Page 55 of Hotter than Wildfire

Ellen was beautiful, incredibly talented, and kind-hearted. In another, better world, that would make her respected and admired. In this world, where men like Gerald Montez ruled, that made her road kill.

Harry’d lost Crissy. He hadn’t been able to protect his baby sister, no matter how hard he’d tried. The sweetest little girl in the world and an ogre had snuffed her out like a candle.

This stopped, right here, right now.

Ellen was not going to fall in Montez’s hands. Not now, not ever.

And he, Harry, was going to have to pull his head out of his ass, PDQ, because his blind fear for her wasn’t any use to her at all. She needed him razor sharp and cool, not this trembling wreck of a man, terrified of losing her just as he’d lost his sister.

“Start at the beginning, honey.” Everyone’s head turned to him, which meant he’d been sounding like a lunatic before. Harry nodded his head—don’t worry, I’m back—and Sam and Mike dipped their heads slightly—glad to hear it. “From when you ran. The reason you ran. You said you’d been working for Bearclaw for a couple of years, right?”

“Yes. Over two years.” She was sitting upright, voice clear and steady, hands clenched tightly in her lap. “I kept coming up against inconsistencies, things that skirted fraudulent accounting. He thought I wouldn’t notice anything. He hired a CPA because the law required it, that was all, but he was fiddling the books. That was clear to me by the first week on the job.”

Man, did you hire the wrong woman, Harry thought.

“So like I said, there was this big company party on the 18th of May, at the Hyatt Regency. One of Gerald’s minions, Arlen Miller, comes up to me, puts his arm around my shoulders and starts telling me how lucky I am to have hooked up with a guy as smart as Gerald. He was so drunk you could have lit his breath. I didn’t really listen at the beginning and I’m sorry now that I didn’t. But all I wanted was his heavy arm off my shoulders and to get home. He was talking about something that happened in April in Kabul and how Gerald was The Man. And that The Man had taken forty million. Then Gerald looked at him and this guy turned paper white. Gerald looked scary mad.”

Harry knew what happened when men like Gerald Montez were enraged. Everyone turned to him.

“Harry,” Nicole said, blinking. “Did you just growl?”

He shook his head sharply, getting rid of some bad thoughts. He picked up Ellen’s hand and brought it to his mouth. “Remember you’re safe now.”

Sam and Mike looked at each other again. Harry didn’t give a shit. This was his woman. One thing for sure—Sam understood. He’d tear the throat out of anyone who threatened Nicole.

“Can you try and remember more about exactly what this man, this Arlen, said?”

Ellen sighed. “I’ve tried over and over, but he was so drunk. Half of what he was saying didn’t make sense. Arlen mentioned another name, but I haven’t been able to find any mention of him in any database. Malowski. Or Makorski. Something like that. Arlen was really really stewed.” She wrinkled her nose. “And he had a sort of speech defect, like a lisp. He sprayed spittle, ew. I was too busy trying to stay away from his breath and the spray.”

“Nicole,” Sam said.

“On it,” she answered, going to Harry’s laptop.

She switched it on and disappeared. To all intents and purposes, Nicole was no longer in the same room with them.

Harry was really really good with computers, but Nicole was better at research. That hurt. She ran a translation agency and was used to carrying out major research for her translations. Her agency had a list of expert collaborators that spanned the globe, men and women who did online terminology research for a living and they communicated daily. She also had low level clearance to check government databases. As a result, Nicole could find anything.

“So you ran when this guy showed up dead?” Sam looked at Ellen.

“Yeah,” she answered softly. “I spent three months on the road, and I ended up in Seattle.”

Three months on the road. Harry didn’t have to ask what that had been like. Three months from anonymous motel to flea-bitten boarding house, because those were the kind of places that didn’t require ID. Sleeping lightly, looking over her shoulder.

Sam leaned forward. “So Montez got to your agent. How’d he know where to look? You kept Eve under cover.”

Ellen shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. I was really careful. The records were produced by a shell company that I set up very carefully. Registered in the Caymans and with no connection to me. Paying my taxes took real creative accounting, let me tell you.”

“Were you this big draw at the bar where you worked?” Sam asked.

“No. The bar’s clientele is…well, let’s say messed up. Most of them don’t pay too much attention to anything. I can’t imagine anyone there connecting the waitress who sang a few nights a week with Eve. Except, of course, for Kerry.”

“Kerry?” Mike swivelled his head, frowning.

“Dove,” Harry and Mike said at the same time.

Mike’s frowned deepened. “You guys met? Talked? What are the odds? That’s not good.”

No, it wasn’t. Kerry was supposed to stay undercover forever. Never let her secret out.