by Anne Stuart
He surveyed her coolly. “I would guess they would. In that case I’ll let you get . . .” He froze midsentence, and all affect dropped away from him.
Her stomach clenched in sudden fear. It was like seeing a man turn into a machine, the look of a serial killer when he finally dropped his surface charm. Had he seen something that implicated her? “What’s wrong?”
He moved so fast he was a blur of energy, grabbing her and running toward the back door. She tried to shriek at him, to demand what the hell he was doing, when he pulled her into his arms and threw them both through the broken back door, the remaining wood splintering around them, as the world exploded in a maelstrom of fire and heat and noise.
They landed hard on the packed dirt behind her house, his body beneath hers, and then he turned and pulled her under him, as the sky rained hell and damnation.
Chapter Six
Jenny was deaf, she was blind, she couldn’t breathe as his body crushed her into the hardscrabble earth as she fought for air. A roaring filled her ears, a blast of heat practically blistering her, and everything was sharp and painful.
Her breath came back with a shocking whoosh, letting her take in thick, greasy smoke, and she began to choke, squashed beneath his weight, stones digging into her back, the fires of hell all around her.
He was up, pulling her with him, but her leg collapsed under her, and she saw with shock there was a jagged piece of wood sticking into her calf. With a muttered curse he scooped her up and began running, leaving her with only jumbled impressions.
Her house was gone. In its place was a roaring fire, billowing, ugly smoke rising in the Sunday-afternoon air. The walls were gone, and half of the empty house beside hers was gone as well.
Her gates had been blown off their moorings, and he climbed over them, cursing, out into the street where a crowd had begun to gather. The Audi was engulfed in flames as well, but Ryder didn’t slow down, didn’t hesitate, taking a narrow alley away from the conflagration, moving until he saw a small parking lot. It was closed, the gate chained across the front, but there were still cars in the yard.
He set her down carefully. “This is our best bet,” he said, half to himself, and pulled out a set of lock picks. It took him less than thirty seconds to open the big lock, and then he slid the chains free before scooping her up again.
“I can walk,” she tried to say, but it came out with a spasm of coughing.
“Shut up.”
So much for comforting small talk. He went straight for an older-model sedan, used the same picks to unlock the passenger side and push her inside. He slid in behind the wheel before she even realized he’d closed the car door, and a moment later the engine roared to life.
“Were you a car thief when you were young?” The words came out in a croak that sounded foreign to her ears, but at least it was understandable.
“Yes,” he said, and tore out of the parking lot, heading away from the remnants of her beloved house.
Jenny fastened her seat belt with shaky fingers, and her hands were black with smoke and dirt. They didn’t hurt, and while she could see some blood beneath the soot, she didn’t think they’d been burned. She flexed them tentatively, then leaned back as the stolen car careened through the streets of the Ninth Ward. The car smelled like singed fur, which made no sense, since it had been two blocks away from the blast. Sudden realization hit her, and she looked down at her blackened clothes. The shard of wood was still sticking in her calf, and she reached down to pull it free when his hand stopped her.
“Leave it.”
He hadn’t taken his eyes off the road and she couldn’t figure out how he’d known she was reaching for it. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said, surprised.
“You’re in shock.”
“I am not,” she said, stupidly incensed.
“Don’t argue with me. I’ll remove it when we get back to the house.”
“The house? I want an emergency room.”
“Wuss.”
“I want the police.”
“This is New Orleans, remember? The police aren’t going to be doing us any good, and it would give them a license to search the big house. I’m not letting any curious eyes in there. Bad enough I had to let you in.”
“My house . . .” The words choked in her mouth and her already-raw throat.
“I’ll find out who blew up your house, and Parker, I promise, I’ll even turn him over to your family. There’s a fate worse than death.”
There was almost a note of kindness in his voice, and for a moment she wanted to cry, but her eyes were dry and scratchy.
She tried to pull herself together. She wasn’t in shock—just because she couldn’t cry and apparently couldn’t feel pain didn’t mean she was such a frail creature. She drew herself up in the seat. “How do you think they knew you’d be there?”
“What?” He took a corner at a reckless speed, but all four tires hugged the road, and he seemed to have a preternatural ability to avoid the police.
“Why else would anyone bomb the place? No one would want to hurt me. You’re the one involved in international . . . whatever.” Words failed her. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did. “They must have been following you . . .”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but that bomb was set ahead of time. There was no way anyone would guess when I’d be there. It was meant for you or your little waif, just as that bullet was.”
Her conscious mind immediately rejected it, just as it rejected the fact that the house she’d loved and worked so hard on was gone in a matter of seconds. “But why?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who insisted Soledad was in danger. Maybe you were right after all. Or maybe there’s something you haven’t been telling me.”
Jenny’s stomach knotted. This couldn’t have anything to do with the cell phone lodged safely in her front pocket—no one but Billy knew she had it, and she wasn’t giving it back until she was convinced there was nothing incriminating on it. She could always destroy it, but right now it was the only hold she had over him. As long as she had it, he couldn’t be tempted to get mixed up in that disgusting business again.
“Why bother shooting at us if they were just going to blow us up a few hours later?” she said stubbornly.
He slanted a glance at her. “Maybe you’re not in shock after all. It’s a good question. Maybe they wanted to shoot you and then blow up any incriminating stuff left behind.”
“You saw my house—do you think there was anything incriminating in that chaos?”
He ignored her question. “Or maybe they needed time to set the charges, and shooting at you kept you away from the house for a while.”
“Two inches closer and I’d be dead.”
“Two inches farther and it would have been just a scare. It would have been a hard shot to make. You piss anyone off in the past few weeks?”
“Besides you and my father?” And my brother, she added silently. “I don’t think so.”
“Great company. You got any enemies? Disgruntled boyfriends?”
“You already said you knew my entire history.”
“Yeah, both of them would be disgruntled,” he drawled, and instinctively she hit him in the side, no more than an angry jab. She was shocked at his flinch and the sudden outpouring of very impressive cursing. “Hit me again and you’ll regret it,” he growled.
“That was nothing,” she said righteously.
“Usually.”
He was wearing black. A black T-shirt and black jeans, and the side of the shirt was shiny. With blood.
“You’ve been hurt,” she said flatly, guilt and shame swamping her. This man had saved her life and she’d only made things worse.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. Just don’t punch me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stricken. “You carried me even though you were hurt, even though I probably could have limped along.”
“I told you, you were in shock.”
She looked out the window,
biting her lip. They weren’t anywhere near the Garden District, and she turned to look back at him. “Where are you taking me? The house is in the opposite direction.”
“I changed my mind. We’re going to see a doctor friend to get patched up. Don’t worry, she’s got her license.”
Jenny felt unaccountably defeated when she should have been relieved. The less time she was alone with Matthew Ryder and his suspicions, the better. “Good,” she said. “And then I can go . . .” She suddenly realized she couldn’t go home. There was no home anywhere. No clothes, no photographs, no favorite paperbacks piled by her narrow bed, no jar of Sumatran coffee pods by her fancy coffee maker. No makeup or expensive hyacinth-scented shampoo, no shoes, damn it. She took a deep breath of despair, and then the physical reaction set in, so that she was rocked by a spasm of coughing.
The coughing was so violent it brought tears to her eyes, but she fought them back.
“You’re coming back to headquarters,” he said flatly. “Once we get patched up we’ll head back to my place. In case you hadn’t noticed, someone wants to kill you or your protégé. How many people knew she was staying with you?”
“No one knew,” she said wearily. “In fact, she hadn’t even moved in yet. You saw my place—it’s in the midst of . . . It was in the midst of a major renovation. I was going to put her on a fold-out bed in the front parlor.”
“Really?” he said, sounding no more than casually interested. “Where had Soledad been staying?”
“I had her in a motel room in the French Quarter with round-the-clock protection, but I was running out of money.”
“Bullshit. You’re a Gauthier—you don’t run out of money.”
“Fuck you. I don’t take money from my father. I have a small inheritance from my mother but I used most of it to buy my house.” Her voice didn’t falter this time, she noticed with pride. “And my law practice is mostly pro bono—I take only enough paying cases to cover the bills, and they always need to be for something or someone I believe in, like Soledad.”
“Well, aren’t you the little saint,” he drawled. “You insure the house?”
“Of course I did!”
“Then stop bitching.”
Fury swept through her. “I wasn’t bitching!”
“You were about to, or cry, and I can’t stand women who cry.”
“I bet you have a lot of experience with them,” she said. “How much longer to your doctor friend?”
“Fifteen minutes, depending on the traffic. She’s outside of the city. Your leg bothering you?”
“No.”
“You’re still in shock, then.”
“Fuck you.”
“Stop offering.”
“What?” she shrieked.
“Don’t worry about it, counselor. Close your eyes and take deep breaths. You know how to meditate? Who am I kidding—of course you do. Lean back and meditate. Just put me and everything unimportant out of your mind.”
“Gladly,” she said, resisting the temptation to lie and tell him she knew nothing about meditation. She hated to be so predictable. She closed her eyes and began her breathing, focusing on each part of her body and forcing it to relax. Her leg was beginning to throb, she thought in triumph. So much for being in shock. She began to count backward, traveling down the staircase she always pictured, but this time it resembled the one in the American Committee headquarters.
She was gone.
Ryder glanced over at her as her breathing evened out. She was a mess, but she’d been too freaked out to realize it. Her face was covered in soot and dirt, her red-brown hair was singed on one side and bloodstained on the other, and that stick of wood was going to be a bitch to remove. He could always ask Doc Gentry to come to the mansion, but he needed to get Jenny away from Soledad long enough to question her. Her protégé had the unfortunate habit of sticking like glue, and Ryder didn’t trust either of them. If Parker was the innocent she seemed to be, then no one would have a reason to kill her. Of course it was just as likely Soledad was the target. His instincts had been on full alert from the moment Ms. Parker interrupted his little pity party that afternoon. Something about the entire situation didn’t feel right, but he was damned if he was going to jump to any conclusions without thinking it through. Conclusions were something you couldn’t back away from, and he was surprisingly reluctant to condemn Parker without proof positive.
Doc Gentry was across the river, in a hidden little delta just outside the city, and as he pulled up to her deceptively ramshackle building, he felt Jenny begin to stir beside him, and the tension in the car began to rise. His fault as much as hers—he couldn’t keep from baiting her. Given that his back was killing him, and he could feel the blood soaking through his shirt into the cloth upholstery of the old POS, it was lucky he could even come up with a civil word. He pulled up to the small, roughly built house and yanked the hot wires apart, effectively turning off the car.
“This is it?” Jenny said in tones of deep distrust as she surveyed the run-down building.
“This is it.” He climbed out of the car, hiding his instinctive grimace of pain, and went around to extract her. For a Southern woman she was fast getting out on her own, but she was leaning heavily on the open door, there were beads of sweat on her soot-stained forehead, and he knew her leg wouldn’t support her.
“I don’t suppose this place comes with something as mundane as a pair of crutches . . . What are you doing? Oh, for God’s sake, put me down!” she cried.
“Stop struggling and you’ll make this easier for both of us,” he said, the searing pain in his back not helping his mood.
Dr. Gentry appeared on the rickety front porch, drying her capable brown hands on a dishtowel. “What you doing here, boy, and who is it you brought me?” she demanded, not moving from the porch.
“Had a bit of trouble, Doc,” he said. “Building blew up.”
“Not that big-ass fancy place in the Garden District?”
“No, ma’am. This one’s a house.”
“Put me the fuck down,” Jenny whispered fiercely.
“You watch your language, girly, or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap while I’m cleaning your wound,” Doc said.
“Doc doesn’t like cussing,” Ryder advised her. He looked back to the old woman. “Can we come in? I’d rather not take her to someplace public.”
“You don’t look any too good yourself, Ryder. Bring that girl in and I’ll see what I can do for the both of you.”
He expected more of an argument from Jenny, but she’d stopped fighting, and he carried her into the shack and straight into the small surgery Doc had set up, placing her on the examining table with great care. She immediately tried to scramble off.
“You’ve been hurt too,” she said as he calmly placed her back on the table and held her there.
“Then stop making things worse by fighting me. If Dr. Gentry thought I needed to be seen to first she’d tell you. Now sit still and shut up.”
“I was never very good at that.”
“Your father should have whipped your ass when you were young.”
“He did,” she said in a flat voice, one that hinted at troubles that were none of his business.
Doc came into the room before he had time to respond. “Now let’s see here what’s going on with that leg,” the old woman said, wearing a spotless white apron. “Matthew, honey, get that girl a pillow for her head. You just lie back, and let Doc Gentry take care of you and you’ll be right as rain.”
The old woman’s voice was soft and crooning, almost hypnotic, working her magic, and it was no surprise that Parker lay back on the examining table, a pillow tucked beneath her head, as Doc began to cut away at the jeans. She started to protest, then she must have remembered they weren’t her jeans, and she closed her eyes.
“That’s right, baby,” Doc crooned. “Just relax. I know just how to take care of you.”
Ryder had every intention of keeping out of Parker’s way, pain in t
he butt that she was, but apparently Dr. Gentry had other ideas. “Come and hold her hands, Matthew. Make yourself useful.”
“I don’t . . .” Jenny began.
“I’ll tell you what you need,” Doc said sternly, and Jenny subsided.
Ryder came forward and took her unwilling hands in his. He knew he must look just as battered and soot-stained as she was. Her hands were small in his big paws, he thought grimly, but he had no doubt hers could be lethal. He’d learned long ago never to underestimate women. His side still hurt from her pulled punch.
He turned his attention to Doc. “Can you take a look at her head when you’re finished with her leg? She caught a bullet graze a few hours ago, and I cleaned it up as best I could, but it could use your expert eyes.”
“Don’t waste your flattery on me, boy. I can see that piss-poor bandage. I’ll get to it after I’ve seen to you.”
“I’m fine,” he said in a flat voice, his hands tightening on Jenny’s.
“Don’t you be telling me my business!” she snapped, though her hands were gentle on Jenny’s leg. “Now hold on tight, baby, and it’ll all be over in a minute.”
Jenny obediently shut her eyes, though she made no effort to let go of his hands, and he had no intention of releasing her. He had his back to Doc, focusing on Jenny’s pale face, trying to distract himself. She looked like she was in pain.
He heard the beginning of a rip, could feel the tug as it shuddered through her entire body, and Doc pulled out the shard of wood with a sound of triumph. Parker let out a shriek, tears of pain filling her eyes without warning. She quickly blinked them away. For a moment their eyes met, held.
It took him a moment to realize he was rubbing his thumbs across the backs of her hands in an unconscious, soothing gesture. She tried to let go of him, not needing any crutch, in particular the help of her worst enemy, but she couldn’t seem to let go. And he couldn’t seem to release her.
