Without A Trace. Sandra Moore K.

to have a sixth sense about when to reach for her hand to keep her from being swallowed up and carried away in the throngs still crowding the sidewalks.

      Now, he stood before the club’s beefy bouncer, one hip cocked in a careless stance, his black leather jacket’s lapel kicked up against his neck.

      He looked, Nikki thought with a spark of awareness, like a young Chow Yun-Fat—beautiful and masculine, sensitive and tough all at once. Nikki closed her eyes briefly against a vision of the actor sprawled bare-chested on a bed in The Killer, and gave herself a mental shake. You can take him home, she heard Jess’s voice tease her, but you can’t keep him.

      She wasn’t sure she dared try to take him home.

      Nevertheless, he was definitely the right guy in the right place, she thought as he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her in close. The bouncer was giving her what Jess used to call the Skanky Eye and saying something to Johnny.

      She resisted the urge to glance down at the getup Johnny had given her at his place, where they’d stopped to change clothes and lose the camouflage face paint. She’d wanted to go back to her hotel to pick up her own clothing, but he’d insisted on gearing her out.

      All his girlfriends must have been tiny because, even as small as she was, the black leather bustier and black skirt he’d grabbed for her out of a closet came close to being obscene. Good thing he’d had a lightweight wrap to put over her shoulders. She’d felt a passing wave of shame—she was actually more demure than most women her age.

      But given the bouncer’s admiring glance down the shirt’s opening, not to mention the strong scent of sandalwood coming off him, the saucy clothes were a good idea, morals be damned. She looked like someone who might be a prostitute, not someone who could, or would, break his kneecaps. That made for a decent element of surprise.

      “Let’s go,” Johnny said after a few words with the bouncer. He jerked his head at the much larger man and grinned, leering a little at her.

      “Great,” she said as she strode through the door. “Meat market, eh, mal parido?”

      Johnny shrugged, still nonchalant.

      Nikki gave up wondering if he knew he’d been insulted and squeezed through the ever-present crowd into the club. This time it was her keeping a tight hold on his hand as they threaded their way to the bar. Once there, Johnny nodded to several angry-looking toughs that Nikki pegged immediately as the kind of guys you didn’t hang around with unless you were armed.

      She was pretty sure Johnny was armed, but where he kept his guns, she was afraid to wonder. His black leather pants didn’t leave room for imagination, much less firearms.

      She hoisted herself onto a just-vacated bar stool and tried to ignore the man pressing between her and the guy on the next stool. It was more togetherness than she was used to, or ever wanted to experience, but for the most part her new good friend seemed harmless, more interested in getting his drink and getting back on the dance floor than anything else.

      While Johnny spoke with a bartender, she cased the joint.

      The Electric Dragon was a happening place, packed to the gills with young men and women writhing to the pulsing beat of a techno pop band whose lead singer’s voice could strip paint off walls. The band was cloistered behind a cage, though it was hard to tell whether that was part of the band’s aesthetic sensibilities or for their protection.