Page 23 of Hotter than Wildfire

Fuck this.

All Ellen’s fault. All of it. Goddammit.

The money. It all came down to the money.

When he’d appropriated the pallets of bills that were just fucking lying there on the ground, without even a fucking security guard, he’d planned on that being the first step. He’d seen it all in one powerful flash. The way to turn his life around, the way to become a player.

And he’d done it, hadn’t he? The money had bought him enough land to qualify as a fucking country, and enough manpower to form an army.

Security work was low hanging fruit in the early years of the war, contracts flowed in like a river rushing to the sea. And then…the waters slowed, reduced to a trickle.

A few incidents that were reported back to the Pentagon. At first, he didn’t take them seriously. So a few ragheads got offed. Who gave a shit? No State Department or Pentagon official Bearclaw guarded got hurt. That was the bottom line.

But Montez had enemies and they started a whispering campaign and the contracts slowed down. There was a lawsuit. Which he won, but it cost him two fucking million dollars.

The shooting range was expensive to keep up, and he was shelling out half a million a month in salary. The company was leaking money and he’d managed to negotiate the last two government contracts by a hair.

If Ellen ever showed up and had anything resembling proof, he was a goner.

The full resources of Bearclaw were now concentrated on finding Ellen Palmer, known as Eve, and wiping her off the face of the earth.

Apartment 8D

La Torre

Coronado Shores

April 9

Ellen opened her eyes, then closed them immediately, trying to process the white nothingness covering her entire field of vision. Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? White, flat, featureless?

Forever?

She ached. Every muscle in her body ached, except her shoulder, which burned. Worse was the utter feeling of exhaustion, weakness, helplessness.

The only good news was that if she were dead, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Unless of course this was hell.

There was no noise except for some rhythmic…rustling sound. Or whooshing sound. Like waves on a beach. But how could that be?

She was lying on her back on what felt like a bed. Her hands moved slightly, fingering cotton. Sheets. One hand couldn’t move well. She twisted it slightly and something tugged. Tape, a needle. An IV line.

The sharp smell of alcohol, the soothing smell of clean linen. A faint hint of coffee in the air.

A hospital? Or did death smell like alcohol and clean sheets and coffee?

She opened her eyes again, and again saw an expanse of something white. Nothing for the eyes to fix on, just a featureless plain.

“You’re awake,” a deep voice said. Panicked, Ellen turned her head. The world tilted crazily, then righted itself. Of course. That wide, empty expanse was the ceiling.

Right next to her was a man sitting in a chair, looking tired, jaws clenched.

Her gasp sounded loud in the quiet of the room.

The last time she’d seen this man, he’d been running toward her, gun in hand.

Oh God, oh God.

Harry Bolt. The man she’d so foolishly turned to for help. The man who’d betrayed her, the man in the pay of Gerald Montez.