Hotter Than Wildfire (18 page)

 
Baghdad, Green Zone, May 28, 2004, byline Sgt. Katina Petrescu

Investigators from Washington landed yesterday to investigate the loss of $20 million from the Green Zone. The loss was discovered by accountants the week before. Investigators believe the losses might date to last month.

  “The CPA was barely in control,” Harry explained. “Bremer said he needed money and it came. In C-130 transport planes, filled with pallets. The pallets contained forty boxes and each box had twenty bricks of one hundred thousand dollars each. The pallets were stored in a warehouse and just kept there. CIA agents would stroll in and stroll out with bricks in their arms. Sometimes they’d use wheelbarrows. It was like the Wild West out there. For a while, it rained money. They just kept it on hand in a storeroom, couple guys had the key. More than a billion dollars was lost, unaccounted for.”

“Gerald was stationed in Baghdad in 2004,” Ellen said. How he’d played that up. Tough-guy talk, together with coy references to how he couldn’t say exactly what had gone on. National security concerns, of course. Whereas the truth was, he’d stolen twenty million dollars. “His tour ended in June. He didn’t re-up. He came home and founded Bearclaw in July 2004.”

“Which immediately landed incredibly lucrative contracts from the U.S. government. Nice work. And look.” Nicole tapped a pink-tipped fingernail at the screen. “Look at the lead investigator’s name.”

“Frank Mikowski. That must have been the guy Arlen was referring to. Do you think he was bought off by Gerald?”

“No.” Nicole shook her head, her glossy hair rippling around her shoulders. “Not at all. I think the problem was, he wasn’t bought off.” She clicked to a new page and scrolled down. “Here. Looks like Mikowski investigated the wrong guy.”

This time it was a State Department cable, declassified on June 17, 2010, referring to events six years before.

Frank Mikowski had been found floating facedown in the Tigris River on June 3, 2004. Forensics established he’d died of a bullet wound to the head and had been dead for at least two days. Sunni insurgents were blamed.

Sam bent to kiss his wife’s cheek. “Nice work, honey.”

“Yes,” she smiled. It was so dazzling a smile her husband blinked. “It was.”

“Sunni insurgents, my ass,” Harry growled. “That wasn’t a terrorist takedown. He was executed to stop the investigation. And it worked, damn it.” Harry was glaring narrow-eyed at the screen as if it were personally responsible for the theft of twenty million dollars, the death of the investigator and the danger to Ellen. “I mean, people know Montez and know his operation is corrupt, but I don’t think anyone knows about this.”

“So we’ve tied him possibly to two murders—Mikowski’s and Arlen’s,” Sam said. Like Harry’s and Mike’s, his face had gone hard, eyes cold. At that moment, Ellen was really glad that they were her friends, not her enemies.

“And my agent, Roddy,” Ellen added. “Don’t forget him.”

Her heart gave a lurch. Roddy—dear, sweet, harmless Roddy. He was a sweetheart, dedicated to music, with a good ear and a good heart. Snuffed out like an irritating bug. As if he didn’t mean anything at all. It made her so
angry
. He’d merely been an obstacle for Gerald, who’d probably ticked him off a list of things to do to get his hands on her.

“Three murders. Definitely something he’d kill to keep quiet,” Mike said, jaws clenching. “Not to mention the theft of a fortune in cash.”

Ellen shivered, and the room went quiet.

Nicole checked her wristwatch and started. “Oh my gosh! I’ve got an eleven o’clock telephone appointment with a client. A New Yorker. They’re always so terribly punctual. I must run.”

“Thanks, Nicole.” Ellen smiled at her as she rose. Nicole was dressed in a beautifully tailored turquoise silk dress and pearls, her pregnancy just visible. She looked cool and professional and gorgeous, and she’d provided invaluable information. At that moment, Ellen loved Nicole. Nicole winked at her as she closed down her computer.

Ellen liked her so much. She was going to miss her. “See you this evening, then.”

The three men froze and turned to her as if she’d opened her mouth and toads had hopped out. Ellen looked from one hard face to another. “What? What did I say?”

“No way are you staying here alone.” It was a miracle he could talk at all, Harry’s jaws were clenched so tightly. He was looking at her with a
don’t even think of arguing
look. Harry was clearly not to be reasoned with, so Ellen turned to Sam, but he looked exactly the same as Harry, and then to Mike, who looked like he’d just chewed nails. “What? I thought it was safe here.”

“It is.” Harry looked like he’d just swallowed the nails Mike had chewed. “But—”

Nicole touched Ellen’s arm. “They do have very good security here, sweetie, but I think Harry would feel better if you would just come in to the office, where he could see you. Otherwise I don’t think he’d get any work done at all.” She shot a glance at her husband. “I know if I were in danger, Sam would want me by his side.”

“Absolutely.” He put his thick, muscled arm around his wife’s shoulders at the thought.

Ellen didn’t think Harry could possibly care for her as much as Sam cared for his wife, but Nicole was right. Harry was clearly a man who took his duty seriously, and right now, she was under his protection. If he wanted her where he could see her, he had every right. And if the thought of just sitting around while others worked wasn’t appealing, that was her problem, not theirs.

Unless…

“Sure, I’ll come in with you, but—I’d love to make myself useful. I don’t have Nicole’s investigative skills, but I’m a really good accountant. Tax time is coming up. Would any of you like me to check your returns, or prepare them if they aren’t ready?”

Four blank looks, which quickly turned into excitement, eyes wide, like kids just promised chocolate ice cream.

“Oh, man,” Nicole moaned. “Me me me! I hate bookkeeping!”

“Me, too!” the three men echoed in chorus.

Okay. So she had some work to do. It made her feel better.

Seattle

  At first she thought she was in her apartment, in bed, after a particularly nasty nightmare. Nightmares often accompanied her sleep. The one she had most often was running from terrible danger, only her legs wouldn’t move and she couldn’t scream. She’d wake up with a pounding heart, gasping and shivering and sweaty.

Kerry’s brows came together in puzzlement. How could this be? She was awake, she knew she was, but somehow still in the nightmare. She couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, she found, as she made a sound deep in her throat that came out soft and muffled.

She snapped her head back, tried to look at the ceiling, but her eyes wouldn’t open. All she could see was blackness.

“—out of it,” a man’s voice said.

“Yeah.” Pronounced
Yiah
. “She’s coming round.” Another man’s voice, not American. Australian?

Her senses returned, all at once, in a painful rush. She was blindfolded, gagged, tied up. To a chair, she found as she tried to kick her feet. They were bound at the ankles, and as she swung her bound ankles side to side they encountered spindly wooden columns. Chair legs.

Her heart nearly stopped.
Tom,
she thought, terror welling up, cold and icy.
He’s found me.

He was going to kill her, beat her to death, and her hands were tied. She had an escape, but she needed her hands for it and her hands were tied.

How could she not have imagined he’d tie her hands?

Because he wouldn’t.

Kerry remembered how Tom had laughed when she tried to hit back once. It had amused him. She remembered his disdainful laugh, the half-smile as she tried to defend herself. He’d studied martial arts since he was a boy. There was nothing she could do to him with her hands that would hurt. He’d never tie her hands. It was an ego thing.

She was puzzling over that when she heard quiet steps, much quieter than the thundering of her heart. The steps approached and she braced herself, but the steps walked past her, behind her. Hands at the back of her head, and the blindfold was pulled off.

At first she couldn’t see anything. There was a blinding light in her eyes. They hurt as they tried to accommodate.

There was the sound of something being scraped across the floor, and a figure came slowly into focus. Black shoes, black pants, black sweater, dragging a chair. Everything about him was elegant, expensive. Another scrape and she saw a face.

Hard, dark, triangular. High cheekbones, the kind of beard that grew dark after five p.m. Dark eyes, dark hair. A face she’d never seen before, a face she’d never forget.

But not Tom.

“Who—who are you?” she said, but the words were muffled by the gag.

The man flicked his forefinger and the man behind her untied the gag. Kerry dropped her head, coughed. Her mouth was completely dry.

The man had somehow understood. “Who am I?” He edged even closer and looked her straight in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What’s important is what I want. I’m looking for the woman who sings under the name Eve. Her real name is Ellen Palmer, but she’s not using that name.”

So. Kerry stared into the man’s blank black eyes. This was Irene’s Tom, worse than her own Tom. And apparently Irene wasn’t Irene. She wasn’t Eve, either. She was Ellen.

Kerry looked into those eyes and flinched. No wonder Irene—Ellen—had been on the run. Those black eyes were utterly dead, like the eyes of a crocodile or a corpse. His eyes didn’t even reflect the light. They were like two dark pools of stagnant water.

Impossible as it seemed, there was something worse than Tom.

Tom was crazy, no question. But no matter that his emotions made no sense, he felt them, and keenly. All he wanted, he said, was for her to be
his
and to be perfect. Even when he was hitting her, there was emotion there. Rage, a perverted and twisted kind of love, a need to dominate. His eyes had glowed with what he was feeling; it was almost visible on his skin.

This man felt nothing, nothing at all, which she now realized was scarier than rage.

Often she’d been able to talk Tom down, get him down from the ledge of crazy despair and wrongheaded love he’d felt. Reason with him, at least a little. Because somewhere in there was a man who was suffering, who couldn’t get a handle on his feelings. She’d stayed with him way too long, but part of it had been out of a misplaced sense of pity.

This man didn’t need pity. And he didn’t feel pity. He felt nothing.

It was there, in his eyes, in his face.

And at that moment, Kerry knew that she was dead. There was nothing in this man she could in any way appeal to. No common humanity, no mercy. There was none in him.

She needed her hands. They were duct-taped together. She needed them
now
.

“Where’s Ellen?” The question was quiet, factual. But she knew it was the first salvo of a coming firestorm.

She said the only thing she could say. “I don’t know.”

Those dead eyes watched her, watched her face. Could he tell she was speaking the truth? Was she? She knew where Ellen had gone, but she had no idea if she was still there.

Something of her ambiguity trickled through.

“You know,” he said flatly. “You’re just not talking.”

He gave a short nod of his head and Kerry felt a large, male hand land on her shoulder from behind. His hand moved and suddenly two fingers pinched a certain spot and pain exploded in her body. Hot, crackling pain, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Pain so intense she couldn’t even pull in the breath to scream. Pain so intense she thought her heart would stop.

Only gurgling sounds were making it past her throat, then a strangled keening. The man in front of her nodded again, the hand was lifted and Kerry sagged against the duct tape, gasping and shaking.

The man sighed. “We can do this all day and all night, you know. Just this and you’ll be reduced to a screaming mass of protoplasm at the end. My friend here touched a special plexus of nerves that is extremely painful in humans. He exerted minimal effort. He’s very strong and tireless. He can do this forever.”

The chair scraped even closer, and through her own sweat and terror, Kerry could smell him now. He actually smelled good—of clean linens and expensive leather and some costly male cologne. She knew that if she ever smelled that smell again she’d throw up.

The man behind her smelled of nothing at all. She hadn’t seen him yet, but already he seemed larger than life, inhuman as an insect or an alien.

“Now, the reason my friend here found that particular spot so very easily is that he’s an expert at extracting information.” The man in front of her was watching her carefully, gauging the effect of his words on her. He didn’t need to assess the effect, though. He terrified her and she didn’t know how to hide that. “He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s broken hundreds of men. Men who were very strong, highly trained to resist torture. And he broke them down into parts. He’d have them whimpering, begging for him to stop. He never stops until he gets what he wants. And he sure won’t stop with you because you’re a woman.”

She needed her
hands
!

Another scrape and a small table was brought forward into the circle of light. On it a leather case, much like a traveling case for jewelry. The man slowly opened it up, like opening up a flower for someone’s delight. First the left-hand flap then the right-hand one. The upper one, the lower one.

Kerry flinched and closed her eyes against the glare of the gleaming steel instruments.

“Now, these are not carpentry tools,” the man said casually. “They’re tools for extracting the truth out of living flesh.”