Driven by Fire (16 page)

They were back outside in a matter of minutes, and Jenny immediately pulled away from him, ignoring the fact that she was suddenly so much colder in the warm, tropical night air. “I want my own room,” she said stubbornly, knowing it was a lost cause.

“Be grateful you’ve got your own bed. I have no intention of letting you out of my sight now that we’re down here. You’d probably take off looking for Soledad the first chance you got, and believe me, you don’t have the intel to even start to find her.”

He was wrong about that. She intended to wait until he came up with the intel, and then bash him over the head and escape. It worked in the movies, and it should work in real life. If she happened to kill him then she could live with that.

The room was small, bare, and thankfully neat. There were two double beds, a dresser, a small table, and two chairs in the beige room, and Ryder dumped her suitcase on the one farthest from the door. She didn’t bother to protest—getting away from him wasn’t going to be that easy. She’d have to wait until he went out to make her escape. But escape she would, no matter how determined he was to keep her prisoner.

She sat down on the bed, kicking off her shoes. The bed sagged slightly, and it was too soft, but she didn’t give a damn. While he slept aboard the plane she’d been wide awake, trying to come up with a scheme that would lead her to Billy’s missing phone before Ryder could get to it.

Finding Soledad seemed to be the only lead they had, and even in Calliveria, Soledad’s dark, sloe-eyed beauty would stand out. If she had come through this port city, and chances were she had, someone would remember.

Ryder was watching her, but she leaned back on the bed and ignored him. If she could just get an idea of where Soledad was being held she could go after her. Ryder must have more than enough weapons on him that he could spare one. She’d learned to shoot years ago, at her father’s insistence when one of his enemies was making a power play, and she was a relatively good markswoman. She didn’t think she would hesitate when the time came, and if someone was threatening Soledad, after she’d already been through so much, then she’d shoot him without compunction.

She realized that Ryder was simply staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. She could always shoot him, she thought dispassionately. He deserved it, and if she were close enough she could avoid anything fatal. Just something that would hurt him, very, very badly.

“Now that I’ve got your attention,” he drawled, “maybe you could stop formulating plans for revenge and concentrate on the matter at hand.”

She didn’t want to talk to him, to pay any attention to him, but unbidden the words slipped out. “I was thinking I might shoot you.”

“You could always try. If you had a gun, that is. Which do you prefer, a nine millimeter or a twenty-two?”

He was calling her bluff. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as she thought he was. “Nine millimeter,” she said instantly. With a full clip they were easier to reload.

To her astonishment he went to the travel-worn duffel bag he’d brought, opened it, and fished out a handgun, setting it down on the bed between them. She stared at it.

“Go ahead. Take it. You could even shoot me with it if you were so inclined,” he said.

“I would have thought you’d be smart enough to know when you were in real danger of that happening,” she said, eyeing the gun but not picking it up.

“You want me dead after what I did to you today. I get that. I also get that, unlike me, you wouldn’t hurt or shoot anyone in cold blood no matter how much he deserved it. Pick it up.”

“I’d watch it with the orders if I were you,” she snapped. “Is that the same gun you had on board the container ship? The one you used to kill all those people? The one you would have used to kill my brother?”

“In fact, no. I’m keeping that one. It has a hair trigger and it would be too dangerous for someone not used to firearms.”

“I’m used to firearms. My father insisted on it.”

He looked skeptical. “And how many guns have you shot in the past ten years?”

None, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She picked up the gun, balancing the weight in one hand, and then pointed it directly at his chest. “I could always start again,” she said silkily.

He didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed. “Then you’d bring the local police down on your head. If you’re determined to shoot me, then wait until we’re out in the countryside and there are no witnesses. You could leave my body at the edge of the rain forest, and the scavengers would make short work of me.”

She shuddered, suddenly horrified at the thought, and she tried to put the gun back down. Her hands were shaking too much. “You deserve to be shot,” she said in a voice that sounded frankly sulky to her own critical ears.

“Many times over. Today was just one more blip in my life, nothing I haven’t done before or would do again. But not to you.”

She didn’t believe him. “Why not me?”

“I could tell you that I’m too tenderhearted to hurt you like that again, but you’d know that was a lie. I have no heart, tender or otherwise. But I also know that I got everything I need from you—you weren’t in a state to hold anything back. Therefore, you’re safe from my methods of interrogation.”

“Is that what you call it? I thought it was torture.”

For a moment she thought she saw him wince, then decided it was her imagination.

“When it comes to torture, what I did to you was really quite tame. Trust me, you run up against anyone involved with the Corsinis and this morning would feel like a walk in the park.” He tossed her small bag to her. “Get into your nightclothes. There’s nothing more we can do tonight, but the sooner we get started tomorrow morning, the better.”

“I’m not changing in front of you!”

“Suit yourself,” he said, yanking the black T-shirt over his head. “Change in the bathroom, or under the sheets, or whatever uptight, prissy way you want to do it. Tell you what—I’ll turn my back and you’ll have my word that I won’t watch.”

His actions suited his words, and she got a view of his tall, strong back, and for a moment she forgot everything. Forgot that she hated him, forgot that he was a killer, forgot that he’d hurt her.

He had the body of a warrior. His beautiful golden skin was marred by scars, a testament to the abuse of a decade or more, and she felt a momentary softening of her rage. A man who had gone through that kind of physical torture would have very little hesitation in hurting someone else if he needed to.

“Are you going to change or am I going to turn around?” he said, his voice bored. She heard the snick of his zipper, and she let out a little shriek.

“You’re not taking off all your clothes, are you?” she demanded.

“No, Parker. In deference to your maidenly modesty I’ll leave my shorts on. But if you don’t get moving . . .”

“I’m changing,” she said abruptly, starting to pull the shirt over her head. Pain seared through her arm, freezing her, and against her will she let out a cry.

He immediately spun around, to see her sitting on the bed in a totally ignominious position, the T-shirt half over her head, her arms stuck inside.

“Go away!” she said between gritted teeth. “I can handle it.”

She should have known she was wasting her breath. He took the hem of the T-shirt and slowly peeled it over her head, gently, relieving the pressure on her left arm as he did so. A moment later she was free, and she was sitting there in the plain-white cotton bra someone had bought for her, feeling totally exposed.

He wasn’t looking at her breasts. He was looking at her arm, and she looked down to see the row of bruises his hands had left on her pale flesh. She almost opened her mouth to tell him that she bruised easily, then shut it in time. He deserved any guilt or remorse she could thrust on him.

He turned his back without another word, picked his T-shirt off the floor, zipped up his fly, and walked out the door, closing it behind him. She heard the sound of the lock, and she stared after him in astonishment.

She wasn’t going to get away from him this quickly, and besides, she needed some sense of where she needed to go. She’d have to spend at least one more day with him. Stripping off her shorts, she slid down under the covers. Whoever had bought her clothes had failed to provide nightclothes, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep naked. The underwear would do.

She turned off the light between the beds, a pink ceramic monstrosity with writhing females all over it. He could find his own way back. She was tired, she was in pain, she was frightened, and she was mad. There were other emotions warring inside her, ones she didn’t want to examine too closely, and she needed sleep.
Please God
, she prayed she wouldn’t dream about Matthew Ryder.

Chapter Fourteen

Ryder walked out into the cool night, taking deep lungfuls of air. One look at Parker’s bruised arm and he’d felt oddly claustrophobic, as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

He’d hurt people before. Innocent people, ones who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’d never felt this way. He did what needed to be done, and he didn’t waste his time second-guessing his actions. Parker had been holding something back, something important, and her time had run out. He’d needed an answer, fast, and he got it the only way he knew how.

She should count her blessings
, he thought bitterly. He could have hurt her a lot more, gotten the answers even more quickly. Or he could have seduced her into telling him.

That possibility had been teasing him for days. He was past denying it—it was a simple fact of nature that he wanted her. There was something about her that drew him, and if he could figure out what it was, he’d have a better chance of fighting it. That, or give in to it.

He suspected she would have hated sexual coercion even more. Physical betrayal was bad enough. If he’d taken her to bed and forced the truth that way, she’d be in far worse shape than she was.

He wasn’t squeamish—sex was as good a weapon as anything else, and he used it when he needed to. He’d had a very good reason not to fuck Parker into giving up her secrets. He’d wanted to.

He presented a cold, unemotional exterior to those around him, but some of the things he’d done for the Committee ranged from painful to despicable. If he’d taken Parker to bed in order to get her secrets, he’d have liked it too much, and the betrayal would have been too devastating. He knew full well how physical abuse could shatter someone’s sense of self. She might not know it, but if he’d used sex, used pleasure instead of pain, she’d be in much worse shape.

But that didn’t change the fact that he’d marked her! How the hell had that happened? He’d always been able to judge the amount of pressure, just how much to hurt someone to get the truth, never to go beyond that point. Somehow he’d miscalculated, hurt her worse than he’d planned, hurt her so badly she trembled when he touched her, shook when he was close. Ms. Jennifer Parker, Esquire, wasn’t someone who broke easily—he, of all people, should know that. But he’d broken her. It was up to him to mend her.

He didn’t dare go far from the seedy inn—there was no telling who was watching them. He wasn’t naïve enough to think their arrival in Calliveria had gone unnoticed, and Parker would need protection whether she wanted it or not. She wanted to save Soledad, and he knew perfectly well she wanted to get hold of that cell phone and the secrets it held. I
t was his job to keep it out of her hands. In the end he didn’t give a shit about her slimy brother. There was information on that smartphone that would help anyone who wanted to take the place of His Eminence and the Corsini family with their human-trafficking empire, and he couldn’t allow such a volatile weapon to fall into the wrong hands. His job was to stop anyone before they got too solid a footh
old in the filthy business, and he needed that smartphone.

All Parker could see was her baby brother, and he couldn’t really fault her for that. She was seeing him with the eyes of an older sister, not impartially. She still clung to the pathetic belief that her brother hadn’t known what he was doing.

Billy Gauthier had to have known exactly what kind of harm his actions had caused, and he didn’t care. He’d continue, simply because he’d gotten away with it, and with the Gauthier connections the trafficking could soon become just as widespread as it had been with the Corsinis. Ryder wasn’t going to let that happen, no matter what the cost.

And that cost was Parker, lying huddled and bruised in a bed in a cheap motel in a third-world country. She was terrified of him, and he had no idea how to get her past that, or if it was even possible. He only knew he had to try.

The room was dark and silent when he came back in an hour later, a bottle of cheap whiskey in one hand, compliments of the nearest cantina. He didn’t dare get drunk—in fact he doubted he even could—but he needed something to take the edge off his self-loathing. What he should do was send Parker back home, have Remy keep watch over her while he did the dirty work.

But he didn’t want the womanizing Remy anywhere near her. He didn’t want her out of his sight. For all he knew she’d stumble into even more trouble in her desperation to save her brother from the consequences of his actions.

He set the bottle down on the table between the beds and kicked off his shoes. Yanking his T-shirt over his head, he stripped off his jeans, watching her body in the bed. He might almost believe she was asleep but for the faint tremor that shook the smooth surface of the covers.

He took another slug of whiskey, reached for the covers, and climbed into bed with her.

She erupted in panic, hitting at him, but he subdued her easily enough, wrapping his arms around to her to keep her from flailing, one of his legs keeping hers from kicking and kneeing him. He’d been prepared to put his hand over her mouth, but she was smart enough not to scream. She just keep fighting, and he let her wear herself out as he held her, her desperate struggles weakening, then fading away into a quiet, panting watchfulness. At least she’d stopped shaking so badly.

“That’s better,” he said quietly.

That provoked another flurry of struggles, and by the time she fell back she was totally out of breath and absolutely furious. Excellent. She could either be mad at him or afraid of him, and he wanted mad.

“Are you done now?” he demanded.

“Get the fuck out of my bed,” she said in a low, dangerous voice. “Get away from me, don’t touch me, don’t speak to me.”

“Or what?”

In response she tried to knee him in the groin, but he was too fast for her, slamming her legs back down with his. “You know, that would really piss me off if you connected,” he said mildly.

“Get away from me,” she said.

“Not likely. We’re not going to carry this off if you don’t get used to me, and I figure the only way that’s going to happen is a little aversion therapy. You may hate me, but you need to act like we’re in love. You look like a terrified rabbit every time I come near you, and even in this backwards country where men rule the roost, your panic seems extreme. You can’t be looking at me like I’m Jack the Ripper whenever you think no one will notice, and you can’t shake like a leaf whenever I touch you.”

A stray tremor ran over her body, but he simply held her tighter, careful not to hurt her bruised arm. She closed her eyes, looking exhausted and miserable. “Please,” she said, “just leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that. It’s just the two of us down here, and I need to know I can count on you. That you’ll obey orders, that you’ll use your impressive brain and stop acting with your heart. Yes, you want to save Soledad. Yes, you want to protect your brother. Yes, you’re afraid of me . . .”

Her eyes flew open. “No, I’m not!” she protested, another shiver giving the lie to her words.

He allowed himself a wry smile. “Could have fooled me. I’m not going to hurt you again. I told you that.”

“And you think I trust you?” She was relaxing more and more as they talked, his body warm against hers in the dark room. “You must be crazy.”

“You trust me, at least a little bit, or you wouldn’t have come with me.”

“I trust you not to kill me, and that’s about it. You weren’t even in the equation when I insisted on coming to Calliveria. It’s Soledad I care about.”

“And your brother’s cell phone,” he reminded her.

She bit her lower lip, and he could feel himself getting hard. He hoped she didn’t notice—she might think his attraction to her gave her some kind of power. It didn’t.

“The cell phone is the least of my worries. I don’t want Billy mixed up in trafficking any more than you do. I want it destroyed so it won’t be of use to anyone.”

“And I need it in one piece. One major bust won’t get rid of human trafficking, but it’s a start.” He could feel her heart beat against him. It had begun to slow, not to a steady pace, but at least closer to normal.

“I promise I won’t act skittish around you,” she said in a low voice. “Just . . . please, get out of the bed.”

“Sorry, Parker, but I’m sleeping here.”

“What?” Her voice rose slightly in horrified protest.

“Don’t worry—sex is the last thing on my mind,” he said, a complete lie. Sex was all he could think about, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it. “We’re just going to sleep together, so you can get used to me.”

“I can get used to you, I promise.” She was sounding slightly panicked, but he simply shook his head.

“This will work better. You’re just going to have to put up with it.”

“Lie back and enjoy it?” she said bitterly.

“I told you, this isn’t about sex. It’s about familiarity.”

He wanted to kiss her. She was looking at him with such distrust, and he wanted to quiet that distrust, to distract her, to take them both to that dark, dangerous place where everything fell away but the elemental connection between man and woman.

No
, he reminded himself.
If you screw her she’ll hate you even more
. Right now they had a job to do, and all his actions needed to be in service to that job. He turned her in his arms, tempering his strength with her reluctance, and then curved his body around hers, his leg still keeping her dangerous ones away from vulnerable parts.

She put up another fight, and she lay facing away from him, panting, furious. “I thought you said this wasn’t about sex,” she said after a long moment, and he knew she could feel his erection pressing up against her delectable butt.

“I said this wasn’t about sex,” he agreed. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you.”

She froze, as if the idea were novel. “Dream on,” she said finally.

“I intend to.”

She was wearing her underwear, which left vast amounts of skin uncovered, and she felt cold to the touch. He wrapped himself tighter around her, and slowly her skin warmed, slowly her heart dropped back to a normal pace. “That’s right, Parker,” he murmured in the ear he really, really wanted to bite. “Accept the inevitable, and trust in the fact that I already hurt you enough today. I’m not about to follow through and use sex to get what I want. I promise.”

“No sex and no violence?” she echoed with a trace of her old spark. “Now why don’t I believe that?”

“You can trust my word?”

Her laugh was bitter. “Until you change your mind.”

“No. No matter what happens, no matter how important it is, I promise you I won’t hurt you again.” It was an insane promise, one he couldn’t possibly keep if the stakes were high enough, and yet he made it.

“What’s to keep you from breaking your promise?”

“I make very few promises in this life,” he said after a moment. “Those I make, I keep.”

“You promise you won’t hurt me or . . . or try to seduce me?” she said in a small voice, her warm, sleek body still stiff in his arms.

“That’s not what I said and you know it. I said I wouldn’t hurt you. As for the rest, we’ll see what happens.” He kept his hands where they were, holding her against him, when he wanted nothing more than to slide them up her sleek torso to that damnable bra and slip it off her. “When two people are as strongly attracted as we are, then chances are something’s going to happen.”

“I’m not attracted to you. I hate you.”

“I believe you on the second. As for the first, I could prove you otherwise, but I’m too tired. Go to sleep, Parker. I’m not letting you go, so you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

“I hate you.”

“Don’t repeat yourself—it gets tiresome. Go to sleep, Parker. Or I just might change my mind.”

He could feel reaction shoot through her body. Alarm, and something else that she refused to recognize. Getting her warm and wet and willing was going to be an uphill battle, but he had every confidence of winning. In the meantime, he just needed to sleep.

Ryder actually expected her to sleep like this, with his big strong body wrapped around her and long bare legs entwined with hers? He was insane.

Damn him. If it were up to her, she’d never let him anywhere near her again. But it wasn’t up to her, and she realized with disgust that she was no longer trembling. Whether she wanted to believe him or not, apparently her body recognized when someone wasn’t a threat, and her muscles were slowly relaxing back against him, too weary to fight any longer. Her arm hurt, but by chance he’d managed to keep from making it worse in their struggles . . .

No, it wasn’t by chance. Ryder didn’t do things by chance. He knew he’d hurt her, he’d done it deliberately, but she had the sense he was shocked by her bruises. Maybe the other times he’d tortured women he hadn’t had to watch them undress afterward and see the results of his abuse.

No, scratch that. A man like Ryder could talk a ninety-year-old nun into bed, she had little doubt. There was an odd intimacy between them now, once they’d shared those moments of pain. It was sick, but it was the truth, and Jenny always believed in facing the truth head on. She wanted him to promise not to try to have sex with her, for the simple reason that sooner or later she’d give in. Even if her brain was screaming no, her body was molding itself to his in soft, animal acceptance.