Crazy Sweet (2 page)

Quite the opposite, and it unnerved the hell out of Travis.

“Give me your keys,” he said, opening the door for her and glancing toward the 1967 Pontiac GTO parked in front of the bar. Chrome bumpers, bright trim, and six coats of wet-sanded and polished Signet Gold paint gleamed in the summer sunlight of late afternoon. Coralie was her name, Corinna’s sister, and with a 360-horse Ram Air 400 under the hood and a four-speed
Muncie
on deck, she was as bad as the girl who drove her.

He unlocked the car and handed Gillian in before giving back the keys.

“Straight home,” he said, making himself absolutely clear.

“Straight.” She nodded, sliding into the butter-soft, custom black leather interior.

“Five minutes.” It shouldn’t take more, not in Coralie, but he never took anything for granted, not with her.

“Two, if we blow the lights,” she said, glancing back up at him.

He grinned and shook his head.

“Not on my watch, babe. Five minutes.” He turned and headed toward his Jeep.

Behind him, he heard the GTO start up, the deep rumbling purr of her engine and headers echoing in the alley. Coralie had been a gift to Gillian from Dylan, a classic piece of muscle for the woman they’d all been too late to save. The boss had been the target that night, not a sweet-faced, tousle-haired thirty-three-year-old “wannabe” assistant trying to work her way up the ladder in General Grant’s office.

She still had a sweet face, sweetly exotic, except when seen from the muzzle end of an SR-25 rifle or her TC Contender pistol. “Sweet” wasn’t the word that came to mind in those situations. She had a Glock 17 long slide reworked to a .40 Smith & Wesson in her fanny pack, and a seven-inch Recon Tanto sheathed in her boot—razor sharp. He’d seen the clip of her folding knife hooked over her pants pocket. He knew if he looked, he’d find a 12-gauge tactical shotgun under Coralie’s front seat, a flat black beauty called “Nightshade” that Gillian kept loaded with double-ought buck and rifled slugs. Her breaching loads were in the glove box.

Two knives, a shotgun, and a semiautomatic pistol, just to visit the neighborhood bar.
Nobody
touched Red Dog. No man could get a hand on her, not on his own.

But Royce wouldn’t be alone when he came. The ex-CIA agent had recruited a dozen of the most notorious mercenaries operating on the international scene to headline his underworld organization, every one of them a hardened criminal, the kind of men who would kill each other for the right price. The DOD had dubbed them the Damn Dirty Dozen, and they were on wanted lists from
London
to
Laos
, their reputations the stuff of people’s nightmares.

Travis knew each of them by name, face, and rap sheet. He’d made it his business to know, and if Tony Royce had moved into
El Salvador
, they’d been there with him—with Red Dog not nearly far enough behind.

She was going to get herself killed, unless he got to Royce before Royce got to her—so he hunted. He followed the mercs, he followed the money, he followed the deals, always looking for the man who stayed hidden behind it all: Tony Royce. Two weeks ago, a source had pinpointed the former
U.S.
government agent in
Bangkok
, cutting a deal on illegal psychopharmaceuticals, the kind of drugs that Dr. Souk had used on Gillian. But when he and Kid had gotten to
Thailand
the trail had been cold, and it had stayed cold—until now.

She was wrong.
El Salvador
wasn’t far away, not at all. Travis could be there in a matter of hours.

Rounding the tail end of his Jeep, he glanced down at the license plate—SRCHN4U—and a brief smile twisted his lips. He’d spent his whole life searching for something—the astral plane, the perfect meditation, the solutions to other people’s problems—but nothing had ever compelled him with more deadly and serious intent than the search for the man who had destroyed Gillian Pentycote’s mind and turned her into a highly professional, highly paid, covert operator who knew herself only by the code name Red Dog.

CHAPTER

2

G
ILLIAN PUSHED OPEN the heavy iron door leading to her loft above the
Commerce City
garage and dropped her duffel bag just inside on the floor. There were locks on the door, but she didn’t bother to use them. Her name painted in red across the dull gray metal was enough to keep out the local riffraff. Nobody in
Commerce City
wanted to get on Red Dog’s bad side. She was a little too sketchy, a little too mysterious, with a street rep for having more firepower than anyone could possibly need merely for self-defense. The reputation was well earned; the rumors told were true, and every gangster on the north side knew it. They also knew she had friends, friends like Christian Hawkins and Creed Rivera, and in
Denver
,
Colorado
, it only took one of those names to guarantee her security—her absolute, total security.

Only an outsider would come for her here, and that’s exactly what she was hoping for.

Striding quickly across the large room, she headed for a Japanese cupboard sitting by itself against the far wall between the open kitchen area and the fireplace. There were a hundred small drawers in the cupboard, each one with a
kanji
carved into its surface, each one of them wishing her something nice: long life, good fortune, health, wealth, happiness, peace, joy, comfort, love, compassion, mercy, justice, and on, and on, and on, all the good things.

Lydia
Shore
had given her the cupboard, brought it back with her from a recent trip to
Osaka
.
Lydia
and her husband, Alan, were nice. Gillian liked them, even if their connection to her was nothing more than a confusing blur. Regardless, she’d instantly been taken with the woman’s gift, with the cupboard’s warm, worn wooden drawers, with each one’s intricately cast bronze handle, with the ancientness of the piece. Two hundred and fifty years old,
Lydia
had told her, so old, so sturdy, and yet with a softness about it.

Gillian liked soft things, insisted on them. The only hard things she allowed in her life were her weapons—and her weapons were very hard. Sharp. Clean. Loaded. Lethal.

Running her fingers over the drawers, she stopped at number forty-three, Tony Royce’s drawer, and pulled it open. A small pile of newspaper clippings were tucked inside, each with the paper’s name, place of publication, and date. She took the latest addition out of her back pocket and laid it on top of the others:
La Prensa;
San Luis
,
El Salvador
;
and yesterday’s date.

She’d been too late to get him in her sights, missed him by two days, but he’d been there in his new Central American lair, the monster who hid in the back of her brain and lunged out of the muddy darkness of her memories to sabotage her.

She’d left him a message. One he wouldn’t miss. One he couldn’t resist. This time, he would come for her.

She was counting on it with everything she had.

Royce wasn’t the only monster who haunted the dark recesses of her mind, but the other man, Dr. Souk, was dead. She knew it deep down in her gut. Every time she saw the sallow-faced doctor standing next to Royce, leaning over her with a syringe in his hand, she also saw a bullet rip through his chest.

It was a comfort.

Such a comfort to know he was dead, no matter how much blood filled the image.

And yes, she knew she was a strange woman not to mind Souk’s blood, but the white room had been splattered with lots of blood by then. Even stranger, sometimes, if she moved slowly enough in her dreams, carefully enough, she could turn her head and follow the path of the bullet back through the air—back across the endless sea of pain to where it had come from, back to the angel, to the gun in his hand, to the cold calculation in his eyes and the hard, brutally calm set of his face.

And sometimes she was able to keep going back—back out the door, out of the building, back through the woods…
back, back, back…before
—

She let out a soft curse and closed the drawer. She never got out of the woods. Never.

Never got away from the men who had hauled her down the path, dragging her toward the lights and the building in the trees, into the white room. Always there was so much…
white
.

Shit!
A spasm of pain shot down her arm, instantly drawing every tendon tight, automatically clenching her hand into a fist—her gun hand.
Goddamn.
Dreams, memories, and the white room were no place for her to go when she’d been pushing herself so hard, when she was tired.

Another spasm ripped through her, tightening her arm even more, and she gasped.

It hurt. It always hurt, but she didn’t panic. She never panicked over reality and the goddamn aftereffects of being injected with XT7. The stuff was never going to go away, not completely, not ever. She’d been the Lab Rat of the Year for two years running over at Walter Reed. There was a doctor there, Dr. Brandt, who tested her every month. He was brilliant, insightful, and kind, too kind not to give her hope.

But she knew how the cards lay, so she dealt with the pain, and saved her panic for Royce. That boy was going away someday, with one of her match-grade bullets through his head. Sometimes he ate her alive with panic and terror, his scream of pain twisting his face and echoing in her ear, blood flowing from a gash that started above his eyebrow and went all the way to his jaw.

Skeeter had done that to him, caught him with her knife and laid his face open.

Taking a breath, she shifted her attention from her rigid tendons to her pulse, and with every beat of her heart, she let space and softness flow down through her veins. Her body had been such a wreck until Superman had made her strong and Angel had taught her how to breathe.

The seconds passed with her heartbeat, one after the other. When the door to the loft swung open, she looked toward it.

No panic. She knew who it was. Angel had been on her tail all the way from Beck’s, driving the crappy old Jeep Skeeter barely kept together for him. The Jeep spent more time at
738 Steele Street
than he did.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” His gaze immediately went to her arm, but he didn’t say anything. He knew what she needed, and it wasn’t talk, not when it came to her arm.

She watched him cross the room, her gaze following every step he took, following the ease with which he unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. With a small toss, the shirt ended up in a pile next to her bed, a built-up pallet on the floor covered with layer upon layer of soft blankets, cotton sheets, silk pillows, chenille throws, and a gossamer canopy in rich shades of green and gold.

His shoulder holster came off next, and he set it and his pistol on a table by the bed. Then he reached back and pulled his T-shirt off over the top of his head. With another toss, it landed on top of his collared shirt.

Angel
…his hands went to his belt, and her heart started to slow, the softness in her veins to deepen.

He was beautiful, exquisitely so, his dark blond hair tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, his face more rugged than it once had been, his body more starkly chiseled than in most of the paintings she’d seen of him, angel paintings done by his friend Nikki Chronopolous.

She owned two of Nikki’s paintings: an ascending angel, where he appeared almost transparent, he was so shot through with golden light, and a descending angel. Dark and tortured, lost and falling, the descending angel reminded her of what she’d been when she’d first woken up into her nightmare.

Another spasm of pain rolled down the length of her arm, less severe, but enough to pull a soft groan out of her.

He turned, still unbuckling his belt, and cocked his head toward an open arch in the wall on the other side of the bed. “You want to do this?”

She nodded silently. He knew she did.

His hands moved to the top button on the fly of his jeans, and when she didn’t move, he spoke again.

“Do you need help?” His fingers moved down to the second button, then the next one.

Yes. Oh, yes.
Her gaze followed the last button as he slipped it open. She watched the slide of his pants down his legs, watched him toe out of his boots and step out of his jeans, and leave everything, including his boxers, in a pile on the floor.

He was so unabashed, years younger than she, and so still, even in motion. She loved his stillness, the calm ease with which he moved and thought, and he thought a lot, about everything. He was highly intelligent, highly educated, compassionate, kind, philosophical, generous, and absolutely deadly—lethally skilled.

And until Royce came for her, he was still hers. A couple more weeks at the best, only days if her plan had worked.

She knew the cost of what she’d done in San Luis. Part of it was going to be leaving Angel behind. He deserved better than a life on the run—and once she killed Royce, she would be running hard until the day she died.

He started toward her, naked, pulling the band off his ponytail and dragging both of his hands back through his hair…
Angel
.

Her pulse picked up, a slow hum of desire replacing her pain. He was so good for her.

She knew he hunted Royce and planned on killing him if the chance arose, but that would never do. The monster was hers to slay. There was no other way.

Angel…angel…angel—
he was everything she’d clung to so desperately as the pain and the drugs had slowly eaten away at her memories, destroying the years of her life and making them disappear. It was his image she’d conjured against the agony, his name she’d formed in her mind to combat the fear.

He touched a switch on the wall next to the cupboard, and warm, subdued light filled the arch behind the bed, revealing a glassed-in shower, an open shelf full of soft, peach-colored towels, and the curved recesses of a large, jetted bathtub.

Circling behind her, he slid his hands around her waist and took hold of the bottom of her shirt. He had strong, large hands, sure hands.

“Lift up,” he said.

She did the best she could, and he gently pulled her shirt off over her head. Another easy toss landed the soft pile of sheer red silk on top of his T-shirt. The black lace bra came off next, and his hands came around to cup her breasts.

With a sigh, she relaxed back against his naked chest, resting her head in the crook of his shoulder, letting him play with her. His mouth came down on the side of her neck, his tongue laving her skin, his fingertips brushing across her nipples, and she relaxed even more deeply against him.

He was so good for her.

He moved his hands to the top of her zipper, and with her help, they got her out of her jeans and boots. Then he did a panty switch on her, slipping the new scrap of boy-cut lace up her legs and over her hips: a perfect fit.

His gifts always made her feel so sweet—and so sweetly bad.

She arched up on her toes, the pain in her arm drifting away as his hand slid around her waist and down between her legs, under the lace. He cupped her there, pulling her close against him, against his arousal.

A groan slipped free from her mouth. God, how she loved him, how she loved this—being close, knowing they’d soon be even closer, with him deep inside her.

He parted her with his fingers, touched her, and a wave of melting pleasure washed through her, leaving a slight tremor in its wake.

He understood.

“Come on, baby.” He pulled his hand out from between her legs and swung her up into his arms, holding her close.

A light dusting of dark brown hair covered his chest, and she ran her fingers through it. He grinned at her and tightened his hold.

She loved his smile, the warmth of it, the ingenuousness of it. When he smiled, the hardness of the last two years slipped away from him, and he looked more like the angels in the paintings, more like what he’d been before the night their lives had changed. He’d been her salvation that night, and her redemption ever since. Only the direst circumstances could ever take her from his side, could make her walk away and never look back—and she wouldn’t be looking back. Not once. She’d sworn it.

He carried her straight into the shower, panties and all, and started a warm stream of water pouring over them—and then he started in on her with his hands. “Sexual imprinting” he called his massage technique, a hands-on method of physical and emotional therapy he’d refined over the last two years to be specifically sexual, and specifically for her.