Crazy Kisses

by Tara Janzen

  Jane. He’d said Jane Linden, as in plain Jane, and Jane’s Addiction, but Skeeter and every gangbangin’ wallbanger from the west side to the ’burbs knew her by her street name as Robin Rulz, as in Robin Hood and robbing fools, robbing them of their purses and their wallets, and for all the times she never got caught, that ruled. She was a grade-A pocket-picking genius whose mad skills included lifting people’s car keys with no jingle jangle. She and her gang had staked out some turf in LoDo a few years back, becoming known as the Castle Rats, with a C-RAT tag marking their territory and enough light-fingered members to give the Denver cops a run for their money. For a couple of years, lower downtown had been notorious for the scrawny band of street kids who came out after dark and stole people blind, with their victims absolutely clueless until they got home and realized their cash and credit cards had gone missing—except, of course, for the really unlucky ones who couldn’t get home because the Castle Rats had stolen their cars.

  Then Robin Rulz had disappeared—poof—right off the streets. Not even her gang knew where she’d gone. Rumors said the legend had finally been busted, bottomed out in juvie, and been sent down to the penitentiary in Canon City for some hard time. Others had said no way. Robin hadn’t been caught, not ever, but she’d been known to take a break now and then when the heat was on. That’s all it was, they said, just Robin taking a break. Some folks had said she’d gone to Phoenix to wait out the cops, give them a chance to forget her, and then she’d be back and the fun would start all over again.

  And here the hell she was, the leader of the pack, with the run of a gallery full of thousands of dollars worth of art, hundreds of thousands with Rocky’s work installed. It was enough to give Skeeter heart palpitations. Had Superman gone completely mad? Robin Rulz living in Toussi’s?

  And Travis thought he liked this girl?

  Skeeter glanced over her shoulder at him, took a breath, and told herself to remain calm. Christian Hawkins was no fool. It was while he’d been doing his own time in Canon City that he’d acquired the name of Superman. He knew the score, and he knew people. Not even a legendary hustler like Robin Rulz could have pulled the wool over Superman’s eyes, but Travis—geez—he was a babe in the woods when it came to this kind of action.

  Somebody really needed to tell him who she was, or at least who she’d been.

  Somebody, right. Dammit. Skeeter didn’t need to look around to know she was the only one available for the job.

  Well, hell. Maybe Travis was right. Maybe they should get the darn show hung first and worry about other things later, like leaving the gallery in the hands of a thief.

  Jane, she thought, shifting her attention back to the girl. The name Jane Linden sounded almost wholesome, and no one who had ever seen them in action would have ever used the word wholesome to describe a Castle Rat.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Panama City, Panama

  KID TOOK NIKKI through the Ramones’ yard, avoiding the Sandovals’ and the dead drag queen with the “Colombian necktie” lying next to the garden gate. There was a reason the guy had been drenched in blood. Having your throat cut and your tongue pulled out through the opening was a damned bloody business. It was also one of Conseco’s signature pieces, his and every drug lord’s from Tijuana to Medellín. But Conseco was the one after him, the one after the ghost killer.

  He’d known his cover would be blown someday. He just hadn’t expected someday to be today. His money said someone in the Bogotá hospital was a few thousand pesos richer tonight. There couldn’t have been too many gringos with bullets in them this week, and he’d left enough blood in the Banco Nuevo cantina and on the Garza for Conseco’s guys to know he’d been hit. Getting flight information on the plane he and C. Smith had taken out of Santa María wouldn’t have been too damn difficult, not with money changing hands, and there was a lot of money waiting to change hands.

  Fuck. Half a million dollars. What was he, the poster boy for the antidrug coalition? Conseco was out to make a statement, that was for damn sure. And if the cocaine baron got his way, the statement was going to be written in el asesino fantasma’s blood.

  A man’s shirt was hanging off a chair on the Ramones’ patio. He grabbed it and jammed his feet into a pair of shoes lying next to the table. Besides the knife and the HK .45, he had a thousand dollars and his wallet in one of his cargo pockets. His passport and three extra ten-shot magazines were in another—standard urban battle pack.

  Heading toward the Ramones’ back gate, the one leading into the alley, he gave Nikki a quick glance. She was in shock, her face white, her expression dazed, and unbelievably, she had her purse clutched in her hand. He remembered seeing it now, on the table next to her teacup.

  He was moving her too fast for there to be much conversation, which was just as well. The last few minutes had been pretty intense. Business as fucking usual for him, but completely outside her realm of experience, until she’d met up with him again—damn it. He could see his whole white-picket-fence fantasy going up in flames.

  At the gate, he pulled her behind him and waited, listening, and trying damned hard to hear anything beyond her breathing. Nikki was hyperventilating. That sucked, but there wasn’t much he could do about it right now. Conseco’s guys usually ran in packs, but there was a slim chance those two guys had been on their own, a couple of freelancers out for the half a million. Everybody and their mother had to be after him for that kind of money.

  His kitchen door slammed, and he swore under his breath. Hell, no, they weren’t out of this, not yet. Voices were coming from his backyard, one yelling orders, another demanding answers, and in the middle of all the shouting, somebody made a threat and backed it up with Juan Conseco’s name, the last thing he’d wanted to hear.

  Shit. It was definitely time to get out of Dodge.

  He eased the gate open, checked both ways, and pulled her out of the Ramones’ yard and into the alley, into the jungle. There was a reason J.T. had bought a house in this particular neighborhood: escape routes and cover. The streets and alleys were a maze, and unlike other places in the city, the forest had been invited back here and nurtured with a vengeance. People in this insular section of the capital valued their privacy, thus the walled gardens and the profusion of vegetation, towering trees and thick shrubbery. Four blocks away, it all emptied into an urban landscape as much of a jungle as any on the planet. That’s where he was taking her.

  Keeping close to the sides of the overgrown alley, and a firm grip on her hand, he ran past the next two houses. As soon as they rounded the corner, he ducked across the alley, opened the first gate he came to, and slipped inside one of his neighbors’ yards. There was nothing random about his movements. The route was planned. He’d run it a dozen times in the dark.

  He didn’t stop inside the gate to listen. He didn’t need to listen. There was no mistaking the sound of men piling into the alley, or of the trash and refuse piles being torn through. Gates were being breached, dogs barking, lights coming on all over the neighborhood, and it was all happening with lightning speed, like an avalanche sweeping toward them.

  So he ran, and he kept running, dragging Nikki with him through one yard after the next, lifting her off her feet when she stumbled, practically carrying her the rest of the time. At the end of the block, they crossed another street. A hedge on the other side provided cover until they came to a set of stone steps leading to a small, tree-enclosed plaza. He plunged the two of them down into the darkness, not daring to slow their pace until they’d reached the far end of the park.

  As they came out from under the trees, he slipped his gun into the waistband of his pants. There were other people on this end of the park, some older kids messing around, groups of party-goers, couples sitting here and there on the benches, and the last thing he wanted was to draw anybody’s attention.

  Blending in—that’s what they were doing now, not running their guts out.

  Releasing the death grip he had on her arm, he
slid his hand down to hers and gave her a quick glance. He’d been holding onto her pretty damn tightly—and sure enough, he’d marked her. Every one of his fingerprints stood out on her pale skin like a brand.

  Damn, he hated that, really hated it.

  Moving her along at a fast walk, he headed toward the street, toward the crowds of people making the scene in the Calle Uruguay, Panama City’s club district. On Friday and Saturday nights it was the biggest party in the country, the safest place for them.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “You’re doing great.” That was a lie. She didn’t look like she was doing great. She looked shell-shocked. He could imagine what was running through her mind, and none of it was good.

  Letting go of her for a second, he did up a couple of buttons on the shirt. He had a round in the chamber of his .45, five left in the magazine, and thirty cartridges in his cargo pocket. Under the best of circumstances that was a damn short firefight. Under the worst of circumstances it was a goatfuck waiting to happen. Thirty-six rounds weren’t enough for him to win a gun battle if Conseco’s narco-guerrillas chased them down.

  At the street, he gave up on the buttons—three would have to do—and took her hand again. He didn’t wait for a break in the traffic. There was no break in traffic in the Calle Uruguay district on Friday night. Taxi drivers honked, and a few people cussed him out in two languages, but they made it across. Half a block farther and he pulled her into the shadows between two buildings.

  His heart was racing. Her breath was coming hard and fast. Geezus, that had been close, too damn close. Somebody at the DEA in Bogotá needed a freaking heads-up on their security protocols at the hospital, because they’d been breached every which way from Sunday. There was no other way for anyone to have traced him to Panama City, to his own house, except through the name on his hospital file, Peter Alexander Chronopolous.

  Cupping her face with his hand, he rested his cheek against her forehead, stealing a couple of seconds to assure himself she was all right. But she wasn’t. She was shaking like a leaf.

  “Shhh, Nikki. You’re safe.” Not really, not quite, not yet. But she didn’t need to hear the truth right now. She felt like she was going to come apart. She was still in one piece, though, still with him, and that’s what counted. He could fix everything else later.

  Still holding on to her hand, he turned back toward the street and scanned the area, especially in the direction of the park, looking for anyone out of the ordinary, anyone who might be carrying a weapon, anyone who looked like they were looking for him. When he’d checked the whole area over once, he did it again, reevaluating the scene, checking the new dynamics of the crowd, looking for someone who seemed hyperalert, someone who was doing the same thing he was doing.

  “There’s . . . there’s blood on my dress,” she said from behind him, her voice softly horrified. “I’m sure I didn’t . . . wasn’t—”

  He turned toward her, his grip inadvertently tightening on her hand, his gaze dropping to the front of her dress.

  “Are you hurt?” he said gruffly.

  “No . . . I—no.” She sounded confused.

  There was a bloody smear at her waist, but she couldn’t have run the way she had, for as long as she had—especially in the freakin’ little sandals she was wearing—if she’d been wounded, and the material wasn’t torn. It was just bloody.

  Then it hit him. He’d done that to her. Stabbed the guy, gotten blood on his hands, and then grabbed her. She had blood on the shoulder of her dress, too, a handprint—his. Geezus.

  “You’re okay, Nikki,” he said, careful to keep his voice confident and controlled. “You did great. I really appreciate how strong you’ve been.” The encouragement was important, deliberate, the recognition of how well she’d followed his lead. He was incredibly grateful. It all could have gone so much worse—but he wasn’t going to think about that.

  Her gaze lifted to meet his, and he felt his heart sink. Her eyes were wide, frightened, darkened by the low light and the shadows. She was pale, the tremors in her hand coming from the entire rest of her body.

  And he’d done all that to her, too, in record time, without an ounce of intent.

  “You killed those men,” she said. “The first one . . . you killed him three times.”

  It was a simple statement, not entirely accurate, but he knew what she meant, and it took the wind out of him. She was in a near state of shock, could hardly catch her breath, and her dress was smeared with some badass hombre’s blood who he’d left in a broken heap outside his bathroom door.

  Yeah, he’d been pretty jacked up in the house, and try as he might not to, it was all too easy to imagine how the sequence of events and his actions in them must have looked to her—not incredibly skilled and heroic, but absofuckinglutely deranged.

  “I only killed him once, Nikki. The rest of it was insurance.” Again, he made sure his voice was steady and confident, letting her know he knew what he was doing, no matter how god-awful it must have looked. Ammo was cheap, and her life wasn’t, he could have added, but he didn’t think that pithy axiom was going to do a damn thing to improve the image of him blowing two guys away at point-blank range, nor did it adequately address half gutting the first guy and breaking his neck.

  He was so screwed.

  “Insurance?”

  “I had to make sure he wouldn’t come after us,” he explained. “Not him or the man in the other hall.”

  “But they were already dead.”

  “Maybe.” Probably. But he didn’t stay alive on maybe and probably. He stayed alive on head shots. “I know everything happened really fast, but in those kinds of situations, everything always happens fast, especially when there are guns involved. I didn’t have a choice, Nikki.” The truth was, he’d made his choice about guys like Conseco’s a long time ago, and the chances of him losing any sleep over tonight’s killings were between slim and none. In the war he was part of, he never doubted where he stood, or what he had to do to hold his ground. That’s why he’d joined the Marines. It was why he’d followed his brother into General Buck Grant’s black-ops special reconnaissance team. It was why he was part of SDF.

  “Guns. I see,” she said—but she didn’t. He could tell by the hesitation in her voice. She was trying to process what had happened, but there was no way in hell for that to happen in this alley in the next few seconds.

  Goddamn. He’d stayed away from Denver for seven months so she wouldn’t see the kind of life he’d been leading, wouldn’t see the changes that life had made in him, and inside of two minutes, he’d bloody well massacred two guys right in front of her.

  He wished it hadn’t happened; with all his heart, he wished she hadn’t been exposed to that kind of danger, to that kind of brutality; but he couldn’t regret the killings. He knew the score. He knew the playing field they were on, and he knew exactly what would have happened to the two of them if he was anything less than what he was: better.

  Better than all the guys he’d ever tracked down, better than any guy who’d ever gone up against him—better than the next guy, whoever he was, wherever they met. Kid didn’t have to be the best, but he knew with every cell in his body that he always had to be better, every single time, without fail. There was only one rule in the warfare he’d been trained for: win or die. For seven months, he’d been living in a world light-years away from Nikki’s. It was stark and dangerous and had no room for errors.

  Tonight, for whatever reason, she’d stepped into his world, but that didn’t change the one rule. It was still win or die.

  He checked the street again, then pulled her back onto the sidewalk, into the crowds. They were only a couple of blocks from their destination, a place called the Parrot Bar. The owner of the Parrot had been a friend to J.T. long before he’d been a friend to Kid. A few phone calls, starting with C. Smith in Bogotá and the DEA Panama Country Office right here in the city, should get him what he needed: transportation out of Pana
ma and a plane ride back to the States.

  She stumbled, and he caught her more closely to his side.

  “I’ve got you. Don’t worry,” he said. The DEA had gotten him into this, and the DEA could damn well get him and Nikki out. “I’m taking you someplace safe. Everything is okay.”

  NO, it wasn’t, Nikki thought, half running to keep up with him.

  Everything was insane.

  Her sandal caught on the uneven sidewalk again, and Kid pulled her tighter, closer.

  My god.

  My holy, freaking god.

  She still couldn’t believe what she’d seen, what he’d done. Her heart had stopped when he’d pulled his gun and pointed it straight at her, right after her heart had damn near jumped out of her chest when he’d . . .

  Kid, with his knee in the man’s back, with the man’s head in his hands, the fierce, violent twist that had broken the man’s neck. Kid drawing his gun. The deafening double explosion. Kid wiping the bloody knife off on the man’s shirt, folding it back on itself and sliding it into his pocket even as he rose to his feet, his other hand still holding the gun steady and aimed.

  The utter and absolute focus of Kid’s gaze, every move choreographed, everything smooth.

  “What did those men want? Wh-what were they doing in your house?” They’d come out of nowhere. One second, she’d been drinking her tea, and the next second, Kid had been in the bathroom hall, slamming a stranger up against the wall and . . .

  Kid, striking hard and fast, brutally hard, burying his knife in the man’s stomach, jerking the blade upward.

  Blood.

  Everywhere.

  “It was a break-in,” he said. “I don’t know what they were after, but that kind of stuff happens all—”

  “Don’t.” She jerked free of him, stopping cold. Fury, hot and out of control, flashed through her like wildfire. “Don’t you dare goddamn lie to me, Kid. You just ki—”

  He grabbed her back into his arms so fast, she didn’t see it coming. Pulling her against him, he cradled her head close to his chest and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “We’re not doing this here, Nikki.” It was an order, fiercely given, not a request.