Driven by Fire

by Anne Stuart

  Then again, she’d believed that saintly act herself. If Billy had been telling her the truth on board the ship that morning, then he’d hardly let them hurt her, would he? But then, he was out of reach, somewhere halfway across the world in a place where he couldn’t be extradited, and he needed to stay there, particularly since she’d told Ryder about him. And if he had lied to her . . . She didn’t want to think about that.

  “We have time,” Soledad said smoothly. “We’re waiting for your boyfriend to come and rescue you.”

  “Why bother? No one’s going to pay ransom for him. And he’s not my boyfriend,” she added belatedly. At least she could reasonably assume that the Committee didn’t negotiate with terrorists.

  “We’re not going to ransom him, we’re going to kill him. The Committee is well known to us, and they’re not likely to simply let things slide. The smart thing for Mr. Ryder to do would be to return to the States, but he won’t, not unless he has you with him.”

  “He doesn’t care about me one way or another!” Jenny protested.

  “Probably not. But he’s not going to leave you to my tender mercies, whether he cares or not, which is a good thing. He knows too much about our workings for his own good. His death leaves the American Committee in disarray and gives us time to set up the trade routes once more.”

  “Trade routes?” Jenny echoed in deep loathing. “You’re talking about human beings!”

  “I’m talking about a commodity,” Soledad said in a silky voice. “You’re such a . . . what do they call it . . . a bleeding heart. These people are nothing to you. The life I give them is better than the toilet they live in now. But no, you must save everyone. I tell you now that this is impossible. You cannot save these people, and most of them come willingly. If something happened to me then someone else would simply take my place. Your Committee friends tried to wipe it out, but they only succeeded in removing the Corsini family from the mix. There are always people to take over, people like your brother.”

  “My brother didn’t know what he was doing!” she protested, ignoring her nascent doubts. “You or someone must have tricked him.”

  “And you’re such an excellent judge of character, aren’t you?” Soledad cooed. She held out the phone in front of Jenny’s nose. “Get to work.”

  Jenny gave her a chilly smile. “You’re going to have to untie me first.”

  “You can dictate the names to me.”

  “That will take twice as long.”

  “I am very fast on a phone keyboard.”

  Shit. She was going to have to string her along instead of simply pretending to work on it. She’d make it as tedious as possible. “Do you suppose I might have some iced tea? My throat is parched.”

  Soledad sneered. “Parched, is it? Such fancy words. You’ll get tea and something to eat once you’ve broken into the phone.”

  “If you’re doing the typing, then I’m going to have to do a lot of talking,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “Then you should begin.”

  It was easier than she had thought. She gave her every name in the family, from their mother to their brothers to their second cousin twice removed, with alternative spellings and substituting numbers for letters. Each one took up a goodly portion of time, and she could see Soledad grow more and more frustrated. “This is no good—your brother isn’t as sentimental as you. He cares nothing about family. What else would he have used?”

  She went on through his college years at Tulane—the name of his fraternity, each of his friends, first name and last, numbers and letters. The sun was beginning to set, and she hadn’t allowed Soledad to get anywhere near the encryption, and while her voice was raw and her stomach empty, she’d lost the ability to worry about it. She just had to keep coming up with plausible choices for as long as possible, long enough for Ryder to rescue her. Assuming Soledad was right and he would risk his life for her.

  No, he wouldn’t risk his life for her, but he would for the smartphone and the information it contained. She was collateral damage—he’d save her if he could, but not at the expense of getting what he wanted.

  “Enough!” Soledad snapped, rising from her chair. The sun was setting over the valley beyond the large picture windows, sending shadows through the room, and Soledad’s innocent beauty was looking jaded and sinister. “You are proving useless. If I didn’t believe you were lying, I would shoot you in the head this minute.” She came up to her, her small body vibrating with rage. “Perhaps I should give you some incentive.”

  “Perhaps you should give me a glass of water,” Jenny shot back.

  It was a mistake. Soledad’s eyes narrowed. “Manolo, bring me that baseball bat you play with.”

  The words were enough to send terror through Jenny’s insides. The baseball bat appeared, and though it looked incongruous in Soledad’s small hands, it didn’t look any the less lethal. The woman swung it experimentally, far too close to Jenny’s head. Jenny didn’t move.

  “You realize if you hurt me too badly I won’t be able to think because of the pain,” she said in a deceptively steady voice. “I’m doing the best I can—what would I have to gain by not giving you the right words? I’m trying everything I can think of—our family, our pets, his favorite foods. Sooner or later I’ll hit on the right one—you just need to be patient. If you let me type them in myself you wouldn’t be so frustrated.”

  Soledad’s smile was horrifying in its sweet evil. “What would you have to gain? You’re a smart woman—you know your own value to me is getting into the phone. It doesn’t matter if you’re dead when Ryder gets here—he won’t make it as far as this house, and he’ll never know if we’ve already killed you or not.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate Ryder if I were you.”

  Soledad swung the baseball bat again, and Jenny could feel the wind whip past her face. “I wouldn’t underestimate me. You can remain stubborn and try to put off telling me the right words to get into the phone, and you can suffer a great deal of pain. Or you can work harder, come up with the right answer, and you’ll have a swift death.”

  “Meaning you won’t hand me over to your men.”

  “Of course not,” Soledad said, righteously, and Jenny knew she was lying. “If you come up with the answer. Otherwise the men are bored and lonely and there are no women up here. I have to give them something to keep them happy, don’t I?”

  “What about the ransom idea? My father would pay a lot of money for my safe return.”

  “You already told me he wouldn’t pay a penny. The Guiding Light has decided that hostage taking isn’t worth the trouble—the payoff is small compared to what we can make with the immigrants.”

  “Immigrants? Is that what you call them? They’re sex slaves.”

  Soledad shrugged. “They’re leaving their country for a new life. And America is the land of opportunity, though they go other places as well. I have sold my body since I was nine years old, and look at me now.”

  Jenny stared at her in shock. “You’re victimizing children the same way you were victimized?”

  “So tenderhearted. You know nothing of what life is like. And your mewling protests are annoying me. I’m tired of you. I will give you the night to think about how helpful you can be, and if you don’t have the answers in the first hour tomorrow, I will start by breaking your foot and working my way upward.” She slapped the baseball bat in her hands.

  “Why don’t you let me take the phone with me and I can work on it tonight?”

  “What kind of idiot do you think I am? You would destroy this rather than let me get the information from it. Why do you think I refuse to let you put your hands on it? It will stay right here, and you will come up with the key to unlock it, or you will be very sorry indeed. Have you ever heard the sound it makes when you break a bone with a baseball bat, Miss Parker? It makes a very satisfying crunch before the person starts screaming. I might start with the knee—you’re stronger than I would like, and I want to be sure I get
to smashing your pelvis. Unless you’ve found sudden inspiration.”

  Jenny’s dry throat had closed up at Soledad’s dreamy words, and it was hard for her speak. “I’ll figure out the password. I promise.”

  Soledad’s lovely mouth curled in a catlike smile. “I know you will, chica.”

  She was half dragged, half pushed through the spacious house, her bare feet stumbling on the cold stone floor, until she was thrust into a vacant room. It had the same floor-to-ceiling windows as the living room, and in the gathering darkness she could see the steep ravine beyond the narrow deck. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can escape,” Soledad warned her. “The sliding door is chained shut from the outside, and if you were fool enough to try to break the window, my men are patrolling the grounds. And they are very, very hungry, Miss Parker. They have orders to help themselves if they find you someplace you should not be. Sleep well.”

  She shoved her, and Jenny went sprawling, unable to help herself with her arms still bound. A moment later the door was closed and she was left in darkness.

  It was a large room, devoid of furniture except for a mattress on the floor, covered with an old blanket. It probably had either fleas or bedbugs, but she couldn’t afford to be too picky. After all, chances were good that tomorrow she’d be dead—what difference would a few bug bites make?

  She didn’t bother to get to her feet as she heard the door being locked behind her, plunging the room into dusk-tinged shadows, she simply crawled over to the mattress, ready to collapse.

  It was covered with a filthy sheet, and there were blood smears on it. Who had spent the night here before? She didn’t bother to ask where they’d gone—she doubted they’d been rescued by a grateful family. She yanked off the sheet with her bound hands and then collapsed on the mattress, shivering in the air-conditioning. Tomorrow she’d have to come up with something, but one password led to the next layer of encryption, and she had no idea how long she could string Soledad along. She suspected that the woman was looking for an excuse to use that heavy wood baseball bat, and the thought of it cracking her knee filled her with terror. She was going to have to give up something, at least enough to keep Soledad at a distance.

  For what? To wait until she heard the gunshots that signaled Ryder’s execution? The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  She’d rather have a clean shot to the head than be turned over to Soledad’s men. Death before dishonor—she laughed at the stupid idea. She could survive anything, would survive anything. There was only one question. If Matthew Ryder was dead, did she want to survive?

  She could still feel him inside her body. She could still feel his steady, solid heartbeat beneath her as she slept in his arms, safe in a world full of danger. She wanted to be back in bed with him, hiding her face against his shoulder as she came down from what his clever hands, his mouth, his body could do to her.

  She brought her wrists up to her teeth, trying to tear at the cable ties, but they were too strong, and she dropped them back in her lap. The room had been stripped, and the small toilet and sink off to one side would provide nothing to cut through the tough plastic that was digging into her wrists. She could try to kick out the window, enough to get a piece of glass that could cut the bond, but then Soledad’s men would hear her, and she didn’t want to think what would happen next.

  What had she meant—that Billy had told her about the phone? Why would Billy have anything to do with that monstrous woman now that he knew exactly what he’d gotten himself into?

  Unless her stupidity and blind faith had been monumental, and Billy had lied to her. Was it possible? Had she been wrong all this time, shielding her brother when he was a worse criminal than her older brothers? She wanted to bang her head against the wall, scream and cry and rail at her misguided trust. How could she have been such an idiot?

  Still, she only had Soledad’s word for it, and Soledad could have fooled Billy as she fooled her. Anything was possible, but for the first time she was going to look at things with clear eyes and no emotion. Whether she wanted to believe it or not, Billy could have played her. And it was up to her to right the wrong.

  If she ever got out of there. In that dark, awful room everything seemed completely hopeless, and all she could do was curl in on herself. She needed to sleep—it was the only way she’d be able to face Soledad the next day, face the threats and the baseball bat. Whether she could face the possibility of Ryder’s death was unthinkable.

  For now, though, she had every intention of crying herself to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  Matthew Ryder was in a thoroughly savage mood. There were seven men guarding the ridiculously upscale house perched above the ravine that served as temporary headquarters for La Luz, and he’d killed three of them, incapacitated another, and one more might or might not make it. He didn’t care. He had a job to do, and he’d learned long ago not to let things get to him, at least not until long afterward, when the nightmares would come. That left two men, and the ones he’d killed weren’t equipped with radios. It would be a close call whether the dead men were discovered before he made his way out of here, but he figured he had till daylight at the very least.

  It was easy enough to tell which room held Parker—only one had chains looped around the handles on the sliding door. He wasn’t crazy about dangling over the ravine, but he’d always been good at picking locks, and he disposed of it in record time, dropping the chain silently onto the deck.

  He could see her on the floor, huddled on a mattress, and he took a deep breath to keep rage from blinding him. He couldn’t tell whether she was hurt or not, but he slid the door open silently, slipping into the room and closing the door behind him.

  Christ, it was freezing in there! This ridiculous palace of glass and steel came equipped with air-conditioning, unheard of in this part of Calliveria, and someone had turned it on high. Parker had a thin blanket around her, but she was shivering in her sleep. He was going to kill Soledad—Madsen had given him his orders, and even without official sanction he wanted to rip her throat out and actually enjoy doing it. She was deliberately freezing Parker, and he could see where the cable ties cut into her wrists, and his rage grew hotter. Pulling out his knife, he knelt down beside her sleeping body, ready to slice through the bonds.

  She erupted like a crazy woman, and it took all his control to keep her from cutting herself on his knife. She fought him, all silent fury, but he subdued her quickly, grabbing her bound wrists and holding them above her head as he covered her body with his. “It’s me,” he hissed in her ear, barely a whisper of sound, but she’d already recognized the feel of him, and she collapsed beneath him, panting slightly, her eyes gleaming in the darkness as she stared up at him.

  “Hold still,” he said unnecessarily, and reached up to cut her wrists free. He could see the pain wash over her as the blood began to flow back through her arms, and he rubbed them, slowly, carefully, kneading the painful stiffness out of them.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  “Saving your ass,” he mouthed back.

  “It’s a trap. They know you’re coming. There are men out there looking for . . .”

  “They’re dead,” he said flatly. “The ones who are still alive are patrolling the outer edges of the property—they won’t find the bodies till tomorrow.”

  She tried to sit up. “Then let’s go . . .” But he pushed her back down again.

  “We’re not going anywhere until I finish my mission.”

  “The smartphone,” she said wearily.

  He didn’t answer. “We’ll stay in here until they unlock you tomorrow morning. As soon as you’re out of the way, I’ll take out the guards. Where’s the fucking smartphone?”

  “On a table in the living room. I tried to talk Soledad into letting me work on it during the night but she refused.” She swallowed. “You were right about Soledad.”

  He didn’t bother replying to the obvious. “What was she having you
do?”

  “She wanted me to break the password, but none of the logical ones worked.”

  He didn’t believe her. It had taken Jack less than forty-five minutes to hack into the phone once they’d found it beneath Parker’s mattress, and the password was the name of Billy’s pit bull. There was no way she wouldn’t have tried it during the time she had the phone, no way she could have missed the obvious. So she was lying to him as well as to Soledad.

  It pissed him off, big-time. He caught her wrists in one hand and hauled them back over her head. “Feel like telling me the truth for once?”

  She glared at him, and despite his annoyance he was glad she hadn’t lost her attitude. “If you’re not getting me out of here then go away,” she snapped, a little louder.

  He slammed his other hand over her mouth. “For Christ’s sake, be quiet. We don’t want anyone coming in to check on you.”

  “Why not? You can kill him, grab the phone, and we can get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m not fucking Rambo, Parker. I need the phone, I need to deal with Soledad, and I need to get you out. I can’t just go in with guns blazing.”

  “I thought that’s what you did to get up here in the first place.”

  “I used my bare hands,” he said, the words flat and unemotional, but something in his tone must have tipped her off. She was silent for a moment, and she’d stopped trying to free her arms.

  “I’m sorry.”