Read Online Crazy Cool by Tara Janzen - Free Book Online Page A

really had killed Jonathan Traynor III.
    “If you end up flying out of Panama City in that rat trap of a Cessna Miguel Romero calls a plane, be sure and check the duct tape on the passenger-side door before you take off,” he said.
    “Right.” Dylan let out another short, mirthless laugh and hung up.
    Hawkins looked at the phone for a second before closing it and slipping it back inside his suit jacket. Well, hell. Despite possibly being handed the opportunity of a lifetime to clear his name for good, everything had worked out just exactly the opposite of what he’d been hoping for—the exact opposite.
    Perfect.
    “Darth Vader?” his nemesis repeated from across the front seat of the car. “In Chanel?”
    He wasn’t going to respond to that. No way.
    Instead, he let out a breath, careful to make sure it didn’t sound too long-suffering and fed up, careful to keep his gaze focused straight ahead. He was stuck with Bad Luck, up close and personal, for at least two days. Probably longer, if he was completely honest with himself, and he couldn’t afford to be anything less than completely honest with himself, not with a thirteen-year-old murder, an hour-old murder, and Katya Dekker all dished up on his plate and practically sitting in his lap—and J.T.’s death weighing on his soul.
    Mama Guadalupe’s—that’s where he needed to go to find Mickey Montana, and Mickey was the guy he needed to find. An undercover cop whose loyalties were as slippery as two eels in heat, Mickey had been working LoDo a long time, long enough to have been around during the Prom King murder. Luckily for Hawkins, Mickey’s favorite hangout just also happened to be the only place in town where they sold his brand of cigarettes.
    He reached for the gearshift and slid it back into reverse. A quick stop, a little chat, a pack of Faros—just one pack, he swore—and then he and Alex and Katya could all sit down at the gallery and take this thing apart—which should prove to be damned interesting.
    He’d never had a chance to talk to her after his arrest, never seen her again after his conviction. In all those hours he and Dylan and Mickey had spent going over the case, trying to figure out who could have set him up for the Traynor murder and why, she’d been the missing piece. She was the only thing he’d ever had that anyone else would have wanted, the only thing worth committing murder over—and somebody had done just that. Not Manny the Mooch, not some drug pusher no one had ever been able to find—but somebody who’d wanted Kat for himself. That’s what he’d always figured.
    And after thirteen years, he was finally going to get his chance to nail the bastard. Coming up for air to double-tap Ted Garraty was going to be the murderer’s final and fatal error.
    Twisting to the side to look over his shoulder, he braced his hand on the back of the passenger seat and released Roxanne’s clutch. The Challenger roared back down the alley. At Seventeenth, he braked hard, looked behind him, and, when the traffic broke, gunned the motor and shot across the street to the alley on the other side, heading south.
    He noticed the way she froze in her seat, noticed the startled look of fear on her face, but did his best not to pay it too much mind, because it wasn’t her startled fear that was threatening him at the moment.
    It was her dress, with the two tiny, ineffectual safety pins, and the curve of her breast he was trying so hard not to see, and it was the way she smelled, part female, part perfume, part pure Kat.
    Roxanne was never going to be the same, not after a night with Bad Luck. Hell. He was never going to be the same.
    I S Garraty dead?”
    “I never miss, Birdy. You know that,” the big man said, closing the French doors behind him. The house was a mansion, old brick and old money and a couple of servants who didn’t ask questions about the comings and goings of guests.
    “What about the rifle?”
    “The Remington?”
    Had