handing her off to the guy whose pocket she’d just picked.
A wild thing, that’s what he’d called her that night in front of the Blue Iguana Lounge, while he’d pried Christian Hawkins’s wallet out of her fist, as in: “Here’s your wallet back, Superman. I think this wild thing is all yours. Better run her by Doc Blake before you throw her back on the street. She looks a little worse for wear.”
She had been worse for wear that night, hungry and roughed up, her body aching from a run-in with a junkie over on Blake Street. Still, she’d squirmed and twisted and tried to break his hold—and all the while she’d been wondering what in the hell had made her think these guys would make good marks. They’d both looked like some kind of superhero. J.T. had been especially incredibly beautiful, a real traffic-stopper, clean cut, tall, and superbly fit, his shoulders broad, his arms strong, with a bone-deep confidence radiating out of every pore that had set her heart aflutter—and that’s what she’d been thinking, how hot he was, instead of paying attention to the lift.
Then he’d really short-circuited her brain, looking down at her after he’d handed her off, still grinning. She’d been struck straight through the heart. Their eyes had met, his smile had faded, and she’d never been the same, not ever, not even now. He’d changed her, even though a guy like him wouldn’t have looked twice at a street rat like her, not back when she’d been picking pockets. Unless, she’d found out weeks later, if a night got so wild that even the good guys started crossing the lines.
He’d crossed the line with her.
Much to her everlasting mortification, she did know that much about him. But the most important thing she knew about J. T. Chronopolous, the hard thing, the worst thing, was that he’d died. They’d buried him six years ago on a summer afternoon in a cemetery in Denver. She’d been one of the hangers-on that day, just a street kid in the background, not really part of the mourning that had gone on. But she’d felt the grief, hard and heavy and aching, right along with his friends.
God, she’d cried for him, for things that had never had a chance in hell of really beginning, let alone lasting.
She stopped at the corner and looked back, but he was gone—J.T., John Thomas Chronopolous, Kid Chaos’s older brother, the best of them all.
He’d told her once how much he’d loved being a Marine, but he’d loved his friends more, and when they’d asked him to come home, he’d left Recon behind. He’d told her a lot of things during the long, hot summer of their unexpected friendship. The city had been scorching that year, the temperatures soaring close to a hundred for days on end, the nights little better. So she’d taken to the rooftops, and one night, so had he …
What a score!
Jane ran down the street for another half block, legs pumping, before turning into an alley off Wazee, a plastic bag full of Chinese takeout swinging from her fist. The food was still hot and had barely been paid for when some hapless old dude with a limp had set it down to unlock his car.
Fool. She’d slid by him and scored an amazing dinner. She could still hear him back there yelling for the cops, but she was long gone—and so was his meal.
She slowed to an easy alley-eating lope, and her mouth curved into a wide grin.
Gourmet Chinese, from the coolest new restaurant in LoDo, a place called the Lucky Moon. If she’d had a cellphone, she would have called her friend Sandman to come and share.
Partway down the alley, she took a right turn into the parking lot of Sprechts Apartments, one of lower downtown’s pricier addresses. Every apartment had a balcony, and the people who lived at Sprechts were the kind who grew gardens on them and had lots of plants, even trees. Sometimes the Sprechts people would sit around on their balconies and drink wine. More than once, she’d scored a half-empty bottle in the wee hours when the city was asleep. But the nicest thing about Sprechts was the roof—specifically, its location.
She came to the fire escape and started up, moving quickly and silently, her steps as light as her fingers were fast. It was five floors to the roof, but she would have climbed twice as high to get the view