She pulled another pin out, and then another.

Dammit. She hated it when she had that feeling.

There was a God.

Johnny had never doubted it, not really. He was a good Catholic boy, one of the best, but verifiable instances of divine grace and intervention were still welcome and only helped cement his faith.

He was currently in the midst of one of those instances-Shimmy, shimmy cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy rock.

Fishnet.

Coming off into a pile at her feet.

It was a gift, with Easy Alex stepping into a black satin slip and about half coming out of her red push-up bra, and if she wasn’t the earthly embodiment of divine grace, he didn’t know what was.

Red lace panties.

He hadn’t known. The hem of her hooker skirt had just covered them. But he’d seen them now, reflected in a double-hung window overlooking Wynkoop, the one closest to the B & B Investigations office bathroom where she was doing her reverse striptease.

She couldn’t know-not that every move she made was revealed in the window glass, just like a mirror, and she couldn’t know someone was standing in the low-lit hallway with a clear view through the window in the door.

And he wasn’t the guy who was going to tell her, not that he’d seen her in her underwear, but he was going to let her know he was there-in a minute, once she got herself dressed. His hand was raised, closed in an easy fist, ready to knock on the door as soon as she put on the suit jacket he could see reflected in the window.

But the jacket wasn’t what she went for next.

Amazingly, what she slipped into next was something he slipped into on a regular basis. Nothing could have surprised him more, that he and Esme Alden wore the same thing under their clothes- and he’d never been within a hundred miles of slipping on a pair of red lace panties.

Well, actually, he had kind of gotten tangled up in a pair one night in the rear bucket seats of a 1960 Chrysler “Letter Car,” a 300-F. The car had been a brute, beautiful and black, sleekly menacing with its 413-cid wedge-head V-8 and tail fins. The girl had been a pure heartbreaker from the get-go. She’d slain him in the back of that car, teased him to the point of no return and then taken him straight over the edge. That she’d only done it once and dumped him for a premed student at the university up in Boulder had damn near driven him crazy.

He was so goddamned glad he wasn’t nineteen anymore. Not that he felt overly in control of his reaction to seeing Easy Alex doing her Victoria ’s Secret model impression.

She’d filled out a bit in the last few years. Quite a bit. What he was looking at couldn’t all be the push-up bra-though he did love a push-up bra. The only thing better was no bra.

When she pulled an autoloading pistol out of her ratty white tote bag and checked the chamber before slipping the gun into her shoulder holster, he lowered his hand. The girl was carrying, “cocked, locked, and loaded.”

Johnny instinctively checked the hall, looking in both directions. Carlson Services was behind him, down at the end of the hall closest to the stairs. The other offices were dark, but Esme Alden was expecting trouble.

He returned his gaze to her reflection in the window. Or maybe, like him, she made a habit of being ready for trouble whether she was expecting it or not.

Extra ready, he thought, watching her slide a folding knife inside the waistband of her skirt. She was starting to look dangerous-damned dangerous.

So what was this all about tonight, he wondered, with her and her weapons and the German? What had she been after in the Oxford Hotel?

And did he really want to know? That was always the sticking point. Johnny’d learned a long time ago not to ask questions he wasn’t prepared to hear the answers to, good or bad. Life was funny that way, real life. A guy could be so goddamned sure of what was going on, and then get an answer straight out of left field.

It happened.

And given what he’d already seen tonight, Esme Alden owned the lease on left field. Geezus.The German in the Oxford had been strapped into a leather thong, and she’d leashed him to the bed- short-leashed. No wonder the guy had sounded a little strained.

Walk away, a voice in his head said. Back up, chingaleto. Get your ass down the stairs and back out on the street.

He knew that voice. He’d heard it hundreds of times. It was the voice of reason, and he was a reasonable guy.

And yet he didn’t budge an inch. He stayed right where he was and continued watching her.

She shrugged into the black jacket, slipped on a pair of black high heels, and changed her jewelry. He could hear the murmuring of the answering machine running through its messages.

Busy girl, he thought.

A little black suit, “catch me, fuck me” heels, and a string of pearls-she looked good. Damn good.

Too good for him to walk away. She was Esme Alden, the hot crush of his teenage years, and he’d just seen her in red lace panties and a push-up bra. No guy was walking away from that.

He raised his hand again and knocked.

Geezus.Esme’s heart damn near stopped. Then it occurred to her that it was probably Pete at the door with his pizza, coming over to share.

Geezus.She took a breath and finished putting the last bobby pin in her sleek new twist before turning off the light and stepping to the edge of the bathroom door.

Peeking around the side, she noted a couple of things right off the bat: They needed better lighting in the hall, and it wasn’t Pete standing out there.

Picking her phone back up and slipping it into the pocket on her skirt, she looked back to the office door. She couldn’t see the guy very clearly through the window, but she could see the outline of his body, and she was guessing five feet ten, maybe five eleven. Pete topped out at five six, and with years of Friday night pizza under his belt, he was as big around as he was tall.

This guy was long, lean, and broad through the shoulders. He was also unknown and unexpected, two things she didn’t take any chances with under the best of circumstances. Tonight hardly qualified for the best of anything except pure, unadulterated trouble.

Crap. Walking quietly and quickly across the room, she stopped to hit the off button on the answering machine, and then she made a beeline for the back office. Tucked into the end of the hall, Bainbridge’s old lair made the short end of the “L” of the two-office suite. From the window in his private entrance, she’d have a clear view of who was standing in the hallway.

An advantage that proved unnecessary when the man knocked again.

“Esme? Hey, it’s John Ramos.”

She stumbled to a stop and whirled around to stare at the door. Geezo freakin’ crap. John Ramos? Johnny Ramos? The name registered instantly, along with a face.

“From East High School. We graduated together.”

Totally unnecessary information. She hadn’t forgotten Johnny Ramos, oh, hell, no. Not in this lifetime, she wouldn’t.

“I, uh, heard you were working with your dad now. Thought I’d drop by and see if you could help me with a problem,” he said from outside in the hall.

Good God. Johnny freakin’ Ramos. Out in the hall.

Of course, out in the hall. Hell, he’d spent half his life out in the hall, especially at Campbell Junior High, especially during seventh-grade social studies class. She’d gotten sent out in the hall with him once, her one and only time in the hall ever, the two of them put there to “work things out,” and her poor little thirteen-year-old heart had barely survived the experience.

Ms. Trent had banished them to a pair of desks on either side of the doorway, leaving a bare three feet between them, thirty-six inches, not enough distance to insulate Esme from Johnny’s dark-eyed gaze and the heat that seemed to come out of nowhere and slam into her whenever their eyes met. There sure as hell hadn’t been any “working things out” going on. She hadn’t opened her mouth, not once. He’d been so bad, dangerously bad, even at thirteen, given the crowd he’d run with, especially his older brother, Dom Ramos, and for reasons she hadn’t understood, out of all the girls in the seventh grade, he’d chosen her to torture and tease.