Hotter Than Wildfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  The dreams were all gone.

  The screen in front of her blurred, grew refracted as tears filled her eyes, but she willed them back, dashing the back of her hand angrily over her eyes.

  Tears were a dangerous weakness.

  What she was going to do—had to do—in the next half hour was tricky, because she was going to have to sneak past Nicole, who was no fool, and past three men who were very alert. No tears, no second thoughts, no hesitation. She had to be brave and decisive, take it step by step.

  First, dropping the whole mess into the lap of the FBI.

  The San Diego FBI Field Office website was very informative. The person in charge of the office—the official title was Special Agent in Charge—was a woman, Karen Sands. There was even a photo of her, a handsome woman with straight, light-blond hair, looking boldly into the camera. She was reassurance itself and looked capable and fearless. Just what Ellen needed.

  Between songs, she lifted an earphone and heard the reassuring sound of Nicole deeply immersed in her translation, keying the words in a steady patter. Nicole wasn’t paying her any attention. Good.

  There was a CONTACT US button for reporting crime. Ellen hesitated for just a moment, fingers curled over the keys.

  This was it. After alerting the FBI, there would be no going back. She would be cutting Harry and his friends out of her life and she would break Harry’s heart.

  But better to break his heart than be the cause of any more death.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Ellen filled out the data page with her real name, without giving an address. Presumably they’d be able to track down her location using the IP address, but by that time, she’d be at the office itself.

  In the message field she stated that she had reason to believe that a government contractor, Gerald Montez, CEO of Bearclaw, had stolen money from the U.S. government in Baghdad and had killed three people.

  Should she ask for an appointment? No, she decided. Better not to wait for a response. Better just to show up at their offices.

  The address given was Aero Drive, in the northern part of the city. The site gave a photo of the façade of the building, a distinctive combination of white marble and dark glass shaped into a big dark Y. She’d recognize it when the cab pulled up.

  The door opened and closed. Good. Nicole had gone to the bathroom down the hall. She complained about practically living in the bathroom now that she was pregnant. She’d be a while. When she came back, Ellen would slip out. Only instead of going to the bathroom, she’d keep on walking down the hall, into the elevator, into a cab, into the FBI office and into a new life.

  A barren life, an empty life, but a life where everyone she cared for would be safe.

  It would take a while for them to discover she was gone. By the time Nicole realized that Ellen was taking too much time in the bathroom, she’d be on her way to Aero Drive in a taxi.

  She’d finished the spreadsheet program and she’d straightened out Nicole’s accounts, happy that she could leave her a little something, a little thank-you for her friendship.

  What could she leave Harry?

  Her heart.

  My dearest Harry,

  This is for the best and you know it. It’s a waiting game and time is on Gerald’s side. The more I wait, the more time he has to find me, the more we’ll all be worn down with worry, you included. Nothing happened to Nicole, but it could have. I could never live with myself if she’d been hurt or lost the baby, and I think the same holds true for you.

  I’m going to the FBI and ask for protection, so don’t worry about me. I should have done this a year ago, but instead I took the coward’s way out and ran. Yet maybe, as a New Age friend of mine would say, the universe wanted me to be a coward because I got to meet you.

  I love you, Harry. I love you so much I have to leave you, because I can’t stand the thought of you being hurt.

  I don’t know what else to say.

  Ellen

  She sent him the e-mail quickly before she lost her nerve and before she could break down. When she pressed the send button it was like pressing the button that detonated her heart.

  Still, maybe there was some room for hope. Just a little. The FBI had huge resources. Maybe they could make a case against Gerald quickly. Put him away forever, dust their hands and tell her, You’re free to go. It was possible, wasn’t it?

  It was wishful thinking, but oh, how appealing that thought was. A couple of months to make the case, Gerald tried and convicted fast. Ellen coming back to San Diego, stepping into Harry’s arms, able to live in the light once more, with him. She’d share her life with Harry and sing and keep everyone’s books.

  Oh God. She shook with longing.

  It wasn’t going to happen, but it could. That thought was going to have to sustain her in the dark months and maybe years ahead.

  Harry would be furious, maybe never forgive her. Though she knew he cared for her, they’d had only a few days together. She knew she’d love him forever, but maybe if it took a long time to put the case together and she came back in a year or two or three, he’d have moved on. He’d be crazy not to move on.

  So that was another horrible scenario to conjure up. Coming back in a year or two, excited and hopeful. Harry going, Don’t I know you? With a child in his arms and a pregnant wife by his side.

  That thought actually hurt.

  There was one other person she needed to contact. Kerry.

  Would she be allowed a laptop while in the FBI’s care? Would they spy on her? Maybe they would.

  She needed to contact Kerry beforehand, tell her she was all right, tell her not to worry. With all that had happened, she hadn’t checked their message board. Kerry would be frantic. Ellen had disappeared without a word and hadn’t been in touch since.

  Right now Kerry didn’t know if Ellen was in enemy hands, sick or dying or dead.

  A pang of shame shot through her. Kerry deserved better.

  She checked the message board, opened the video attachment, saw something terrible come up and simply froze. She’d been holding a pen and it clattered to the floor. The breath stopped in her lungs.

  It was almost impossible even to process what she was seeing—a person with a red shoulder, with a red…cap?

  Kerry. Oh my God. That was Kerry, slumped in a chair. She’d been—oh God—she’d been scalped. And part of her torso skinned.

  Bile rose in her throat and she leaned over the wastepaper basket and vomited the coffee and yogurt she’d had for breakfast.

  A deep, digitized voice came online through her headset. “Ellen Palmer, this is your friend Kerry.”

  She sat, shaking, keening, rocking back and forth in shock.

  She didn’t want to hear any more, couldn’t. This had escalated to a level of horror she couldn’t deal with. That alien insect voice was saying something but she couldn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, so she cut off the audio.

  All she understood was that her friend Kerry, gentle, kind Kerry, had fallen into the hands of monsters. Her monsters. Her monsters had come roaring up out of the deep looking for her and had found Kerry.

  Out of sheer instinct, trembling so badly she could barely key the words in, Ellen forwarded the file to the FBI, picked up her purse and fled the room, stumbling. There was no one in the corridor, thank God, because she would have rammed through anyone who tried to stop her.

  Her heart was pounding, legs barely able to hold her.

  Kerry, sweet Kerry, who liked music and books and had been running from something, too. Kerry’d been skinned like an animal. That horrible digitized voice, like something echoing up from the bowels of hell, said that Kerry was alive, but how could she be? And maybe being dead was better than being skinned alive.

  Ellen bent over in the elevator, stomach clenching, but all that came up was bile. Her eyes were tearing up so badly she could barely see. When the elevator doors pinged open, she was able to make her way to the exit only because it was straight
ahead and the big windows let in light.

  She followed the light because it was the only thing she could think of to do and because she instinctively wanted light after the dark horror of what she’d seen. In any other place, she’d have lost her bearings and banged into the walls.

  Aero Drive. The words lit up in her head and she longed to be there, longed to be among FBI agents who would take one look at that monstrous video and arrest Gerald. Arrest him and put him into the deepest, blackest hole possible, forever.

  Aero Drive. She had to get there.

  Go go go! A voice in her head pounded. Because what she’d seen hadn’t been human. No human being could do that to another. These were creatures from some other planet. The FBI had to deal with this, because she couldn’t, not in any way.

  Out on the street, she stopped, blinking in the bright light. Her throat burned from the bile she’d vomited, her stomach hurt, her legs hurt. Her heart hurt.

  Oh, Kerry.

  She glanced back to see if a taxi was coming but all she saw was a tall blond man, almost running toward her. If he wanted to ask directions, he was plain out of luck. She couldn’t talk to anyone in any rational way. She felt barely capable of telling the cab driver where she wanted to go.

  The tall blond man moved fast. She was starting to step out of his way when she felt a sting in her arm, a car drove up beside her, and the edges of the world turned black.

  They were parked a block south of the Morrison Building, Piet riding shotgun, Montez at the wheel.

  Piet had his ruggedized laptop open, carefully researching the websites of all the businesses in the Morrison Building and its annex. There were more than a hundred, but he was patient, and besides, what else was there to do? Talk to Gerald Montez, who had a huge vein throbbing in his forehead, looking like a stroke in waiting?

  He’d rather shoot himself.

  He’d just opened the site of a group of lawyers and was perusing it—the rates these bastards charged per hour, and they called him a criminal?—when his laptop beeped softly.

  Montez jumped. “What? What was that?”

  “Easy, mate,” Piet murmured, but his own heart had speeded up a little, the predator catching scent of the prey. It was the end game, now. “She’s logged on to the site.”

  He tapped furiously at the keyboard. A three-dimensional map came up, rotated, the floor plan of a tall building. A green dot flicked on the ninth floor. “And she’s…yeah, she’s in the Morrison Building. Right fucking now.” He manipulated the image, input some data. “And she’s on the ninth floor. Hang about…” He pulled up the building’s space allocation specs he’d preloaded during the flight. “Right. So she’s on the ninth floor in an office called Wordsmith.” He brought up the site. “A translation agency.” He shot a glance at Montez. “She know languages?”

  Montez shook his head, confused. “Not that I know of.”

  “You have any incriminating material you shouldn’t have in other languages, like Arabic?”

  That made Montez pause. “No,” he said finally.

  “Then what the fuck’s she doing in a translation agency?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Christ,” Piet began in disgust, lifting his head to automatically check the street. His eyes widened. “There she is!”

  “What? Where?” Montez shouted frantically, but Piet was already out of the car and running after a slender figure about fifty feet ahead of him.

  Palmer looked behind her, but she wasn’t focusing on him. She had no idea who he was. Maybe she was looking for a taxi.

  Well, he’d give her a ride, all right.

  In a few strides he had caught up with her. She was prettier than in her pictures, with rich, red-brown hair that shone in the sunlight, fine features, green eyes. Though right now she was crying.

  Of course.

  She’d just seen the video of her friend.

  Well, good, she was off balance.

  The whole op was embarrassingly easy. Didn’t take more than thirty seconds. Smooth, textbook.

  Piet reached out and put his hand around her upper arm. That was the thing with civilians—they never reacted. Touch him unexpectedly and he’d break your arm before you knew it. Fuck with him in any way and you’d find yourself staring at the haft of a knife that was buried between your third and fourth ribs, the blade slicing deep into your heart.

  But not Ellen Palmer, oh no. Even in a state of shock, she was clearly going to speak civilly to him. Whatever she was going to say was lost, though, because the syringe he had hidden in his palm sank deep into her biceps and her eyes rolled up in her head.

  The Mercedes had rolled up behind him, stopping with the back door not a foot from him. At least Montez did this right.

  Ellen Palmer’s knees buckled.

  He caught her before she fell.

  Harry was putting together a quote for a client, but his mind wasn’t on it. His mind was in the small, pretty office across the hallway from RBK Security, where his woman was. He had to really focus on what he was doing, because Ellen’s beautiful face kept floating across his field of vision.

  She’d been so solemn this morning, so sad. Distant and reflective, staring out the window at the scenery without really taking it in as they drove across the bridge and into the business district.

  The incident yesterday had really spooked her. Well, hell, it had spooked him. But he was a soldier. You dodge the bullet and forget about it. There will be another bullet, but not today. Nicole was okay, the baby was okay, move on.

  Ellen found it hard to move on. She had a tender heart, which made him even more determined to shield her. Crissy had had a tender heart, too, and she’d been mowed down by the creatures of the night. No one was going to touch Ellen, ever again. He’d move heaven and earth to prevent it.

  There was an e-mail, from Ellen.

  Before he could read it, Nicole stuck her head into his office, Sam hovering behind her.

  “Harry?” Nicole looked worried, and for a second Harry was terrified that she was bleeding again.

  Man, she’d scared the shit out of him yesterday.

  He’d hidden it from Ellen because she was out of her mind with worry and guilt, but deep down the thought of losing that little girl they were all looking forward to so much was horrifying.

  But it turned out that Nicole was concerned about the only thing worse than losing the baby.

  “Harry,” she said softly, “it’s Ellen.”

  “What?” Harry rose on legs that felt suddenly hollow. What could possibly be wrong with Ellen? He’d left her in Nicole’s office, which was as safe as modern technology and three determined and savvy men could make it. “What about Ellen?”

  In the field, Harry was known for keeping his cool. That emotional detachment that had defined him his whole life came in real handy on ops, and in firefights. It was easy for him—just disengage the gear that drove his emotions and he was firing on all cylinders. Fast and cool and deadly.

  That deserted him now while cold terror roiled his guts.

  “She’s gone, Harry.” Sam stepped forward, face somber. “Nicole was in the bathroom and when she came back, Ellen wasn’t there. She’d thrown up in a wastepaper basket. She just ran out, the chair was thrown back from the desk. I clicked on her computer monitor and, shit man, I saw why she ran.”

  Oh God. “What? What was there?”

  Sam hesitated. “Not good.” He turned to Nicole, said gently, “Wait outside, honey,” and kissed her cheek.

  Looking sad, Sam placed the laptop on Harry’s desk while Nicole closed the door behind her. Harry clicked on the space bar to turn the screen on and felt a rush of rage at the image. He processed it immediately.

  A dark-haired young woman, pretty underneath the tears and terror, duct-taped to a chair. He quickly scanned the background, but there was absolutely nothing there. Not even a digital image specialist could pick up anything, he was sure. A bare gray space, no reflections, no objects.
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  Just stills of a poor, terrified woman, straining against the restraints, bucking with pain, a big hand pinching the brachial plexus.

  It was excruciating, the kind of pain that could reduce a person to shuddering bedrock, down to something barely human.

  “Wait,” Sam said. His face was dark and grim. “There’s more.”

  Another still. Something torn and broken appeared. Red and savaged. Barely human.

  “Christ,” Harry breathed.

  “Yeah,” Sam grunted. “That’s Dove.”

  “Fuck,” Mike chimed in. Harry hadn’t heard the door open and close. Mike had extrasensory perception when it came to trouble. “That’s serious shit.”

  “There’s audio.” Sam clicked on the icon and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “It’s real bad, Harry.”

  A surreal, digitized voice that sounded like it came from the lowest reaches of hell buzzed. “Ellen Palmer, this is your friend Kerry…”

  He listened to the message through to the end, fury rising.

  Bullshit. That woman was dead. They were fucking with Ellen’s head, trying to get her to show.

  Harry was sweating. He looked up at his two friends, his brothers. “She saw that. That’s why she vomited.” He clicked on his e-mail and read with growing horror the message she’d sent him. “And Christ, that’s why she’s gone. She went to the FBI.”

  “Well, fuck.” Sam looked puzzled. “She wants to go to the FBI, why didn’t she wait for you to take her?”

  “I think she wants to ask for protection while they put together a case.” Harry met his brothers’ eyes. “She blamed herself for what happened to Nicole. She kept saying it was her fault. She’d be totally freaked if this was a friend of hers.”

  “Wasn’t anybody’s fault except for that fucker Montez,” Sam responded heatedly.

  “Yeah, I know. Try to convince her of that. I’ll talk to Welles, see what I can do.” Aaron Welles, former Ranger, now FBI. A good friend. Harry would explain the situation, they’d debrief Ellen and he’d convince her to come home. Actually, going to the FBI was a good move and one he’d have gotten to eventually.