Crazy Cool (32 page)
“Already on it,” Kid confirmed.
Quinn kept his gaze glued to the woman. Where in the hell, he wondered, had he seen her? He didn’t forget faces. He didn’t dare, and he knew hers.
Or had known her.
“Son of a bitch,”
Kid swore behind him, showing more emotion in the one small phrase than he had in the whole two weeks they’d been camped out in the desert.
“You’ve got a match?”
“No, but it looks like we’ve got more company,” Kid said, striding back toward the scope.
Quinn looked through the far window and saw what Kid had seen, a blue SUV coming off the top of a rise in the highway—and slowing down, way down.
“Two men, no visible weapons, but they don’t look happy,” Kid said from his position at the scope. Quinn watched him quickly scan the rest of the horizon and come back to the SUV. “They’re checking out the woman’s Ford . . . and . . . they’re . . . well, hell. They’re heading out of Cisco. What do you make of that?”
“A coincidence? Or maybe Cisco has just gotten real friggin’ popular.” Quinn limped back to the Camaro and picked up the Beretta 9mm he always kept close by.
“Maybe” was all Kid conceded as he checked the load on his rifle, a highly “accurized” sniper’s M40.
Quinn and Kid weren’t getting paid to take chances. Not today.
Keep your heads down and don’t get your asses shot off
had been Dylan’s orders. A couple of weeks ago, when his body had still been pretty messed up, Quinn had been willing to follow orders. But he was mobile now. His stitches were out, and he was ready to get back to the job of taking Roper Jones down. If the unhappy guys in the four-wheel drive were part of that job, great. He just had to get Little Miss Tourist out of the way.
Damn. In about five minutes, if she was an innocent civilian looking for ghost town junk, she was going to wish she’d driven right on by Burt’s old place and Cisco. What he didn’t like to think about was that niggling sense of familiarity and the possibility that what she was looking for was him—though God knew how a woman could have tracked him down in Cisco. Or why.
“Call Denver,” he said to Kid. “Tell them we’ve got company. I’ll get the woman.”
“No,” Kid insisted, quickly coming around the desk at the back of the shop. “I’ll get her. You . . . uh, should be the one to call.”
Quinn narrowed his gaze at the younger man and was gratified to see him falter just a bit. It took a lot to make Kid Chaos falter.
“What I mean is, Dylan would rather hear the . . . uh, details of the operation from you . . . I’m sure.” Kid didn’t sound too damn sure to Quinn.
“Dylan’s in Washington, D.C., and we don’t have an operation yet,” Quinn explained. “Skeeter’s holding down the fort back at headquarters.”
“Well, see, there you have it.” Kid kept moving toward the door, each step slower than the last, until he finally came to a complete stop under Quinn’s unwavering gaze.
Quinn knew the distance between the barn and the gas station. A hundred yards. “I can handle it.”
Kid didn’t look convinced. “Maybe she’s a decoy. Roper Jones is not going to give up, Quinn. Not until you’re dead or Hawkins gets him.”
“Roper Jones is not stumbling around in Burt’s Gas Emporium. A woman is, and I’m pretty damn sure we better find out why.”
With a reluctant nod, Kid finally agreed.
Quinn turned toward the door, slipping the Beretta under his shirt and into the waistband of his jeans. Hell. He wasn’t making it easy for Kid to play bodyguard.
Bodyguard. Christ. He’d always been his own damn bodyguard, and done a damn good job of it—up until two weeks ago in those West Side rail yards.
The memory gave him an instant’s pause.
Okay, he admitted. The Roper Jones heist had gone down bad, real bad, and Hawkins had literally had to scrape him off that friggin’ back alley, but they’d gotten what they’d been after that night and he was healed now. He was ready to get back in the game. More than ready.
He slanted the computer screen a quick glance as he passed by. Plum lipstick. Lavender shirt. Golden ponytail.
Hell. She didn’t look like she was ready to get in the game. She didn’t look like she’d ever even heard of the game. Ready or not, though, she was about to get her first taste of it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Of a mind that love
truly
is what makes the world go ’round, Tara Janzen can be contacted at
www.tarajanzen.com
.
Happy reading!
ALSO BY TARA JANZEN
Crazy Hot
CRAZY COOL
A Dell Book / November 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2005 by Tara Janzen
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33471-2
v3.0