Loose Ends Page 13

  So maybe she should have thought about that before she’d ended up sliding off the map into the basement of an abandoned factory over on the west side with a guy with God knew what kind of criminal tendencies.

  As a matter of fact, sitting in the dark at the bottom of a virtual pit with a man who had no recollection of himself as one of the good guys—well, on second thought, maybe that hadn’t been her best move.

  “Is there a way out of here?” she asked, tossing a question into the great pool of silence between them, trying to sound nonchalant, like it was a matter of business, not of survival.

  “The way we came in.”

  She gave him an incredulous look, not that he could see it, which in no way stopped her from flat-out staring in his direction like he was nuts.

  “And Plan B?” she asked, because his Plan A sounded like a homeless kid’s Christmas list: a whole lot of wishful thinking.

  “We don’t need Plan B,” he said. “This is doable.”

  “With a jetpack and a winch?” She didn’t mean to sound skeptical, but she was damned skeptical.

  “No.” He started the car, and suddenly she could see the basement in the twin-beam illumination of Corinna’s headlights.

  The place was a dump, literally, full of junk and garbage. It looked like bad things happened here, and that was the voice of experience. She’d been homeless. She knew about the Christmas list, and she knew what homeless looked like, and it looked like this.

  “I’ve gotten a car up that ramp,” he said. “Driven one out of here.” He paused for a moment. “It was a deal for a guy named … Sparky. Yeah, Sparky … a BMW 535i, black, an ’89.”

  Oh-kay. That definitely got her attention. He couldn’t remember his own name, but he remembered a car he’d stolen. Oh, yeah, he was J. T. Chronopolous, all right. She knew Sparky Klimaszewski, remembered him from a few years back. J.T. must have dealt with old Sparky quite a bit in his younger years. Mr. Klimaszewski was a hard nut, a guy who’d been brokering half the cars stolen in Denver for the last twenty years.

  “You must have scraped the hell out of the front cowling, getting a Beemer out of here.”

  He let out a short laugh. “Yeah. I did. It’s why I never told anybody about this place. We lost money on the 535i. Sparky was …” His voice trailed off as he took in the basement, looking around.

  She felt the hesitation in his thoughts, heard the confusion, but she didn’t press him. It was obvious which guys he’d never told, or Hawkins would have driven Roxanne right down on top of Corinna in this basement, anything to hold him in place.

  God, it had to be tearing them all up, to know J.T. was alive, to be wondering what had happened to him—to wonder who they’d buried in that grave in Sheffield Cemetery.

  “So this is one of your old hangouts?” If it was, it was one he hadn’t shared with her.

  “No,” he said, putting the car in reverse and backing up. “It was a rabbit hole, a one-off deal that didn’t work out.”

  Smooth and easy, he executed a three-point Y-turn, getting the GTO lined back up in front of the opening a half a floor above them at the other end of the impossibly steep ramp.

  “Maybe I’ll just get out and walk it.” She did not want to be part of any more drop-of-death roller-coaster insanity. Maybe he was right. Maybe they weren’t trapped down here. Inconvenienced, sure, but not trapped. Frazzled and frayed, but not falling apart. Anxious, sure, but not out-and-out panicked.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t want to get out of here in a reverse play of how they’d gotten in. She reached for the door.

  “Stay put,” he said, shifting gears and backing up. “You’re fine.”

  Oh, right, she’d heard that before.

  She felt Corinna’s rear bumper come softly up against the wall behind them, and he stopped and shifted gears again.

  Technically, at that point, she had a couple of seconds to get out, but she missed it, and then it was too late.

  With all the mind-numbing, bone-shaking roar and rumble of a Ram Air 400 going balls-out in neutral with a heavy foot on the gas pedal, she braced herself. He didn’t drive a car. He launched a car, and Corinna was being prepped for another rocket ride.

  When he released the clutch, she was already pressed back into her seat, holding her breath, reciting Hail Marys.

  Power. That’s what he needed, and that’s what he got, all the power Corinna could deliver in one screaming, smoking blast. Slingshot, all the way. He pushed the car as hard and fast as the beast could go in an impossibly short distance, and even then, Jane wasn’t sure they were going to clear the top of the ramp. When they did, it was with air to spare and a subsequent body-slamming descent of the front end onto the asphalt of the parking lot.

  Things crunched.

  She winced.

  And he drove.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Rick Karola at ten o’clock,” Scout said, seeing Lancaster’s errand boy driving by where she and Jack were still parked close to Coors Field, not far from Steele Street. “In the blue Lexus ES350.”

  “Got him,” Jack said. “Do we follow the bastard, or do I go back into Steele Street? What do you think?”

  What did she think?

  Well, she spent a helluva lot of her time trying not to think about that blond bimbo in Key Largo four months ago. That’s what she thought. She’d hated him for that, truly hated him. And she knew the blonde had just been one in a long, long line of women in his bed.

  “I think we follow Karola,” she said, all business. “See what he’s up to. He’s alone, and from the way he’s craning his head around, I say he’s looking for something, or somebody, like maybe Sam Walls. And if we can, we need to get a fix on Lancaster. If Con hasn’t checked in with us by the time we do that, then we consider going back into the building.”

  She was always all business with Jack. It was the only way for her to function without her heart breaking all over the place.

  “I’ve got a notebook in my pack,” he said. “Draw me a layout of the building.”

  “Check.” She reached into the backseat for his pack.

  Sure, he’d rescued her, but that’s what he did, Jack’s Big Thing: Save the girl, dazzle and amaze, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. He was a pirate, pure and simple, six feet of swash, buckle, and balls.

  Jack started the Buick and put it in gear, and she began drawing what she knew about 738 Steele Street, every room, every hall, not that they’d let her see too much—except when it came to Kid. They’d made damn sure she’d had plenty of time to see him, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he was Con’s younger brother.

  She looked up when Jack pulled into the street. Two sets of eyes were better than one on a tail, and she sure didn’t need to be staring at him. He had one of those faces that for reasons she did her damnedest to ignore had imprinted itself on her brain the first time she’d seen him: lost boy, all the way, pure trouble, high cheekbones, firm mouth, a slight cleft in his chin, beautiful. His nose was a swoop of Irish mischief, his hair a rich, deep shade of auburn and usually wildly tousled on his head, never completely under control, like Jack himself. His eyes were nearly the same color as his hair, a rich, warm brown beneath auburn eyebrows, totally incongruous with the reality of Jack Traeger. There was very little warmth to be had in the ex-Ranger. To the core of his being, and despite his Fair Isle looks, he could be the coldest bastard on the face of the earth. She’d seen him in action, and as far as his operational skills, all she had to say was that he was the best, which was why he worked for Con. It was his personal life where he fell far, far short of the mark.

  “Sonuvabitch,” he muttered under his breath, and oh, hell, she saw it, too, a beer truck pulling onto the road between them and Karola and taking up both lanes to make a wide turn.

  “Well, hell.”

  “Dammit.”

  “We’ll go three blocks—”

  “Take a right and—”

  “Check the cross
street,” she finished the drill, and he flashed her a grin. That’s the way it used to be between them: fast and fluid, the two of them on the same wavelength.

  Ten minutes later, Jack pulled over and parked a block over from their first parking spot. If Karola was looking for something around Steele Street, chances were, he’d come back around.

  Scout went back to sketching a plan of the building and ignoring Jack Traeger.

  Hell, he’d probably imprinted himself on her soul and done it on purpose, just so he could torture her.

  But she was done with that. She’d been done since Key Largo. She had no more emotion left to give to the lost cause that was Jack Traeger. None. Zero. Nada. It was time for her to grow up and move on. If he hadn’t noticed her by now, he probably wasn’t going to notice her.

  God, it was times like this when she really missed her mother. Girls with mothers didn’t end up in strange cities in rented Buicks with pirates who’d broken their heart more times than she could count. At least that’s what she always told herself any time she was sad or in trouble—that if her mother were alive, things would be better, life different, her troubles a thing of the past.

  But there was never a mother—only Con and the pirate, Black Jack Traeger.

  “Hey, there’s Karola, going around the block again,” he said, putting the Buick back in gear.

  She peeked up from her drawing. “He still looks lost.”

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Let’s go see what he’s up to.”

  “Roger, that.” She sat up a little straighter in her seat. The sooner they found Con and tied this mess up, the sooner she could get herself somewhere halfway around the world from wherever Black Jack ended up. “Let’s follow this bastard and see where he lights.”

  Half an hour of wandering around later, Karola finally found a place to call home.

  “The Kashmir Club,” Scout said, and gave a low whistle.

  Jack concurred. The hotel was anything but discreet. Indian in design, it had shades of the Taj Mahal in its architecture, an exotic addition to the Denver skyline, and, from the looks of it, a recent one. The grand entrance to the downtown hotel was elegantly wrapped in pillared arches. The large, mullioned windows revealed a lobby lush with exotic chandeliers and sumptuous furnishings in rich shades of ruby red, gold, and deep sage green.

  “What do you think?” Scout asked. “Five stars?”

  “At least four.”

  “It looks like a place Lancaster would stay,” she said, and he agreed. The man was used to high living. It disgusted him, the way Lancaster had made his money, selling the best of America’s war-fighters to the highest bidder.

  “And there goes Karola,” he said, watching the man pull into the hotel’s underground parking lot. At the barrier, Karola handed the attendant a card, and after a moment, the barrier was raised, and Karola drove in and disappeared from view.

  “We’ve got him.” Scout’s voice was edged in excitement.

  Jack understood. He felt the same way. The bastard was in there.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “Go in and take him out,” he said flatly.

  “I’ll need a weapon.” She was succinct. If they were going in, she needed to be armed.

  And if they had been going in, Jack couldn’t have agreed more, but her statement cleared his head like a cold north wind. He wasn’t taking her into the line of fire—ever.

  “We can’t do it without Con.” It was a flat-out lie. He could do it, clean and fast. That was the best way. Drop her off at the Star Motel first. Come back and get the lay of the land at the Kashmir Club. Find out how many men were with Lancaster and plan accordingly, including a foolproof escape—good to go.

  But not with Scout.

  Never with Scout.

  “Yes, we can.”

  He shook his head. “Con has questions. He deserves answers. If we kill Lancaster before Con can talk with him, he may never get those answers.” He shook his head again. “It’s too much to risk.” All true, but he still liked the idea of dumping Scout at the motel and just taking care of business.

  Liking it and doing it were two different things, though. Tactically, killing a guy was pretty damn easy. Abducting a guy wasn’t, and Con did have a lot of questions for Lancaster. He wanted to know names, dates, missions. He wanted to know if there was anybody else out there who needed help, some guy like him who hadn’t survived as well as he had.

  Scout seemed to mull his explanation over for a moment. Then she agreed.

  “So we go for the long shot.”

  The perfect solution, of course, and he agreed with it one hundred percent. There was only one hitch.

  “What’s the long shot?”

  “Give me your phone,” she said, and he complied, taking it out of his pocket and handing it over, curious as to what she thought she could do that he hadn’t tried.

  They finished cruising by the parking garage entrance, and he picked up some speed. By the time she’d keyed a number into his phone and gotten an answer, they’d traveled a couple more blocks. He turned the corner and pulled over into the first available parking space.

  “Miller,” he heard her say. “It’s Scout. I need a favor. Hold on.” She looked over at him. “What’s the number on the phone Con’s using?”

  He gave her the number, and she repeated it to Miller. Jack liked the U.S. Army vet. Miller had been in Special Forces before he’d been wounded. Now he lived in Nevada with a girlfriend named Carlotta Aragon, a buxom, dark-haired beauty, and between them, they had five kids, a passel, a posse, a bunch, all of them cuter than bugs on a milkweed pod. Scout loved them.

  She’d make a good mother. Jack knew it in his heart, but it was the last damn thing he wanted to think about, except when he’d been drinking too much and got all maudlin. Then he thought about it plenty. The girls would be gorgeous, mixed-race beauties with brains like their momma, and the boys would have his and Garrett Leesom’s blood running through their veins—warriors all, cunning and skilled. He’d make damn sure of it.

  “I need you to ping that number off a cell tower if he makes a call, and don’t tell me you can’t do it. We’re in Denver,” she said, still talking to Miller.

  Great plan, Jack thought, except for one obvious fact.

  He made the time-out gesture.

  “The only person Con is going to call is me,” he said, when he had her attention. “And if he does, I’ll be sure and ask him where in the hell he is.”

  To his credit, he managed the news flash without so much as a hint of sarcasm—for all the good it did him.

  “I’m fully operational, Traeger,” she said, giving him a look that said he was an idiot for thinking otherwise. “I’m just covering bases. If anybody uses that phone for any reason, we’re going to know where it is. With luck, Con will be in the same place. If we need to go back into Steele Street to get him, at least you’ll have a better idea of the layout than you probably had going in the first time.”

  Damn good point. There was a reason he loved her, and it was the same reason he made a point of taking up with more intellectually challenged women. No one could compare, not in beauty or brains, so he saved himself the trouble of even attempting to find someone who could hold his interest beyond the bedroom.

  He was a jerk. He knew it. But he was a heartbroken jerk, a condition he didn’t see a solution for, so he cut himself a lot of slack in the romance, such as it was, department.

  Karl the college professor—hell. Just when he’d decided to try to move their relationship to the next level, to take a chance and put himself out there, she’d had to go get a boyfriend who had a damn good chance of being a real step up in life, somebody a helluva lot classier than an ex–Army Ranger, somebody who probably never got shot at.

  “We should go back to the motel and wait for him there. That was the original plan,” he said.

  “Motel?” She slanted her gaze at him from across the interior of the Buick, both of he
r eyebrows raised.

  “The Star Motel, a dump on the north end of Denver, up in the suburbs.” He knew she was used to much nicer digs. When they were on a job, he and Con holed up in whatever place was least likely to get them noticed. But on missions he did with Scout, Con usually managed damn nice accommodations. Of course, he let Scout in on only the most benign operations, doing things no one even half as skilled could get hurt executing, like low-risk surveillance, document preparation, money shuffling, and the occasional security analysis for people who had more money than actual trouble. She was a good courier, too, a world-class traveler who slid through airport security, overworked customs agents, and foreign cities with ease. She always delivered.

  Con would skin him alive if he took Scout into the Kashmir Club after Lancaster. The best thing he could do, for her and for himself, was take her back to the motel and lie low. Jack knew Con would rather miss his chance at Lancaster a hundred times over than put Scout in danger again.

  “A dump?” She sounded appropriately skeptical.

  “The sheets are clean, the water’s hot, and I’m on the couch, so you’ve got a bed. Not that you’ll need it for long. We’re booked on a jet out of here at seven a.m.”

  “Headed to?”

  “Paraguay.”

  “How’s the river house?” she asked. It had been her home, on and off, for the last four years.

  “There’s not much left, but Con thought you might want to go through it before we move on.”

  “Move on where?”

  He shrugged. “Paris, I think, the apartment.”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than she smiled, a grin that lit up her face and broke his heart all over again for about the millionth fucking time. She loved Paris. He knew it. Con knew it. And if she loved a place, they were both hoping it meant she would stay put.

  After this job, it was downhill for everybody, especially Con, and one of them, either he or Con, really needed to step up and tell her. If for no other reason on the face of the earth, that was why he needed to find the boss: so Con could do the dirty work.