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  “Look, you don’t even know me, okay?”

  Finally, something he could latch on to.

  “That’s the whole idea behind seeing each other again,” he said, though he thought that idea was pretty self-evident. “To get to know each other. It doesn’t have to be a date or anything. It can just be coffee.”

  “Okay,” she said, way too quickly. “I’ll give you a call sometime.”

  Liar. She was lying through her teeth, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why that hurt. Something must have shown on his face, because she let out a big, heavy sigh and reached up and took her glasses off. Her head was tilted down, and he still couldn’t see her face because of her hat. But then she reached back up and pulled it off her head, careful to pull her ponytail through the back, and then she stood there, looking him straight in the face.

  She had blue eyes, real pretty blue eyes, kind of a silvery blue, instead of a deep, dark blue. And she had a scar that ran diagonally across her forehead, cut through her right eyebrow, and ended at her temple just an inch or less from the corner of her eye. It wasn’t pretty. It hadn’t faded with time, and being an EMT who spent many of his weekend nights scraping car accident victims off the highways and putting them into ambulances, he could just imagine how much blood she’d lost when it had happened. She must have been blinded by the blood. It had to have run into her mouth and down her chest, and the whole thing must have hurt so badly, she must have thought she was going to die. She must have been terrified by seeing so much of her own blood soaking her clothes.

  “Guys like you—” she started.

  “Guys like me?” Now he was mad.

  “Guys like you,” she continued patiently, “have lots of choices. You know that’s true.” She smiled at him, as if he were going to buy that when she was shutting him down. “And though I admit that I can be a bit of a novelty for—”

  “Novelty?” Now he was really pissed off. Novelty? What kind of a jerk did she think he was?

  Oh, right. He didn’t need to wonder. She was telling him straight-out what kind of a jerk she thought he was.

  “The truth is,” she continued, still so damned patient, which just pissed him off that much more, “there’s no reason for us to get to know each other.”

  “I’d like to kiss you.” That was a reason, but where it had come from, he didn’t have a clue. It was true, but he sure hadn’t meant to tell her.

  What annoyed him even more was that she took his pitiful confession in stride.

  “Gino wants to kiss me, and you don’t see me inviting him to come up here and hang around all night, either.”

  What was this? “Guys like him” now included slimy psychopaths like Gino? He was more than shot down. She’d ground him into dust.

  And he still wanted to kiss her.

  Shit. There was nothing to do but walk away—which he did, just turned on his heel and headed for the elevator.

  She didn’t stop him, either.

  By the time he got to the street, he’d decided to just chalk up the whole strange night to the bizarro zone. Skeeter Bang. What kind of name was that?

  And how had she gotten hurt so badly?

  And why did he want to kiss somebody who thought he was such a jerk?

  She was right. He had lots of choices. There had been at least two women who had wanted to take him home from the gallery. Two who’d made it pretty damn clear, which always left him cold. He knew he was slow to hook up with a new person, but he liked to set his own pace. He didn’t have sex with strangers, never had, didn’t imagine that he ever would. It always took a few dates before he felt comfortable approaching a girl that way—which surprised a few of them, because he had this small home business on the side, Boulder Sexual Imprinting, Inc., a business based on his master’s thesis on human female sexuality, but it was business, not personal. It was work, and he was very careful to stay within certain boundaries when he was with a client. The process was sensual, without a doubt, and wouldn’t have been very effective if it wasn’t, but when he was working with a woman on her sexual imprint, he was very careful to keep his responses out of the process. Extremely careful. Sure, he had women who were addicted to the process, but as far as he knew—and he was very intuitive about such things—none of them were addicted to him, or fixated on him, which was a sign of good clinical therapy.

  It was the process they loved, the process that healed. He just happened to be particularly adept at facilitating that process. He knew how to touch them, how to soothe them, but he did have to wonder sometimes if his client base was getting a little inbred.

  Either way, the business was doing fine, and his social life sucked. He hadn’t been with a woman of his own for a long time—and tonight wasn’t going to be any different. It was just going to be him and his much-loved, maybe overly loved, poster of Regan McKinney in her lavender underwear—a photo he’d all but begged Nikki to blow up and give him.

  Actually, he had begged, and had never regretted a minute of his groveling.

  Regan was married now. He probably should give the poster up, but he just wasn’t ready to part with it. She was a goddess, all lush curves and pale blond hair, who had never had a tan or lifted a weight in her life, and she’d been his fantasy ever since the day she’d walked in on him naked in Nikki’s studio, when he’d been eighteen. He hadn’t even had the brains to cover himself up. All he’d been able to do was stare at her, and all she’d been able to do was stare back, and he would have sworn something had passed between them. He’d been swearing it for five years, but he’d never once gotten her to admit to anything, or gotten her around to his way of thinking. Too young, she’d kept telling him, but a few times, definitely a few times, she’d come close to giving in. One night in particular, last Christmas, he’d been saying good-bye to her and Nikki at the door, when their granddad, Wilson, had hollered for Nikki. With the two of them standing there, with just the Christmas tree lights on and a couple of candles, he’d taken her hand and asked her why there wasn’t any mistletoe. She’d smiled, started to say something polite, and he’d kissed her, just bent his head down and kissed her.

  Her mouth had opened for him. He remembered that in every detail, the way he remembered the feel of her breasts against his chest, and the way she’d smelled. He had never wanted to let her go, but the sound of Nikki returning had made Regan pull away. For himself, he had trusted Nikki to catch what was going on and get lost, but older sisters weren’t like that, he guessed.

  Nonetheless, he’d leaned forward again, still holding her hand, and whispered in her ear, “Come home with me, Regan, please. We’ll have such a good time. I promise.”

  The memory brought a fleeting smile to his lips. As he recalled, he’d promised her a few more things, too, like a fireplace, a sheepskin rug, and a vibrator, and his most sincere declaration that she would love all of it, especially him, and the vibrator, together, in any combination she might want to try.

  She’d melted against him with a little groan he still heard in his dreams, the closest she’d ever gotten to surrender—but in the end, she’d turned him down again.

  And now she was married.

  He stopped walking and turned around to look back at Steele Street. Well, he’d kind of walked and worried his anger away, and maybe Skeeter Bang had been right. Maybe he didn’t have any business kissing her—or anybody, for that matter.

  Maybe Regan was what had gone wrong with Tracy, who’d dumped him in June, because, she said, he was too disengaged in their relationship. He knew for a fact that Christmas night with Regan was what had gone wrong with Lisa. He’d woken up about a week after that night, looked at his girlfriend, and just gotten an awful empty feeling, like there just wasn’t anything left between them, no reason to keep on seeing her or sleeping with her.

  So here it was the end of August, and he was horny and alone, and had just gotten his ego crushed by a biker chick in work boots. There was probably some justice in there somewhere, but
he’d be damned if he could see it.

  “Pssst, Creed.” A voice came out of the alley to his right.

  Pssst? Hell. He turned to look, and at first couldn’t see anything. Then a shadow disengaged itself from the wall, a very rumpled, bedraggled shadow that smelled like grain alcohol and hot summer garbage.

  “Yeah, Creed. It’s been a while,” a raspy voice intoned. It was a guy, an old guy, very dirty and very drunk. “Just heard you were back. You remember me, don’tcha? Ray, Ray Carper.”

  “Sure, Ray, yeah. How’s it going?” This did not seem the time or the place to tell anyone he wasn’t Creed Rivera.

  “Not so good. I think I’m dying.” The old guy laughed, and coughed, and hacked, and then hacked some more. “Friggin’ doctors. They don’t know crap. I told them what was wrong with me. I got elbow cancer, but they won’t do a friggin’ thing about it.”

  “Elbow cancer, man, that’s rough.” The stench was damn near overwhelming, but Travis didn’t move away or blow the guy off and leave. He did check the street both ways to make sure he wasn’t being set up for a mugging, but he also got the feeling Creed Rivera was the last person anybody on this side of town would try to mug.

  “Yeah, I can hardly move my fucking arm.”

  “Here.” He pulled a twenty out of his pocket and gave it to the old man. “Give them this and tell them to treat you better.”

  Ray pocketed the twenty and laughed again, which started another hacking fit. When he got it under control, he let out a small chuckle. “Yeah, I’ll tell ’em, Creed. Tell ’em you’re gonna kick their ass, if they don’t fix my elbow.”

  “You do that, Ray.” He turned to leave, but the old guy stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Wait a minute, I got something for you, something important.” He started digging through his jacket pockets. “I heard Superman was looking for me, and I still got the goods.”

  Superman again, Travis thought. This Superman guy led a pretty complex life.

  “You’re lucky you caught me, though. I been thinking about going south, maybe to Florida.” Ray kept searching his pockets, until he pulled out a fat, dirty envelope. “Yeah. Here it is. I kept it all these years, all of it. You look it over, you and Superman, see if I wasn’t right.” He pressed the envelope into Travis’s hands. “The damn cops are worse than the damn doctors. You know I tried to tell them, tried to tell them everything, but they didn’t listen to old Ray.”

  “Thanks, Ray,” Travis said, taking the envelope. He didn’t have a clue what the old guy was talking about.

  “That poor little whore shouldn’t a died like she did. Those boys were just too rough with her. I saw it that night, saw the whole goddamn thing, but nobody wanted to listen to old Ray.”

  Travis froze where he stood, his blood instantly running cold. Oh, shit.

  “Who, Ray?”

  “Jane. They called her Jane Doe, but her name was Debbie Gold. Least that’s what she called herself. She thought it would make her money turning tricks, if she had a name like Gold, but all it did was get her killed.”

  “Do you know where she is now?” Good God.

  “Six feet under, boy. She’s been six feet under for thirteen years, her and that Traynor boy, and old Lost Harold. The same damn wild ones did them in, except maybe for old Lost Harold. I never knew for sure about him, but it looks like one of ’em got their own back last night at the Gardens. You look that over and see if I’m not right, that’s all,” Ray mumbled, wandering back into the alley. “You just look it over.”

  Travis tightened his hand around the envelope and watched the old man disappear. When Ray was gone, he took off for his car at a slow jog, then he picked up the pace, wishing Creed Rivera had been here to get his own damn envelope.

  In a couple of minutes, he was back at the gallery, where he’d parked his Jeep. He slid into the driver’s seat and hit the glove box to get the flashlight out from inside. His overhead light didn’t work. Hell, half the stuff on his Jeep didn’t work.

  He tore open the envelope, careful not to rip anything inside. It was all newspaper clippings. One new one from this morning’s paper talking about the murder and the fireworks at the Denver Botanic Gardens, and a bunch of old clippings dated thirteen years back, all from the same summer: some wino kicking the bucket down by Union Station, the death of a Jane Doe they’d dragged out of the river in June, and the arrest of Christian Hawkins for the death of Jonathan Traynor III in July. The name that caught his eye, though, was the only one he knew: Katya Dekker. It was all over the clippings, half the time in the headlines.

  She’d been at the Botanic Gardens last night, too, with a painting from Toussi’s. He didn’t know who in the hell Superman was, but he obviously had some connection with Katya Dekker—and from the looks of things, the connection was murder.

  He didn’t know what to make of Ray Carper’s envelope, but someone who knew Katya Dekker a whole lot better than he did might. He looked toward the gallery and caught sight of a light still on.

  Alex Zheng, he decided. That’s who needed the envelope.

  CHAPTER

  21

  KATYA’S RISE UP from the soft drift of sleep was a languid affair, a lazy meandering of her mind from one pleasant thought to another, the limp relaxation of her body, the comforting sensation of overall well-being. It had been a long, long time since she’d awakened with a sense of such rightness with the world.

  Maybe she needed to drink double-chocolate mocha lattes more often before going to bed. She’d always been afraid that the caffeine would keep her awake that late at night, but maybe the triple whipped cream—

  Her eyes popped open on a flash of sudden and total awareness, her every cell coming fully awake, the full extent of her current situation hitting her all at once, with startling clarity. It wasn’t the whipped cream in the latte that had wrung her out until she was limp and then hung her out to dry. It was Hawkins. Christian Hawkins.

  Oh, my God, what had she done?

  Or rather, what hadn’t she done?

  Very carefully, holding her breath, she slanted her gaze to the right.

  What had she done or not done, indeed?

  As a question, it was beyond stupid. What she’d done was as obvious as the six feet of purely nude, purely male, tattooed elegance lying next to her, as obvious as the heat coming off him and keeping her warm on what was a very gray and rainy morning.

  She remembered that about him. How he’d always run hot. Even that long-ago summer, she’d loved lying close to him, feeling his warmth and the power that so naturally emanated from his body, feeling the latent energy in the muscles of his arms as he’d held her. He’d been the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen.

  Now he was the most beautiful man. Not even Nikki McKinney could improve upon his perfection. The harsh angles of his face were softened by sleep and the morning’s pale light. His hair was thick and silky, and the color of midnight spread across his pillow. Beard stubble darkened his jaw.

  The sheet was pooled low around his hips, revealing most of his tattoo, and she was—she glanced down at herself—she was perfectly naked.

  A blush coursed down her body. She felt it start in her cheeks and flow past her knees to her toes. She’d lost her clothes in his car, long before they’d made it to his bed. As she recalled, she’d worn his shirt to get up to his loft—and maybe it had all been inevitable.

  There was a reason they’d been so inseparable all those years ago. It was more than the sex, though this slow death by never-ending orgasm thing they had going was a powerful motivation for not leaving—ever. But even before the sex, she’d fallen in love at first sight. She’d been running so fast from Jonathan and the other boys, running her heart out, scared to death. She hadn’t heard anything—her heart had been pounding too hard—but she’d seen the car come from out of nowhere, and the huge cloud of white smoke filling the alley. Then she saw him, walking out of the cloud, like an angel, a dark angel, and she knew that wh
atever was going to happen next, it wasn’t going to be the atrocity she feared. She knew he wasn’t going to let the other boys hurt her.

  He’d caught her in his arms, and in that split second when he looked down at her and she saw his face, she’d fallen in love.

  She let her gaze drift over him again, wondering what in the world she was supposed to do now. Running was what she usually did, what she’d been doing for thirteen years, and it still seemed like the only logical answer, but somehow, she didn’t have the heart for running anymore. All her years of it had only brought her right back where she’d started—so maybe this time she should tough it out.

  She took a steadying breath. Okay, she could buy that, but she didn’t have to tough it out naked. Talk, that’s what they needed to do. Not what they’d been doing—oh, God.

  ON his side of the bed, Hawkins lay perfectly still, perfectly content—except for the tidal wave of tension rolling off the other side of the bed.

  She was thinking way too hard over there.

  Now was not the time to be thinking, not of anything. He really needed to take the high ground here and save her from herself. He needed to be selfless.

  He needed her under him again.

  Oh, yeah. One more time for old times’ sake, that was the strategy move on a lazy Sunday morning with the rain beating down on the windows. With the sky all gray and the world all quiet, making love was the only thing that made sense.

  Without giving it another thought, he rolled onto his side and snaked his arm around her waist, dragging her across the mattress and under him in one easy move. She started to say something, but he stole the words with his mouth. It took all of five seconds for her to buy into his plan, five seconds of soft kisses on her lips and his hand sliding up to palm her breast.

  His body was crazy for hers. All she had to do was breathe to turn him on. How could he have forgotten how easy it was to be with her, to be inside her? There wasn’t any tension when they were making love. It was all languid sensation, a melting into her he’d never experienced with anyone else. Years ago, he’d thought that meant true love. He wasn’t sure what it meant anymore. He only knew he wanted it, craved it like air.