Crazy Kisses Read Online Free Page A

of his rope, that’s where he’d still be.
    No, she couldn’t have come here looking for him. For the last seven months, no one except the men he was with had known where he was or what he was doing. In the beginning, that had been Hawkins, and later another SDF operator, Creed Rivera. After Creed had finished his mission, he’d gone home, but Kid had stayed.
    He’d stayed too long.
    Colombia wasn’t safe for him anymore. People were looking for him. They just didn’t know his real name or what he looked like, not yet, but that wasn’t going to hold them off forever, not these guys, not if he kept doing what he’d been doing. The airfield on the Putumayo wasn’t the first time
el asesino fantasma
had hit Juan Conseco’s operation, and the drug lord knew it. News of the “Putumayo bounty” Conseco had put out on the ghost killer had hit Bogotá while he’d still been in the hospital. The cocaine baron wanted him dead or alive, and for half a million dollars, Kid figured Conseco had a pretty good shot at getting him.
    It was a helluva lot of money, but Kid had done a helluva lot of damage, including a pair of sniper hits contracted by the Colombian government via the U.S. Department of Defense on two of Conseco’s top lieutenants, a mission so black it had been black-on-black. Which all made Nikki’s presence even more unnerving, if that was possible—which, honest to God, it wasn’t. He was already unnerved all the way down to his gut and his toes by her being here. The situation with Conseco only made it worse.
    And wasn’t that just perfect? He hadn’t been home five minutes, and the first thing he had to do was literally kick Nikki McKinney out of his bed.
    Well, hell. At least now he had something to say that didn’t begin and end with “I’m sorry.” He’d said that to her so many times, especially when she was crying, and when they’d been together, she’d cried a lot. He had to admit that “Get your butt home” didn’t sound much better, though.
    He reached for the gate, then had to stand back when a couple stumbled through, their arms wrapped around each other, holding each other up on their way to the Ramones’ place on the other side of Kid’s yard.
    From the looks of the two of them, a little drunk, a little disheveled, and both in drag with half their clothes falling off, the Sandoval party was in full swing—a fact proven when he stepped through the gate.
    Every year, four days before Ash Wednesday, Panama City hosted Carnaval, a sexually charged, anything-goes party leading up to Lent. Every Friday night, no matter what was happening on the next Wednesday, the Sandoval brothers did the same.
    There were colored lights hanging in the trees, two transvestites crooning on a makeshift stage, well over a hundred other people crammed into the garden, some in costume, plenty of beer, and a bar serving
baja panties
—literally “panty lowerers,” which in Panama translated to any drink made with hard liquor.
    And there was Nicole Alana McKinney. He spotted her instantly. She was half in costume, with a pink feathered tiara in her black-and-purple spiked hair, and a blue sequined miniskirt with a matching stole to go with the top half of her green-and-purple palm frond bikini. She had a
baja panties
in one hand and five cards in the other. Her back was to him, and she was sitting at a table with four guys, two of them Rico and Luis, one of whom was already down to a pair of tighty-whities and an orange feather boa.
    It was like the living incarnation of his worst nightmare—or at least his nightmare before she’d gotten engaged.
    But this scene. Oh, yeah, he’d imagined it plenty of times: Nikki and a bunch of half-dressed guys well on their way to being undressed guys.
    It was her work, taking naked guys and putting them through the wringer of her cameras and her paint brushes until she got what she wanted, which was always more than the guys ever thought they’d have to give.
    She