Crazy Kisses (6 page)

C
HAPTER

4

Denver, Colorado

L
IFT YOUR SIDE
about two inches,” Travis James said, leaning back a bit from his ladder to see if the painting was lining up on the wall.

“Cripes, Travis, two minutes ago, you told me to lower it two inches, and it’s the middle of the freaking night,” his friend, Skeeter Bang, bitched.

“Hey, babe, you knew the deal,” he said, adjusting his side of the seven-by-five-foot painting after she moved her side. Then he tied it off.

The “deal,” when they’d negotiated it, hadn’t specifically included hard labor all night long, but Skeeter knew things didn’t always go as planned when a person was hanging a show for Nikki McKinney. This wasn’t pottery they were arranging. Nikki’s paintings—most of them of him, naked and in angel wings—ranged from large to extra-large.

It was tough work, yeah, but no tougher than Skeeter. She wasn’t going to walk. She needed him. For every hour she slaved for him, helping him put up Nikki and Rocky Solano’s show in the Toussi Gallery, he was going to slave for her—bare-chested and shrink-wrapped in blue Lycra tights, a mighty sword in his hands, Japanese
kangi
tattoos running down his arms. Tattoos that were damn hard to get off, and that she got to choose. And she chose the good stuff, just what he wanted on his body—Blood Warrior, and Scream Reaper, whatever the hell that was, and Dagger Death, real weird shit. She’d let him choose the first time she’d drawn him, but then complained that Peace, Love, Compassion, and Joy had thrown her off her vibe.

He thought her vibe was off all by itself, without any help from him. The character she had him playing, Kenshi the Avenger from her
Star Drifter
series, was
not
him. She was thinking of somebody else. He didn’t know who, but it was somebody who’d been places he couldn’t get to even in his imagination, which was strange. Nikki took him straight to hell most of the time, and he didn’t have any trouble getting there.

“How many more paintings are there?” she asked.

“Eight, and don’t get your panties all in a wad. Just be glad Rocky’s stuff is up.” Rocky Solano’s fabric art pieces were triple-extra-large, damned heavy, and unwieldy until they were in place. No place mats for that boy. No way.

“I . . . I feel faint,” she groaned, stopping halfway down the ladder and resting her head against a step.

“Oh, right. Faint.” He let out a short laugh. “You could kick my butt from here to Boulder all night long, which is why I called you. And you need me, which is why you’re here. You can’t afford to feel faint, Skeeter, and neither can I, not tonight.”

SKEETER
made a face behind his back, the slave driver. But he had a point. She did need him, if she was ever going to get her
Star Drifter
series finished, and he definitely needed her, if he was going to get this show hung before Nikki got home.

His other helper, a small piece of crumb cake curled up in a corner of the gallery, sound asleep, wasn’t proving to be much help at all.

“What’s her name again?” she asked, gesturing at the girl.

“Jane Linden,” he said.

“And how much does Nikki pay her to sleep on the job?” The girl had been asleep since Skeeter had gotten to Toussi’s.

“She doesn’t work for Nikki. Hawkins hired her to help Katya around the gallery. She’s staying in the apartment upstairs.” The gallery was in LoDo, a restored historical neighborhood in Denver’s lower downtown, the place where Katya Hawkins had launched Nikki McKinney’s career last summer, super-launched it. Nikki was going places, and Skeeter was keeping tabs—not for herself, but for Kid Chronopolous, the poor sap. She loved him, but he was being a total idiot when it came to Nikki McKinney, who’d turned around and thrown a real wrench in the works by getting herself engaged to Rocky Solano. Skeeter’s own love life was far from perfect—well, actually, it was far from even existing—but even she knew you couldn’t hold on to a lover by completely ignoring them, and Kid had completely ignored Nikki McKinney since he’d left for South America last September. It was now March. Seven whole months.

“Street kid?” she asked, tilting her head toward the sleeping Jane.

“If Hawkins hired her, you know she’s got to be a certified juvenile delinquent with a rap sheet a mile long.”

Yeah, Skeeter knew. That’s what she’d been when Christian Hawkins, a.k.a. Superman, had pulled her in off the streets and given her a chance at a new life. Now she was a certified computer geek with a deadly roundhouse kick and a Heckler & Koch 9mm who did race-quality tune-ups on sixties-era muscle cars on the side.

She’d come a helluva long way in the last few years—and Travis was right, at five feet eight inches tall, and benching one seventy-five, she probably could kick his butt all the way to Boulder and back. It wasn’t that he wasn’t in shape. The guy was ripped—and plenty hot, with his golden, wheat-colored hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and ocean-blue eyes girls and gays seemed to just drown in—but he was also really, really nice, gave great neck massages, did yoga, for crying out loud, was a good listener, and believed with all his heart in conflict resolution, not confrontation.

In other words, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the places she’d been.

“Should we wake Jane up and put her to bed?” she asked. The girl looked a little crumpled and darned uncomfortable where she’d fallen asleep across a couple of upholstered chairs.

“I don’t, well, uh, let’s just get finished here first.”

It was a subtle thing, just the barest hint of hesitation in his voice, but it was more than enough to fire up Skeeter’s imagination. Fighting a grin, she slanted her gaze back to Travis. He was sweet on the crumb cake.

Fascinating.

Women mobbed Travis James. A couple of women had actually followed him home from Nikki’s last show, presented themselves
en déshabillé
on his doorstep, and basically freaked him out. The risk was inherent. Over half of Nikki’s work featured him, in angel wings, in agony or ecstasy, either descending or ascending, and always completely in the nude. When Nikki painted him in Hell, he was post-Apocalyptic, shattered from the inside out, his wings in shreds, his body bleeding. On his way to Heaven, he was a rising god, pure as the driven snow, nearly transparent with bliss and light—and looked good enough to eat, which she was sure was exactly what those two women had had in mind.

Nikki McKinney was a genius, and Travis was the muse.

Skeeter knew that in comparison she was just a graffiti artist who’d taken her stuff off the city’s walls and thrown it on paper. But, hell, Travis inspired her, too, along with everyone else she knew. Unlike Nikki, she had a whole bunch of people she drew all the time, though a couple of them didn’t know it.

“Eight more paintings, huh.” She shifted her attention back to the stack against the wall. It was fine with her if he wanted to let the crumb cake sleep. Skeeter couldn’t see her face, but from the size of her, she didn’t think Jane could haul eight more paintings up on the walls.

“Three of them are a triptych,” he said, as if that helped. “We’ll hang them last.”

Triptych, diptych, there were still eight paintings left to be hung.

“I’m going to need food.” Carbs, herbs, protein bar, a triple-whipped-cream mocha latte with chocolate sprinkles and an extra shot—anything.

“There’s a few things over on the table, next to . . . uh, Jane.”

Sheesh.
She didn’t even bother to hide her grin this time. The guy was smitten.

Stepping down off the ladder, she went over to see what Mr. Twigs and Leaves might have brought for snacks. Skeeter liked an organic smoothie as well as the next person, and had more than one herbal concoction she swore by, but Travis was from Boulder, home of free-range supplemental fungi and antioxidant algae, and sometimes his idea of food looked more like compost to her.

And sometimes it looked darned good. On the table, she found a bag of tortillas, a container of organic herbal cheese spread, and a bunch of grapes—which solved her hunger problem beautifully.

Curious, she checked out the girl while she fixed herself some food. Jane had silky dark hair that fell halfway down her back. It was very shiny, and straight as a stick. Her shoulders were narrow, her butt definitely curvy under her designer jeans, and she had on a blue silk sweater to match her blue high heels—very uptown. She definitely looked expensive, at least from the rear. Travis seemed to have excellent taste in reformed delinquents.

Skeeter was halfway through her first tortilla and reaching for the grapes, when Jane stirred in her sleep. Taking another bite, she glanced over at the girl again—and came to a full-out stop in mid-chew.

Jane had rolled over onto her other side, revealing her face—and
oh, cripes.

Oh, brother. Oh, cripes.

Jane. He’d said Jane Linden, as in plain Jane, and Jane’s Addiction, but Skeeter and every gangbangin’ wallbanger from the west side to the ’burbs knew her by her street name as Robin Rulz, as in Robin Hood and robbing fools, robbing them of their purses and their wallets, and for all the times she never got caught, that ruled. She was a grade-A pocket-picking genius whose mad skills included lifting people’s car keys with no jingle jangle. She and her gang had staked out some turf in LoDo a few years back, becoming known as the Castle Rats, with a C-RAT tag marking their territory and enough light-fingered members to give the Denver cops a run for their money. For a couple of years, lower downtown had been notorious for the scrawny band of street kids who came out after dark and stole people blind, with their victims absolutely clueless until they got home and realized their cash and credit cards had gone missing—except, of course, for the really unlucky ones who couldn’t get home because the Castle Rats had stolen their cars.

Then Robin Rulz had disappeared—poof—right off the streets. Not even her gang knew where she’d gone. Rumors said the legend had finally been busted, bottomed out in juvie, and been sent down to the penitentiary in Canon City for some hard time. Others had said no way. Robin hadn’t been caught, not ever, but she’d been known to take a break now and then when the heat was on. That’s all it was, they said, just Robin taking a break. Some folks had said she’d gone to Phoenix to wait out the cops, give them a chance to forget her, and then she’d be back and the fun would start all over again.

And here the hell she was, the leader of the pack, with the run of a gallery full of thousands of dollars worth of art, hundreds of thousands with Rocky’s work installed. It was enough to give Skeeter heart palpitations. Had Superman gone completely mad? Robin Rulz living in Toussi’s?

And Travis thought he liked this girl?

Skeeter glanced over her shoulder at him, took a breath, and told herself to remain calm. Christian Hawkins was no fool. It was while he’d been doing his own time in Canon City that he’d acquired the name of Superman. He knew the score, and he knew people. Not even a legendary hustler like Robin Rulz could have pulled the wool over Superman’s eyes, but Travis—
geez
—he was a babe in the woods when it came to this kind of action.

Somebody really needed to tell him who she was, or at least who she’d been.

Somebody, right. Dammit. Skeeter didn’t need to look around to know she was the only one available for the job.

Well, hell. Maybe Travis was right. Maybe they should get the darn show hung first and worry about other things later, like leaving the gallery in the hands of a thief.

Jane, she thought, shifting her attention back to the girl. The name Jane Linden sounded almost wholesome, and no one who had ever seen them in action would have ever used the word wholesome to describe a Castle Rat.

C
HAPTER

5

Panama City, Panama

K
ID TOOK NIKKI
through the Ramones’ yard, avoiding the Sandovals’ and the dead drag queen with the “Colombian necktie” lying next to the garden gate. There was a reason the guy had been drenched in blood. Having your throat cut and your tongue pulled out through the opening was a damned bloody business. It was also one of Conseco’s signature pieces, his and every drug lord’s from Tijuana to Medellín. But Conseco was the one after him, the one after the ghost killer.

He’d known his cover would be blown someday. He just hadn’t expected someday to be today. His money said someone in the Bogotá hospital was a few thousand pesos richer tonight. There couldn’t have been too many gringos with bullets in them this week, and he’d left enough blood in the Banco Nuevo cantina and on the
Garza
for Conseco’s guys to know he’d been hit. Getting flight information on the plane he and C. Smith had taken out of Santa María wouldn’t have been too damn difficult, not with money changing hands, and there was a lot of money waiting to change hands.

Fuck.
Half a million dollars. What was he, the poster boy for the antidrug coalition? Conseco was out to make a statement, that was for damn sure. And if the cocaine baron got his way, the statement was going to be written in
el asesino fantasma
’s blood.

A man’s shirt was hanging off a chair on the Ramones’ patio. He grabbed it and jammed his feet into a pair of shoes lying next to the table. Besides the knife and the HK .45, he had a thousand dollars and his wallet in one of his cargo pockets. His passport and three extra ten-shot magazines were in another—standard urban battle pack.

Heading toward the Ramones’ back gate, the one leading into the alley, he gave Nikki a quick glance. She was in shock, her face white, her expression dazed, and unbelievably, she had her purse clutched in her hand. He remembered seeing it now, on the table next to her teacup.

He was moving her too fast for there to be much conversation, which was just as well. The last few minutes had been pretty intense. Business as fucking usual for him, but completely outside her realm of experience, until she’d met up with him again—damn it. He could see his whole white-picket-fence fantasy going up in flames.

At the gate, he pulled her behind him and waited, listening, and trying damned hard to hear anything beyond her breathing. Nikki was hyperventilating. That sucked, but there wasn’t much he could do about it right now. Conseco’s guys usually ran in packs, but there was a slim chance those two guys had been on their own, a couple of freelancers out for the half a million. Everybody and their mother had to be after him for that kind of money.

His kitchen door slammed, and he swore under his breath. Hell, no, they weren’t out of this, not yet. Voices were coming from his backyard, one yelling orders, another demanding answers, and in the middle of all the shouting, somebody made a threat and backed it up with Juan Conseco’s name, the last thing he’d wanted to hear.

Shit
. It was definitely time to get out of Dodge.

He eased the gate open, checked both ways, and pulled her out of the Ramones’ yard and into the alley, into the jungle. There was a reason J.T. had bought a house in this particular neighborhood: escape routes and cover. The streets and alleys were a maze, and unlike other places in the city, the forest had been invited back here and nurtured with a vengeance. People in this insular section of the capital valued their privacy, thus the walled gardens and the profusion of vegetation, towering trees and thick shrubbery. Four blocks away, it all emptied into an urban landscape as much of a jungle as any on the planet. That’s where he was taking her.

Keeping close to the sides of the overgrown alley, and a firm grip on her hand, he ran past the next two houses. As soon as they rounded the corner, he ducked across the alley, opened the first gate he came to, and slipped inside one of his neighbors’ yards. There was nothing random about his movements. The route was planned. He’d run it a dozen times in the dark.

He didn’t stop inside the gate to listen. He didn’t need to listen. There was no mistaking the sound of men piling into the alley, or of the trash and refuse piles being torn through. Gates were being breached, dogs barking, lights coming on all over the neighborhood, and it was all happening with lightning speed, like an avalanche sweeping toward them.

So he ran, and he kept running, dragging Nikki with him through one yard after the next, lifting her off her feet when she stumbled, practically carrying her the rest of the time. At the end of the block, they crossed another street. A hedge on the other side provided cover until they came to a set of stone steps leading to a small, tree-enclosed plaza. He plunged the two of them down into the darkness, not daring to slow their pace until they’d reached the far end of the park.

As they came out from under the trees, he slipped his gun into the waistband of his pants. There were other people on this end of the park, some older kids messing around, groups of party-goers, couples sitting here and there on the benches, and the last thing he wanted was to draw anybody’s attention.

Blending in—that’s what they were doing now, not running their guts out.

Releasing the death grip he had on her arm, he slid his hand down to hers and gave her a quick glance. He’d been holding onto her pretty damn tightly—and sure enough, he’d marked her. Every one of his fingerprints stood out on her pale skin like a brand.

Damn, he hated that, really hated it.

Moving her along at a fast walk, he headed toward the street, toward the crowds of people making the scene in the Calle Uruguay, Panama City’s club district. On Friday and Saturday nights it was the biggest party in the country, the safest place for them.

“We’re almost there,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “You’re doing great.” That was a lie. She didn’t look like she was doing great. She looked shell-shocked. He could imagine what was running through her mind, and none of it was good.

Letting go of her for a second, he did up a couple of buttons on the shirt. He had a round in the chamber of his .45, five left in the magazine, and thirty cartridges in his cargo pocket. Under the best of circumstances that was a damn short firefight. Under the worst of circumstances it was a goatfuck waiting to happen. Thirty-six rounds weren’t enough for him to win a gun battle if Conseco’s narco-guerrillas chased them down.

At the street, he gave up on the buttons—three would have to do—and took her hand again. He didn’t wait for a break in the traffic. There was no break in traffic in the Calle Uruguay district on Friday night. Taxi drivers honked, and a few people cussed him out in two languages, but they made it across. Half a block farther and he pulled her into the shadows between two buildings.

His heart was racing. Her breath was coming hard and fast.
Geezus,
that had been close, too damn close. Somebody at the DEA in Bogotá needed a freaking heads-up on their security protocols at the hospital, because they’d been breached every which way from Sunday. There was no other way for anyone to have traced him to Panama City, to his own house, except through the name on his hospital file, Peter Alexander Chronopolous.

Cupping her face with his hand, he rested his cheek against her forehead, stealing a couple of seconds to assure himself she was all right. But she wasn’t. She was shaking like a leaf.

“Shhh, Nikki. You’re safe.” Not really, not quite, not yet. But she didn’t need to hear the truth right now. She felt like she was going to come apart. She was still in one piece, though, still with him, and that’s what counted. He could fix everything else later.

Still holding on to her hand, he turned back toward the street and scanned the area, especially in the direction of the park, looking for anyone out of the ordinary, anyone who might be carrying a weapon, anyone who looked like they were looking for him. When he’d checked the whole area over once, he did it again, reevaluating the scene, checking the new dynamics of the crowd, looking for someone who seemed hyperalert, someone who was doing the same thing he was doing.

“There’s . . . there’s blood on my dress,” she said from behind him, her voice softly horrified. “I’m sure I didn’t . . . wasn’t—”

He turned toward her, his grip inadvertently tightening on her hand, his gaze dropping to the front of her dress.

“Are you hurt?” he said gruffly.

“No . . . I—no.” She sounded confused.

There was a bloody smear at her waist, but she couldn’t have run the way she had, for as long as she had—especially in the freakin’ little sandals she was wearing—if she’d been wounded, and the material wasn’t torn. It was just bloody.

Then it hit him. He’d done that to her. Stabbed the guy, gotten blood on his hands, and then grabbed her. She had blood on the shoulder of her dress, too, a handprint—his.
Geezus
.

“You’re okay, Nikki,” he said, careful to keep his voice confident and controlled. “You did great. I really appreciate how strong you’ve been.” The encouragement was important, deliberate, the recognition of how well she’d followed his lead. He was incredibly grateful. It all could have gone so much worse—but he wasn’t going to think about that.

Her gaze lifted to meet his, and he felt his heart sink. Her eyes were wide, frightened, darkened by the low light and the shadows. She was pale, the tremors in her hand coming from the entire rest of her body.

And he’d done all that to her, too, in record time, without an ounce of intent.

“You killed those men,” she said. “The first one . . . you killed him three times.”

It was a simple statement, not entirely accurate, but he knew what she meant, and it took the wind out of him. She was in a near state of shock, could hardly catch her breath, and her dress was smeared with some badass
hombre
’s blood who he’d left in a broken heap outside his bathroom door.

Yeah, he’d been pretty jacked up in the house, and try as he might not to, it was all too easy to imagine how the sequence of events and his actions in them must have looked to her—not incredibly skilled and heroic, but absofuckinglutely deranged.

“I only killed him once, Nikki. The rest of it was insurance.” Again, he made sure his voice was steady and confident, letting her know he knew what he was doing, no matter how god-awful it must have looked. Ammo was cheap, and her life wasn’t, he could have added, but he didn’t think that pithy axiom was going to do a damn thing to improve the image of him blowing two guys away at point-blank range, nor did it adequately address half gutting the first guy and breaking his neck.

He was so screwed.

“Insurance?”

“I had to make sure he wouldn’t come after us,” he explained. “Not him or the man in the other hall.”

“But they were already dead.”

“Maybe.” Probably. But he didn’t stay alive on maybe and probably. He stayed alive on head shots. “I know everything happened really fast, but in those kinds of situations, everything always happens fast, especially when there are guns involved. I didn’t have a choice, Nikki.” The truth was, he’d made his choice about guys like Conseco’s a long time ago, and the chances of him losing any sleep over tonight’s killings were between slim and none. In the war he was part of, he never doubted where he stood, or what he had to do to hold his ground. That’s why he’d joined the Marines. It was why he’d followed his brother into General Buck Grant’s black-ops special reconnaissance team. It was why he was part of SDF.

“Guns. I see,” she said—but she didn’t. He could tell by the hesitation in her voice. She was trying to process what had happened, but there was no way in hell for that to happen in this alley in the next few seconds.

Goddamn
. He’d stayed away from Denver for seven months so she wouldn’t see the kind of life he’d been leading, wouldn’t see the changes that life had made in him, and inside of two minutes, he’d bloody well massacred two guys right in front of her.

He wished it hadn’t happened; with all his heart, he wished she hadn’t been exposed to that kind of danger, to that kind of brutality; but he couldn’t regret the killings. He knew the score. He knew the playing field they were on, and he knew exactly what would have happened to the two of them if he was anything less than what he was: better.

Better than all the guys he’d ever tracked down, better than any guy who’d ever gone up against him—better than the next guy, whoever he was, wherever they met. Kid didn’t have to be the best, but he knew with every cell in his body that he
always
had to be better, every single time, without fail. There was only one rule in the warfare he’d been trained for: win or die. For seven months, he’d been living in a world light-years away from Nikki’s. It was stark and dangerous and had no room for errors.

Tonight, for whatever reason, she’d stepped into his world, but that didn’t change the one rule. It was still win or die.

He checked the street again, then pulled her back onto the sidewalk, into the crowds. They were only a couple of blocks from their destination, a place called the Parrot Bar. The owner of the Parrot had been a friend to J.T. long before he’d been a friend to Kid. A few phone calls, starting with C. Smith in Bogotá and the DEA Panama Country Office right here in the city, should get him what he needed: transportation out of Panama and a plane ride back to the States.