“And what do you do when you’re not hired to help out here? Take care of Mr. Toussi?” It wasn’t fishing. He was dragging the ocean floor with a steel net.
“Mr. Toussi lives in San Francisco with Mrs. Toussi, and they manage to take care of each other without too much interference from me.”
“Only child?”
“Two sisters and a brother,” she said, obviously chatting him up, still so professional. She wasn’t giving away anything… not yet.
He grinned. “I bet they were glad to get the boy.”
She arched a delicate eyebrow. “In my experience, boys are nothing but trouble, but I bet you already knew that.”
His grin broadened.
“So why did you sell out?” he asked. “This place looks like the place to be.”
“I got an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she said, so cool.
“Early retirement and all that, but keeping your hand in on the side?”
“Not quite.” The barest flicker of humor passed through her gaze, and he was all but hypnotized with curiosity. “So, Mister…?”
“Killian, Dax Killian.”
“Dax,” she repeated. “That’s an unusual name.”
“Daniel Axel,” he explained. “About seventh grade, it got slammed together and stuck.”
“I see, Dax.” Her smile returned, perfectly professional, which simply wasn’t going to do, not for him, not with her. “We have wine and escabeche and some other very nice… canapés and hors d’oeuvres for your pleasure. Feel free to look around, and if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask me, or one of my assistants. There are two or three still running about. Oh, just a moment.” She lifted her hand and waved someone over.
Dax followed the gesture, and if his heart hadn’t already been stolen, he might have been susceptible to the young woman heading in their direction.
Sweet lovin’ Patsy. He’d never thought of a sweater dress as summerwear, but when it was cobalt blue, sleeveless, low-cut, and barely covered a very cute butt, he was going sweaters for summer. Yeah, sweaters and curves-slinky, slender curves, not like the lush, auburn-haired bombshell on his right.
“Jane,” Suzi said, when the girl reached them. “This is Mr. Killian. He’s interested in Nikki’s work. Will you show him around, please?”
“My pleasure.” Jane had silky dark hair falling straight to her shoulders, freckles and a small scar across the bridge of her nose, a wild pixie face, and the palest green eyes he’d ever seen. She also had a small scar along her left cheekbone, which in no way detracted from her beauty. If anything, it made her even more exotic-looking.
Esme was right. He needed to spend more time in Denver. He wasn’t keeping up, especially in the old neighborhood. The chop shop where he’d moonlighted as a teenager wasn’t too far north of the gallery, home of hot women and amazing angels.
“Thank you, Jane,” Suzi said, then turned to him with another blindingly gorgeous smile. “Mr. Killian, my head assistant, Jane Linden, and my pleasure.”
Given half a chance, he thought, watching her walk away.
“Mr. Killian,” Jane said at his side.
“Dax,” he offered, getting his mind back on his business, and he did have business here.
“Dax.” The younger woman smiled with all the professional courtesy of her boss and gestured toward the far corner of the room. “We can start where Nikki McKinney started, with the Ascending Angel series. She was only sixteen when she won the prestigious Cooper-Lansdowne competition, which was the beginning of her brilliant career. She’s had a meteoric rise in the art world since her first showing at Toussi when she was twenty-one, the youngest artist to ever have a solo show here, or at our sister gallery in Los Angeles.”
“I can see why.” The longer he looked at the paintings, the more intrigued he became. He pulled the invitation out of his back pocket. “I actually came here with a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” the beautiful girl said.
Dax smiled back. “Well, I have a little sister, about your age, I guess, and she’s been corresponding with this guy who asked her to meet him here tonight, for this party, this showing, and I thought-well, I thought I better meet him first. From the invitation, it seemed like the artist knows him. Nikki McKinney wrote him a note on the card.” He handed the postcard over, address side up, so Jane would see it right off.
The girl took one look and let out a laugh, her cultivated, professional smile turning into a real grin.
“Johnny,” she said, looking up and meeting his gaze, her green eyes alight. “Johnny Ramos. Come on over here, and I’ll introduce you, so to speak.”
She started weaving a path through the crowd, and Dax followed, curiosity warring with concern. Easy wasn’t here. If she’d made it this far, she would have called him. And if Easy wasn’t here, he didn’t want to be meeting John Ramos in this room. The kid had decked Kevin Harrell with a single punch back when he and Easy were in school, and Dax wanted the guy with those instincts to be with her at Nachman’s.
Dax didn’t think Isaac Nachman would or could do anything to Easy, but he’d always felt she was on safer ground with the Otto Von Lindberg part of the night’s plan. Otto had a few sexual proclivities, sure, but Easy had his number.
Nobody had Nachman’s number, nobody, and the guy was way more than half a bubble off.
“So you know this Johnny Ramos?” he asked the lovely Jane.
“Very well,” she said. “But I didn’t know he had a girl he was seeing.”
“The relationship is in its infancy. I think that’s what tonight is all about, the first face-to-face meeting.”
“Lucky girl,” Jane said, her smile warming. “Come on.”
She led him up a staircase to a catwalk that ran across the width of the gallery. At the top, she stopped and leaned against the rail, pointing at a twelve-foot-high piece of stretched canvas that dominated the western half of the gallery.
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.