Loose and Easy (24 page)

Nobody could tie Franklin to that deed—but the more Sparky talked, the more uneasy Franklin got.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said, reaching the end of his rope—like he needed blackmail on top of every other screwup he’d had to contend with tonight. “My guy is counting the cash now. If it comes up right, Alden is off the hook. I won’t touch him. He can walk away.”

In theory, Burt Alden could walk away, but only in goddamn theory. In truth, Alden hadn’t budged since Eliot had dropped him on the betting-room floor.

Franklin turned and looked halfway down the length of his warehouse, where Esme and her knights in shining armor were waiting for him to accept payment and clear the debt. Shifting his gaze to Dovey, he watched the kid count the last of the bills out of the duffel.

When Dovey gave him the “okay,” he made his decision—he would roll over for Sparky. Burt had already had the crap beat out of him. Nothing was going to fix that, except a trip to the hospital, but if he handed the guy over, that’s where his buddies would take him. Sparky Klimaszewski didn’t make idle threats. Guaranteed, by this time tomorrow, if Burt Alden didn’t get put back together, the Bleak warehouse was going to be swarming with cops looking to hang the guy who had offed one lousy lawyer and sold two whores.

Christ.
Like the world didn’t have enough lawyers and whores. Sure, he and Eliot had gone a little overboard with the lawyer guy, but so what? What was one lousy lawyer in the scheme of things?

“Sure, Sparky. I’m reading you, and we’re clear.” Clear as mud. “My guy kind of wrenched Alden around a bit, but I’m gonna take care of that right now. If I’d known he was important to you, I’d have told Eliot to be more careful with him. But you know how these things happen…sure, sure, Sparky. Alden won’t see my guys again. Hands off. Right.”

Bullshit.
All of it. Franklin was going to do whatever it took to get out of this with the most he could get, which he was afraid was not going to include lunch with Katherine Gray.

He ended the call and stared down the main aisle of the warehouse. The answer to his problems was watching him with her big gray eyes, her cute little suit fitting her just so, her blond hair twisted up in a real sophisticated style. She had diamonds in her ears, and high heels on her feet, and all he needed to do was get rid of her father, get rid of her goons, and keep her with him, and for that, he only needed one thing—her mother.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

Esme stood carefully and quietly in the bottom of a canyon of paper-filled pallets—paper towel pallets, paper napkin pallets, and towering pallets of toilet paper. It was damned crowded on the floor, with a baker’s dozen of mostly very bad guys variously arranged around a small table, including the three gangsters on the home team.

No, sirree, having three of the worst gangbangers in the history of Denver on her side was not a comfort, not when Franklin Bleak was headed their way. Six or eight Locos might have done the trick, but she only had three, and it was all she could do not to bolt.

The bookie had his damn money. Dovey had counted it and given him the sign. All was well. All was as it should be, and yet Esme had a very strong feeling that the deal wasn’t even close to being over, and she wanted it over. She wanted out of this damn warehouse, and the closer Franklin Bleak got, waddling his short, overweight, gimpy body down the aisle toward the table, the more she wanted out.

She consciously deepened her next breath to keep from jumping straight into full-blown panic. Even with Johnny on one side of her, Dax on the other, and an auto-loading .45 closer than both of them, Bleak scared the hell out of her. The photographs she’d seen of him, a couple of stills taken in a Denver restaurant, did not do him justice. He’d looked almost normal, smiling, raising a glass of wine in a toast, a heavily made-up bimbo on each side.

But he wasn’t normal. Not even close.

It wasn’t his slightly misshapen body, his right leg obviously shorter than the other and giving him an odd limping gait, that made him look so strange. It wasn’t his hair, worn in a dark, greasy comb-over long enough to be tucked behind his ears. It wasn’t his clothes, a disco turn of electric blue silk and badly tailored black polyester with the looping chain of a pocket watch crisscrossing the front of his mismatched vest. It wasn’t even his shoes, shiny bright black patent-leather elevator shoes with taps—freakin’ taps. Every step he took down the concrete floor was an announcement—“I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming.” And every step made her want to run like hell.

No, what made Franklin Bleak so damn scary was his face, every part of his face, the low widow’s peak of sparse dark hair backed up by the comb-over, the beakish nose, his eyes too round, the irises too dark, like bottomless pits, fixated on her, and his mouth. It didn’t close, but stayed partly open, his tongue sliding across his lips. She was creeped out to the max and had to force herself to hold her ground—carefully, quietly, nothing showing, not giving her fear away. But sweat was beading on her upper lip and running down the middle of her back.

He stopped at the table, his gaze still riveted to her, and he stood there, staring, until she understood this was personal between them. That whatever was going through his head was more than the debt her father owed—and all she could think was that he was damn lucky she didn’t draw down on him, anything to get the bastard to back the fuck off. She wasn’t going to play this game with him, and yet it was only when he broke eye contact with her that she realized Dax had said something.

“Yes. The money’s good, but it’s late,” Bleak said, his gaze shifting to Dax for a brief couple of seconds before returning to her.

“Eighty-two thousand clears the debt, no repercussions, no blood revenge, no breaking anybody, no shakedown,” Dax said, his voice slow and calm and sure without an edge in sight. “That’s the deal, nothing more.” He made it sound like they were exchanging calling cards, but what he put on the table was the Lindsey Larson file.

Bleak picked it up, took one look inside, and turned beet red, color and anger infusing his face in equal measures. Those too-round, bottomless black eyes landed on Dax with the force of a train wreck, but Dax had faced down a helluva lot worse than a psycho bookie.

“That’s the deal, nothing more,” he repeated, still very calm, very matter of fact, and Esme breathed a little easier. As weird as Bleak was, Dax wasn’t fazed by the crooked little man. She was overreacting, that was all.

His fist tightening around the file, crushing it, Bleak turned to the huge guy who’d met them at the loading dock door, “Bleak’s beast,” she was calling him. The guy bent his head to Bleak’s, and the bookie said something too softly for her to hear. The big guy nodded and turned and left, heading toward a door at the rear of the warehouse.

“This is a mistake,” Bleak said, raising the fistful of crumpled papers. “You would have been better off leaving her out of this.”

Dax nodded his head. “Absolutely. You’re right, and I have no intention of ever going to Folton Ridge again…unless you give me a reason to go.”

No one with half a brain would mistake Dax’s calmness for anything other than what it was—complete and utter control of himself and the situation.

“A smart man would forget what he knew,” Bleak warned.

At the end of the warehouse, the huge guy had opened the door and disappeared inside.

“A smart man would take the money and call it good,” Dax said. “Take the money, Bleak.”

Take the damn money,
Esme thought, her attention shifting from Bleak to the door at the end of the warehouse and back again.
Take the damn money, so we can get the hell out of here.

This had dragged on too long already. Nothing good could come from staying any longer. All Bleak had to do was pick up the duffel bag, or give some sign of acceptance. Any damn sign would do.

But this damn standing there, giving everybody the evil eye, that wouldn’t do at all. That was indicative of some unforeseen problem, and Esme didn’t want there to be any unforeseen problems. Straight deal, that’s what her father had arranged with Bleak.

A movement at the end of the warehouse drew her gaze down the length of the aisle, and with the shift in attention came a horrifying sinking of her hopes.

Her feet moved of their own volition, everything inside her telling her to run, while at the same time telling her it was too late. Bleak’s beast had a bundle of rags by the scruff of the neck, an old green striped shirt and a pair of worn brown corduroys, and inside the rags, hanging slack from the beast’s hands, was her father.

Dead.
He looked dead, and even with everything inside her telling her to run to him, she was frozen, held in place by a sudden wash of emotion and Johnny’s hands catching her and dragging her up against him, keeping her from moving any closer.

Her father’s arm had been broken. The way it was hanging, the angle, was bizarre, and for a moment, all she could think about was the pain he must have felt.

It was the beast, the damn beast who had hurt him. Bleak wasn’t big enough to have done the deed. The beast had beaten her father and broken his arm. Her breath started coming faster, and she began to struggle.

“Let go of me,” she said under her breath, the words meant for Johnny. “Let
go
of me.”

“No, babe.” His voice was not slow and calm. It was harsh and hard, and full of the same serious intent she felt in his body. He wanted out of there, too, and he was taking her with him.

“He’s not dead,” Bleak said, and nodded at Dovey, who immediately trotted down the aisle to the beast and took hold of her father’s head, tilting it back so she could see that his eyes were open—and filled with agony. “Not yet.”

“What have you done to him?” she demanded.

“Go see for yourself,” Bleak said, but when she and Johnny started forward, he held up his hand. “Just the girl. No one else.”

“No,” Johnny said immediately.

“Let me go. I have to see if he’s okay. I have to help him.” She lifted his hands away, peeling them off from around her waist, feeling his reluctance to let her go, and when she was free, she started forward, her gaze riveted to her father.

He was breathing, with each breath costing him in pain, and every step she took closer to him took her another step away from the safety of Johnny’s arms, from the safety of Dax and the Locos.

A hospital, that’s all she could think. She had to get her dad to a hospital. When she was within twenty feet, Bleak’s beast dropped him and headed back toward the rear of the warehouse, letting her father crumple into a pile on the concrete. A terrible cry of pain came out of her father, an expulsion of air edged in acute distress, and she ran the last few feet, before dropping to her knees by his side.

“We’re done here,” she heard Bleak say behind her.

Her father’s skin was pale and clammy, his every breath coming ragged and hard. She didn’t know where to touch him, hardly dared to touch him.

“Dad, Dad…” She lightly smoothed his hair back off his brow. “It’s Esme, Dad. I’m here, and I’m going to take care of you, get you to a hospital.”

“Your friends can take him,” Bleak said, appearing at her side. “You’re coming with me.”

She looked up, her gaze drawn by a sickening awareness, to find him standing between her and the rest of the men in the warehouse, blocking her view, blocking her from their view. A wave of dread sluiced down through her body. He was crazy. She wasn’t going anywhere with him, and she had enough guys on her side to enforce that plan. She could overpower him herself, if it came to that.

He was close enough to touch, mere inches from her, the duffel bag in his right hand. With his left, he handed her something small, a piece of hard plastic, a quick exchange accompanied by a dire warning.

“Come with me, or my man Eliot will snap her neck.”

The words were so cruel, so unexpected, it took a second for them to sink in, and she still didn’t understand, until she looked at the small thing he’d given her.

Beth Alden, R.N.—that’s what it said, the blue letters printed on a white base. Her mother’s name tag, her identification badge.

Behind him, she heard the commotion of Johnny moving forward and being blocked by Bleak’s other men.

Eliot,
she thought. Bleak’s beast was named Eliot, and he had her mother.

“Bleak!” She heard Dax call the guy’s name, but she was watching the bookie, watching him limp his way to a set of stairs crawling up the side of the warehouse and leading to a door one floor above the door where Eliot had disappeared again.

She looked over her shoulder at Johnny and Dax, the small name tag grasped in her hand.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got everything under control. I’ll be back in a moment.” Then she turned to her dad and let the name tag drop to the floor as she rose to her feet.

Suddenly, she wasn’t afraid.

Johnny was terrified, his blood running cold, watching her follow Franklin Bleak up the stairs. The only thing keeping him in place was Dax.

“Leave her be, Ranger.” The guy’s voice was right behind him, a softly spoken command of unmistakable authority, but it wasn’t the command keeping him from starting World War III in this damn warehouse and going after her. It was knowing Dax wouldn’t take an unnecessary risk with her life. It was knowing Dax understood her skill levels better than he did, knew her internal resources. And it was knowing how she’d drawn down on Mitch Hardon in the Gas-N-Go, with absolute precision, and absolute certainty.

It was knowing she had a Para-Ordnance .45 caliber pistol tucked into a shoulder holster and that she most definitely knew how to use it.

Not even Patsy could save this goatfuck.

Dax let his breath out, slow and easy, watching his bad girl climb those damn stairs, which more than likely led to Bleak’s office. Of all the possibilities of what could happen in that room, he was sure of only one—the guy was unlikely to come out ahead of Easy.

But something was up.

She’d strayed from the plan, big time.

“Do you mind?” he said to Dovey, gesturing at the pile of crumpled humanity on the floor.

Dovey gave him the go-ahead with a short nod, and Dax walked over and knelt down by his uncle.

Damn Burt—he’d really gotten into it this time.

Dax lightly pressed his fingers to the side of the guy’s neck, feeling his pulse.

Fluttery, he decided, which was just so damn bad.

He picked up a small piece of plastic lying next to his uncle and turned and looked back at Baby Duce.

“He needs a hospital. Can you send him with your boys?”

The shot caller for the Locos gave a nod, and the two
Arañas
and Johnny moved forward to pick up a very limp Burt Alden, leaving just him and Duce to face off Bleak’s remaining five guys. Duce, Dax figured, could at least be counted on not to accidentally shoot him, and Dax had certainly been up against worse odds than five to one, hence those stories that had made his name in Afghanistan. As far as Johnny, Dax hadn’t always had a partner who so instinctively understood a good plan when it was thrown out on the stage without any explanation.

Getting the Ranger out of the warehouse, where he could scout the building and find Esme, was precisely what they needed. Getting Burt out of the warehouse was simply the best Dax could do for his uncle under the current circumstances. There was no calling an ambulance down into this mess. He wasn’t too concerned about losing the two gang members. If anything started to happen, he would just as soon not have two unknown shooters at his back. And if anything started to happen, there was going to be shooting.

Bleak had his Aunt Beth.

It was her name tag Easy had left on the floor.

Dax was guessing Beth was being held in the warehouse somewhere, probably through the door where that big guy had gone to get Uncle Burt, and that real big guy was undoubtedly still with her, and that was the threat Bleak had used to get Easy to go up those stairs with him.

His bad girl could take Bleak. The problem was his sweet Aunt Beth. She couldn’t take anybody, and Dax didn’t know what kind of shape she might be in after a night of Bleak’s hospitality. Judging by Uncle Burt, his hopes weren’t too high.

This was bad.