Crazy Wild (29 page)

C
HAPTER

32

Two months later

I
T WAS A SHORT
flight from Denver to Leavenworth, Kansas, and he'd done it God knew how many times in the last few weeks, but today was the last time he'd ever have to do it, and Creed was about ready to jump out of his skin.

He had a ring in his pocket.

He didn't know half the stuff Dylan had pulled to make this happen, but Daniel Alden, Director of the CIA, had sent Steele Street a bouquet of flowers that was so frickin' big, it took up one whole desk.

Dylan had done something, all right, and Creed didn't know what it was, and that bugged the hell out of him. He didn't know half of what Dylan was up to anymore, but whatever it was, it was keeping him busy. He hadn't so much as stepped foot inside Steele Street in twelve weeks.

Skeeter sure wasn't happy about it, and an unhappy Skeeter, he'd learned, was a dangerous Skeeter. Nothing worked in Steele Street anymore. The computers crashed, the elevators got stuck, batteries died, organic smoothies went bad in the refrigerator.

“Are you going to be okay while I'm gone?” he asked her.

They were under Mercy's hood, for no special reason, which seemed to describe most of Skeeter's actions lately.

“I'll be fine.
Cripes!
” She jerked her hand back.

“You have to keep your fingers out of the blower, Skeet.” He wanted to help her, but if Dylan didn't want to come home, there wasn't a damn thing anybody could do about it.

“I know. I know.”

Hawkins was coming home. He and his wife, Kat, had been traveling throughout the South Pacific for the last five months, on the longest honeymoon in the history of mankind, but they were settling back into Steele Street at least through the summer, until the baby came.

Babies. That was a whole other ball game. Creed could dig it, but first he had to get a wife.

He checked his watch and decided that getting to the airport three hours early was probably a smart move and not the sign of an overeager idiot. Visitation today. Release tomorrow. Never-ending paradise after that.

“You know how to get hold of me if you need me, right?” He and Cody were going to be gone for a long time, at least a couple of months, maybe even longer. They'd been planning the trip together. It had been something for her to hold onto, a fantasy to help her sleep, she'd told him.

The marriage idea was all his. He wasn't going to spring it on her all at once. He wanted to win her over first, cover his bases, that sort of thing.

“Homing pigeon. I got it the first time, Creed.”

“The guy's name is Javier Bernal, and he won't like you referring to him as a homing pigeon.”

“Hey. I saw the photo. That's all I'm saying. He looks like a pigeon.”

Crabby, crabby Skeeter. “Your earrings giving you any trouble?”

She smirked, but didn't rise to the bait. The ruby-and-diamond crosses really did look good on her.

“I love you, but I'm not going to miss you,” he said.

That finally got him a sincere smile.

She came out from under the hood and threw her arms around him. “Well, I'm going to miss the hell out of you. Say hey to Cody for me.”

“I will.” With luck, he'd be saying hey to Cody every day for the rest of his life.

C
HAPTER

33

“H
EY.”

“Hey.” Cody smiled and rolled over onto her side, not bothering to open her eyes. She wasn't ready to wake up, but she was always ready for him, the jungle boy.

“The sun's coming up.”

“Hmmm,” she said, snuggling closer, not exactly amazed at his news flash. The sun came up every day in their lost-world paradise, and him with it. The jungles of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula were always hot, steaming with humidity, and most days it rained in the afternoon. The weather was wonderfully predictable, day after endless sun-drenched day. They swam in the river, ate fruit off the trees, and lived in a tree house hidden among the overgrown ruins of an ancient civilization.

She felt his mouth on her cheek, the silky weight of his hair brushing her skin, the warmth of his body stretched out along the length of hers.

“You're naked,” she murmured.

He smiled against her mouth and slid her leg up over his hip.

“So are you.” He pressed against her, and she let her eyes drift open. She loved watching him as he entered her, the way his hair fell down around his face and his lips would part, the dark light that came on in his silvery blue eyes.

“I lost my clothes again last night.”

“Hmmm.” He moved over her, pressing her back into the soft disarray of sheets and cotton blankets covering the bed.

“I think they fell out of the bedroom.”

“Your clothes are always falling out of the bedroom,” he murmured against her skin, and then pushed up inside her.

It was the loveliest way to wake up, so hot and sweet, and at the end, so achingly intense. She'd never dreamed she could be so in love.

When she woke up again, the sun had risen well above the horizon. A warm breeze blew across her skin and ruffled through the curtains that were the tree house's only walls. Pink and saffron, each length of cloth lifted in the wind. Every morning she felt like she was waking up inside a flower.

She stretched lazily in the bed, watching the river flow past their small beach. They'd fallen into the most somnolent existence, sleeping, eating, making love. They fished. They explored. They canoed, and they talked, a lot.

He stirred beside her, his hand curving around her waist. “I heard a jaguar last night.”

“Close?” She turned to face him.

“Not really. He was about half a mile north of the Achka temple, before the clearing where we saw the tapir.”

“And what were you doing half a mile north of the temple in the middle of the night?” He'd been by her side when she'd fallen asleep.

“Hunting,” he said, then nuzzled her neck.

He hunted a lot in the middle of the night, just like the big cat.

“What did you get?”

“Breakfast, lunch, and probably dinner.” He bit her, once, softly, on the neck, and then she felt him smile.

He'd gotten something big with his blowgun. She would have heard a shot.

“A deer.” She hoped.

“Um-hmmm.” His smile grew wider.

He still had nightmares about J.T., not so many. Sometimes he went hunting to work them off, sometimes he made love to her, and sometimes he just held her and they watched the stars.

“Where are we exploring today?”

“I think we need to go back to the Altar of the Moon,” he said, referring to another of the stone ruins they'd found hidden in the jungle. “I think we missed something, maybe a secret entrance, or a buried stela.”

He liked the adventure, and she liked him. It was more than love that bound them, more than the rings they wore on their fingers. Up until Prague, she'd lived her whole life in libraries, reading about what other people had done, all of her adventures coming vicariously. After Prague, and after Leavenworth, it would have been easy to crawl back into the safety of the book stacks and never, ever come out again.

But Creed lived, a hundred percent, every day, out in the world. When duty called, he answered. When things went bad, he survived and kept going, even when it was hard. She'd done the same thing after her father had died and her life had gotten so crazy—and the admiration Creed had for her was as important as his love. He made up adventures just to share them with her. He said it made them all worthwhile.

She felt the same way. Sharing with him, the nature child who never wore shoes, but never went anywhere without his Glock 10mm locked and loaded, had turned her whole life into an adventure.

“So you still think there's treasure there?” she mused aloud.

He grinned at that and let out a short laugh.

“Not really,” he said, pulling her closer and kissing her mouth once, twice, three times. “I just like hanging around the ruins, seeing what comes up, and seeing if I can get you to take your clothes off for me out in the jungle.”

“You are so bad.” She gave him a little push, and he caught her to him again, pulling her closer.

“One-hundred-percent pure badass to the bone, babe,” he agreed, kissing her on the cheek. Then he leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “But you are
so
damn good.”

Don't miss

C
RAZY KISSES

Kid Chronopolous's story

ON SALE MARCH 2006

C
RAZY KISSES

ON SALE MARCH 2006

Panama City, Panama

T
HERE WAS A BIKINI
bottom in his bathroom.

Curious as hell, Kid picked the tiny scrap of green and purple cotton up off the towel bar and turned it over in his hand.

It wasn't unusual for him to come home and find somebody crashing at his place. He'd known the instant he'd walked in that someone was there. The house in Panama City had belonged to his brother, and J.T. had always had an open-door policy.

But the bikini bottom was unusual.

Combat boots, surfboards, cases of beer—that's what he usually found. Not outrageously green bikini bottoms with purple palm fronds printed on them.

It was enough to make a guy think.

About sex.

And about death.

He swore softly and put the swimsuit back on the towel bar. J.T. had been the kind of guy who took care of people, a lot of people. Some of them had been women, mostly friends, but a couple of ex-lovers had shown up over the last few months. Kid didn't think he could face one of them tonight, and have to be the one to tell her J.T. was dead. He still felt about half dead himself.

Easing himself around, he limped back out to the living room. The house was pure tropical bungalow, with two bedrooms, a bath, kitchen and dining area together, and a living room that opened onto a palm-shaded courtyard. It had lizards darting around outside, a housekeeper named Rosa who held the place together no matter how many unexpected visitors showed up, and neighbors who liked to party—tonight being a case in point. A salsa beat was coming from both sides of the house.

After his and C. Smith's adventure on the Putumayo, two days in a Bogotá hospital, and two days of debriefing with the DEA and the Defense Department guys, he wasn't in the mood to party. All he wanted to do was sleep in a bed he called his own. He hoped the bikini girl had picked the spare bedroom and not the one he usually took.

The thought made him pause.

Geez.
No wonder he never got laid anymore.

He shook his head and continued on across to the breezeway and the south bedroom, the one he preferred, and sure enough, it was definitely
ocupado
. There were clothes everywhere, and girl stuff piled up on his dresser and draped over the chair, filmy stuff, bright colorful stuff, bits and pieces. The girl's suitcases were on the floor in a corner, and besides being the most amazing shade of crocodile-patterned hot-pink leather he'd ever seen, they were overflowing with electrical cords, makeup bags, and shoes, like a girl grenade had exploded and sent her clothes flying in every direction.

That thought gave him pause, too, sort of reminded him of something else, but he wasn't going to spend the effort to figure out what. He was too damn tired to sort through anything tonight. All he wanted to do was sleep, and one bed or another didn't really make much difference.

He turned to leave, when a small, torn white T-shirt hanging off the doorknob caught his eye, a plain white T-shirt with a paint smear on it—electric blue paint.

Everything inside him froze, except his heart, which plummeted into the pit of his stomach.

Impossible.
It was absolutely impossible—but he knew that T-shirt, knew that paint smear.

His gaze slid to the clothes draped over the chair, and he saw something else he knew, a purple silk robe with a letter “N” painted in pink on the pocket.
Geezus.
He looked around the room at all the stuff. But it wasn't just stuff, and it wasn't just any girl grenade that had gone off in here. It was a Nikki McKinney grenade.

He picked up the robe, brought the silky material to his face—and her scent flooded his senses. Hot sex, warm love, all the memories were there, so close to the surface.

Too close.

Nikki was here, and suddenly, he was in over his head. Way over.

Why in the world would Nikki be in Panama City?

And had she brought the freakin' fiber artist with her?

Geezus.
He couldn't take that. No way in hell.

He looked up from the robe and checked the room. No, this was a one-person disaster, from the Panama hat and pink and green striped sunglasses on his dresser to the pile of underwear on the bed. This was all Nikki, every square inch of it.

Underwear. Bed. Nikki.

And suddenly, he was wide awake, every cell in his body.

He dropped the robe back on the chair and headed out the door. In the courtyard, he turned toward the loudest music. Nikki would be at ground zero, which meant the Sandovals' walled garden next door.

Rico and Luis Sandoval were a couple of trust-fund twins whose daddy ran the biggest chain of car dealerships in Panama. They were great guys for a good time, a cold beer, and a Friday night poker game, strip poker if they could talk a girl into playing.

Kid always opted out of any Sandoval-brother scheme that included drunk naked women, but Rico and Luis wouldn't have had to use liquor or talk very fast to get Nikki in the game. There wasn't anything she liked better than naked men. Twins would be an irresistible bonus in her book.

Cripes.
Nikki and a couple of Panamanian beach-boy hustlers with a marked deck. The thought had Kid limping at double time. It would serve Rico and Luis right if he just let her have them. They'd never get the drop on her, no matter how much they cheated, and once she pulled her “Gee, can I paint you naked” line on them, they wouldn't have a chance. She'd have them stripped out of their
machismo
faster than they could drop their skivvies. The trust-fund boys would still be looking for their balls come Christmas.

But he didn't want any other guys dropping their shorts for Nikki tonight, or any other night—Panamanian beach boys or fiber-artist fiancés.

A fiancé—how in the hell had he let things get so out of hand? How had he gone seven months without calling her? Without writing her?

He stopped by the gate in the wall—stopped and made himself take a reality check. The truth was, he knew why he hadn't contacted her. He knew exactly why he hadn't gone home at Christmas. And nothing had changed.

He wasn't the man she'd fallen in love with, not anymore, not even close, and there was no coming back from the places he'd been.

But she was here, and he had to see her. He wasn't going to fool himself into thinking she'd come to see him. He was the last person she would have expected to show up in Panama City, despite him owning the house. Skeeter would have given her the key and the official situation report: he was in Colombia, working out of Bogotá.

For the last seven months, no one except the men he was with had ever really known where he was or what he was doing. In the beginning, that had been Hawkins, and later another SDF operator, Creed Rivera. After Creed had finished his mission, he'd gone home, but Kid had stayed.

He'd stayed too long.

Colombia wasn't safe for him anymore. People were looking for him. They didn't know his real name or what he looked like, not yet, but that wasn't going to hold them off forever, not these guys, not if he kept doing what he'd been doing. The airfield on the Putumayo wasn't the first time
el asesino fantasma
had hit Juan Conseco's operation, and the drug lord knew it. News of the “Putumayo bounty” Conseco had put out on the ghost killer had hit Bogotá while he'd still been in the hospital. The cocaine baron wanted him dead or alive, and for half a million dollars, Kid figured Conseco had a pretty good shot at getting him.

It was a helluva lot of money, but Kid had done a helluva lot of damage, including a pair of sniper hits last month contracted for by the Colombian government via the U.S. Department of Defense on two of Conseco's top lieutenants, a mission so black it had been black-on-black. Which all made Nikki's presence even more unnerving, if that was possible—which, honest to God, it wasn't. He was already unnerved all the way down to his gut and his toes by her being here. The situation with Conseco only made it worse.

And wasn't that just perfect? He hadn't been home five minutes, and the first thing he had to do was literally kick Nikki McKinney out of his bed.

Well, hell. At least now he had something to say that didn't begin and end with “I'm sorry.” He'd said that to her so many times, especially when she was crying, and when they'd been together, she'd cried a lot. He had to admit that “Get your butt home” didn't sound much better, though.

He reached for the gate, then had to stand back when a couple stumbled through, their arms wrapped around each other, holding each other up on their way to the Ramones' place on the other side of Kid's yard.

From the looks of the two of them, a little drunk, a little disheveled, and both in drag with half their clothes falling off, the Sandoval party was in full swing—a fact proved when he stepped through the gate.

Every year, four days before Ash Wednesday, Panama City hosted
Carnaval,
a sexually charged, anything goes party leading up to Lent. Every Friday night, the Sandoval brothers did the same.

There were colored lights hanging in the trees, two transvestites crooning on a makeshift stage, well over a hundred other people crammed into the garden, some in costume, plenty of beer, and a bar serving
baja panties
—literally “panty lowerers,” which in Panama translated to any drink made with hard liquor.

And there was Nicole Alana McKinney. He spotted her instantly. She was half in costume, with a pink feathered tiara in her black and purple spiked hair, and a blue sequined miniskirt with a matching stole to go with the top half of her green and purple palm-frond bikini. She had a
baja panties
in one hand and five cards in the other. Her back was to him, and she was sitting at a table with four guys, two of them Rico and Luis, one of whom was already down to a pair of tighty-whities and an orange feather boa.

It was like the living incarnation of his worst nightmare—or at least his nightmare before she'd gotten engaged. He'd never imagined that happening.

But this scene. Oh, yeah, he'd imagined it plenty of times—Nikki and a bunch of half-dressed guys well on their way to being undressed guys.

It was her work, taking naked guys and putting them through the wringer of her cameras and her paintbrushes until she got what she wanted, which was always more than the guys ever thought they'd have to give.

She was practically famous now, her paintings showing on both coasts and selling in five figures. Three months ago, she'd done an
Esquire
magazine cover of Brad Pitt as one of her fallen angels. Kid had seen it in Bogotá, and it had been incredible.

Fucking Brad Pitt. Who would have believed? Nikki's mentor, Katya Hawkins, was taking her straight to the top of the art world, exactly where she deserved to be. He'd watched Nikki work once—work a guy over—and it had made him sweat and all but turned him inside out. He hadn't known a girl could be so freakin' fierce.

Yeah. He'd kept up with her career, with her life. He'd been discreet, but he'd kept up, asked a few questions. Her sister was married to another of the Steele Street operators, Quinn Younger, who hadn't gone out on many missions since he and Regan had hooked up.

It was a helluva price to pay for a woman, but under any other circumstances than the ones he'd found himself in last summer, he would have done it for Nikki.

She hadn't come straight out and asked him to quit his job, but he'd seen it in her eyes every time she'd looked at him. He'd known it every time she'd cried because he was going away. So freakin' fierce, and yet so fragile.

Hell, she'd probably made the right choice with the basket-weaver guy, but yeah, sure, he could have done it, left his buddies and turned himself into her boy toy, gone back to school, and become . . . something.

Something other than what he was—a highly skilled weapon of the United States government. The months he'd spent with Hawkins and Creed, tracking down and taking out his brother's killers, had changed him. Superman and the jungle boy had changed him. They'd taken everything the Marine Corps had taught him and honed it all to a razor sharpness.