Crazy Sweet (17 page)

“Where did Mitzi call you from?” he finally asked. In his experience, there weren’t too many women in El Salvador named Mitzi.

“Washington.”

“D.C.?”

“
Um-hmmm,
” she said, scooping chocolate on another chip and holding it up to his mouth.

“Can I borrow it?” he asked, then opened up and took the chip, just to feel the brush of her fingertips again. It was a cheap shot, but he loved it. “I have an important call I need to make.” That was one way to put it, he guessed, one kind of understated, incredibly stupid, oversimplified way.

“Sure,” she said, handing the phone over and fixing him another chip. “Just don’t talk long, if that’s okay. I’m running a little low on the battery, and Julia will probably check in with me sooner or later since I haven’t shown up at the church yet tonight.”

And she wasn’t going to be showing up at the damn church tonight, period. He’d thrown that damn plan out the minute she’d told him, when she’d first come out of the bathroom. Carting a quarter of a million dollars across San Luis in a fricking tote bag would be fine, if it was him doing the toting. But asking Honey to do it bordered on the insane, something he was going to make very clear to Sister Julia and Father Bartolo in the morning, when he
would
be the one toting and delivering the orphan money. He’d promised her, just to keep her from trying to do it on her own, and maybe just so he could sleep at night for the rest of his life.

Orphan money.
Geezus.
He was supposed to be down here tracking Red Dog,
la cazadora espectral,
and keeping tabs on Tony motherfucking Royce—not saving orphans.

And all he’d needed to do was make one lousy phone call to an annex of the Pentagon to confirm with a general of the United States Army that he’d tracked the general’s black ops contractor to the last goddamn place she should have been, and found out that the international criminal who had destroyed her life was not in residence, but that she’d left her address so he could look her up back home in Colorado.

General Grant needed to know it. Christian Hawkins needed to know it, and like it or not, Dylan Hart needed to know it—and once the
info
rmation got to Hart, Smith could guarantee that Red Dog was going to wish she’d thought twice about those cans of red spray paint she’d used on Royce’s villa.

HONEY was running out of time and ideas. She really didn’t think she could put him to sleep with chocolate-covered potato chips and orange juice, but he’d turned down her offer of more liquor, and she didn’t have it in her to slip him a Xanax.

She just didn’t.
Dammit
.

She hadn’t lied to him, not really, but there was a bit more to Julia’s story than orphans, and his really sweet offer of taking the money to St. Mary’s in the morning wasn’t going to work.

She had until three A.M. to get to the church, and not a minute later, or Julia would be gone, and she wouldn’t have her money, and Honey would never forgive herself.

C. Smith Rydell pushed off the bed and took her phone with him into the bathroom, but unlike her, when she’d secretly made her last three phone calls under the pretext of potty breaks, he didn’t close the door.

She was thinking he might have the instincts of a Rottweiler, or a bullmastiff, some kind of highly bred guard dog. Honestly, she didn’t know what would make him think he needed to keep an eye on her, or why in the world he would care what she did—but he was watching her like a hawk, like she might make a dash for it.

Which was exactly what she was trying to figure out how to do—to make a dash out the door, down the street, and into the god-awful fray to save the sister she loved.

Sometimes Honey hated her mother, and never more so than when Julia Ann-Marie was in trouble up to her neck and sinking fast. Maternal neglect had been the problem from the get-go. There were three brothers between her and Julia, but Honey didn’t remember ever paying the boys too much mind. They’d all gotten plenty of attention. They were the York-Lyttons who would make sure the world didn’t run out of York-Lyttons for at least another generation—God forbid. Sometimes Honey wasn’t sure the world was noticing nearly as much as her father thought or was hoping.

But then one day, something new had come into the York household, the softest, tiniest, pinkest bundle of baby Honey had ever seen, and everything in her ten-year-old heart had instantly fallen in love.

Julia had been hers from the first tiny spoonful of cereal Honey had put in her mouth, until Honey had pulled her out of that blood-splattered elevator in the Hotel Langston on the island of Malanca off the coast of Honduras two years ago. Julia’s husband had been crumpled in the corner, his body torn apart by the same kind of gunfire Honey could hear out on the street in San Luis.

That was the day Honey had lost her.

She was getting ready to lose her all over again, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Talk about a goddamn hard lesson to learn.

Julia had chosen a path Honey could barely comprehend, but she could ease her way. A quarter of a million dollars in small bills went a helluva long way in Central America, whether a person was fixing orphanages or supporting the families of farmers displaced by a consortium of coffee corporations, the church’s newest rallying point against a government trying to usurp its power.

Honey was all for helping people. It was Julia’s hands-on approach to saving the sick, feeding the hungry, and easing other people’s suffering through prayer and judicious infusions of cash that made her lose sleep at night, because it could take a frightful toll.

It had taken a frightful toll.

Politics was a deadly game, especially in the Third World, the world Julia’s young doctor husband had meddled in too deeply, trying to change things that couldn’t be changed, trying to improve the lot of people whose lot in life couldn’t be improved. Dr. Carl Bakkert had made Honey look like a realist, and that was a tragic statement on the frightful depths of idealism some people could sink to and still not be prepared for the consequences.

So here she was, running out of time and short on ideas, and wondering why, with all the huge problems she was dealing with, one of the biggest seemed to be that Smith was cute.

Really cute, in a bigger, badder, faster, stronger, smarter sort of way that she could guarantee caught a lot of women’s attention. It had caught hers from the moment she’d seen him sitting in front of the cantina. Sure, he’d looked like a thousand other slackers she’d seen in dozens of other tropical beach towns all over the world, but not quite—not with that body, and not with the calmly cold expression he’d had on his face. As relaxed as he’d been, he’d looked like a man on a mission.

She shouldn’t have been surprised he’d been the one to reach her first when she’d been running from all those men. Everything about C. Smith Rydell said he was used to winning, to getting what he wanted—and he wanted her.

She knew it, which just made the whole “cute” problem that much worse. She was only in El Salvador for one reason, and it was not to find herself attracted to some mysterious guy in serious need of a haircut—no matter how cute he was, no matter how thick and dark his eyelashes were, no matter that every time she looked at his mouth, all she could think was…trouble.

But he’d saved her almost before she’d even known she needed saving, thinking way ahead of the game, being kind of romantically heroic, yelling at those guys through the door, ready to take it all to the next level. Whatever it took.

And he had that whole “I’m in charge—get used to it” attitude that normally would have had her explaining a few of the realities of life to him—except he was the biggest wall of reality she’d ever run into. She didn’t understand it. She just knew it, and it was a comfort, to wash up against that much solid confidence and know it wasn’t going to let her down, at least not in a hotel room in San Luis in the middle of a riot.

And then there was the heat.

God, the heat.

Every time he sat down next to her, it was all she could do not to squirm—but she wouldn’t. Honoria York-Lytton did not squirm, especially in front of men, and most especially not in front of strange men. And yet it was wonderful. And it was awful. It was the kind of heat that got girls in trouble—and it was happening with him.

She needed to get a grip. Heat and Smith were not her problems. Her problem was that she was going out the door and into the street, one way or the other, and in her heart she knew that even with the map she had in her tote, and even if she managed to get her gun and her bullet back, it was going to be damn hard getting to the church.

Damn hard.

Dangerous.

Rain in the mountains had washed out the road Julia and Father Bartolo had been taking from the rebel camp, so they were running as late as Honey, and every hour later that it got was one less hour Honey would have with Julia before she disappeared again, for God knew how long. It had been eight months, two weeks, and five days since the last time Honey had seen her, and the thought of going that long again broke her heart right down to the center of her soul.

Julia was hers.

She did not want to be late, and it was two miles to St. Mary’s from the Royal Suites Hotel. The Hotel Palacio was only a couple of blocks closer. With detours to take into account, she wanted an hour to get there. She wanted to be waiting when Julia showed up.

So here she was, in a hotel room on a sweltering summer night in a tropical country coming apart at the seams, with only a couple of hours before she threw herself into the breach and committed a crime that would probably get her shot by the local government, if she didn’t manage that all by herself getting to St. Mary’s.

And there was C. Smith Rydell, the Rock of Gibraltar with a pair of Ray-Bans tucked into his T-shirt pocket, pacing the bathroom floor and making her hot all over.

CHAPTER

21

T
HIS IS ONE of those parties where you wish you’d brought your own booze, your own music, and your own rules of engagement,” Hawkins said, holding his phone in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other.

“Don’t start with me,” Dylan said.

“Sorry, boss, but I’m looking at more trouble in one place than I’ve seen in a while.” He was lying on the roof of the nondescript Buick he’d taken out of the Steele Street garage, watching four of Royce’s men pull gear out of the black Expedition they’d rented at the airport. “They’ve definitely got the girl’s number. They’re three blocks west of the garage, parked in the old Geiss Fastener lot, and it looks like they’re loading up to go in on foot. From the looks of the gun cases they’re pulling out of the back of their SUV, I’d say they’re getting ready to seriously break some laws.”

“I’m sure they are, but let’s keep Loretta out of it as long as possible, preferably all night long. Have you gotten a positive ID on Royce?” Dylan asked.

“No,” Hawkins said. “Loretta’s men said he got in the SUV, and there haven’t been any stops since I picked them up.”

“If they’re going in on foot, they must figure she’s waiting for them.”

“
Absolutamente,
boss. They’re going hunting. Otherwise, why not just drive up and go knock on the door.”

“I wonder—what in the hell did Gillian do in El Salvador?”

“So Rydell is still off the radar?”

“Somebody needs to teach that boy how to use a phone.”

“Well, whatever it was she did, it sure got the job done,” he said. “We need to send Frankie T a nice thank-you note, or we would have been left out in the cold—
geezus
.”

“What?”

“Here’s an ID for you. Zane Lowe just got out of the Expedition. That bastard has to be fair game anywhere in the United States. Have Skeeter see what she can find on him. Hell, I could probably make money taking him out.”

“Let’s just pick Gillian up and get her under wraps. When these boys come up empty-handed, they’ll leave.”

“Bull. Now that they’ve tracked her down, they’ll be back. We should move on them and talk fast later.”

“Not tonight, Superman. Not when the Feds are watching.”

He swore, one succinct word, but Dylan was right, for tonight.

“Yeah. I guess we better drop a little thank-you to Setineri, too. I take it Red Dog hasn’t answered her phone, either?”

“No. But she’s holding steady on the warehouse roof.”

“She’ll move fast once she gets a load of these boys. How far is Travis from the garage?”

“Five minutes out. He’s driving Adeline.”

“That’s a helluva sound signature. She’ll hear Addy’s pipes whether she’s paying attention to her phone or not.”

“It’s why Skeeter gave the Angel Boy Quinn’s newest piece of iron,” Dylan said. There wasn’t a person at Steele Street who wouldn’t recognize the sound of one of Quinn’s Camaros. “Gillian will know somebody is coming in to get her, and maybe that will make her think twice before she does something we’ll all regret.”

“Maybe,” Hawkins said.

“Or maybe not,” Dylan said.

Yeah, that’s what Hawkins thought, too. He’d trained her, done his best to put her back together, but there were parts of that girl nobody was ever going to reach.

Geezus
. He looked up from his binoculars for a second, scanning the streets around him. Colorado weather had just kicked in big-time, the temperature dropping a good ten degrees in less than that many seconds. The wind was coming down the alley to his north, blowing trash and taking the heat out of the air, and replacing it with something they hadn’t had in weeks—rain, a soft, steady sheet of it.

And the weathermen strike out again, he thought in disgust. Nobody had predicted rain.

“Get your headset on,” Dylan continued. “Skeeter is going to connect you to Travis. It’ll be radio communications from here on out, and Superman?”

“Yeah?”

“If you get turned around down there in the alleys and lose these guys, be sure and let us know.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah. You, too. Good hunting.”