“But I need . . .” She started back toward the stairs, but he simply caught her and swung her around back to the Audi.
“You don’t need anything. Everything will be explained to her, and you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about it again.”
She made a low, warning sound, like a jungle cat about to strike. “Don’t you fucking patronize me!”
“Then don’t act like a baby. You wanted to dump her on me—consider her dumped. You just come along as the booby prize. We need to find out who shot at you. Once we do, you can go home and we’ll get her settled with the job and an apartment and a new name if necessary. What more do you want?”
It almost seemed as if she were going to tell him. “To see the last of you,” she said finally.
He wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. She was lying about something, and he still couldn’t tell what. “The feeling’s mutual,” he said. The sooner she was permanently out of his life, the better. “Now get in the fucking car.”
Chapter Five
Jenny prided herself on the fact that she was practical, levelheaded, and unemotional. At that moment she found herself unaccountably close to tears. She wrapped her arms around her body—the loose T-shirt wasn’t enough in the icy blast of the air conditioner as he drove the Audi too fast through the tourist-jammed streets of New Orleans, but she said nothing. She had no intention of uttering a single word to him. If she needed to follow up on Soledad, she’d have Daisy, her paralegal, make the call. She certainly wasn’t going to give up her house for even a day. Soledad would be safe on Magazine Street, and she’d be safe in her tumbledown shotgun cottage.
Except that Daisy was a wuss, and she’d likely crumble before a bully like Ryder. And that’s exactly what he was, a big, mean, beautiful, scary bully, with gentle hands when it came to bullet grazes . . .
Shit, she was going to have to talk to him after all. “Shouldn’t we report the shooting to the police?”
“No.”
“What if my wound gets infected and I end up having to go to the hospital? They’ll be asking all sorts of questions—you’re supposed to report gunshot wounds.”
“Doctors are supposed to report them, not the people who get shot. And you won’t need a hospital or any kind of follow-up unless you’re the biggest hypochondriac in the world. It was a small graze. I cleaned it thoroughly, and the only aftereffect you’re going to suffer is a headache.”
“Oh, really? I thought that was you.”
“Funny.” His voice was flat.
Okay, now she could shut up. Snapping back at him gained too much attention—she needed to be soft and quiet and polite so he didn’t look too closely. Even though she was still burning with questions, she wasn’t going to ask him a thing. He’d just blow her off.
Could someone really have been shooting at her? Granted, Billy was upset that she wouldn’t return the cell ph
one that was right now resting in her pocket, but Billy would never hurt her. That cell phone had been part and parcel of the trouble Billy had gotten into, and he was going to need to convince her that there was nothing incriminating on it before she’d even consider returning it, and so far he’d done nothing.
So if they weren’t shooting at her, and her instincts told her Ryder wasn’t the target either, then that left Soledad, making her safety an even more important concern.
“Will you tell me if you identified the shooter?” she blurted out, then could have bit her tongue.
To her surprise he answered her. “Depends who he is. Since at first glance you’re the least likely target, I’ll probably deal with it myself. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which you seem to make a habit of doing, if I remember correctly.”
Bastard, she thought silently, fuming. With luck she would keep her damned mouth shut until they reached her house.
And then she realized he was heading in the wrong direction, toward the mansions on the edge of the French Quarter. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m taking you home. What’s the address?”
“Now you ask,” she said grumpily. “I don’t live in the French Quarter.”
He turned to look at her, cold blue eyes full of something she couldn’t quite define.
“I did a complete background check on you, lady, right after you showed up on the container ship. You live in the French Quarter.”
“I haven’t lived there in four months. I live at the edge of the Ninth Ward.”
She managed to shock a reaction out of him. “You live where?”
“How the hell did you think I could afford a house?”