Page 85 of Hotter than Wildfire

The car went fast around a corner and Ellen rocked forward then backward, scraping her arm against the seat backs. Her right arm hurt more than the rest of her, hurt in a specific place, as if she’d been stung by a giant insect.

She looked down and saw a puncture wound on her right biceps, frowning. A scene flared in her head. She was running…running somewhere. Somewhere important. It was essential that she get there. And…and someone behind her, running toward her. Tall man. Blond. Running, grabbing her arm, blacking out…

She’d been stung by an injection of some kind of narcotic and it still clouded her mind. Worse, much worse, she was a prisoner, in a car with Gerald Montez and another man.

She could remember the blond man, unfamiliar but a type. Hard face, hard lean body, very fit. A soldier, she’d bet anything on it. A soldier hired by Gerald to find her. And he had.

It was her worst nightmare, come to terrifying life.

Helpless. Gerald’s prisoner.

Heading for a plane where they’d take her to where he could hurt her as long as he wanted and where Harry could never find her.

SIXTEEN

Sam drove. Harry wasn’t in any condition to. He said he needed to follow the GPS signal but all three of them knew it wasn’t that. He’d drive them into a tree or off a cliff if he was behind the wheel.

He called out directions to Sam because tracking a monitor and talking seemed to be the extent of his motor skills right now. He had to get his head out of his ass, fast. They were heading toward a showdown and he couldn’t afford nerves, couldn’t afford not to have his head in the game. Even if he was shit scared.

Not for himself. He’d been trained by the best. Delta operators were the finest elite troops on the face of the planet, SEALs be damned. It had taken an RPG travelling over 8000 meters a second to take him down. But two men? With Mike and Sam by his side? No motherfucker on earth could withstand them.

Except Ellen was caught right in the middle. Lovely, gentle Ellen, who had no tactics in her, who wouldn’t know how to move, how to find shelter, how to defend herself…she was a gorgeous sitting duck and it was all too easy to imagine her catching a bullet to the head, caught in a crossfire.

All too easy to imagine her head exploding into a pink mist, imagine her doubled over, gut-shot, insides spilling out, imagine her shot in the back, unable to move.

God, he couldn’t think straight. It drove him crazy. He couldn’t even sit still in the same space with the images zinging around his brain.

“Easy.” Mike’s big strong hand reached out from the back seat and settled heavily on his shoulders. He’d seen Harry twist and turn with the horror of his thoughts.

He had to stop this.

He was dragging his buddies, his brothers, the men he loved most in the world, into a firefight where he could get them killed because he couldn’t focus.

And he couldn’t. Not even clamping down hard on his thoughts the way he’d done in rehab, concentrating so furiously sweat broke out. It didn’t work. His mind kept sliding to Ellen strapped to a chair, glorious hair gone, in its place a red cap…

His stomach wrenched hard, bile came up. He clamped his jaws shut.

“Don’t puke now,” Sam said, not taking his eyes off the road. Where traffic allowed, he shot over the 100 mph mark. If Sam weren’t such a goddamned good driver, they’d have killed someone by now. “Puking’s not going to do her any good, trust me on this one.”

Sam had barfed right into their fancy designer wastepaper basket when Nicole had been kidnapped over a year ago. “I know what you’re going through, buddy, believe me. But you’ve gotta keep your head, otherwise…” His own jaws clamped shut before he could say anything more.

They’d all seen that video. They could all imagine Ellen being skinned alive. Maybe…right…now.

Harry was sweating so hard he stank like a goat. He wiped his hands carefully on his jeans because whatever was going down, he needed his hands dry.

“We all set up back there, Mike?”

“Yeah, got everything handy.” While Harry was negotiating Sam through the streets on the tail of that fucker Montez, Mike had been lining his ducks up in a row. Harry knew that right now, Mike could lay his hands in a second on whatever they could possibly need. “We’ll be ready whenever we get a clear shot.”

Harry glanced down at his handheld, watching the screen.

Mike looked down over his shoulder. “What’d you bug? Are they going to be able to find it?”

Harry knew what he was thinking. If there was a bug in Ellen’s purse or in a pocket, they could scan her and throw it out the window when they found it.

But he’d been smarter than that. Ellen had stepped out three times on smart men, including himself, just slipped away.

“They can’t find anything because it’s wrapped up in a special porcelain casing that gives off a signal on a very high frequency. They won’t pick up on it.”