Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

“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.