what he did, Jack’s Big Thing: Save the girl, dazzle and amaze, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. He was a pirate, pure and simple, six feet of swash, buckle, and balls.
Jack started the Buick and put it in gear, and she began drawing what she knew about 738 Steele Street, every room, every hall, not that they’d let her see too much—except when it came to Kid. They’d made damn sure she’d had plenty of time to see him, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he was Con’s younger brother.
She looked up when Jack pulled into the street. Two sets of eyes were better than one on a tail, and she sure didn’t need to be staring at him. He had one of those faces that for reasons she did her damnedest to ignore had imprinted itself on her brain the first time she’d seen him: lost boy, all the way, pure trouble, high cheekbones, firm mouth, a slight cleft in his chin, beautiful. His nose was a swoop of Irish mischief, his hair a rich, deep shade of auburn and usually wildly tousled on his head, never completely under control, like Jack himself. His eyes were nearly the same color as his hair, a rich, warm brown beneath auburn eyebrows, totally incongruous with the reality of Jack Traeger. There was very little warmth to be had in the ex-Ranger. To the core of his being, and despite his Fair Isle looks, he could be the coldest bastard on the face of the earth. She’d seen him in action, and as far as his operational skills, all she had to say was that he was the best, which was why he worked for Con. It was his personal life where he fell far, far short of the mark.
“Sonuvabitch,” he muttered under his breath, and oh, hell, she saw it, too, a beer truck pulling onto the road between them and Karola and taking up both lanes to make a wide turn.
“Well, hell.”
“Dammit.”
“We’ll go three blocks—”
“Take a right and—”
“Check the cross street,” she finished the drill, and he flashed her a grin. That’s the way it used to be between them: fast and fluid, the two of them on the same wavelength.
Ten minutes later, Jack pulled over and parked a block over from their first parking spot. If Karola was looking for something around Steele Street, chances were, he’d come back around.
Scout went back to sketching a plan of the building and ignoring Jack Traeger.
Hell, he’d probably imprinted himself on her soul and done it on purpose, just so he could torture her.
But she was done with that. She’d been done since Key Largo. She had no more emotion left to give to the lost cause that was Jack Traeger. None. Zero. Nada. It was time for her to grow up and move on. If he hadn’t noticed her by now, he probably wasn’t going to notice her.
God, it was times like this when she really missed her mother. Girls with mothers didn’t end up in strange cities in rented Buicks with pirates who’d broken their heart more times than she could count. At least that’s what she always told herself any time she was sad or in trouble—that if her mother were alive, things would be better, life different, her troubles a thing of the past.
But there was never a mother—only Con and the pirate, Black Jack Traeger.
“Hey, there’s Karola, going around the block again,” he said, putting the Buick back in gear.
She peeked up from her drawing. “He still looks lost.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Let’s go see what he’s up to.”
“Roger, that.” She sat up a little straighter in her seat. The sooner they found Con and tied this mess up, the sooner she could get herself somewhere halfway around the world from wherever Black Jack ended up. “Let’s follow this bastard and see where he lights.”
Half an hour of wandering around later, Karola finally found a place to call home.
“The Kashmir Club,” Scout said, and gave a low whistle.
Jack concurred. The hotel was anything but discreet. Indian in design, it had shades of the Taj Mahal in its architecture, an exotic addition to the Denver skyline, and, from the looks of it, a recent one. The grand entrance to the downtown hotel was elegantly wrapped in pillared arches. The large, mullioned windows revealed a lobby lush with exotic chandeliers and sumptuous furnishings in rich shades of ruby red, gold, and deep sage green.