mother lode. Maybe.
“He was a Marine, like my dad, Recon.”
And that explained a lot.
“They told me his name is J. T. Chronopolous.”
Geezus. For something they’d wanted for so long, the name was surprisingly hard to hear.
“Sounds like you had a helluva eight weeks.”
She nodded, still trembling.
“Okay,” he said, moving ahead with the plan. “Let’s get out of here, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
She nodded again and, to his everlasting disappointment, pulled away. He wasn’t surprised. She got only about an inch of distance, but he felt every long millimeter of it.
Yard after rattling creaking yard, the elevator ground its way down to the alley with the car rumbling and shaking. In all the diversionary tactics he and Con had gone over, there hadn’t been one that included a mass exodus of Steele Street’s classic muscle cars, but he noticed when, besides the Chevelle in the cage with them, another big-block monster, a midnight blue GTO, tore down the street. Moments later, another automotive street machine streaked past—the green 1971 Challenger the redhead had driven to the Quick Mart.
So where was everybody going? he wondered. For reinforcements? Or was it total surrender, an out-and-out retreat?
A small eternity of her silent tears later, they slid by the third floor, and he stifled an exasperated groan. The lift was taking for-fricking-ever, and he’d just about reached his maximum Scout Leesom saturation point, had about all he could take of breathing her in, of feeling her sadness and not being allowed to help. She owned the word “tomboy,” but she smelled like a girl, felt like a girl. Worst of all, when they were this close, even with that damn inch between them, she felt like his girl.
And his girl was wound tight, the tension rolling off her in waves, and, more than likely, a boatload and a half of it was directed at him. There were a few things he didn’t know about her, like how she looked in a dress. But he knew how she felt about him: angry, day in and day out. It wore at him. The last time they’d been in the same room had been the day she and Con had come down to the Florida Keys to drag him back into the fold—his last great failed escape.
What had that woman’s name been, the blonde’s? he wondered, watching a white 4 painted on the fourth-floor garage door slowly disappear above them.
Ah, Maggie, it came to him. That was right.
A big white numeral 3 slid into view, and the lift kept descending, and still neither of them moved.
Well, Maggie didn’t know how close she’d come to finally getting him banished forever. Scout had been so tight-jawed furious with him. And all he’d been doing was trying to forget her.
It never worked. Never.
For a moment, no more, he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair, let it fill his senses, but he didn’t move. He didn’t spread his fingers wider across the small of her back. He didn’t pull her back in closer to him.
Closer into love, closer into inevitable disaster.
There was no winning, not here, not between them.
He’d tried to forget her hundreds of times, thousands, sometimes with another woman, most times just with the sheer adrenaline rush of living as far out on the edge as he could get. So he took jobs even Con walked away from, and he took chances no sane man would hazard, and he did his damnedest not to cross her path.
But here he was again, crossed every which way he could get and as close as he’d ever been.
The freight cage rolled past the second-floor garage door with its big painted 2, and a heightened sense of readiness passed through Scout to him. He understood. He was ready, too. He couldn’t have her, but he could get her out of Steele Street and out of Denver.
The elevator finally came to a grinding halt in the alley, and the Chevelle took off like a bat out of hell, all smoke and tires and rumbling exhaust. Scout was only half a second behind the car, bolting for the cage door, when he grabbed her and held her back.
“Wait,” he said softly, his attention caught by a black Mercedes sedan slowly turning the corner up 19th at Wynkoop. The car was crawling along, making the rest of the traffic go around it. The back window was about a quarter of the way rolled down.
He didn’t know the car, but