Driven by Fire

by Anne Stuart

  She looked up at his too-long hair dispassionately. “What do I do with you—give you a perm so you can look like Bradley Cooper in American Hustle?”

  “Cancel that. You’re not touching me.”

  “Don’t trust me, Ryder?” she taunted. As long as she didn’t let him know how unnerved she was by him, she stood a chance.

  “No.” His voice was flat.

  She didn’t flinch. “Besides, a sleepover with you is the absolute last thing in my schedule. Ouch!” she added as he washed the wound. It burned, and she could probably blame his overzealous use of peroxide for that.

  “Think again, Parker.” There was something about the way he drawled her name that got on her last nerve—she’d already shattered all the other nerves in her body. “You’re not going anywhere. Not when someone wants to kill you or your little protégé.”

  “How do you know they weren’t shooting at you?” she countered. “This is your place, not mine, and I’m sure you’ve made a lot more enemies than I have.”

  “Is that so? I don’t know if I’d take your word for that.”

  She looked up at him from behind the strands of her wet, blood-soaked hair. “The only person who seems to consider me an enemy is you, Ryder.”

  Once more that grim mouth showed just the trace of a smile. “You have no idea what I think of you.”

  She couldn’t come up with an answer to that. “I’m not staying here,” she said firmly.

  “You wanted a place for Soledad to stay. This place is huge. Just stay out of the rooms that are off-limits and we should get along fine.”

  “Don’t . . . Ouch! Are you deliberately hurting me every time we have a disagreement?” She eyed him suspiciously. Her head had continued to throb, the beginnings of a pounding migraine, and she was looking forward to the ibuprofen.

  “Yes.” He leaned back and looked at her, and for a moment she stared up into his dark, expressionless eyes. “Where’s your waif?”

  “Stop calling her that! She’s twenty years old!” she said at the same time Soledad spoke up from the doorway.

  “I am here, Mr. Ryder.”

  “Help Ms. Parker clean herself up,” he said curtly, “unless you think you can’t handle it. I can wash her hair—cleaning around a cut like that can be tricky . . .”

  “I have a great deal of experience helping people who have been shot or tortured,” Soledad said in her liquid, tranquil voice.

  He raised an eyebrow at that. Jenny had never seen anyone who could do that, and for a moment she was distracted.

  “Do you indeed?” he answered Soledad, and Jenny was temporarily forgotten. “You’ll have to tell me all about it at a later time.”

  “Of course, Mr. Ryder,” Soledad said politely, her accent barely noticeable.

  He turned his attention back to Jenny. “You,” he said in a peremptory voice, “behave yourself and do what she tells you. I’m leaving you in her hands, and I expect you to look halfway human when she’s done with you. I’ll find you some clothes, and see what our surveillance cameras picked up. In the meantime it might be worth your while to think of anyone you might have pissed off with your dulcet ways.”

  “Apart from you?”

  “Well, I’ve got an alibi, remember? I’ll find something clean for you to wear—you look like a cast member of The Walking Dead.”

  “I believe the rotting flesh is the major fashion statement,” she said.

  “Not if they just had a snack.” He rose, all fluid grace, and turned back to Soledad, who’d been following all this with a bewildered expression on her face. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish.”

  He started out the door, and Jenny called after him, incensed. “I didn’t do anything foolish! I just opened your goddamn door.” But he was already gone.

  “The Walking Dead?” Soledad echoed, looking perplexed.

  “A television show,” Jenny said briefly. She was hardly going to explain to Soledad about the gory TV show that had been her obsession from the first episode.

  Funny that Ryder happened to mention it, but then it was a part of popular culture by this time. She turned to look at the massive bathtub that graced the huge room. Ryder and his organization certainly had spared no expense in the renovation of this old house. They could fit a family of four in that bathtub.

  “I will draw you a bath,” Soledad said in the mellifluous English that she’d said was compliments of the good sisters who’d lived and died as missionaries in Calliveria. “It will calm and relax you.”

  “I’m perfectly calm and relaxed.” Her defensive voice was pitched just a bit too high.

  Soledad smiled sweetly as she turned on the taps. Instant hot water responded with a blast of steam. She turned back. “May I help you undress? Your pretty clothes—I do not know if I will ever be able to get them clean.”

  “I told you before, Soledad, you don’t have to do things like that! I could send the suit to the dry cleaners but I don’t think I ever want to see that thing again.”

  She began unbuttoning the stained silk jacket, then stared down at her bloody hands. Shuddering, she looked away.

  “We may have to go back to the house to find me some clean clothes. I don’t trust Ryder—he’ll probably find a Mardi Gras costume or something equally disturbing for me to wear.”

  “I think Mr. Ryder will be taking very good care of you, Ms. Parker.”

  There was a faintly teasing note in Soledad’s voice, one Jenny chose to ignore. Soledad’s English might be flawless, but that didn’t mean she understood the nuances. “I doubt it,” she said wearily. Ryder disliked and distrusted her, for all his decent attempts at taking care of her. Once she got Soledad settled she’d have no more reason to see him, which was a very good thing. He was far too suspicious for her peace of mind, and she suspected he wasn’t the type to let anything go. She needed to get as far away from him as she could.

  She had no doubt at all the bullet that had hardly grazed her scalp had been meant for him. After all, he was the one who dealt with terrorists and international criminals—she was simply an immigration lawyer, and a pro bono one at that.

  She felt strange stripping off her ruined clothes in his house, stepping into his deep bathtub. She might as well enjoy it while she could—her narrow shotgun house had only a rusty stall shower, and the luxury of a bath like this was not to be taken lightly. With a sigh of decadent delight, she slid down into the warm, faintly scented water and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Four

  Ryder stared at the computer screen, scrolling through the images impatiently. There was no angle surrounding the house that wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras, and it had taken Jack, the best hacker in the business, no more than fifteen minutes to isolate the car driving by, the shadowy passenger in the hoodie, the almost imperceptible circle of a gun barrel pointed at the old house. A gun that size shouldn’t have been able to reach the front door, the first and possibly most important conundrum, the second being the identity of the shooter. It hadn’t taken Jack any longer to trace the anonymous late-model sedan to a stolen car report, and he had little doubt it was already abandoned on the edge of the Ninth Ward.

  Ms. Jenny Parker, Esquire, could have been right and the bullet was meant for him. After all, no matter how discreet they’d been, the underworld would become aware of their location sooner rather than later, and he had enough murderous enemies to fill a 747.

  But his instincts, the ones that had kept him alive to the ripe old age of thirty-seven in the most dangerous life imaginable, told him that the bullet was meant for one of his visitors. The question was, which one? And why?

  “So you’ve finally got Parker in your clutches,” Jack drawled from his spot in front of the bank of computer screens. Jack Abbott was one of the Committee’s greatest assets, though he seldom left the computer room. “You figured out whether she’s involved or not?”

  “If I had proof she was part of the sex trafficking, she’d already be dead
.” Ryder’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I just know she isn’t who and what she says she is. She acts twitchy around me.”

  “Anyone with any sense will act twitchy around you, Ryder,” Jack said dryly. “You’re a lethal weapon and maybe she’s smart enough to see that. I would have thought you would have managed to get a read on her by now.”

  Ryder frowned. “Easier said than done. She was trying to get the last girl from the boat into our household, and now she’s wormed her way in here as well. Good thinking for an enemy.”

  “She said she wants to be here?”

  “She’s too smart for that. I’m thinking that bullet wasn’t meant for anyone. I think it was just an excuse to get us to keep them here, where they think they can find out what we know. Hell, maybe Parker plans to murder us in our sleep.”

  “Doesn’t seem the type. Doesn’t seem the type to be involved in an international sex-trafficking ring either.”

  “You forget she comes from a family of gangsters,” Ryder said grimly. “We’ve got a complete background on her, down to the tiniest of details.”

  “True enough,” Jack said. “But as far as I can see there isn’t any connection between them and the Corsini family or their front man, His Eminence. We cleared up that nest of spiders, and the shipload of human cargo brought up from Calliveria was probably just the tail end of the Corsinis’ operation. And there’s no connection with Jenny Parker at all. Apparently she’s a perfect Mother Teresa.”

  “Except that she’s been there from the beginning, making certain the hostages got taken care of, sent off someplace safe where no one could ask any questions. She’s done a great job of covering up, whether she meant to or not.”

  “Well, don’t kill her until you’re sure she meant to,” Jack warned him. “And what about the girl who’s with her? If she’s one of the bad guys, why would she bring a possible witness in with her?” Jack spun around his chair, ignoring the screens for the moment.

  Ryder considered it. “Maybe Soledad is part of the whole mess as well. Just because she looks like a Madonna doesn’t mean she’s not evil.”

  “You don’t trust anyone, do you?” Jack said.

  “No. Not if I have even the slightest reason to doubt them. And Parker’s been just a little too busy with the refugees to satisfy me. We know there’s at least one person at this end that we haven’t caught yet. It may or may not be Parker, and I’m not giving up on her until I’m sure.”

  “And if you find out she’s the local connection . . . ?”

  “I suppose it depends what Peter Madsen says. He can make the hard decisions—it comes with the territory. The smart thing to do would be to get rid of her,” he said coolly. He could do it, of course, if ordered to. It wouldn’t matter that he didn’t want to.

  Jack shook his head. “How do you think her family would take to that?”

  “You think I don’t know how to make people disappear? I’ve never been squeamish about any of the less savory parts of my job, and that’s not about to change,” he said quietly. “Either Ms. Jenny Parker is a bleeding-heart liberal who enjoys throwing her time and money into a lost cause, or she’s a member of a ruthless cartel that traffics in women and children. All she has to do is slip up, just for a moment, and I’ll clean up the mess.”

  Jack shook his head. “She doesn’t give off that kind of vibe.”

  “You haven’t even met her face-to-face. I have and I still can’t read her.”

  Jack watched him out of quiet eyes. “You ever made a mistake?”

  Ryder froze. “What kind of mistake?”

  “You ever killed an innocent?”

  “No one’s innocent,” he said flatly. “If she’s the target then someone had a reason to shoot at her, so she must have pissed someone off, big-time. Apart from me.”

  “You gonna tell me why she pisses you off?” Jack said, spinning back to look at his computer screens full of data.

  “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

  “I think there’s more going on than you’re aware of, and I don’t want you jumping to conclusions just because she makes you feel uncomfortable.”

  “If I were the type to jump to conclusions, she’d be out somewhere in the bayou, served up as alligator food.”

  “You’re a sick bastard, Ryder. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  Jack punched in a few numbers on the computer before turning back. “Look at it this way: the Gauthier family has enough enemies—she might just be the target of a mob war. Taking out a relatively innocent member of the family could always deliver a crippling blow.”

  “Maybe. The big-eyed waif with the mysterious background might have been the target as well. After all, Parker’s looking for protection for her, so there must be an interesting story behind that Madonna expression and passive demeanor. Either way, with the two of them in the house I’ll figure out what’s going on. If it turns out she’s innocent, I can push her off to Remy or even one of the junior operatives—it’s a simple enough issue compared to what I usually deal with. Speaking of which, where is Remy?”

  “On his way back from Oklahoma City,” Jack said briefly. “Weapons transport.”

  As usual the information was succinct, without any human interaction. As far as Ryder was concerned, Jack was part machine himself, no emotions, no social niceties. It made work more efficient—right then Ryder thought he’d be happy if all his coworkers were the efficient, deadly machines Jack was.

  “Emery, Johnson, and Duvall?” Ryder demanded of his favorite machine.

  “Emery’s downstairs in reception, Johnson’s awaiting orders, Duvall’s with his wife.”

  Ryder made a muffled sound of disapproval. “Why the fuck did he have to go and get married? Women are nothing but a complication.”

  “So are men,” Jack pointed out absently, typing something into one of his many keyboards.

  “Call Emery, will you?” Ryder demanded. “I’ve got a job for her.”

  That was enough to make Jack turn around, and once more Ryder was startled by his face. Jack was almost unnaturally beautiful, with long straight black hair, and an Asian tilt to eyes of an impossibly blue color—some trick of genetics Mendel would be hard put to explain. He had long lashes that could effectively hide his expression, high cheekbones, and a mouth he’d been told by Emery was luscious. With a face like that he’d be excellent at undercover work, particularly in third-world countries where his mixed-race beauty would blend in, but so far he’d been much more valuable gathering intel on anything and anybody.

  “Something I can do? I’m just running facial recognition and that takes time.”

  It took forever, even with Jack at the helm, and Ryder knew it. He also knew what had prompted Jack to make the offer. He didn’t like having anyone up on his floors, near his computers, if he could help it, and that seemed to go double for Emery.

  “Secure the third-floor work areas and show Ms. Parker’s little waif to one of the guest rooms while I take our lawyer friend home. And look a little deeper into the Gauthiers. Just because we haven’t found anything so far doesn’t mean they’re clean in this deal. The trafficking run by the Corsini family had to have been public knowledge among the criminals in the city, which includes the Gauthiers. Check again to make sure none of them was involved. There are three brothers besides the old man, aren’t there?”

  “Maurice runs their shady law firm, Tonino is involved in shipping, and the youngest one, Billy, just graduated from college and is off in Europe,” Jack rattled off instantly.

  “Tonino is the obvious one, if he’s connected with shipping. Shipping what?”

  “Cheap souvenirs from China, with stolen artwork and drugs on the side, though they’ve been raided a couple of times and nothing was ever found.”

  “A couple of times? Someone’s making hefty payoffs.”

  “That’s how business works in New Orleans,” Jack said cynically. “You think that bullet was meant for
Parker and not the Madonna?”

  “Why not me? There sure the hell are enough people who hate me.”

  “You’re hard to kill,” Jack said. “So why are you thinking Parker’s the target?”

  Ryder shrugged. “Instinct, and those instincts are why it’s so hard to kill me. She’s hiding something, and I intend to find out what.” Jack had already turned his back on Ryder, staring at the screens, dismissing their conversation from his consciousness. “Keep checking,” he said.

  Jack didn’t respond, his straight back a reproach to such an unnecessary order, and Ryder turned to deal with the lying Parker.

  He shoved the door shut behind him, closing Jack into his domain, and slid the bookcases across the entrance, camouflaging it from any nosy visitors. He turned and almost slammed into his quarry.

  She was watching him with no more than casual interest. “That seems awfully low-tech for a super spy agency.”

  “We’re not a super spy agency,” he said irritably, taking in her appearance. When he’d seen her before, she’d worn her short hair in a professional sweep across her forehead. Now it was a rumpled mess, a halo of curls around her face, curls she’d always manage to keep under strict control, and he found himself wondering what else she kept under strict control.

  She was wearing the clothes he’d left out for her. His jeans fit her—she filled them out much better than he ever had. Not that he gave a damn, but he couldn’t help but notice she had a delectable butt. He immediately put it out of his mind.

  His old T-shirt clung to her, and a bloody stain was spreading from her bra into the white fabric. For some reason he’d had no idea how curvy she was beneath those businesslike suits she wore like Southern armor. He had a hard time dealing with Southern women—the charm seemed to cover a deadly determination, though in most cases it was simply a lethal determination to get their own way.

  The woman in front of him had succeeded, as she presumably knew she would. He made a noncommittal sound. “That’s why we don’t like having guests. But don’t worry, Parker,” he said, his use of her name deceptively friendly, “you’ve won this round. We’ll keep the two of you here for the time being until we ascertain whom that shot was meant for. In the meantime your little one is already settled in”—at least he hoped she was—“and I’m taking you home to get your things.”