Loose And Easy Read online

  Geezus. She’d hog-tied that poor sap in the Oxford. She’d stolen something from the guy, and Mr. America here had been going to let her just walk away from the crime. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know what was up with that. Just because he’d liked a girl in high school did not make her a saint, although he had seemed to fall for the saintly ones, the good girls, the ones who wouldn’t give it up in a backseat.

  No wonder it had taken him so long to get laid.

  Thank God, he’d expanded his horizons since then. Saintliness didn’t even make the cut on his top ten list of attributes to look for in a woman anymore. As a matter of fact, given what he’d learned of human nature, any woman aspiring to saintliness was highly suspect in his book.

  Which, of course, under her current circumstances, made Esme Alden look like the perfect girl for him all over again, except this time from the dark side-very dark, if Franklin Bleak was after her.

  “No. I’m not a cop. I’m the guy who just saved you from getting shook down by Dovey Smollett and maybe getting thrown into the back of that Buick LeSabre parked on Wynkoop.”

  Her reaction was almost imperceptible, a slight, extra stiffening of a body already strung tight, but without another dose of alarm. He knew the difference between readiness and fear-and she was ready.

  Ready for the likes of Dovey Smollett, and alarmed by the police. That didn’t look good or set well.

  “What’s it to you who shakes me down?” she asked.

  Her cool little attitude didn’t set too well either. Neither did the fact that he didn’t have an answer to her question. What the hell was it to him who shook her down? None of his business is what it was-and yet here he was, jammed into the back of O’Shaunessy’s, up close and personal with her for no damn good reason.

  “If you tell me why he’s after you, maybe I can help.” And maybe that was enough, the whole “damsel in distress” motif. Although, from what he’d seen so far, she was doing pretty good on her own, and if it hadn’t been for Smollett and Bleak, he might have let it be.

  But it was Smollett, and it was Bleak, and if she knew what he’d heard about Bleak, she wouldn’t be quite so nonchalant.

  She seemed to consider his words, weigh his offer, and see what it might be worth.

  “I saw the LeSabre,” she finally admitted. “But I can’t imagine any reason for some guy from high school to get on my case, let alone abduct me- present company excluded, of course.” The last was delivered with the arching of one delicate eyebrow.

  He got the point.

  Smart-mouthed Easy Alex didn’t mince words, and she was right. He had abducted her off the street, and done a damn good job of it. He had her, and Dovey Smollett was sucking air out there on Sixteenth and Wynkoop.

  “Dovey was staring at you so hard when he got out of his car, I’m surprised your hair didn’t start on fire. He had a tractor beam on you.”

  “Guys stare at me all the time.” She was stating a fact, not dabbling in vanity, and he didn’t doubt her for a second. Hell, he’d hardly taken his eyes off her since he’d spotted her up on Seventeenth.

  But he shook his head. “He was waiting for you, parked on Wynkoop with a good line of sight on the Faber Building. If you hadn’t been dressed in your flavor-of-the-week getup, I’m guessing he would have recognized you when you first went to your dad’s office and tried to pick you up then.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a cop?”

  “No, I’m not, but I know a stakeout when I see one.”

  “Congratulations. So do I, and you’ve been following me since the Oxford. But we’re done.” She looked up at him from underneath her lashes. “Right here, right now. I’m walking out of here, and if you touch me one more time, I’m going to take deep, personal offense. No more nice girl just because we’re old school chums. Do you understand me?”

  Well, when she said it like that, he guessed every guy in the bar would understand her.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her eyebrow arched again, and she started to step by him-but he stopped her with a simple lift of his hand, being damn careful not to deeply and personally offend her.

  “I just have one more question,” he said. “Do you know who Dovey Smollett works for?”

  “No.” She shook her head and gave him a small, indulgent smile. “Dovey and I haven’t kept up.”

  She started to move again, but his hand stayed where it was, blocking her path, but still not touching her.

  “I do.”

  Her look said she wasn’t impressed and didn’t give a damn.

  “He’s a local guy,” he said anyway, whether she wanted to hear it or not. “He makes book up in Commerce City, a guy named Franklin Bleak.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Esme’s heart caught in her throat, and for a moment, she was frozen in place. But just for a moment.

  Bad news, she told herself. Take the hit, and move on, very carefully.

  Goddammit. Franklin Bleak.

  Commerce City, five A.M., a warehouse on Vogel Street -the payoff had been set. So why was the bookie pooching the deal?

  Only one reason came to mind, and the bad feeling she’d had in the office suddenly got a whole lot worse. Strong-arming people for money sometimes required a little extra leverage. A wife or child, or both, worked pretty good. A guy who might be willing to sacrifice himself could usually be spurred a little harder to come up with cash when his other choice was having his family take the hit for him, possibly quite a bad hit. If they owed money to Franklin Bleak, the prognosis could be elevated to “definitely bad.” The Commerce City bookie had a very unsavory reputation, and thus the.45 for tonight’s work. Even with the money to pay her dad’s debt, she’d known presenting herself to Bleak in her father’s place entailed a certain amount of risk. For her own peace of mind and to keep potential problems at a minimum, she’d purposely left her dad out of the night’s proceedings.

  But now. Hell, the risk factor had just gone through the roof-which in no way meant she didn’t still have to deliver the money. It did mean she couldn’t afford even one loose end, not so much as a thread out of place. She needed to tighten up her plan, get her contingencies in place and lock them in, and for that she needed the name Thomas had promised her father, and she needed Dax. She hadn’t planned on walking into a Vogel Street warehouse with eighty-two thousand dollars without guarantees. If the name Thomas delivered didn’t do the trick, the information Dax had gone to Colorado Springs to get was her backup-and if that didn’t work, then it would be just her and Dax, and that was as close to an ironclad guarantee as a girl was ever going to get.

  At least it had been. Now she had to wonder if the only guarantee was to walk away. Come up with another game plan.

  Dax had gotten her out of Bangkok -but it had cost him. She didn’t know what. He’d never said, not in eighteen long months, no matter how many times she’d asked, no matter how obliquely she’d approached the subject-but the price of her freedom, whatever back-room deal he’d cut with Erich Warner, had cost him, and now this damn deal was twisting in her hands.

  That bastard Bleak had sent somebody to snatch her off the damn street, and if it hadn’t been for John Ramos, that somebody might have succeeded.

  So what did Bleak want here? His damn money? Or blood?

  Goddammit.

  Something had gone wrong somewhere, and she needed to find out what.

  “Are you sure it was Dovey Smollett you saw?” She wasn’t surprised to hear Dovey had taken to a life of crime. Hell, half their graduating class had been headed for a life of crime. And she wasn’t surprised to hear that Dovey worked for Denver ’s most dangerous bookie. What made her head spin was the screwing of the deal eight hours before it was supposed to go down.

  That was all bad, all dangerous, all totally disastrous, and she was running out of time, standing around in a bar.

  “Look for yourself,” John Ramos said, making a slight gesture toward the door where they’d entered.


  She turned to look, and swore under her breath. He hadn’t been lying, and he hadn’t made a mistake. It was goddamn Dovey Smollett coming into O’Shaunessy’s off Sixteenth-stringy blond hair, pockmarked face, narrow shoulders, a cheap suit.

  He hadn’t changed nearly enough since high school.

  “I think he’s working the room with somebody,” she said. Dovey had a phone to his ear.

  “Check out the Chicago Bear at two o’clock.”

  She turned and looked in the direction he’d given.

  “Yeah. I see him.”

  Dammit. The guy coming in O’Shaunessy’s front door was big, brutish, dark-haired, bulbous-nosed, and needed a change in football team affiliation. Denver was a Broncos town, all the way, and this guy was wearing a Chicago Bears jacket. Esme didn’t know him. She didn’t have to know him. All she had to know was the look of somebody’s untrained chump looking for somebody else, and this guy had it-gaze blatantly quartering the room, phone to his ear, standing straight and tall, neck craned. He might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “Can you help me? I’m looking for ____________________.” Fill in the blank.

  “I think…” God, she couldn’t believe what she was about to say.

  “What?” he asked next to her.

  “I think we should get a cup of coffee.”

  There, it was out, and from the shit-eating grin forming on his face, Johnny Ramos knew exactly what she meant-inside joke, all the way. A person had either double-dog-dared their way through Campbell Junior High, or they hadn’t.

  She had, and he’d been the one double-dogdaring her-him, and Mason Maxwell, and Ruben Sabino, and Janessa “the jerk” Kaliski. Esme had only taken the stupid dare because of Janessa. The girl had been ridiculously infatuated with Johnny Ramos, and Esme hadn’t wanted him to think the skinny brunette with the big boobs was tougher than her.

  So, yes, she’d taken the dare, and she’d made it to the coffee shop, and Janessa Kaliski had chickened out. The other boys had rushed over to rescue “the jerk” where she’d gotten hung up in the bridge over the alley-but not Johnny. He’d been watching her, Esme the Miraculous, make her triumphant climb up onto the roof of what had once been the Wazee Warehouse. From there it had been a short drop and a five-story high walk to the fire escape down to street level. Half of another block southeast had dumped them out on Wazee, right in front of the Cuppa Joe coffee shop.

  Their first date-that’s what she’d always called how that little escapade had finished up, a date. Her and Johnny Ramos, with his silky dark hair and tight T-shirt, the two of them sitting at a table next to the window overlooking Wazee, watching the traffic, waiting for Mason and Ruben and Janessa to show up-and not a damn thing to say to each other.

  It had been excruciatingly embarrassing-but still an official first date. She’d put it in her diary that way. Date number two had been in the backseat of the Challenger, and now here they were on date number three. Like date one, date two had been a little low on conversation, so by comparison, date three was on a roll, a real chatterfest. Most of it bitchy on her part, true, but still conversation.

  And they were in the exact spot where the Cuppa Joe double dog dare began, between the waitress station and the door into the kitchen of O’Shaunessy’s Bar and Grill. The first trick for a junior-high-school-aged kid being to get into the back bar to begin with. Anybody could get into the main bar. It was part of the restaurant. But the back bar was for the after-work crowd, the sports crowd, and the drinking crowd-no kids allowed.

  “You’re wearing heels,” he said.

  “You knew that when you brought me in here and shoved me into this corner.” Yes, she’d immediately recognized the spot where he’d corralled her, and recognized his tactics for what they were, a way of ditching a tail with a built-in escape route if the ditching failed. “Don’t worry, I can do the alley bridge in heels.”

  “Then we only have one problem,” he said, his gaze going back toward the middle of the room. “Make that two problems.”

  “Two?” She tried to turn and look, but he’d already started moving her toward the kitchen door.

  The back bar end of O’Shaunessy’s kitchen was the storage area, and therein lay the secret of the double dog dare-the entrance to the O’Lounge. At the far end of shelves laden with cans and boxes and fifty-pound bags of flour and beans and rice, was a smaller pantry where the chef kept the good stuff, the specialty goods, and in the back of the pantry was a small wooden door, no more than four feet high. There wasn’t a busboy, dishwasher, or bar back who’d ever worked O’Shaunessy’s who didn’t quickly learn about the door, or the dark, rickety little staircase that led four stories to the southeast corner of the roof and the open-air O’Lounge.

  The last time Esme had been up there, in high school, someone had gotten a couch up the staircase. She didn’t know how. The first time she’d been in the O’Lounge, the day of the dare, it had been furnished with produce crates, a couple of broken chairs from the restaurant that somebody had duct-taped back together, and an amazing number of empty beer bottles, “handles,” and forties. How the O’Lounge had lasted all these years without some drunken kid accidentally pitching himself over the side of the roof was beyond her.

  Johnny pushed the kitchen door open, and she got hit with bright light and chaos. In a big place like O’Shaunessy’s, on a Friday night, the kitchen was a madhouse. Dozens of people were moving in dozens of directions, orders flying, flames on the grill flaring, cooks yelling above the din, waiters going every which way.

  Nobody asked them if they needed help, or particularly took notice of them. Johnny knew how to walk through a room like he belonged there, and so did she. They stayed out of the action, keeping close to the storage shelves. It wasn’t very many steps to the pantry, just enough for him to take the small spiral-bound notebook and his mechanical pencil out of his shirt pocket and look exactly like a delivery guy checking an order.

  She, on the other hand, made a point of looking like his boss-expensive and unhappy.

  “Two problems?” she repeated, when they reached the pantry. She kept her attention on the door, with an occasional glance at his notebook. She did not look around the kitchen.

  “I think Dovey Smollett did this dare back in seventh grade.”

  Oh, crap. He was right. Dovey had been a Campbell Junior High kid, and like every other outcast, which at Campbell had just about encompassed the entire damn seventh grade and half the eighth-graders, Dovey had laid himself on the line for double dog dares. On the whole, ninth-graders were too sophisticated for double dog dares. By ninth grade, sex, drugs, and gangs had taken them.

  But Dovey, she remembered, had gotten suckered into a few sketchy moments and gotten hurt on the Larimer Square dare, a bit of “on the hoof” pickpocketing of the chichi LoDo crowd. Dovey had been too heavy-handed for the deed and been knocked into next week by the guy whose wallet he’d tried to lift.

  Esme had bypassed the Larimer Square dare, out-and-out thievery being beyond her comfort zone at the time, way beyond, though she’d obviously since adjusted her parameters. Johnny, as she recalled, had been quite comfortable and surprisingly skilled at picking pockets. He’d gotten a couple of wallets the night he’d done it. Fourteen years old and running freaking wild on the streets.

  It was a wonder he’d never gotten arrested. Or maybe he had been. Hell, for all she knew, he was an ex-con on probation, which made her wonder what in the hell she was doing going to the O’Lounge with him.

  Getting away from Dovey and the Bear, and staying out of Franklin Bleak’s clutches-the answer really was straightforward, and honestly, it didn’t matter how many crimes and misdemeanors John Ramos had committed as one of the city’s more skilled juvenile delinquents, or at any other time. He’d already redeemed himself by rescuing her off Wynkoop.

  And wasn’t it funny how quickly a girl’s perspective could change, from abduction to rescue.

  She walked into the pantry after
him, looking concerned and serious, and like any number of the most expensive items in her entire inventory had been misplaced by one of her delivery drivers-up until he closed the door.

  “We better-” he said.

  “Yeah,” she finished his thought, looking around. The pantry was small, the shelving high and narrow, and there was a step stool pushed up against a crate.

  She shoved it toward him, and he lodged it between the wall and the shelving unit closest to the door, then further reinforced the blockade with two five-gallon tubs of Greek olives. By the time he was finished, she’d moved three cases of premium mixers for the bar away from the small door in the back of the room.

  “There’s a-” she said, noticing a lock on the door.

  “I’ve got it.” He took his mechanical pencil and shoved it hard between the hasp and the door. When he pulled, half the hasp and its screws came out of the wood, and the door swung wide.

  She was impressed.

  She ducked inside the door and started up the stairs. “Steel pencil?” It had to be.

  “Titanium.”

  Very cool. Dax had a titanium pencil. It had saved his life once, when he’d buried it in…

  Her thought trailed off for a second. The narrow stairwell was dark, and it took her a couple of seconds to get her flashlight out of its pocket on the messenger bag. There were a few things she never went anywhere without; a small flashlight was one of them.

  What Dax had buried his titanium pencil in was some guy’s throat. He’d recommended she get one for the same reason. She’d decided to stick with her knife instead, and even then, even with the training she’d had, she wasn’t sure how effective she’d be if the moment ever came for the throat-burying move. Not because her training wasn’t good, but because she hadn’t had enough of it-yet. Working with Dax meant there was plenty more on her horizon.

  And Johnny Ramos had a titanium pencil and had been giving her directions like “incoming,” and “two o’clock,” for the last five minutes. Possibly, he had risen above street level.