Read Driven by Fire for Free Online Page B

type to let anything go. She needed to get as far away from him as she could.
    She had no doubt at all the bullet that had hardly grazed her scalp had been meant for him. After all, he was the one who dealt with terrorists and international criminals—she was simply an immigration lawyer, and a pro bono one at that.
    She felt strange stripping off her ruined clothes in his house, stepping into his deep bathtub. She might as well enjoy it while she could—her narrow shotgun house had only a rusty stall shower, and the luxury of a bath like this was not to be taken lightly. With a sigh of decadent delight, she slid down into the warm, faintly scented water and closed her eyes.

Chapter Four
    Ryder stared at the computer screen, scrolling through the images impatiently. There was no angle surrounding the house that wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras, and it had taken Jack, the best hacker in the business, no more than fifteen minutes to isolate the car driving by, the shadowy passenger in the hoodie, the almost imperceptible circle of a gun barrel pointed at the old house. A gun that size shouldn’t have been able to reach the front door, the first and possibly most important conundrum, the second being the identity of the shooter. It hadn’t taken Jack any longer to trace the anonymous late-model sedan to a stolen car report, and he had little doubt it was already abandoned on the edge of the Ninth Ward.
    Ms. Jenny Parker, Esquire, could have been right and the bullet was meant for him. After all, no matter how discreet they’d been, the underworld would become aware of their location sooner rather than later, and he had enough murderous enemies to fill a 747.
    But his instincts, the ones that had kept him alive to the ripe old age of thirty-seven in the most dangerous life imaginable, told him that the bullet was meant for one of his visitors. The question was, which one? And why?
    “So you’ve finally got Parker in your clutches,” Jack drawled from his spot in front of the bank of computer screens. Jack Abbott was one of the Committee’s greatest assets, though he seldom left the computer room. “You figured out whether she’s involved or not?”
    “If I had proof she was part of the sex trafficking, she’d already be dead.” Ryder’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I just know she isn’t who and what she says she is. She acts twitchy around me.”
    “Anyone with any sense will act twitchy around you, Ryder,” Jack said dryly. “You’re a lethal weapon and maybe she’s smart enough to see that. I would have thought you would have managed to get a read on her by now.”
    Ryder frowned. “Easier said than done. She was trying to get the last girl from the boat into our household, and now she’s wormed her way in here as well. Good thinking for an enemy.”
    “She said she wants to be here?”
    “She’s too smart for that. I’m thinking that bullet wasn’t meant for anyone. I think it was just an excuse to get us to keep them here, where they think they can find out what we know. Hell, maybe Parker plans to murder us in our sleep.”
    “Doesn’t seem the type. Doesn’t seem the type to be involved in an international sex-trafficking ring either.”
    “You forget she comes from a family of gangsters,” Ryder said grimly. “We’ve got a complete background on her, down to the tiniest of details.”
    “True enough,” Jack said. “But as far as I can see there isn’t any connection between them and the Corsini family or their front man, His Eminence. We cleared up that nest of spiders, and the shipload of human cargo brought up from Calliveria was probably just the tail end of the Corsinis’ operation. And there’s no connection with Jenny Parker at all. Apparently she’s a perfect Mother Teresa.”
    “Except that she’s been there from the beginning, making certain the hostages got taken care of, sent off someplace safe where no one could ask any questions. She’s done a great job of