Loose and Easy (12 page)

And she was trembling, ever so slightly, but he could feel it.

Good. That’s all he’d needed to know.

He slowly broke off the kiss, taking his time, breathing her in and letting his mouth rest on hers, before he finally pulled away.

“Stay put,” he said, opening the car door and swinging his feet out onto the pavement. “This will only take a minute.”

In whole, it took more like five before he was settling back in behind the steering wheel.

“Genesee Park?” he asked.

“Yes.” She nodded. “And, well…whatever you’re thinking…well, it’s probably not…I mean I just wanted to say, uh…well…”

He turned in his seat, and with one arm draped over the steering wheel, gave her his full attention.

“Well, what I wanted…to, uh, say, I guess…was, that, I, uh…”

She was stumbling over her words and having trouble meeting his gaze, and yeah, he remembered her doing that before when he’d kissed her. It was sweet. But she needed help here.

“Yeah, me too,” he said, hoping that would clear up any confusion she might have. He’d loved it. She’d loved it. And trying to play it any other way wasn’t going to fly, not in his car.

Reaching for the ignition, he gave it half a twist, and the beast that was Solange fired up, all eight cylinders of pure Cobra Jet.

Genesee Park, a cold-cash deal in exchange for an undisclosed piece of property “recovered” off a seminude German, and Esme Alden sitting in his Cyclone, looking downright dumbstruck—the night was looking up, even if they were in a back alley in RiNo, surrounded by crazy spider boys, with a pimp trolling the streets looking for a Dixie impersonator who looked just like her, and a bookie and his goons looking for Burt Alden’s daughter and the guy in a Cyclone who’d saved her.

Was he willing to stick with her with that kind of night stretching out in front of him?

Oh, hell, yeah.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Lieutenant Loretta Bradley of the Denver Police Department surveyed the scene in room 215 of the Oxford Hotel with a jaundiced eye. Friday night was definitely getting off to a strange start.

Damned strange.

“What we’ve got here isn’t the bloodbath we expected,” Connor Ford, her newest detective, said. “It’s just a bloody mess.” She’d snagged the sandy-haired, gray-eyed youngster from the Boulder Police Department about a year ago, and he was working out pretty damn well—so far.

“Yes, I can see that,” she said, letting her gaze range across the elegant hotel room one more time before it settled on the victim and the EMT patching him up with a little first aid. “So what did he do, panic and roll around on every single surface he could find?”

“Seems like it. He’s a little upset,” the detective said.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. The old guy, one Otto Von Lindberg from San Francisco, was definitely upset, grumbling and complaining under his breath, giving them all the evil eye, wanting everyone to leave, just leave. “And what in the hell is that?” She gestured to the symbol someone had very carefully carved into the old guy’s back. He was bleeding, but he was in no danger of bleeding out. He’d been cut deep enough to maybe leave a scar, but not deep enough to kill, not even close. The EMT was using steri-strips and butterfly bandages, not stitches, to hold the guy together.

It was all damned strange.

Especially the black leather thong the old guy was wearing. It had snaps on it, and spikes, and…oh, hell, she’d seen it all in her twenty-five years on the force, but this was one of those things that was going to stick with a person, seeing this old fart in his leather thong, sporting a dog collar around his neck. According to Connor, he’d been handcuffed with his hands behind his back, flex-cuffed around the ankles, hog-tied, leashed to the bed, and bleeding profusely when the manager had found him, after being alerted by one of the maids.

Interestingly, the maid had not seen any blood or wounds when she’d first glanced in the room. But by the time the manager had calmed her down enough to understand what she was talking about and gotten up to room 215, the guy had definitely been bloody and writhing around on the floor. The 911 call had been dramatically overstated—with three squad cars bearing down on the hotel in award-winning response time…
“Blood everywhere, it’s a massacre.”

Not quite a massacre, Loretta thought, shaking her head and looking the old guy over. He did have blood running down his back into his butt crack, though, and
geezus,
she would have just as soon skipped that part.

Half of a leash was hanging off the guy’s dog collar and trailing down the front of his chest, with a cleanly cut end, and the other half was still tied around the bed frame. He’d been easy pickings for whoever had cut him up and then cut him loose.

Sometimes Denver was an interesting town—too interesting.

“I don’t remember Dixie ever taking a knife to anyone,” she said.

“Dixie’s involvement was a misunderstanding on our part,” Connor said. “The guy was pretty wound up when we arrived, jabbering away in English and German, and it took a while to figure out he wasn’t saying ‘It was Dixie.’ He was saying ‘It wasn’t Dixie.’ Kind of a miscommunication thing…maybe.”

Loretta gave her new boy a long look. “I want Dixie anyway, and I want Benny-boy Jackman, and I want them both at the precinct before I get there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And if it wasn’t Dixie, who was it? Maybe this guy blew into town on his own and found a knife-wielding dominatrix hawking it on Colfax. Or maybe somebody helped him out. The doormen here at the Oxford usually have their little black book vetted better than this, but if someone in the hotel was involved, I want to know who.”

“The new valet,” Connor said. “He was approached a couple of days ago by a blond-haired woman who wanted him to make sure she got this trick instead of Dixie. The woman also requested that Von Lindberg be put in this room—two-fifteen. I think because of the fire escape. She paid the valet fifty bucks, and the reservation clerk fifty bucks.”

Loretta looked to the open window and the curtains blowing in the light breeze. Okay, she thought, the Boulder boy was earning his keep.

“And how was the valet supposed to steer this john to her?”

Connor flipped open his notebook and showed her the top page. “She left her phone number.”

Loretta grinned. “Find this blonde and bring her in. I can’t have hookers carving their initials into their customers.”

“It’s not her initials, Lieutenant. It’s kanji.”

“Kanji?”

“Japanese characters. At least the middle part of it looks like a distinct character. The angled lines around the outside of it might just be for decoration.”

Whatever it was, she didn’t want decorating fat old Germans with the sharp end of a knife to become a new trend in Denver.

“And what’s the kanji on this guy mean?”

“I’ll know here in just a minute,” he said. “I had the tech clean him up a bit and took a picture of it to send to—”

“Skeeter,” she interjected. Who else? Skeeter Bang Hart was a mutual friend,
manga
artist, and former kick-ass street punk turned good. The young woman had become part of a Defense Department black-ops team Loretta was very glad to have based in Denver and on her side. She’d saved most of the operators’ butts at one time or another as juveniles, and they made a habit of returning the favor when they could, sometimes quite handsomely. For reasons on both sides, their unspoken alliance remained just that—unspoken. They had each other’s numbers and weren’t afraid to use them. It was enough.

“Yeah.” The detective showed her the photograph on his phone, and Loretta was impressed. His phone took better pictures than her camera. Hell, she could hardly keep up with personal technology anymore.

“Well, let me know as soon as she…” Her voice trailed off, and she reached for Connor’s phone. Holding it one way into the light, and then the other, she swore under her breath. There was no doubt what she was looking at—
dammit.

“What?” Connor asked.

She handed him back the phone.

“Swastika,” she said. “Those angled lines? That’s a swastika, radiating out of the kanji in the middle.”

Connor looked at his phone, then looked over at the German.

“Hell,” he said softly. “So what do you think? Aryan Nation?”

“Or just plain old Nazis,” she said. “Either way, I don’t like it. What’s Otto Von Lindberg been saying?”

Connor gave her a resigned glance. “Nothing except he wants us out of his room. He paid good money for the room and seems to have plenty left, and he wants to be left alone.”

Loretta gave a short nod. Von Lindberg had a fistful of hundred-dollar bills clutched in his right hand.

“Robbery would have been too easy,” she said.

Getting attacked and robbed was a nice, straightforward crime. Getting cut the hell up, while wearing a dog collar and a thong, and being tied to a bed, and
not
getting robbed—that was complex.

Most days, Loretta thrived on the complex, but she had a late date tonight, and a damned early morning tomorrow, and she wasn’t in the mood for ranting Germans.

“We’ve got a definite crime scene here, Lieutenant,” Connor said. “But Mr. Von Lindberg is saying he did this to himself.”

“Handcuffed and tied to a bed, he cut a swastika and a kanji into his back?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Connor said. “That’s his story.”

“It’s a little weak, wouldn’t you say, Detective?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve definitely heard better.”

So had she.

“Take him into protective custody. We’ll hold him as long as we can, see what we come up with. I want the window dusted. If the blonde paid for an escape route, I’m sure she used it.”

“And maybe the guy with the maid did, too,” Connor said. “Nobody saw him go back out the lobby, but there’s almost half a dozen ways out of the hotel. He could have used any of them.”

“Guy?” Loretta asked. “What guy with the maid?”

The detective had the wisdom to blanch slightly. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He flipped over to the next page in his notebook. “I thought Weisman filled you in on the way up.”

“He did, but he didn’t tell me about any guy with the maid.”

“Young guy, in his twenties, five ten, maybe five eleven. Taller than the maid’s husband, she says, and her husband is five eight,” Connor said, consulting his notebook. “Hispanic, clean-cut, wearing jeans and a black-collared shirt, gray T-shirt, told the maid he was the police and asked her to open the door of this room for him. She did open the door for him. He walked in. She took one look, saw Von Lindberg tied to the bed, and ran the other way.”

“But this guy came in the room?”

“That’s what she says.”

“Did she see if he was carrying a knife?”

“No such luck,” Connor said. “But she did say he had a hard look about him, serious, very much in charge. She didn’t doubt for a second that he was a policeman.”

“In jeans and a black shirt.”

“She thought he was undercover.”

“Did he flash any identification?”

“No, ma’am. Not according to her.”

“And she goes around opening room doors for every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes along?”

“If he says he’s a policeman, it seems so, yes, ma’am.”

Perfectly legitimate, Loretta thought. If she were an illegal immigrant shifting the sheets around in an upscale hotel, she wouldn’t be second-guessing anybody calling himself a policeman either, especially if he had a solid air of authority. It sucked, but that was the way of it.

“Take her in, get her an artist. Let’s find out what this clean-cut police impersonator looks like.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The detective’s phone beeped twice, signaling a text message, and they both looked at the screen while he opened the file. The sender was Skeeter, and only one word came up on the screen:
HERO
.

“Nazi hero,” Connor said, putting the two symbols together.

Well, that just about took the cake in Loretta’s book of crap she didn’t want to deal with on her beat, which was the whole damn city.

“I don’t like it,” the detective said, shaking his head, still looking at the screen on his phone.

“Neither do I, Connor,” Loretta agreed. “Neither do I.”

She was going to die.

Her mind was going in circles, thoughts racing. Her heart was pounding, pulse racing. Her legs were shaking, arms trembling, her stomach churning, lips quivering. She hated it all. She hated it so much—and yet she couldn’t stop any of it. She was going to die. She knew it with a dread certainty.

For no reason, she was going to become one of those horrifying statistics, an unsolved crime, a victim of senseless, random violence.

She only had one edge, and she was holding onto it with a death grip, using every ounce of her strength to keep her emotions frozen, to keep from crying.

The awful, terrifying man who had kidnapped her had taped her to a chair, her ankles taped to the legs, big, wide, gray duct tape, her wrists handcuffed to the arms. He’d stuffed something foul in her mouth and taped it in place, and it took every ounce of her strength not to gag. She hurt everywhere, especially where he’d hit her, backhanding her in the face, punching her in the stomach, where he’d pulled her hair out and wrenched her arm backward. She could see her blood on the front of her uniform shirt. He’d taken her name tag. She didn’t know why.

She didn’t know where he’d brought her, or why. It had all happened so fast. The huge, frightfully strong man had come out of nowhere, his attack so fast, so brutal, so unexpected, she’d never had time to react. One second, she’d been walking across the hospital parking lot, and in the next she’d been in the middle of a nightmare, caught in the maelstrom of violence, a random act of violence perpetrated by some pervert, some woman-hater.

She felt sick. She was so frightened, and she knew beyond any shred of a doubt that her situation was very, very unlikely to improve.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

“Yes, Mr. Nachman…No, Mr. Nachman…Absolutely. I have it with me now, and it is beautiful. I’m quite thrilled, and I know you will be, too.” Smoothing feathers, that’s what Esme was doing, smoothing eighty-two thousand feathers, and after her last stammering bit of embarrassed idiocy in the alley, she was also doing everything she could to avoid having to talk to Johnny Ramos ever again for the rest of her life. “Within the hour, yes, sir. I’m leaving downtown now.”

But despite her dearest wish to remain utterly occupied while in Ramos’s car, there was only so much verbal genuflecting she could manage, and with her last “yes, sir” she’d met her quota.

She should have gotten a damn cab, and the reasons she hadn’t were reasons…well, they were reasons she wasn’t going to examine too damn closely. She knew they wouldn’t pass any test of actual reason, so she wasn’t going to put them to the test. Given the night she was having, she figured she deserved a break, and it sure as hell didn’t look like the universe at large was going to give her one.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll see you shortly.” She ended the call and checked her messages, hoping for some, especially one from her dad, but there was nothing, which left her at a momentary loose end—
dammit
.

“Solange and I have made the run to Genesee in half an hour, if you need to be there quicker,” Johnny said to her from his side of the car.

Solange?
She glanced over at him.

Who in the heck was…oh, she got it. The Charger had been named Roxanne. Solange was the Cyclone, and yes, she supposed if a person sort of squinted and didn’t look too closely, possibly the “sleeper” looked French. Good God.

“I think regular speed will be fine,” she said. “It’s why I told Mr. Nachman an hour, in case there were any…uh, any more extenuating circumstances.”

Extenuating.
Right. She guessed that was one way to put the night so far, one damned unexpected extenuating circumstance after another.

“Even if there is a delay, we should be okay.” Yes, she’d just said that. “We shouldn’t hit traffic, though.”

And that was it.

“Not at this time of night,” she added, and that really was it. Nothing more needed to be said, which left her at another momentary loose end—
dammit.

While Johnny downshifted for the next stoplight, she busied herself with rummaging through the pockets on her messenger bag until she came up with her PDA. She really needed to upgrade to an all-inclusive system. A quick check of her calendar proved she was heading in the right direction, toward Genesee, but running a little late, over half an hour. No news there.

She let out a very quiet sigh, which in no way indicated her current level of stress.

He’d kissed her, and on top of everything else she had going wrong tonight, she’d liked it—a lot. So everything was A1 perfect: running late, Bleak gunning for her, Dax in the boondocks, and she’d liked kissing a guy she’d known in high school who, despite her initial hopes, had turned out to be a street gangster.

She had to be certifiable. She didn’t have a love life, true, and she resented that she’d all but told him as much, but on those nights when she dreamed about having a love life, she usually dreamed a little bigger than old muscle cars with big engines, and bad boys with big…

Oh, for the love of God and Patsy freakin’ Cline
—she brought her hand up to cover her face. She couldn’t believe she’d just thought that, about his…

Oh, hell
—there she was again, remembering his…

“Are you okay?” he asked, and under her hand, she felt her face turn hot with a blush.

No, she wasn’t okay. She was mortified. He was the first boy she’d ever seen naked, and in her naiveté, she’d thought all guys were built like him.

They weren’t.

Not even close.

“Esme?”

Not that size mattered, really, at least that’s what everyone said, but how in the hell would she know? Every guy she’d ever been with had been about the same, size-wise anyway, and she’d never been with him, not really, not with him actually…

Oh, geez, Esme,
she told herself,
grow up, get a grip.

But there was no way to get more grown-up than the thought she’d just had, of him inside her, of everything she remembered about him, and everything she’d learned about men since. The combination was sheer, erotic meltdown, a wall of heat crashing into her and washing through her body, triggering a deep, sensual reaction that was going to be her undoing, right here in his bucket seat.

He’d kissed her, and she’d been poleaxed, frozen in place, because his mouth had felt like coming home. The taste of him, the smell of him, the sound of his breath—the slow slide of his tongue over and around and down the length of hers, it had all said, “Here’s your place, girl, here with me.”

Wrong. Impossibly wrong. It just simply couldn’t be.

He’d done a great job tonight, and it had been a good decision to stick with him for the delivery to Isaac Nachman’s, but beyond that it was crazy.

Crazy to want to kiss him again, right now, while the warmth of him was still in her mouth.

Crazy to feel desire like a weight on her chest, a longing she wasn’t getting past, even though it had only been a kiss.

Just a kiss.

One kiss.

“I’m…um…feeling a headache coming on. It’ll pass. They usually do. If I just rest quietly.” And don’t talk to guys who get me hot.

She was pitiful.

Of course, not talking to guys who got her hot was her signature modus operandi. That was the problem. Almost one hundred percent of the time, she was only ever in the company of guys who didn’t get her hot—and now she knew why. Johnny Ramos was the guy who got her hot, and she hadn’t been in his company since high school.

Good God.

“Here,” he said, and she heard him lift something into the front seat from the back.

She glanced up from beneath her fingers, then reached over and took the small red canvas pack he was handing her.

The stoplight changed, and with a press of the gas pedal, the Cyclone ramped back up to chassis-shaking life.
Geezus,
she felt it everywhere, the slow, deep rumble curving around her in the seat, the sound of it sliding down her spine.

“Look in the mesh pocket inside,” he said, shifting into second gear. “You’ll find aspirin and Motrin. Take your pick. Have you had anything to eat lately? Like in the last three or four hours?”

“Uh, no.” Breakfast had been coffee. Lunch had been light, and dinner had been nonexistent.

“Well, open this up.” He stretched his arm into the backseat again and brought up the last thing she’d expected to see.

She lowered her hand from her face to take the package he was offering.

“Um, thanks.” It was an MRE—Meal, Ready to Eat. She glanced into the backseat. Four more MREs were stacked in the corner—government issue, no commercial resale allowed. A guy couldn’t just go to the grocery store and buy a few MREs to keep in his car. She should have noticed them before, and she might have, if she hadn’t been so busy noticing the Locos in the alley and trying to keep them all in view.

She had noticed how nice he kept the interior of the Cyclone. The dash looked as if it was regularly detailed with a toothbrush. Every knob and dial gleamed. There wasn’t so much as a gum wrapper in sight, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the upholstery on the seats was new. Considering what a wreck his car looked like from the outside, he took surprisingly good care of it on the inside.

He’d been taking good care of her, too. Dax had been right, and she’d noticed. Even taking her to Baby Duce’s hadn’t been a bad idea. It had given her a chance to catch her breath someplace safe—and not much could have surprised her more than that she’d been safe in Locos land.

At a clear place between a couple of cars, he pulled over to the curb and put the Cyclone in neutral before engaging the parking brake and reaching into the backseat again.

“You should have this, too. The more of it you can get down, the better you’re going to feel. I can guarantee it,” he said, bringing up an eight-pack of a bottled sport drink.

Electrolytes, just what she needed.

She let out another small sigh, watching him pull a bottle out of the plastic ring harness and unscrew the lid for her.

“Thank you,” she said and took a sip—grape, her favorite.

This was crazy.

He lifted the red pack out of her lap and unzipped the main compartment, revealing an incredibly well organized first-aid kit, of all the darn things.

Watching him, she screwed the lid back on the bottled drink, curious as hell.

“Blowout kit?” She read the label off a sealed plastic pouch in the pack. The pouch was only slightly smaller than the MRE.

“In case one of the good guys gets hurt, me included,” he said, moving aside a package of sterile bandages set above a number of elasticized bands and pockets, each of them fitted with some kind of medical supply.

“What about the bad guys?”

He let out a short laugh. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about saving the bad guys.”

A little harsh maybe, or maybe not—MREs, blowout kits and first-aid supplies, a pistol he carried concealed in a shoulder holster, for crying out loud, and the way he had of taking charge…
especially
the way he had of taking charge.

“Do people get hurt a lot in your line of work?”

“Sometimes, yeah,” he said, unzipping one of the kit’s mesh pockets.

“And what is that exactly? Your line of work, I mean.” They’d been rolling through lower downtown pretty much at a dead run for the last hour together; she figured it was time to ask, probably past time.

He gave her a brief glance, and without missing a beat said, “I’m currently between assignments.”

Oh, right. Between assignments. Sure. She’d been there.

Well, actually, she’d never been between assignments, but she could see how some gangster from RiNo could end up “between assignments.”

Bull.

He’d just given her a perfect example of misinformation by omission if she’d ever heard one—and she’d heard plenty. Some days in the private investigation business were just chock-full of all the things people
weren’t
telling you.

“You’re not one of the Locos, are you?” She just couldn’t get that to line up, him being a street thug, a gang member. It didn’t fit with what she’d been seeing since he’d walked into her dad’s office, no matter how easily he’d fit in with those guys in the alley off Delgany.

He pulled two small brand-name packets out of the mesh pocket and held them up. “Aspirin or Motrin? What do you want?”

“An answer to my question.”

He held her gaze, and, after a moment, handed her the aspirin packet. The Motrin went back in the kit. Then he took the MRE out of her lap and ripped open the top.

“Drink more of your drink,” he said, pulling a tightly sealed package out of the MRE and ripping it open as well.

She unscrewed the lid on her bottle and took another sip, and when he handed her a four-inch-square cracker, she took a bite.

“They’re a little dry,” he warned.

No kidding.

When she had about half the cracker washed down, he nodded at the aspirin packet she still had clutched in her hand.

At any time during the exchange, she could have told him that she didn’t really have a headache, but she was rather ridiculously enjoying his attention—emphasis on the ridiculous.

She took the aspirin, and when she was finished swallowing, she let her gaze slip to his mouth.

She was doomed.

It had only been a kiss, she told herself, a kiss that made her want more and more, until the more became more than just a kiss.

Her gaze drifted lower, down the strong column of his throat, down the gray T-shirt covering his chest, to his lap, to the zipper on his jeans. It had been a long time for her, since she’d been with someone, which she was absolutely positive would never have come into play tonight—except he’d kissed her, and now everything was in play, especially her response to him.

He’d grown quiet on his side of the car, and when she looked up, she found him watching her, his gaze darkly serious, his attention focused on her face.

Another wave of heat washed through her. Johnny Ramos, all grown-up, the promise of what he could be completely eclipsed by what he’d become—harder, calmer, with a solid confidence she felt coming off him with every breath he took. He wasn’t running wild anymore. He wasn’t running dice in the school parking lot or dope on the corner for the Locos. His world had gotten much bigger, whether he was between assignments or not.

“You don’t answer to Duce,” she said, so sure of it. He didn’t look like he answered to anyone who wasn’t at least as mentally strong and physically tough as he was—which she knew for a fact narrowed the field down to a couple of very specific skill sets, law enforcement and the military. He was either a cop or a soldier. It was in his bearing. She’d been picking up on it since her dad’s office, but she hadn’t put her finger on it until now. The businessmen she dealt with didn’t move like he did. They thought tactically, but their tactics revolved around making money, not survival. Lawyers jockeyed for position in court, not on the street. Accountants, like Pete Carlson, the guy whose office was next door to her dad’s in the Faber Building, or even her own accountant back in Seattle, spent their time anticipating the cost-benefit ratio of tax laws, not threats like Dovey Smollett.

Johnny moved like Dax, who would have seen Dovey zeroing in on her in a heartbeat.

“No, I don’t answer to Duce,” he admitted, handing her the other cracker from out of the package.

She took the cracker, but what she noticed was the ink peeking out from under the cuff of his shirt.

“Oh,” she said, surprised, but then quickly remembering. “I’d forgotten about that one.”

She reached out, her fingers making contact with the letter
L
inscribed on the inside of his wrist. Almost as quickly, she felt the warmth of his skin.

“This was before Dom got killed, wasn’t it?”