Loose and Easy by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    From the looks of her, he figured the odds on her begging him for anything were zip and none.
             
    Esme hesitated, but only for a second, before she walked back to the bathroom. She knew what time it was, and she knew she didn’t have any to waste.
Good God, Johnny freakin’ Ramos.
    She had a handheld black light already in the bathroom, and once she closed the door, she turned it on. It would only take her a minute to check the painting. The last thing she wanted was to show up at Nachman’s with a fake. The Meinhard was her bargaining chip. She needed to know she had a solid opening hand.
    Reaching into the white vinyl tote, she removed the thin metal case containing the Meinhard and popped it open. With a small screwdriver also from out of her tote, she loosened the wooden frame on the painting and lifted off the protective covering. One slow pass with the black light was all she needed, and as soon as she was finished, she reassembled the painting and the frame and put the piece back into the case.
    The metal case measured precisely two by ten by fifteen inches, and when she got back to her dad’s desk, she slipped it neatly inside a black leather messenger bag she’d designed for a courier contract she’d taken last May. The job had been to transport a rare manuscript from Presque Isle, Maine, to Bern, Switzerland, and it had gone without a hitch.
    She zipped the interior pouch on the bag closed, securing the case inside, then buckled the outside straps.
    John Ramos, standing right there next to her. That was a bit of a hitch, maybe more than a bit.
Cripes.
She’d seen the way he’d looked at her red leather skirt, and she didn’t have a doubt in her mind that he’d been the
“policía”
at the Oxford, or that he’d followed her through the hotel room, or that he knew exactly what she’d done to Otto Von Lindberg.
    Hell, for all she knew he
was
a policeman, undercover, off-duty, whatever. It was enough to make a girl sweat, if a girl ever sweated. Thank God, Esme didn’t, never, not on the job.
    The messenger bag had been constructed with a net of very fine steel mesh sandwiched between its lining and the thick latigo leather. It also had a cipher lock connected to a steel cable running through the flap. She engaged the lock before slipping the bag’s shoulder strap over her head and adjusting it across the front of her body in a manner that insured it wouldn’t get in the way of drawing her pistol. Nobody could get the