Driven by Fire

by Anne Stuart

  “Ouch!” she said weakly.

  “Won’t be much more,” the old woman said in a soft voice. “I just have to make sure I got all the splinters out of the wound before I dress it. Out of my way, boy.” She elbowed Ryder to one side. He released Jenny’s hand, one of them, but she clung to the other. He made no attempt to pull it free.

  “Now let’s have a look at that head wound,” Dr. Gentry said. “Woo-hoo, that was one close call! I take it the bullet was meant for you?” She turned to Ryder.

  “I don’t think so. Somebody blew up her house a few hours later. That’s why we’re here.”

  “You don’t say,” Doc mused. “I’ll change the dressing after I look after you.”

  “I’m fine . . .”

  “Cut it out, Ryder. I got eyes—I know when someone’s hurting,” Doc said briefly. She leaned over Parker. “You think you can sit up? I got you stitched up all nice and clean but I can’t give you anything for the pain until I check your head, and I have to make sure Ryder isn’t going to drop dead on me.”

  Jenny pushed herself up to a seated position, still looking slightly dazed. “Oh, I’m fine,” she protested.

  “I’ve never seen so many ‘fine’ people show up in my infirmary,” Doc Gentry said sarcastically. “Ryder, help her into the wicker rocking chair. She can watch while I deal with you, and that way I can keep an eye on the both of you.”

  The last thing he wanted was Jenny’s watchful eyes, but then he didn’t really have a choice. He scooped her up, trying not to flinch as she struggled against his left side, and dumped her into the ancient chair by the table, a chair that had held countless worried mothers over the decades.

  “That’s right. Now take off your clothes and get up on that gurney.”

  He gave Doc Gentry a stern look. “You know I’m not going to do that.”

  “Never seen you worried about modesty before. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before, though I do admit you’re a sight prettier than most.”

  “Never had an audience before,” he said in a cool, low voice that must have carried straight to Jenny’s ears. He glanced at her, but her eyes were closed, and perversely he snapped out her name. “Parker!”

  Her eyes flew open, and she looked blessedly cranky beneath the soot and blood. “What?”

  “Don’t fall asleep. We haven’t ruled out a concussion.”

  “You probably would have left me alone in my house if it hadn’t exploded.” Her voice was querulous. “Where was the worry about my concussion then?”

  “Who said I was going to leave you?”

  That shut her up. She slouched into the protesting rocker, for all the world like a grumpy teenager, and the relief that filled him was out of proportion. He didn’t bother to examine it too closely. He didn’t want her hurt on his watch. Not anymore. Not until he had his answers.

  Chapter Seven

  She really didn’t want to be here, Jenny thought, keeping her eyes determinedly open. She’d been hoping to avoid watching her nemesis take off his shirt, so now she was simply going to have to hope he was pale and flabby, or covered with a thick pelt, because there was no denying that Matthew Ryder, super spy, was one hell of a good-looking man. Even a possible concussion and the loss of her house couldn’t dull that knowledge, and she didn’t need that kind of distraction.

  Maybe she just needed to think about something else. Damn it, she wasn’t in shock, but just a hint of denial, and if looking at Ryder would distract her, then she’d damn well look. And fantasize if she felt like it. It wasn’t as if he’d ever know. He disliked and distrusted her, and as far as he knew the feeling was mutual. There was nothing dangerous in taking inventory of a good-looking sex object.

  He was starting to peel off his bloodstained T-shirt, and she got a flash of tanned, flat stomach. She braced herself.

  “Oh, for mercy’s sake,” the old woman snapped. “Let go of it and I’ll cut it off.”

  “No, thank you.” He was still struggling to get the shirt off, and the more stomach she saw the more bothered she felt, until she saw the blood. How badly was he hurt? “I don’t intend to go home shirtless,” he grumbled.

  “And what makes you think I’m too old to have gentlemen callers who might leave clothes behind?” Dr. Gentry demanded, affronted.

  “Doc, you have no use for gentlemen,” he said. “You like bad boys.”

  “Which is why I put up with you,” she said, advancing on him with a pair of blunt-tipped scissors, and Jenny could tell by the blood on them that they’d been used to cut off her pant leg to expose her wounded calf. For some reason her stomach lurched, but she controlled it, determined to appear unmoved.

  In a moment the ruins of the black T-shirt were on the floor and Jenny’s errant lust had vanished. To hell with his chiseled abs and golden skin—he had a long gash across his back that was oozing blood and ugly bruises on his shoulders.

  “My, my, you two are a pair,” the doctor said. “What happened—a house fall on you?”

  “So to speak,” Ryder said in an even voice, as if he weren’t having a nasty wound across his back being cleaned with the same incredibly painful stuff Doctor Gentry had used on her. He didn’t even blink. “I told you her house blew up.”

  “And she escaped with a piece of wood stuck in her leg while your back looks like it landed directly on you.”

  “Like the Wicked Witch of the West,” Ryder said dryly. “I’m sure that’s what Ms. Parker was thinking.”

  Heat flooded Jenny’s face. That was exactly what she’d been thinking. “Of course not,” she protested weakly.

  “What’d you do—throw yourself over her body to protect her?” Dr. Gentry scrubbed at his back with a little more energy, and finally he winced. She shook her head. “Of course you did. Always got to be the hero.” She stepped back to survey the wound, which was still oozing blood. “I’ve got some Krazy glue to fix that.”

  “Krazy glue?” Jenny echoed, horrified.

  “She’s talking about surgical glue,” Ryder said irritably. “Don’t take her at face value—she was top of her class at . . .”

  “Long time ago,” Dr. Gentry said, her leathery brown face creased with amusement as she turned to Jenny. “And then I’ll perform a voodoo rite. You can spare some of your blood, can’t you?”

  Jenny froze in horror for a nanosecond, then realized she was being teased. She leaned back again in the creaking chair. “Want a piece of my brain too?”

  “Depends on how much you got to spare.”

  “Stop teasing her, Doc,” Ryder said, holding very still while she applied the ointment. “You don’t want to offend a member of the Gauthier clan.”

  Dr. Gentry looked unimpressed as she glanced back at Jenny. “What’s your name, child?”

  “Jenny Parker.”

  “Jennifer Parker, Esquire, née Gauthier. She doesn’t take after her brothers or her father. She is a hopeless do-gooder. She’s the one who wants to be a hero.” Ryder’s voice was a lazy drawl, and Jenny did her best to keep her expression blank. He knew about her brothers—of course he did. But did he know exactly what they did? Exactly what Billy had done, and how she had covered for him?

  “I’m surprised she didn’t wrestle you to be on top, then,” the old woman said. “Get down and get yourself an ice pack for those shoulders. I want to look at your girlfriend’s head wound.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend!”

  “She’s not . . . !”

  The protests came out simultaneously and vigorously, and Dr. Gentry ignore them both. “Why is it”—she inquired of no one in particular—“that young people are so stupid?”

  “Neither of us is young, Doc,” Ryder said, sliding down from the table with his pantherlike grace. “She’s twenty-eight and I’m a hell of a lot older.”

  “You’re thirty-seven, boy. And I notice you don’t deny you’re stupid.”

  Ryder stalked from the room without a backward glance, and Jenny started to rise from t
he chair until Doc’s strong, capable hands stopped her. “You don’t need to move. I can see just fine from here.”

  She was surprisingly gentle as she poked at Jenny’s scalp, making clucking noises as she asked her all the questions about blurred vision and sleepiness.

  “You’re good,” the old lady said finally. “Don’t worry about feeling tired—just hearing about what you went through makes me want to take a nap.”

  “I think,” Jenny said hesitantly, “that I might be in shock, maybe just a little bit. I can’t even cry over my house being gone, but all I want to do is curl up in a bed with the covers over my head. But don’t tell Ryder that.”

  “That boy? Of course I won’t. He seems to think he knows everything about everything. You’ll be right as rain in a little while. Old Dr. Gentry’s been around a long time, and that little tap on your head isn’t going to do anything. If you’ve survived being shot, having your house blown up, and being flattened by Ryder, then you’re going to be just fine.”

  “What are you telling her about me?” Ryder’s disapproving voice came from the doorway, and instinctively Jenny turned to look, then regretted it.

  Somehow in that short time he’d managed to take a shower, and water still glistened on his bare chest.

  “Where are the ice packs?” Dr. Gentry demanded.

  “Screw the ice packs. What are you telling her about me?”

  “Not a God Almighty thing except that you must’ve crushed her.”

  Jenny was surprised Doc even bothered to answer his rough question. “Don’t be rude,” Jenny snapped at him. “I already know who you are and exactly what you do.”

  “I doubt that. You need another bath but Doc only has a shower. If Doc is finished with you I can help you get clean.”

  “I’ll help her,” Doc said sternly.

  “To paraphrase your elegant words, she doesn’t have anything I haven’t already seen.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you have or haven’t seen. The woman deserves her modesty.”

  “I thought you had somewhere to be,” he said with a meaningful undertone.

  “I don’t leave my patients until they’re ready. Now get those damned ice packs, or you won’t be able to move your shoulders by tomorrow.”

  He gave her a disbelieving glance. “You really think so?”

  “All right, you’re Superman. Make things easier on yourself for once and use the ice packs.”

  Ryder made a disgruntled growl as Dr. Gentry helped Jenny to her feet. “You just come along with me,” she said. “You’ll feel a sight better after you’re cleaned up.”

  The woman was right. Half an hour later Jenny was coming to the conclusion that Dr. Gentry was always right. She even managed to shampoo the dried blood from her hair with a minimum of discomfort to her lacerated scalp, but when they were done Jenny was shaking with exhaustion.

  Dr. Gentry toweled her off with capable, impersonal hands, found her an ancient dressing gown that came to her ankles and looked like it had once belonged in Storyville, that notorious center for prostitution in old New Orleans. Great, she thought. As if she weren’t already feeling vulnerable and uncomfortably sexual for no good reason. At least there was a pocket for Billy’s cell phone. She’d had every intention of leaving it at her house, and now it was about the only thing she had left, useless as it was to her.

  The bathroom was off a tiny bedroom with a sagging, tarnished brass bed taking up most of the space. “What you need most now is sleep,” said Doc.

  “I want to go . . .” She’d been about to say “home” when she realized she had no home. Sudden tears filled her eyes.

  “Now don’t be worrying about anything right now. Things will sort themselves out—you’ll see. You just climb into bed—that’s right—and I’ll tell Ryder to leave you alone.”

  The sheets were wonderful—like heavy linen—and the bed was soft and comforting. She blinked away her tears, patted the phone in her pocket, and a moment later she was sound asleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Soledad looked around her large room in the headquarters of the American Committee for the Preservation of Democracy and sniffed disapprovingly. It was filled with old furniture, like the rest of the house, with old rugs on the polished floors, marble in the bathroom, and heavy curtains to block out the sunlight. She had watched a great many shows on American television and she knew this was not what a rich house should look like. It should have stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops for fat American women who never cooked. All this old furniture belonged in a dump, she thought contemptuously.

  It was getting late, and it seemed as if the house was empty. There was no sign of her jailer, the saintly Ms. Parker, or the bad-tempered man who’d let them in. She’d done a preliminary canvass of the place and found nothing suspicious—not a computer in sight, not even a telephone, not anyone to question why she was snooping around, but she knew she was far from alone. She’d already identified one hidden camera in the bedroom, three in the hallway, and she had no doubt the place was littered with them. She kept her stupid sheep expression on her face. Even the most innocent of women would be curious about a place like this, especially someone who supposedly grew up a sheltered innocent in a third-world country.

  There were no innocents in third-world countries, but Americans were too stupid to know that.

  It was getting very late. Ms. Parker wasn’t the kind of woman to spend the night in the arms of a man like Ryder, though Soledad would have been tempted if he weren’t the enemy, but then Ms. Parker didn’t know how to enjoy life. She was so caught up in being good, trying to prove she had nothing to do with her rich family. If Soledad had had a family like her jailer’s, she would have made full use of it.

  Right now, though, Soledad was better off depending on herself. If the house really were empty, then she needed to use her time wisely, find out where the hell Parker had hidden the cell phone. Once she found it she could be long gone, no longer at the mercy of her saintly lawyer. God, but that woman annoyed her! It was no wonder someone had shot at her.

  Soledad didn’t know who had fired the gun and she didn’t care. It had come nowhere near her, and she had the kind of enemies who didn’t miss.

  She slipped out the door, heading down the hall, the saccharine smile on her face. She knew she could pass for a teenager, when in fact, she was twenty-five in years and ancient in experience. She had yet to find one person she couldn’t fool.

  She knew better than to look at the cameras stationed around the hallway. She was on the second floor, and she suspected that’s where the heart of the operation kept itself. She couldn’t very well tap the walls, looking for a hollow sound, but she could keep her chastely lowered eyes glued to the doors, looking for a trace of light escaping from beneath the heavy wood. Ugly, she thought to herself. She would have torn down the whole place.

  “Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing?” a voice came from behind her, slow and lazy with the New Orleans accent she was getting used to, the one Ms. Parker seemed to be missing, and she jumped, cursing herself for being so jittery.

  She turned to find a man watching her. He was tall, lean, with a charming smile on a too-handsome face. Child’s play, she thought. He would be so used to women falling at his feet that he would assume she would do the same.

  She put a fluttering hand to her chest, surreptitiously tugging the ridiculous peasant top down a bit to accentuate her breasts. Men were stupid to begin with, but breasts seemed to render them witless. “You frightened me,” she said in a breathy voice, her shy smile hiding the instinctive curl of her lip. “I didn’t know anyone was around.”

  “I realize that,” he said, and with someone else it might have almost sounded cynical. Not this man, though. “I’m Remy Vartain, at your service. Ryder put me in charge of you once I arrived back. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

  “I have no idea, señor,” she said, wondering if she was laying it on a bit too th
ick.

  But no, his smile just broadened. “Call me Remy,” he said. “So Ryder’s run away with the lawyer, has he? That’s no surprise.”

  “But why would he? They hate each other,” Soledad said, honestly perplexed. Ms. Parker couldn’t mention the man without fuming, and from what little she’d seen the feelings were mutual.

  “Sure they do,” Remy drawled. “Just how young are you, sugar?”

  “Twenty.”

  “That’s what I would have guessed,” he murmured. “Except you have old eyes.”

  And Remy Vartain was more observant than she had thought. “That’s because I’ve seen many, many bad things in my life,” she said with great dignity.

  “I’m sure you have. In the meantime, why don’t you get your sweet self back to bed before you see anything else that you shouldn’t?”

  She arranged her face in worried lines. “There is something here I shouldn’t see?”

  “There are always things young girls shouldn’t see. Just go back to bed and I promise I won’t let the bad guys get you.”

  He wouldn’t notice the grim edge to her smile. “I find it hard to trust these days.”

  “You can trust me. I make it a habit to keep innocent young girls safe from harm.”

  She lowered her eyes sweetly. “Thank you, Señor Vartain.”

  “Just Remy.”

  “Thank you, Remy,” she said. He was a fool to trust anyone he’d just met, a fool to think she’d trust him. She’d cut his throat before she left this place, and she’d make sure he saw her after she did it.

  Everyone needed to be taught a lesson on occasion.

  Jenny awoke in darkness, sleepy, disoriented, and for a moment she didn’t want to move. The bed was a soft cushion beneath her and she was wrapped in a cocoon of safety. She was someone who liked a rock-hard mattress and the lightest of covers, no matter how high the air-conditioning was set, but right now all she wanted to do was snuggle down closer into the blankets as unwanted memories hit her.

  She’d let a criminal escape. Billy had been so remorseful for the hideous trade he’d been involved in, and she’d covered for him, saved him.