Kid was holding on to his wife, too, holding on for the ride, but who could do anything else with Nikki? She was an artist, like quicksilver. Johnny had posed for her completely buck naked, the first time a couple of years ago, and a few times since, and he still wasn’t sure if he’d ever quite recovered from the experience. He liked the paintings she’d done though, most of them dark angel paintings with him looking pretty badass. He liked them a lot. Nikki did, too. She’d picked one of the paintings of him for the poster of her latest exhibit, the Ironheart Angel. It would probably impress the hell out of Esme.

Sure it would-and he just happened to have the announcement Nikki had left for him at Steele Street in his back pocket. She and Kid had left for Los Angeles this morning, and he knew she was hoping he’d stop by the gallery and just sort of be there-getting stared at.

Right-just one of the perks of posing naked for a famous artist, having women show up to check you out. Not that they needed you there. Nikki didn’t leave anything to the imagination, but Johnny had wondered if she kind of added a little something extra here and there. Even with paintings of himself to look at, the verdict was still out on that one.

“Well, maybe after your appointment then,” he jumped back in, reaching around and checking his back pocket. Sure enough, he had the postcard announcement next to his wallet. “You could give me a call.” He pulled out the postcard. He wasn’t really floundering. This was a plan. “A friend of mine has some paintings showing at the Toussi Gallery on Seventeenth. There’s going to be wine and cheese, that kind of stuff, tonight, and these things always go late. So, if you like, we could go and look around, check out the artwork, whenever you were free. It wouldn’t matter what time, not really. I know the owner.” He handed the postcard over to her-and if her answer had even a hint of “I’ll be busy the rest of the night,” he was heading straight back to Steele Street and knocking on Hawkins’s door.

“You know Suzi Toussi?” Her eyebrows went up again, her expression slightly disbelieving.

Okay. More than slightly.

He wasn’t insulted. There was no reason on earth for her to think he’d turned into anything other than the street gangster his guidance counselor had predicted.

“Yeah, I know Suzi, and she’s still involved with the gallery,” he said. “But the woman who owns it now is named Katya.” Katya Hawkins, Superman’s wife and mother of three, with another one on the way. Johnny wasn’t the only one at SDF who was beginning to wonder if Christian and Katya were going for some kind of record.

“Uh, sure…Toussi’s, that sounds like fun,” Esme said, after another few seconds of looking him over. Then her gaze dropped to the postcard.

He didn’t expect her to recognize him, not as the blood-streaked, tragically heroic angel Nikki had made him. For the postcard, Nikki had only used a portion of the painting, zooming in on his jaw and shoulder, with part of one wing showing. The feathers in the wing were broken and torn, and he didn’t know why, but that was the part that disturbed him the most-not what Nikki had done to him, how she’d made him look so brutalized, but what she’d done to his wings. It just looked so fierce, like some maelstrom had gotten ahold of that angel and shaken him to his core-which, if he remembered correctly, and he did, was exactly how he’d felt when Nikki had gotten hold of him.

He guessed she was a pretty good artist. In fact, he knew she was an amazing artist.

“This is good… very good,” Esme murmured, quietly echoing his thoughts. “Um, sure”-she looked up-“why not. Why don’t you give me your number?”

She set the card on the desk and pulled her cell phone out of a pocket on her skirt. He recited the ten digits, watching her punch them into her phone’s memory along with his name-and all the while, he knew she was lying through her teeth.

She wasn’t going to call him, and suddenly it wasn’t just curiosity motivating him, and it wasn’t just his heated memories, or his teenage crush. Suddenly, she was a woman with a gun and something she’d stolen off a man in a hotel room, and she had an appointment she was damned serious about keeping.

Whatever was going on, Johnny had a feeling it had to do with her marketing genius of a father, and it was a bad feeling. He knew her. He’d spent six years in school with her, and he’d been paying attention, probably too much attention-but, man, she’d held it hard. She’d been more than book smart. She’d been able to think her way around things, book things, sure, but people and situations, too. East was a tough school. She shouldn’t have lasted a week in those hallways, not looking the way she had, all cute middle-class white bread. But she’d done three years, and the only time anyone had ever gotten to her had been in that locker bay with Kevin Harrell-and that bastard hadn’t gotten far.

She’d been the valedictorian of their class for a reason, and none of those reasons would have led her here. No way in hell did she work in this dump, and no matter where she worked, she didn’t have pens with naked women on them lying around on her desk.

Christ. She had stolen goods, a.45, and an appointment. There wasn’t a thing in that combination that didn’t spell trouble in capital letters, and the one thing she didn’t have, the one thing he hadn’t seen anywhere since he’d first seen her up on Seventeenth, was backup.

He let his gaze drop down the length of her, and when he got to her feet, he stopped, his attention arrested. By whatever quirk of fate was out there, when she’d stepped over to the desk, she’d stepped right on top of her hooker skirt. It was under her slinky black high heel, and as he watched, she quietly and deliberately slid her foot across the carpet, dragging the small slip of leather and lace with her, until she could give it one small last push and make it disappear under the desk.

And she did it all without a word.

When she pulled her foot back from the desk, he looked up and caught her gaze. She knew he’d tailed her from the Oxford. She knew he knew about the German, the leash, the dog collar, and probably about the suit jacket she’d cut open, and man, oh, man, it didn’t faze her in the least. Butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth.

Oh, she was a cool one, all right, but not cold. Her hair was warm honey gold, swept up in a Holly Golightly twist. Her mouth was softly pink and glossed, and her eyes were gray, a dozen shades of it, any one of them callable at will-and the one she was currently calling up was clear. Not storm gray, not arctic gray, nothing to do with ice or an emotion-just clear, pure, simple, clean gray. Pure and simple “I know what I’m doing, so don’t get in my way” gray, and he was impressed as hell. What he’d seen in room 215 was none of his business. She couldn’t have made it any plainer if she’d painted it on a billboard in big block letters: “Back off, big boy.”

He knew women like her, had been in love with them most of his adult life, women like Skeeter Bang and the bodaciously dangerous Red Dog. Those two knew exactly what they were doing, and they really didn’t need his help, especially if they had each other.

But Easy Alex had taken on the German alone, and nobody had been waiting for her in the Faber Building. She was running a private game here- and she was cutting him loose, pushing him out the damn door. He had an emotion for that, but he really didn’t know what in the hell to call it.

Bottom line, though, this was her call, not his, no matter how skeptical he was about her father, her gun, and how she’d leashed that guy to the bed. She was done with him, and he wasn’t going to learn anything more by hanging around the B & B office, getting in her way and holding her up.

“If you want to get your things, I’ll walk you out.” He didn’t ask. It wasn’t a question. He was walking her out, end of story, and unless she threw herself at his feet and begged for his help when they hit the street, he was going to go back to his beer at the Blue Iguana.