Hotter Than Wildfire by Lisa Marie Rice

were trembling. He saw that. Those fierce eagle eyes saw her shaking hands and she curled them back in her lap.
    Harry Bolt barely glanced at the card, but of course he’d know what it was. Not a normal business card.
    The top of the card had a beautifully rendered bird in flight, the very epitome of freedom in few brush strokes, and a telephone number printed in the center of the card. Nothing else. No words. No name, no address. Just the symbol of freedom and a number.
    The number didn’t correspond to any of the official numbers of RBK Security, either. There was no other information on the card. Just the stylized bird and a toll-free number. Which she’d called. One of the company’s secretaries had given Ellen the city and address when she called.
    It was a special phone line. Obviously the line for desperate women on the run.
    Bolt watched her carefully. “Do you have any idea how these men might have tracked you down?”
    Here it comes, she thought. “Yes, yes I do, unfortunately. You remember I told you I worked in this bar? More of a dive, really?”
    He nodded his head gravely.
    “Well, the place featured live music every Tuesday and Thursday evening. The music was provided by this ancient jazz singer who wasn’t actually…um…very good. His voice was shot to hell by years of smoking and drinking and he had arthritis in his hands, but he’d been playing there for twenty years, the customers were used to him and, knowing the boss, he’d stay for another twenty. One night he didn’t show up. We found out later that his heart simply gave out.” Honorius Lime. He’d been one of the good guys who’d found life simply too hard to face without the help of the bottle. He’d once had talent, but he’d flushed that, and his life, down the toilet.
    Ellen had grown up with people like that. Talented but weak, living life on wishful thinking until there was nothing left but charity and then the grave.
    She’d studied and worked so hard all her life to get out of that hole, and now look at her.
    It was a sign of her exhaustion that she even let these thoughts inside her head, because they were wasted energy and she couldn’t in any way afford that.
    She drew in a deep breath. “So my boss was left without live entertainment. I, um, I offered to step in.”
    For the first time, she saw lightness in his face. It wasn’t a smile, but something amused him. “Do you have any talent?”
    Well, that was the problem. “Some. More than poor old Honorius, anyway. So I started singing every Tuesday and Thursday and the place filled up. The boss gave me Wednesday and Friday off. He said I was bringing in so many new customers, he wanted me fresh. And then one evening, about six months ago, after I’d been singing there for a couple of weeks, an agent was in the audience. We talked after the gig and he asked me to record some songs and we did. He knew this great studio and we did it all in one day, in one take. Enough for two CDs. One just voice and keyboard and bass and sax and drums. Covers, mostly. I also had some songs that I’d, um, composed myself. Just for…something to do.”
    The solace of music. How grateful she’d been over this past year of terror and flight that she could find solace in music.
    “I didn’t think too much about it. I thought maybe he’d use the recordings for some private purpose or something. Play them at parties. But he didn’t. He put out two CDs under a pseudonym and…” she shrugged, almost embarrassed, “one went gold and the other went platinum. We never thought—”
    The words died in her throat as Harry Bolt jolted, looking as if he’d been stuck with a cattle prod. His face was tight and harsh. He placed his big hands on the desk and leaned forward on powerful arms.
    “Christ,” he breathed. “You’re Eve .”
     
     
      Harry thought he was impervious to surprise. More or less everything that could happen to him already had. At least twice. He’d been a Delta