Hotter Than Wildfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  The look he’d given her as the hospital door closed behind her terrified her. His rages had been escalating as her errors multiplied. Now her mistakes included the way she spoke, dressed, ate and breathed. More or less everything she did was wrong now, and subject to punishment. She knew she wouldn’t survive the next time.

  Alice—the person she’d been before becoming Kerry—had shifted painfully on that hospital bed and had been surprised to hear a crackling sound. A card, which obviously the social worker had managed to slip onto the mattress as she was saying goodbye.

  On it had been a beautiful bird in flight, a number and the words CALL NOW in big block print. The number didn’t have any of the San Diego area codes. Alice didn’t know where the number was, who the person was who the social worker thought could help her. She didn’t know anything, except for one thing: If she stayed, she’d be dead within the week.

  So, with a broken wrist, a damaged liver and a slight concussion, with an IV line with glucose and a powerful antibiotic running into a needle on the back of her hand, she’d escaped. She’d pulled the IV line out, pulled her clothes out of the little closet that had been provided and ran. If Tom had had any idea that she’d have the nerve to run away, he’d have taken her clothes away, no question.

  But she’d never run away. That was the quickest way to a fatal beating she knew of.

  When she emerged from the basement of the hospital and walked four blocks to hail a cab, she knew that she was running for her life. If Tom ever found her, her life would be over.

  With shaking hands, she called the number and set in motion the events that led her to Seattle, to the life of a waitress in a dive, barely making ends meet, with no future to speak of. It wasn’t much, but it was still definitely better than being six feet underground, food for worms.

  Sam Reston had saved her life, and she wondered if someone had saved Irene’s. Of course, she knew Irene wasn’t her real name. Whoever she was, she was a good kid and had somehow stumbled onto the same awful planet of dangerous men Kerry had.

  God, she’d had no idea that place had even existed until she’d married Tom. And Irene still seemed a little shell-shocked herself.

  Kerry knew Irene was in trouble when she told her a man had been asking for her. Irene had turned icy white and just like that, Kerry knew. Turned out the guy was harmless, just wanted to go out with Irene. That was normal; Irene was a pretty woman. But the guy she was hiding from wouldn’t want to go out with her. He’d want her dead. Irene had landed on Kerry’s planet. That was when she gave Irene Sam Reston’s number. Just in case.

  Where was Irene? They’d gotten into the habit of taking tea at Kerry’s a couple of times a week. Kerry was good at decorating. She’d turned Tom’s home into a showcase. And even on a nothing budget, she’d managed to turn her hole in the wall into something inviting.

  Both of them avoided public places. Kerry’s little cubbyhole had been a safe haven for them both. Kerry never told her story, and neither did Irene tell hers. They didn’t need to. They both knew.

  Once Irene accepted the number, the last refuge of a desperate woman, they both knew she’d someday call it.

  In the meantime, in their little time outs over the expensive teas Kerry splurged on, they talked of quiet, gentle things. Never anything personal. No information that could be used against them. Just books and movies and music. Kerry hadn’t even known that Irene was a world-class singing talent until that evening when she’d stepped in for old Honorius. She’d nearly fainted, Irene had been that good. And she hadn’t hinted, not once, that she sang or played.

  Kerry didn’t mind. She didn’t need to know Irene’s secrets. God knew she had enough of her own. The whole point of a secret was that it stay hidden. Her secrets could kill. She suspected Irene’s could, too.

  Where was Irene? She’d been gone for a week now, without communicating in any way. They had a secret online message board, set up by the two of them, as casually as if every person on earth needed a secret means of communication. Neither of them talked about it, but they used it often. To set up appointments, to exchange a few words.

  For both of them, Kerry suspected, this was their only form of human connection—the odd cup of tea in her cozy, cheap little apartment. They never spoke at work. They had different shifts anyway. There was an unspoken imperative: Don’t let anyone know we’re friends. They both respected it.

  Kerry was just starting to get worried. Whoever was after Irene—had he caught up with her?

  What kind of man was after Irene? Was he like Tom—a pillar of the community? The kind of man people instinctively looked up to? The kind of man no one would ever believe was capable of cruelty?

  Where was Tom? Had he moved on to some other woman-victim? God, she hoped so, though she pitied any woman under his harsh rule. But if there was another woman, maybe his obsession with her was abating. Maybe she was hiding out here in cold, rainy Seattle, doing a maid’s job for a pittance, for no discernible reason. Maybe she could go back to her first love—interior decoration.

  Oh God. For the first time in a long while she allowed herself to think of the future. Or at least a future. Something more than merely staying alive.

  The rain was pelting now, drops splashing down so hard they bounced almost a foot high. She chanced a glance at the sky. It was pewter-dark, without a break at all in the clouds. She knew by now what that meant—rain for at least the next couple of hours. Holing up in a storefront wasn’t going to help. She was going to have to run down the street to the Blue Moon.

  She dashed down the street, glancing for a startled second at a man who was coming toward her fast. He was an idiot without an umbrella. You got drenched with an umbrella; without one…well.

  He was tall and thin and blond. For a horrified instant she thought he looked like Tom, only without that pampered spa look, and dressed in casual clothes.

  He wasn’t Tom, though. That thought made her so happy she nodded at him as he walked by, the nod two strangers caught in a downpour would make.

  Lousy weather, isn’t it?

  You can say that again!

  Suddenly, Kerry felt a strong hand grip her arm from behind, almost lifting her off her feet. A sharp prick in her biceps. The rainy world turned entirely to water, long, streaming silver stripes that were fast turning black.

  She had time for one panicked thought.

  Tom found me.

  Chapter 12

  San Diego

  They crowded round Nicole. Ellen noticed that Sam kept a hand on his wife’s shoulder, in encouragement, support. That must feel…nice, she thought. To have someone always on your side.

  Then a heavy, warm hand landed on her own shoulder and she looked up, startled, into Harry’s sharp, golden eyes. He wasn’t looking at Nicole’s monitor, he was looking at her, face somber.

  Suddenly, he smiled. Straight at her, looking her right in the eyes. Harry had a face that didn’t smile often; the lines and muscles of his face told her so.

  This smile lit his face up, made him look younger, approachable. For the first time Ellen realized that he couldn’t be that much older than her. Maybe six or seven years. He’d seemed lifetimes’ older, with his detailed knowledge of the inner workings of violence and with hidden tragedies she could sense.

  The smile did something else. It lit her up inside, as well.

  Crazily, with all that had happened, even with the fact she had a dangerous man after her, a man who’d tortured and killed her agent, a man who’d probably killed Arlen—when he smiled at her, it all disappeared.

  Her head knew that there were monsters outside, monsters with sharp teeth and claws, but for this instant in time, it all felt far away, happening to someone else. Another Ellen Palmer, not this one. This one had made love all night with the big golden man who was now standing so close to her she could feel his body heat. That huge hand, elegant and long-fingered, had touched her everywhere. At the end, it had seemed as if he’d known her body be
tter than she did. He had a Reality Distortion Field around him, and when she was inside it, danger and fear were far away. They didn’t have anything like the hold on her that sex with him did.

  Sex.

  God, why hadn’t anyone told her about the sheer power of sex? That it felt like plugging in to some primordial power source? Who knew?

  Sex had been sometimes fun, sometimes boring, sometimes a little painful, but that was usually her fault because often she wasn’t turned on very much.

  Sex was always lopsided. One always cared more than the other, and when it finished, someone always left someone else. At times, Ellen had felt as if she made love in some kind of invisible carapace that stopped her from feeling much of anything.

  Well, with Harry that had flown out the window. Her entire body had become a giant touch screen, where she felt everything he did to her. Her skin had become so sensitive she’d felt every aspect of his scarred body: the long, striated muscles, so clearly delineated he could have served as an anatomy plate, the textures of the hair on his body, starting from the hair on his head, silky and warm, the crisp dark-gold hairs on his chest, the golden fur on his legs.

  She remembered every second of his kisses, the sharp, biting ones, the deep, tender ones. Each one with a flavor of its own.

  The feel of him inside her…oh God. Heat and strength, mind-blowing pleasure even when he stayed still inside her. And when he moved…

  He knew what she was thinking. She must be a bright shade of red by now. She had a redhead’s pale complexion, the kind that showed everything she was feeling. His smile widened.

  He’d smiled just like that last night, on top of her, nose an inch from hers, his member deep inside her. She’d smiled back and he’d surged inside her, becoming somehow longer and thicker. At the memory, her vagina tightened, hard, pulling stomach and groin muscles.

  “Okay,” Nicole said, and Ellen thought okay. Clearly, they had to go back to the bedroom together and—

  She froze, pulled her gaze away from Harry’s. It was incredibly hard to do. Stop that, she told herself sternly.

  They weren’t alone. They were with his two best friends and Nicole. All of them were doing their best to keep her safe, even Nicole, who was four months pregnant. They were working hard for her and she was thinking about going to bed with Harry, just as soon as physically possible.

  She was still red, only this time with shame.

  Nicole had been looking up at her, cobalt-blue eyes narrowed, head tilted so that her shiny, blue-black hair brushed her shoulders, full lips pursed. She was such an incredibly beautiful woman. No wonder her husband was crazy about her. She was more than just gorgeous, though. She was smart and kind. And she was looking at Ellen as if…as if she understood what had been going through her head. And, crazily enough, as if she didn’t disapprove.

  “What?” Ellen shook herself. She needed to find out as much as possible right now, while she still had people—smart, good and brave people—on her side, because soon enough, she’d be on her own again.

  She wouldn’t even be able to go back to Seattle, to her tenuous friendship with Kerry, so full of unspoken secrets. No Seattle, no Kerry, no music.

  Nothing.

  “I checked a couple of government sites I often use for research. They have a low-level degree of confidentiality and I use them ever since I got clearance. There’s nothing terribly secret in these databases, but they are mines of information and you can’t access them through Google. There are also the armed forces news sites, which are not always rendered public. And look what I found for May 2004.”

  Nicole shifted her head so everyone could see what was on the monitor.

  It was a PDF copy of what must have been a printed article. It was written up newspaper style, in four columns. The article was below the fold and continued on page four of the publication. Nicole had split her screen into two so that the entire article could be read.

  Baghdad, Green Zone, May 28, 2004, byline Sgt. Katina Petrescu

  Investigators from Washington landed yesterday to investigate the loss of $20 million from the Green Zone. The loss was discovered by accountants the week before. Investigators believe the losses might date to last month.

  “The CPA was barely in control,” Harry explained. “Bremer said he needed money and it came. In C-130 transport planes, filled with pallets. The pallets contained forty boxes and each box had twenty bricks of one hundred thousand dollars each. The pallets were stored in a warehouse and just kept there. CIA agents would stroll in and stroll out with bricks in their arms. Sometimes they’d use wheelbarrows. It was like the Wild West out there. For a while, it rained money. They just kept it on hand in a storeroom, couple guys had the key. More than a billion dollars was lost, unaccounted for.”

  “Gerald was stationed in Baghdad in 2004,” Ellen said. How he’d played that up. Tough-guy talk, together with coy references to how he couldn’t say exactly what had gone on. National security concerns, of course. Whereas the truth was, he’d stolen twenty million dollars. “His tour ended in June. He didn’t re-up. He came home and founded Bearclaw in July 2004.”

  “Which immediately landed incredibly lucrative contracts from the U.S. government. Nice work. And look.” Nicole tapped a pink-tipped fingernail at the screen. “Look at the lead investigator’s name.”

  “Frank Mikowski. That must have been the guy Arlen was referring to. Do you think he was bought off by Gerald?”

  “No.” Nicole shook her head, her glossy hair rippling around her shoulders. “Not at all. I think the problem was, he wasn’t bought off.” She clicked to a new page and scrolled down. “Here. Looks like Mikowski investigated the wrong guy.”

  This time it was a State Department cable, declassified on June 17, 2010, referring to events six years before.

  Frank Mikowski had been found floating facedown in the Tigris River on June 3, 2004. Forensics established he’d died of a bullet wound to the head and had been dead for at least two days. Sunni insurgents were blamed.

  Sam bent to kiss his wife’s cheek. “Nice work, honey.”

  “Yes,” she smiled. It was so dazzling a smile her husband blinked. “It was.”

  “Sunni insurgents, my ass,” Harry growled. “That wasn’t a terrorist takedown. He was executed to stop the investigation. And it worked, damn it.” Harry was glaring narrow-eyed at the screen as if it were personally responsible for the theft of twenty million dollars, the death of the investigator and the danger to Ellen. “I mean, people know Montez and know his operation is corrupt, but I don’t think anyone knows about this.”

  “So we’ve tied him possibly to two murders—Mikowski’s and Arlen’s,” Sam said. Like Harry’s and Mike’s, his face had gone hard, eyes cold. At that moment, Ellen was really glad that they were her friends, not her enemies.

  “And my agent, Roddy,” Ellen added. “Don’t forget him.”

  Her heart gave a lurch. Roddy—dear, sweet, harmless Roddy. He was a sweetheart, dedicated to music, with a good ear and a good heart. Snuffed out like an irritating bug. As if he didn’t mean anything at all. It made her so angry. He’d merely been an obstacle for Gerald, who’d probably ticked him off a list of things to do to get his hands on her.

  “Three murders. Definitely something he’d kill to keep quiet,” Mike said, jaws clenching. “Not to mention the theft of a fortune in cash.”

  Ellen shivered, and the room went quiet.

  Nicole checked her wristwatch and started. “Oh my gosh! I’ve got an eleven o’clock telephone appointment with a client. A New Yorker. They’re always so terribly punctual. I must run.”

  “Thanks, Nicole.” Ellen smiled at her as she rose. Nicole was dressed in a beautifully tailored turquoise silk dress and pearls, her pregnancy just visible. She looked cool and professional and gorgeous, and she’d provided invaluable information. At that moment, Ellen loved Nicole. Nicole winked at her as she closed down her computer.

  Ellen liked her so much. She was g
oing to miss her. “See you this evening, then.”

  The three men froze and turned to her as if she’d opened her mouth and toads had hopped out. Ellen looked from one hard face to another. “What? What did I say?”

  “No way are you staying here alone.” It was a miracle he could talk at all, Harry’s jaws were clenched so tightly. He was looking at her with a don’t even think of arguing look. Harry was clearly not to be reasoned with, so Ellen turned to Sam, but he looked exactly the same as Harry, and then to Mike, who looked like he’d just chewed nails. “What? I thought it was safe here.”

  “It is.” Harry looked like he’d just swallowed the nails Mike had chewed. “But—”

  Nicole touched Ellen’s arm. “They do have very good security here, sweetie, but I think Harry would feel better if you would just come in to the office, where he could see you. Otherwise I don’t think he’d get any work done at all.” She shot a glance at her husband. “I know if I were in danger, Sam would want me by his side.”

  “Absolutely.” He put his thick, muscled arm around his wife’s shoulders at the thought.

  Ellen didn’t think Harry could possibly care for her as much as Sam cared for his wife, but Nicole was right. Harry was clearly a man who took his duty seriously, and right now, she was under his protection. If he wanted her where he could see her, he had every right. And if the thought of just sitting around while others worked wasn’t appealing, that was her problem, not theirs.