Hotter Than Wildfire (20 page)

Fuck them.

She put up the toilet cover, a sound the man would be expecting. Only instead of bending over that filth, she held up her right hand and examined the ring on it. It was a sleek, modern design, pure titanium.
Will resist a conflagration,
the online brochure had said.

Of course the subtext was,
If they burn your body, something will remain.

The company was as mysterious as its owner—a legendary beauty who hid from the world. Whoever she was, she was brilliant—a designer of jewelry that doubled as weaponry, only for women. Necklaces that broke apart to become small, razor-sharp scythes or hid garrotes, bracelets that held a small amount of C-4 and a detonator that came with detailed instructions and was just enough to blow someone up. The solutions were endless and fascinating.

Kerry had opted for a ring, very simple and unobtrusive, but beautiful nonetheless. It was disguised as the kind of ring that at first glance looked like something you could pick up at a crafts fair or on any costume jewelry stand.

Perfectly ordinary ring except for one thing: Press a tiny hidden button on one side and out shot a spring-loaded mini hypodermic syringe preloaded with enough neurotoxin to fell a bull. The syringe could also be preloaded with a powerful tranquillizer, but Kerry knew that if she ever became desperate enough to use it, she’d need to kill. So it had been option A, neurotoxin.

There was a second option to the ring, which Kerry had barely paid attention to. Twist that tiny button instead of pressing it, and the syringe would pop out on the underside, penetrate the skin of your hand and kill you instantly.

If the man who stood with his back to her had been alone, she’d have stabbed him in a heartbeat. Reached over and jabbed him in the neck, hard. He wouldn’t be expecting it at all. He’d die at her feet and she’d rejoice.

But the syringe was preloaded with just one dose. Kerry hadn’t thought it through but she realized how incredibly clever the designer was. If you needed two doses, you were better off killing yourself because you’d never prevail.

“That’s enough,” the man muttered and turned around, giving her a quick, impersonal up and down look. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom, she hadn’t vomited. “What the fuck—”

Staring him straight into his dead eyes, Kerry wrenched the button, felt the white-hot prick of the needle, welcomed it, and dropped where she stood, dead before she hit the ground.

 
San Diego

  They drove up out of the condo’s garage in single file. One, two, three. Mike first, then Sam and Nicole, then Harry and Ellen. They turned right and followed the ocean for a couple of miles, then turned inland over a beautiful bridge.

They all drove at exactly forty miles an hour and kept the exact same distance from each other.

It took Ellen a while to realize what this was: a convoy.

She turned her head and looked blindly out at the passing scenery. This was an unusually beautiful part of San Diego, but she barely noticed what she was seeing.

This, then, was the life of Harry, of Sam and Nicole and of Mike. Reduced to moving in a convoy as if through Baghdad, through incredibly hostile terrain.

Because of her.

Roddy, dear, sweet Roddy, was dead.

Because of her.

“Hey.” Harry’s deep voice broke the silence. He picked up her hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the back and returned her hand to her lap, all the while staring at the road up ahead. “It’s not your fault.”

“Are you a mind reader now?” Ellen’s voice was froggy and she cleared it.

“Don’t have to be a mind reader to know what you were thinking. It was all over your face.”

She huffed out a little laugh. He hadn’t looked at her once since they’d come up out of the garage, so clearly he had 360-degree vision. It wouldn’t surprise her; he seemed to be Superman. He’d prevailed over three of Gerald’s men.

He continued staring straight ahead. “There was nothing you could do for your agent. And it had nothing to do with you. Montez is a bad guy and your agent was caught right in the middle of his machinations. Just bad luck, like being run over by a truck. You can’t beat yourself up over it. It won’t do you any good, and above all, it won’t do him any good. The only person to profit would be that fu—would be Gerald, because you’ll be a little less alert.”

He was right, of course he was right.

“Besides, you’ve got other things to think about. Like my tax return. We’re all going to dump tons of pieces of paper on you, and man, you’re going to regret your offer.”

No, she wouldn’t. She was actually looking forward to it. “Nicole comes first.”

He dipped his head briefly, and a touch of a smile crossed his face. “Of course. Ladies first.”

“No, not because ladies come first but because she figured out what happened in Baghdad. That deserves a reward.”

“Yeah.” He frowned. “I can’t believe she’s better at some types of computer research than I am.”

Ellen laughed. She
laughed
. When was the last time she laughed? Over a year ago, surely. It felt odd, and came out a little rusty, but it was definitely a laugh.

He slanted her a glance. “Sounds good, you laughing.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, surprised at herself. It felt good, too. With all her troubles, and she had a mountain of them, she felt her spirits rise.

Her situation in general sucked, and she had no future to speak of, but right this second, life was good. She was very safe right now, in a vehicle that she was sure was armored, with Harry at the wheel. Gentle, sexy Harry, who was good with violence. He wielded it like a surgeon wields a scalpel,
for
her, not
against
her.

In the vehicles in front of her were three people who were fast becoming her friends, two of them warriors.

Amazingly, all of them had gathered her into their little circle of protection and friendship. Crazily enough, though she was in terrible trouble, she’d never felt so safe. So safe, so warm, so protected.

Don’t get used to it,
she warned herself. Because it would be easy to just sink into it, like into a warm bath, and never get out. There would be a deadline to all of this, no doubt. Harry and Sam and Mike would be working to come up with a plan for her. A place to go, documents to fit into a new life that they’d conjure up out of thin air.

They’d do a better job of it than she could. Would she have a say in what life they chose for her? Music was out, of course. At the thought, a heavy lump of lead settled into her chest. No more music, no more singing, not even amateur singing in a choir. Her voice was too well known by now. Somehow Gerald must have traced her back through her music, so music was out.

Accountancy, too, of course. Even she knew, you don’t take up your old profession when on the run.

She didn’t want to waitress any more. It had been fun for a while but it was hard drudgery, and for better or worse, she had lots of money stashed away, so she didn’t have to do it.

Maybe a job in a bookstore? She liked reading. Or, or…her mind turned blank when Harry took her hand again, raised it to his mouth. This time the kiss wasn’t reassuring, it was pure sex. She felt his warm lips, the slight bite of beard even though he’d shaved. His mouth lingered, a touch of tongue, and she suddenly flashed on last night. How his beard had scraped her shoulder as he kissed and lightly bit his way down to her breast.

He’d stopped moving in her, hot and hard and heavy inside her, while he kissed his way to her breast. Then he’d lifted his head, fierce golden gaze locked to her eyes. Sliding his hips forward to be more deeply into her.

Oh God, just remembering made heat blossom all through her body.

Harry chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m red, aren’t I?” Her voice was resigned.

“Like a stoplight, honey.” The little convoy took a corner and she looked blindly out the window, trying to cool off a little. His voice roughened.

“I don’t blush, but—” He took her hand and put it over his groin. Right over the hot steel column in his pants. It was a shocking thing to do. Probably she should protest, but there wasn’t any blood in her head to think, and all the air had left her lungs. “I’m thinking of the same thing you are.”

He pressed his hand down hard over hers and she gasped as she felt his penis jump, lengthening a little. It had done exactly the same thing last night when she’d nipped him under his ear. It hadn’t been planned; she hadn’t thought it out. It had been instinct, an urgent curiosity to find out what he tasted like, and whether he liked being lightly bit as much as she did.

The answer had been yes. Hell yes.

She’d felt the pulse of new blood flooding into his penis buried deep inside her and her vagina had clenched tightly. Thinking of it, remembering it, her hand instinctively tightened around him and the breath exploded out of his body.

“God.” The word came out rough. His jaws were clenched, muscles rippling up to his temples. She’d have said he was in pain if it weren’t for the fact that his hand tightened over hers to keep it right where it was.

His eyes quartered the street. “We’re going to be at the Morrison Building in about four minutes. Where am I going to go with
this
?” His hand clenched around hers and his penis surged again against the palm of her hand.

Blood suffused her face; her hands trembled. The little convoy was slowing down. Soon they’d be parking and the two of them would have to emerge from this SUV with her burning face and his erection.

“We have to think of something that will cool us down,” she gasped. Something as big and as cold as Antarctica, the way she was feeling.

Harry lifted his hand from hers and she released him.

They drove down into the gloom of the building’s underground garage, the bright sunlight abruptly gone, as if a switch had been thrown.

“Not hard,” Harry said, parking neatly beside Sam and Nicole’s vehicle. “Just think of Gerald Montez. That’s enough.”

 
Turned out that Nicole’s office was just across the corridor from her husband’s. Pretty convenient.

She had elaborate security, involving a palm print and a keypad code. The only thing missing was the retina scan. When her door clicked open, like that of a bank vault, Nicole put her hand to Ellen’s back and urged her inside. Nicole turned back to the three men.

“Ellen’s spending the day with me.” Harry opened his mouth and she shook her finger at him. “With
me
. And I don’t want to hear any discussion about it.”

Harry looked at Sam, who made a strangled noise in his throat. It was clear who called the shots in that family. Mike just looked amused.

Nicole leaned forward a little. “Harry, you know perfectly well that Sam made sure my office is as secure as yours, and he watches who comes in and out of my office on his monitor anyway, don’t you, Sam?”

Sam looked at the floor and had the grace to look a little bit abashed. It was hard to tell, though, on that rough face. He was even worse than Harry at showing emotion.

“Ellen is going to be much more comfortable spending the day with me, aren’t you, dear?” Nicole turned to her.

Walking around in an office of men she barely knew, except for one who turned her on so powerfully she’d have to avoid him as much as possible, or staying with Nicole, cool, calm, friendly Nicole. There was only one possible answer. “Ah. Yes.”

“This is your way to make sure that she looks at your books before she looks at ours,” Harry said sourly.

“Absolutely. So embrace the suck, as you military types say.” Nicole smiled as she closed the door in their faces. She leaned her back against it and blew out a little breath. “Now. We’ve got rid of them, so we can relax.”

She waved a graceful hand at the small office. “Welcome to my little lair. You work on that laptop over there and I’ll work at the desktop. Around eleven one of Sam’s men will go downstairs and get a skinny decaf latte for me and you’d like…what?”

“Cinnamon chai,” Ellen smiled.

“Great.” Nicole pressed a button on a fancy intercom system, murmured
Cinnamon chai
and hung her jacket up on a brass clothes tree.

Nicole went to a beautiful antique console under the window, brought out two big cardboard boxes and placed them on the table next to the laptop. She opened the flaps, looked inside and winced.

“Oh, man. This is what denial looks like. I’ve been putting this off for way too long. I started Wordsmith while my father was very ill, and it took all my energy to do the work and take care of Dad. So bookkeeping came a very distant third.” She tilted the boxes so Ellen could see inside. There was a wild tangle of bills and check stubs and invoices. It looked like weasels had nested in there. Nicole peered again into the box and back at Ellen. “This is really bad. Sorry.”

Ellen looked around at the tiny little office. Small as it was, it was gorgeous, decorated with a few antiques and lovely watercolors and pretty knickknacks, and it smelled of potpourri. It was like being inside a little jewel box. Just being here made her feel good.

“I can’t imagine anything I’ll like more than repaying your kindness by doing something I enjoy doing. So no thanks necessary.”

Nicole’s beautiful cobalt-blue eyes widened. “You
like
keeping accounts?” she asked, in the same tone as you’d say,
You
like
genital herpes?

“I do, yes. Strange as that sounds. So, Nicole, you’ve made me a very happy woman. Tell me how your system works.”

“System.” Nicole thought while tapping on the lid of one of the boxes with a manicured pink-tipped nail. “Um, I don’t really have much of a system besides Throw the Piece of Paper into the Box. On that laptop you’ll find chronological files of work as it came in and the quotes I put out. Then you’ll have to match those to the bills. I do translations myself and bill those directly, but a much bigger part of my business is matching clients with translators, and I take a ten percent commission for that. So there are two different sets of accounts.” She looked worried. “It’s really complicated. Maybe I should—”

Ellen put her arm around Nicole’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. This is what I do, so let me do it.”

“I thought you sang.”

“Yeah, and keep books.” Nicole just looked at her, shrugged, and sat down at her desk. She slid in a portable hard drive into the processor and fired up her desktop. Within a minute, she was lost to the world, tapping away at the keyboard, totally absorbed in whatever it was she was translating.

Ellen understood completely. Numbers did for her what languages did for Nicole. She loved them, trusted them. They loved her back and had never, ever let her down. Numbers just—they just always made
sense
. When the people around her had never made sense, numbers had.

When she had math homework she could forget about her mom’s latest loser boyfriend, about the rent her mom hadn’t paid that month, the cigarette cough that wouldn’t quit. Her mom getting thinner and thinner…

It all went away, thanks to the beauty of math.

Her love for numbers naturally flowed into accounting. She wasn’t a genius mathematician. She was just good with numbers, and accounting was great for that. Money in, money out. When more money came in than went out, you were doing fine. When more money went out than came in, you were in trouble.

So simple. So easy.

She dove right into Nicole’s messy files, and inside a minute, she was gone, too.

Nicole had a…creative filing system, which was code for no filing system at all. So the first thing Ellen did was put things in piles—invoices, rent payments, utilities, deductible bills. After that, she started to get a handle on Nicole’s business.

Nicole was doing well, so she must be good at what she did. There had been a period in which the company hadn’t been doing so well and it coincided with when Harry said her father had been dying. So that was understandable. Now it was thriving. No doubt, once the baby was born, it would be put a little on the back burner.

This was exactly as it should be.

Work is important. Family is more important. Not that she’d know that firsthand. Her own family had been highly dysfunctional, the next best thing to not being there. But Ellen had eyes and she could see. Family was something she’d never had, and now, considering what was awaiting her, possibly never would have, but she could see its power in others.

Sam’s love and concern every time he looked at his wife, every time he touched her, was clear. And Nicole’s love just shone in her eyes when she looked at Sam. There was no doubt that the little girl Nicole was expecting was very much wanted.

At eleven the office doorbell rang. Nicole opened the door to a giant of a man with a slab for a face and basketballs for biceps, holding a big cardboard box with the luscious smell of coffee and cinnamon tea wafting from it. Every line of his huge, muscled body spelled trouble. Ellen tensed for a second until she saw how untroubled Nicole was.

“Thanks so much, Barney.” She took the box, placed it on her desk and gave him a blinding smile. Ellen was standing to the side and
she
was nearly blown over by the force of the smile. “That’s really sweet of you. How’s Zip? The vet figure out what was wrong?”

Slab—evidently called Barney, and if ever a man was misnamed, it was this man—blushed red all over his rough face. He’d have tugged a forelock if he’d had hair instead of a shaved, tattooed skull.

“Doc says Zip’s gonna be okay, thanks for asking, ma’am. Kidney trouble. Gave me medicine.” He wound down and just stood there, a huge hunk of a man, standing in the doorjamb, almost as big as the door frame.

“That’s great,” Nicole said gently. “Thanks again for the coffee and tea—we appreciate it.” She smiled as she slowly closed the door in his face.

“Wow. Your own personal gorilla.” Ellen lifted up her cup, pried open the lid and sniffed deeply, appreciatively. Was there anything better than cinnamon chai? “Who’s Zip?”

“His pet iguana. Three feet long. He loves that animal more than his motorcycle, and that’s saying a lot.” She laughed. “Sam employs some colorful characters, but they seem to get the job done.” She took a sip of her decaf. “Gets great coffee, too.”

They both dove back in their work, Nicole tapping away at the keyboard, Ellen finishing up classifying Nicole’s paperwork.

At noon, Nicole’s cell phone rang. Distracted, she picked it up, saw who was the caller, and sighed. She spoke quickly, all in one long sentence. “Hello, darling, no, I’m not working, I’m lying down on the couch with my feet up, just like you told me to, as a matter of fact I was taking a nap, no, that’s okay, I needed to wake up anyway, I don’t feel tired, I feel just great, so don’t worry, see you soon.”

Ellen looked, startled, at the little couch where Nicole definitely was not resting. She was at her desk, working hard.

“I love you too,” Nicole said, blew a kiss into the receiver, folded her cell closed and sighed. “If I don’t tell him I’m resting, he comes over and stands there with his arms crossed looking like Neptune on steroids on a bad day. Lying to him is easier.”

“He loves you,” Ellen said.

“Yes,” Nicole sighed. “And I love him. But he needs to back off a little. He was bad enough before, but he’s gone overboard ever since I told him about the baby.” She smiled and rubbed her belly.

“Must be nice,” Ellen said without thinking. “To be loved like that.”

Nicole turned her deep blue gaze on Ellen and looked at her thoughtfully. It was like being hit by blue spotlights. She simply looked at Ellen for a while, assessing her.

“What?” Ellen gave a half laugh. “Did the foam leave a mustache? Do I have lettuce in my teeth or hay in my hair?”

“
You’re
loved like that. By Harry. You can’t see it because you don’t know Harry that well. Like Sam and like Mike, he doesn’t express his emotions well. But to someone who knows him, what he feels for you is right there.”

“I—ah. Um.” Ellen’s tongue flapped uselessly in her mouth. “He, um, he doesn’t love me. He can’t. We’ve only known each other—what? Five days? Six? And I was unconscious a lot of the time.”

“Sam asked me to marry him the fifth day after we met.” A memory that made Nicole smile crossed her beautiful face. “It was a terrible proposal, very badly botched, but I accepted anyway. I’ve never regretted it.”

No, Ellen could see that she didn’t.

Whoa. All of a sudden, Ellen realized that she could pump Nicole for information on Harry. He was so damned closemouthed. They were lovers, yes, but she knew so little about him. Now that she thought about it, he always deflected personal questions. Often with a kiss, which always worked. He could kiss her through a nuclear detonation and she wouldn’t even notice.

“You say all three men have problems expressing their emotions. Is there a reason?”

“You mean besides having a Y chromosome?” Nicole rolled her eyes. Then her face turned serious. “Yes, there’s definitely a reason they’re more closemouthed than most men. All three of them had a terrible childhood and adolescence. They became friends—more like brothers, actually, and they think of themselves as brothers—in a brutal foster home. Sam says that they would have died if they hadn’t had each other’s backs.”

Ellen shivered. “How awful,” she breathed.

Nicole nodded. “Yes, I think it truly was awful. Sam rarely speaks of it, but you can see the effects of it. The tight bond he has with Harry and Mike and their dedication to helping women in trouble. All three of them have seen a lot of cruelty to women and children.” She caught Ellen’s eyes. “Harry in particular. He’s never actually told me the story—Sam has. He told me that when Harry was twelve years old, he was living with his mother and baby sister in a hovel in the Barrio. His mom was a junkie and had men coming in and out of the house, sometimes violent men. Sam says Harry throws up if he gets too close to the house where it happened.”

“What?” Ellen swallowed. “Where what happened?”

Nicole took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Looks like I’m going to have to be the one to tell you, though rightly it should be Harry himself. But Sam says Harry never talks about it, ever. And that’s not fair to you, because you should know.”

“Whatever it is, I’m already feeling dread.” Ellen leaned forward on her elbows. “So…something happened when Harry was twelve. Something awful.”

“Yes. The three of them were living with Harry’s mom’s boyfriend du jour, who was a meth addict. A very violent one.”

“Oh no,” Ellen whispered, knowing where this was going.

Nicole nodded and closed her eyes briefly. “On Christmas day, the methhead got it into his crazy head that Harry was hiding money from him. He took a baseball bat to Harry’s mom and staved in her skull, then he broke…”

Nicole’s voice wobbled as her eyes grew wet. She stroked her belly, where her little daughter was growing. Her voice was hoarse as she continued. “He broke Harry’s sister’s arm. Her name was Crissy. Christine. She was five years old, and she loved Harry. Sam said that Harry said that she was the sweetest little girl on earth.” Nicole wiped a slender, elegant finger under her eyes and checked the finger for mascara. “I can hardly think about it. That madman broke Crissy’s arm, then picked her up by the broken arm and smashed her against the wall. She died instantly. Harry did everything he could to save his mother and his sister, but this monster took a bat to his legs and shattered both femurs. Even with two shattered legs, Harry managed to kill the man, but it was too late. His mother and sister were gone. When he was able to walk on crutches, he was sent to the most brutal foster home in the system.”