Crazy Cool (31 page)

C
HAPTER

27

I
T WAS ANOTHER
perfect day in a South Pacific paradise. A blue green sea stretching to the horizon, the soft froth of breakers crashing into the island’s surrounding reef, the silence broken only by the distant sound of birds.

Hawkins lay half asleep on the double chaise longue sitting on the end of a dock that stretched thirty yards out into the lagoon. A thatched tiki roof cast him and Mrs. Christian Hawkins in a pool of shade, a cool pool of gray amidst the blazing splendor of sea and sky.

Mrs. Christian Hawkins. He liked it. He liked it a lot.

There had been times these last two months when he’d wondered if he was going to make it to this point. Times when he and Kid had pushed too hard, taken too many chances. They’d gone back to Colombia within days of finishing up the Prom King murder mess. Albert was the only one who had died that day at the Traynor mansion. Stuart was in jail awaiting trial, and Philip was out on bail while the judicial system and his lawyers tried to figure out precisely which crimes he’d committed, and which ones had been committed against him. Big Jon Traynor had survived being shot but, according to Marilyn, was struggling with the truth of having employed Jonathan’s murderer for thirteen years.

Those problems seemed miles away with the trade winds gently blowing through their bungalow.

Katya had hated for him to leave her for the job in Colombia. She’d cried salty sweet tears all over him for days, but in the end, she’d let him go with hardly a sniffle.

Not so Nikki McKinney. She’d been almost frantic by the time they’d left, which had only made it that much harder on Kid. Hawkins understood. Nikki was young, barely twenty-one, artistic by nature and spoiled by design, and she hadn’t done well with the thought of Kid leaving again.

A lot of that had to do with Kid. Hawkins had been going to do a job, to honor his friend. Kid had been filled with far more powerful motivations, far more dangerous needs.

Hell, he was still filled with them. Hawkins didn’t know when Kid would get enough and come home—which must have been Nikki’s fear.

It had been hard, and fast, and dirty, what they’d done. He’d known what it was going to be like going in, and he’d had no regrets coming out. Sometimes the world was a hard place, and in those places, only hard men survived—and even they didn’t always make it.

J.T. hadn’t, and neither had the hard men who had tortured and killed him—all except for two.

Two of the bastards had gotten away.

Creed had recovered enough to replace him, and Creed and Kid were still after the last two rebels. Creed had needed to go and be part of it. Hawkins understood that. He understood it better than his own need, which had been to leave and get back to Katya. He’d always been the last man standing, the last one to leave a bad situation—but not now. She’d been a siren lure, and toward the end, getting back to her had become more important than getting the job done—which had been his wake-up call to get the hell out of Colombia, before he got himself or Kid killed.

Creed was fresh, though, fresh and running on the bloodlust of revenge. Hawkins didn’t pity the poor bastard guerrillas when they caught them—and they would catch them. Neither Creed nor Kid knew the meaning of the word quit.

He’d been learning it, though, been thinking about it a lot—quitting. He had enough money for him and Kat to get by for a few years, or even longer, depending on how they decided to live. Katya still had the galleries, and he could see himself in the art world. He loved art, had a collector’s appreciation that could be honed into something more.

And if he never slit another throat, he wouldn’t miss it—which was not exactly what he wanted to be thinking about on such a totally excellent day.

“So, naturally, I agreed with the old guy,” he said, picking up a conversation they’d sort of let drift off. It was one of the luxuries of being with her in this place, letting things drift off, picking them up later, with no one else getting in the way of their stream-of-consciousness honeymoon. “A man’s got
no
use for a woman, I told him. None.” Belying his own words, he rolled onto his side and licked his way up her rib cage to under her arm, stopped to tickle her with his tongue, then continued on down to her elbow. She tasted like saltwater and coconut oil. She smelled good enough to eat.

She giggled when he tickled her. God, how he loved that sound.

“Did you tell him you practically had me tied naked to the chaise longue out here in this little thatched hut on the dock?”

“No.” He nibbled his way down to her wrist. “There aren’t that many women on the island. I think it’s better if the old geezer figures he doesn’t need one.”

“That’s the last time I let you go into town for a six-pack on your own. You just get up to mischief.”

“Town?” He laughed. “Honey, it’s a dive shack and a pop stand. Oh, God, will you look at the time? Three o’clock.”

“Christian,” she said with a laugh. “My temperature was
not
up this morning.”

“Well,
mine
was. Now where’s that sexual device?” He looked over the side of the chaise longue, hoping to hell it hadn’t fallen in the water. That was the thing about living in a little thatched hut on a dock out in the middle of a lagoon. Everything ended up in the water.

“Sexual device?” she queried with a lift of her brow. “You mean the pillow?”

“Aha.” He found it underneath her sarong. “Lift up.”

She did, and he shoved it under her very pretty, bikini-clad bottom. Then he untied the two sides of her bikini. She was already topless.

“I don’t have to elevate my pelvis until afterward.”

“That’s what you think.” He grinned, already kissing his way down the smooth, satiny skin of her belly.

She was ripe for this, for making a baby. He knew, just like he knew so many things about her, and the more he knew, the more fascinated he became.

He took his time, teasing her, before he slid his tongue into those soft, sweet folds that simply drove him crazy every time he touched her. She instantly tightened beneath him, then melted back onto the pillow with a little moan of pleasure.

Damn, he was good at this, and that gave him absolute boatloads of pleasure. Pleasing her had become his favorite pastime.

“Christian?”

“Hmmm?”

“This isn’t how you make a baby.” Her voice was so soft and breathless, yet serious. Sweet thing, she was giving him advice.

He lifted his head. “Yes, it is, honey. This is how you make a boy baby,” he said, then went back to doing what he did so very well, thank you, and she lifted her hips ever so slightly for him. He loved reading her:
to the left, Christian, please, up, down, oh, right there, Christian . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes.
He loved following all her little hints and silent directions, listening to her body language and following the path she wove into her own pleasure. He loved being the instigator of it all, the catalyst.

“With your tongue?”

Of course with his tongue, he thought. Everything with his tongue. His tongue had been made for exploring her.

Then he remembered the subject under discussion, and lifted his head again. Honestly, how they were going to get anywhere with all these interruptions was beyond him.

“It’s in the book, Kat. Haven’t you been reading the book?”

She giggled, which he took as a no.

“Step One,” he said. “Bring the woman to orgasm, which will change the pH of all her most lovely secret places. That’s where we’re at right now, the middle of Step One.”

She just grinned at him, obviously
not
taking all of this nearly seriously enough.

“Step Two, proceed to intercourse.” He crawled up her body, balancing himself on the chaise. “Step Three, continue intercourse until ejaculation. That’s my part.” He leaned down and kissed her, long, slow, wet, and deep. Then he kissed her again, short and sweet. “Thanks to you, I think I’m getting pretty good at my part.”

She laughed again, and he truly had to wonder when sex had gotten so damn funny—but he was grinning while he wondered.

“Step Four, don’t let the woman move for at least half an hour. May elevate pelvis if so desired.”

“Do you want a boy, Christian?” she asked, more serious now.

“Boy, girl, it doesn’t matter to me.” He leaned back down and kissed her nose, licked her lips, and whispered, “I just like making you come.”

She looked up at him, her eyes all dreamy with love, and for a second he felt struck through the heart, the emotions he felt for her like a breath caught in his throat.

“Kat?”

“Hmmm?”

“I love you, Kat.”

“You already said that today,” she murmured. “This morning at breakfast, and again at lunch, and twice over pineapple snacks.”

“Yeah, I know, but this time I mean it. I really mean it.” And he did, with all his heart, and he needed her to know it, to believe it as strongly as he did.

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

“I know, but this time it’s different, Kat. I swear. This time it’s like sunlight on your skin.” He reached over the side of the chaise and picked up the bottle of coconut oil. “This time it’s like the ocean flowing through your veins.”

He saw the dreaminess disappear from her eyes, saw her gaze narrow in concern. He didn’t care. He was heedless. He was in love, and he went ahead and popped the top on the bottle.

He looked down the length of her body, all those curves just running into each other and taking off again. It was enough to drive any man crazy with love.

“Christian,” she warned.

“This time it’s like the tides, Kat. Inevitable.” He slowly upended the bottle and squeezed a small stream of oil over her breasts, down her torso, onto her legs, back up between her legs.

“Christian . . . honey.” She wrapped her hand around the arm of the chaise. “The last time you went crazy with the coconut oil, you slid off me into the water.”

“I know, but this time it’ll be different.”

“You mean like the day before, when we both slid in like a couple of greased pigs and could hardly get back up on the dock?”

“Yeah.” He grinned and squeezed on another layer, because he loved the way it smelled on her, loved the way it felt on her, loved the way it felt on him when he was inside her. “It’s so sexy when you say greased pigs.”

She fought a grin—and lost, fought a laugh, and lost that one, too. “You know you’re going to hurt yourself, don’t you? If you don’t get this coconut oil thing under control?”

“Don’t worry, babe,” he assured her, a very confident smile on his face. “I can handle coconut oil. I’m Superman.”

Oh, yeah,
Kat thought, when he finally slipped inside her, filled her. He was Superman.

Don’t miss

Quinn Younger’s story in . . .

C
RAZY HOT

Now on sale

Read on for a preview

Coming soon . . .

Crazy Wild

Creed Rivera’s story

on sale February 2006

Crazy Kisses

Kid Chronopolous’s story

on sale March 2006

C
RAZY HOT

Now on sale

N
OTHING MOVED
in the shimmering heat.

Good God,
Regan McKinney thought, staring over the top of her steering wheel at the most desolate, dust-blown, fly-bit excuse for a town she’d ever seen. The place looked deserted. She hadn’t seen another car since she’d left the interstate near the Utah/Colorado border, and that had been a long, hot hour ago.

CISCO
, the sign at the side of the road said, confirming her worst fear: She’d found the place she’d been looking for, and there wasn’t a damn thing in it. Unless a person was willing to count a broken-down gas station with ancient, dried-out pumps, five run-down shacks with their windows blown out, and one dilapidated barn as “something.”

She wasn’t sure if she should or not. Neither was she sure she wanted to meet anybody who might be living in such a place, but that was exactly what she’d come to do: to find a man named Quinn Younger and drag him back to Boulder, Colorado.

Quinn Younger was the only lead she had left in her grandfather’s disappearance, and if he knew anything, she was going to make damn sure he told the Boulder Police. The police never had believed that Dr. Wilson McKinney had disappeared. Since his retirement from the University of Colorado in Boulder, he’d made a habit of spending his summers moseying around the badlands of the western United States, and according to the results of their investigation, this year was no different.

But it was different. This year Wilson hadn’t checked in with her from Vernal or Grand Junction, the way he always did, and he hadn’t arrived in Casper, Wyoming, on schedule. She’d checked. It was true he was a bit absentminded, but he’d never gone two weeks without calling home, and he would never, ever have missed his speaking engagement at the Tate Museum in Casper.

Never.

He loved nothing better than to rattle on about dinosaur fossil beds to a captive audience and get paid for doing it. At seventy-two, nothing could have kept Wilson from his moment of glory—nothing except some kind of trouble.

Quinn Younger,
she mused, looking over the collection of broken-down buildings. Sheets of tar paper flapped on every outside wall, loosened by the wind. Half the shingles on the roofs had been blown off. The two vehicles parked in front of the gas station were ancient. Over fifty years old, she’d bet—a pickup truck with four flat tires, and some kind of rusted-out black sedan up on blocks.

If Quinn Younger did live in Cisco, he was stuck there, and nothing could have made less sense. He was a former Air Force pilot, for God’s sake, a national hero. He’d been shot down over northern Iraq enforcing a no-fly zone and made the covers of
Time
magazine and
Newsweek,
and the front page of every major newspaper in America. His survival behind enemy lines and daring rescue by the Marines had become the stuff of contemporary legend. He was a one-man recruitment poster for the United States military.

Not a bad turnabout for someone who at sixteen had been on a fast track to juvenile hall and probably the state penitentiary, until a judge had put him in her grandfather’s field crew for a summer of hard labor digging up dinosaur bones. Wilson had been damn proud of the young man, one of the first to be pulled off the streets and out of the courts of Denver and given a second chance with him. Outlaws all, Wilson had called that first crew of boys, but over that long, hot summer, he’d begun the process of turning outlaws into men—and at least in Quinn Younger’s instance, he’d felt he’d succeeded.

Regan wasn’t so sure. Not anymore. She’d met Quinn Younger once that summer, if one awkward encounter constituted a meeting, and despite his subsequent rise to fame and glory, the image of him as a shaggy-haired sixteen-year-old car thief with coolly assessing eyes and a slyly artful grin was the image lodged in her brain. Looking at Cisco did little to change the impression. Neither did the cryptic entry she’d found written on her grandfather’s desk calendar, the entry with Quinn Younger’s name in it that had brought her to this nowhere spot in the road in Utah.

With an exasperated sigh, she returned her attention to the buildings. The town was eerie, damned eerie, but she’d come a long way, and the least she had to do was check the place out. If Wilson or Quinn Younger was there, or had been there, she was going to know it before she left.

Ignoring her unease and a good portion of her common sense, she put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road, heading for the gas station.

S
HE’S
stopped in front of Burt’s old place,” Peter “Kid” Chronopolous said, looking through his scope.

Quinn glanced up from under the hood of the ’69 Camaro parked in the barn and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Stopped?”

All kinds of people drove by Cisco. Every now and then somebody pulled over to the side of the road and got out their map to figure out where in the hell they’d gone wrong. Damn few people pulled into town and stopped—with good reason. Out of the seven buildings still standing, not a one of them looked anything less than forbiddingly deserted. Other than the shop and living space the SDF team had built into the barn to use as a safe house, the buildings were deserted.

“Yep.” Kid’s gaze was still trained on the gas station through the scope. “And now she’s getting out and going in.” The younger man’s voice stayed calm and steady, but Quinn sensed his heightened sense of readiness. Most lost tourists, especially lost
women
tourists, would not go wandering into Burt’s place. Most, however, wasn’t all, and Quinn wasn’t inclined to jump to conclusions. Not one damn thing had happened in Cisco in the two weeks he and Kid had been stuck there. A woman in Burt’s didn’t mean their luck was changing or that the action was picking up, not by his standards.

“Take her picture and send it through the computer,” he said, returning his attention to the Camaro’s engine. The car was barely street legal as it was. Changing out the pulleys to work with the boost had pushed it right to the edge. Kid could have his fancy Porsche. Quinn was putting his quarter-mile money on the Chevy.

“I’m on it, but I think you better take a look,” Kid warned.

Quinn lifted his head again, looking over the engine at the twenty-three-year-old ex-Marine. Kid—who for numerous reasons was also known as “Kid Chaos”—was the newest member of SDF and he was definitely jazzed. His eye was glued to the scope; his body was tense and alert. Of course, the boy had been roughing it with Quinn since the middle of June. Possibly it was merely the sight of a woman, any woman, that had gotten his juices going.

Or maybe Roper Jones, the man currently at the top of General Grant’s Most Wanted list, had tracked them down.

Setting aside his wrench, Quinn straightened up from under the hood, testing his left leg before trusting it to completely hold his weight. He limped across the shop floor and turned on the laptop Kid had rigged up to half a dozen cameras around Cisco.

Despite a serious addiction to fast cars, extreme sports, and general mayhem, Kid was a certifiable electronics wizard—an electronics wizard with way too much time on his hands since they’d been holed up in the desert, waiting for the heat to die down in Denver. Kid had wired the ghost town to within an inch of its life for twenty-four/seven surveillance. Getting hurt in their line of work came with a few interesting consequences, the least of which was Kid watching over him like a mother hen, and if lately Quinn had been feeling like he’d washed up on the wrong side of thirty with not much to show for it but a friggin’ barn to live in and a busted leg, well, he had no one but himself to blame. He’d made some bad choices—especially that last damn choice he’d made in the rail yards on the west side of Denver when he’d gone up against Roper and his goons.

Quinn typed in a couple of commands, activating the cameras in the buildings. When the camera in Burt’s came on, the image of a woman filled the screen.

His brow furrowed. The only female assassin he’d ever seen had been sleekly fit and buffed on steroids. She’d also moved with the prowling gait of a hungry panther. Not this woman. She was randomly picking her way through the dust and the tumbleweeds inside the gas station, peering over countertops and around half-fallen beams. A broken chair caught her unawares in the shin, and she swore under her breath.

Colorful,
Quinn thought, his lips twitching in a brief grin.
Definitely lost tourist material.
No trained hunter would swear because of a measly shin hit. No truly trained hunter would have run into the chair in the first place. After rubbing her leg, she continued on, looking around with curiosity and caution, but not with deadly focus—and not with a weapon in her hand or visible anywhere on her body.

In short, she did not look like a killing machine. What she looked like was a schoolteacher—the luxury model. And oddly, to someone who didn’t know many schoolteacher types, she looked faintly familiar.

Her honey blond hair was piled into a ponytail on the top of her head, but a lot of silky swaths had tumbled back down, giving her a mussed-up, just-out-of-bed look. She wore a soft-looking lavender shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which appeared to be standard mall issue, and both of which revealed a perfectly average, if decidedly nice, and very nicely endowed, female form.

Plenty there for Kid to get excited about,
Quinn thought. Maybe even something there for he himself to get excited about, if he’d been in the market for that kind of excitement, which he wasn’t. The only female in Cisco that Quinn was interested in fooling around with was the one he’d named Jeanette, she with the supercharged 383 LT1 stroker under her hood. The smartest move the woman in Burt’s could make would be to get back in her car and get out of town.

“Have you got that picture yet?” he asked Kid, who had moved to the computer in the back of the shop.

“Running it through now, Captain.”

Quinn let the rank slide, though he hadn’t been a captain since a surface-to-air missile had taken him and his F-16 out over northern Iraq. Still, he had been a captain in the U.S. Air Force for a hell of a lot longer than he’d been a cripple holed up in Cisco.

Two weeks.
Shit.

Dylan Hart, his boss at SDF, couldn’t expect him to lie low forever. Quinn could only take so much sitting around listening to the wind blow through this nowhere town—Roper Jones was still out there, and Quinn needed to be out there, too. He needed to be back in the game.

He rolled his shoulder. It was healing. His leg half-worked. And he had a fucking vendetta with Roper Jones’s name written all over it.

On the screen, the woman picked up a dusty pile of papers and looked them over, giving him a better view of her face. She was fine featured, with a dusting of freckles across her nose. She was pretty in a quirky way, not elegant, but cute, her eyebrows surprisingly dark in contrast with her hair. Her chin was delicately angled, but definitely set with determination. Her eyes were light, the color indiscernible on the screen. At odds with her all-American looks, her mouth was lush, exotically full, and covered with a smooth layer of plum-colored lipstick.

Okay. She was nice. Very nice.

The whole package was nice.

“Not a known felon,” Kid said from the back of the shop.

Quinn absently nodded. He would have been damned surprised if the woman’s picture had matched that of a known criminal, especially given the kind of wiseguys in Kid’s current files.

“Try the official database,” he said, knowing it was another long shot. Despite his niggling sense of familiarity, the chances of the woman in Burt’s being part of an officially sanctioned U.S. government service were exceedingly damn low. And she sure as hell didn’t belong to SDF, the very
unofficially
sanctioned group of Special Forces operators that he and Kid were part of. General Grant, the two-star who deployed them, would never hire a woman for fieldwork.