Cutting Loose (22 page)

“How well do you know her?” She slid him a curious glance, and he laughed.

“Very well, and then some, and then even better than that.” He grinned.

“You jerk.” He didn't have to say it like that, even though she'd figured as much.

“I was seventeen. She was twenty-eight, and she kept me for a month,” he said, closing the gate behind them, still grinning.

“Oh.”

Oh, my.

“That must have been…uh, educational,” she said, at a bit of a loss. She'd never heard of anybody who'd, well, who'd done anything quite like that.

“Very,” he said, “and at the end of a month, she shooed me back home.”

Walking over to a small table in the shade, she stretched up on her tiptoes to smell the flowers on the trees. They were irresistible, the branches heavy with blooms, filling the courtyard with scent.

He came up behind her and slid his arm around her waist, then bent his head and kissed the side of her neck. “But we keep in touch. We all keep in touch with Alazne.”

“We?”

“The guys I grew up with.”

“And did they come and spend a month with her, too?”

“Some did. The ones she chose.” He kissed her cheek.

“Sounds like a racket to me.” Honestly, what kind of woman did that?

“It was.” He let out a soft laugh and kissed her again. “A lovely racket.”

“Did she teach you this?” His mouth was warm on her skin, his body a hard wall of muscle at her back.

“She taught me everything.” He kissed her one more time and took her by the hand, leading her toward the blue door. “Come on.”

“And I have to meet this woman?” God, she'd barely met him.

“No,” he said. “She's not home. If she was home, the door would be open.”

Lily looked around at the goats in the pen, and the fountain bubbling, at the open windows and the curtains fluttering in the soft breeze. “The place seems pretty open to me, like somebody could steal everything without breaking a sweat.”

“Nobody is going to steal from Alazne. She's a
bruja,
a sorceress.”

Oh, great.

“Don't worry. She won't mind us being here, and when the sun goes down, we'll leave.”

“For Denver,” she said.

“Yeah. This will all be over in Denver, Lily. I promise.”

She believed him, but somehow, instead of being a relief, the idea of it all being over depressed the hell out of her. She wanted the danger to be over, the damn bracelet, the getting shot at, the violence, but not him. She didn't want him to ever be over, and that hardly made any more sense now than it had last night, when she'd thought she'd never see him again.

Damn.
She hoped this wasn't love. She wasn't ready for love.

But she was ready for Alazne's, for preparing a meal with him and finding out he could cook, for taking a shower with him and finding out how easily making love three times in one day could turn into four, and for sitting in the shade of the trees and listening to the fountain splash.

“So about those things you can tell me,” she prompted, scooping up a bit of their freshly made
pico de gallo
on a small tortilla chip. “Does that include where you grew up?”

“Denver.”

“And what kind of kid you were?”

“Wild.”

A fleeting smile crossed her mouth. “This is hard for you, isn't it? Talking about yourself?”

He let out a short laugh. “Damn near impossible,” he admitted.

She picked up another chip and scooped more of the
pico
onto it. “I knew everything about Tomaso,” she said. “We went to Italy on our honeymoon, and he showed me every place he'd lived, and I met everyone in his family. We went to the schools he'd gone to as a child, and visited all his friends. He came to the States when he was fifteen to live with one of his older brothers in Chicago, and he got his law degree from the University of Denver. I could show you the apartment where he lived while he was in law school, and if you like, I probably still have a picture of his dog, the one he had as an undergraduate in Chicago.” She popped the chip in her mouth and chewed slowly, until it was gone. “By the time we got back from our honeymoon and he started at the firm in Albuquerque, I thought I knew everything about him—and I did, everything except that he was going to make a complete and utter fool out of me.”

“None of us ever sees that coming,” he said, taking her hand and brushing his thumb across her knuckles. He had strong hands.

“So do you disappear once we get to Denver?” She could see that coming.

“I'm not a lawyer, or an accountant, Lily. I go where the job is, and when it's over, I go on to the next job.”

Well, this sucked. Her heart was starting to break a little, just around the edges, and she wasn't sure how it had happened. Why in the world did she care so much, so deeply, for a man she didn't know, and didn't know anything about? She couldn't possibly have fallen in love.

No, absolutely not. Love was unacceptable. Besides, after Tom, she honestly didn't know what love was anymore. Lust was the closest she could concede, and that was no damn comfort at all.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

Saturday, 6:30
P.M
.—Denver, Colorado

Gabriel had come all this way for nothing. He realized it now. After spending a day with his sister in Steele Street with the SDF team, he had a much better understanding of who and what she was, and a little less guilt about what she wasn't. Not a lot less guilt, but enough for him to give up his quixotic quest to save her from Sir Arthur Kendryk. She could do better by herself and with her team than with him getting in the way.

His other mission had been more successful, to deliver the DREAGAR files and the reports he'd written for his superiors in the Marsh Annex to General Grant's team, at least the ones they'd authorized him to share. The technology data stayed with the Commerce Department Security Division, the CDSD. That's what they were over there in Marsh, a think tank and a brain trust, not policy implementers, even if, because of their security designation, they were authorized to carry firearms.

Most of the guys didn't, but Gabriel did, and had put considerable effort into learning how to use his pistol and honing his skills, the same as he did with any tool.

None of which explained why he found himself standing in front of Cherie Hacker's desk again. He'd come over to refill his coffee, but he hadn't gotten past her desk and the clothes she'd left strewn on her chair.

In a slight breach of protocol, he reached over and tapped a universal access code into her keyboard so he could see what she'd been working on after they'd come back from Commerce City.

Blueprints came up, a whole series of them, with the subbasement of Steele Street being the last one up on her screen. From what he could see, there wasn't much down there. He scrolled back through her history and wondered why, with not much down there, she'd brought it up on her screen five more times than the other floors.

“Gillian,” he said, walking back over to where she, Skeeter, and Dylan were working at a bank of computers. Their agent in New Mexico was secure until nightfall, so they'd gone back to studying the DREAGAR files and Kendryk. “Where do you think Ms. Hacker has gotten off to?”

Three pairs of eyes glanced up at him.

“This is her building,” his sister said. “Her first big installation. It's how she got her company up and running, and it's still a signature Hacker piece, so she tends to spend a lot of time looking it over, checking connections, running software, doubling up on her checks and balances. She can't show it off, or tell anybody about it, but she can show off what she learned doing it. She's like a little spook in here. You can stumble across her anywhere.”

“Even in the subbasement?”

Gillian glanced at Dylan. “Does Steele Street have an accessible subbasement?”

“Slightly accessible,” he said.

“Very slightly,” Skeeter concurred. “It's creepy down there.”

She went back to her computer screen, apparently unaware that her husband's gaze had swung around and was riveted to her.

“When were you in the subbasement?” Dylan asked, his voice very cold.

“Three years ago,” she said, continuing on with her file search. “And once was enough, so you can get that tone out of your voice.”

She tapped along for another couple of seconds, then stopped and whirled around to face her husband.

“Holy crap,”
she said, her eyes wide. “It's the breach. She's gone looking for the breach.”

Dylan's gaze snapped up to Gabriel, and he could definitely feel the coldness in those icy gray eyes. “What makes you think Cherie is in the subbasement?”

“She's accessed the blueprints for that floor six times since we got back from Commerce City, and she hasn't been at her desk for the last four hours.”

“Skeeter,” Dylan said, “try calling her first. Let's make sure she isn't just up on the eighth floor or lounging on The Beach.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hart's attention shifted to Gillian. “If you have to go after her, get a tactical vest. The opening is in the absolute northeast corner of the building. It's cold and dark and empties out into every subterranean byway in the city. If she's lost, she's going to be damn hard to find.”

Gillian nodded once, very clearly, very succinctly. “Yes, sir.”

“I'll go, too,” Gabriel said, quickly stepping forward. “In…uh, case Gillian needs help.”

He knew how ridiculous that sounded, Gillian needing help, but he stood his ground, and after a couple of seconds, Dylan nodded.

“Get him a vest, and check your radios before you enter the tunnels.”

Check the radios, definitely, Gabriel thought. It wasn't a mission, exactly, going into the basement, but if they were going to use radios, there was a little more edge to it than anything that ever happened in the Marsh Annex.

         

Saturday, 6:30
P.M
.—the Colorado–New Mexico border

Spencer had a plan. He'd give the city of Denver two days to cough up the bracelet, two days he would spend working his network to see what he could come up with in the Mile-High City, two days putting the pressure on people elsewhere who could put the pressure on people in Denver to find him a goddamn 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustang, red with white racing stripes, and the asshole who drove it.

If he came up empty-handed, he'd head to Europe and start serious inquiries into who, what, when, where, and how the bracelet might change hands. And for every buyer he found, he'd chase down a goddamn seller, until he nailed somebody.

He hated that it had come to this. If Paul Stark and Jason Schroder hadn't already been dead, he'd kill them tonight, just for messing up a simple plan. They shouldn't have gotten within a hundred yards of Lily Robbins. The woman should have taken the bait to Tahiti, or have been comfortably in her bed when Spencer had gone to visit this morning, instead of hell-and-gone somewhere with a house full of blood and bullet holes.

“You're not happy, Spence.”

“No, Kitten, I'm not.”

She started to say something, to offer some words of comfort, which was always her way with him, when her phone rang.

“Rush,” she said. “Rick, how lovely to hear from you.” She pulled a pad and pencil out of the side pocket on her leather messenger bag. “Yes, I know, it took a long time, all day…Poor baby, you had to work so hard…Two cars? How perfect. Yes, give me the address…hmmmm, the last one seems a bit far away, but I'll take it…yes, of course…always.” She laughed, but Spencer didn't take it too seriously. She was a natural flirt, and in any room full of people, men would naturally gravitate to her. But he was her man, no other, and he never doubted it.

She hung up the phone and turned to face him, a warm smile curving her mouth.

“We've got it, Spence.” She waved the notepad. “An address in Denver where not one but two red 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustangs with white racing stripes are registered through the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles. The only other one is in a town named Greeley, about fifty miles north of the city.”

“What's the address in Denver?” he said.

She looked at her notepad. “Seven thirty-eight Steele Street. Rick says it's in the downtown area, lower downtown.”

“And who's the lucky bastard who owns two of these babies?” That was unusual, by any stretch of the imagination.

Again, Mallory looked at her notepad. “The lucky bastard,” she said, “is a man named Dylan Hart.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

Saturday, 11:30
P.M
.—Denver, Colorado

Zach cruised through the streets of Denver, holding Charlotte to a low rumble. They'd made the run up from New Mexico without laying eyes on a cop, and now the whole damn thing was almost over. It had been one helluva day.

God, he was going to sleep for a week, hopefully with Lily right there next to him in the bed. Which he knew wasn't going to make anybody happy except him, and he hoped Lily. Maybe he'd been in Central America too long, too much on his own, to worry about upsetting the powers that be too much. If he could get a week with her, he was going to take it.

She was already asleep and had been for the last hour. Every streetlamp they passed under sent a lovely moment of light sliding across her face. They'd showered at Alazne's, and he'd helped her braid her hair, putting it in a low ponytail first and kissing the back of her neck all the while, but some of the braid had fallen out, and now she had a tangle of silken waves and dark curls framing a face whose curves were imprinted on his heart.

He was in love. He was sure of it.

He didn't know enough about love to know how long it might last, but he knew what he felt when he looked at her, and he didn't see that fascinating and complex mix of emotions fading for a long, long time.

He would run as much interference between her and Alex as was feasible, and the whole murder suspect fiasco had to be taken care of immediately. According to SB303, New Mexico had alerted Colorado that he and Lily were heading north out of Paysen, so the cops in Denver would be on the lookout for them, too.

Steele Street, that's where they needed to be. To put Charlotte to bed in the garage and just shut down for a while.

He turned north off of Speer Boulevard, heading up into LoDo. They were close now. It wouldn't be too much longer before they were safe.

Two hours' worth of staking out 738 Steele Street, and Spencer was growing restless. There had been lots of chatter about the Shelby Cobra on the radio, but no sightings since the motel in Paysen, New Mexico. It was like the car had dropped off the face of the earth, and with two states' worth of police looking for it, that was a pretty good trick.

If Rick Connelly had found this building, though, Spencer could guarantee the cops were going to show up sooner or later, probably sooner, and once the cops made it, the rest of the vultures who'd been cruising for the car in New Mexico wouldn't be too far behind. He and Mallory had been granted a small window of advantage here, given to them by superior intelligence, but that advantage was running out along with their time.

He'd driven past the three street sides of the building and walked through the alley once, following along with a group of other pedestrians, and he didn't have a doubt that Rick had found the right place. Four garage doors opened onto the narrow alley named Steele Street, and an ancient freight elevator crawled up the side of the building, servicing a whole series of garage doors, one on top of the other, for the next seven floors. At ground level, the freight cage would take up most of the alley, making it impassable. There were no windows on the ground floor, but surveillance cameras covered every conceivable angle of approach to the building, an interesting fact he had Mallory working on, running the address through a number of databases. There was a sign advertising tires next to an iron door that also opened into the alley, and the place had the smell of cars—automotive fluids, grease, oil. None of that new-car smell people liked so much. No, 738 Steele Street had the smell of a place where cars were taken apart and put back together better, the kind of place where a couple of classic Shelby Cobras would be housed by the kind of people who had classified CIA data and needed cameras on their building—but was the classic Shelby Cobra he wanted already inside, or was it on its way?

Two days, he'd already decided. If he and Mallory lost their initial advantage, he would watch the place for two days, just like he'd planned, longer if anything happened to give him good cause. Patience was the key to a lot of his success, something those Vegas boys had never figured out.

If, after two days, nothing and no one of any interest came or went, he'd move to Europe, not because of a lack of patience, but because that was where the sale of the bracelet was most likely to take place. That's where the parties most interested in the CIA's intelligence data did most of their business. That's where Ivan Nikolevna and Arthur Kendryk did business, and until, or if, the deal closed, he still had a chance to make things go Kendryk's way, to get the information from the bracelet into Lord Weymouth's hands.

He was also rethinking his stance on the girl, on Red Dog, Gillian Pentycote. Five months ago, she'd killed Tony Royce, Zane Lowe, and Royce's whole damn crew in Denver; everyone knew the story. It had spread fast and hard and made a helluva impression on the world circuit. Now this damn bracelet had a good probability of ending up in Denver in a building covered in surveillance cameras. He didn't believe in coincidence. He believed in doing his homework, in following leads, and tonight, he'd been led here, to the scene of Gillian Pentycote's world-class takedown. Two days in a hotel room with Mallory on her computer and Kendryk's intelligence network at his disposal, and maybe he could come up with something, a connection, maybe even come up with the girl. He didn't have to leave the States empty-handed. It all depended on how big of a risk he was willing to take for two million dollars.

Pretty big, he figured, because he had something none of his competition could even come close to getting. He had Mallory Rush. She was his ace. She thought out of the box, and that's what it was going to take to capture the sniper called Red Dog. Actually, he was surprised Mallory's Tahiti-on-a-hook thing hadn't reeled little Ms. Robbins in like a suckerfish. If she'd used the ticket, they could all be doing this on a beach somewhere, and the guy with the Shelby Mustang would never have even made the cut. Mallory didn't fail often with her schemes, and she was usually especially good with women. Her mistake had been in thinking Lily Robbins knew what she had and would be looking for a deal. Mallory always knew what hand she was holding, and what hand everybody else was holding, as well.

But hell, Lily Robbins had been clueless, and look what had happened to her—death and destruction at the crack of dawn, a murder rap, abduction, and she'd been on the run for all of a long hot day, only to end up here with Spencer cocked, locked, and loaded, ready, willing, and able to take her down.

Of course, that was the hapless Lily Robbins. Even with Mallory on his side, he was hoping the success of this trip wouldn't end up depending on the capture of Gillian Pentycote. He was hoping the Cobra Mustang would show up here, in this alley, tonight.

Next to him in the Town Car, Mallory was watching the alley, too, and all the people and other cars on the street. On a hot summer Saturday night in Denver, the alley named Steele Street and its environs were obviously the place to be. There were lots of bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, and galleries and coffee shops and bookstores, cops cruising a beat, and people everywhere.

He would have preferred for things to be more isolated. Anything he did here was going to draw attention, and Spencer made a point of never drawing attention to himself.

He settled back in behind the steering wheel and watched, and waited, and in between one moment and the next, things went his way. It wasn't coincidence. He'd made the right moves and used his resources to insure he was in the right place, ready, when a red 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustang came driving down the street.

He actually heard the car before he saw it. So did Mallory. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

“Six o'clock,” she said, and he confirmed. The Shelby was coming up behind them. “Seven…eight…nine o'clock.”

She watched the Shelby draw parallel and slowly pass them by—cruising, checking the place out. Spencer didn't watch the car. He watched her, and waited.

The guy was going to drive around the block at least once, seeing what was up. He knew, because that's what he would do.

“The woman is with him,” Mallory said. “Nine-fifteen, baby.”

And Spencer turned his head, just enough to catch a glimpse of the guy as the Shelby passed them.

Dark hair cut short, lean face, hard—Spencer had seen a thousand guys like the one driving the Shelby. The world was full of hard-ass guys who did the kind of work where a man either came out on top or he died. This guy was one of them, and he looked to be in his prime.

Good. Great. Whatever. Spencer shifted his gaze to the woman. He had not seen a thousand like her, and she was definitely in her prime. Long dark hair pulled back, exquisite profile, creamy skin, one bare arm resting in the Mustang's open window.

His gaze followed her down the street, until the muscle car turned right, starting its circle around the block.

He had a plan; it was very simple and straightforward, and involved Lily Robbins. It also involved the Smith & Wesson .45 caliber pistol concealed in his shoulder holster. Fast and dirty, that's how it was going to go down. A gun to the woman's head and a demand for the bracelet.

“Hand me my suppressor, Kitten,” he said.

Mallory reached into the gun bag he'd set between them and pulled out a silencer for his pistol. He quickly and efficiently threaded it onto his Smith & Wesson.

“Take the wheel,” he said, getting out of the car with his pistol hidden inside his suit jacket. There were only two regular doors into the building, and they were all in view of where he'd parked the Town Car. All the garage doors were in the alley.

He moved quickly, using the crowd on the sidewalk to conceal his approach and wanting to be in place before the Shelby Mustang came back around. He noticed a spot close to where the alley met the street, opposite the garage doors, a wedge of deep shadows between a Dumpster and the next building's fire escape. He would stop there, facing the street. If he showed up on a camera, he'd look more a part of the pedestrian traffic than the alley. He wouldn't enter the alley until he had a target.

He was still on his approach when the freight elevator rumbled into action, breaking the relative silence of the night with its sudden clanking and clanging. It couldn't be anything else, not on this block. As soon as he broke the alley's opening, he saw it, the freight cage slowly descending with its gears squealing and its bars rattling, making a perfect racket.

He instantly understood. Whoever was in the building had been alerted to the Mustang's arrival and was blocking off half the alley. Nobody was getting past the huge iron-and-steel freight cage. He was glad he'd kept Mallory and the Lincoln Town Car on the street.

He kept moving, speeding up his gait, walking faster, knowing the Mustang had to be close and would come in behind him.

In less than five seconds, he was at the Dumpster, in place, and heard the car's headers rumbling up the street. Turning his head, he located the Mustang and followed it with his eyes, watching it pull off the street, stop for some people crossing the mouth of the alley, then start forward again. The car was moving slow, about five miles an hour; as it crawled along, one of the garage doors farther down in the alley started sliding open.

Spencer was only going to get one chance at this. The driver's attention would be on the widening rectangle of light where the door was opening. The guy would never see him coming up on the passenger side until it was too late.

         

The streets of Denver were packed with people, especially in LoDo on a Saturday night, and Zach was careful to maneuver around them. He'd gotten Lily to Steele Street, though, and that was all that mattered.

SB303 was opening a garage door for him. They were less than thirty seconds away from being home free. He glanced in his side-view mirror, saw nothing, and brought the car to a stop, waiting for the garage door to fully open.

“Don't make a move, or she dies.”

Zach didn't make a move. He'd heard similar words and similar voices before, and in his experience, they meant exactly what they said.

He shifted his gaze hard right without moving his head and saw Lily. He also saw the suppressed .45 jammed up against her head, saw the hand holding the gun, saw the asshole's finger on the trigger, already applying pressure. He had his Para in his shoulder holster, but inside the car, even though he'd trained for it, he knew he couldn't draw faster than the guy could squeeze those last few ounces of pressure on his trigger.

“Give me the bracelet, now.” The guy's voice was cold and calm, with just a hint of impatience.

Ahead of the Shelby, the garage door was still opening.

“I dead-dropped it a couple of blocks north of here, on my way into town,” Zach said, lying and buying time. “Let me leave the woman here, and I'll take you to it.”