Consumed by Fire

  Evangeline felt the blade bite in deeper, and more warm blood spread down her chest, soaking into the towel. She was going to die, naked, in the middle of nowhere, and they’d probably never find her body. It was a lousy, ignominious fate for a tenured professor, and one more thing she could blame on Bishop.

  “Don’t be so quick, Clement. That’s always been your problem—too fast off the mark. You get many complaints about that from your women?” Bishop’s disembodied voice was soft, taunting.

  “My women aren’t usually in any shape to complain when I’m done with them. So this one is important to you? I thought she might be, though I admit it surprises me. I’ve never known you to give a shit about anyone.”

  “I don’t.” He seemed farther away now, and Evangeline wondered if he was just going to disappear and leave her with this monster. “But have you taken a good look at her? Why waste all that gorgeousness if you don’t need to?”

  She felt the man’s head move as he looked down, and then to her horror he pulled the towel away from her, dropping it on the ground. She clenched her jaw. If she didn’t get out of this alive then she was going to haunt James Bishop into madness.

  Clement shrugged against her, and it made the knife bite in again, and more warm blood slide down her body. “She’s not my type. Not enough tits and ass. But if she’s yours, then you’d better show yourself or there’s not going to be much left of her. I’ll count to ten . . .”

  “Don’t bother, James,” she called out in a caustic voice. “He’s going to kill both of us, so don’t waste any noble gesture on me. It would ring false.”

  “I’m incapable of noble gestures, Angel,” Bishop said, suddenly close at hand, and the man holding her was yanked back.

  She went flying, landing on the hard ground. She was stark naked, covered with blood, and she lay there, stunned for a moment, until her eyes focused on the men.

  Bishop and the erstwhile border guard were rolling in the dust, grappling with each other. Bishop had a knife as well, though his wasn’t as big as the guard’s weapon, and they looked like strangers, people she’d never seen before, as they rolled and grunted and fought. It was far from a clean fight—the guard kept trying to knee Bishop in the crotch, and Bishop was equally vicious, the violence so thick in the air that it made her ill.

  The border guard had his lips drawn back from his teeth in a feral grin as he straddled Bishop, but a moment later Bishop tossed him off as he rolled away, and there was a patch of blood beneath Bishop’s arm. He was the one who was truly scary, fighting with such icy calm and determination that she never once considered he might not win.

  They broke apart and were both on their feet so quickly, it was almost synchronized. Then they circled each other. Bishop was edging closer, keeping his body between her and Clement, and without looking at her, he growled, “Get the fuck out of here, Angel. This piece of trash won’t take long to deal with, but you don’t need to watch.”

  She was still slightly dazed, but she knew a lie when she heard one. For some reason he wasn’t sure he could stop the man, and he wanted her out of the way. She wanted to be out of the way as well, whether he won or lost, and if the two men kept each other busy, she could make her way to the truck; hopefully he’d left the keys in it. Even if he hadn’t, she could manage—she had a spare hidden under the seat. The canopy was out on the trailer, and the road that had brought them to this clearing was little more than a path. The thought of driving out of there wearing nothing at all wasn’t enough to stop her. She and Annabelle would make it.

  “I won’t leave without Merlin,” she said, shaking off her stupid wish that she had something, anything, to cover her body.

  “What’d you do with the dog, Clement?” Bishop’s voice was silky. “If you hurt him, I’ll make you very sorry.”

  Clement snorted. “You think I’m an idiot? Killing dogs causes more trouble than it’s worth. Even Colombian drug lords get sentimental over their dogs, and if I got the reputation that I off animals, I wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere.”

  “Sweet of you,” Evangeline muttered.

  “I said get the fuck out of here,” Bishop said again in a cold, hard voice she would never have recognized. “I’ll find Merlin after I finish with this prick and we’ll come after you.”

  Now why didn’t that thought fill her with dread? She should do what he told her to do—get the hell away from there and just hope he wasn’t able to find her later. Except . . . she wasn’t going to leave Merlin.

  In fact, she wasn’t going to leave Bishop either. If Clement got the drop on him she could always leap onto his back, distract him long enough to give Bishop the advantage again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going to beat you after I kill Clement,” he said through gritted teeth, never taking his eyes off the other man.

  Clement laughed. “You can’t even make your woman obey you, Edmunds? I thought you had more balls than that. She’ll appreciate having a real man take care of her after I kill you.”

  Bishop was still moving, always keeping her guarded. “You’re a real man, Clement? Then why do you have to fuck women you’re going to kill? No one else hold still for you?”

  “I like it when they fight. Don’t you?” Clement licked his lips, and Evangeline felt sick.

  “Oh, sometimes. As long as they’re into it,” Bishop said in a conversational voice. “But are we really here to talk about sexual variations, or are you going to put your money where your mouth is and try to kill me?”

  “If I take a run at you, it puts me at a disadvantage. You’ve killed enough people to know that,” Clement purred. “I think you should come to me.”

  She saw Bishop’s broad shoulders shrug. “Have it your way.” He moved so fast he was no more than a graceful blur, kicking Clement in the side of his head. Clement staggered back, stunned, slashing out with his knife, but Bishop dodged him, moving to Clement’s side and kicking him in the back of the knees. Clement went down hard, his head hitting the ground with a thud, and he didn’t move, dazed.

  Bishop went to stand over him, kicking the dropped knife away from him. Then he knelt down, grabbed Clement by the hair, and yanked his head up. “You cut my woman,” he said, “and you hurt my dog.” And to Evangeline’s horror, he took his knife and slashed the man’s throat.

  Evangeline turned her face into the dirt and vomited. She could hear the gurgling sounds as the man bled to death, but Bishop didn’t move; he dropped the man’s head back and watched as he died.

  She didn’t have enough in her stomach, and she was racked with dry heaves by the time he rose and turned toward her. He was going to kill her as well, she thought, no longer caring. What had the dead man said . . . “You’ve killed enough people . . .” Bishop the liar, the thief, the murderer, had no reason to keep her alive. She was a witness . . .

  He scooped her up in his arms, and she fought him, her arms flailing, but he managed to subdue her with quick, brutal efficiency. She gave in, too sick and exhausted to continue the battle, and he carried her past the body, pushing her head against his shoulder so she couldn’t look. A moment later they were in the camper, and he was setting her down on the bed with exquisite care. She knew she should jump up, hit him, run, but for the moment she was just numb, and there was no way she could stop him from doing whatever he wanted to do.

  He moved away from her, and she closed her eyes, trying to disappear into herself. But then she remembered she was naked; she reached for the sheet, pulling it up around her and curling into the fetal position.

  Bishop came back. “Sorry, that won’t do.” She felt the mattress sink beneath his weight, his strong hand catch her shoulder and force her to face him. It wasn’t worth the struggle, and as she let him pull the sheet away, she told herself she didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her body before.

  She opened her eyes then, looki
ng up into the face of a killer. It was the same face. The high cheekbones, the familiar-unfamiliar eyes. She looked at him, and it hit her with the force of a blow.

  She wanted to fuck him. For a crazy, irrational moment she wanted to pull him down over her, take him between her legs, rut with him in the blood that covered her, and it didn’t matter how sick she felt: she wanted him. She wanted to wipe out death with life, she wanted to change everything. She stared up at him and said nothing.

  “I’d wash you off in the stream but you’d be more likely to pick up an infection,” he said in a flat voice. He had a wet cloth in his hand, and he was washing her, cleaning the blood away from her skin. He worked with impossible gentleness, and all she could do was lie still and watch him, keeping her face expressionless. He found a place that hurt, and he frowned, his touch even more gentle. “It’s not that deep,” he said. “I think I can close it with butterfly bandages. I’d rather not have to stitch you up—I’m not very neat with my needlework.”

  I’m supposed to smile at that, she thought. She couldn’t. She lay still as he rinsed out the cloth and drew it down her body with the impersonal attention of a doctor, as if her body had never meant anything to him. Finally he pulled back. “You’ve got two gashes, both of them shallow, and they bled enough that they should be fairly clean, even though you ended up rolling in the dirt. I’m going to put some disinfectant on them and bandage them . . .”

  “What about Merlin?” She could finally talk, though she almost didn’t recognize her voice.

  “As soon as you’re taken care of, I’ll go after him. Either it’s too late or he’ll be fine—five minutes won’t make any difference.” He must have brought her first aid kit over to the bed with him, because his hands were on her again, and she felt the sharp tug as he closed her torn flesh with the butterfly bandages. One slash was on her collarbone, the other was across the top of her breast. Any lower and it would have been across her nipple. She shuddered.

  “You’re cold,” he said, finishing with the second wound, his cool hands on her breast, and she wanted to cry. But she didn’t cry anymore, she reminded herself. He flipped the sheet back over her, and she felt an odd, disjointed relief. “I’ll get you something for the pain.”

  “I don’t need anything, I just need Merlin.”

  He ignored her, moving away, and when he came back, he had a bottle of water and a pill in one hand. It wasn’t from her medical kit, and she looked at it dubiously. “I’m not going to . . .”

  “If you want me to go after Merlin, you’ll take it,” he said flatly. “I’ve got other things to take care of out there, and I need to be sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m all right without drugs . . .”

  “Take it.” His voice wasn’t just implacable, it was dangerous. She wanted to protest again, but something in those blue eyes stopped her, and she took the pill. She had every intention of tucking it in her cheek, but she ended up swallowing it by accident.

  She was too tired to glare at him. She sank back on the blood-stained sheets and closed her eyes. “Bring Merlin to me.” Her voice was barely audible. “No matter what.”

  He said nothing for a long moment, and she was tempted to open her eyes again. She didn’t. “Rest,” he said finally. “I’ll bring him back.”

  James Bishop stared down at Evangeline, controlling his need to touch her again. He had had better days in his life. He really hadn’t wanted Evangeline to know just how dangerous things were. He’d been a fool to think he could outrun Clement—even though he’d checked to make sure there’d been no tracker planted on the truck or the camper, he somehow must have missed it. It was unforgivably sloppy on his part—the kind of mistake a rookie would make. He’d been so determined to get Evangeline out of harm’s way that he’d almost gotten her killed.

  He wasn’t used to making mistakes—another reason why he couldn’t risk being anywhere around her. The Corsinis knew she was a way to get to him, and they were as relentless as the Committee. It had taken five long years to bring the Corsinis’ filthy sex trafficking to its knees, but the rest of the crime family continued on like some overbloated octopus—the other arms slimy and lethal.

  He never should have left Evangeline’s side earlier—that or, even better, he should have made sure Clement never got near her in the first place. He’d been searching for Merlin, whose sudden disappearance should have alerted him, and he’d played right into Clement’s hands. He’d fucked up, and he’d ended up with Evangeline’s beautiful, creamy skin marred by that bastard’s knife, with Merlin out there, possibly hurt or dead despite Clement’s assertions that he didn’t kill animals, and worst of all, he’d ended up with Evangeline knowing exactly who and what he was, a calm, methodical killer. It was no wonder she’d thrown up in the dirt.

  There was nothing he could do about it now. He stared down at her as she lay beneath the bloody sheet, and he could see the outline of her body perfectly. He’d never wanted to fuck so badly in his life.

  He was used to it—the normal aftermath to taking a life. But he’d never wanted to fuck anyone else he’d worked with or been with, and he’d killed more people than he wanted to remember.

  The problem was, he did remember. He knew all the faces, every sound as their life left them. He knew the finality of it, and it gave him no sense of power, as it did for people like Claudia or the other operatives, like Matthew Ryder. He usually just felt empty.

  But he hadn’t killed when he’d been around Evangeline. Evangeline, who could put her arms around him and hold his head against her breast, who could take him into the warm, wet, peace of her body and bring him to a ferocious climax that was life itself, a spit in the eye of death.

  He was hard, and it was a good thing she was too wiped out to notice, or she’d probably throw up again, and he wouldn’t blame her. He rose, surreptitiously adjusting himself. First off he had to find Merlin, and then he had to get rid of the body and wipe out any trace of their short, fierce battle. Then maybe he could take care of the slash in his side that had finally stopped bleeding.

  She hadn’t noticed that either—a good thing. She was on the ragged edge already, and it would give her a good target to punch. She was ruthless, thank God. That ruthlessness might very well keep her alive.

  The drug he’d given Evangeline would likely knock her out for hours, which would give him more than enough time to deal with things. They needed to get the hell out of there—while Clement liked to work alone, he was no more than a hired gun. His Eminence and the Corsini family had sent Clement after him—somehow they had found Bishop’s connection to Evangeline. Clement’s employers would expect a report, and if they heard nothing, they’d know that Clement had failed. And then they’d send someone else.

  But for the next few hours Evangeline could sleep while he took care of business.

  He looked down at Clement’s body, and remembered the slashes on Evangeline’s chest. He slammed his boot into the man’s head, just because. Then he went in search of Merlin.

  Chapter Eight

  It was dusk when Evangeline awoke. Bishop had turned on one of the lanterns and set it on the dinette, and he was busy with something. His back was turned to her, and his shirt was off. She stared at him for a long sleep-dazed moment, and then realized something heavy was beside her. She turned, and Merlin lay there, in one piece, wagging his tail slowly. She reached out a hand to touch his head, and he snuffled and slept on.

  “Clement clubbed him on the head and left him for dead. Lucky for him Merlin’s got a harder head than most humans.” Bishop’s tight voice came from the dinette, but he hadn’t turned to look. He was still doing something with his back to her, and she stared at him.

  He had scars on his back. She remembered some of them from five years ago, and he’d given her the easy excuse of an accident-prone life when she’d asked him. She’d kissed and licked every one of those scars.
br />   He had new ones. A slash across his hip that had healed to a pale pink line, and a deeper score just below his shoulder blade that would have come much too close to his heart. He could have died and she never would have known.

  Never would have cared, she reminded herself. She didn’t need this new information about the man who’d lied to her, tricked her, robbed her. Presumably he’d graduated to bigger targets, who were more lethal, since his penny-ante time with her. The stakes were a lot higher than a measly pair of diamond earrings. What he’d stolen from her hadn’t been thirty-thousand-dollar earrings—it had been her trust, her heart, her soul. Her reaction to his betrayal had been just as lethal—she simply hadn’t had the ability to claim revenge. Whoever had sent the dead man must be another one of his victims.

  “Are you admiring my back, Angel, or did you have something to say?”

  She didn’t move. “Was he another one of your victims? What did you steal from him?”

  “From whom? You mean Clement? No, he was just a middleman. A hired gun, so to speak.” Bishop’s voice was cool, clipped, as if killing a man was an everyday affair.

  “Then who was it you robbed?”

  “No one.” He turned to look at her, and she realized with a mixture of sickness and awe what he was doing. He had a slash across his ribs, and he was sewing himself closed.

  She sat up too quickly, and her wounds screamed in protest, her head spun, and Merlin stayed asleep. “That man hurt you.” It was a stupid thing to say—obviously he had.

  There was an air of hidden tension about him—the violence of the afternoon still hung in the air, but he answered her anyway. “I should have been faster. I was trying to get him away from you before I killed him.” He paused. “Violent death is never easy to witness, and I was trying to spare you. But would you fucking listen? Of course not.” He stabbed himself with the needle again, not even wincing.

  “Why are you doing that? Aren’t there any more butterfly bandages?”