Hotter Than Wildfire (10 page)

“No names. We met during Moondust. I headed the team. Do you remember me?”

Moondust had been a private black op just over the Pakistani border, technically illegal. Piet and four of his men had been guarding and leading a
New York Times
journalist on the hunt for al Qaeda’s bioweapons expert. The journalist had gone on to win a Pulitzer. What the article didn’t mention was that their GPS had died on them and they had gone four miles into no-no land, over the border into Pakistan, and had been shot up by a cove of Taliban.

Piet had wasted every single tango but he was left with two dead and two wounded, including the journo. If the ISI, the Pakistani secret service, had caught them, the journalist would have been thrown into jail till the end of time and Piet and his men would have been hanged, not without some pain first.

Montez had been following a lead that one of Bin Laden’s comms guys had his headquarters in a mud hut. But the mud hut was just that—full of goat herders with their goats—and Montez was ready to pull back with his men when he got an SOS from Van der Boeker.

Technically, it wasn’t Montez’s business at all. In fact, technically, helping mercenaries was illegal. But hell, it was only a couple of miles out of his way, he had manpower up the wazoo and it was a chance to get an IOU out of Piet van der Boeke. Better than money in the bank.

His team cut communication with their FOB for a couple of hours and went out to rescue Piet, his wounded and the journalist. The journalist was sworn to silence about the rescue, wrote an article that was turned into a book that became a bestseller and didn’t once mention Piet or Montez.

“Yiah. I remember you, mate. You need something?”

“Bad. I’ll send a company jet for you. Are you near Lungi?” The Freetown airport was the staging area for most of western and central Africa. Busy and corrupt, a place where one more corporate jet wasn’t going to be noticed.

“Yiah.”

“Can you be there by fourteen hundred hours local time tomorrow?”

“Yiah.”

“Good. The corporate jet will be in the name of—”

“I know the name.” And he hung up.

Montez stared at his screen for a moment, then powered down the laptop, knowing that he’d just done the only thing possible to correct a really bad situation.

Yiah.

 
Prineville, Georgia

  Piet van der Boeke hadn’t aged in the past eight years, Montez thought. His face had been deeply tanned and weatherbeaten eight years ago and still was. He was still wiry and lithe, moving swiftly down the steps that had been rolled up to the Gulfstream at the private airfield as if he hadn’t just spent the past ten hours sitting down in a pressurized compartment.

“Thanks for coming.” Montez clasped his hand at the bottom of the stairs. Piet’s grip was strong and dry.

“No problem.”

A car and a driver were waiting. Two minutes after Piet stepped onto the tarmac, they were driving away. The flight had been registered as a cargo flight. No one knew Piet was in America.

They both understood that the chauffeured limo was no place for a briefing, so they didn’t talk. Montez opened a small fridge and silently handed Piet a bottle of spring water. Unlike most mercs, Piet was a teetotaller.

Montez had the driver go straight into the detached six-car garage that was connected to the main house via an underground passageway. Piet made no comments, just observed everything with his sharp gaze.

For the first time, Montez wondered what someone would think of his home. It was more than thirty thousand square feet and as luxuriously appointed as the crazy fag decorator from Atlanta could make it. Piet was an observer. He carefully studied his prey, both in and out of their natural habitats. Montez wondered uncomfortably just what Piet made of his own habitat, what he thought it said about him.

He shook that thought off irritably. He was going to offer Piet over half a million bucks for this job—who cared what the fuck he thought?

Finally, they were in Montez’s study. Montez had his study swept for bugs twice a day. The windows were specially treated to break up laser beams; there was a thirty-foot perimeter around the entire house with motion sensors. No one was going to thread in a snake camera and mike.

They were secure.

Montez indicated a big, comfortable leather armchair and watched as Piet sank into it. After pouring himself a generous portion of a twenty-year-old Talisker he sank down into another one.

Piet might be a teetotaller, but that was no reason for Montez to deprive himself.

He studied the South African for a moment. Piet sat quietly, accepting the scrutiny. “I’m offering half a million,” Montez began, and Piet held up a big, callused hand.

Montez didn’t even let an eyelash flicker, but inside he was groaning with dismay. Had Piet’s prices gone way up? Half a million was a real stretch for him at this particular moment, with no government contracts in sight. Fuck, what would happen if Piet’s price had gone up to a million? He didn’t even know if he had that kind of spare cash.

“I don’t want any money,” Piet said, and Montez’s mouth fell open before he was able to school his face back to blankness. “You saved my life and I owe you. I always pay my debts. But I do this one job for you and that’s it. You never call me again. Is that agreed?”

The bank account in Montez’s head went
ping!
He shifted the half mil back onto the assets side and tried not to nod too enthusiastically his agreement. “Fine by me. And thanks.”

Piet waved that away. “So…who am I after?”

“A woman.” Montez watched him carefully. For some reason, some mercs had problems with women and kids, which made no sense to him. A gig was a gig.

But Piet merely nodded. “Who is she?”

“Ellen Palmer.” Just saying the name made Montez’s blood speed up. “Used to be head accountant here.”

Piet’s eyes were the lightest blue Montez had ever seen. In direct sunlight they looked so pale they were almost white. “Tell me about her.”

Montez gulped down the rest of his whiskey to calm himself down. Just thinking of the bitch…“What do you want to know?”

His voice was calm, thoughtful. “What kind of woman is she? Flashy, loud? Quiet, bookish? Any hobbies? Is she the friendly kind? What does she look like?”

Well, that was something Montez could answer easily. He slid across two photos, both taken at a company picnic a year and a half ago.

Piet studied them carefully, spending about five minutes on each photo. Montez fidgeted in his chair. Damn, he wanted to get
going
. Finally, Piet spoke. “So tell me, tell me everything.”

Montez did, leaving out only the dollar amount of the missing pallets in the Green Zone in Baghdad and what happened to Arlen Miller.

“And then?” Piet’s voice was so fucking calm.

“And then the bitch just…disappeared. Been gone for a whole fucking year. I had men fan out, I had her phone tapped, I got her mail, I checked her credit cards. Nothing. It was as if she had vanished off the face of the fucking earth.”

“But then you ran her down again.”

Montez squinted suspiciously. “How the fuck did you know that? No one knows that.”

“It only stands to reason. You wouldn’t have called me in now if you hadn’t. You found her and then you lost her.”

Put like that, it made Montez’s blood pound heavily through his veins. She’d slipped right through the fingers of two of his guys in Seattle. And it was a good thing his three guys in San Diego were already dead because he wanted to kill them all over again for letting her get away. Again.

“Yeah. There’s this singer who became real popular, only no one knows her real identity. She goes by the name of—”

“Eve,” Piet said, and raised his eyebrows slightly at Montez’s expression. “Music travels the world, Gerald. And there’s only one singer in the world whose identity is a secret. Most of them are—how would you Americans put it? Very
out there
. How did you connect the two?”

“Sheer chance.” Montez felt the bile rise up in his stomach and swallowed it back down. “There was a radio on in the background at a restaurant about ten days ago. I heard a voice, a song. I’d heard them before. Ellen was singing that song in her office one day. It turned out that the song was written by this Eve, and I recognized the voice and the song, so I put two and two together.”

“I understand she’s been pretty good up until now about keeping her identity a secret,” Piet said thoughtfully. “I heard she recorded in a separate room from the musicians. And she’d have the money now to buy herself a lot of privacy.”

“Uh huh. But she didn’t think to protect herself against the one guy who knew her identity.”

“The agent.”

Montez nodded.

“Where’s the agent now?”

“Bear bait in the Cascades. He
was
in Seattle. So was she. She’d been there nine months.”

“What did you get out of him?”

Montez ground his teeth. “Not much. He didn’t know her real name, he never found out where she lived. She’d tell him where to meet him—some café or park bench. She never gave him zip.”

Piet narrowed his eyes. “Except, I’m guessing, her cell number.”

Montez nodded. “Yeah. It was a prepaid job, but we got an address from that. We were waiting outside her apartment. Bitch never showed and then the cell was turned off. The next ping we got was two days later, in San Diego, of all places. Had to really scramble to get men there. Luckily, three of my men were working in Tijuana, so they left that job and came up. The phone was in a hotel room. My men called and the front desk said she was out. So they laid out an ambush.” He ground his teeth. “My men are
good
. They all know what they’re doing. I wasn’t anticipating any trouble. In fact, I’d flown back here from Seattle because they had orders to bring her here. I’ve got…business with the bitch and wanted to be ready for her. But something happened and three good men are dead and she’s still in the fucking wind.”

“She had protection,” Piet said.

“Oh yeah.” It still burned. “One guy. One gun, one guy.” He met Piet’s eyes and saw that he understood completely. “Wherever she is, she’s got protection.”

Piet went silent for a full ten minutes. Montez couldn’t stand it. He poured himself another whiskey. He’d puzzled this long enough. Let someone else work it out, goddammit.

Piet suddenly stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah? Where to? San Diego?”

“No, Seattle.” He pronounced it
See-ehttel
. “Nose around. We’ll dig up your bear bait, stake it out, rattle her, make her show herself.”
Hehsilf.
“Then down to San Diego.”

Montez got up slowly, a little dizzy. “If we’re going to dig around for intel, you’re going to have to do something about that accent of yours. Sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“Dude. Can’t believe you said that.” Piet plastered a hand over his heart, looking pained. His baritone switched to that of a suburban dad who coached Little League, with just a touch of surfer in it. Indistinguishable from a million other American male voices. He shook his head sorrowfully. “Hurt my feelings, man. Don’t do that again.”

San Diego

  The next time Ellen woke up, he was still by her side, looking just as solid, as irremovable as before, only with a few extra lines in his face.

It was morning, late morning of a sunny day, to judge from the buttery quality of the sunshine. The windows were open, light cotton curtains fluttering in the breeze. The wind carried in a soft, regular plashing sound. They were near the ocean.

She moved her head, her hands. No more IV line. Her hands were free. She twisted slightly, ease in her movements. Her shoulder was a little sore, but the fiery pain was gone.

Her gaze roamed quickly around the room then landed back on Harry Bolt’s face. He looked older, grooves etching deeply in his cheeks, smudges of exhaustion under his eyes.

“Hi.” The deep voice was quiet, one corner of his mouth lifting in a half smile.

“Hi.” She felt breathless. It wasn’t physical weakness. She felt better, as if someone during the night had lifted that boulder from her chest.

The day was bright and sunny. The sound of the ocean pulsing melded with the faint sounds of a jazz sax in another room. She could smell salt water, fresh cotton and…coffee?

She pulled in a deep breath. “Am I smelling what I think I’m smelling?”

A smile flickered on his somber face. “Absolutely. As much breakfast as you can eat.” His hand covered hers. “Please tell me you feel hungry.”

“Oh yeah,” she breathed.

His hand over hers was hard and warm, so warm some heat trickled up her arm. His smile had warmed her, too.

Um, actually, to tell the truth, his smile hadn’t just warmed her. His smile had sent a burst of heat running through her entire body, the most amazing sensation. The sensation of…of life.

Suddenly, she couldn’t stay on her back like a half-dead creature for one second longer. She bent her legs, digging in her heels, lifted herself up on her forearms…and found herself sitting up, pillows at her back. He’d lifted her up with total ease, as if she were a child. Carefully and smoothly.

“There you go.” He smiled into her eyes and for the very first time, Ellen realized how incredibly attractive this man was. The outsized body, the gorgeous golden coloring—even his stubble glinted gold over that square-jawed face—it all added up to one hugely attractive package. Her fear of him had masked it, but the fear was gone now and she felt it in full.

That, in itself, was amazing. Something about the time she’d spent on this bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, had drained the fear right out of her.

She had a sudden muscle memory of him holding her hand for hours. Days.

“What day is it?” she asked suddenly.

“Thursday.”

Ellen blinked. “I’ve been out for
four days
?”

“You haven’t been out all this time, no. You woke up a few times.” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember?”

Maybe. Awareness was seeping back into her consciousness, a friend that had been gone too long. “Where am I?”

“My place. This is my study.”

Her eyes refocused on him. “I’ve been here four days,” she repeated, just to get it straight.

“Yeah.” His lips pressed together into a thin line. “I told you this before. I didn’t take you to a hospital. You were shot and hospitals and doctors must report gunshot wounds to the police. I imagined you didn’t want that. Those men meant business.”

“You’re right,” she whispered with a shudder. “I didn’t want that.”

“And I didn’t want it either, because you can be sure Gerald Montez is watching hospitals and monitoring police stations.” He pulled his chair closer to the bedside, the chair’s legs scraping along the hardwood floor. He tightened his hand over hers. “He has no idea where you are. And it’s going to stay that way.”

“Um, to tell you the truth, I don’t know where I am, either.”

“I told you. My place.”

“Which is?”

“Coronado Shores.” His eyes widened at her blank look. “You don’t know San Diego, do you?”

Ellen shook her head, amazed that it didn’t hurt. “No, I’ve never been here before. I’m assuming it’s along the beach, because it sounds like the ocean out there. So, you patched me up.” She moved her right shoulder, lifted her right arm, moving with ease. Above all, that horrible feeling of weakness was gone.

She looked down at herself. She had a vague memory of wearing a huge T-shirt, but now she had on a pale peach nightgown. Pure silk. Absolutely gorgeous. Possibly La Perla. “More than patched me up. You seem to be pretty prepared for caring for women who’ve been shot. You’ve got a hospital bed, an IV line, presumably surgical instruments.” She brushed her hands along the soft peach material. “Silk nightgowns. Do you have a habit of rescuing women?”