Wildfire (The Fire Series Book 3)

by Anne Stuart

  “Get back in the kitchen,” Mal murmured beneath his breath. “Go out the back and run like hell.”

  “Oh, I really don’t think so.” Archer limped forward, coming closer to inspect the dead body. He looked back at her. “I suppose I shouldn’t have killed the man—he still could have been of use, but I’ve had a trying day. As for you, baby, you lied to me, many times over. You don’t think I’m going to let you get away with that, now do you?”

  “You can’t kill us both,” Mal said, moving into the room. One hand was behind his back, signaling her to run, but that was the last thing she was going to do. Perhaps literally. She wasn’t going to escape while Archer shot Malcolm.

  She stayed with him, trying to move in front of him, but Mal simply caught her arm and shoved her behind him. “Stay put, damn you,” he muttered.

  “Oh, she never does what she’s told—hadn’t you realized that by now?” Archer said, having lost interest in the doctor’s corpse. “And while she deserves to be punished for her duplicity, I’m thinking there are sides to her I have yet to explore. I might bring her back into the fold—Rachel didn’t survive our unfortunate trip to the mainland, and I do like variety.”

  “You’re not touching her,” Mal said.

  Archer was surveying the gun in his hand like it was a new toy, sniffing at the barrel, checking it from every angle. And then he turned his beatific smile on both of them. “What’s it to you, old man? She’s just part of the job. I’m still willing to discuss business with you, despite our little setback on the sea stairs, but we certainly can’t let Sophie come between us.”

  “You’re a sick fuck.”

  “Yes, I am,” he said cheerfully. “I’m giving you a choice. I’ve got to kill one of you if I’m to keep my self-respect, but I’m perfectly willing to keep one of you alive. You for business, Sophie for pleasure, but I can’t have it both ways. You decide.”

  Sophie stared at her husband from behind Mal’s back. She needed to get to the sofa, find the Beretta. No one had to die but Archer, and damn did he have to die!

  “You’re not touching her,” Mal said again.

  “Well, there’s our problem. If you’re dead, you can’t protect her from my villainous clutches. If she’s dead, there’s nothing to protect. I think you’ve solved the conundrum for me. Step out from behind him, Sophie. I’m afraid you drew the short straw. Move, or I’ll shoot you through him. You saw what one of those bullets did to the good doctor’s substantial brain—it won’t have any problem going through his body to get to yours.”

  “Don’t move,” Mal said furiously, but Sophie was no longer listening. If she could buy them a few more moments, then Mal could take him, even without a gun. She didn’t doubt for one moment that Archer would do exactly as he threatened, and he could make his move at any moment. Before Mal could stop her she darted out from behind him, moving toward the sofa on the off chance that Archer would miss.

  For a nanosecond all was still. Archer was smiling at her, his mad, bulbous eyes red-rimmed and gleeful, and he brought the gun up, pointing it straight at her chest. She heard the click as he cocked it, and she couldn’t move, frozen like a deer in the headlights.

  “Sophie!” Mal screamed, throwing himself in front of her just as the gun went off.

  She went down hard beneath his body, and she wondered whether he’d knocked her down or if Archer had done as he promised and shot them both with one bullet. She could feel the hot wetness pouring over her, and she realized Mal had been hit. He was so heavy she couldn’t budge him, couldn’t even move.

  She could hear Archer’s laugh. “What a hero!” he said in a mocking voice. “That poor fool must have really loved you.” He was coming toward them—she could see his bloody foot dragging along the floor. “I’m afraid I did mislead him. There’s no way I could allow either of you to live.”

  She was helpless, frozen, and too numb to care. His blood was wet and sticky, soaking into her clothes. He was dying, because of her.

  Closer, closer. Step, drag . . . the smear of blood making a path across the room. “Maybe I’ll blow off his skull too, and let you watch, before I finish with you,” he said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t want to do a job half-assed.”

  Half-assed. Maybe Mal wasn’t dead yet. But if she didn’t move he would be. With an inhuman effort she shoved, and Mal rolled off her, a dead weight, as Sophie leapt for the sofa. Bullets whined over her head, but she was able to duck behind the sofa in time. For a second she thought the gun was gone, but then her fingers closed around the butt, and she cocked it as she pulled it out from the cushions, aimed it, and fired, over and over and over again.

  Each bullet hit Archer. He recoiled as they struck him, his chest, his neck, his face, the force of the last one spinning him around until he fell on the floor, his gun skittering far out of reach. A smart operative would wait where she was to make certain the danger was passed, but she wasn’t smart and she wasn’t an operative. She didn’t even look at what remained of her husband; she went straight to Mal’s body, turning him over.

  Archer had shot him in the chest, and blood was pouring from the wound. He was unconscious, his color was pale, and when she fumbled for a pulse it was thin and thready.

  “Don’t you dare fucking die on me!” she screamed at him, ripping off her shirt and pressing it against the wound. “You goddamned noble idiot, you don’t even like me. Why the fuck would you die to save me?”

  His eyes fluttered open for a moment, focusing on her. “Who says I don’t like you?” he whispered, and closed them again.

  She cried then. Loud, miserable howls as she pressed the shirt against his wound. He didn’t open his eyes again, the shirt was soaked with blood, and she was making so much noise she didn’t hear the helicopter land, or the pounding of booted feet, until someone reached for her and tried to pull her away.

  She fought them, screaming that she wouldn’t leave Mal, but they were stronger, and people were bending over Mal, and she quieted. Whoever was holding her released her, and she fell back on the blood-streaked floor, numb.

  To her left lay Archer’s body, his long limbs splayed out, his mouth and eyes open in shock. On her right medics were working on Mal, at least she assumed that’s what they were. They’d gotten a breathing tube in and someone was working a bag over his mouth, forcing air into his lungs. His shirt had been cut off, the gaping wound exposed, and it was even worse than she thought. She felt dizzy, sick, staring at him as they tried to jolt his heart into working again.

  A hand touched her arm, and she yanked it away, but he was inexorable. She looked up to see a tall man with dark blond hair, a cane over one arm, and then she remembered who he was. She’d met him years ago when she’d trained with the Committee. His name was Madsen, Peter Madsen.

  “Come with me, Miss Jordan,” he said in crisp British accent. “There’s nothing we can do for him now. They’ll do everything possible.”

  “I’m not leaving him,” she said fiercely.

  “Yes,” he said gently, “you are.”

  Everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sophie moved through the French Quarter in the rain, head down, newspapers clutched in her arms. Malcolm Gunnison had been dead for three months and Sophie was still in denial. Her therapist had warned her about it—the longer she refused to accept his death, the harder the eventual grieving would be, and Sophie had dutifully said yes, she knew, and she would work on it.

  In fact, there wasn’t any particular advantage in denial. Even if she couldn’t believe he’d really died on that island, she was still grieving, alternating between anger and feeling numb. Pictures kept playing in her mind, Mal looking at her with that half smile, Mal on the floor, bleeding out. Her heart was twisting inside her, but damn it, he wasn’t dead.

  The trolley cars were packed in the rain. It was tourist season, close to Mardi Gras, and everyone in the city seemed amped up. Everyone except her.

  Even the businesslike
operatives in the house in the Garden District had lightened up, just a bit, but the mood wasn’t catching. Sophie knew that sooner or later she was going to have to accept the truth, but until then she was just putting one foot in front of the other.

  She got off at her stop and walked up Magazine Street to the old mansion that housed the new American branch of the Committee. The plaque outside said American Committee for the Preservation of Democracy, but she doubted anyone was fooled. Apart from the occasional ballsy tourist who showed up requesting a tour, no one came around, no solicitors or religious fanatics, and those who did show up came in the back way.

  She was one of the few people who used the front door, but then, she was part of the decoration. She’d been working in the front office, a supposed receptionist, for the past two months, with James Bishop and Matthew Ryder looking out for her. She knew she had Peter Madsen to thank for it, and she didn’t give a fuck, but she knew she’d better do something with her time.

  Her apartment in the French Quarter had seemed perfect until Mardi Gras started approaching, and each night the noise got worse. She had the firm conviction that by the weekend there’d be no sleeping at all.

  “Morning, Sophie, darling,” Remy Vartain said as he scooped the newspapers out of her arms. “Still raining out there?”

  “Don’t I look like a drowned rat?” she countered. She liked Remy, despite his charm and exceptional good looks. She wasn’t in the mood to be charmed, but with Remy she couldn’t help it. He made her laugh. The others, Bishop and Ryder, treated her a little like glass, as if she’d shatter with one nudge. They hadn’t seen what she’d done to Archer MacDonald without blinking.

  But no one was offering her a job as an operative, despite her training, and she didn’t want one. She was just biding her time.

  She had no family left—her elderly aunt had died the year she graduated from Sarah Lawrence. When she’d gone to work for the Committee, she’d severed any close friendships, and now she had nothing. Scratch that. She had a bank account so hefty that she always thought the number was a mistake.

  Peter Madsen was now head of the Committee, and he had determined that she was still under its employment during her time with Archer, despite her rejecting her mission and their support. That entitled her to almost three years of hazard pay, and the Committee paid very well indeed.

  She had a tentative plan. She was going to buy a house in the country, though for the life of her she couldn’t decide where. She rejected the South—she’d had enough of warm sunshine to last her for a good many years. She wanted seasons again, blinding winter snowstorms and green hills and crystal blue lakes. She wanted to be miles away from civilization—she could make do with going out once a week for groceries. Sooner or later she was going to have to accept the truth about Malcolm, and she needed to be alone to do that. Someplace where she could go outside and scream and no one would come running. Someplace with water, so she could go kayaking in the early morning and then drink her coffee on a covered porch. Someplace to open the wound, let it bleed, and heal, if such a thing were possible.

  She headed into the front office, pushing open the pocket doors that slid like silk on their tracks. Her ridiculously thin computer monitor awaited her, with its innocuous screensaver of alpine peaks and its magic button that accessed the closed-circuit cameras. She could lock this place down with one stroke of a key, something that astonished her. Archer hadn’t let her near a computer, and with no commercial TV, no magazines, she had no idea how technology had changed in a few short years. She remembered the iPhone she had when she’d first been in London—it was a far cry from the skinny little sliver that rested in her purse.

  She dumped her umbrella in the eighteenth-century umbrella stand, shook the excess water from her hair, and took her seat behind the computer. A moment later she was busy at her day’s occupation, killing everything she came across in Dark Souls Three, the most brutal video game she could find. The body count rose, and Sophie smiled grimly.

  “You about ready to get to work?” Madsen said as he slid behind the table at Malcolm Gunnison’s favorite pub near the Committee’s offices in London.

  Mal shrugged, then cursed at the dull pain slicing through his shoulder. Archer’s bullet had made a mess of it, and three surgeries later it was as close to normal as it was going to be. He was never going to enjoy a pickup game of basketball again, but all things considered, it could have been a lot worse. “I told you, I’m quitting.”

  “Yes, you told me. I didn’t believe you.”

  Mal reached for his beer. “Why not? Don’t you think someone can get burned out by all this? I want to quit before I lose my soul and become nothing more than a ghost wandering through life. Like you,” he added with deceptive humor. In fact, the hardest decision in his life had ended up being a no-brainer. Something was dead inside him, and had been since they’d flown him off that fucking island, and nothing seemed to matter anymore. Staying in the business with an attitude like that was a short trip to failure and death. Not that he currently gave a shit about his own life, but he wasn’t going to let his mistakes take down anyone else.

  Madsen laughed. “My kids would disagree with you. They’d like it a hell of a lot better if I were a little less involved with them.”

  “Your fault for having so many goddamned children. You need to stop picking up strays wherever you go.”

  Madsen shrugged. “What can I say? Genny and I like our brood.” He took a sip of his scotch. “So what can I do to talk you into staying? A raise?”

  “I’ve got more money than I need and you know it,” Mal said. “I need a break. I was thinking of going to the States for a while.”

  He didn’t like Madsen’s smug smile. “Heading down to New Orleans, are you?”

  “Of course not,” he said stiffly. “Sophie thinks I’m dead, and that’s the best way to leave it. She’s building herself a new life—she doesn’t need reminders of the past.” It had been another easy decision, he thought, showing nothing on his face. He was no good for her—he was well past the time that he could let himself care for anyone else, and Sophie needed someone to love her as she needed to be loved. Deserved to be loved. When he looked back at his life, he knew he didn’t deserve shit.

  Madsen laughed. “You’re such a pathetic bastard. Sophie’s wandering around like a lost soul, and you’re moping over here. Why don’t you grow a pair and admit it?”

  “Admit what?” he said icily.

  But Madsen wasn’t about to come right out and say it. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, then far be it from me to tell you. Next thing you know we’ll be having sleepovers and you’ll be fixing my hair.”

  Mal gave an unexpected bark of laughter. “I don’t think so. Besides, I was thinking of heading up north. Maybe Montana.”

  “Full of survivalists and wackos. You could find plenty to do there.”

  Mal growled. “I’ve quit, remember. Starting today.”

  “I took you off the payroll last week,” Madsen admitted. “I never really thought you’d change your mind, but I figured it was worth a try, and I promised Genny that I would.”

  Mal drained his beer. “Give her my love. She deserves better than a mangy old bastard like you.”

  Madsen grinned. “So she does. And give Sophie my best. She didn’t think very highly of me when she woke up back in New Orleans and I told her you were dead, but I imagine she’ll figure out where the blame falls.”

  “I’m not going to New Orleans.”

  “Have some crawfish étouffée for me.”

  Malcolm growled.

  “This is the wrong city to live in if you don’t like parades, cher,” Remy said, leaning against the kitchen counter.

  Sophie made a noncommittal noise as she waited for her coffee to squirt through the complicated machine. She couldn’t believe all the changes in technology in such a short time, but this coffee machine was a definite improvement over the old way. “I’m just not in a festive mood
.”

  “Nobody who lives in New Orleans can stay gloomy during Mardi Gras,” Remy protested.

  She gave him a withering glance. Remy was born and bred in New Orleans, full of sly charm and devilish wit, and he was so insanely gorgeous that any normal, red-blooded female would respond with a little mild flirtation. She couldn’t even manage that much. “I’m not going to be in New Orleans for much longer,” she said. “I’m moving to Oregon.”

  “I thought it was going to be Montana?”

  “Bishop told me it was full of survivalists,” she said gloomily.

  “Well, shoot, honey, Oregon’s full of aging hippies,” Remy said cheerfully. “Not to mention that it rains all the time. How are you going to feel if you never see the sun?”

  “The same,” she said. “I probably won’t even notice.”

  Remy sighed. “I consider you my greatest failure. I’m usually an expert at fixing broken hearts, but you just don’t want to be fixed.”

  “He died, Remy,” she said stonily, trying to get used to the words. “He didn’t just walk out on me. That’s a little harder to bounce back from.”

  Remy immediately looked contrite, which only made him more luscious. It really was a shame she couldn’t appreciate him, Sophie thought wearily. “I’m sorry, darlin’. Of course you’re right. I keep forgetting he’s dead. But you have to know that Committee operatives make terrible partners. You’re better off without him.”

  She gave him an outraged expression, and he held up his hands as if warding off an attack. “All right, cher, I know you loved him. But Malcolm Gunnison didn’t look like a man who would ever settle down—he’d been in the life too long.”

  Sophie stared at him in shock. “Did you know him?”

  “Why, sure. He stayed with us for two months before he headed out for Isla Mordita to go after MacDonald. Bishop was overseeing the operation with the London office. In fact, Gunnison was going to be assigned to this office when he got back. Too bad he changed his mind.”