Loose And Easy

“Um, no, Joh

She was, he assumed, referring to the scratch on Ramos’s face.

He got the picture, loud and clear, and he was fascinated. Easy was not easy, and in less than five hours, Joh

He checked his watch. “We should leave here about four-thirty, which gives us a couple of hours. If somebody would like to start a pot of coffee, I think we should go over our plan for the meeting and count the cash,” he said. “I can guarantee you that Bleak is going to count it. Is that Dovey Smollett I saw in the Buick LeSabre?” When he’d gotten to the corner of Vine and Hoover, he’d noticed the stakeout and called Esme for further directions to the safe house. Charo was currently safely parked in the building’s garage, with Smollett none the wiser.

“Yes, sir,” Ramos said, nearly snapping to attention.

Okay. Time for a little attitude adjustment, so to speak. Three tours of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dax guessed he wasn’t surprised the kid had heard his name. He’d certainly seen recognition on the young guy’s face when Esme had introduced him as her partner, Dax Killian.

“You can forget any of those stories you heard in the Sandbox, Ranger,” he said. Hell, if even half the stories had been true, Dax might have been impressed himself-but more than half of them weren’t. Only a couple were true, but apparently, a couple were more than enough.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tonight we’re just a couple of guys with a job to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rangers, Dax thought. You had to love the Rangers.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Five A.M., party time, Esme thought, sliding out of the Cyclone’s front seat. Joh

Dax followed her out of the car, coming from the backseat, carrying a small duffel bag loaded with the eighty-two thousand dollars. Exactly eighty-two thousand dollars-they’d counted it twice.

Charo had been parked two blocks over with the key under her front seat, safely snugged rear-endfirst into a loading dock at the long abandoned Geiss Fastener building, a backup escape, if things didn’t exactly go according to plan.

It happened-like in Bangkok, where her perfect plan for recovering a small fourteenth-century gold Buddha had gone awry and she’d ended up faceto-face with Erich Warner. Unfortunately, Shoko hadn’t been far behind. She of the one name and the many knives hated other women with a cold and ruthless passion-and she was here in Denver, unless Otto had been a hit-and-run, and she and Warner were already gone, headed back on Warner’s private jet to any one of half a dozen elaborate mansions he owned around the world. Warner wouldn’t be happy, not about losing the Meinhard, but as long as Esme’s name stayed out of it, she didn’t give a damn if Warner was happy or not.

Somebody else wasn’t very happy this morning, and even though she cared very much about that person, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Joh

She had overruled his plan to leave her behind in the safe house and have just him and Dax go into Bleak’s with Baby Duce and a couple of Locos, and bring in some guy named Sparky Klimaszewski to pull strings and jerk Bleak’s chain on the side.

To her amazement, Dax had gri

She glanced at the duffel bag and hoped to hell that eighty-two thousand hard-earned dollars and the name Lindsey Larson were enough to do the job.

Eighty-two damn thousand dollars-what in the hell had Burt Alden been doing to get himself into Franklin Bleak for eighty-two thousand dollars? Joh

So here he was, trying for the fourth time to make a call that was really going to cost him, and instead of negotiating to get Franklin off his ass, he was going to be working a deal to get Franklin off Alden’s. For his trouble, he could count on owning the top slot on Sparky’s short list for a long time and being on Bleak’s until hell froze over, a price he was more than willing to pay if Klimaszewski would just wake the hell up and answer his damn phone.

“This better be my wife,” Sparky finally answered on the third ring, sounding half asleep and maybe hung-over, with a real crabby edge to his voice.

“What’s the matter, old man, did Carol A

“Joh

“I’m at Franklin Bleak’s warehouse.”

“Why?” Sparky asked. “You know better than to lay a bet with Bleak.”

“I’m not laying a bet. You had it right the first time. I’ve got some trouble that needs clearing up.”

“Then you need Superman, boy, not me,” Sparky said.

Superman? Christian Hawkins? Joh

“No, Sparky. I just need you.”

“For what?” The old man sounded damn suspicious, and Joh

“I’ve got a friend who’s into Bleak real deep. We’ve got the cash to clear the debt, but Bleak’s threatening payback with interest. I need you to call him off.”

His request was met with a long moment of silence, and then another, and another. Joh

“I’ve got some stuff I can use on Bleak, sure, but it isn’t going to come cheap.” Sparky didn’t sound half asleep or hung-over now. Oh, no. The chop-shop king of Denver was wide-awake and firing on all cylinders.

“How bad are you going to hit me?”

“Three cars,” Sparky said without hesitation. “I’ve already got them scouted. All you have to do is go and pick them up. Piece of cake for you, Joh

Yeah, Joh