Driven by Fire

by Anne Stuart

  “I can’t wait,” she said, striding deeper into the house’s interior.

  “Guess you’re going to have to, Sissy.” Billy’s voice came from the shadows, and Jenny froze, turning slowly to face him.

  He looked the same—boyish, handsome, enthusiastic, and she almost went into his arms, until she noticed the petulant expression around his mouth.

  “Billy,” she said breathlessly, panicked. “You were supposed to be overseas, out of reach of the US authorities.”

  “No one’s ever out of reach of the Committee, and I have you to thank for that, don’t I?” he said in a sour voice. “If you’d given me back the smartphone when I asked for it then all this would have been avoided.”

  Her heart sank. “I couldn’t,” she said miserably. “Don’t you realize what you did? You sold women and children into slavery. Most of those people won’t live that long, and yet you’re sitting on a profit made off them.”

  “And a very nice profit it is,” he said with a shrug. “It’s their choice. They could have stayed in the pigsty villages and died young, or they can enjoy civilization for a few years. I know which one I’d pick,” he said with supreme indifference.

  “You’re a monster,” she breathed, shocked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a businessman, like my father and brothers before me.”

  “Not like me,” Tonino spoke up. “It’s dirty money.”

  “You’re a pussy,” Billy said maliciously. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, you can’t make a profit without stepping on some toes. My partner and I know what we’re doing.”

  “Your partner?”

  “Soledad. You had no idea she was working for me, now did you? It took her too damned long to find the telephone after you refused to hand it over, but in the end she got it.”

  “I smashed it,” Jenny said.

  The momentary darkening of Billy’s eyes was terrifying. And then he smiled affably. “That’s all right. Most of the information is outdated by now. In fact, you’ve probably saved my life. No one will be able to prove anything even if they had the records I’d stored on that phone.”

  “The Committee does.”

  “Does what?” Billy demanded irritably.

  “Has all the records on the smartphone. They dumped the information while I was staying in the house, and they’ll use it to hang you. You need to get out of here before you’re arrested.”

  Billy laughed. “No one’s arresting me. You forget—Father’s paid for half the New Orleans police force. I’m not going anywhere until I feel like it. In fact, I’m safer from the Committee right here.”

  Jenny looked at him as she saw the last vestige of her family crumble in front of her eyes. “How could you do this, Billy?” she demanded brokenly.

  “Give me a break, Sissy! You always were such a bleeding heart. I told you, I’m ambitious. Father’s always discounted me, and I decided it was time he was taught a little lesson. No one should ever underestimate me.”

  “You’ve betrayed all of us with this shit,” Tonino exploded, taking a step toward him.

  “Never.” He turned a winning smile on Jenny. “I love my family, and you, sister mine, most of all. I could never hurt you.”

  Relief swamped her. Thank God. Someone else had to have been behind the murder attempts . . .

  “That’s why I hired someone else to kill you,” Billy continued blithely, as if it made perfect sense. “After all, you were the only one who knew I’d been part of the trafficking, and you wouldn’t give me back my cell phone. I don’t know why you were so selfish about it, Sissy. I wouldn’t have had to hire someone if you’d just been reasonable.”

  Jenny swallowed, as something inside of her died. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus, Billy,” Tonino said.

  “No need to be sorry, Sissy. Everything’s taken care of. Even the Committee can’t touch me here, and I have the money to go anywhere I want. The only problem that remains is you.”

  “Why me?” This all had a strange, Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass kind of feel about it, her brother acting as if he were making perfect sense when every word out of his mouth was insane.

  “Because you know the truth. Sooner or later you’re going to tell the wrong person and I’ll get caught, and I really can’t let that happen.”

  “You’re my brother. Why would I want you to get caught?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t want me to,” he said sweetly. “You just can’t keep your fucking mouth closed.”

  They were alone now in the giant foyer of her father’s garish house. Tonino had disappeared; it was just the two of them, and she felt sick inside.

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked, very calm and reasonable.

  “I’m going to have to take care of you, of course. Father will understand. Family is family but business is business, and business comes first. If I get caught it reflects badly on Father, and he wouldn’t want you shooting off your fat mouth either.” The hateful words, in such a sweet tone, were eerie. The front door had three locks on it, but there was always the chance she could open it in time, and she could run very, very fast. That, or she could try to get to her father, but she’d be an easier target in the house, and there was no telling whether her father would protect her or not.

  “Are you going to shoot me, Billy?” she asked. “Or is someone else coming to take care of me?”

  “Unfortunately I don’t have time to call someone in. Tonino’s probably tattling to Father right now, and he might not think it was a good idea.” He reached behind his back and pulled out a Glock 25, just like the one her father carried. “If you kneel down on the floor I promise I won’t make it hurt.”

  She stared at him in horror and disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. “You don’t mean it,” she said, hating the pleading sound in her voice.

  “Of course I do.” Billy shook his head. “Don’t look so surprised, Sissy. I’m just a businessman, like father, cutting my losses. You should understand—you’re a member of this family.”

  “Not anymore,” she said brokenly. He raised the gun, and Jenny closed her eyes.

  “Keep away from her!” Ryder’s voice thundered through the cavernous hallway, and Jenny’s eyes flew open as shock and relief flooded her. She made an instinctive move toward him, but Billy intervened, grabbing her and pressing the gun against her temple. It was cold and hard, and all he had to do was pull the trigger and her life would disappear. She held herself very still.

  “Who the hell are you?” Billy said disdainfully, glaring at Ryder. “I don’t think this is any of your business.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference to you,” Ryder said, moving into the hallway. “Leave her the fuck alone.”

  She could see Tonino move behind him, and she realized that Ryder had been there all the time.

  Billy laughed. “God, what a hero! You must be Ryder—my father told me about you and your pathetic attempts to find me. If you’re in love with my sister, then I’m sorry for you. She’s a waste of oxygen with no family loyalty. But I’m afraid you don’t have any say in the matter.”

  Ryder didn’t even glance at her, his face cold and implacable. “I’m not in love with your sister, Billy. This is a job. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Billy brightened. “Of course I do. I’m not sure Sissy does—she’s looking like you slapped her in the face. Did you think he was in love with you, Sissy? Men like us can’t afford to love anyone.”

  “Ryder isn’t anything like you,” she said, ignoring the sharp pain in her chest. She wanted to weep. She’d been wrong about everything, about her brother’s innocence, about Ryder caring about her.

  “Oh, I think he’s exactly like me. I’m guessing you slept with him—Father won’t like that. You know he thinks women are whores or Madonnas, and you’re supposed to be in the saintly category like our mother. I tried to explain to him that all women are whores at heart but he never believed me.”
He swung the gun toward Ryder, and Jenny froze. He could kill them both with that small handgun, and he wouldn’t care. He was a Gauthier after all, amoral and heartless in his casual cruelty. “Don’t move any closer to her. I really don’t want to have to shoot you both.”

  Ryder kept moving, slowly. “You’re not going to have any choice in the matter. You kill her then you might as well kill me, because I’ll rip your heart out if you do.”

  Billy laughed, and there was a tinge of hysteria in his voice. “And you say you don’t love her. You’re just as weak as the rest of them!”

  “My son, this is enough.”

  Fabrizio Gauthier appeared behind Tonino, a small, dapper man with the face of a bulldog. “You will only make things worse. Your sister doesn’t understand. She has betrayed you and your entire family, but it is already too late. Put the gun down, Billy.”

  Billy froze. Slowly, like a naughty child, he lowered the gun and set it on the shiny marble floor. He turned to look beseechingly at their father, and for a brief, shocked moment Jenny could see the little boy who’d opened Christmas presents with her, the child with the innocent eyes and sweet mouth.

  “The FBI is coming for you,” Fabrizio said. “Mr. Ryder has explained that there is nothing I can do to stop them. There is no one left to pay off. I am sorry, my son.”

  Billy looked shocked. “You aren’t going to let him do this to me, are you, Papa?”

  “No, my son,” said Fabrizio, and shot him three times in the chest.

  The flashes of light came a nanosecond ahead of the thunder that echoed around the foyer, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air as Billy stared down at his shirt, now dotted with bright red stains. He looked up again, his mouth moving soundlessly, and then his head exploded with a final bullet.

  Jenny began to scream, sinking to her knees on the marble floor, screaming and screaming until someone yanked her hands away from her face and slapped her, and she looked up into her father’s furious expression.

  “You see what you made me do?” he said in a voice of deadly quiet. “I killed my own son because of your stupidity. You stop this, do you hear, or I swear I will shoot you too.” He pulled back his hand to slap her again when Ryder caught his arm, yanking him away.

  “Leave her the fuck alone,” he snarled, then knelt down beside her. He put his hands on her, pushing her hair back from her shocked, tear-streaked face. “Let me get you out of here.”

  “And don’t let her come back, or I swear I’ll kill her myself. My family has shamed me, first my son with his stupid choices and now my daughter who doesn’t know the meaning of the word loyalty. This is all her fault—blood is first.”

  “Blood is first and you murder your son,” Jenny said in a shaky voice. “You bastard! You’re even more of a monster than I thought you were.”

  “Get her out of here, or I swear I’ll come after her,” Fabrizio said.

  “You won’t touch her,” Ryder said in a quiet voice, scooping her up in his arms. “Because I can get to you, no matter how big an army you have, no matter how many people you pay off. You’ll leave her alone.”

  “Fine. From this day forward I have no daughter.”

  From somewhere deep inside Jenny found her voice. “You never did,” she said.

  And Ryder carried her from the house, leaving the carnage behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jenny was scarcely aware of Ryder as he carried her out into the overcast day. He tucked her into the front seat of the car, fastening the seat belt for her, and within moments they were speeding down the driveway, out onto the road. She leaned back against the seat, closing her dry, scratchy eyes.

  She couldn’t cry. She’d lost her baby brother, the last person she’d considered to be her family, lost him more thoroughly than she’d lost her other brothers. No one else in her family had considered her worth bothering about, but at least they hadn’t tried to kill her. She could see her father’s cold, angry face, the gun still in his hand. She really had been raised by wolves, and that madness, that bad blood, ran in her veins as well.

  She was in shock. She knew it, welcomed it. She didn’t want to feel the dark cloud of pain that hovered, threatening to smother her. She didn’t want to think, to feel, to care.

  The car pulled out onto the interstate, and she opened her eyes. Ryder was driving fast, way too fast, weaving in and out of traffic, and normally she’d be grabbing the door handle and screaming at him to slow down. It didn’t matter. If they ended up in a pile of twisted metal it would make no difference.

  She turned to look at him. His face was set, his eyes cold and wintry. He glanced at her, taking his eyes from the road for a moment, and she considered shrieking in protest. She couldn’t say a word.

  “I should tell you I’m sorry.” His voice was low, unexpected. “But I’m not. If your father hadn’t killed that son of a bitch then I would have. You know that, don’t you?”

  She pictured her brother’s body lying on the marble floor, the blood pooling beneath him, and she felt nothing. “Yes,” she said dully, surprised that her voice worked.

  “Whoever your baby brother was, he died a long time ago. That piece of shit would have killed you.” There was banked fury in his voice, enough to catch her attention.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, knowing she sounded as defeated as she felt. “He was the last member of my family I cared about, trusted. Now there’s no one.”

  “There’s me.”

  She barely heard the words. She jerked her head back to him, some of the fog beginning to lift. “What did you say?”

  He didn’t answer her question. “Look at it this way—you had a rough start in life. You’re a changeling, born into the wrong family. That family is gone now, and you can shut the door on them.”

  “You think it’s that easy? That I don’t need to mourn my brother?” she said, her raw voice stronger.

  “Of course you do. You need to cry and scream and hit things. You can even hit me if it helps. But you can’t change the fact that he’s dead and the world is a better place for it.”

  She wanted to hit him, hit him for the awful truth she couldn’t refute. Billy had been a monster in sheep’s clothing, and she’d been too blinded by her need for family to look past his smooth exterior.

  “You’re driving too fast for me to hit you,” she said in a low voice.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He sped up, and it was beginning to scare her, just a little bit.

  “Slow down!”

  “Make me,” he shot back. He was going over ninety now, and the roads were crowded with commuters and tourists heading back into the city. He dodged into the right lane, passed someone and then crossed three lanes of speeding traffic into the fast lane, and Jenny wanted to scream.

  “Slow down!” she yelled at him, no longer apathetic.

  “Why?” he shouted back, the noise of the traffic all around them.

  “Because I don’t want to die.”

  He immediately slowed down, and she could sense some of the tension leaving him. Which was fine—she was already tense enough for the both of them. “Good,” he said. He moved the car over to one of the middle lanes, driving at a comparatively sedate pace. “So where do you want to go?”

  She looked at him with disbelief. He was getting rid of her, now that everything was over, and that safe cocoon that had embraced her began to dissolve. “How the hell should I know?” she said, her voice harsh. “I have no house, no clothes, nothing. Drop me at a hotel somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then where the hell are you planning on taking me? I won’t go back to that goddamn house on Magazine Street.”

  “Not there.”

  Oddly enough the traffic was thinning a bit, the highway going from four lanes to three, and she suddenly realized they were driving away from the city, not toward it. “What are you doing?” she said in a calmer voice.

  “Taking care of you. You’re hurting,
and you need someone to look after you. That’s what I’m doing.” His voice was matter-of-fact, and for a moment she was cold and silent. She was hurting, and he was looking after her. His words broke the dam inside her, and suddenly she began to weep, loud, noisy sobs.

  She had no idea how long she cried—at some point he pulled off the road and parked, hauled her to him and held her as she wept, stroking her back in a soothing gesture. Eventually her sobs slowed, turned into shuddering hiccups, and then into shaky breaths, and he moved his hand up to push her hair away from her wet face.

  He’d pulled her over onto his lap, and she’d never felt so safe, so protected in her life. She looked at his impassive face, and she was so tired. All she wanted to do was stay in his arms forever, but she knew that was impossible. “Why are you doing this?” she said in a small voice.

  “Doing what?”

  “Holding me. Acting like you care about me when I know you think I’m nothing but a pain in the ass.” She felt completely vulnerable, with nothing to hold on to, and she wanted to hold on to him.

  To her shock he actually smiled. “You are a pain in the ass. You’re also being deliberately obtuse but I’ll give you that. You’ve had a hard day.”

  “You think? So fucking indulge me. What am I being obtuse about?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “I’m in love with you. I’m not even sure I believe love exists, but if it does I’m in it with you, and I’ve given up fighting. You may as well give up too. Love doesn’t seem to respond to common sense and conventional wisdom.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “I gave up long ago,” she said simply, half afraid to admit it.

  “Gave up what?” he said warily, as if he wasn’t sure he could believe her words.

  “Gave up fighting it.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “Let’s face it—you’re hot. And you save my life, over and over again, you utterly destroy me when we make love, and . . . and I trust you. You’re a good man, whether you believe it or not, and I love you.”

  His smile widened as he shook his head. “This isn’t Romeo and Juliet.”