Consumed by Fire (Fire 1)

Which apparently wasn’t a marriage at all. She could take some pleasure from that, at least. And she’d really been trying to move ahead for the last three years. James Bishop’s reappearance had shown her just how little progress she had made in that direction. He’d gotten her back in bed in just about the same amount of time.

No, she reminded herself. He hadn’t gotten her back in bed. She had gone with him, willingly. If she was ever going to move past this she needed to take responsibility, and she was tired of feeling helpless.

Tired of being a prisoner as well, even if it was ostensibly for her own protection. She should open the front door and peer out. She should put on her shoes and go out looking for them, but something kept her from heading for the front door. Her instincts were clearly useless—she’d had no idea James had been using her, no idea that Pete was a lying, cheating plagiarist. How the hell could she trust whether she was in trouble or not?

It didn’t matter. As long as there was any chance of danger, she’d need to be careful. Ryder and his men might think they were the crème de la crème of operatives, or whatever they called themselves, but she’d spent the last week working on the decorative iron grille over the bathroom window and no one had noticed. A nail file had gotten it started, and each time she could reasonably disappear into the tiny room she’d worked on it. It would be a tight fit, and she would have to be able to set the grille down on the narrow iron walkway outside the window without attracting any attention, but right then it seemed like the smartest thing she could do. She had no ID, no money, no credit cards, but it didn’t matter. There was always the police, though from the stories she’d heard they might not be any better than the crime family Ryder had warned her about. One thing she wasn’t going to do: stay in this apartment like a sitting duck, waiting for someone new to try to kill her.

She moved over to the door as quietly as she could, pressing her ear against it. Was she imagining faraway whispers, or were people really out there? People who didn’t want to alert her to their presence?

Her indecision vanished. She slipped into the bedroom and locked the door, then dragged a dresser in front of it. Grabbing her sneakers, she then went into the adjoining bathroom and locked that door before climbing up onto the toilet. The moment she opened the window muggy night air swept into the air-conditioned room, but for some reason she shivered. The grille needed one more shove at the upper corner, but when she gave it one, it slipped out of her grasp and went crashing onto the narrow metal balustrade, bouncing off it and landing on something below, something that sounded sickeningly like a car.

She couldn’t hesitate. Shoving herself up, she dove through the window, wiggling herself through it as she clung to the railing, and when she finally pulled her feet through, she reached back and shut the window behind her.

It was only then she realized she’d left her shoes in the bedroom. She could hear noise from the apartment, a banging sound. Someone was trying to break down her bedroom door, and whether it was Odila or someone far more dangerous, she couldn’t afford to squat there on the narrow railing and wait for that person to get to her. The moon had come out again, illuminating the night, but she didn’t dare run on the flimsy little balcony and draw any more attention to herself.

She had no idea whether there would be a fire escape off this thing or if she was still trapped, but she headed for the back of the building, reasonably certain that if there was any way to get down to the street, it would be back there. Please please please, she muttered beneath her breath, as she heard the muffled sound of something crashing beyond her. She had made it around to the back of the building when she heard the breaking glass, the shouting; suddenly, like a deus ex machina, a fire escape appeared, and she practically threw herself down the ladder’s two flights, her bare feet slipping on the rusty metal.

She landed in a dark alley, which was dimly lit from the streetlight out on the main thoroughfare. She had no idea where she was—it had been dark when Ryder had brought her here, and she’d been too angry and miserable to pay attention—and naturally her rotating cadre of protectors/wardens refused to answer any of her questions. She could be in the French Quarter or down by the once-savaged levees, and she had no idea where to go.

No, not the French Quarter—it wasn’t bright or noisy enough. Probably not the once-flooded part of the city either—surely there’d still be a smell of lingering damp? She hesitated, and then heard the thundering footsteps overhead. She couldn’t afford to wait.

Heading toward the light would be the obvious choice, so instead she turned and sprinted down the alleyway, into the darkness. The ground was rough beneath her feet, and she knew it would only be luck that would keep her from slicing her foot open on something. The alley smelled of beer and piss and puke, and she could hear the thunder of footsteps racing down the rickety metal stairs. It sounded like an army was coming after her, and she knew it wasn’t anybody from Bishop’s mysterious Committee after all. Whoever it was wanted to harm her, wanted to kill her, and she wasn’t ready to die.

She turned the corner and slammed to a halt: wire fencing went up twenty feet or more, blocking the exit. They were coming closer now, and she looked around for a place to hide, desperate. There was nothing—no convenient Dumpster, no abandoned car, nothing to hide behind. She was well and truly trapped.

She looked back at the fencing, wondering if she could climb over it, just as strong lights speared into the alleyway; they missed her as she ducked down, but briefly illuminated a door in the brick wall she’d thought was solid. The beam of light swept back, and she jumped, not hesitating, reaching the door before the light returned.

For one desperate, breathless moment she thought it was locked, and she wanted to scream, to cry, to yank at what she believed was an immovable doorknob. But it moved, opening inward, and she stumbled into the darkness, down, down, managing to kick the door shut behind her as she fell.

Merlin found Jenkins’s body underneath the stairs. Bishop might not have noticed, but the smell of blood and body fluids hit him a moment after Merlin leapt forward.

Ryder pushed past him. “You go on,” he said brusquely, kneeling down by the corpse as Merlin began scrambling up the flights of stairs in search of Evangeline. Odila’s body was crumpled in a corner of the third-floor landing, but the dog didn’t slow down, his nose taking him straight to the apartment door, and Bishop didn’t stop to check whether he was dead. The Corsini family never left anything to chance. He followed Merlin and saw the apartment door standing open. Whoever had come after her hadn’t had to kick it in—they’d have taken the keys from Odila, and Evangeline would have had no idea that she was about to die.

He didn’t hesitate, crossing the hallway with a few strides. Merlin was already inside, growling, and he knew she was already dead. She wouldn’t have had a chance, and it was all his fault . . .

Merlin’s growl turned to a bark, and Bishop sped up, slamming past the open front door, certain he was going to find her body, but there was no sign of her. The door to the bedroom had been smashed in, and he could see she’d tried to push the bureau in front of it. Smart girl—she hadn’t been caught unawares after all.

She was still no match for hired killers. Merlin had already leapt through the remnant of the door, and Bishop followed. No sign of her there either. The dog was already in the bathroom, barking loudly, the sound echoing off the tile.

He steeled himself, but the small room was empty. Someone had taken the grille off the window, and he knew it had to have been her. It would have been a slow, painstaking job, and it would have taken her days to work on it. She was a fighter and she never gave up. Thank God she didn’t trust him—otherwise she would have been trapped in there.

Merlin was trying to jump high enough to get through the window, but with a short command, Bishop called him back. The only way they could find her was through Merlin, and the chances of Evangeline being out

on the narrow balcony were nil. Ryder was already at the door, his face the same expressionless mask he always used on assignment. He took one look at James and allowed just a glimmer of reaction before he shut down again.

“She got out?” he said.

Bishop nodded. “Sneaky little thing spent the week unfastening the bathroom grille. She got out that way.”

“But how far?” It wasn’t a question—Ryder knew that Bishop would have no more answers than he would. He also knew that time was running out.

“Merlin will find her,” Bishop said.

“In time?”

Bishop just looked at him, and Ryder shook his head. “We’ll be in time, James,” he amended. “If the mighty James Bishop is going to fall, then I’m damned well not going to let some half-ass mob family get in the way of love’s young dream.”

Bishop didn’t bother replying. If Ryder had any control over the situation, they’d get her back safely. But they both knew that some things were out of their control.