Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

At first she thought no one was out there. The chairs were empty, and the hammock that was strung along one side didn’t move. She walked to the railing, looking out over the shining stillness of the slow-moving river as a fish leapt in the water, all grace and silver beauty, before it splashed back down again and was gone.

She sank into one of the chairs and put her feet up on the railing. The flimsy dress slipped past her knees, and there was a faint breeze off the water, cooling her. Where had Ryder gone? It shouldn’t matter—she was safe now. The car was gone, he was someplace else, and for the time being no one was going to bother her. She was going to sit by the river, the soft music in the background, and try to figure out what she was going to do with her life without the distraction of Ryder.

“Couldn’t sleep anymore?” Came his deep voice from the doorway, and Jenny’s heart caught.

Ryder took a long, unemotional look at the woman who just might be an international terrorist and wondered if he was being way too suspicious. She looked rumpled, sleepy, and Doc had put her in some kind of nightgown or dress that gave him way too good a view of her body. Knowing Doc, she probably did it on purpose just to teach him a lesson.

“You think that little girl is a killer, Matthew?” she’d demanded over glasses of her excellent bourbon once Jenny had fallen asleep. “You’ve lost your touch. She’s as innocent as a stray lamb.”

“And I’m the big bad wolf?” he’d countered. “I don’t think so. She’s hiding something, I know it, and I don’t give up until I know the answers.”

Now, a few hours later, Jenny jumped at the sound of his voice, and she reached for the filmy shawl on the back of the chair, one that did very little for her modesty. Maybe she didn’t realize how the moon illuminated every curve and shadow. Clearly she thought she’d been alone. That, or she thought he was stupid enough to be distracted by a half-naked woman. Not a chance.

“I thought you were gone!” she said in the edgy voice he’d gotten used to. “What happened to the car?”

Why was she so damned twitchy around him? Not that he went out of his way to be agreeable, but if she was who she said she was, then she was in no danger from him. “I got rid of it,” he said, watching her. “Had someone take it north to Baton Rouge and leave it there. We don’t want it leading anyone to us.”

“Us?” she echoed.

“Afraid you’ve got me as your constant companion, at least until we find out who’s so interested in trying to kill you. Consider me your new BFF.”

“No one’s trying to kill me,” she said flatly. “It’s impossible. I have no enemies, and not enough of a connection to my family to be a target of something like that. You must have made a mistake about the explosive device.”

“Bomb,” he corrected. “And I don’t make mistakes—if I hadn’t recognized it I wouldn’t have gotten you out of there in time and the question would be irrelevant. No one gets shot and has their house blown up in the space of a few short hours without having some very bad people after her. What I want to know is, what have you done to make such a determined enemy?”

“Nothing! That’s why it’s so impossible—no one has any reason to hurt me. Maybe they’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“Maybe.”

“I have other people who can protect me, you know.” She pulled the shawl tighter around her and shivered despite the warm night air blowing off the river. “It’s not your responsibility.”

He shrugged. “I’ll just drop you off at the family compound and you can leave it up to your brothers and your father’s enforcers to keep you safe. And that might even work. For a while.” He paused, waiting for the words to sink in. He suspected his self-sacrificing heroine would walk barefoot on Mardi Gras before she would go back home to her family, but he wasn’t that much better an option in her eyes.

He continued in the face of her silence. “Of course, they don’t have the connections or intel to find out who’s trying to kill you, not unless it’s one of their many enemies and they’re targeting you as a hapless symbol of the Gauthier family. In which case going home is a very bad idea as well.”

“Why?” She sounded perfectly controlled.

“Because attacking you would simply be the opening shot in an all-out war, and your father’s house on Royal Street would be the obvious target, not our headquarters.”

She turned to face him, putting the delicious bits of her body in shadow. What the fuck was he doing, lusting after Jenny Parker, Esquire? She was a major pain in his ass. Because lusting he was, and everyone knew it but her. It was a good reason for his cantankerous mood—you didn’t fuck people of interest.

Maybe it’d been too long since he’d been gotten laid. He’d been too busy setting up the American Committee to bother, and his partner had been having enough sex for both of them. Not that Bishop ever slacked off on the job—he was a great multitasker, and Ryder actually liked his wife, Evangeline. He just needed things to settle down into some kind of normalcy, and that didn’t include falling into the sack with a woman who could be as treacherous as a snake.

> But Parker, oblivious to the convoluted direction his thoughts were taking, simply stood there. “What makes you think the house on Royal Street is his only residence? There are at least three other places that no one knows about . . .”

“The house in the Quarter, one in Lafayette, and the apartment in Atlanta,” he rattled off, much to her obvious annoyance, “and I’m sure he could buy any number of bolt-holes for you, if you decided to ask him. I thought you made it a habit not to accept anything from your crooked family.”

“That’s easy enough to say when no one’s trying to kill you,” she muttered.

She looked like an unhappy little girl with her rumpled hair and troubled expression, at least, when he wasn’t looking any lower than her face. It was almost comical, but Ryder wasn’t amused. “You don’t need to break your holy vow, Parker. No matter how much protection your father offers, it won’t be enough.”

“Why? I’m not worth anything to anyone. I’m not an international terrorist or a trafficker or even a very good lawyer. Scratch that—I’m a damned good lawyer, but not good enough that anyone would want to kill me. It doesn’t make sense.”

He could almost believe her. She really did seem confused, but there was still the faint trace of guilt to her. She was hiding something from him, and until he found out what it was, she was the enemy. “You’re old enough to know life doesn’t make sense.” His voice was caustic.

“I suppose you’ve got an impregnable place somewhere that’s just the thing to keep me safe?”

“The house in the Garden District. You’ll stay there until we find out what’s going on.” He wasn’t giving her a choice in the matter. “Whether you believe it or not, that place is impregnable.”