Wildfire (Fire 3)

It didn’t matter. She was stiff from holding herself so still, and besides, what would one of Archer’s criminal associates want from her? If he thought he could use her as leverage, he was going to be disappointed. She didn’t have the faintest idea why Archer was keeping her alive. She’d been living on borrowed time and she knew it. He could have her taken out on a whim, and sooner or later he would, unless she finished him and got the hell out o

f Dodge. There was nothing Malcolm Gunnison could do that would make her position any more dangerous.

She pushed herself to a sitting position, making sure she kept her legs still and lifeless beneath the heavy sheets. She leaned back against her headboard, and the wood made a soft creak, so slight that most people wouldn’t notice, but Sophie froze. Archer would have only the best, most precise microphones—they would have picked up that thump, isolate it as coming from her room. That thump was an anomaly, and she knew better than to hope Archer would ignore it.

She switched on the light beside the bed, dragging her body over, and blinked against the blinding brightness. With a sigh of resignation she pulled herself into the wheelchair that had been left beside her bed and slowly rolled it toward the big bathroom. Archer might question why she hadn’t slept through the night like she usually did, but he could hardly argue with her plainly biological excuse. She pushed the door shut and leaned her head against it, taking deep breaths. This wasn’t what she wanted—drawing attention to herself would be the kind of mistake that could end up with her being dead and buried in a shallow grave somewhere on this island. She wondered exactly how many corpses littered the five square miles. Emilio, the man who had “accidentally” shot her, was one of them. So was Emilio’s girlfriend. Over the last two years people had come and gone, come and not gone. As long as Archer was convinced she still adored him, he’d be content to keep her around for amusement’s sake. If he found out she just didn’t give a damn, he’d have her killed without hesitation.

She stayed in the bathroom for as long as she could manage, pacing back and forth in complete silence as she considered her next-door neighbor. Exactly who was Malcolm Gunnison, and why had he risked discovery to sneak into her room in the middle of the night? Had Archer hired him? Maybe he was outsourcing her execution, but if so, why the delay? Killing someone was easy work—no one would know that better than Archer.

She rolled the chair back to the bed, maneuvering herself onto the mattress awkwardly. She’d originally thought the arrival of a guest on Isla Mordita would be a benefit—someone to take Archer’s mind off of her. Not that Archer usually wasted a second thought about her—if he didn’t have such a razor-sharp intellect, she’d think he’d forgotten all about her. But Archer didn’t forget anything. Malcolm Gunnison was probably here for something that had nothing to do with her, but then, why had he come into her room? Was it on Archer’s orders? And what about Archer—did he have a specific reason, or was it simply to fuck with her?

She couldn’t afford to panic. Her escape plan was simple—she knew the highly regimented schedule of the guards, knew who would be on duty and when. Marco took guard duty on weekends; during the week he was Joe’s second-in-command. Marco was the one who carried her places when Joe was busy, who brought her chair. Marco was the one who watched her when she swam in the warm, beautiful pool, her legs trailing uselessly as her arms sliced through the water. Marco was the one who told her about his love life and his mother and grandfather in Cuba, struggling to get by. Marco who was a stoner.

Archer didn’t give a damn about Marco’s affection for weed, and he even tolerated the garden where he cultivated it. He didn’t know that Marco liked more than weed, and that she’d been passing her Vicodin on to him, just enough to whet his appetite.

She really didn’t understand his affection for the stuff. She’d taken it during the first year and half after she’d been injured, and while it had put a dent in her pain, it never removed it completely—and as far as she could tell, it provided no pleasant feeling whatsoever. The most she felt was a little sleepy. But Marco seemed to love the stuff, as much as he could get. She was counting on his greediness—he went through the drugs like a gluttonous child. Once she handed over the stash hidden in her bed, he would devour them and be out of commission. Getting away from the house would be relatively easy. Using the boat Marco had boasted about might be more of a challenge.

He wasn’t supposed to have one, of course. It was nothing more than a glorified rowboat, one Marco used for his occasional attempts at fishing, which were really no more than an excuse to get stoned away from everyone else. She would have been surprised that Archer put up with him if Joe hadn’t divulged some of his past. If it weren’t for Marco’s impressive marksmanship, Archer wouldn’t be where he was today. She wouldn’t have thought Archer was one for loyalty, but apparently she was wrong, because Marco was given a huge amount of leeway.

She figured she had a fifty-fifty chance of getting away from there, odds that went way down if she finally finished her assignment and put a bullet in Archer’s brain. Her best chance would be to sneak off when no one was looking, when Archer was otherwise occupied, and get the hell out of there. If she wasted time killing him, she would probably be signing her own death warrant.

Hell, she’d probably drown in that stupid small boat anyway. If she managed to get off the island, she simply had to keep heading west to the closest solid land, Mexico, and then go from there.

As a plan it relied too much on luck and circumstances, and on her faulty judgment of character. She might think Marco was easily seduced by a handful of pills, but she’d been convinced Archer was a good man, not the monster the Committee had painted him. She’d been convinced they were in love. She’d been convinced he’d never hurt her.

She hunched down in the bed again, pulling the covers around her body and turning off the light, and she allowed herself a grimace of pain in the unseeing darkness. It still hurt when she twisted a certain way, and it probably always would. It made no difference. In fact, she almost welcomed the pain. It reminded her that she was alive, not in one of those shallow graves on the edge of the island. At least, not yet.

It was late when she finally woke, jerked into alertness by some dream she refused to let herself remember. Her heavy curtains had been pulled open, and a tray of congealed scrambled eggs and cold coffee sat on the table beside her bed. Rachel must have come and gone, not bothering to wake her. Making a face, she pulled herself into a sitting position, glancing out at the tropical sunshine. It was after eleven—she usually woke up at six and then waited hours for Rachel to make her appearance. She cursed silently. Another change from routine that Archer would notice. If she was going to get out of here, then she had to make sure nothing else out of the ordinary drew his attention.

She heard the soft knock at her door, and she called out, “Come in,” before she could think twice. Rachel never knocked—she just barged in.

The man calling himself Malcolm Gunnison stood in the doorway, his face the same blank expression she was getting used to. He’d dumped his bespoke suit, trading it in for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt rolled up at the elbows. He really did have endless legs, she thought, momentarily distracted. Or maybe it was simply that he wasn’t as top heavy as the men she was used to on the island. Everyone there had pumped iron to the max, so at times she felt like she was living in a land of thick-muscled mutants. Even she had done some weights, supposedly to enable her to haul her inert body around. In truth, she simply wanted all the strength she could get, and an excuse for her impressive guns.

Which meant that she, or any man on the island, could probably flatten the elegant Mr. Gunnison. Good to know.

She looked at him warily. “Yes?”

He didn’t smile—she wondered if he was capable of it. “Your husband would like you to join us for lunch,” he said, and the English accent slid down her spine.

She mentally shook it off. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

He glanced at her untouched tray. “I wouldn’t if I were you. Joe will come fetch you in half an hour.”

Fetch? Did people really say fetch? It would be a waste of time to argue, to plead a sleepless night—Archer always got his way, sometimes by charm, sometimes by force. She managed to put a pleased smile on her face. She had no idea who this man was, whether he was the obscurely titled “consultant” or something else entirely, but he was here at Archer’

s behest, which meant he was the enemy. “I’ll be ready,” she said, using her arms to pull herself to the side of the bed.

He stepped inside her door, into her room, an act that would have shocked her if he hadn’t already been prowling around. “Do you need some help getting dressed?”

There were limits to how pleasant she could be. “From you? I don’t think so,” she said, and then immediately regretted it. Most people wouldn’t have seen that interested light flash in his clear green eyes, so fast did it come and go, but she wasn’t most people. That had been some kind of test, and she’d failed it. Or passed it, depending what outcome he’d been hoping for. He’d paid very little outward attention to her the night before, apart from his random courtesies, but now he was directing his focus at her, and she’d been a fool not to be more careful. She quickly moved to make up lost ground. “But if you could send Rachel or Amy up I’d be very grateful.” She gave him the winsome smile she’d been practicing, the one that would melt Archer’s most ruthless employees.

Malcolm didn’t even blink. “Certainly,” he said politely, moving back into the hallway. A moment later she could hear his footsteps on the stairs, could hear them quite clearly because he’d left her door open, the son of a bitch. But why?

Had Archer begun to suspect her? Had he really brought Malcolm to the island to unmask her? That would explain everything, including the man’s late-night wanderings. When it came right down to it, nobody set foot on Isla Mordita without Archer knowing exactly who and what they were. Malcolm would be no threat to Archer, and therefore no help to her. She was going to have to watch herself for the next few days.

That is, when she wasn’t watching Malcolm Gunnison.

Malcolm joined Archer MacDonald on the shady terrace that ran along one side of the house. The water in the swimming pool was sparkling in the sunlight, and the one called Rachel was tanning herself, topless, on the side. She really did have the most impressive pair of man-made tits, Malcolm noticed, unmoved. He had never been fond of plastic in bed.