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  “Kid doesn’t like what he’s seeing,” she’d say.

  “What’s he seeing?”

  “Not much. A couple of silhouettes moving inside.”

  Well, hell. He didn’t like what he was seeing, either, which was nada. Katya was in the house and he was not, and it was damn hard to see inside a mausoleum like the Traynor mansion when you were parked discreetly down the block, even if you were using the single-lens scope Skeeter was so generously sharing with him, but not generously enough.

  Kid Chaos, Skeeter Bang, and Alex Zheng. Chaos, Bang, Zheng—hell, they sounded like a comic-strip fistfight, and in the case of Skeeter, she looked like a comic-strip hero, with her long platinum ponytail, her mirrored sunglasses, and her ball cap pulled low. Her muscles actually rippled under her skin. She wasn’t overbuilt. She was just sleek, and then there were her breasts. Alex was not a breast man. He was gay. But she had beautiful breasts, and he’d noticed. He’d also noticed how much she smoked.

  “That’s about your hundredth cigarette,” he said, eyeing the flimsy-looking thing she was sucking on. “Or have you switched to something else?”

  “It’s a cigarette,” she assured him. “Mexican. I found them on Roxanne’s dash, a pack of Faros.”

  “Roxanne?”

  Skeeter patted the hood of the car they were sitting on.

  Of course, Alex thought. Roxanne. He gave the car a once-over and couldn’t fault the name. She did look like a Roxanne.

  “How long until Hawkins gets here?”

  Skeeter checked her watch, looked toward the end of the street, and said, “Five seconds.”

  Before he could voice a doubtful response, she was proven correct. A car turned onto the block and pulled to a stop behind them in about five seconds.

  It was a helluva thing.

  Hawkins got out of Francesca’s car and walked around to the front of Roxanne. He shook hands with Alex and gave Skeeter a quick one-armed hug.

  “Fill me in.”

  “There’s over a hundred people in the house,” Skeeter said. “And they’ve been having lunch since about twelve-thirty. It’s kind of hard to follow the action through all those little mullioned windows with the gauzy curtains, but Kid is doing a little better in the back, where the additions onto the house have bigger windows—and we’ve been warned off by the maid twice and the cops once.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  “Yeah, Officer Sean Evans, so there hasn’t been a problem since. I had him call Lieutenant Bradley.”

  Hawkins looked down the street, letting his gaze go over the windows of the Traynor mansion, methodically, one by one.

  “Lunch, right?” he said to Skeeter.

  “Right. With her mother and the campaign finance committee for the reelection of a United States senator in one of the cushiest neighborhoods this town has to offer. Very classy. Very upscale. Very privileged.”

  “So why does it feel so bad?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question, and Skeeter knew it. She knew a lot of things. They never used her in ops, except as a communications coordinator or for stakeouts, but she’d started taking over the office very shortly after Hawkins had brought her in off the street a couple of years ago. He’d just wanted to give a spooky little wallbanger, a graffiti artist, a chance to regroup, a chance to take charge of her life. Instead, she’d started taking charge of theirs.

  “Well, after you left, the old bat dragged out some photos of Clive Lennox and Wes Lake, the body shots. Used them for shock value. From the look on Katya’s face when she saw them, I’d guess the senator only got about half of what she wanted.”

  “Meaning?” He barely got the word out around the sudden lump of fury lodged in his throat.

  “Well, dead bodies are always shocking, and it can’t be easy knowing somebody you love had a hand in it, because I can tell you, that picture of Clive has not improved with age.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Skeeter.” Shit, pictures of Lennox and Lake. Fuck. And it wasn’t the pictures he hated, it was the friggin’ stories behind the pictures.

  Shit.

  “But Alex came to your defense rather succinctly, kind of gave her the facts-of-life speech, and she didn’t dwell on it after I took the pictures away.”

  Hawkins took a long, deep breath, making a conscious effort to keep his hands relaxed at his sides. “I hate that woman.”

  “So even if absolutely nothing criminal is going on in there, I’m still seeing red flags everywhere. The very fact that, against all her wishes to the contrary, Katya Dekker has ended up back in her mother’s sphere of influence means she is getting the life sucked out of her. Been there, done that, Hawkins. It’s a weird cycle to break.”

  Okay. He’d asked; she’d delivered.

  “What does Kid think?”

  “Kid?” she said into her lip mike. She listened for a moment, then grinned. “Kid doesn’t know what the fuck we’re talking about. He just wants to know if we’re gonna go in there and kick some ass today or not.”

  Hawkins let that scenario play out in his mind: he and Kid doing a takedown in the Denver Country Club neighborhood, rescuing a bona fide debutante from the evil clutches of a senatorial campaign finance committee. Somehow the scene was lacking something—like any semblance of reality.

  “Alex?”

  “We are not going to launch an invasion and do some sort of takedown on the Traynor mansion. Nor are we going to kick anybody’s ass,” the Asian guy said, clearly appalled by the idea. “So just get those thoughts out of your head.”

  Hawkins slanted a look over at Alex. Hell, was he reading minds like Skeeter now?

  “That said, I agree with Skeeter. Kat needs to be rescued. I can’t believe she went with her mother to begin with, unless she was thinking that by cooperating, she could keep the heat off you. But Marilyn isn’t the only one in there I don’t trust.”

  “Who?”

  “I think Philip Cunningham arrived with the last group. I couldn’t get ahold of the scope at the time”—Alex shot an accusing look at Skeeter—“so it was hard to get a positive ID, but if it was him, I don’t like it.”

  “Cunningham,” Hawkins said, a cold thread of doom winding through his gut. “You would recognize him?”

  Alex nodded. “Unlike all you street hoodlums, the Prom King boys have been easy to keep track of. Marilyn sends me an update about every six months or so, including recent photographs.”

  Hell, Hawkins thought. He should have spent a lot more time talking to Alex Zheng, instead of letting his proprietary instincts get the best of him.

  “Do you know where Stuart Davis is?”

  “Not since he left the Army. After his discharge, he sort of fell off the map.”

  “What about Albert Thorpe? We had an address for him in Maryland, but he said he was flying into Denver this morning and we’d arranged a meeting—which we obviously missed.”

  “Albert ‘Birdy’ Thorpe works for Jon Traynor, seldom leaves his side, so if Traynor is in there”—Alex pointed toward the mansion—“so is Albert.”

  “Skeeter?” Hawkins asked.

  “I followed his paper trail to Maryland and a company named Western Armament Corporation,” the girl said.

  It took a second for the name to register in Hawkins’s mind, but when it did, sheer, absolute dread washed through him. Western Armament Corporation was the name General Grant had given Dylan this morning. Someone who worked there had been responsible for getting him and Dylan pulled out of South America and assigned to Katya’s garden party—and that someone was probably inside the Traynor mansion right now, with Katya.

  “Traynor has the controlling interest in Western Armament, and a house in Maryland—big, like this one,” Alex explained, solidifying all of Hawkins’s worst fears. “It could be he writes off the house and the staff on Western’s books.”

  Shit. The situation had all the earmarks of a total freaking disaster—with Katya in the middle of it.

  “No takedown?” Hawkins a
sked, still preferring an out-and-out assault.

  “No.” Alex was adamant. “Discretion is the way to go on this one.”

  “So it’s a one-man job,” Hawkins said.

  “One man,” Alex concurred.

  “One man.” Skeeter nodded in agreement. “Superman.”

  CHAPTER

  25

  “ALBERT,” KATYA SAID, swallowing back her fear. “How great to see you. I’m sorry we missed our appointment earlier this morning. My mother showed up in town, and I just didn’t have time to call and cancel. I hope it didn’t create too much inconvenience for you.” Politeness, politeness, politeness—it was her only hope.

  Out of all the boys she’d seen so far, Albert Thorpe had changed the least. He was still tall, dark, and blandly handsome, with blue eyes, an athlete’s build, and a vacuous smile meant to charm.

  Other than Bobby Hughes, though, Stuart Davis had changed the most, and Kat couldn’t help but keep glancing over at him, just to keep him in her sights, in case, God forbid, he made a move for her. He was built like a lowland gorilla, and all she could think was Steroids, Stuart?

  “It wasn’t a problem,” Albert assured her. “I was going to change our meeting place to Big Jon’s anyway. He wanted to see you again, and he can be very persuasive.”

  “Well, yes.” She let out a breathless laugh. “I know my mother is hoping he’ll persuade a few million dollars out of people in the coming months, quite a few million.”

  “Let’s go back into the billiards room,” Albert suggested. “I know Big Jon would like you to see his new Charles M. Russell paintings.” He gestured for her to precede him, and Stuart led the way, the two of them effectively herding her back the way she’d come.

  Inside the billiards room, Albert motioned toward the paintings.

  “Big Jon loves all this Old West stuff.” He gave an indulgent laugh. “I went to your gallery in L.A. once. You weren’t there, but your collection was great. Truly superb. Not a Russell or a Remington in sight.”

  “Thank you,” she said as politely as she could, considering that her heart was going about a million miles an hour. “So you work for Jon Traynor?”

  Albert nodded. “I work for a military research service that’s part of a multinational conglomerate in which Big Jon holds one helluva lot of stock. I do things for him on the side. He does things for me on the side. Together we’re a good team, and we’ve both been waiting for justice for a long time.”

  “Justice?” That didn’t sound good.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you, Katya,” Albert said, dismissing her question, his smile doing anything but charm her. She wondered what her chances were for getting into the solarium without one of them getting her, or God forbid, Stuart tackling her. “But we needed to talk with you, needed to set a few things straight. And frankly, after Bobby called yesterday—”

  “Bobby Hughes?” she interrupted. “Bobba-Ramma?”

  “Yes,” Albert confirmed. “After he called and said you were dragging a man around with you to all these little get-togethers you seemed so intent on organizing, we did some checking—and once again, prom queen, you have chosen the wrong side. What is it with you and the bad guys? The street scum murders Ted Garraty and you run off with him into the night? What kind of judgment is that? I know you struggled with math, Katya, but I always figured you had some natural intelligence somewhere inside your pretty little head. At least I did, until you shacked up with Christian Hawkins in the Brown Palace that summer, and now this?”

  “This what?” she asked, buying time, she hoped.

  “This running around with him all weekend,” Albert said, clearly disgusted. “It just looks bad. Christian Hawkins murdered two of our friends, and he is going down. Now, if you’re smart, you’ll let him go down alone.”

  So Hawkins had been right: This whole thing was about framing him.

  “And if I’m not smart?” Quite possibly, her mother had been right about being smart not suiting her. In this instance, it didn’t suit her at all.

  “You’ve seen the photographs Ted took. Hell, Kat, just how many millions of other people do you want to see those photographs?”

  He was going to blackmail her with nude photos? Not bloody likely. Those eight-by-ten glossies might scare her mother, but they didn’t scare her. They made her angry, had shocked and dismayed her, but they didn’t scare her. She was an art dealer, for heaven’s sake. If Albert released them to the media, she’d do one better and put them up for sale in her galleries as erotica. Maybe she’d even have Nikki McKinney do some of her gorgeous enhancements.

  Nonetheless, there was one aspect of what he said that made her skin crawl. “Ted took the pictures?” The very thought was so disgusting, she feared she might be sick. Maybe she’d release them to the media herself, just to spread them around, lessen the onus of some perverted little Ted, dangling out some high-rise window somewhere, snapping photographs of her and Christian.

  The more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea. She’d much rather the photographs were in the public domain than some deviant’s dirty little secret.

  “Yes, and had prints made for all of us.” Albert let out a short laugh.

  “Is that why Ted was killed? Because of something to do with the pictures?” She backed toward the door into the solarium, holding Albert’s gaze with her own.

  “I don’t think so.” A new voice entered the conversation, and Katya jerked her gaze away from Albert to see who it was.

  “Philip,” she gasped as she saw the man standing in the doorway to the billiards room, but Philip’s gaze remained fixed on Albert.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with the pictures, did it, Birdy?”

  Philip still looked awful. His face was flushed, and beads of sweat were forming on his brow, as if his tie were too tight. She could see his Adam’s apple working in his skinny neck.

  “I’m tapped out, Birdy,” Philip continued, his voice distressed. “I can’t do this anymore. I guess when we started, I thought we’d get to an end somewhere. But there’s never going to be an end, is there? You’ll just keep at me, until there’s nothing left, and it won’t matter anymore that Christian Hawkins took the fall and Manny the Mooch died a liar. That’ll all be a waste, all that work, because you’ll never get enough. You’ll just keep at me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Philip,” Albert said, his brow furrowing in concern and confusion. “Maybe you should go back upstairs where you belong.”

  But Philip wasn’t going anywhere. Whatever he was talking about, he was truly distraught.

  “Was Ted trying to blackmail you? Was that it?” Philip asked.

  “Hell, no,” Stuart said. “He was gonna squeal about the girl.”

  Both men turned and looked at the ex-Ranger, who was looking damned fed up with all their wrangling.

  “You idiot,” Albert snarled.

  The look of disgust slowly faded off Stuart’s face, but Kat had heard enough, and she kept slowly inching herself closer to the solarium door.

  WHAT’S the situation?” Hawkins whispered, sidling up to Kid in the dense foliage along the back of the Traynor estate.

  “Two men going in and out of the solarium,” Kid said, watching the back of the house through the scope on his sniper’s rifle. “One of them is big, cut like he’s juiced on steroids or something, a huge guy, and he’s wearing BDUs, with a big old U.S. Army Ranger tattoo on his bicep.”

  Shit. Hawkins reached in his pocket for the lip mike and earpiece Skeeter had given him and slipped them on.

  “Tell Alex I just found Stuart Davis,” he said to Skeeter over the radio.

  “The other guy is slick,” Kid said, “wearing a suit, spending a lot of time on the phone. I can’t follow them when they go back inside the main house. It’s too damn dark in there, like a cave, but for the last two hours, it’s just been them, wandering in and out of the swimming pool area, like they’re waiting for something.”
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  “Or someone.”

  Kid nodded and handed him the rifle. “They’re inside now.”

  Hawkins checked the back of the house through the scope. He had about half a dozen doors to choose from to get inside, and two of them were open, including the one on the solarium, which told him no one inside was expecting any trouble.

  “It’d be real easy to draw them out,” Kid said.

  And kick their asses. Hawkins finished Kid’s thought for him.

  “No. For all we know, they’re harmless,” he said, handing back the rifle. “Just a couple of guys who were once involved in a bad murder case visiting an old friend and hanging around the pool.”

  Kid snorted in disbelief, shouldered the rifle, and took another look. “No, they’re not harmless. The Ranger is as twitchy as Skeeter on race day,” he said, then winced and pulled his earpiece out real quick. After a couple of seconds, he put it back in. “Sorry, Skeet, but you know how you get.”

  “And the other guy?” Hawkins asked.

  “The Ranger is looking for trouble, and the other guy is making it. This whole situation feels bad.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking,” Hawkins said, wondering if he’d have better luck going through the front door and getting her, or sneaking in the back. “Skeeter grabbed the radio bag, but no flex cuffs. What have you got?”

  Kid dug in his pocket and came up with a handful of condoms and three flex cuffs.

  “Cherry-flavored?” Hawkins grinned, eyeing the prophylactics.

  “Yeah.” Kid grinned back, looking over and meeting his gaze for the first time, and at once, he sobered.

  Hawkins did, too, feeling the same thing he suddenly saw on Kid’s face, the agony of losing J.T.

  “Skeeter didn’t have to call you in on this. I guess I should have gotten back to you and told you to stay put.”

  “No,” Kid said. “Keeping moving is the best thing for me. I’m good to go, but we need to talk.”