from a few years back. J.T. must have dealt with old Sparky quite a bit in his younger years. Mr. Klimaszewski was a hard nut, a guy who’d been brokering half the cars stolen in Denver for the last twenty years.
“You must have scraped the hell out of the front cowling, getting a Beemer out of here.”
He let out a short laugh. “Yeah. I did. It’s why I never told anybody about this place. We lost money on the 535i. Sparky was …” His voice trailed off as he took in the basement, looking around.
She felt the hesitation in his thoughts, heard the confusion, but she didn’t press him. It was obvious which guys he’d never told, or Hawkins would have driven Roxanne right down on top of Corinna in this basement, anything to hold him in place.
God, it had to be tearing them all up, to know J.T. was alive, to be wondering what had happened to him—to wonder who they’d buried in that grave in Sheffield Cemetery.
“So this is one of your old hangouts?” If it was, it was one he hadn’t shared with her.
“No,” he said, putting the car in reverse and backing up. “It was a rabbit hole, a one-off deal that didn’t work out.”
Smooth and easy, he executed a three-point Y-turn, getting the GTO lined back up in front of the opening a half a floor above them at the other end of the impossibly steep ramp.
“Maybe I’ll just get out and walk it.” She did not want to be part of any more drop-of-death roller-coaster insanity. Maybe he was right. Maybe they weren’t trapped down here. Inconvenienced, sure, but not trapped. Frazzled and frayed, but not falling apart. Anxious, sure, but not out-and-out panicked.
She didn’t care. She didn’t want to get out of here in a reverse play of how they’d gotten in. She reached for the door.
“Stay put,” he said, shifting gears and backing up. “You’re fine.”
Oh, right, she’d heard that before.
She felt Corinna’s rear bumper come softly up against the wall behind them, and he stopped and shifted gears again.
Technically, at that point, she had a couple of seconds to get out, but she missed it, and then it was too late.
With all the mind-numbing, bone-shaking roar and rumble of a Ram Air 400 going balls-out in neutral with a heavy foot on the gas pedal, she braced herself. He didn’t drive a car. He launched a car, and Corinna was being prepped for another rocket ride.
When he released the clutch, she was already pressed back into her seat, holding her breath, reciting Hail Marys.
Power. That’s what he needed, and that’s what he got, all the power Corinna could deliver in one screaming, smoking blast. Slingshot, all the way. He pushed the car as hard and fast as the beast could go in an impossibly short distance, and even then, Jane wasn’t sure they were going to clear the top of the ramp. When they did, it was with air to spare and a subsequent body-slamming descent of the front end onto the asphalt of the parking lot.
Things crunched.
She winced.
And he drove.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Rick Karola at ten o’clock,” Scout said, seeing Lancaster’s errand boy driving by where she and Jack were still parked close to Coors Field, not far from Steele Street. “In the blue Lexus ES350.”
“Got him,” Jack said. “Do we follow the bastard, or do I go back into Steele Street? What do you think?”
What did she think?
Well, she spent a helluva lot of her time trying not to think about that blond bimbo in Key Largo four months ago. That’s what she thought. She’d hated him for that, truly hated him. And she knew the blonde had just been one in a long, long line of women in his bed.
“I think we follow Karola,” she said, all business. “See what he’s up to. He’s alone, and from the way he’s craning his head around, I say he’s looking for something, or somebody, like maybe Sam Walls. And if we can, we need to get a fix on Lancaster. If Con hasn’t checked in with us by the time we do that, then we consider going back into the building.”
She was always all business with Jack. It was the only way for her to function without her heart breaking all over the place.
“I’ve got a notebook in my pack,” he said. “Draw me a layout of the building.”
“Check.” She reached into the backseat for his pack.