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  Hell. Dinosaur bones. They were a logistical pain in the ass and the most unlikely method of smuggling any of them had ever seen. They'd had to cut each plaster jacket to see what was inside, and McKinney was refusing to have the fossils moved until they'd finished replastering all of them.

  They'd traced the wooden crates back to Seattle, but where the bones inside had come from was a mystery. Old man McKinney predicted it could take months, years, or maybe forever to figure out where the fossils had originated. To top it all off, the old doc had fallen in love with a three-hundred-pound specimen he'd made clear he wasn't going anywhere without.

  Hawkins didn't have time to baby-sit either the doc or the bones. As far as Roper Jones knew, Hawkins was still working for him, and he'd been called in for the night shift. Hawkins could use Quinn and Kid right about now, but Quinn's cover as a low-lifer named Jeff Frazier had been blown all to hell, and if Roper had his way, the all-American hero was as good as dead the minute he stepped back inside Denver city limits.

  The bones and Quinn—Roper wanted both of them back, and he wanted them bad, which was why Quinn had been shipped to Cisco with Kid to baby-sit.

  Leaving only Skeeter in SDF's Steele Street office.

  Hell, Hawkins hadn't even gotten through the last time he'd tried to reach the little nerdzoid. So much for the dashboard-laptop-phone combo that should have connected him to Skeeter's Jeep. It didn't work. His gadgets never worked. Kid said it was because Hawkins let off too much electromagnetic energy, whatever the hell that meant.

  Kryptonite, Skeeter had further explained. “You're like raw kryptonite, giving off an interstellar force of exponential power and frying the heartsheath of the laptop's unprotected motherboard.”

  Sometimes Hawkins wondered if Skeeter's lightbulbs were screwed all the way in.

  Alerted by the sound of a metal door opening, he pushed off the wall and flicked his cigarette onto the asphalt.

  Special Agent Tom Leeder, a big, burly guy in a dark suit, walked over to him. “Sorry, Hawkins,” the FBI agent said, lifting his hands and shrugging in resignation, “but this is it. I'm outta here. If the old man finds anything tonight, let me know, and I'll have agents all over this place.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” The old man wasn't going to find anything. They'd already cut open all the plaster jackets and come up with nothing. One case of assault rifles, that's all he'd wanted. One frickin' case of OICW prototype assault rifles. Was that too much to ask for a lousy four months' work? With the FBI working from the top down and Steele Street working from the bottom up, they should have found them by now—if the guns had ever actually been slated for an exchange in Denver. Hawkins was beginning to have his doubts.

  “We'll have a crew up here from Buckley Air Force Base in the morning to get everything packed up and shipped out.”

  “Where are the bones being sent?” Maybe with a little bit of the right wheel-greasing, Doc McKinney could still have a chance at his three-hundred-pound fossil. Steele Street owed him that much for dragging him into this.

  “Into the abyss of bureaucracy.” Leeder flashed him a grin. “An official warehouse someplace where even the guy who loads them off the forklift won't know where they are.” Lifting a hand in farewell, the agent turned to leave, then stopped. His expression sobered. “Things are heating up all over. If the cops can get that pimp on Wazee Street to talk, Roper Jones is going to get nailed for killing that whore a few weeks ago. And then the shit's really going to hit the fan. Watch your back.”

  Hawkins nodded, appreciating the tip even though Leeder's warning was not exactly a news flash. Hell, Hawkins knew the situation was heating up. Roper's primal nerve endings were fraying right down to their synapses over the missing crates. It was a dangerous condition for a guy who was at best a meaner-than-hell sociopathic son of a bitch. The question they hadn't been able to answer was why.

  Why was Denver's newest crime lord fretting over a bunch of old bones?

  As for the pimp, Hawkins knew Benny-Boy Jackman personally, and he didn't care what the cops threatened or promised, Benny-Boy wasn't going to talk. Desiree hadn't been the first girl Benny-Boy had ever lost. She'd just been the first he'd lost to a knife. It hadn't been pretty.

  Watch your back. Hawkins's mouth curved in a mocking grin, and he knocked another cigarette out of his pack. He hadn't lived as long as he had and survived two years in the pen without watching his back.

  When Leeder drove away, Hawkins glanced back at the metal door and reached for his lighter. He couldn't leave the old man alone, not all night. He'd been watching McKinney for the last two weeks, and the doc's mind wandered . . . a lot, maybe too much. He didn't drive, either. One of the first things he'd done after showing up at Lafayette was hand over his car keys. There'd been no explanation offered, and Hawkins hadn't asked. Hell, the Porsche the old guy had been driving was Dylan's.

  Hawkins pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and punched in a number. As it rang, he checked his watch. Johnny Ramos should still be at SDF's garage in Commerce City.

  “Yo,” Ramos answered on the third ring.

  “Johnny, it's Hawkins. I need a favor.” He could almost see the younger guy's grin come out in full bloom. Johnny “the negotiator” Ramos ought to be his name.

  “Sure, Superman,” Johnny said, already sounding overly confident.

  Superman. “I'm at a warehouse just off the Lafayette exit. How soon can you get here?” He bent his head to the lighter and lit up the cigarette.

  “Depends what I'm driving.”

  Hawkins could have called that one the minute he'd decided to tag Johnny.

  “You'll be driving your pickup. I'll need you all night, watching an old man and a dozen crates.” He took a drag off the cigarette, before taking it out of his mouth and flicking off the ash.

  “Roxanne,” Johnny said succinctly, naming his price. “Next Friday night.”

  Okay, he'd seen it coming, and he might have to bite the bullet—but not without some negotiating of his own.

  “Betty's the one you want for Friday-night cruising. All the girls love Betty. Roxanne will just scare them off.”

  “Not the girl I'm thinking about.”

  Well, that was actually a little bit alarming. Any girl who wasn't scared off by Roxanne was probably more than a seventeen-year-old boy could handle, even if that seventeen-year-old boy was Johnny Ramos.

  “How's school going?”

  “I finish classes next week and I'm back at East High in the fall.”

  “Probation? How's that going?”

  “Clean as a whistle,” the boy said easily. Maybe too easily. It was hard to give up the cash of a few quick deals, harder yet to stay away from your old buddies in the 'hood.

  “You know what I'm getting at, don't you?” Hawkins knew Johnny better than Johnny knew himself, knew what it was like to get a chance to get off the streets, and knew, too, what it was like to screw that chance up.

  He also had a fine appreciation for Roxanne. He knew why the boy wanted her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  That sounded more like what Hawkins was looking for.

  He rubbed a hand across his brow, thinking, weighing his choices, weighing Johnny. He lowered his hand and absently noted the blue tattoo arcing up the length of his arm. It went from the back of his hand to under his T-shirt, then it tracked across his back and worked down his other arm to just past his wrist.

  What he didn't know about misspent youth hadn't been written.

  “No racing,” he told Johnny, making his decision. “No high-octane even if you're not racing, and no leaving the state.”

  “Agreed.” The boy didn't hesitate, which Hawkins didn't find in the least bit reassuring.

  “No track racing. No street racing. No drag racing. No racing your grandmother to the end of the block.”

  “Dusk to dawn,” Johnny vowed.

  “Okay,” Hawkins said with effort, knowing he didn't have much of a choice. “I'll see yo
u in an hour.”

  He hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket, his gaze going to the Sublime Green low-slung beauty sitting in the hot summer sun, the steam rising around her tires. Roxanne. She was a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T. He'd bought her a few months ago off a dealer in Naperville, Illinois, who'd only raced her on Sundays, invariably in the low-thirteen-second zone. At Steele Street, he and Skeeter had already knocked another second off that. Roxanne was a verifiable earthbound cruise missile—and he was going to let Johnny Ramos drive her on Friday night.

  If he'd needed any more proof of his commitment to Uncle Sam's welfare, he'd just gotten it. No matter how many rules he laid down, Ramos and Roxanne were a combination guaranteed to smoke.

  “Skeeter to Superman. Skeeter to Superman,” a faint voice came to him from inside Roxanne.

  I'll be damned, he thought, pushing off the building and heading over to the car. His laptop gizmo was working.

  CHAPTER

  7

  FEEDING HER HAD BEEN a good idea, Quinn thought, watching Regan pick her way around a hamburger and a plate of fries. She wasn't eating much, but she did have a little color back in her face. The temperature had started dropping with the sun and their ascent into the mountains, so she'd changed out of her wet clothes in the restaurant's bathroom. He couldn't complain. The pale yellow shirt she'd put on was pretty, especially on her, real pretty, with short, lace-edged sleeves and a lace-edged collar. This morning, if anyone had asked him if he'd liked lace, he'd have told them only if it was black, skimpy, and coming off.

  Now he was expanding his horizons.

  The same went for little buttons. He was ready to prostrate himself at the baptismal font of little pearly buttons like the ones running all the way down the front of her shirt, ready to sacrifice himself on the altar of her mid-thigh-length jean skirt. He'd never gotten so much mileage out of a bag of ice, had never imagined pleasantly erotic possibilities even existed in a five-pound bag of frozen water.

  He needed to get over it. Regan McKinney probably hadn't given him a second thought after the Rabbit Valley camp, and the only reason she was with him now was because of Wilson. She'd come to him with a problem, obviously against her better judgment. He made her nervous as hell, and he didn't blame her. The situation they were in made him nervous as hell, too.

  He'd caught a couple of her sidelong glances while they'd been driving. He'd noticed every time she'd wrapped her arms around herself, taken a deep breath, and tried to steel herself against the craziness of the day—the slight lifting of her chin, the forced straight-ahead gaze. She'd be good for a few minutes before the façade would start crumbling, before her chest would lift on a heavy sigh and her hand would rise to her hair, trying to tuck in a loose strand here or there. Then she'd take another deep breath, tighten her arms, and start building her defenses all over again.

  She was tired. She was scared. She was worried about her grandfather.

  She was breaking his heart, and he still thought she was sexy, sitting in a corner booth with a picture-window view of Vail and the valley behind her. He hoped the food would help her relax, maybe make her drowsy enough to doze off. If his driving made her uneasy in broad daylight, rocketing over the mountains in the dark was guaranteed to give her a new religion. He'd offered her wine with her dinner, but hadn't been surprised when she'd turned him down. She was careful. He'd figured that much out, careful with what she said, careful with her buttons, and her clothes, and her modesty, careful with her accusations, too damn careful with the decision she hadn't yet made about what she was going to tell her sister, Nikki—whether to run or stick. So no. Drinking wine in the company of a gun-toting car thief was not a careful thing to do.

  He wasn't used to explaining himself, but he needed to explain a few things to her. He needed her to call Nikki, and had figured getting her out of the car for half an hour could only help. God knew she'd needed a break. Jeanette was no Cadillac. She was a beast, and riding in her meant riding hard. By the time they'd reached Vail, Regan had looked like she was coming apart at the seams, so he'd pulled off at Jake's, the first place he'd seen with good food, fast service, and a parking lot in the rear.

  “Andy's fries are famous from one end of the valley to the other,” he said, watching her push another french fry to the side of her plate.

  She looked up. “Andy?” The simplicity of the question couldn't hide her wariness.

  Yep, he definitely made her nervous. He was sure she was going over everything in her mind and still couldn't exactly figure out how in the hell she'd ended up with him and Jeanette. Things had moved pretty fast in Cisco.

  “Andy ‘Jake' Johnson, World Cup downhill racer. He took the Big Three a few years back. Homegrown Colorado boy. He owns this place.”

  “Jake Johnson.” The delicate arches of her eyebrows drew together, her brow furrowing. “I remember him. He's from Boulder. Everyone thought he would take gold in the Olympics. Then he quit the team. You know him?”

  “We shared a house in West Vail one winter.” He grinned. “Damn near killed me.”

  Her eyebrows rose, and with good reason. Jake Johnson was notorious for high living, fast women, and the kind of shenanigans that would, and did, land lesser mortals in jail. There had been one incident with an aging movie star's young wife that had been tabloid fodder for weeks.

  “Yes, well, that's a pretty fast life,” she said, trying to hide her surprise and maybe a little relief. Under normal circumstances, Jake Johnson would probably not be considered much of a character reference. At least not one who would impress her, he was sure.

  “The people who live it think so,” he said, his grin turning into a wry curve.

  “And you don't?”

  He shook his head. “Fast is twice the speed of sound above thirty thousand feet.”

  He watched his words sink in, saw the flicker of understanding cross her face, saw her tension ease, and knew he was on the right track. U.S. military hero was more in her comfort zone. He'd figured as much, but he hated to lead with his trump card in the credential department. His only trump card.

  “You drive like a fighter pilot,” she said. It didn't sound like a compliment the way she said it, but his grin broadened anyway.

  “Yeah, but Jeanette and I have never been shot down.” And they hadn't, not ever, not on the streets, not on the track, not in the quarter-mile.

  Her head came up, the gray of her eyes bordering on violet as they met his, and for the first time her expression lacked the wariness she'd worn all day.

  “You were all over the news,” she said, leaning slightly forward, her own predicament suddenly forgotten. “We couldn't believe it at first. That it was you. It was amazing, really, that you survived.”

  “It was one hell of a ride,” he admitted. He didn't mind talking about his last great flying-ace disaster, if it helped her relax a little.

  “We read all the stories. Wilson even had the Newsweek cover framed. He keeps it in his office at home.”

  He let out a laugh. “I definitely got my fifteen minutes' worth of fame out of losing a twenty-million-dollar jet.”

  Her brow furrowed again. “They didn't blame you for what happened, did they? None of the news reports we saw mentioned anything about pilot error.”

  “No.” He reached for his coffee. “The investigation cleared me of any wrongdoing. The missile had been fired without radar. By the time I knew I'd been targeted, it was too late. The damn thing was only a couple of seconds away from my fuselage. When it hit, the whole plane came apart around me.”

  “I can't even imagine what it must have been like, to be blown out of the sky.” She leaned even closer over the table, her voice softly sympathetic, her gaze darkening with concern—her breasts pushing toward the scoop top of her little lacy shirt. She'd fixed her hair in the bathroom, gotten it all back up in a tidy ponytail, but as she spoke, an errant strand slipped free and fell in a silken curve to her chin.

  Something inside Quinn t
urned over, and it was all he could do not to lean over and take her mouth with his, to slide his fingers up into the silver and gold silk of her hair and bend her into his kiss. He wondered if there was a name for this kind of reaction to a woman. Obsession might cover it. Horny certainly did. When she looked at him all gray-eyed and tenderhearted, like she wanted to take care of him, make it all better, he wanted nothing more than to give her the chance—every chance.

  Telling himself to slow down, way down, he stayed put on his side of the table and did no more than hold her gaze. He did have a point he was trying to make, and maybe he better just make it.

  “Kid was one of the Marines who dropped behind enemy lines to rescue me,” he said.

  “The boy wonder?”

  A quick grin turned the corner of his mouth. “He was only eighteen, but I can guarantee you he didn't think of himself as a boy then, and he sure as hell doesn't now. He carried me out of there on his back, under fire. You can trust Kid with Nikki, Regan. He's smart and effective, and one of the most highly trained weapons experts in the world. If protecting her is his mission, somebody would have to kill him to get to her.”

  Her face paled again at his words. “And you think this Vince Branson is the kind of man who might try to harm my sister?”

  “Branson will hurt anybody who gets in his way.”

  “Because of you and those cars.” It was a flat condemnation.

  “No.” He shook his head, his decision already made. At seven o'clock, he wanted Kid glued to Nikki McKinney, whatever it took. If Roper's goons were on the hunt, there wasn't any room for second guesses. “Because of a load of dinosaur bones I stole off the Burlington Northern.”

  For a long moment, she just looked at him.

  “What?” she finally asked, as if she thought she must have misunderstood him.