Hotter Than Wildfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  When she had math homework she could forget about her mom’s latest loser boyfriend, about the rent her mom hadn’t paid that month, the cigarette cough that wouldn’t quit. Her mom getting thinner and thinner…

  It all went away, thanks to the beauty of math.

  Her love for numbers naturally flowed into accounting. She wasn’t a genius mathematician. She was just good with numbers, and accounting was great for that. Money in, money out. When more money came in than went out, you were doing fine. When more money went out than came in, you were in trouble.

  So simple. So easy.

  She dove right into Nicole’s messy files, and inside a minute, she was gone, too.

  Nicole had a…creative filing system, which was code for no filing system at all. So the first thing Ellen did was put things in piles—invoices, rent payments, utilities, deductible bills. After that, she started to get a handle on Nicole’s business.

  Nicole was doing well, so she must be good at what she did. There had been a period in which the company hadn’t been doing so well and it coincided with when Harry said her father had been dying. So that was understandable. Now it was thriving. No doubt, once the baby was born, it would be put a little on the back burner.

  This was exactly as it should be.

  Work is important. Family is more important. Not that she’d know that firsthand. Her own family had been highly dysfunctional, the next best thing to not being there. But Ellen had eyes and she could see. Family was something she’d never had, and now, considering what was awaiting her, possibly never would have, but she could see its power in others.

  Sam’s love and concern every time he looked at his wife, every time he touched her, was clear. And Nicole’s love just shone in her eyes when she looked at Sam. There was no doubt that the little girl Nicole was expecting was very much wanted.

  At eleven the office doorbell rang. Nicole opened the door to a giant of a man with a slab for a face and basketballs for biceps, holding a big cardboard box with the luscious smell of coffee and cinnamon tea wafting from it. Every line of his huge, muscled body spelled trouble. Ellen tensed for a second until she saw how untroubled Nicole was.

  “Thanks so much, Barney.” She took the box, placed it on her desk and gave him a blinding smile. Ellen was standing to the side and she was nearly blown over by the force of the smile. “That’s really sweet of you. How’s Zip? The vet figure out what was wrong?”

  Slab—evidently called Barney, and if ever a man was misnamed, it was this man—blushed red all over his rough face. He’d have tugged a forelock if he’d had hair instead of a shaved, tattooed skull.

  “Doc says Zip’s gonna be okay, thanks for asking, ma’am. Kidney trouble. Gave me medicine.” He wound down and just stood there, a huge hunk of a man, standing in the doorjamb, almost as big as the door frame.

  “That’s great,” Nicole said gently. “Thanks again for the coffee and tea—we appreciate it.” She smiled as she slowly closed the door in his face.

  “Wow. Your own personal gorilla.” Ellen lifted up her cup, pried open the lid and sniffed deeply, appreciatively. Was there anything better than cinnamon chai? “Who’s Zip?”

  “His pet iguana. Three feet long. He loves that animal more than his motorcycle, and that’s saying a lot.” She laughed. “Sam employs some colorful characters, but they seem to get the job done.” She took a sip of her decaf. “Gets great coffee, too.”

  They both dove back in their work, Nicole tapping away at the keyboard, Ellen finishing up classifying Nicole’s paperwork.

  At noon, Nicole’s cell phone rang. Distracted, she picked it up, saw who was the caller, and sighed. She spoke quickly, all in one long sentence. “Hello, darling, no, I’m not working, I’m lying down on the couch with my feet up, just like you told me to, as a matter of fact I was taking a nap, no, that’s okay, I needed to wake up anyway, I don’t feel tired, I feel just great, so don’t worry, see you soon.”

  Ellen looked, startled, at the little couch where Nicole definitely was not resting. She was at her desk, working hard.

  “I love you too,” Nicole said, blew a kiss into the receiver, folded her cell closed and sighed. “If I don’t tell him I’m resting, he comes over and stands there with his arms crossed looking like Neptune on steroids on a bad day. Lying to him is easier.”

  “He loves you,” Ellen said.

  “Yes,” Nicole sighed. “And I love him. But he needs to back off a little. He was bad enough before, but he’s gone overboard ever since I told him about the baby.” She smiled and rubbed her belly.

  “Must be nice,” Ellen said without thinking. “To be loved like that.”

  Nicole turned her deep blue gaze on Ellen and looked at her thoughtfully. It was like being hit by blue spotlights. She simply looked at Ellen for a while, assessing her.

  “What?” Ellen gave a half laugh. “Did the foam leave a mustache? Do I have lettuce in my teeth or hay in my hair?”

  “You’re loved like that. By Harry. You can’t see it because you don’t know Harry that well. Like Sam and like Mike, he doesn’t express his emotions well. But to someone who knows him, what he feels for you is right there.”

  “I—ah. Um.” Ellen’s tongue flapped uselessly in her mouth. “He, um, he doesn’t love me. He can’t. We’ve only known each other—what? Five days? Six? And I was unconscious a lot of the time.”

  “Sam asked me to marry him the fifth day after we met.” A memory that made Nicole smile crossed her beautiful face. “It was a terrible proposal, very badly botched, but I accepted anyway. I’ve never regretted it.”

  No, Ellen could see that she didn’t.

  Whoa. All of a sudden, Ellen realized that she could pump Nicole for information on Harry. He was so damned closemouthed. They were lovers, yes, but she knew so little about him. Now that she thought about it, he always deflected personal questions. Often with a kiss, which always worked. He could kiss her through a nuclear detonation and she wouldn’t even notice.

  “You say all three men have problems expressing their emotions. Is there a reason?”

  “You mean besides having a Y chromosome?” Nicole rolled her eyes. Then her face turned serious. “Yes, there’s definitely a reason they’re more closemouthed than most men. All three of them had a terrible childhood and adolescence. They became friends—more like brothers, actually, and they think of themselves as brothers—in a brutal foster home. Sam says that they would have died if they hadn’t had each other’s backs.”

  Ellen shivered. “How awful,” she breathed.

  Nicole nodded. “Yes, I think it truly was awful. Sam rarely speaks of it, but you can see the effects of it. The tight bond he has with Harry and Mike and their dedication to helping women in trouble. All three of them have seen a lot of cruelty to women and children.” She caught Ellen’s eyes. “Harry in particular. He’s never actually told me the story—Sam has. He told me that when Harry was twelve years old, he was living with his mother and baby sister in a hovel in the Barrio. His mom was a junkie and had men coming in and out of the house, sometimes violent men. Sam says Harry throws up if he gets too close to the house where it happened.”

  “What?” Ellen swallowed. “Where what happened?”

  Nicole took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Looks like I’m going to have to be the one to tell you, though rightly it should be Harry himself. But Sam says Harry never talks about it, ever. And that’s not fair to you, because you should know.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m already feeling dread.” Ellen leaned forward on her elbows. “So…something happened when Harry was twelve. Something awful.”

  “Yes. The three of them were living with Harry’s mom’s boyfriend du jour, who was a meth addict. A very violent one.”

  “Oh no,” Ellen whispered, knowing where this was going.

  Nicole nodded and closed her eyes briefly. “On Christmas day, the methhead got it into his crazy head that Harry was hiding money from him. He took a b
aseball bat to Harry’s mom and staved in her skull, then he broke…”

  Nicole’s voice wobbled as her eyes grew wet. She stroked her belly, where her little daughter was growing. Her voice was hoarse as she continued. “He broke Harry’s sister’s arm. Her name was Crissy. Christine. She was five years old, and she loved Harry. Sam said that Harry said that she was the sweetest little girl on earth.” Nicole wiped a slender, elegant finger under her eyes and checked the finger for mascara. “I can hardly think about it. That madman broke Crissy’s arm, then picked her up by the broken arm and smashed her against the wall. She died instantly. Harry did everything he could to save his mother and his sister, but this monster took a bat to his legs and shattered both femurs. Even with two shattered legs, Harry managed to kill the man, but it was too late. His mother and sister were gone. When he was able to walk on crutches, he was sent to the most brutal foster home in the system.”

  Ellen could actually feel her heart swelling with pain. “Oh God.”

  “But Sam and then Mike were there and they had his back. They couldn’t look out for him in Afghanistan, though. He came back in pretty bad shape. Was blown up by something called an RPG—I guess sort of like a flying bomb. When I first met him, Harry could barely stand. He’s done miracles since then, mostly because Sam and Mike forced a physical therapist on him he called the Norwegian Nazi.”

  “He told me about the Norwegian Nazi.” The Norwegian Nazi was very, very good at his job because Ellen could remember the steely muscles under her hands, lean and hard. The grace with which he moved. You’d never have known he’d been grievously wounded, twice.

  “Of course, you helped, too.”

  She’d been thinking of Harry’s muscles. How hard he was all over. Intense heat had crept into her thoughts. “Um, yes, he said he listened to my music quite a lot.”

  Nicole wasn’t smiling. “They say Harry listened to your two CDs obsessively, over and over and over again. He couldn’t sleep at night, so he listened to you, and somehow your voice pulled him through. Sam and Mike were really worried about Harry, about his will to live. I think thanks to you, he found the will to put himself back together.”

  Oh God. Ellen blinked the tears back. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “I do.” Nicole leaned forward, incredibly serious. “Last year, some bad guys came after me. It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you some day. Even worse, these guys came after my father, who was very ill—dying, in fact. They kidnapped him, hurt him.” Her blue eyes blazed with what Ellen recognized as hatred, so strange on her beautiful face. “Sam saved me with the help of Mike and Harry. Sam said that when he and Mike set off to rescue me and Dad, Harry’d have done anything, given anything to be able to come with them, even though he could barely stand. As it happens, he helped Sam and Mike find me even if he wasn’t there at the showdown. He’s one of the good guys, Ellen. A really good guy. He’s had more than his share of tragedy. He loves you. I know he’s completely on your side and he’ll protect you with his life. I couldn’t bear to see him hurt in any way. So think about this carefully. Because if you hurt him in any way, if you break his heart, you’ll have me to answer to. And Sam and Mike. But trust me, I can be meaner than Sam and Mike. I’m the one you should be afraid of. Is that clear?”

  In that instant, Ellen understood completely why Sam loved Nicole so much. Not for her beauty—though that was off the charts—but for her fiercely loving heart.

  “Completely,” she answered. “And for the record, I think it’s more likely that Harry will break my heart instead of the other way round.”

  Nicole was still watching her intently. At Ellen’s words she suddenly broke into a smile. “Okay.” The smile broadened as she sat back. “Okay. That’s settled, then. Well.” She rubbed her hands briskly. “Now that that’s taken care of, I say we all have takeout pizza tonight and a salad to make it officially healthy. And afterwards—you’ll sing for us? For Harry?”

  There was only one possible answer. “For you guys and for Harry? Sure.”

  Chapter 14

  Seattle

  “Fuck fuck fuck!”

  Montez paced around the small rental storage unit muttering, walking in circles around the dead body of the woman, all but tearing his hair out.

  Piet watched him emotionlessly. This was a real waste of time and energy, but the fokken gek—fucking moron—clearly had to get it out of his system. Some operator, wasting time on this shit.

  But—he was the boss. Though really, he wasn’t the boss of anything, least of all himself. Still, Piet always followed the client, even when the client was stupid.

  It wasn’t his problem. If it had been, he sure as hell wouldn’t be walking around in circles with a dead girl at his feet. He’d have already taken care of the girl and moved on.

  After a while he got tired of watching Montez. It was one thing for Montez to piss away his time in theatrics. But every second in which Piet was with that dead body was another second in which he could be caught.

  Doing time in a U.S. prison for this asshole was not in the cards.

  “Calm down,” he said finally.

  Montez whirled. “Calm down? Calm down? This—” His shaking index finger pointed at the girl lying on a tarp in the middle of the small space. “This is a disaster! Goddammit, this should never have happened! Now we’re left with nothing but dead meat!”

  Piet tuned him out and studied the girl’s face. He’d laid her down on her back. Whatever poison she’d taken had acted incredibly quickly. The only poisons he knew that worked so fast were neurotoxins. Only an autopsy with a tox screen would tell exactly which one, but she sure wouldn’t be getting an autopsy.

  He studied the face carefully. A pretty woman, pretty even in death. Death had come for her so quickly her features weren’t distorted. She looked like she was sleeping quietly, in a better place than she’d be right now, because he’d have inflicted a lot of pain and he’d have made her talk.

  Montez had been getting hard looking at her, thinking of the pain to come. He hadn’t realized it, but Piet had seen. Those guys were the worst, the ones who got wood during interrogation.

  It amazed Piet that Montez had been in the army at all, though he knew the Yanks had become less selective about the boots they were putting on the ground. Back in the day, qualifying for South African Special Forces as a Recce, that kind of sick fuck had been weeded out right at the start. No place for them in a man’s military. Violence was a tool, not an end in itself.

  For just a second, Piet allowed himself a brief flash of regret, a short, intense wish that he could roll back the clock and be with his mates in the bush again. Good men, all. No sick fucks, just warriors.

  While Montez was ranting, Piet continued observing the body. The girl’s skin still held a faint flush, which was of course fading fast as the blood drained away from the skin. She’d dropped dead ten minutes ago. Right now, gravity was draining the blood in the capillaries from the front of her body to the back, which soon would turn dark red.

  He’d made very, very sure that there was nothing underneath the tarp that could make an imprint on the skin. The pooled blood would show any object up as clearly as an image on a negative. Montez wasn’t thinking straight, but Piet was.

  The capillaries were draining the blood right now. They had a little window of opportunity…

  He kneeled and started skinning her, making a sharp, straight surgical incision along the midbody line of the torso from base of neck to sternum and stripping away the skin on the left from her breast and shoulder. Like field-dressing a deer. No blood spurted, of course; the heart wasn’t pumping anymore. But there was still enough blood in the arteries to pool sullenly around the body. Piet made sure none of it touched his shoes or trousers.

  He had to get this done before rigor set in. Handling a body in the throes of rigor mortis was hard. Not to mention the fact that the internal organs had already begun decomposition. He’d seen bodies explode with the
force of built-up internal gas in the intestines, though that took a while.

  Montez was watching, slack-jawed. He’d stopped his ranting and stared. “What the fuck?”

  Piet didn’t sigh, though he wanted to. This guy was supposed to be smart. He headed up a multimillion-dollar company.

  “We’re going to do with her what we did with the agent, only this needs to be scarier. This has to be a real message to Palmer: Look what we can do. Do you have the tape?”

  “Yeah.” Montez held up a Flip camcorder the size of a USB key.

  They’d filmed the first part of the interrogation.

  The idea had been to film the entire session and send it to Palmer. But instead of an hour-long session, they’d had about ten minutes.

  “Didn’t last long, so we’ll use stills,” Piet said. He cut a fine incision on her forehead along the hairline and started pulling back the skin.

  “Jesus!” Montez shouted. He held a hand to his mouth. “God, you’re scalping her!”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  Montez wouldn’t have been averse to torturing this woman to death, but scalping her after death made him retch.

  Piet couldn’t wait to finish the job and get away from this moron.

  He finished scalping and stood back, assessing the effect. Should scare the shit out of this Ellen Palmer. He waited for her to bleed out then lifted the woman in his arms. He settled her back in the chair, wrapped the duct tape around her chest again. The woman slumped, head down, red skull gleaming, looking like she had on a patchwork red shirt. “Take a couple of stills of her. We’ll add it to the still of her screaming and send it to that bulletin board.”

  Montez took out his cell, took several snapshots and downloaded them onto his laptop.

  Piet put together the stills into a narrative anyone could understand. The woman bucking against his hand on her, mouth open in silent screams, then the stills of her now, after what Palmer would think was horrible torture. It worked. He switched on the laptop’s mike and digitized his voice.