Hotter Than Wildfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Eve was on the ground, unconscious, but there was one more guy to worry about before Harry could help her. The van door slammed shut on the other side—the driver’s side. Harry dropped to the ground and put a round in each ankle, watching bone splinters pepper the ground. Ignoring the screams, he raced around the front of the van and placed a round in the screaming man’s head without a second thought.

  There was no doubt that these fuckers’ orders had been to bring Eve in alive if possible—dead if not. All three were armed—flipping back the jacket of the man who’d manhandled Eve showed a well-used holster and a Glock 17 seated in it, undrawn. He’d trusted his big fists to subdue a lone woman.

  Harry gave him a vicious kick in the side, sorry that the fucker was dead, because he wanted to kill him all over again. He told himself the kick was to see if he was still alive, but that was bullshit. Some primitive part of him wanted to cut the fucker’s chest open, rip his heart out and feed it to the dogs. Touch Eve and you died.

  He looked down and his heart stopped. Just stopped for a long, horrendous second.

  No.

  This couldn’t be. He closed his eyes for a second, sure that when he opened them again, he’d see bare asphalt at his feet and three very dead men scattered around the vehicle and that was all.

  Life couldn’t be that cruel. In the nanosecond in which this thought flashed through his head, every cell in his body rejected it as false. Life could definitely be that cruel. The cruelty of the world was never-ending, fathomless. The fact that something would break your heart was almost a guarantee that it would happen.

  He opened his eyes again, the scene unchanged.

  Eve, lying on her back, utterly still, blood staining her white shirt, staining her arm, pooling around her back. As he watched, a rivulet of blood broke from the pool and followed a groove in the asphalt invisible to the naked eye down to the edge of the curb, where it started dripping into a grate.

  Harry dropped to his knees, because his legs wouldn’t hold him up any more.

  No, no, no. The words were a heavy drumbeat in his heart.

  No.

  He refused even the thought of it. He hadn’t been able to save Crissy, but by God he was going to save Eve, whose voice had saved his own life.

  He was supposed to save her! That was the way it was supposed to be. Not once in the wild ride here, or while fighting Montez’s goons, had it occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to save her.

  He had to save her. He had to save her to save his own soul, because it felt like his own life’s blood dripping down onto the street and draining into the gutter, instead of hers.

  He couldn’t let the monsters win all the time. His life had to have some meaning, some ability to stop the monsters, at least once.

  Kneeling, Harry bent over her, tears pricking his eyes. The last time he’d cried had been over Crissy’s lifeless body. The sweetest little girl in the world, destroyed by a monster. He’d cried until he’d blacked out.

  He hadn’t cried at the grinding, unbearable pain he’d suffered for all the long months of his recovery. All the pain in the world, concentrated in his body, but it hadn’t made him cry, not once.

  Now tears simply spurted out of his eyes as he gathered up Eve’s limp body, bowing over her bloodied torso.

  Oh God, why couldn’t he stop it, just once? What the fuck had he been born for, if not to save Eve? To save all the Eves?

  If only he’d been a couple of seconds faster in getting out of the building, if only there hadn’t been traffic on the road, if only he’d reacted instantly when she’d left the office instead of waiting like an asshole…the if onlys piled up, as high as the sky.

  Eve felt nearly weightless as he held her in his arms, tears dripping down, watering the blood on her chest. He held her and felt like howling, railing against the sky, the world, fate.

  The dim sound of sirens penetrated his head. He’d been in some timeless zone of grief, but the world rolled on. Someone had called in the shootings and the police were on their way.

  Harry looked down at the woman in his arms. The police were coming. That meant they’d figure out who she was and her death would be all over the newspapers.

  Montez would read it and rejoice.

  No, no way would Harry let Montez know that he’d won. That once more, sheer evil had prevailed. Let Montez think she was alive and out there, an ongoing and never-ending threat to him. His men sure wouldn’t talk. Harry’d take her away and…

  He froze, frowning. Eve’s eyes had moved behind her lids.

  She was…she was alive!

  Oh God, she was alive!

  And she was fucking well going to stay that way, he promised himself and her as he rose easily with her in his arms.

  The sirens were coming closer. He placed her carefully in the lowered passenger seat of his SUV, rounded the vehicle and fired it up.

  He was two blocks away by the time the cop cars arrived. He watched through the rearview mirror as six cops emerged from three cars, guns drawn, checking the perimeter. One reached down and put two fingers against the neck of the fucker who’d held Eve.

  Harry rounded the corner and lost them, driving at exactly the speed limit so he wouldn’t be pulled over.

  He glanced over. Eve was still as death, skin pale as ice except where blood flecks marred the smooth skin, her shoulder and side a deep red. Even grievously wounded and unconscious, she was beautiful. With a voice that was magic.

  She wasn’t going to die. Harry wouldn’t let her.

  He’d die himself first.

  Chapter 5

  Prineville, Georgia

  They weren’t checking in. Montez had sent three men—three men who’d been trained by the U.S. government at about a million apiece, then he’d taken that training and tweaked it for another million—and they weren’t answering. Nothing. It was as if they’d dropped off the face of the earth.

  Fuck!

  Montez slammed the green silk brocade of the fancy arm of the fancy armchair he was sitting on. He hated being in the dark. Hated it.

  The security cameras around the site where that bitch Ellen’s cell phone had been geotagged had gone out at precisely 11:47, exactly when Trey had sent a text message.

  Package arriving in taxi

  And then the cameras blinked off.

  At the time, Montez was certain that his men had blanked the security cameras so as not to leave a trace of the abduction, particularly if they had to off the bitch.

  His men had their orders, sure. Montez wanted her alive and he’d made that very clear, but shit sometimes happened.

  He told himself he wanted her alive to find out what she knew and to find out if she had any proof she’d hidden somewhere. At some level that was true, but it was also crap.

  He wanted her alive because she needed punishing. It was the first thing he thought of every morning and the last thing he thought of every night. Before falling into a shallow sleep and dreaming of her.

  Fuck this.

  All Ellen’s fault. All of it. Goddammit.

  The money. It all came down to the money.

  When he’d appropriated the pallets of bills that were just fucking lying there on the ground without even a fucking security guard, he’d planned on that being the first step. He’d seen it all in one powerful flash. The way to turn his life around, the way to become a player.

  And he’d done it, hadn’t he? The money had bought him enough land to qualify as a fucking country, and enough manpower to form an army.

  Security work was low-hanging fruit in the early years of the war. Contracts flowed in like a river rushing to the sea. And then…the waters slowed, reduced to a trickle.

  A few incidents were reported back to the Pentagon. At first, he didn’t take them seriously. So a few Iraqis got offed. Who gave a shit? No State Department or Pentagon official Bearclaw guarded got hurt. That was the bottom line.

  But Montez had enemies, and they started a whispering campai
gn and the contracts slowed down. There was a lawsuit. Which he won, but it cost him two fucking million dollars.

  The shooting range was expensive to keep up, and he was shelling out half a million a month in salary. The company was leaking money and he’d managed to negotiate the last two government contracts by a hair.

  If Ellen ever showed up and had anything resembling proof, he was a goner.

  The full resources of Bearclaw were now concentrated on finding Ellen Palmer, known as Eve, and wiping her off the face of the earth.

  Apartment 8D

  La Torre

  Coronado Shores

  Ellen opened her eyes, then closed them immediately, trying to process the white nothingness covering her entire field of vision. Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? White, flat, featureless?

  Forever?

  She ached. Every muscle in her body ached, except her shoulder, which burned. Worse was the utter feeling of exhaustion, weakness, helplessness.

  The only good news was that if she were dead, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Unless of course this was hell.

  There was no noise except for some rhythmic…rustling sound. Or whooshing sound. Like waves on a beach. But how could that be?

  She was lying on her back on what felt like a bed. Her hands moved slightly, fingering rough cotton. Sheets. One hand couldn’t move well. She twisted it slightly and something tugged. Tape, a needle. An IV line.

  The sharp smell of alcohol, the soothing smell of clean linen. A faint hint of coffee in the air.

  A hospital? Or did death smell like alcohol and clean sheets and coffee?

  She opened her eyes again and again saw an expanse of something white. Nothing for the eyes to fix on, just a featureless plain.

  “You’re awake,” a deep voice said. Panicked, Ellen turned her head. The world tilted crazily, then righted itself. Of course. That wide, empty expanse was the ceiling.

  Right next to her was a man sitting in a chair, looking tired, jaws clenched.

  Her gasp sounded loud in the quiet of the room.

  The last time she’d seen this man, he’d been running toward her, gun in hand.

  Oh God, oh God.

  Harry Bolt. The man she’d so foolishly turned to for help. The man who’d betrayed her, the man in the pay of Gerald Montez.

  This, then, was the end. She’d run, but not hard enough or fast enough or far enough.

  A wheezing, keening sound escaped her lips. It would have been a high-pitched scream, but she simply didn’t have enough breath in her lungs to bring it out. Just the whimpering tones of a wounded animal as she tried to run away, bare feet scrabbling for purchase against the slick sheets.

  She tried to sit up, but only managed to thrash around helplessly. The IV line was ripped out of her hand and blood pooled out under the bandage.

  “Jesus, stop.”

  The man, this Harry Bolt, stood up immediately and placed huge hands on her shoulders, pinning her down, looking down at her with a frown.

  Even in her desperation, Ellen could see he looked ten years older than he had before, deep grooves creasing his cheeks, dark circles under his eyes, cheekbones more prominent.

  She struggled against his hands, but it was like struggling against a concrete block. She couldn’t move his hands, not even a little bit. They stayed strong and steady on her shoulders, holding her down.

  It was the most horrible thing of this horrible situation. She had no chance, none at all. The times she’d escaped Gerald’s men she’d done it by reacting quickly, making the smart decision, moving fast.

  Everything that had helped her before—swift reflexes, strength, the will to survive—all of it was gone. Her mind was muddy, confused, slow. It had taken her a couple of seconds to even recognize Harry Bolt, as if her mind had to focus just as much as her eyes did.

  Even her ineffectual attempts to shake off his hands exhausted her. There was nothing left in her. She’d reached the end of the line, muscles lax and unresponsive. And, deep down, at an animal level, she no longer had the will or the strength to fight.

  It was over.

  She made one last pathetic attempt to shake his hands off her and subsided, her spirit sinking into her, spiraling down. There was nothing left to her, nothing.

  She closed her eyes and felt the cool tracks of her tears at her temples.

  “God, don’t cry. Please.”

  That deep voice again.

  Hard, heavy hands lifted from her shoulders, took her hand in his. In a second, without pain, the needle was rethreaded into her vein, the bandage gently pressed again to the back of her hand.

  Startled, Ellen opened her eyes again and met his. Where she’d been expecting victory and cruelty, all she saw was fatigue and…kindness?

  What—?

  They stared at each other, Ellen’s heart thudding slowly. “Are you going to kill me?” she finally whispered.

  A spasm crossed his face and his head reared back. “Fuck no! Sorry.” He shook his head, looking baffled and worn out. He turned to the room behind him and bellowed, “Nicole!”

  Ellen continued watching his face. No craziness, no cruelty. He held himself still, one finger pressed gently on the back of her hand, holding down the tape.

  A swift tattoo of heels and a woman appeared in Ellen’s line of sight, bending over her.

  Ellen nearly gasped. She was the most beautiful woman Ellen had ever seen. Long, midnight-black hair belling down to her shoulders, intense cobalt-blue eyes, fine features, a soft expression on her face.

  Was this Harry Bolt’s woman? Was she the enforcer? Was she the one who would kill her?

  It was like having spikes pounded into her brain. With the hand untethered by the IV line and Bolt’s hand, Ellen held her head where it hurt, so badly she whimpered again.

  Never show weakness. It was a rule she’d lived by all her life, but right now, she was so weak she was rendered down to her rawest state.

  Nicole lifted her hand and put it on her uninjured shoulder, the touch light and gentle. “It’ll be okay,” she said softly. “Everything will be all right.”

  That was a lie. Nothing would ever be okay again.

  Ellen turned her palm over, crooked her index finger in the universal come here gesture. Even that taxed her strength. Nicole bent down to her, holding her hair to one side. She smiled. “Yes?”

  Ellen arched her neck, trying to get closer, lifting her head a little. It fell back. She had no strength in her neck muscles. Nicole bent closer.

  Ellen looked at Harry Bolt, then up at this Nicole woman. She was taking a huge risk. Maybe Nicole had no idea Harry was a killer. Maybe she was his girlfriend and thought he was an ordinary guy.

  “That man,” she whispered as Nicole bent her head closer. “Be careful. He tried to kill me.”

  She closed her eyes, exhausted. There, she’d said it. At least someone would know the truth before she died.

  Nicole straightened, startled. She looked at Bolt then back at her. Bolt was completely still, the only thing moving his broad chest as he breathed. His face was taut, remote, completely emotionless.

  Nicole laughed and Ellen jolted a little.

  The laugh was genuine and so out of place in this room of pain and sorrow that it took Ellen a second to recognize it and process it. Nicole sobered as she looked down at Ellen, beautiful face suddenly very serious. Her hand passed lightly over Ellen’s hair.

  “Harry didn’t try to kill you, my dear. Trust me on this. He saved your life. You were walking right into an ambush when he showed up. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Ellen’s hand opened, scraping lightly along the sheet, index finger pointing toward Bolt. “Him,” she whispered. “Running toward me with a gun.”

  Nicole frowned and looked at Bolt again. “You didn’t see two—” Harry Bolt held up a big hand, three fingers up. “Three men?” Nicole finished.

  Ellen closed her eyes, trying to remember. It was all a blur. Getting out of the taxi, bein
g slammed, shouts…shouts.

  “Several men there. Yes.” Her voice came out a weak croak. What else? “A—a truck. Someone opening the back of a truck. Not a truck, a van.” It was all such a blur. Voices, shapes…

  She opened her eyes.

  “Yeah.” Harry Bolt’s deep voice was hard, rough. “They were going to take you away in that van. I got a chance to look inside it and there were restraints in there. Meant for you.”

  Ellen’s heart skipped a beat at the thought of being in the hands of Montez’s men, in handcuffs.

  “Did they follow you? Do they know where I am?” Ellen pushed the words out through the tightness in her throat. Maybe this Harry Bolt wasn’t after her, but Montez’s men were.

  Silence. Nicole looked away uneasily. Harry Bolt just stared at her with his fierce eagle gaze. Finally, he stirred. “They’re dead,” he said roughly. “No one’s coming after you, not anymore. Not ever again.”

  Ellen tried to rise on her elbows but she couldn’t. She couldn’t hold herself up and felt panic rising at her inability to move. She was trapped in this house, with people she didn’t know. Her voice rose in panic. “He’s smart. He’ll have followed you, somehow, they could be coming right now, they could—”

  “No,” Bolt rapped out sharply, scowling. “No one’s coming. We left before the police came. I used a cold gun, untraceable. I blanked out all the security cameras beforehand. Even if by some chance one of the men saw my license plate and called it in, and there really wouldn’t have been time—it belongs to a shell company it would take a team of forensic accountants a year to trace. You’re safe now and you’ll stay that way.”

  He stated it like a law of nature. Gravity pulls toward the center of the earth. The sun rises in the east. You’ll be safe here.

  She twisted slightly, and pain shot through her shoulder. A reminder that “safe” was a relative term.

  He noticed and reached for a bottle of pills on a table nearby. He took a pill, poured a glass of water from a pitcher and slid his hand under her head.

  “Painkiller,” he said. “It’ll take effect in about ten minutes.” He lifted her easily, somehow not hurting her.

  Ellen met his eyes as he gently eased her head back on the pillow. She was so weak it frightened her. Maybe she wasn’t in any immediate danger, but if she were, she’d be utterly helpless to defend herself. She needed help to swallow a pill.