Avenging Angel

To Roger—my main squeeze at Trivia Central. Thank you and thank you again.

First published by Bantam/Loveswept, 1993

Copyright Glenna McReynolds, 1993

E-book Copyright Tara Janzen, 2012

E-book Published by Tara Janzen, 2012

Cover Design by
Hot Damn Designs
, 2011

Cover Photo by
Hot Damn Designs
, 2011

E-book Design by
A Thirsty Mind
, 2012

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For more information about Tara Janzen, her writing and her books please visit her on her website
www.tarajanzen.com
; on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/mSstpd
; and Twitter @tara_janzen
http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen
.

Welcome to the Tara Janzen line of classic romances! 
New York Times
Bestselling author, Tara Janzen, is the creator of the lightning-fast paced and super sexy CRAZY HOT and CRAZY COOL Steele Street series of romantic suspense novels.  But before she fell in love with the hot cars, bad boys, big guns, and wild women of Steele Street, she wrote steamy romances for the Loveswept line under the name Glenna McReynolds.  All thirteen of these much-loved classic romances are now available as eBooks.

Writing as both Glenna McReynolds and Tara Janzen, this national bestselling author has won numerous awards for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America, and nine 4 ½ TOP PICKS from 
Romantic Times
magazine.  Two of her books are on the
Romantic Times
ALL-TIME FAVORITES list – RIVER OF EDEN, and SHAMELESS, a Loveswept romance, and LOOSE AND EASY, a Steele Street novel, is one of Amazon’s TOP TEN ROMANCES for 2008.

She is also the author of an epic medieval fantasy trilogy, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, DREAM STONE, and PRINCE OF TIME.

Scout’s Honor

Thieves In The Night

Stevie Lee

Dateline: Kydd and Rios

Blue Dalton

Outlaw Carson

Moonlight and Shadows

A Piece of Heaven

Shameless

The Courting Cowboy

Avenging Angel

The Dragon and the Dove

Dragon’s Eden

Medieval Fantasy Trilogy

“A stunning epic of romantic fantasy.” 
Affaire de Coeur
, five-star review

The Chalice and the Blade

Dream Stone

Prince of Time

River of Eden
— “One of THE most breathtaking and phenomenal adventure tales to come along in years!” Jill Smith
Romantic Times
4 ½ Gold Review

SEAL of My Dreams
Anthology

All proceeds from the sale of SEAL Of My Dreams are pledged to Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit foundation supporting veterans medical research.

Panama Jack
, by Tara Janzen

The woman. He needed her . . . desperately. He needed her to drag him up, get him out, and set him free
.

Dylan drove with nerveless precision, tearing down the highway, burning up the road and the tires on his black Mustang. Wind whipped his hair through the open window and stung his face with the blast-furnace force of a summer gone crazy with heat. From Chicago, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Colorado, the asphalt had shimmered to the horizon like the shadow of a mirage on the landscape.

Without taking his eyes from the road, he lifted a Styrofoam cup to his mouth and drained it of coffee. He’d lost the other two times he’d broken his FBI cover to prevent disaster. He’d been too late, too slow, in far too deep to surface in time to save a life. He wouldn’t be too late to save Johanna Lane. He couldn’t be. He’d come up for good and three was his lucky number.

A grim line broke across his face, an expression no one had ever mistaken for a smile. Since when did he know about luck? He had no luck.

In the darkness ahead, a pickup truck pulled onto the highway. Dylan hissed an obscenity, his fist crushing the empty cup before he threw it to the floor. The man had to be blind not to see the Mustang hurtling toward him. When the driver didn’t even speed up to the limit, Dylan cursed him again, taking a lot of names in vain and ending up with half a dozen synonyms of dirty slang for sex.

The oncoming traffic was heavy on the two-lane highway outside Boulder, but Dylan had no time and nothing left to lose except his pulse. Flooring the gas pedal, he roared up on the truck and at the last moment jerked the wheel, sending the Mustang slewing into the other other lane, taking a highly calculated risk and the narrowest of openings in the traffic. Cars scattered onto the shoulder. The truck skidded off the road.

Hard-won skill, not luck, guided Dylan through the hundred-mile-an-hour maze he’d made of a van, a station wagon, and two compacts. Dylan Jones had no luck.

The fact was proved a mile down the road, less than a minute’s worth of traveling time. The flashing lights of a police car lit up his back window and rearview mirror like a Fourth of July parade.

Dylan swore again and pressed harder on the gas pedal, willing the Mustang to greater speed. The city lights of Boulder were seconds away. He’d come too far, too fast, too hard to lose.

He swept through the first stoplight on the north side of town, ignoring its red color. The Mustang barely held on to the ninety-degree turn he slammed it through. The tires squealed and smoked on the hot pavement. The chassis shuddered. Working the steering wheel one way and then the other, he missed hitting a car in the eastbound lane and shot between two westbound vehicles.

The police car behind him missed the turn and came to a jolting stop in the middle of the intersection, siren and lights going full bore, snarling traffic even further. Dylan made the second left-hand turn he saw, then wound through the streets in a frenzied, seemingly haphazard fashion for more than a mile. Finally he slowed the Mustang to a stop on a side street, pulling between two other vehicles, a gray, nondescript sedan and a midsize truck.

The summer night was quiet except for the pounding of his own heart. Expensive houses crowded this part of town. Porch lights were on, smaller, homier versions of the street lamps, but the interiors of the houses were dark. People were settled in for the night, safe, sound, and unsuspecting.

He waited for a moment, checking the street before pulling his duffel bag across the front seat to his lap and slipping his left arm out of his coat. The bag was heavier than clothes would have allowed, the weight being made up in firepower and ordnance. It was the only protection he had, and it felt like damn little compared with what he was up against.

Sweat trickled down the side of his face. At the corner of his eye, the moisture found the day-old cut angling from his temple to his ear. The salty drops slid into the groove, burning the raw skin. He swiped at the irritation with the back of his hand, then yanked open the duffel.

He took out a shortened, pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun and slipped the gun’s strap over his free shoulder. After angling the shotgun down the side of his torso, he put his arm back through his coat sleeve. The duffel went over his other shoulder as he got out of the car. The policeman had been behind him long enough to call in his plates. The Mustang had to be ditched. It didn’t matter. If he lost Johanna Lane, he didn’t much care if he got through the night with his life. He sure as hell didn’t care if he got out with his car.

He walked to the pickup truck in front of him and tried the door, his gaze moving constantly, checking shadows and sounds. The door was locked. The owner of the late-model gray sedan parked behind him wasn’t nearly as cautious. He got in and smashed the ignition assembly with the butt of the shotgun. Then he went to work hot-wiring the car.

Johanna Lane lived at 300 Briarwood Court, and Dylan knew exactly where 300 Briarwood Court was in relation to his current position—two blocks west and one half block north.

* * *

Johanna Lane stood on her third-floor balcony overlooking the street. French doors were open behind her, allowing the night wind to lift and flutter sheer, floor-length curtains. Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
played on the stereo, the classical notes crystal clear, floating on the air with all the purity that the finest digital sound was capable of producing. The stereo system was an indulgence, one of many in the oak-floored, art-deco-furnished apartment.

She turned partway to look inside. In the dining room, an unfinished, candlelit dinner of pasta alfredo and salad was neatly laid out on one end of an intricately carved, black lacquer table. A damask napkin was crumpled next to the still-full crystal wineglass.

She really should eat, she thought, watching the candle flame dip and bow with the breeze. If she wasn’t going to run home to Chicago and her father, she should eat, and she’d decided against running. Running was an admission of guilt, either of a crime she’d been very careful not to commit, or of an act of betrayal she’d never considered.

Austin Bridgeman was flying in from Chicago. To do some follow-up work on a deal that had gone bad in Boulder, he’d said when he called. He’d suggested going out for drinks or a late dinner so they could talk about old times—old times when she had worked for him as his most private legal counsel.

Even the thought of her previous employment made her head ache and her palms sweat. She’d left her job and Chicago because of what Austin Bridgeman had become, and she doubted if the intervening four months had improved his moral character.

Slowly, to calm herself, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In four years of working for Austin, she’d seen him skirt the law many, many times, bending it at will with his power and his money. She’d seen him crawl on his belly like a snake to make bribery look like a gift. She’d seen him voice requests as unrepentant demands to politicians and judges alike. But she hadn’t seen him break a law until two days earlier, Friday morning, when she’d read the front-page newspaper story about a senator charged with influence peddling. With all the other congressional scandals cropping up, she hadn’t given the story much more than a glance at first. Then a name had caught her eye, the name of a small, privately held company in Illinois—Morrow Warner.

The influence the dear senator had been peddling went far beyond the expected pork barreling. He had dabbled in foreign affairs and foreign wars, foreign corporations, foreign currency, and especially foreign imports. The press had labeled him the “Global Connection,” and all of his hard work had been directed toward filling the coffers of Morrow Warner.