Driven by Fire (21 page)

Why did everyone want to hurt her? Jenny thought. How the hell had she gotten involved in this mess? It all led back to Billy and her father, two people who’d do nothing to ransom her from a militant army of thugs. Billy didn’t have the money, and her father simply didn’t care.

“How did you even know I had the smartphone?” She rose to her feet at Soledad’s gesture. She towered over the smaller woman, but even if Soledad hadn’t held a gun Jenny wouldn’t have made the mistake in thinking she could best her. All the watered-down martial arts training she’d gone through in her teens would be nothing against the determination of one small, vicious woman.

Soledad laughed. “How do you think? Your brother told me.”

Ryder was in a particularly foul mood, one he attributed to simple lust. After all he’d spent the night pressed up against a nubile female, one who interested him far too much, and he hadn’t done a damned thing about it. A case of blue balls would put anyone in a temper.

His life had gotten so fucking complicated since he’d met Ms. Jennifer Parker, Esquire. He wasn’t the kind of man who let women mess up his life, and Parker should have been nothing more than an inconvenience, one he could pass off to someone else, but from the very beginning he wasn’t letting anyone else near her. He was still furious with her about her lies, furious that she’d covered for her nasty little fuck of a brother, but he could understand. Reluctantly, of course, because he’d always made it a rule never to sympathize with the bad guys.

Parker didn’t quite qualify as a bad guy, no matter what she did. She was just a misguided optimist who thought she could save the world. Definitely not the woman for him—he knew the world was long past saving.

Why would he even think of that? There was no such thing as a woman for him—women screwed things up, complicated them, distracted men and got them killed. Women operatives were a different matter—the ones he’d known had been so cold-blooded they could probably mate and then bite their partner’s head off once they were done.

When it came right down to it, men were more susceptible. Once they were deluded into thinking they were in love, then all bets were off. He had little doubt that many of the Committee operatives, both in the US and in Europe, would toss a mission in favor of a woman’s life. He’d never make that mistake. Collateral damage was an ugly fact of life, and he wasn’t about to let some misguided streak of sentimentality get in the way of procuring that smartphone. She’d insisted on coming along—if she paid the ultimate price it wasn’t any skin off his ass.

“Yeah, and pigs fly,” he said out loud, disgusted with himself. “You are one sorry son of a bitch, Ryder.” So okay, he’d do his best to keep her alive. But if something happened to her, those were the dangers she’d signed on for. Once she’d covered up for her brother, let him escape the justice he deserved, she’d sealed her fate.

But even so, he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. He moved deeper into the jungle, every sense alert for signs of La Luz. His first stop this morning had been the cantina, and Rosario had been extremely helpful. She would have been more than happy to relieve him of his acute state of horniness, but he wasn’t tempted. No, Parker had gotten under his skin, and for some reason she was all he wanted right now. It was a temporary affliction—he’d get over it the moment they got back to the States, but all his commonsense lectures to his libido did absolutely nothing. If he’d ever possessed something as useless and vulnerable as a heart, it would have refused to listen, but he could imagine what another man, a better man might be feeling. He wouldn’t be off beating the bushes, leaving his woman alone and unprotected in an abandoned convent.

Good thing he wasn’t that man, good thing she wasn’t his woman. He didn’t believe in all that crap anyway—love was a trap at worst, a business arrangement at best. Parker would be lying in bed, sound asleep, dreaming about God knew what. Him again?

Well, tough shit. He had things to do. He needed to find some sign of the Guiding Light, and if that nagging feeling at the base of his skull weren’t so irritating, he wouldn’t give it a second thought.

But one reason he was still alive was because he knew things. His senses were so highly trained he knew instinctively when there was trouble.

Parker was nothing
but
trouble. He had work to do—he couldn’t be babysitting her on the slight chance that something was wrong.

He turned, looking back the way he’d come. The overgrown track made for tricky walking, and he could just imagine her going down in a heap, a victim of the wrong shoes or the wrong terrain.

And why the hell did he keep thinking of her when he had so many other things to do? He needed to forge on ahead, look for signs of La Luz, and ignore the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Fifteen minutes later he gave in. She was perfectly fine, there were no more snakes, and La Luz was in a small town somewhere up the road. The most Parker was suffering from was boredom.

Hell, he was bored too. He’d drag her along with him, listening to her gripe—yeah, that was it. Because leaving her alone in the last outpost from hell wasn’t really an option.

He turned in his tracks, and a moment later he began to run.

Chapter Nineteen

Soledad hadn’t come alone. There were three large men in the hallway and another half dozen wandering around the place, turning things upside down. They’d bound her wrists in front of her with some kind of plastic tie, and it seemed as if Soledad took particular pleasure in hurting her. Jenny was more troubled by the gag and blindfold and her awful feeling of helplessness. A moment later she was shoved forward, stumbling her way toward some kind of vehicle, and then she was picked up and tossed into what she could only guess was the back of a truck. The hands that had thrown her had touched her between her legs, squeezed her breasts, much to the amusement of all the men, until a sharp command from Soledad silenced them. Not that Soledad had any interest in protecting her dignity, Jenny thought. She simply wanted them on the road.

Men climbed into the back of the truck around her, and she knew she was lying at their feet, no shoes, no bra, trussed like a rabbit and completely vulnerable. “Not yet,” Soledad had warned them, and Jenny had to put up only with the occasional kick that was far from accidental.

It was a long, bouncing drive, one that gave her plenty of time to berate herself for her epic stupidity. Why had she trusted Soledad? Why had she been so certain the woman had been an innocent victim of the traffickers? Ryder hadn’t believed her, and he was experienced in things like this, and yet Jenny had refused to listen, so certain her instincts were right. If she’d been this far off when it came to Soledad, what other mistakes had she made? Was her brother more than the foolish participant in something he didn’t understand, or had he lied to her? Why in the world would he tell Soledad that Jenny had the smartphone and put her in that kind of danger?

Billy had always been so sweet, unlike her older brothers, who could be as vicious as their father. Only Billy had still seemed to care about her, and she couldn’t give him up without a fight. Surely she couldn’t have been that wrong about both Soledad and her baby brother.

It seemed as if they drove for hours, though Jenny could tell by the feel of the hot sun overhead that it couldn’t have been that long. She should have been starving but she’d lost her appetite, the softly murmured threats from the soldiers convincing her she’d never want to eat again. Fortunately her Spanish was of the schoolgirl variety, and she didn’t understand half their nouns and verbs. She was pretty sure that was a blessing. If she had she might have panicked.

As it was, an almost unnatural calm settled over her. She had no more illusions about Soledad—the young woman would happily feed her to the sharks once she got what she wanted from Jenny. It was up to her to take as long as possible to unlock the phone, something that was going to be difficult. She wasn’t used to dissembling, and she’d been able to come up with Billy’s passwords when she first got the thing. The contents were incomprehensible—encrypted files, Excel spreadsheets, an address book full of code names. Unfortunately, all that probably made perfect sense to Soledad, and it must be important if they would go so far as to kidnap her.

Where the hell was Ryder when she needed him? How long would it take him to return to the convent and find out she was gone? What would he do then—shrug his shoulders and decide she was no longer his problem?

No, whether he gave a damn about her or not, he still needed the smartphone. Even if he was tempted to leave her to Soledad’s tender mercies, he still had to get what he’d come for, and he wouldn’t leave her behind.

He also wouldn’t jeopardize his . . . his mission for her sake. He’d warned her of that when she insisted on coming with him. If he didn’t find them soon Soledad would lose patience, and what Ryder had done to hurt her a few days ago would pale in comparison with what the soldiers were suggesting. Rape was considered a fate worse than death, and gang rape would be unbearable. If it came to that, though, Jenny had every intention of surviving, if for no other reason than to slap her baby brother upside the head. She was a survivor—always had been, always would be, and sooner or later Ryder would show up. She could hold out until then.

The air was thinner when they finally stopped the truck, and Jenny felt bruised everywhere from bouncing around on the floor of the truck bed as well as the occasional kicks from the guards. They hauled her down with rough hands, but this time there were no insulting touches, and she suspected Soledad was watching. Someone took her arm, and she picked her way carefully on the unseen dirt beneath her feet. She was picturing some kind of jungle camp when she heard a door open and felt a sudden, shocking blast of air-conditioning.

“Bring her inside,” Soledad ordered. “We have work to do.”

Someone ripped off her blindfold, and she cried out behind her gag as the tape pulled her hair, but the sun was so bright all she could do was blink owlishly, her eyes refusing to focus. When they did she almost thought she was imagining it—the clean, elegant lines of the wood-and-glass house perched up high, backing up to a steep ravine. She staggered forward when someone pushed her in the back, tripping over the flagstone pathway, and stepped into the darkened, air-cooled comfort of the place. The sudden flash of cold made her dizzy, and she stumbled slightly as she was shoved forward once again.

One soldier was still with her—the rest of them were left outside—and he dragged her into a large living room, pushing her down on a low ottoman so that her knees buckled beneath her. “Stay,” he said in Spanish, and ripped the gag off.

“As if I have any choice in the matter,” she said caustically, but she was smart enough to keep it under her breath. The room was spare and sleek, with white leather sofas and thick white carpeting. It looked as if it belonged in a design magazine, not like the headquarters for terrorists disguised as revolutionaries.

Soledad came up to her, and Jenny could recognize the phone in her hand with its distinctive New Orleans Saints case. How could something that supposedly held so much evil information have a football logo emblazoned across it? It was like having Sesame Street handguns.

“You are to help me with this. No one here knows anything about technology, and I cannot even begin to guess what his password is.”

“I’m sure there’s more than one,” Jenny said. “It’s going to take a while to get through them all.” In fact, her brother had been fairly unimaginative when it came to protecting his smartphone, more proof that he was no criminal mastermind but simply someone who’d gotten in over his head. If there was any way she could avoid putting all that information into Soledad’s criminal hands, then she would. Decoding it wasn’t going to do Jenny a damned bit of good—her father wasn’t going to pay one cent to get her free, and neither would her two older brothers, so it wasn’t going to save her life. As for Billy—how could he have told Soledad? They must have known each other, but it was hard to believe her brother was naïve enough to believe Soledad’s saintly act.

Then again, she’d believed that saintly act herself. If Billy had been telling her the truth on board the ship that morning, then he’d hardly let them hurt her, would he? But then, he was out of reach, somewhere halfway across the world in a place where he couldn’t be extradited, and he needed to stay there, particularly since she’d told Ryder about him. And if he had lied to her . . . She didn’t want to think about that.

“We have time,” Soledad said smoothly. “We’re waiting for your boyfriend to come and rescue you.”

“Why bother? No one’s going to pay ransom for him. And he’s not my boyfriend,” she added belatedly. At least she could reasonably assume that the Committee didn’t negotiate with terrorists.

“We’re not going to ransom him, we’re going to kill him. The Committee is well known to us, and they’re not likely to simply let things slide. The smart thing for Mr. Ryder to do would be to return to the States, but he won’t, not unless he has you with him.”

“He doesn’t care about me one way or another!” Jenny protested.

“Probably not. But he’s not going to leave you to my tender mercies, whether he cares or not, which is a good thing. He knows too much about our workings for his own good. His death leaves the American Committee in disarray and gives us time to set up the trade routes once more.”

“Trade routes?” Jenny echoed in deep loathing. “You’re talking about human beings!”

“I’m talking about a commodity,” Soledad said in a silky voice. “You’re such a . . . what do they call it . . . a bleeding heart. These people are nothing to you. The life I give them is better than the toilet they live in now. But no, you must save everyone. I tell you now that this is impossible. You cannot save these people, and most of them come willingly. If something happened to me then someone else would simply take my place. Your Committee friends tried to wipe it out, but they only succeeded in removing the Corsini family from the mix. There are always people to take over, people like your brother.”

“My brother didn’t know what he was doing!” she protested,
ignoring her nascent doubts. “You or someone must have tricked him.”

“And you’re such an excellent judge of character, aren’t you?” Soledad cooed. She held out the phone in front of Jenny’s nose. “Get to work.”

Jenny gave her a chilly smile. “You’re going to have to untie me first.”

“You can dictate the names to me.”

“That will take twice as long.”

“I am very fast on a phone keyboard.”

Shit
. She was going to have to string her along instead of simply pretending to work on it. She’d make it as tedious as possible. “Do you suppose I might have some iced tea? My throat is parched.”

Soledad sneered. “Parched, is it? Such fancy words. You’ll get tea and something to eat once you’ve broken into the phone.”

“If you’re doing the typing, then I’m going to have to do a lot of talking,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Then you should begin.”

It was easier than she had thought. She gave her every name in the family, from their mother to their brothers to their second cousin twice removed, with alternative spellings and substituting numbers for letters. Each one took up a goodly portion of time, and she could see Soledad grow more and more frustrated. “This is no good—your brother isn’t as sentimental as you. He cares nothing about family. What else would he have used?”

She went on through his college years at Tulane—the name of his fraternity, each of his friends, first name and last, numbers and letters. The sun was beginning to set, and she hadn’t allowed Soledad to get anywhere near the encryption, and while her voice was raw and her stomach empty, she’d lost the ability to worry about it. She just had to keep coming up with plausible choices for as long as possible, long enough for Ryder to rescue her. Assuming Soledad was right and he would risk his life for her.

No, he wouldn’t risk his life for her, but he would for the smartphone and the information it contained. She was collateral damage—he’d save her if he could, but not at the expense of getting what he wanted.

“Enough!” Soledad snapped, rising from her chair. The sun was setting over the valley beyond the large picture windows, sending shadows through the room, and Soledad’s innocent beauty was looking jaded and sinister. “You are proving useless. If I didn’t believe you were lying, I would shoot you in the head this minute.” She came up to her, her small body vibrating with rage. “Perhaps I should give you some incentive.”

“Perhaps you should give me a glass of water,” Jenny shot back.

It was a mistake. Soledad’s eyes narrowed. “Manolo, bring me that baseball bat you play with.”

The words were enough to send terror through Jenny’s insides. The
baseball bat appeared, and though it looked incongruous in Soledad’s small hands, it didn’t look any the less lethal. The woman swung it experimentally, far too close to Jenny’s head. Jenny didn’t move.

“You realize if you hurt me too badly I won’t be able to think because of the pain,” she said in a deceptively steady voice. “I’m doing the best I can—what would I have to gain by not giving you the right words? I’m trying everything I can think of—our family, our pets, his favorite foods. Sooner or later I’ll hit on the right one—you just need to be patient. If you let me type them in myself you wouldn’t be so frustrated.”

Soledad’s smile was horrifying in its sweet evil. “What would you have to gain? You’re a smart woman—you know your own value to me is getting into the phone. It doesn’t matter if you’re dead when Ryder gets here—he won’t make it as far as this house, and he’ll never know if we’ve already killed you or not.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate Ryder if I were you.”

Soledad swung the baseball bat again, and Jenny could feel the
wind whip past her face. “I wouldn’t underestimate me. You can remain
stubborn and try to put off telling me the right words to get into the phone, and you can suffer a great deal of pain. Or you can work harder, come up with the right answer, and you’ll have a swift death.”

“Meaning you won’t hand me over to your men.”

“Of course not,” Soledad said, righteously, and Jenny knew she was lying. “If you come up with the answer. Otherwise the men are bored and lonely and there are no women up here. I have to give them something to keep them happy, don’t I?”

“What about the ransom idea? My father would pay a lot of money for my safe return.”

“You already told me he wouldn’t pay a penny. The Guiding Light has decided that hostage taking isn’t worth the trouble—the payoff is small compared to what we can make with the immigrants.”

“Immigrants? Is that what you call them? They’re sex slaves.”

Soledad shrugged. “They’re leaving their country for a new life. And America is the land of opportunity, though they go other places as well. I have sold my body since I was nine years old, and look at me now.”

Jenny stared at her in shock. “You’re victimizing children the same way you were victimized?”

“So tenderhearted. You know nothing of what life is like. And your mewling protests are annoying me. I’m tired of you. I will give you the night to think about how helpful you can be, and if you don’t have the answers in the first hour tomorrow, I will start by breaking your foot and working my way upward.” She slapped the baseball bat in her hands.