Crazy Wild (18 page)

This, then, was the man who had saved her. This was Creed Rivera stripped to the bone.
Sweet Jesus
.

It was more than she ever would have wanted to see. Creed so defenseless, so utterly destroyed. How did he bear it?

She kept sorting her way down through the stack. A new series started in color, and again there was a name, place, and date at the bottom of each of the pictures:
Manuel Garcia/Peru S.A./December.
He'd been shot between the eyes and was lying in a road. Part of a tire and the front of an automotive grill were visible in the photograph. The second photograph was more gruesome:
Pablo Castano/Peru S.A./December.
He was lying in the dirt, with small patches of snow caught in the sparse vegetation surrounding him—and his throat had been cut. Blood darkened the ground around his head and shoulders.

His throat cut with a knife
—a sharp blade wielded with lethal skill.

She pushed the photographs away, heartsick. No one lived through that kind of an ordeal without being changed forever, down to their soul, the way Karlovy Vary had changed her.

Trying to force the horror from her mind, she looked around at the office again. The room was sparsely decorated, but every piece was exquisite, expensive. From what she could see through the open doorway, the rest of the offices were even more luxurious. And the cars—there must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cars on the lower floors, maybe millions.

Skeeter Bang was in the outer office, standing in front of a bank of computers, actually working two keyboards at once, with no sign of the CIA, or anybody else for that matter, in sight, and for that Cody was grateful.

Despite her youth and her appearance, Skeeter and the man in South Morrison had sounded like a team. He'd treated her like an equal.

She was definitely one for the books with her leather pants, fur-lined black jacket, ball cap, sunglasses, and lightning-bolt T-shirt. The fur looked like sable, very expensive. She had a sheathed knife on her hip and was wearing clunky, thick-soled work boots, but even those looked designer made. She'd certainly known her way around Creed's gun.

And the attitude. Man, she had it in spades, calling the CIA “not very nice guys.” The fact that she even knew a CIA agent put her in a category most kids her age couldn't claim.

A small pain tightened in Cody's chest. Keith O'Connell had been a nice guy, smart, professional, and he'd done his best to bring her in from the cold. She'd told him everything, all about
Tajikistan Discontent
and her father's death while he'd been leading Sergei's men into the Tajikistan mountains, and she'd given O'Connell the names of all the buyers who had come to the house to deal with Sergei.

How much of her information had gotten through before O'Connell had been killed, she didn't have a clue. Enough, she guessed, that the CIA had shown up here, looking for her. Enough to put Creed Rivera on her trail.

She'd learned her lesson from O'Connell's death, though. Learned it well: Don't talk. Run.

Out in the main office, Skeeter grew suddenly still, her head coming up, her gaze seeming to fix on some point out in the garage. It was another full minute before Cody heard it—the sound of cold metal grinding, screeching, of cables straining and shuddering against a great weight being lifted.

The freight elevator.

C
HAPTER

19

O
KAY, HE WAS FREEZING
his ass off, and Dylan wanted to talk about ice-cream fountains? What the hell was up with that?

Creed wrapped his arms more tightly around himself and vowed to put a little more effort into Angelina's heater, instead of spending all his time porting her heads and tuning her to within an inch of her life.

“Yeah,” Dylan said, relaxing back into the Chevelle's passenger seat as they slowly crawled up the side of 738 Steele Street in the old freight elevator. The new get-you-to-the-top-in-sixty-seconds-flat freight elevator, the one with heat, was deep into repairs. “A regular, old-fashioned soda fountain, banana splits, sundaes, milk shakes, the works.”

“I'd rather have a Scotch.”

Creed didn't want to hear about milk shakes. He'd just tagged and bagged a Taliban terrorist and gotten away from God only knew how many of the rest of them by the skin of his teeth, all on a mission where there hadn't been any clearly defined Rules of Engagement, because he wasn't supposed to have actually
engaged
anybody.

Hell, he'd done nothing but
engage
all frickin' night long.

Dylan slanted him an annoyed look. “Not everybody at Steele Street is old enough to drink.”

Yes, they were. Everyone except Skeeter.

His gaze narrowed, and he looked over at Dylan, looked very carefully. Skeeter?

He wasn't going there. No way. And Dylan shouldn't go there, either. Not Skeeter.
Geezus
.

“So what's the score tonight?” They'd gone over it twice already on the drive home, but Creed needed to hear it all again.

“The CIA has come up empty-handed. The Denver Police Department's finest, the lovely Lieutenant Loretta Bradley, is claiming Edmund Braun, and she picked up two Iranians in the stacks—so she's pretty damn pleased with the night so far. I think she's going to go for a Homeland Security Award or something. It's a toss-up over who's going to get the Afghans, but nobody who was after you in South Morrison is going to have time to go back and get the wounded one without getting busted.” Dylan had put a call in to Loretta, who, it seemed, was having trouble shaking the CIA agent she'd had to arm-wrestle for Edmund Braun. A dead Taliban terrorist was really going to have them at each other's throats, but Creed's money was on Lieutenant Loretta. He'd given Dylan the address to Cody Stark's apartment, and Dylan had passed it on to the good lieutenant and suggested she pass it along to the CIA to soften them up a bit. They were definitely going to want a piece of that action.

“Tony Royce is the agent who showed up at Steele Street tonight?”

Dylan nodded. “With his name written all over Dominika Starkova. He wants you to back off and turn her over.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to follow orders, which means she goes to General Grant, not the CIA.”

That sounded damn good to Creed, but there was a problem. There was
always
a problem. “She was in Karlovy Vary. I think she saw the whole thing; she said Reinhard Klein was there. She even offered to tell me all the details if I'd let her go and give her some spending money.”

Dylan winced at the news and brought his hand up to rub the bridge of his nose.

“Damn it,”
he swore under his breath. “Keith O'Connell. So this isn't just business for the Agency, this is personal.”

“Real damn personal,” Creed confirmed. Everyone knew what had been done to O'Connell.

“She must have talked,” Dylan said, lifting his gaze to meet Creed's across the inside of the Chevelle. “O'Connell must have been trying to bring her in, and she must have talked. That's got to be where the Pentagon got the information we have about the arms buyers. Maybe the CIA is way ahead of us on this.”

“Not tonight, they aren't,” Creed said. “Because we've still got her. Right?” That's the part he'd actually needed to hear again, the only part. He needed to hear it until he saw it with his own two eyes: Cody Stark safe in SDF's headquarters at Steele Street.

“Yeah, we've got her,” Dylan said. “As of Skeeter's last call, she's still handcuffed to the chair in my office.”

“Good.” Damn good. She was out of his hands now. He could live with that, but he damn well wanted to know she was out of Klein's hands as well, and Walmann's, and everybody else's. “If she talked to O'Connell, then she was cooperating. Make sure Grant knows that when you hand her over.” Considering what was on the line, it wasn't going to buy her out of the mess she was in, but cooperation was always worth something.

Geezus
. He'd kissed her. Again. What was up with him?

“And she's American?” Dylan asked. “You're sure?”

Creed nodded. “Cordelia Stark of Wichita, Kansas, but we need to double-check the details. She went to visit her father in Prague, a Dr. Dimitri Starkova, who also definitely needs to be investigated.” He lifted his hips off the seat and pulled a photo out of his back pocket. “This is her school picture.”

“Damn.”
Dylan swore again and looked down at the photo. He was quiet for a second, then asked, “Are you sure this is her?”

Creed knew what he meant. There was no resemblance between the school photo and the picture they'd been sent of Dominika in her ass-hugging little silver dress. Neither was there much resemblance between the photo and the punked-out raver Dylan had picked up in South Morrison. Creed hadn't really had a chance to fully describe the beauty of her mousy-librarian and homeless-boy incarnations.

“It's her,” he said. “Look at the eyes and the cheekbones, forget the hair.”

Dylan studied the photograph for a moment, then glanced up. “I'll get Skeeter to morph them.”

“Sure,” Creed agreed with a shrug. “Then maybe you can take her out for a milk shake or something.”

His comment hit a wall of silence.

“Kids like milk shakes,” Dylan finally said, sounding far too defensive to be anything except defensive.

Creed hated to be the one to burst his bubble, but Dylan had obviously fallen out of the loop on this one.

“Skeeter is no kid.”

“Sure she is.”

“No,” Creed corrected him. “No, she's not. No more a kid than you were at her age. But she is Superman's baby chicken.”

“Which means?”

“Absolutely nothing, except if I was fishing for shark, I'd keep one hand on my
cojónes
.”

Nothing but the sound of the old elevator straining up to the seventh floor filled the ensuing silence.

“So when did you get so friggin' inscrutable?” Dylan asked after a moment.

“Three hours ago.” On the roof of the Denver Public Library. He knew it to the minute.

“Christ,” Dylan said, dropping his head back on the seat and letting out a short burst of laughter. “It's been a crazy night.”

“Fucking
insane,
” Creed agreed, shaking his head and fighting back a grin.

FIVE
minutes later, he was in no condition to alter that statement.

He'd steeled himself all the way across the garage, parking Angelina at the far end of the seventh floor and walking the length of the bays toward the main offices—and he still felt gut-punched when he walked in and saw Cody Stark sitting in Dylan's chair, handcuffed to the frame.

She was such a lovely mess, her spiked hair falling over her face and going every which direction in the back and on the sides, glitter drifting onto her skin, her cheeks pale, mascara smudged beneath her eyes—but still so beautiful it was all he could do to drag his gaze away from her.

Not good,
he thought, taking in a deep breath and forcing his attention to Skeeter, who was striding toward Dylan's office, a concerned look on her face, her brows knitted together beneath the brim of her hat. She breezed through the doorway, shrugging out of her jacket and tossing it on Dylan's desk, disturbing a pile of papers or photos or something, then all but throwing herself into his arms.

“Creed,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Baby Bang.” He held her close, thinking back to those fifteen phone calls he hadn't bothered to answer and feeling a little guilty. She must have been more worried than he'd thought. He didn't like to freak her out. She was too good a kid to deserve that.

Okay, so he thought of her as a kid, too, but he really did think of her as a kid, and only a kid—regardless of her absolutely amazing body, which was pressed up against him all over the place.

He looked up and found Dylan's gaze boring into him like a laser beam on Death Blast, and he couldn't help himself. He grinned.

Skeeter pulled away after giving him a tight squeeze, and they slid their palms off each other. A quick slap and a tap of their fists later, the formalities were over.

They were both so full of the street.

Creed knew his name was still whispered in lower downtown's darkest alleys, and that suited him just fine, but he'd never killed anybody until Uncle Sam had put a gun and a seven-inch Randall knife in his hand and taught him how. He'd be the first to admit that it hadn't taken much. He'd been a natural.

“Where's Royce?” Dylan asked.

“On your butt.” Skeeter turned to him. “I pulled him up on the computer, and you barely beat him back. Creed's 911 must have sent them racing out of here like rabbits at the track. I show them hitting South Morrison about twenty-five minutes after we did and turning tail about three minutes later. I'm thinking they didn't even get out of the car, unless they left somebody behind.”

“You put a tracker on a CIA agent's car?” Creed asked.

“You bet,” Skeeter said. “SOP.” Standard Operating Procedure.

“And they're headed back here?” Dylan asked.

Skeeter looked out toward the garage. “Any second now we're going to get a call to open the alley garage door and let those bad boys back in.”

“Three minutes at South Morrison and they leave?” Dylan looked over at him. “When there's live fire and they think Dominika Starkova is inside with you?”

Creed knew what he meant. It didn't make sense. The party boys and girls in the basement wouldn't have heard the gunshots, but anybody outside the building would definitely have heard the pistol fire.

“Somebody jerked their chain, hard,” he said.

“Only one person can jerk Tony Royce's chain that hard,” Dylan said. “Daniel Alden, the director himself. But why would he pull his men off the case? They wouldn't use a retirement option, unless . . .” His gaze slid to Cody Stark for the barest split of a second, while everything inside Creed ground to a sudden, wrenching halt.

Unless they were just going to let the terrorists have her. Unless they wanted her dead—and that really didn't make sense, because unless something had drastically changed in the last three hours, she was still their best bet for finding the bomb.

Geezus
. The CIA wouldn't walk away from her. They couldn't let Reinhard have her—but even as he thought it, he knew they could.

“Well, they sure didn't waste any time getting back here,” Skeeter said, forcing a bright note into her voice and looking everywhere except at Cody Stark.

Geezus.

The phone rang, and Skeeter glanced at Dylan, who nodded. She picked up the receiver.

“Uptown Autos, we only sell the best,” she said, keying a code into Dylan's laptop and firing it up.

Dylan turned his attention to Creed, whose heart had started back up on a painful, unsteady beat. He didn't know how long he could protect her if the CIA wanted her dead, but he knew she deserved better than to be shoved out in the cold so Reinhard Klein or some Middle Eastern bastard could gun her down and do the Agency's dirty work for them.

“So what's changed since I was sent out four hours ago?” he asked. Four hours ago, she'd been a top priority capture-and-recovery—and now they wanted her eliminated?

“Maybe nothing,” Dylan said. “Maybe it is what it was.”

That was no answer. If they'd wanted an assassin, they wouldn't have sent him. They would have sent one of those never-seen-them-because-they-don't-exist CIA spooks whose pasts were so shady they couldn't have gotten a job before 9/11, the kind of guy whose résumé was half rap sheet. General Grant knew the score. And if they'd wanted somebody to screw up enough that the tangos would get her—well, they wouldn't have sent SDF.

His mission had been to recover and protect, and he'd done it—and he wasn't at all inclined to stop doing it now.

“We've got a potential ID on Klein, Walmann, the Braun twins, and the fact that there were two Iranians in the library tonight,” Dylan said, ignoring the questions burning between them and getting back to the answers they already had. Creed agreed with the tactic. Cody didn't need to hear that her government might want her dead. “We're assuming the Iranians the Denver police picked up are Khalesi and Hafiz. The two guys speaking Dari and interrogating Dominika Starkova with a knife have got to be Hashemi and Akbar. They were all known buyers.” He turned his attention on Cody. “Can you verify any of those names?”

Her gaze slid to his, looking for something Creed wasn't sure he could give her. She looked scared, and she had every right to be as scared as she could get if what Dylan had suggested was true.