  Holy freaking crap.

  But suddenly, she knew how Travis had known exactly where to find her—somebody at Steele Street had hacked her phone, and it had to be Baby Bang. She pulled the phone out of her back pocket, swearing under her breath as she flipped it open.

  Then she grinned.

  ROYCE PLUS 5 IN DENVER.

  It was about fucking time.

  The grin widened, lifting the corner of her lips, but it didn’t last long.

  Angel was here, and that was no good.

  She scanned the area. The dry creek bed where they played paintball with Johnny Ramos like their lives depended on it would be a good place to take him. Junked cars, piles of old tires, a couple of broken Dumpsters—the place was full of stuff to hide behind and fences to keep people in, or at least slow them down. She could take him into Sand Creek and slip back out without him knowing. By the time he figured out he was in the creek bed alone, she’d be long gone.

  Her gaze went back to the text message on her phone.

  ROYCE PLUS 5 IN DENVER. BUT REMEMBER, IF YOU’RE NOT COP, YOU’RE LITTLE PEOPLE. CALL ME. LET ME HELP. DYLAN.

  Blade Runner. She’d watched it dozens of times. Poor Zhora, the Nexus 6 hit girl, that’s what she felt like sometimes, an enhanced android trained to kill, something not quite right. But she wasn’t going down like Zhora. It wasn’t going to be a blade runner or one of Royce’s men who got her. Her demise, when it came, would come from inside herself. XT7 had taken the first thirty-three years of her life, and she was afraid it was going to take the last two—the two she’d spent with Angel.

  But five guys, hell, that was a lot of men, especially given the kind of men Royce hired. One at a time had been her plan from the beginning, for them to not have a clue where she was and how she was killing them off, and then, once she got the information out of the one she left alive, she’d go for Royce.

  And when he was gone, she’d be done. The rest of her life could play out as best it could, what was left of it, which didn’t feel like very damn much—not tonight, it didn’t.

  The faint
est trickle of sensation slipped up her arm from the inside, and she swore again. Bullshit. This was not going to happen, not now.

  She shook out her hand, keeping her fingers spread. Sometimes that helped, if the problem started slow enough, was light enough, and she hoped to hell tonight was one of those times. She’d already had one episode. That usually worked it out of her for a while. She shook her hand twice, then squeezed it into a fist, closing the fingers tight, and she breathed. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had until Dr. Brandt came up with something better, something she could shoot herself up with to negate the symptoms of having a whole boatload of crap jacked into her system and just having to live with it.

  Opening her hand, she jerked on her other glove, then slipped her rope through the cutout and dropped over the side of the building. Halfway down, she heard the blast of a breaching load coming out of a 12-gauge somewhere on the other side of the building. Fuck. They’d never blown the freaking door off the warehouse before.

  Blast or no blast, though, she didn’t stop for a second, just kept sliding, using her feet to hold the rope steady.

  When she hit the street, she looked up and started pulling the rope down, one long, slinky jerk at a time. Glancing east, she saw nothing, and by the time she looked west, it was too late.

  He was there, coming out of the darkness and the rain, and when he grabbed her arm, she knew her time was up. He hadn’t gone into the building and headed for the stairs. He’d faked her out.

  “Game over, babe,” he growled. His hair was plastered to his face, his expression one she’d never seen on him before: fury, and it struck her deep in her core. “The next time I tie you up, I’m leaving you there.” His voice was low, hard, and it scared her almost as much as the look on his face.

  “That’s mean.”

  “And this isn’t?” He gave her a small, short shake.

  She could tell he wanted to shake her harder, to say more, wanted to say things he might regret. It was in the tightness of the hold he had on her arm. It was in the way he’d dragged her close and almost had her up on her toes. He wanted to break something, and all signs were pointing to her.

  She wouldn’t let him. He had to know that. She’d only let him have so much of his anger at her, and then she’d have to shut him down, if she could.

  And if she couldn’t, it was going to be over between them, and wasn’t that the price she’d been willing to pay? To lose him forever so she could have her vengeance?

  God, it had never seemed simple, but faced with the reality of his face, with his coldness, and the fierce grip he had on her arm, she had to wonder what in the fuck she’d been thinking she was going to get away with.

  Nothing.

  Not like this.

  He had never hurt her, not once, not in thought, word, or deed, not in two years, but he was coming damn close to hurting her now.

  He’d never marked her, not once, not ever, but he was leaving marks on her now. She could feel the strength of his fingers digging into her arm, the bruises that would be there in the morning.

  “I’ve got her,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking to her, but into his headset. “Rog—fuck! Move.”

  A bullet cracked by their heads.

  He threw her behind him and took a knee on the asphalt, his UMP45 spitting a short burst into the night.

  Fuck, move was a helluva command—for some other girl.

  She got out of his way and backed him up, drawing her night-scoped TC with lightning speed and firing a .223 round into the target she had almost instantly acquired—if it moved, she saw it—and whoever “it” had been, they weren’t anymore. She saw the figure crumple to the street, and she and Angel were both moving, fast, fast, fast, along the side of the building, to cover.

  CHAPTER

  24

  SHE WAS IN the bathroom.

  Singing.

  Smith could hear her through the closed door, singing some song he’d heard on the radio and doing a damn good job of it.

  The night was wearing thin.

  He’d lain in hides with Red Dog or Kid for hours on end, sometimes days, and been more relaxed than he was lying in bed in the Hotel Palacio with Honey York singing in the bathroom.

  He thought he might be falling in love. That was the problem. He was prone to it, spur-of-the-moment lust turning his brains to mush. Sometimes sex took care of the problem, and sometimes sex only made it worse. He had a feeling that, with Honey, sex would only make it worse. She was so . . . unexpected. He didn’t have a category for Harvard-educated, trust-fund, sex-kitten feminists. She was just a little hard for him to wrap his mind around.

  He didn’t think he’d have any trouble getting anything else wrapped around her. His mind, truly, was the only sticking point, and since he was well on the way to losing it, there might be hope for the night after all.

  Or not, he thought, when another explosion rocked the hotel from about a block over.

  Geezus. Fuck.

  He swore and brushed at the plaster drifting down from the ceiling, and would have gotten it all off himself if she hadn’t jerked the bathroom door open, wild-eyed.

  “That . . . that was big, and close,” she said breathlessly, her hand white-knuckled on the doorknob.

  Yes, it had been close—

  Another explosion rocked the room from just outside on the goddamn street.

  —but not as close as that one.

  And what in the holy hell was her shirt doing unbuttoned? Completely unbuttoned.

  What had she been doing in the bathroom? Singing with her shirt unbuttoned?

  Who did that?

  And why?

  There was only one answer, and it made his head spin: shameless sorority girl self-help sex games. And just as he was getting ready to get himself all worked up over that, he noticed the washcloth in her other hand, dripping water down the doorjamb.

  Okay. Take a breath, Smith, old boy. There was nothing shameless about trying to cool off in a hotel room that had broken the hundred-and-five-degree barrier a good hour back.

  He pushed himself off the bed and went to look over the top of the chiffonier. Another explosion like that last one, and he might have to reconsider staying in the Palacio.

  He looked into the street and felt his gut churn. Shit. Then somebody else, a woman, noticed the guy who’d been blown to pieces, and a scream rent the air—and he meant rent, like a hundred-and-twenty-decibel schism of sound tearing through the night. It was bloodcurdling, a sound of utter, senseless shock, and the kind of uncomprehending disbelief that broke people’s minds.

  Fuck. He ran his hand over his chest, an instinctive gesture. Yeah, his heart was still beating, and the woman was still screaming, and then he heard it. Another sound. A small sound.

  He looked toward the bathroom, and Honey was standing there, her face pale, the washcloth clutched to her chest, the straps on her bow-tied platforms unbuckled and flying out on either side of her ankles—and she was overwhelmed and falling apart, one soft gasping sob at a time.

  And that’s when he gave in.

  He lifted his arm and beckoned to her with his palm up: Come to me.

  And she did, all but throwing herself across the room and into his arms.

  It was sweet, and hot, and a little crazy. She still had her washcloth, and somehow, instead of just wrapping her arms around him, she’d gotten her hands under his T-shirt, all the way under, and water was running down his back and down into his pants, which made her feel like kind of a sloppy mess in his arms.

  But he wasn’t complaining.

  No. He was breathing, slow, and steady, and deep, and holding on to her with his face buried in the silky, tawny cloud of her hair, and he was deciding to do it with her. Right now. In this dumpy hotel room with the night falling apart all around.

  So he kissed the top of her head, and breathed her in, and filled himself up with Paradise and Honey, and with her platform shoes on her feet, he didn’t have to bend too far down
to get his mouth on her face, on her soft, soft skin, on her cheek . . . on her lips.

  She opened her mouth under his, but he didn’t kiss her, not yet, because it was a crazy, crazy moment, a place outside of time, with the woman screaming and the night smelling of burning rubber, and the woman in his arms feeling like so much more than made sense.

  He was a careful guy. He didn’t give anything away, least of all to a woman he didn’t know.

  “Hi,” she said, her mouth barely touching his, her breath so soft against his lips—and despite everything, he grinned.

  Yeah. Hi.

  “I’m a little scared,” she said. “That woman out there, she sounds like . . . like I shouldn’t look out the window.”

  “No, baby,” he said, brushing his lips so softly across hers. He wasn’t letting her anywhere near the window.

  “I think . . . I think—” She stopped and a tremor went through her. He could see the struggle she was having. It was in the starkness of her gaze. He could feel it in the death grip she had on him. “I think maybe you should really, really kiss me.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  Sex, he reminded himself. That’s what was going to happen here. They were going to have sex—naked bodies, hot sheets, wet mouths—and just take the edge off what had become a very edgy night.

  Gently tilting her head back, he grazed her cheek with his thumb, and closed the scant distance between them by thrusting his tongue into her mouth, slowly, deeply—and that’s when he knew he was in so much fucking trouble.

  He liked his sex hot and sweet, a little bit dirty when he could get it, and utterly shameless, just like those sorority girl sex games, and he didn’t have a doubt in his mind that Honey could give him all those things, because she instantly melted against him in the way that got guys so hard, and one of her hands had tunneled up into his hair, pulling him down to her, like maybe he might get away if she didn’t hold on to him, and her other hand was flat on the small of his back, holding him so close, pressing against him.

  It was all that—the whole kiss, the moving of their mouths with each other, and with him not forgetting for a second that her shirt was completely unbuttoned and that her breasts were just a short slide of his hand away from where he was holding her at her waist.