“What have you got on Bleak?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know, boy,” Sparky said. “It’s dirty business. Let me give him a call. That’s all it’ll take.”

Sparky was right. Johnny had a good enough imagination to imagine he didn’t want to hear what lousy information the chop-shop king had on the bookie-and yeah, for a second, Johnny had to wonder what knowing all these guys said about him. But then he looked up ahead, at Esme climbing the concrete steps into the warehouse, and figured he was in good company, skirting the edge of Denver ’s underworld with the girl of his dreams.

God, he was such a sap. He’d finally had her, twice, no less, and three hours later, he already wanted her again. But mostly he wanted her out of here. He didn’t know why she couldn’t have just stayed put at the safe house. Everyone would be so much happier if she wasn’t in the middle of this. He sure as hell would be.

“Can you make that call in about fifteen minutes, Sparky?”

A pair of headlights at the end of the Bleak parking lot announced another arrival, a big-ass black Escalade that all but had Baby Duce’s name painted on the door panels.

Both Dax and Esme glanced back at him, and Johnny gave a short nod. They’d seen the Escalade, too.

“Sure, Johnny. I can have Bleak eating out of my hand in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Sparky.”

“You call me when you’re done with this, and I’ll let you know about those cars.”

Hell.

“Sure, Sparky. I’ll give you a call.” He pressed his end button.

At the top of the stairs, Esme came to a stop, and the brute waiting for them at the back door got a confused look on his face.

“The boss wants you inside,” he said.

Fighter, Johnny thought, looking the guy over. He looked like he’d spent a lifetime getting hit in the face.

Johnny looked down at the guy’s hands and made a mental note not to end up on the receiving end of a right hook. It would put him into next week, guaranteed.

“We’ve got company,” Dax said, gesturing at the Escalade being parked at the next dock over.

The fighter looked, and Duce and his boys got out of the big SUV.

“He ain’t s’posed to be here,” the guy said.

“Well, why don’t we let Mr. Bleak tell him that,” Dax said, walking by the fighter and into the warehouse.

The big guy looked even more confused. Then he looked at Esme and his face cleared, like he suddenly remembered what he was supposed to do.

“You,” he said, pointing at her. “You come on inside.”

Asshole. Johnny had his number. He took the last two stairs in one step, hearing Duce and the Locos coming up behind him, and within a couple of minutes, he, Esme, Dax, Duce, two Arañas Locos, and eighty-two thousand dollars were cruising into Bleak’s warehouse.

Baby fucking Duce. Franklin couldn’t believe he was looking at Baby fucking Duce standing in the middle of his warehouse at five o’clock in the morning.

“Yeah, sure, I get it,” he said into his phone, not quite believing what he was hearing coming at him from the other end of this call, either.

There was no justice.

He was screwed.

Goddamn Sparky Klimaszewski was playing hardball to keep Burt Alden in one piece, and Burt Alden was already broken, at least his damn arm if nothing else, and Franklin knew there was something else broken on the guy, probably more than one something else.

But hell, he wasn’t going to tell Sparky that.

“Yeah, sure, I remember, Sparky. I remember how it used to be.” This was all just so goddamn bad. How in the hell had this happened? he wondered. How in the hell had his back gotten shoved so hard up against the wall?

Five guys and a girl-that’s all that had come in through his loading dock, but he’d done nothing but sweat since they’d arrived, and then his phone had rung. Bad news on top of bad news, like the two gangsters with Duce, one of them with vampire caps on his teeth. Geezus. Franklin had heard a few things about the Arañas Locos, the Crazy Spiders, and none of it was good.

“Sure, Sparky. There’ll be no heat on the guy. Once I’m clear with a guy, I’m clear with him, you know that.”

Goddamn Sparky. How in the hell had the chop-shop king of Denver gotten into his deal? What the hell was Burt Alden to Sparky Klimaszewski? Some long-lost brother or something?

And Duce, goddamn Baby Duce wanted a cut of the deal, of the cocaine, and if Franklin didn’t deliver, things were going to happen-bad things, to him, personally, with Duce throwing him to the Parkside Bloods.

Old news, now, and Duce didn’t know it, but he and the Bloods were going to have to get in line behind Sparky Klimaszewski if they wanted a piece of Franklin ’s ass. Sparky, Duce, Bloods, the Chicago boys, the guys from New Jersey -hell, he needed a goddamn dance card to keep track of everyone who wanted a piece of him. If he lived ’til Christmas, it would be a miracle.

Baby Duce, the two Arañas, Johnny fucking Ramos, Esme Alden, and “the cousin”-five guys and a girl, that’s all he was looking at, and he was in it up to his eyeballs.

Franklin had six guys at his back, six mean sons-a-bitches packing plenty of hardware, and he was still sweating. Johnny Ramos, who had screwed the whole deal for him in the first place, didn’t look like he’d be all that damn easy to kill, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the damn cousin Esme Alden had brought with her looked like he could drop them all on a dime. Dax was his name, and Franklin didn’t know what in the hell kind of name that was.

The only damn bright spot of the whole damn morning was Esme herself.

Dovey was such an idiot. He’d gotten it all wrong, and the photos Franklin had seen simply had not done the young woman justice.

She was exquisite-fine-boned, elegant, gorgeous, classy, every square inch of her, and stupid him, he’d already made his deal with Rollo.

Hell, he could get a fortune for her in this certain Middle Eastern market he had done business with a few times. He needed to think this through, figure out the win for himself. With the eighty-two thousand to finish his cocaine deal, and the girl, he could come out okay.

That’s all he needed, half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine with a ready market in Aspen and Vail, and one drop-dead gorgeous girl worth ten times those two young whores he’d sold five years ago. By the time he unloaded all that, he’d be sitting back on top. Of course, from the looks of things, he’d need to be sitting someplace other than Denver.

Goddamn cocaine.

Keep your head down, lay low, work your bets- those were his rules, and he’d broken them all for a damn drug deal and a shot at Katherine Gray, who wasn’t going to find him all that damned intriguing if he was dead.

He needed to put Rollo off, that was all. Offer him more money if he’d wait until the coke was delivered and sold. Hell, that’s all he needed to do, hold everything together until he could get the coke sale money in his coffers.

Of course, he was running a tight margin on the cocaine sale, damn tight, what with the exorbitant interest rates charged by the Jersey guys, and having to buy off Duce, and now to buy off Rollo.

But damn Sparky didn’t want cash or cocaine. Damn Sparky wanted Burt Alden.

“That’s old news, Sparky. Nobody cares about two runaway whores who disappeared off the face of the earth five years… well, yeah… sure, Sparky, the cops care, but nobody is going to be dragging the cops into our business, are they?”

Klimaszewski was insane. Nobody in their right mind would drag the cops down on Commerce City just to save Burt Alden.

“That’s a bad decision, Sparky. I mean it. You-” Sparky interrupted him, and Franklin listened with growing unease-hell, as if he wasn’t uneasy enough.

This lawyer guy Klimaszewski was talking about was no good. Franklin bent his head into the phone, holding it closer. Sparky couldn’t really be serious about dragging this guy up out of the past. One dead lawyer who had been into cheap whores, big bets, and premium cocaine, who had bought the farm one night in kind of a gruesome manner, and Sparky was going to hold that over his head?