He wasn’t.

Franklin Bleak was an inside guy, all the way; he was also the piper, and one way or another, Burt Alden was going to pay, starting with the middle-aged blonde handcuffed to a chair in the corner of the betting room. She was alone down there in the half-lit room where he ran his bets. Her first name was Beth, according to his information and her name tag, and she looked terrified-rightly so. She was a done deal. Twenty years ago… hell, even ten years ago, Franklin might have been able to cop a deal on her, but not now. She was worthless to him, except as leverage, her best years long behind her.

She was also in complete disarray-the top of her nurse’s uniform ripped up one seam, as if she might have put up a fight when Eliot had grabbed her out of the parking lot at Denver General Hospital. Her cotton pants were torn and dirty, as if she’d perhaps fallen in the parking lot and Eliot had dragged her to his car. Most of her hair had fallen free of her ponytail band and was hanging in a knotted mess to her shoulders, as if Eliot might have had a fistful of it while he was dragging her across the pavement. And one of her shoelaces was missing out of her sensible shoes.

That was a new one on Franklin. He’d never seen a woman lose a shoelace in a struggle. He’d seen them lose their shoes, but it had always been whole shoes, not just a lace.

Live and learn, Franklin thought, turning his back on the frightened, smallish woman and walking toward his desk, live and learn-unless you were Beth Alden. Her time ran out on both those options at five A.M.

CHAPTER NINE

The state of Colorado was known as the Centennial State, having been admitted to the Union in 1876, one hundred years after the War of Independence. The state bird was the Lark Bunting. The state flower was the Columbine. The highest mountain was Mount Elbert at 14,433 feet, and the fastest fish was the barracuda.

Not many people knew that last fact. Dax Killian did. He knew it, he’d built it, he’d run it up at Bandimere in the quarter mile and forever laid claim to the title-fastest fish in the state.

Fourteen years later, he didn’t have a doubt in his mind that the pure stock Plymouth drag title was still holding at 11.897 seconds @ 119.46 mph. Her name was Charo, because she could shake, like jelly on a plate, with a Shaker hood scoop feeding air to 426 cubic inches of hemispherical engine, the old King Kong of power plants bolted under the hood of his 1971 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda. Every car that had ever gone up against her had gotten sent to the house.

Charo was shaking now, stuck in idle in the parking lot called Interstate 25. Four lanes heading north, and all of them were stopped cold.

The traffic in Seattle had won “Worst on Planet” on some oddball list he’d seen last year, but Dax had to wonder if the list makers had checked out trying to get from Colorado Springs to Denver on a Friday night. He and Easy were on a schedule, and he was screwing up his end.

That was unusual.

Dax usually had everything under control. So did Easy most of the time, with a couple of notable exceptions-very notable exceptions. Bangkok came to mind. That one had cost him, but he couldn’t have left the girl to Erich Warner.

A favor, that’s all Warner had asked for letting her go, an unnamed favor due and payable upon request-and then the German had offered a little something to seal the deal. Eighteen months later, and Warner still hadn’t asked for his favor, and Dax and Easy were back in Warner’s business, stealing the man’s Meinhard.

Sometimes life got too interesting. Dax didn’t mind, not really. He figured it beat the alternative. On the other hand, a guy needed to think about things like an open-ended debt to the likes of Erich Warner.

So every now and then, he gave it a thought, while trying at the same time not to think too much about that little something Warner had offered.

He checked his watch-a Chase-Durer Pilot Commander Alarm chronograph. He wasn’t a pilot. He just wished he were when he was stuck in traffic with nothing but rolling hills, pine trees, and prime Angus on either side of the highway. He thought this might be a phenomenon unique to the Front Range of Colorado-interstate traffic stopping dead in the middle of nowhere. He had an aunt who lived north of Denver, in Fort Collins, and he’d heard her complain about the same thing happening whenever she drove south toward the city, the whole interstate grinding to a halt in the middle of nowhere.

The Honda Civic in front of him slowly inched forward, and Dax followed suit, easing up on Charo’s clutch and brake to get the ’Cuda rolling. They went all of ten feet before they stopped cold again.

He leaned over and popped open the glove compartment. At this rate, he was going to need Patsy and a smoke to see him through. There was only one Patsy, but he had a choice on the smokes, a jockey box full of half-empty cigarette packs, menthol, nonmenthol, filtered, straights, clove, no kidding, compliments of some girl, and those things had almost killed him. He had chewing tobacco, loose tobacco with papers, a pair of handcuffs, and cigars in every size, from corona to robusto, but no presidentes, which was fine. This was not a presidente moment.

No. It was Patsy and a panatela.

He unwrapped the long, thin cigar and cut the end before firing up his lighter and getting it going.

Puffing, he thumbed through his case of CDs until he found what he wanted. Charo was a driver, not a concourse car, and he’d been only too happy to change out her eight-track for a Bose sound system.

Patsy sounded good on Bose.

The panatela smoking, he snapped his lighter shut.

Ahead of him, the Civic rolled another ten feet and Dax followed, easing up on the pedals until he was back on the Honda’s ass.

Sucking in a mouthful of smoke, he lifted his hips partway off the seat and slid his lighter back in his pocket. Then he slid the divine Ms. Cline into the CD player.

It was a hot summer night in the most beautiful state in the lower forty-eight, a perfect night for “Walking After Midnight.” That’s what he and Patsy did a lot-search for love in the lonely dark hours. As a pair, they were a couple of losers in that regard, and that’s probably why he loved her so much.

It was nine-thirty, and he knew where Easy was supposed to be-Isaac Nachman’s. She should be pulling into the guy’s Genesee Park compound in the mountains above Denver right about now. The old guy had built a massive hunting lodge back in the fifties, instantly creating a Colorado landmark, but Dax wasn’t at all sure the girl was there. She had not checked back in with him yet. The last he’d heard from her was right after she’d gotten the call from the valet at the Oxford, the call that should have gone to Dixie.

She’d told him when she was going in, and she should have called and told him when she was coming out. Standard operating procedure called for turning cell phones on silent mode for the duration of any contact with the opposition. Certainly, frisking old Otto Von Lindberg out of his contraband qualified as hostile contact. But Easy should have had her phone back on normal ring by now and been taking his calls.

He had three into her.

Settling deeper into Charo’s driver’s seat, he took another long draw off the panatela.

Dixie the Dominatrix. Her real name was Jolene Talbot. She’d been a few years ahead of him in school, and putting out even way back then. She hadn’t been the only girl doing it, of course, but she was the only one he knew who’d gone professional.

It was a rough life. He didn’t remember her being bad, or even all that wild, just real down on her luck. She’d had a friend whose luck had been even worse than hers, a girl named Debbie Gold. Debbie had started turning tricks young, too, and ended up floating in the South Platte River, her body washing up near Confluence Park one summer about eighteen years ago.