Wildfire (Fire 3)

Closer, closer. Step, drag . . . the smear of blood making a path across the room. “Maybe I’ll blow off his skull too, and let you watch, before I finish with you,” he said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t want to do a job half-assed.”

Half-assed. Maybe Mal wasn’t dead yet. But if she didn’t move he would be. With an inhuman effort she shoved, and Mal rolled off her, a dead weight, as Sophie leapt for the sofa. Bullets whined over her head, but she was able to duck behind the sofa in time. For a second she thought the gun was gone, but then her fingers closed around the butt, and she cocked it as she pulled it out from the cushions, aimed it, and fired, over and over and over again.

Each bullet hit Archer. He recoiled as they struck him, his chest, his neck, his face, the force of the last one spinning him around until he fell on the floor, his gun skittering far out of reach. A smart operative would wait where she was to make certain the danger was passed, but she wasn’t smart and she wasn’t an operative. She didn’t even look at what remained of her husband; she went straight to Mal’s body, turning him over.

Archer had shot him in the chest, and blood was pouring from the wound. He was unconscious, his color was pale, and when she fumbled for a pulse it was thin and thready.

“Don’t you dare fucking die on me!” she screamed at him, ripping off her shirt and pressing it against the wound. “You goddamned noble idiot, you don’t even like me. Why the fuck would you die to save me?”

His eyes fluttered open for a moment, focusing on her. “Who says I don’t like you?” he whispered, and closed them again.

She cried then. Loud, miserable howls as she pressed the shirt against his wound. He didn’t open his eyes again, the shirt was soaked with blood, and she was making so much noise she didn’t hear the helicopter land, or the pounding of booted feet, until someone reached for her and tried to pull her away.

She fought them, screaming that she wouldn’t leave Mal, but they were stronger, and people were bending over Mal, and she quieted. Whoever was holding her released her, and she fell back on the blood-streaked floor, numb.

To her left lay Archer’s body, his long limbs splayed out, his mouth and eyes open in shock. On her right medics were working on Mal, at least she assumed that’s what they were. They’d gotten a breathing tube in and someone was working a bag over his mouth, forcing air into his lungs. His shirt had been cut off, the gaping wound exposed, and it was even worse than she thought. She felt dizzy, sick, staring at him as they tried to jolt his heart into working again.

A hand touched her arm, and she yanked it away, but he was inexorable. She looked up to see a tall man with dark blond hair, a cane over one arm, and then she remembered who he was. She’d met him years ago when she’d trained with the Committee. His name was Madsen, Peter Madsen.

“Come with me, Miss Jordan,” he said in crisp British accent. “There’s nothing we can do for him now. They’ll do everything possible.”

“I’m not leaving him,” she said fiercely.

“Yes,” he said gently, “you are.”

Everything went black.

Chapter Twenty-One

Sophie moved through the French Quarter in the rain, head down, newspapers clutched in her arms. Malcolm Gunnison had been dead for three months and Sophie was still in denial. Her therapist had warned her about it—the longer she refused to accept his death, the harder the eventual grieving would be, and Sophie had dutifully said yes, she knew, and she would work on it.

In fact, there wasn’t any particular advantage in denial. Even if she couldn’t believe he’d really died on that island, she was still grieving, alternating between anger and feeling numb. Pictures kept playing in her mind, Mal looking at her with that half smile, Mal on the floor, bleeding out. Her heart was twisting inside her, but damn it, he wasn’t dead.

The trolley cars were packed in the rain. It was tourist season, close to Mardi Gras, and everyone in the city seemed amped up. Everyone except her.

Even the businesslike

operatives in the house in the Garden District had lightened up, just a bit, but the mood wasn’t catching. Sophie knew that sooner or later she was going to have to accept the truth, but until then she was just putting one foot in front of the other.

She got off at her stop and walked up Magazine Street to the old mansion that housed the new American branch of the Committee. The plaque outside said American Committee for the Preservation of Democracy, but she doubted anyone was fooled. Apart from the occasional ballsy tourist who showed up requesting a tour, no one came around, no solicitors or religious fanatics, and those who did show up came in the back way.

She was one of the few people who used the front door, but then, she was part of the decoration. She’d been working in the front office, a supposed receptionist, for the past two months, with James Bishop and Matthew Ryder looking out for her. She knew she had Peter Madsen to thank for it, and she didn’t give a fuck, but she knew she’d better do something with her time.

Her apartment in the French Quarter had seemed perfect until Mardi Gras started approaching, and each night the noise got worse. She had the firm conviction that by the weekend there’d be no sleeping at all.

“Morning, Sophie, darling,” Remy Vartain said as he scooped the newspapers out of her arms. “Still raining out there?”

“Don’t I look like a drowned rat?” she countered. She liked Remy, despite his charm and exceptional good looks. She wasn’t in the mood to be charmed, but with Remy she couldn’t help it. He made her laugh. The others, Bishop and Ryder, treated her a little like glass, as if she’d shatter with one nudge. They hadn’t seen what she’d done to Archer MacDonald without blinking.

But no one was offering her a job as an operative, despite her training, and she didn’t want one. She was just biding her time.

She had no family left—her elderly aunt had died the year she graduated from Sarah Lawrence. When she’d gone to work for the Committee, she’d severed any close friendships, and now she had nothing. Scratch that. She had a bank account so hefty that she always thought the number was a mistake.

Peter Madsen was now head of the Committee, and he had determined that she was still under its employment during her time with Archer, despite her rejecting her mission and their support. That entitled her to almost three years of hazard pay, and the Committee paid very well indeed.

She had a tentative plan. She was going to buy a house in the country, though for the life of her she couldn’t decide where. She rejected the South—she’d had enough of warm sunshine to last her for a good many years. She wanted seasons again, blinding winter snowstorms and green hills and crystal blue lakes. She wanted to be miles away from civilization—she could make do with going out once a week for groceries. Sooner or later she was going to have to accept the truth about Malcolm, and she needed to be alone to do that. Someplace where she could go outside and scream and no one would come running. Someplace with water, so she could go kayaking in the early morning and then drink her coffee on a covered porch. Someplace to open the wound, let it bleed, and heal, if such a thing were possible.

She headed into the front office, pushing open the pocket doors that slid like silk on their tracks. Her ridiculously thin computer monitor awaited her, with its innocuous screensaver of alpine peaks and its magic button that accessed the closed-circuit cameras. She could lock this place down with one stroke of a key, something that astonished her. Archer hadn’t let her near a computer, and with no commercial TV, no magazines, she had no idea how technology had changed in a few short years. She remembered the iPhone she had when she’d first been in London—it was a far cry from the skinny little sliver that rested in her purse.