But she was staying in Denver.
She took another quick glance at her watch-
7:27 A.M. She felt like an idiot for wanting to see him again as soon as possible, like maybe this morning, about nine-oh-five or so, right after his meeting-but there she was, Esme the Impatient, Esme the Insatiable, Esme Maybe in Love.
Duffy’s made great coffee, and it was a great summer morning in the Mile High City after one helluva night, but it was 7:28 A.M. and Dax’s time was running out.
He had the place to himself, and that hadn’t been his plan, or his wish. One of Duffy’s cooks had just finished watering the pots and pots of flowers filling every corner of the outside patio, geraniums and petunias still fresh with morning dew, and another cook had brought out the coffee pot to give him a refill and another chocolate croissant to fill him up, and it was all just great, but damn he’d hoped to be sharing it with her, the her, Suzi Toussi.
He hadn’t been hit that hard by a woman in a long, long time. It wasn’t something a guy was going to forget.
He pushed back from the table and tossed a ten next to his plate. The next time he ran into Suzi Toussi, he wasn’t going to let her get away. All he had to do was make sure there was a next time.
He could do that. He could make damn sure there was a next time.
Suzi slipped out of her black 1955 Porsche Speedster, the one she’d bought off Kid Chaos, Nikki’s husband, over at 738 Steele Street, and quickly walked to the side door of Duffy’s Bar. Everybody used the side door if they wanted into Duffy’s before eleven o’clock in the morning, except for those brave souls who hazarded the alley, and the crumbling brick steps, and the wrought-iron gate into the patio. She hurried down the hall past the bathrooms, and ducked behind the coat closet to get to the door leading to the patio from inside the bar.
For a second, her heart soared ridiculously high. There was a cup of coffee on a table, a plate with a half-eaten chocolate croissant-and a ten-dollar bill lying between the plate and a small bouquet in a vase.
He’d already paid and gone.
Her smile faded, and she just stood there and stared at the empty table, the sense of loss she felt completely out of proportion with the circumstances. But there it was, taking the air out of her.
She was late, and he was gone. Dax Killian. God, what a name.
She looked to either side of the patio, just in case… just in case-but no luck. She’d missed him.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He probably hadn’t even shown up. The coffee could have been anyone’s, and even if it was his, by any test of reason, it was impossible to feel a sense of loss over missing someone a person didn’t even know, or had barely met.
And yet it was there, weighing on her in an odd, sad way.
She looked around the patio again, then walked over to the iron gate leading into the alley. There was no one, only the bricks of the surrounding buildings warming up with the morning sun, the damp alley where one of Duffy’s busboys would have hosed it down-and a table where someone had been just minutes before she’d arrived.
She went over to the table and sat down in the chair where that someone had been sitting, and told herself she’d never been this ridiculous in her life.
She touched the coffee cup. It was still warm.
Oh, hell, she really had just missed him, or someone.
They’d barely met, she assured herself. She’d spent more time talking to the surveillance cop last night than she’d spent talking to Dax Killian.
He shouldn’t matter, not to a reasonable woman, not at all. Yet she found herself running one finely manicured finger along the edge of the croissant plate, and when she looked at the flowers in the vase, she saw the note.
Duffy, it said. If she doesn’t show, would you see that these get to Suzi Toussi at Toussi Gallery on Seventeenth. And it was signed-Dax.
Unbidden, a thrill went through her, and a very pleased, cat-in-the-cream smile curved her lips. The flowers were gorgeous, fresh and dew-kissed, picked right out of Duffy’s pots, a bright red geranium surrounded by a dozen or more purple and white double petunias, but the vase-ah, the vase. Upon closer inspection, it was exquisite, and she had to wonder where in the world Dax Killian had found a Chihuly vase between one and seven-thirty on a Saturday morning?
The only reasonable answer was that it was his, and he’d left it, this lush little piece of art, on a patio table for her.
He’d come into her gallery last night looking for Johnny, and that connection was more than enough.
With a name and a connection, she could find anybody.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dylan Hart’s office always left Buck Grant cold. It was so damned austere, like the man himself, coldly efficient, everything expensive and in its place. A guy didn’t feel good even bringing a cup of coffee into the room. As a matter of fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anybody drinking coffee in Dylan’s office. He’d sure as hell never seen anybody set a coffee cup on Dylan’s desk.
Which was Buck’s problem. He’d brought a cup of coffee with him into Dylan’s private lair, already slopped a little over the edge, and now he didn’t know what in the hell to do with his cup. The finish on the damn desk probably cost more than the wood to build it. Buck was no connoisseur of anything that didn’t have a caliber and require a cartridge, but he was no cretin either.
“Sir,” Dylan said, setting an extra chair down in front of the desk and taking the cup out of his hand.
Hawkins brought his own chair in, too, and shut the door behind him.
Buck got the good chair, and Dylan put his cup on the desk, sloppy drips and all-problem solved. That’s what a second in command did, solve the commander’s problems, and nobody was better at it than the two men in front of him.
Good. They were going to need to be better- better than they’d ever been if they were going to solve the problem he’d brought with him from Washington, and even better than that if they were going to do it without losing the team.
He dropped a pair of files on the desk and sat down. Nothing about the damn thing was going down any easier this morning than it had yesterday afternoon when he’d first seen it. If anything, the longer he’d had to think about it, the more disturbing it had become.
In half an hour, the rest of the team would be assembled in the main office, but Grant had wanted to see Dylan and Hawkins first. They needed to be told first, and there was no easy way to do it.
“We’ve been tagged for an assassination in South America,” he said. Nothing unusual there; that was all in the normal course of SDF’s business, of any Special Ops business. “If you can bring him in, the powers that be would like to talk to the guy, but bringing him in is secondary to retiring him. Four agents have been lost trying to do one or the other, so the idea has been put forth to send in a team, your team.”
Still business as usual-SDF often got tasked with missions other entities had failed to successfully accomplish.
Grant pushed the top file across the desk, but kept his hand on it.
“No matter what you think, this guy is not who you think he is,” he said, and after a moment, during which he hoped to hell those words sunk in, he removed his hand.
He saw the look that passed between the other two men, and he was glad of it. His guys didn’t get paid to be delicate, but the file was asking a lot of anyone-a goddamn helluva lot.
Dylan reached for the file and opened it without hesitation-and then he froze, turned to absofuckinglutely stone. Not a flicker of emotion showed on his face. Nothing. But within that complete stillness, Buck was reading a maelstrom. Dylan’s breathing had missed a beat and started back up too shallow, too fast. Buck didn’t have to guess what his subordinate was struggling with. He knew-utter disbelief, total denial, and fast on its heels, confusion, and in about thirty more seconds, it was all going to coalesce into anger-cold, glacially cold anger.