Crazy Hot (7 page)

Why was Denver's newest crime lord fretting over a bunch of old bones?

As for the pimp, Hawkins knew Benny-Boy Jackman personally, and he didn't care what the cops threatened or promised, Benny-Boy wasn't going to talk. Desiree hadn't been the first girl Benny-Boy had ever lost. She'd just been the first he'd lost to a knife. It hadn't been pretty.

Watch your back.
Hawkins's mouth curved in a mocking grin, and he knocked another cigarette out of his pack. He hadn't lived as long as he had and survived two years in the pen without watching his back.

When Leeder drove away, Hawkins glanced back at the metal door and reached for his lighter. He couldn't leave the old man alone, not all night. He'd been watching McKinney for the last two weeks, and the doc's mind wandered . . . a lot, maybe too much. He didn't drive, either. One of the first things he'd done after showing up at Lafayette was hand over his car keys. There'd been no explanation offered, and Hawkins hadn't asked. Hell, the Porsche the old guy had been driving was Dylan's.

Hawkins pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and punched in a number. As it rang, he checked his watch. Johnny Ramos should still be at SDF's garage in Commerce City.

“Yo,” Ramos answered on the third ring.

“Johnny, it's Hawkins. I need a favor.” He could almost see the younger guy's grin come out in full bloom. Johnny “the negotiator” Ramos ought to be his name.

“Sure, Superman,” Johnny said, already sounding overly confident.

Superman.
“I'm at a warehouse just off the Lafayette exit. How soon can you get here?” He bent his head to the lighter and lit up the cigarette.

“Depends what I'm driving.”

Hawkins could have called that one the minute he'd decided to tag Johnny.

“You'll be driving your pickup. I'll need you all night, watching an old man and a dozen crates.” He took a drag off the cigarette, before taking it out of his mouth and flicking off the ash.

“Roxanne,” Johnny said succinctly, naming his price. “Next Friday night.”

Okay, he'd seen it coming, and he might have to bite the bullet—but not without some negotiating of his own.

“Betty's the one you want for Friday-night cruising. All the girls love Betty. Roxanne will just scare them off.”

“Not the girl I'm thinking about.”

Well, that was actually a little bit alarming. Any girl who wasn't scared off by Roxanne was probably more than a seventeen-year-old boy could handle, even if that seventeen-year-old boy was Johnny Ramos.

“How's school going?”

“I finish classes next week and I'm back at East High in the fall.”

“Probation? How's that going?”

“Clean as a whistle,” the boy said easily. Maybe too easily. It was hard to give up the cash of a few quick deals, harder yet to stay away from your old buddies in the 'hood.

“You know what I'm getting at, don't you?” Hawkins knew Johnny better than Johnny knew himself, knew what it was like to get a chance to get off the streets, and knew, too, what it was like to screw that chance up.

He also had a fine appreciation for Roxanne. He knew why the boy wanted her.

“Yes, sir.”

That sounded more like what Hawkins was looking for.

He rubbed a hand across his brow, thinking, weighing his choices, weighing Johnny. He lowered his hand and absently noted the blue tattoo arcing up the length of his arm. It went from the back of his hand to under his T-shirt, then it tracked across his back and worked down his other arm to just past his wrist.

What he didn't know about misspent youth hadn't been written.

“No racing,” he told Johnny, making his decision. “No high-octane even if you're not racing, and no leaving the state.”

“Agreed.” The boy didn't hesitate, which Hawkins didn't find in the least bit reassuring.

“No track racing. No street racing. No drag racing. No racing your grandmother to the end of the block.”

“Dusk to dawn,” Johnny vowed.

“Okay,” Hawkins said with effort, knowing he didn't have much of a choice. “I'll see you in an hour.”

He hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket, his gaze going to the Sublime Green low-slung beauty sitting in the hot summer sun, the steam rising around her tires. Roxanne. She was a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T. He'd bought her a few months ago off a dealer in Naperville, Illinois, who'd only raced her on Sundays, invariably in the low-thirteen-second zone. At Steele Street, he and Skeeter had already knocked another second off that. Roxanne was a verifiable earthbound cruise missile—and he was going to let Johnny Ramos drive her on Friday night.

If he'd needed any more proof of his commitment to Uncle Sam's welfare, he'd just gotten it. No matter how many rules he laid down, Ramos and Roxanne were a combination guaranteed to smoke.

“
Skeeter to Superman. Skeeter to Superman
,” a faint voice came to him from inside Roxanne.

I'll be damned,
he thought, pushing off the building and heading over to the car. His laptop gizmo was working.

C
HAPTER

7

F
EEDING HER HAD BEEN
a good idea, Quinn thought, watching Regan pick her way around a hamburger and a plate of fries. She wasn't eating much, but she did have a little color back in her face. The temperature had started dropping with the sun and their ascent into the mountains, so she'd changed out of her wet clothes in the restaurant's bathroom. He couldn't complain. The pale yellow shirt she'd put on was pretty, especially on her, real pretty, with short, lace-edged sleeves and a lace-edged collar. This morning, if anyone had asked him if he'd liked lace, he'd have told them only if it was black, skimpy, and coming off.

Now he was expanding his horizons.

The same went for little buttons. He was ready to prostrate himself at the baptismal font of little pearly buttons like the ones running all the way down the front of her shirt, ready to sacrifice himself on the altar of her mid-thigh-length jean skirt. He'd never gotten so much mileage out of a bag of ice, had never imagined pleasantly erotic possibilities even existed in a five-pound bag of frozen water.

He needed to get over it. Regan McKinney probably hadn't given him a second thought after the Rabbit Valley camp, and the only reason she was with him now was because of Wilson. She'd come to him with a problem, obviously against her better judgment. He made her nervous as hell, and he didn't blame her. The situation they were in made him nervous as hell, too.

He'd caught a couple of her sidelong glances while they'd been driving. He'd noticed every time she'd wrapped her arms around herself, taken a deep breath, and tried to steel herself against the craziness of the day—the slight lifting of her chin, the forced straight-ahead gaze. She'd be good for a few minutes before the façade would start crumbling, before her chest would lift on a heavy sigh and her hand would rise to her hair, trying to tuck in a loose strand here or there. Then she'd take another deep breath, tighten her arms, and start building her defenses all over again.

She was tired. She was scared. She was worried about her grandfather.

She was breaking his heart, and he still thought she was sexy, sitting in a corner booth with a picture-window view of Vail and the valley behind her. He hoped the food would help her relax, maybe make her drowsy enough to doze off. If his driving made her uneasy in broad daylight, rocketing over the mountains in the dark was guaranteed to give her a new religion. He'd offered her wine with her dinner, but hadn't been surprised when she'd turned him down. She was careful. He'd figured that much out, careful with what she said, careful with her buttons, and her clothes, and her modesty, careful with her accusations, too damn careful with the decision she hadn't yet made about what she was going to tell her sister, Nikki—whether to run or stick. So no. Drinking wine in the company of a gun-toting car thief was not a careful thing to do.

He wasn't used to explaining himself, but he needed to explain a few things to her. He needed her to call Nikki, and had figured getting her out of the car for half an hour could only help. God knew she'd needed a break. Jeanette was no Cadillac. She was a beast, and riding in her meant riding hard. By the time they'd reached Vail, Regan had looked like she was coming apart at the seams, so he'd pulled off at Jake's, the first place he'd seen with good food, fast service, and a parking lot in the rear.

“Andy's fries are famous from one end of the valley to the other,” he said, watching her push another french fry to the side of her plate.

She looked up. “Andy?” The simplicity of the question couldn't hide her wariness.

Yep, he definitely made her nervous. He was sure she was going over everything in her mind and still couldn't exactly figure out how in the hell she'd ended up with him and Jeanette. Things had moved pretty fast in Cisco.

“Andy ‘Jake' Johnson, World Cup downhill racer. He took the Big Three a few years back. Homegrown Colorado boy. He owns this place.”

“Jake Johnson.” The delicate arches of her eyebrows drew together, her brow furrowing. “I remember him. He's from Boulder. Everyone thought he would take gold in the Olympics. Then he quit the team. You know him?”

“We shared a house in West Vail one winter.” He grinned. “Damn near killed me.”

Her eyebrows rose, and with good reason. Jake Johnson was notorious for high living, fast women, and the kind of shenanigans that would, and did, land lesser mortals in jail. There had been one incident with an aging movie star's young wife that had been tabloid fodder for weeks.

“Yes, well, that's a pretty fast life,” she said, trying to hide her surprise and maybe a little relief. Under normal circumstances, Jake Johnson would probably not be considered much of a character reference. At least not one who would impress her, he was sure.

“The people who live it think so,” he said, his grin turning into a wry curve.

“And you don't?”

He shook his head. “Fast is twice the speed of sound above thirty thousand feet.”

He watched his words sink in, saw the flicker of understanding cross her face, saw her tension ease, and knew he was on the right track. U.S. military hero was more in her comfort zone. He'd figured as much, but he hated to lead with his trump card in the credential department. His only trump card.

“You drive like a fighter pilot,” she said. It didn't sound like a compliment the way she said it, but his grin broadened anyway.

“Yeah, but Jeanette and I have never been shot down.” And they hadn't, not ever, not on the streets, not on the track, not in the quarter-mile.

Her head came up, the gray of her eyes bordering on violet as they met his, and for the first time her expression lacked the wariness she'd worn all day.

“You were all over the news,” she said, leaning slightly forward, her own predicament suddenly forgotten. “We couldn't believe it at first. That it was you. It was amazing, really, that you survived.”

“It was one hell of a ride,” he admitted. He didn't mind talking about his last great flying-ace disaster, if it helped her relax a little.

“We read all the stories. Wilson even had the
Newsweek
cover framed. He keeps it in his office at home.”

He let out a laugh. “I definitely got my fifteen minutes' worth of fame out of losing a twenty-million-dollar jet.”

Her brow furrowed again. “They didn't blame you for what happened, did they? None of the news reports we saw mentioned anything about pilot error.”

“No.” He reached for his coffee. “The investigation cleared me of any wrongdoing. The missile had been fired without radar. By the time I knew I'd been targeted, it was too late. The damn thing was only a couple of seconds away from my fuselage. When it hit, the whole plane came apart around me.”

“I can't even imagine what it must have been like, to be blown out of the sky.” She leaned even closer over the table, her voice softly sympathetic, her gaze darkening with concern—her breasts pushing toward the scoop top of her little lacy shirt. She'd fixed her hair in the bathroom, gotten it all back up in a tidy ponytail, but as she spoke, an errant strand slipped free and fell in a silken curve to her chin.

Something inside Quinn turned over, and it was all he could do not to lean over and take her mouth with his, to slide his fingers up into the silver and gold silk of her hair and bend her into his kiss. He wondered if there was a name for this kind of reaction to a woman. Obsession might cover it. Horny certainly did. When she looked at him all gray-eyed and tenderhearted, like she wanted to take care of him, make it all better, he wanted nothing more than to give her the chance—every chance.

Telling himself to slow down, way down, he stayed put on his side of the table and did no more than hold her gaze. He did have a point he was trying to make, and maybe he better just make it.

“Kid was one of the Marines who dropped behind enemy lines to rescue me,” he said.

“The boy wonder?”

A quick grin turned the corner of his mouth. “He was only eighteen, but I can guarantee you he didn't think of himself as a boy then, and he sure as hell doesn't now. He carried me out of there on his back, under fire. You can trust Kid with Nikki, Regan. He's smart and effective, and one of the most highly trained weapons experts in the world. If protecting her is his mission, somebody would have to kill him to get to her.”

Her face paled again at his words. “And you think this Vince Branson is the kind of man who might try to harm my sister?”

“Branson will hurt anybody who gets in his way.”

“Because of you and those cars.” It was a flat condemnation.

“No.” He shook his head, his decision already made. At seven o'clock, he wanted Kid glued to Nikki McKinney, whatever it took. If Roper's goons were on the hunt, there wasn't any room for second guesses. “Because of a load of dinosaur bones I stole off the Burlington Northern.”

For a long moment, she just looked at him.

“What?” she finally asked, as if she thought she must have misunderstood him.

“We were looking for stolen goods, but I think there were fossils in the crates.”

“Fossils? Stolen goods? What kind of stolen goods? And what do they have to do with my grandfather?”

He could tell by the look on her face that none of what he was saying made sense.

“Some government stuff, very hush-hush. I could tell you more, but . . .” He let the sentence trail off with a grin and a lift of his eyebrows.

“Then you'd have to kill me?” She didn't look worried. She looked like she thought he was nuts.

“The stuff we've been looking for was stolen in April, and two weeks ago, we thought we'd found it all on a train in Denver.”

“But you ended up with dinosaur bones instead?”

“I think so, yeah. And one of my partners must have asked Wilson for help with the fossils.”

“No.” She shook her head, adamant. “Impossible. No dinosaur bones came into Denver two weeks ago. No dinosaur bones were scheduled to come to Denver two weeks ago. I would have known.”

“You?” Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Why you?”

“I'm a fossil preparator for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. If there were bones coming into Denver, they would have been coming to us.”

Quinn sat back in the booth, intrigued. So that's what she did all day, scraped away at little flecks of rock, millimeter by millimeter, exposing two-hundred-million-year-old skeletons. He had to admit it was a good job for a careful person—and enough to drive anyone else crazy.

“Unless the fossils were being used to pay for a stolen shipment of government goods,” he said. “You wouldn't have known about those.”

“Dinosaur bones as illegal tender?” She looked extremely doubtful. “It doesn't make sense. Dinosaur fossils, especially unprepared ones, aren't exactly a top black-market item. They can weigh hundreds of pounds, are sometimes nearly impossible to free from the rock, and aren't necessarily worth much except in the scientific sense, unless they're a spectacular or unique find. They're not pre-Columbian pottery. You've seen them. You were there that summer at Rabbit Valley.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I saw a lot of things that summer.”

He shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have let a slow grin curve his mouth when he did, but the soft wash of color staining her cheeks was worth it. He'd never seen a prettier shade of pink.

R
EGAN
felt the heat flood her face and would have given anything not to be blushing like a schoolgirl. Anything. Damn him. She'd wondered exactly how much he remembered about the night he'd walked into her tent, and now she knew. Everything. And all of it was showing in his cat-in-the-cream smile.

He was impossible, utterly impossible, with his wild story and wilder Camaro. Dinosaur bones and stolen government goods, and Jeanette and Betty, for crying out loud. She'd never known anyone who named his car, let alone every car he owned. And he was dangerous, unquestionably dangerous. He'd slipped on a shoulder holster and covered it with a denim shirt before entering the restaurant. She was eating dinner with a man carrying a concealed weapon—who had seen her naked.

A second wave of mortification rolled through her, and she wanted nothing more than to excuse herself, incredibly graciously, and walk away from him and never, ever, have to see him again.

But she still had to find Wilson, and every time Quinn Younger opened his mouth, she knew that no matter how awful the day had become, she'd been right to go to Cisco. If she was honest with herself, she also had to admit the truly awful part of the whole mess was that she remembered plenty about that night, too. Plenty.

Embarrassed enough by her own memories, let alone his, she shifted her gaze from the table to the window and the mountains beyond. He'd been sixteen, pure adolescent renegade, and in her whole life, no one had ever looked at her as hotly as he had that night, standing there in her tent with his lazy, hip-shot stance and heavy-lidded gaze. His T-shirt had been white and clean, his arms hard and browned by the sun, the veins running down his forearms to the backs of his hands readily visible. His eyes had been so green, green fire, and they'd touched her everywhere, licked her skin like a flame, frightening her and exciting her at the same time. It had been better than sex. Better, at least, than any sex she'd ever had—which she well knew was a pitiful comment on her marriage. Her fault, Scott had assured her with his ego and arrogance intact. She just didn't have what it took—whatever the hell that meant. He'd been a little short on particulars.