Yeah, that was it, and she knew damn well where her partner had gotten it from-the crucible of combat and years of exacting training engaged on a level that was recognized in all quarters as elite, those teams where the percentages of acceptance were measured in single digits, with only two or three men out of a hundred already toughened soldiers making the cut. Dax belonged in the life-anddeath game of war played by the “for real” big bad boys, not the sagging gangbangers, not the mall rats and the street punks, but the ones who’d “been there, done that” in far-off places under circumstances few men could survive.

And Johnny Ramos reminded her of that.

It was enough to make a girl think.

No, he wasn’t setting her up for Bleak, and she knew for damn sure he wasn’t part of any fallout from Otto. She knew Erich Warner’s guys, and Johnny wasn’t one of them. Whatever he was up to, following her, getting involved, he was up to it for his own reasons-and she couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell those were.

They cruised up Market Street in the Cyclone, weaving through traffic at just over the speed limit, just fast enough to give them an edge without getting a ticket, leaving Dovey and his crew behind, which was all great and good, except for one thing.

“We’re going the wrong way.” She didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but it was the truth.

“Excuse me?” He slanted her a quick glance across the darkened interior of the car.

“Wrong way,” she repeated, pointing out the windshield. “We’re going it.”

“We’re on a one-way street.”

“I know.” And she did. She knew Denver like the back of her hand, and she knew he did, too. “We need to get up on Larimer and back down to Speer, or you need to pull over and let me out somewhere up here, so I can catch a cab.”

“Sure,” he said, nodding his head, his brow furrowing. “Right. Good idea. I’ll get right on it, right after you settle down for a minute and take a breath, and maybe, just maybe, tell me what in the hell is going on.”

He downshifted for a light, and they sat at the corner, rumbling and rocking in place.

“Is this thing street legal?” It didn’t feel street legal.

“Not in fourth gear.”

Whatever that meant, though she thought she had an idea. Just like she had an idea of what was making his jaw so tight. Just like she had an idea that he wasn’t really considering her suggestion to pull over and let her out.

“I have an appointment,” she explained. She didn’t dare put it any plainer, or make it any clearer, and her appointment was in the other direction.

“So you said.” He kept his attention on the street, his gaze checking the intersection and the Cyclone’s rearview mirror. “But you didn’t say who with, or what it’s about, and frankly, given who’s chasing you, I think we’d both be better off if I knew the answers to both those questions.”

She thought about his request for a nanosecond, and gave him the only possible reply.

“You can think whatever you like.”

It was a summer night in August, in the middle of the city, but the temperature in the Cyclone dropped forty degrees in a heartbeat, with the Ice Age starting on his side of the car. She didn’t bother to turn and see what kind of look he was giving her. She could figure it out on her own-glacial, with a side order of pissed-off. So what-she had a job to do. That was her bottom line, and he wasn’t part of the job.

While they waited, two cop cars came down Eighteenth, heading northwest, passing in front of them at a good clip. A second later both cars hit their lights and sirens. Another siren sounded somewhere behind them, the noise fading north.

Typical Friday night in the city, she thought. Trouble everywhere, and her in the middle of more than she liked. She had to get to Isaac Nachman’s. Her schedule wasn’t flexible, her plan was not optional, and Johnny Ramos wasn’t part of either.

The light turned, and they cruised up another block and stopped at the next light with cars on either side of them. He slid the Cyclone back down into first gear.

“I saw that guy you hog-tied at the Oxford,” he said, not sounding any too happy about it.

She didn’t blame him. Otto Von Lindberg hog-tied in a black leather thong and leashed to a bed frame was one of those haunting images she was afraid she was just going to have to live with, probably for quite a while.

There were worse things, though, far worse, and if John Ramos was anything close to what she thought he might be, he knew it.

“So?” she said, refraining from a sigh. She wasn’t going to squirm. Regardless of how sordid it all must have looked to him, she’d done a damn good job in the Oxford. She’d gotten in with the least amount of effort possible, a seamless pretext that had required nothing more of her than fifty bucks to the valet and slipping into a short skirt and a cheap shirt. She’d controlled the situation from the first instant of contact until the last. Old Otto had never had a chance. She’d had one hundred percent mission success, verified by the Jakob Meinhard currently residing in her messenger bag.

And she’d gotten the hell out without a hitch- except for the close to six feet of tight-jawed bad boy sitting behind the Cyclone’s steering wheel.

He was a hitch. No matter how she worked it around in her mind, the truth was she’d gotten herself tailed and caught.

“I heard him say he’d called for Dixie,” he said. “He was expecting the dominatrix.”

Oh, great. He’d been right there on her ass practically the whole time, and she hadn’t had a clue.

“ Dixie ’s pimp is a guy named Benny-boy Jackman,” he continued, after her first moment of silence built to a second, and a third, and a fourth.

She cleared her throat-very discreetly.

“If he finds out you’ve been trading on her name, he’ll come after you big-time and not play nice when he catches up with you.”

Yes, she knew, and wasn’t that just what she needed, one more thing to worry about, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t figured Dixie and Benny-boy into her night’s profit margin.

“I’m prepared to shell out some cash to keep the peace,” she said.

“Fair warning, babe. Benny-boy may want more than cash. He’s got a reputation to maintain, and it ain’t pretty.”

She held herself still, refraining from giving in to another, even heavier, sigh. She knew all this. Didn’t everybody the hell in Denver have some damn reputation to maintain? That was her whole frickin’ problem, men’s egos and their badass reputations. She knew how the streets worked, and they didn’t work with some middle-class blonde getting away with stealing “Dixie” Talbot’s tricks- but no matter what in the hell Benny-boy Jackman wanted, she had much bigger problems than a Mile High Sixteenth Street pimp.

“Tough,” she said, and she meant it. “If he wants more than that, he’ll have to get in line.”

Get in line? Benny-boy Jackman could just get in line?

Yeah, Johnny thought. Benny-boy could get in line behind Franklin Bleak and his goons, and probably that German guy, too, if he’d gotten out of his cuffs yet. That ought to be a real party and a half, and just how the hell many of these guys did she think she could take on and still come out in one piece?

Oh, she was a cool one, all right. Too cool for her own good, and he was just about ready to tell her, when he saw a delivery van pulling into the traffic behind them off of Eighteenth and onto Market.

Fuck.

“You’re buckled, right?”

“Right.”

He checked the street ahead of them again, waited for a truck to clear the intersection, then shot across against the light and kept going.

She twisted in her seat to look out the back window. “What? The LeSabre? I don’t see it.”

“No. A white panel van in the right lane.” He took a sharp left into an alley and slowed down just enough to keep the Cyclone from hitting the Dumpsters and packing crates pushed up against the sides of the narrow opening.