Consumed by Fire (The Fire Series)

by Anne Stuart

  “What makes you think I watch TV?”

  He didn’t blink. “James has briefed me thoroughly. You have a preference for twisted mysteries and love stories and you don’t like sitcoms unless they’re British. Plus, New Orleans has some of the best food in the world and I’ve made arrangements to have meals delivered from any restaurant that takes your fancy.”

  She swung her legs off the bunk, ignoring his proffered hand. “Where’s Merlin?”

  “I’m afraid he can’t come with you. He’s too easy to track. Once everything is taken care of, you’ll be able to take him back to Wisconsin with you.”

  For a moment she didn’t move, but then she did what she had done so long ago. She simply turned everything off, all feeling, all interest, all longing, regret, or memory. “I don’t have any shoes,” she said, as if that were the most important thing in the world.

  “That’s all right. It’s only a few steps to the car. There’ll be shoes waiting for you.”

  “And how do I know you aren’t one of the people who has tried to kill me? Why should I trust you?”

  Ryder’s smile this time was less of a grimace. “James said you’d ask that. He said to give you these.” He took her hand and placed something in it, closing her fingers around it. She knew what it was, even before she looked.

  Her aunt’s diamond earrings, the ones he supposedly stole in Venice. She wanted to fling them at him.

  But then, he wasn’t Bishop. So instead she calmly put them on, sliding them into the piercings and fastening them. She looked Ryder straight in the eye. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “How did she look?” Bishop was sprawled in the apartment where Ryder had been living the last month, partway through a bottle of Scotch. He’d spent the last few hours signing paperwork, checking in with Madsen, prowling around the ramshackle building Ryder had chosen, and he was in a thoroughly foul mood. Merlin had risen the moment Ryder had come back in, whining in anticipation, and then sank down on the floor with a sigh of disappointment when he realized Evangeline wasn’t with him. Bishop knew just how he felt.

  “Your Angel? Just fine, particularly when she saw all her research papers and her laptop waiting for her. Jenkins and Thomas have the first watch, and Thomas had already stopped in at Commander’s Palace for food. She looked quite happy to be rid of your sorry ass, though I think she misses the dog.”

  “Thanks,” Bishop said with just the trace of a snarl. “She didn’t argue?”

  “Just a little. You were right, though. Once I handed her the earrings, she shut right up. Nothing like diamonds to make a woman behave.”

  “You don’t know shit. Those were her diamonds.” Stupid idiot that he was, he’d carried them with him, ever since he left her in Venice. He’d kept meaning to give them back to her, but something had always stopped him. Now he had nothing tying him to her, apart from the legal trifle of a marriage. Now he could let go of her. “I took care of the paperwork. This wreck of a place officially belongs to the Committee on the Preservation of Democracy. How’s that for a bullshit title?”

  “It’ll do for now, as long as we don’t have any skinheads crawling out of the woodwork. Now that you’ve finally gotten your ass here we can start work on retrofitting the place, plus I’ve bribed the right people. Considering New Orleans’s reputation, it’s surprising how twitchy the city gets about their old buildings.”

  “You could have chosen a high rise,” Bishop said.

  Ryder shrugged, unmoved. “I don’t like them, and neither do you. We’ll have an easier time keeping things on the down low here in the Garden District. You gonna see her again?”

  The last bit was such a change in subject that Bishop snarled before he could control himself. “You said it. She’s better off without me.”

  “Think about business for a change, why don’t you?” Ryder said, totally without sympathy, but then, he’d always been a cold bastard. “We’ve only got circumstantial evidence against His Eminence, not even enough to warrant an official investigation, and in the meantime ships go in and out of port, filled with cargo.”

  “Human beings aren’t cargo.” Bishop took another drink. He could hold his liquor, which was unfortunate when he wanted nothing more than a few hours’ oblivion.

  “Not to His Eminence and the Corsini family. And we can’t even get close enough to take him out. He keeps that cadre of priests around him at all times—the only chance we’d have would be to kill all of them.”

  Bishop looked at him. “Why haven’t we?”

  “Two reasons. You and I are sanctioned—the others aren’t—and I’m not sure you and I are enough to handle it. Plus, not everyone in the Cardinal’s entourage is dirty. You were raised a Catholic—how’d you like to face your God after murdering an innocent priest or two or three?”

  “I’m not likely to face any God at all after the things I’ve done. And I’m a recovering Catholic. If I’d still kept any doubts, this whole mess would have put a stop to it.”

  “You shock me!” Ryder’s voice was mocking. “Even with your nice new pope?”

  “He’s not my pope, and he’s probably a Corsini too,” Bishop said bitterly. “And I really wouldn’t mind beating the shit out of you, so just keep at it.”

  Ryder laughed. “You and what army?”

  Bishop leapt for him. It didn’t take long, and as usual it was a draw. The two of them lay side by side on the floor, broken furniture around them, and Bishop passed Ryder the bottle he’d managed to salvage before their brawl. He took a long pull, then passed it back. “You have to get over her,” Ryder said.

  “I can hit you again,” Bishop growled.

  “It’s not me you want to hit. Just keep your mind on business and it’ll be over. The sooner it’s done with, the sooner she’s gone, and you can go back to living a normal life.”

  Bishop closed his eyes. He didn’t feel like moving—there was a broken chair leg under his back and he was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he was just as comfortable where he was. “Sure I can,” he said morosely. He glanced over at Merlin, still lying by the door, paying absolutely no attention to their short, furious battle. “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”

  With great dedication Evangeline threw herself into ignoring the passage of time. She had plenty of things to keep her busy—the sheer mass of data she’d acquired during the summer required organization and editing, plus there was a goodly amount she hadn’t transposed onto the computer yet. She played gin with her bodyguards, watched old movies, managed to keep a false veneer of Zen-like calm around her. Bishop wouldn’t have believed it, but Bishop wasn’t anywhere around her. He’d disappeared—as far as she knew he wasn’t even in the country, much less in New Orleans. She didn’t miss him, not for one moment, she told herself every morning when she woke up in the huge, king-sized bed, and every evening when she climbed back into it, alone. She just missed Merlin.

  She wasn’t any too fond of the man called Ryder. He showed up occasionally, when she least expected him, and she never could figure out why. She missed freedom; she missed fresh air, even if it was the sultry heat of the Crescent City. She missed her camper, she missed her house in Wisconsin . . .

  Fuck that, she didn’t miss any of those things. She just missed Merlin, and his asshat of an owner. No, she was his owner now, she reminded herself. Meaning she had no connection left to the man she’d unwittingly married. He’d probably disappeared to end that particular travesty, and once it was done with, she’d be released to the wild once more, like some captive animal.

  She hadn’t spent much time in New Orleans in the past, and what little she could see out of the shuttered windows didn’t give her much of a clue as to which area of town they’d stashed her. It was close to the heart of the city, she could tell that much from the noise that filtered through, the buildings that were crowded together, the general sense of grunge. Occasio
nally she considered trying to escape—she had no illusions that the guards were simply there to protect her. They were there to keep her from leaving as well, and she was getting very sick of it all. She had no access to the Internet, no phone, and despite Ryder’s empty promises, the only television available to her was only for streaming movies. In the past three years of living alone, she’d watched a lot of movies, and the only ones she’d loved enough to want to see again were fucking romances, the last thing she was in the mood for.

  So she sat, and she worked, and she waited. When it was all over, when she was finally safe, would James be the one to bring Merlin back to her? Or was he really gone forever this time?

  It was Thursday, and she’d been cooped up in the small apartment for a week. Her research was turning into a frustrating pain in the butt—there was too much for even a lengthy paper but not enough for a book, and she was heartily sick of it. She was half tempted to just send the whole fucking thing to Pete so he could keep plagiarizing. At least there’d be some consistency in the writing.

  She was just as sick of the rich food, no matter how much she’d loved it the first few days, sick of coffee with chicory in it, sick of playing gin, sick of everything, even beignets, which she would have considered an impossibility. Finally, in an act of great rebellion, she’d sent Jenkins out to the nearest fast-food restaurant for the greasiest cheeseburger and fries she could get, complete with a milkshake and a gallon of Diet Coke, as she prepared to enjoy a total debauch of junk food. Maybe the taste of ordinary Americana would help remind her there was another life waiting for her, back in the heartland.

  “What’s taking him so long?” she asked Odila, one of the six guards in rotation to watch her. Odila was a young father and a lousy gin player, two things that recommended him, but he was almost impossible to lure into conversation. His expression was entirely neutral, but she’d become very observant, particularly with nothing to watch but the limited confines of the apartment and her cadre of guards. He looked worried.

  “Probably long lines at the burger place. You said you wanted the best cheeseburger in the Big Easy,” he said.

  “Probably,” she agreed. “Or maybe a vampire got him,” she added with a weak attempt at humor.

  “Vampires aren’t real,” Odila said repressively.

  “Yes, but you have to admit that if they were, they’d live in New Orleans.”

  Odila wasn’t admitting anything. “I’d be more likely to believe in Voodoo,” he said. “There’s a stronger history. Everything else just comes from a crazy lady in the Garden District.”

  “Blasphemy!” Evangeline summoned up some humor. “I love Anne Rice.”

  Odila’s response was monosyllabic and profane. They sat in an uncomfortable silence for minutes longer. It was getting late, though anything before two in the morning was early for New Orleans, and a brief rain had ended, already swept out to sea, leaving the streets wet and shining in the lamplight. “Maybe I’ll take a look outside and see what’s keeping him,” he said finally.

  “Can’t you call him?” For some reason she felt uneasy. Here was her perfect chance to escape her mink-lined prison, and instead she didn’t want to be left alone.

  Odila shook his head. “No phones. Too easy to track them.”

  “Not if you use burner phones.”

  Odila gave her a pitying look. “If we can track burner phones, then they can too.”

  “Then how do you let Ryder and James know if something’s wrong?” She put James’s name in there as a test, to see if Odila would admit whether he was still around or not.

  “We’re good enough at what we do.” He shoved himself to his feet, giving nothing away. “I’m going to check on Jenkins. Don’t let anyone in, including me, unless I give you the password.”

  “Which is?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “Vampires,” he said finally, giving in.

  She laughed. “Sounds good. I’m really looking forward to that hamburger.”

  Across town, the empty house in the Garden District had lights on for the first time in years. “You know you’re a pain in the butt, don’t you?” Ryder said, throwing himself into one of the folding camp chairs they’d brought in. “If I had any idea you were going to be such an asshole, I would have told Madsen to send someone else. Being cooped up with you has to rank with one of my worst assignments . . .”

  “Not likely,” Bishop said, glancing up from the schematics he was looking over. The moldy Gothic mansion in the Garden District was going to need a complete gut job, both for the damp and the complicated infrastructure needed for any outpost of the Committee, and he’d been staring at the sketches spread out on the makeshift table for hours without really seeing anything. “You forget, I was with you in Chechnya, not to mention that mess in Lyons. We barely made it out alive.”

  “I’d take being shot at over putting up with a lovesick idiot.”

  “Fuck off,” Bishop snapped, pushing the papers away from him. “The only reason she’s still here is that you haven’t taken care of business. Find one way for me to get a shot at His Eminence and this will all be over.”

  “I think that was going to be Claude’s job,” Ryder pointed out.

  “Well, Claude isn’t here, is he?” Bishop’s voice was like ice.

  “No, he’s not. And if you think the Corsinis don’t know exactly where you are, then you’re even more of a fuckhead than I thought. There’s no reason to keep your little wife on ice . . . They don’t need her to get to you and you know it.”

  “Shut up about my wife,” Bishop snapped. “It’s not safe.”

  “Yeah, right. You going to tell me you aren’t just as much a fool for that woman as your dog is?”

  Merlin lifted his head. He’d taken to sleeping by the door, clearly waiting for Bishop to take him back where he belonged, with Evangeline. Since no one was heading in his direction, he dropped his head back with a heavy canine sigh.

  “If I were fool enough to let myself get emotionally twisted over some damned woman, I’d have been dead long ago,” Bishop said repressively.

  Ryder laughed. “You didn’t fall in love before. Don’t bother denying it—I recognize the signs. I’ve seen far too many good men laid low by it. If I thought there was a chance in hell of curing you, I’d do it, but you’re too far gone. It’s a chronic condition and you’ll never get rid of it, so you may as well get used to it.”

  “Give me a break. You know as well as I do that there’s no room in our lives for normal relationships.”

  “Shit, I don’t think you’d know a normal relationship if it came up and bit you on the ass. No offense, Merlin,” Ryder added when the dog lifted his head again. “Neither of us is cut out for a normal life, but you let your guard down, and now you’re moping around like some fucking teenager . . .”

  “Don’t annoy me.” There was no missing the very real danger in Bishop’s voice.

  “Look, we’re wasting our time. We need to concentrate on shutting down His Eminence, not arguing about who wants to go steady with his best girl. Shit or get off the pot. You’re in love with her. Either take her or let her go.”

  “She’d end up with a target on her back . . .”

  “She already has a target on her back, Bishop,” Ryder said, clearly exasperated. “And she always will, no matter how far away from her you keep yourself. The safest place for her to be is with you—you’re about the only one who can protect her. Well, I could, but I’m not interested in the job.”

  His sudden surge of jealous rage shocked Bishop. “Go near her and I’ll cut your throat.”

  “Did you hear me? Not interested. Never will be—women have two uses in this life: to sleep with or work with. That’s it, and the two lines don’t cross. If you don’t get your ass in gear and do something about her then I will. If you aren’t going to take her, then it’s time for her to go
back to Iowa or wherever she comes from.”

  Bishop controlled his temper with an effort. “And what the hell makes you think she’d come back with me? I’ve done everything I could to drive her away.”

  “You’ll never know until you find out.” He pushed back from the table. “You coming with me?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Odila didn’t return. Evangeline tried not to look at the clock, but she knew that Jenkins had left around eleven, and it couldn’t have been more than two hours later that Odila had gone after him. It was almost three in the morning now, the noise of the city was dying down, and she was still alone.

  Maybe it was simply Bishop’s way of getting rid of her. He’d called off his watchdogs long enough to let her escape so he wouldn’t have to be troubled with any messy scenes. This way he could keep Merlin and never have to deal with unpleasant trifles like emotions and a lovesick female.

  Lovesick? She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t really find it funny. She’d had a lot of time to think during the past week—and she’d twisted herself inside out trying to avoid the ugly truth, but it just kept popping up again, inescapable. No matter how big a bastard he was, no matter how he tricked and lied and manipulated her, no matter how clearly hopeless any kind of future was, she still loved him, and had never stopped, even when she thought he’d seduced her only to rob her.

  She reached up and touched the diamond studs in her ears. Why had he held on to them? Clearly he hadn’t needed the money or he would have sold them—he’d simply needed an excuse to ditch her. But why keep them with him?

  If he thought she was going to run away the first chance she got, then he was mistaken. He might be an emotional coward, but she wasn’t. She’d fucked up her life good and proper five years ago, and never had any closure. Oh, she could blame him, and God knows he’d been the one to instigate it, to lie and trick her.

  But she wasn’t a victim. She had been dazzled by him, she’d tossed away all practicality and gone with him the moment he’d beckoned, and instead of giving herself a good kick in the ass and moving on with life once he left her, she’d moped and thrown herself into even worse relationships, culminating with her marriage to Pete.