Geezus.

“That’s him? John Ramos?” He didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.

“That’s him, the Ironheart Angel.”

Ironheart.

The guy had a tattoo. Actually, he had a few tattoos, but the heart-shaped one was prominent on the upper left side of his chest, a heart with wings, angel wings, like those sweeping in large graceful arcs from the guy’s shoulder blades, but the wings on the tattoo were perfect, every feather in place, and the wings meant to keep him airborne were not-feathers were broken, some of them singed, some of them smoking, some of them on fire.

He was flaming out.

Burning in.

The angel’s head was tilted back, exposing his throat, an incredibly vulnerable position that the painting made clear was nothing less than the beginning of the final end. Strength ebbing, his will proving not to be enough, not against the battle wounds marking his body, a long slice from beneath his right breast down the length of his thigh, the edges ragged, blood streaming, and the lesser wounds, numerous smaller cuts, all deep, the scrapes, and contusions, and burns.

The angel’s left knee was bent, raised higher than the other, as if by some miracle of God, he would rally one more time and find the strength to push off and ascend. But Dax wasn’t putting his money on it. This angel, Ironheart, had seen his last for this go-around. Simple fact.

Standing there, looking at the painting, Dax saw the violence of the attack that had destroyed him, and after another moment, he saw the whole attack, strike by parry, strike by failure to parry. It was there in the wounds. Ironheart was left-handed, a wicked-looking, modified drop-point blade with a skeletonized handle still in his grip, and he’d been taken down by a left-handed knife fighter.

John Ramos was left-handed.

He was also born and bred to the Locos and was safe with God-C/S, con safos. The gang tattoo ran down the inside of his right arm. Obviously, Nikki McKinney thought her street-fighting warrior angels actually came straight off the street, this one from Twenty-second, XX22ST. He was buck-ass naked in the painting, totally ripped, and the reason for that was made more than clear by the leading edge of another tattoo Dax could see gracing his left shoulder-the numbers and letters “75 RAN” on a scroll.

Suddenly, the whole night made more sense. There was a good reason John Ramos had been so effective at protecting Easy. He was a U.S. Army Ranger, 75th Ranger Regiment, and the iron in his iron heart? The letters “Fe,” the chemical symbol for iron, were richly inscribed inside the winged-heart tattoo.

Ironheart-a good name for anybody from the 75th, though he couldn’t say he’d ever met an angelic Ranger. Dax grinned. Hoo-yah.

He’d also never seen a knife-fighting angel. He looked around the gallery at the other paintings. They seemed to come in two basic flavors, dark angels and light angels, or as Jane had said, “Ascending Angels,” and, he surmised, “Descending Angels.”

Ironheart was definitely on the descent in the supersize painting, and of them all, John Ramos was the only one carrying a knife, using a knife. The drop-point blade in his hand was bloody.

“He’s a Ranger,” he said, and Jane nodded.

“Just back from Afghanistan, two weeks ago, his third combat tour,” she said. “We were really hoping to see him tonight. Our guests really love meeting Nikki’s models, especially the women.”

Her smile said it all, not that Dax had needed the extra info. He was looking right at the guy.

A combat-hardened Ranger up against a seventynine-year-old nutcase was no contest. Dovey Smollett wasn’t going to give this guy a run for his money either. Neither would Bleak.

Easy would, though. She would be running him hard for his money, and Dax figured the guy was loving it. Any Ranger who’d only been back for two weeks would still have women at the top of his… wait a minute.

His gaze shot back to the Ironheart Angel painting. Sure, the guy was like “enlarged.” The painting was twelve feet high, but still… yeah, but still.

He shifted his attention back to Jane.

“This Ramos guy, how well do you know him exactly?” He wasn’t a jerk about the question. He was just curious, and possibly a little concerned. Easy wasn’t his sister, but he felt that way about her. He’d known her since she’d been in diapers. Hell, he remembered the day Aunt Beth had brought the little pink bundle home from the hospital, and he cared. A lot.

“We go to each other’s birthday parties,” she said, and Dax figured that was pretty well, and a pretty good way of putting it.

“And he’s a-”

“Great guy,” she filled in his blank. “You don’t need to worry about your sister. I guarantee it. She couldn’t be in safer hands.”

Dax hoped the hell so.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Phone in hand, Franklin stood in his office, looking down at Beth Alden in the room below. She was crumbling from the inside out. He’d seen it before, where the fear just ate the guts out of a person. That’s what was happening down in his betting room. Fear was eating Beth Alden’s guts out. Burt really should be ashamed.

He shifted his attention back to his phone and hit a number.

“Where the hell are you, Dovey?” he said, when the guy answered. He was just about finished screwing around with Dovey Smollett. “And why in the hell did I just get a call from goddamn Stu Abrams saying one of my boys just showed up at the goddamn Jack O’Nines in goddamn handcuffs? Why is that, Dovey?”

There was a long, appropriate pause on the other side of the phone connection before Dovey came up with an answer.

“I don’t know, Mr. Bleak, sir.”

Fucking brilliant.

“It was Harrell, Dovey. Kevin Harrell. Your good buddy, right?”

Another long pause ensued.

“Yes, sir.”

Like Franklin had said-fucking brilliant.

“One of my boys showing up at Abrams’s club in handcuffs with a broken nose, that makes me look bad, Dovey. Real bad. And you’re the guy who brought this douche on board. You’re the guy responsible for this, Dovey. So what are you going to do about it?”

“I-I don’t know, sir.”

That’s what Franklin had thought, that Dovey Smollett didn’t know crapola about Shinola-and he was stuck with the guy, at least until the deal went down. He had guys running all over tonight, and Harrell was already a wash. Franklin wouldn’t bet a rat’s ass on Kevin Harrell getting out of the Jack O’Nines in one piece. The guy’s timing was amazing. Amazingly bad. To show up at the club, mouthing off about working for Franklin Bleak, after Mitch and Leroy had just been there and worked Stu over a bit.

Bad news.

Real bad news.

And the guy had already been cuffed. Christ. Talk about just asking for it. Stu probably had him hanging upside down in the back room and was selling hits at twenty bucks a pop.

Shit. Harrell would be lucky to get out at all, let alone in one piece.

So Franklin was running shorthanded. He couldn’t afford to let Dovey go, not on the manpower end of things, and not for the mess of letting a guy go, not when things were really starting to go his way-except for the damn money. He needed that damn eighty-two thousand dollars.

“And where are you, Dovey? Mitch and Leroy picked up that goddamn Cyclone at the Genesee entrance ramp onto the damn highway, but they didn’t see you anywhere. So where the hell are you?”

The pause this time was interminable, until Dovey finally broke the silence.

“I don’t know, sir.”

That’s exactly what Franklin had thought. It made him doubt his own judgment, that he’d handpicked Dovey Smollett to pick up Esme Alden. The girl couldn’t be that goddamn elusive.

The girl wasn’t that damn elusive.

Mitch and Leroy had her in their sights, streaking like a bat out of hell down the interstate, trying to keep up with a goddamn Cyclone that Mitch swore had a zero to a hundred of under twelve seconds, well under-“Geezus, Frank. We almost lost her. The damn car hit the interstate and it was Star Wars, boss, a fucking jump into hyperspace.”