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.”
Franklin didn’t want to hear about any jumps into hyperspace. He had a damn load of cocaine headed his way, and he needed that goddamn girl, and he needed her goddamn father. So where in the hell was Eliot? He should have had the Alden jerk here an hour ago, easy.
Eliot, dammit, Eliot could get out of hand, and if he’d accidentally “disabled” old Burt, then it was going to be damn hard for the man to get around and get the damn money. His next call, Franklin knew, had to be to Eliot. But he’d had kind of a busy night on the phone.
Good and busy. He grinned. Damn good and busy.
Katherine Gray had called him personally, and the sweet, husky sound of her voice had made all the trouble he was going to more than worthwhile. Graham Percy was aces, absolute aces. Percy was delivering on his promise, and Franklin needed Burt Alden to do the same. There was a lot on the line.
Katherine wanted to meet him. Percy had told her all about him, and she was intrigued. That’s the word she’d used, “intrigued.”
Hell, he understood it. He was a damned intriguing guy.
“Are you on a road, Dovey? Can you tell me that?” He turned away from the betting room and walked across the office.
“Yes, sir. We’re on a road…a dirt road… in the woods, but it’s damn dark up here, and-”
“And nothing, Smollett. Get your ass the hell out of there, and call me when you hit the goddamn suburbs. I want you over at the Commerce City Garage, where that Cyclone is usually parked, in case this Ramos guy shows up there.”