Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

“Don’t . . . Ouch! Are you deliberately hurting me every time we have a disagreement?” She eyed him suspiciously. Her head had continued to throb, the beginnings of a pounding migraine, and she was looking forward to the ibuprofen.

“Yes.” He leaned back and looked at her, and for a moment she stared up into his dark, expressionless eyes. “Where’s your waif?”

“Stop calling her that! She’s twenty years old!” she said at the same time Soledad spoke up from the doorway.

“I am here, Mr. Ryder.”

“Help Ms. Parker clean herself up,” he said curtly, “unless you think you can’t handle it. I can wash her hair—cleaning around a cut like that can be tricky . . .”

“I have a great deal of experience helping people who have been shot or tortured,” Soledad said in her liquid, tranquil voice.

He raised an eyebrow at that. Jenny had never seen anyone who could do that, and for a moment she was distracted.

“Do you indeed?” he answered Soledad, and Jenny was temporarily forgotten. “You’ll have to tell me all about it at a later time.”

“Of course, Mr. Ryder,” Soledad said politely, her accent barely noticeable.

He turned his attention back to Jenny. “You,” he said in a peremptory voice, “behave yourself and do what she tells you. I’m leaving you in her hands, and I expect you to look halfway human when she’s done with you. I’ll find you some clothes, and see what our surveillance cameras picked up. In the meantime it might be worth your while to think of anyone you might have pissed off with your dulcet ways.”

“Apart from you?”

“Well, I’ve got an alibi, remember? I’ll find something clean for you to wear—you look like a cast member of The Walking Dead.”

“I believe the rotting flesh is the major fashion statement,” she said.

“Not if they just had a snack.” He rose, all fluid grace, and turned back to Soledad, who’d been following all this with a bewildered expression on her face. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish.”

He started out the door, and Jenny called after him, incensed. “I didn’t do anything foolish! I just opened your goddamn door.” But he was already gone.

“The Walking Dead?” Soledad echoed, looking perplexed.

“A television show,” Jenny said briefly. She was hardly going to explain to Soledad about the gory TV show that had been her obsession from the first episode.

Funny that Ryder happened to mention it, but then it was a part of popular culture by this time. She turned to look at the massive bathtub that graced the huge room. Ryder and his organization certainly had spared no expense in the renovation of this old house. They could fit a family of four in that bathtub.

“I will draw you a bath,” Soledad said in the mellifluous English that she’d said was compliments of the good sisters who’d lived and died as missionaries in Calliveria. “It will calm and relax you.”

“I’m perfectly calm and relaxed.” Her defensive voice was pitched just a bit too high.

Soledad smiled sweetly as she turned on the taps. Instant hot water responded with a blast of steam. She turned back. “May I help you undress? Your pretty clothes—I do not know if I will ever be able to get them clean.”

“I told you before, Soledad, you don’t have to do things like that! I could send the suit to the dry cleaners but I don’t think I ever want to see that thing again.”

She began unbuttoning the stained silk jacket, then stared down at her bloody hands. Shuddering, she looked away.

“We may have to go back to the house to find me some clean clothes. I don’t trust Ryder—he’ll probably find a Mardi Gras costume or something equally disturbing for me to wear.”

“I think Mr. Ryder will be taking very good care of you, Ms. Parker.”

There was a faintly teasing note in Soledad’s voice, one Jenny chose to ignore. Soledad’s English might be flawless, but that didn’t mean she understood the nuances. “I doubt it,” she said wearily. Ryder disliked and distrusted her, for all his decent attempts at taking care of her. Once she got Soledad settled she’d have no more reason to see him, which was a very good thing. He was far too suspicious for her peace of mind, and she suspected he wasn’t the type to let anything go. She needed to get as far away from him as she could.

She had no doubt at all the bullet that had hardly grazed her scalp had been meant for him. After all, he was the one who dealt with terrorists and international criminals—she was simply an immigration lawyer, and a pro bono one at that.

She felt strange stripping off her ruined clothes in his house, stepping into his deep bathtub. She might as well enjoy it while she could—her narrow shotgun house had only a rusty stall shower, and the luxury of a bath like this was not to be taken lightly. With a sigh of decadent delight, she slid down into the warm, faintly scented water and closed her eyes.

Chapter Four

Ryder stared at the computer screen, scrolling through the images impatiently. There was no angle surrounding the house that wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras, and it had taken Jack, the best hacker in the business, no more than fifteen minutes to isolate the car driving by, the shadowy passenger in the hoodie, the almost imperceptible circle of a gun barrel pointed at the old house. A gun that size shouldn’t have been able to reach the front door, the first and possibly most important conundrum, the second being the identity of the shooter. It hadn’t taken Jack any longer to trace the anonymous late-model sedan to a stolen car report, and he had little doubt it was already abandoned on the edge of the Ninth Ward.