The guy looked up and flipped him off.
Johnny was impressed. The guy had more balls than he would have guessed-more than was good for him, that was for damn sure.
“Come on out of there,” the red-haired guy was saying, keeping his attention focused on Johnny, giving him a look that said he was the one who had better back off.
Right. Like that was going to happen.
“I’ve got some news about your father, Esme,” the red-haired guy continued. “Come on.”
Esme? News about her father? Oh, man, that guy couldn’t have come up with anything worse to say if he’d had all year. Any doubt Johnny might have had in his mind about the guy maybe being a random pervert was gone-not that he’d had much of a doubt.
The sound of the lock being released from inside drew the guy’s gaze back to the door, and that was all she wrote. In that one moment of inattention, Johnny moved in and decked the guy. One punch, hard, like a fucking pile driver. To his credit, the guy almost managed to block the blow, but no forty-year-old asshole was fast enough to beat a Ramos left hook. The redhead dropped like a stone, out cold, and Johnny leaned down and quickly frisked him for a piece. He found a Beretta 9mm, grabbed it, and turned to meet the threat he could hear coming down the aisle at a run.
This asshole was even older than the redhead, and Johnny would bet his socks that neither of them had ever been U.S Army Rangers.
Hubris. That’s what hit him, and sent him rocking. The old guy had clocked him.
Geezus. Stars. Yeah, he was seeing them, but he was still scrambling, still moving, knowing he couldn’t afford to let the old gray-haired geezer lay another hand on him.
Geezus. He’d lost the 9mm on the floor somewhere.
Okay, that hadn’t been his smartest move tonight-but it was one move smarter than what happened next. The old guy did get ahold of him, moving like lightning. Johnny elbowed him hard and twisted out of his grip, grabbing hold of the old guy and slamming him into the wall. Then found himself facedown on the floor with the old guy on top of him.
Geezus. What the fuck was this?
He reached back and grabbed a handful of whatever he could reach, pants, shirt, whatever, and jerked hard, dislodging the gray-haired guy enough for him to move and twist-and go totally mannequin on command, just like the old guy.
“Freeze, sucker.”
That’s what she said-Freeze, sucker, her voice glacial. And she was backing it up with the muzzle of her.45 pointed straight at the old guy. He couldn’t miss it. From this angle, with Johnny and the old guy close enough that the gun was almost pointing at him as well, the barrel of a.45 looked humongous, like a bottomless pit, a large, gaping black hole leading straight to hell.
For an instant, the old guy looked like he might try something, another move.
“He’s got a gun inside his waistband, right side,” he said.
“Take it, Johnny,” Esme said, moving a step closer, holding the old guy’s gaze. “If you so much as twitch, it’s all over for you. I won’t miss.”
It wasn’t the words, it was the tone of voice that sent the message. She was dead serious. Only a fool would mistake her, and the old guy proved not to be a fool.
Johnny released the guy’s gun from its holster and leveled it at the bastard. “Get off me, pendejo, very, very slowly.”
As soon as the old guy was off him, Johnny rose to his feet, and Esme gave him a handful of flex cuffs she’d pulled out of an outside pocket on her messenger bag. It took him and the hog-tying queen of LoDo less than a minute to secure Bleak’s two guys and be heading back out the door.
He grabbed a cold drink as they passed the coolers, and left a ten on the counter.
Hell, he’d been saved by a girl.
“Thank you,” he said as they dropped into the seats in the Cyclone. It was the only appropriate thing to say.
He fired the car up and wheeled her in reverse, until they were heading back out onto the street.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
He cast her a quick glance. She was secretly gloating. He could tell. The Mona Lisa smile on her face was a dead giveaway.
“Burt?” Beth said, staring down at her husband. He was practically at her feet, having been dropped there by the Hulk, which is what she’d been calling the guy who’d kidnapped her. “Burt?”
If he was smart, and he could hear her, he’d be wise to answer. Her mouth hurt so badly from where the Hulk had ripped away the tape holding her gag in place, and yet she was so grateful to be able to talk, especially to the man on the floor.
“ Burton Aaron Alden?”
This was his fault. She knew it. This wasn’t a random act of violence. This was a not-so-random Burt-Alden-hadn’t-paid-his-bookie act of retribution. She’d seen it a hundred times in their marriage, just never so seriously, never so dangerously. The truth was so demoralizing, it made it hard to breathe.
“Are you okay?” she asked. He didn’t look okay.
“No,” he mumbled, the word barely a breath of sound.
“Is your arm broken?” It looked broken.
“Yes.”
“I’m leaving you for this, Burt,” she said. “I mean it this time. If we get out of this alive, I’m leaving you.”
“I’ll quit,” he said, still so quietly she could barely hear him. “I swear.”
She didn’t even bother to answer. She was leaving him, and this time she meant it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Esme remembered the summer Dax had set the pure stock Plymouth drag title up at Bandimere with an 11.897-second time at 119.46 miles per hour in his Hemi ’Cuda. The two of them had toasted his success with a couple of her mother’s homemade root beers. It had been a big day, sharing a cool moment with her cool cousin.
Today had been a big day, and Johnny had been going faster than Dax coming down out of the mountains. Thank God he had an upgraded suspension on the Cyclone. She didn’t mind fast, and she hadn’t felt unsafe, but neither had she taken her eyes off the road or her hands off the car. Her right hand had been holding onto the door, and her left had been wrapped around the edge of her bucket seat, in case they’d gone airborne.
He’d cut it down a notch now that they were in Denver, and her hands were in her lap, trying not to wring each other. Damn. She knew what made her feel unsafe-a couple of armed and dangerous guys trying to grab her in the middle of a simple bathroom pit stop.
“Who were those guys, do you think?” she asked. “Bleak’s?” They had to be Bleak’s. She was beginning to think that somehow she, and Dax, and her dad had completely underestimated how serious Franklin Bleak was about collecting his money. It seemed a little crazy, how all these guys were after her, chasing her all over the damn state.
“You tell me,” he said, lifting his hips off the seat and pulling two wallets out of his back pocket. He handed them over to her, and all she could do was look at him and be a little amazed.
Then he reached in his front pockets, one after the other, and produced two cell phones, and handed them over.
“That’s… uh, good work.” Why in the hell hadn’t she thought of that? Frisking. She should have thought of that, or at least noticed what he was doing. He’d taken their weapons. She’d noticed that. He’d also unloaded both pistols before dropping them in the backseat. She’d definitely noticed that. He’d been very fast about it, very efficient, like it was something he did all the time.
She opened the first wallet and read the name on the driver’s license. “Mitch Hardon, that was the old guy, the one who almost ate your lunch.”