Loose Ends Read Online Free Page B

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 themourning 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 she wanted—the alley at 738 Steele Street and the undying long-shot hope that the hot guy who’d busted her boost two weeks ago would show up tonight
.
    It was a little silly, and fun, and kind of comforting to have such a crazy crush on a guy. In this one way, at least, she was like all the other teenage girls in the city, the normal ones. None of them could have cruised the dark alleys of Denver or stolen their dinner off the street, and she doubted if very many of them had ever been on the rooftops. But they had crushes on hot guys, and so did she—the hottest guy ever
.
    Her smile returned
.
    At the top of the fire escape, she made a small leap onto a balcony rail and quick-stepped across, balancing herself with her arms outstretched, her small backpack in one hand, the Chinese food in the other. When she reached the end of the balcony, she threw her backpack up on the roof, gripped the plastic bag of food in her teeth, and swung herself up. She had her place all picked out and settled in with her dinner for the long haul, sitting in the prime place for watching the alley backing 738 Steele Street. A lot of buff guys went in and out of the building, but she was only interested in one—her