Loose Ends by Tara Janzen Page B

had a knife in her hand, and after throwing the car into first gear, he disarmed her and closed the blade. It was all one motion, and it was over before she had a chance to realize that he was hijacking her ride.
    Just as well.
    She’d done her job, and done it damn well, hot-wiring the Pontiac. The rest was up to him.
    He shoved the knife in his pants pocket, working the pedals and the gear shift, and spun the car’s steering wheel. The tires squealed and smoked. The freight elevator door was dead ahead, and in a flash, he got a memory he could use: The elevator worked off a pressure plate twenty feet from the door. Drive over it, the door opened. The old contraption on the other side of the building was all levers and cables, but the new one they’d installed was high-tech.
    They. Them. The other guys. Us
.
    Perfect.
    He’d been stretched pretty thin of late, and this place was crashing down around him from the inside out, starting with the city of Denver and ending here on Steele Street.
    He heard shots, and when he checked the rearview, he saw the auburn-haired woman and one of the blond men break for a gold GTO, another 1967 like Corinna. The dark-haired guy from the stairs, the one who’d yelled “Jane,” was running for the Sublime Green Challenger Con had ridden in on, and the other blond guyfrom the shadows was making his break for a red 1970 Chevelle with black racing stripes and that big 454 under the hood.
    So this was going to be a race—but not much of one. He had the fast elevator to the street all locked up, which left everybody else either to wait in line or use the gothic contraption.
    Corinna rode over the pressure plate. The door slid open, and Con hit the clutch and worked the brakes, letting the beauty roll into place. The elevator controls were easily reached through the open driver’s-side window. Con punched GROUND FLOOR , checked the rearview mirror, and time stopped.
    It stopped like the cut of a knife—suddenly wounding, brutally deep. It took his breath, and for a split second, it lifted the veil between
Then
and
Now
.
    Peter—running into the garage and stopping to stare at the escaping car, his chest heaving, his breath coming hard.
    Kid Chaos—the name Con had given the boy, something to toughen him up.
Geezus
, he’d been such a little nerd. But like all the others, the whole Steele Street crew, he’d been worth saving time and again … 
and again … and again
. Forever and always.
    Con’s heart wasn’t cold now. It was on fire, burning with an ache he didn’t know how to control, his gaze meeting his brother’s and the instant connection revealing all that used to be.
    Yes
. The word and the feeling welled up inside him, filling him with a painful longing.
    Yes
.
    Then, with a
whoosh
of sound, the solid metal door fell back into place, closing him off from the garage and taking the younger man from his view. Immediately, the elevator started its rapid descent. The loss twisted inside him, bringing his hand up to his chest, but with eachfloor they dropped, the memory grew softer, the pain lessened.
    Out of sight, almost out of mind
, he thought, like so many of his memory jolts, and when the elevator stopped with a small shudder and the door opened on the ground floor, he was out of 738 Steele Street.
    Hand back on the wheel, Con gunned the engine, and Corinna rolled onto the street, sliding into a break in the traffic.
    Working the car up through her gears, he shot a glance across the interior of the car to the woman still perched sideways in the passenger seat—Jane, a plain, homespun name for a very exotic creature. Her mouth was slightly parted, as if she’d been taken by surprise, which he could guarantee she had been. Hell,
he’d
been taken by surprise. Her eyes were still wide and stark with shock, and he didn’t blame her for that, either. She didn’t look like she’d caught her breath yet, let alone figured out her current situation.
    He could have saved