Читать книгу Her Secret Spy - Cindy Dees - Страница 10
ОглавлениеLissa Clearmont looked around her aunt Callista’s shop—her shop now—torn between both affection and dismay. The purple string lights hanging all around the ceiling cast a spooky light on the eclectic inventory of Callista’s Curiosities of the Magical and Macabre. An inventory that was hers to replenish and grow now, ideally by embracing the inner weirdo she’d spent years doing her best to deny.
Until last month her world had been thoroughly cleaned out of both the magical and the macabre. But then her peculiar aunt called to announce that she’d had a vision and was going to die any day. And, oh, by the way, she’d willed everything she owned, including her wacky store in New Orleans, to her favorite niece.
She hadn’t taken Auntie Callista seriously at first, but the woman had been adamant that the end was near and she had to get her affairs in order immediately. The curiosity shop was infamous within the Clearmont clan, which was populated by generations of rational, logical, scientific souls who saw anything having to with the unexplained, prophetic, occult—or heaven forbid, magic—to be rubbish of the first water. The family grudgingly gave Callista credit for managing to sell her crystals, tarot cards, talismans, spells and palm readings to a gullible public and making what was, by all accounts, a decent living at it. But their patience for her eccentricities ended there.
Lissa, named loosely after her aunt, had been the only family member to take Callista’s startling announcement of her forthcoming demise seriously. She’d questioned her aunt in alarm over any diagnoses or heretofore unknown health issues, and Callista had responded firmly that she was in the bloom of fine health. Nonetheless, the spirits had spoken, and she was about to die. Of course, Callista had snorted at the mere mention of visiting a traditional medical doctor.
If only her aunt had been more specific about how she’d expected to die and why. Maybe then Lissa wouldn’t have this nagging feeling that something was very wrong with the circumstances of Callista’s abrupt death two days after that phone call.
Frustrated, Lissa turned off the bronze lamp by the antique cash register, pausing for a moment to admire the deep rose silk shade with its beaded fringe and black lace edging. It was a pretty little thing in spite of its uselessness at actually emitting light. She trailed her fingertips wistfully through the cool fringe.
Sometimes she felt like the little lamp. Pretty and useless. The only thing in life she was good at was the one thing she was determined to leave behind in this cross-country move to New Orleans. Not that her parents hadn’t tried to suppress her talent for years before now. In fact, they’d done everything in their power shy of trying to pray it away to eliminate her gift for seeing past and future events, and, worse, seeing into people’s souls.
She’d kept the shop open late tonight for a coven of witches who’d come in to buy supplies for an upcoming Imbolc ritual. The holiday coincided with a full moon this year, and they were planning to throw a big shindig to celebrate the conjunction. The group couldn’t agree quickly on anything, and they’d lingered a full hour after her usual closing time at seven o’clock. She barely had time to rush out and grab some cat food for Mr. Jackson, Callista’s entirely cliché black cat, before the convenience store two blocks away closed for the night.
The women had just left in a joyous cluster, taking with them their noise and laughter and leaving her alone. Worse, night had fallen while the customers browsed the shop. To say that the store turned creepy after dark would be like saying the sun was hot. She peered into the dim corners and to the back of dark shelves in an effort to find the source of her unease. Yet again, she failed to spot whatever it was that made her so blasted nervous. It was as if she was being watched by some foreign, and possibly malevolent, force.
Shuddering a little, she wrapped herself in her favorite vintage wool coat, locked the iron grillwork over the glass door behind her and hurried away from the store into the bowels of the night. It was a sorry thing when a dark, deserted street in a dodgy neighborhood in a sometimes violent city felt safer to her than her own store did. Aunt Callista would have told her to do some sort of exorcism or cleaning ritual to the curiosity shop and see if she could improve the place’s vibe. A white sage smudge probably wouldn’t be enough. No, a full spell, complete with a ritual circle, libations, candles—
Stop whispering into my brain, Aunt Callista! You’re gone. I’ll make my own decisions. She didn’t do that kind of woo-woo stuff anymore. Immersing herself in the mystical world had cost her too much. Brought her too much pain. No more. Henceforth, she would live life as a normal, mundane human being.
A warning vibrated somewhere in the back of her mind, and she scoffed at it. Nope. She didn’t pay attention to baseless intuitions and vibes anymore. She could handle life entirely on her own. The powers that be could just get over it.
Something big slammed into her from behind as a hand slapped over her mouth, yanking her back against what turned out to be a powerful body. “Don’t fight. Don’t make a sound, or else I’ll mess you up right here.”
Son of a— Stupid warning intuition had to go and be right, didn’t it? But then panic and terror rolled through her, and all else disappeared in the face of certainty that this man was intent on doing something terrible to her.
The voice vibrated with malice. Urgency. Accent: local. Smell: cigarette smoke and cheap strip club. This assailant clearly planned to harm her or worse.
His plan roared through her mind, projected so loudly he might as well have spoken the words. He was going to drag her into an abandoned space—big, open, drafty like a warehouse of some kind—tear off her clothes, beat her up, cow her into submission and then do unspeakable things to her before finally strangling her.
She fought then. For her life. With all the violence and desperation her five-foot-two frame could muster. Which wasn’t enough, of course. But she gave it her best shot. Her attacker merely tightened his arms around her in a vise that crushed her ribs and made breathing nigh unto impossible, and then he waited out the expenditure of her remaining oxygen. This obviously wasn’t the first time the man had done this.
An image of another girl’s face, bloody, scared and pleading for her life, flashed into Lissa’s head. She froze, arrested momentarily by the image, memorizing the face carefully.
Lifting her slight frame mostly off her feet, the man dragged her backward toward an alley even darker than the street they currently wrestled on. If only he would take his hand away from her mouth and nose and let her draw a proper breath. Then she could scream. Or fight some more. Or do something to save herself.
She felt herself dropping into a state of shock. This must be what it was like to be a gazelle in the moments after a lioness caught its neck in her mighty jaws and crunched into it. Paralysis first and then blessedly numbing shock. The gazelle wouldn’t even be aware of its bleeding muscles being ripped away by razor-sharp teeth, its living organs being torn from its warm belly. There would be just the shock. The blessed, detached, distant awareness of encroaching death. Warmth. Quiet. Calm. She was going to die, if not right now, then soon, at this man’s hands.
Vague regret at having never been in love—the real thing, with all-consuming need, soaring heights of ecstasy, a melding of minds and souls, and, of course, really great sex—passed over her. She was too young to die. And she sincerely wished it didn’t have to be like this.
But maybe it was fated. She’d been conceived in violence, after all. Maybe that meant she had to leave this life the same way. Was this some cosmic evening out of the scales? Had she never been meant to be born? Was that why the universe saw fit to take her out like this? Or was it some wrong she’d committed in her own life coming back to haunt—
Something big and fast flew at her from the side. More shadow than man. But big. Fully as big as her attacker. A second attacker? Oh, Lord. Were they going to gang-rape her?
Her first attacker grunted as the newcomer barreled into him and Lissa, knocking all of them into a pile on the ground. She rolled clear of the melee of flailing limbs as the two men struggled to untangle themselves.
She scrambled to her hands and knees, sucking air into her oxygen-starved lungs gratefully. Must get up. Run away while they still tried to gain their feet. She must fly like the wind—
But no wind could outrun the wave of psychic power that rolled over her as she panted on the sidewalk. It was as if a great floodgate had swung open and a massive flood of energy clobbered her. The scale of it was staggering. It made the rest of her life look as though she’d been sipping at a trickle of psychic power from a leaky faucet. But this. This was unbelievable. Time had no boundaries; her vision had no limits. Knowledge of all things was right there, hers for the taking.
Something hot and wet and smelling of iron splattered her face, jolting her out of the vision and banging the floodgates of time and power shut. In front of her nose, a fist connected with her attacker’s jaw again. Hard. With a smack of flesh on flesh that spoke of violent intent. Wait. What? The new man had just slugged his partner in crime? Maybe not his partner in crime?
Very belatedly she realized the two men were fighting. The second man was rescuing her! Well, then. That changes things. She pushed to her feet, balled up her fists, waited for an opening...and dived into the fray.
* * *
Max mentally groaned as the woman he’d just rescued leaped into the fracas in a misguided attempt to help him. He could kill this punk here and now if he wanted to, but he was trying hard to keep the guy alive so the police could have a chat with him. The attack on the woman had been too practiced, too perfect, for some amateur lowlife looking to score drug money. This guy was a professional stalker of women.
The woman, however, had different ideas. She seemed hell-bent on killing the bastard and was punching and kicking with all her strength. Although, on second thought, she was probably too tiny to do the guy any serious damage. And it was undoubtedly therapeutic for her to kick the hell out of the punk for scaring her like that.
The stalker finally rolled into a fetal ball with his arms over his head to protect himself from the woman’s fury, which was prodigious now that she wasn’t on the verge of dying.
Max rolled away and pressed to his feet, panting. He jerked his leather bomber jacket back into place and dusted off his jeans, which were torn at one knee. Dammit, he liked these jeans.
“Okay, lady,” he said drily. “That’s enough, or else the cops will charge you with assault when they get here instead of that jackass.”
The woman looked up at him, confused. As if she was just now registering what her feet and fists were doing. “Oh. Oh! Right.” She stumbled back and commenced shaking so hard he could see it from where he stood.
The attacker made a move to jump to his feet and take off, but Max put a hand on the back of the guy’s neck and shoved him down to the ground with casual strength. “You stay right there, or I’ll break your neck.” The punk lurched one more time, and Max increased the pressure. “For real, man. I’ll kill you. Right here. Right now. No compunction.”
The punk subsided.
For good measure, Max went down to one knee, kneeling on the spot between the guy’s shoulder blades and no doubt pressing the stalker’s cheek painfully into the gravel-strewn sidewalk. He glanced up at the woman. “Ma’am, if you’d be so kind as to call nine-one-one. Tell them to send the nearest cruiser. Then tell them to call Detective Bastien LeBlanc and pass the message that Max could use a hand.”
“Is that your name?” the woman asked in a shaky voice close to tears. “Max?”
“Please make the call, ma’am.”
“What is it?”
“What is what? You mean my name?” he echoed blankly. That was a good question. He’d been living under that other name, not his own, for so long, he almost didn’t remember his real name anymore. Not that he had any great fondness for either his real name or his real life. All of it had turned out to be a lie of epic proportions. And he was so caught in this new lie, so deeply ensnared in its tangles, he couldn’t breathe, let alone move.
“Max,” he mumbled. “Call me Max.”
“Max what?”
Damn, she was persistent. “Smith,” he muttered under his breath.
In what little light there was in this crappy corner of town, he made out a faint frown puckering her brow. The sort of frown that said a person didn’t believe what she was hearing and was trying to understand why the speaker would lie to her. An urge to tell her the truth, to tell her his real name, bubbled up from somewhere deep in his gut.
But thankfully a siren’s wail sounded just then, and the woman looked away, relief painted in every sweet line of her face. She was a little thing. She looked like Mary Poppins in that old-fashioned wool coat and those funny curved-heel granny shoes. Her hair was curly, and about half of it remained in a bun at the back of her neck. The rest fell around her face in a wild, sexy riot of curls that fit her face massively better than the old lady attire did.
A police car careened around the corner, and in the glare of the headlights he saw the woman’s curls were dark, dark red. Almost maroon. And she was young, midtwenties maybe. Which he supposed wasn’t that young. It was just the age of his younger sister, who would forever and always be his baby sister, even when she turned old and gray.
Like his sister, the woman trembling in front of him was beautiful in an old-fashioned way. Her skin was porcelain, her lips rosy and full, her eyes huge and dark. Her beauty was soft.
Under any other circumstances but these, he would have registered this woman as ridiculously attractive, walked away from her and then obsessed about her for weeks afterward, kicking himself for not talking to her or at least getting her name and phone number.
It wasn’t that he’d never successfully put the moves on a hot female. But he’d been undercover for so long that he was starting to worry about forgetting how to come on to women at all.
He could not see her figure under that ridiculous coat, but even swathed in heavy wool, she was slight in stature. She hadn’t fought like an athlete. And then there’d been that horrifying moment when she’d started to go into shock. She’d gone limp in her captor’s arms like prey in the jaws of death.
He hadn’t intended to leave his surveillance post. He’d been prepared to let her get robbed, maybe even roughed up a little. But when that bastard had started to drag her away—and, worse, she’d appeared to go catatonic—he’d had no choice but to leave his hidey-hole and act.
She might be the target of his op, but that op did not include watching the damned subject die. He needed her contacts. Her connection to the top leadership of the group he’d spent all these months infiltrating.
It was a huge breach of security protocol to blow his cover like this, to come into direct contact with the person he was supposed to be watching. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t stand by and let that jerk drag her off and do his worst to her. Swearing to himself, he pasted on the bland expression of a casual passerby who was just grateful to have been in the right place at the right time to lend a hand to a lady in distress.
The cops collected the assailant, who was now looking quite a bit worse for wear. He watched carefully to make sure they didn’t mess up Mirandizing and cuffing the perp.
As a police officer stuffed the assailant in the back of a squad car, Max straightened and turned to check on the woman. He lurched as something light plastered itself against his chest. It was her. Oh, God, sobbing.
“I got to you as fast as I could,” he muttered unwillingly. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”
Reluctantly his arms came up around her, and, swear to God, she snuggled against him. The strangest feeling washed over him as this tiny female burrowed closer against his chest as if he were a combination furnace and Second Coming. It made him feel protective. Possessive. Needed. What the hell was that all about?
Lord knew, other people had needed him his whole life. His father after the divorce devastated him. His mother after the car accident paralyzed her. His baby sister after their mother died and left him alone to raise her. But never had any of that made him feel like this. Like he could climb a mountain or conquer an army single-handedly.
The woman’s shaking lessened as he held her, and eventually a policeman peeled her off his chest to take a brief statement from her about what had happened. She gave her name, Lissa Clearmont, but, of course, he already knew it.
He already knew lots of things about her. Like what time she opened the bedroom blinds in the morning to greet the sun. That she practiced yoga almost every day. That she didn’t like being in the store alone after dark. Which electric company and telephone company the shop used. What brand of laundry soap the owner preferred. After all, he was very good at his job.
He was intrigued when she begged off coming down to the police station immediately to make a report, saying that she had something pressing to do before she talked to them again. What was more important than putting away the bastard who’d tried to assault her and possibly kill her? There’d been something about the way the assailant had attacked Lissa that smacked of a psychopath and not a regular, garden-variety mugger.
Another police car pulled up, this one unmarked except for a magnetic siren stuck to the driver’s side roof. Bastien LeBlanc, a friend of his sister and her fiancé, piled out of the car. He looked as if he’d been pulled out of an undercover mission, too. Or maybe he’d been at a strip club down in the French Quarter using all those bad-boy good looks to get lucky. He stopped to speak briefly with the arresting officers and then made his way over to Max.
“Hey, bro. What up?” the New Orleans cop and former navy SEAL asked him.
“That guy—” he pointed at the perp in the cop car “—mugged that woman—” he pointed at Lissa “—a few minutes ago.”
“Lemme guess. You dived in and saved the day. Dude’s looking a little rough around the edges. Street name’s Julio G. He’s a notorious gangster. We’ve been working on taking him down for a couple of years. Problem is, his flunkies keep taking the fall for him and he keeps slipping out of our net. But not tonight, methinks. Make sure the NOPD doesn’t get blamed for busting him up like that, eh? We wouldn’t want him to get off on yet another technicality.”
Max grimaced. “The girl did most of the visible damage after I took the bastard down. I thought it might be good for her to work out a little of her fear on him before we called you guys.”
Bastien grinned. “I’m beginning to see why my future brother-in-law called you an ice-cold motherfu—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max interrupted. “Listen. I need a favor.”
“Name it. The district attorney’s going to be thrilled that we finally got Julio G. dead to rights. We think he’s top dog in one of the more violent gangs in the area. Not only did you take him down, but you gift wrapped him for the police. No way is he passing off these charges on to one of his boys. We owe you one.”
“I need my name kept out of the police report. In fact, I need all mention of my being involved with this incident sanitized out of the official record.”
“You don’t want any credit at all for catching this slimeball?”
“Nope. None. I was never here.”
Bastien grinned again. “I dunno. The way that pretty little lady’s lookin’ at you, I might rethink that ‘never been here’ thing. She’s one sweet piece of—”
“And that’ll be enough out of you,” Max interrupted.
Bastien frowned. “The woman’s testimony ought to be enough to put Julio away. But if it’s not looking good at trial, I’m gonna have to give your name to the DA and let him call you to testify. We can’t let this guy slip out of our grasp. He’s seriously bad news.”
Max nodded reluctantly. “Understood.” This was the paradox of being undercover and going after bad guys. It became a trade-off of blowing one’s cover versus putting away the scumbags one encountered along the way. At what point was it worth blowing two years’ worth of undercover work to put away one guy?
“Do me a favor in return, bro,” Bastien said.
“What’s that?” he asked cautiously.
“See to it Ms. Clearmont gets home safely. She’s refusing to come down to the station until tomorrow to make her statement, and I’d hate for one of that bottom-feeder’s buddies to find her overnight and take it upon himself to silence her before she can press charges. Given the gang he affiliates with, he’s got some downright unfriendly associates.”
“You protect her. That’s your job.”
Bastien shrugged. “She’s refusing any police protection. Insists on you being the one to take her home.”
Max rolled his eyes. It wasn’t as if he could say no to that. Dammit. “Fine. I’ll follow her to her place.”
“You’ll do more than that if I’m keeping your name off the report. You hold her hand and tuck her into bed. She’s had one hell of a scare, and the way she tells it, she’s got no family or friends in town to take care of her.”
“Why me?” he protested. “I’m on an op and she stumbled into the middle of it...” He left out the part where she was the op.
Bastien threw him a withering look that said he’d thought better of Max than to abandon a lady in need. Max huffed. “All right already. I’ll walk her home and make sure she’s safe overnight.”
“You’ll stay with her?”
Max frowned. “If she’ll let me. And if not, I’ll spend the night outside her place and keep an eye on her. She’ll be safe.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, Bastien. I’ve got her back.”
The cop stared at him intently for a moment and then nodded, accepting his word. “All right. I got me a date to get back to, then. Can’t keep the ladies of New Orleans waiting for all this hotness.”
Max rolled his eyes as the cop strolled away; then he turned his attention back to the problem at hand. Rather, the damsel in distress at hand. Dammit. He really didn’t need to pull babysitting duty when he should be out hunting bad guys. Or maybe being the bad guy would be more accurate.
A soft hand touched his sleeve, and he reacted violently, spinning to face Lissa, who pulled back sharply at his abrupt move. He carefully stilled his entire body and pitched his voice to calming tones. “The police asked if I’d mind walking you home. Would that be all right with you, or would that frighten you?”
“Why on earth would that frighten me? You saved me. You’re my knight in shining armor.”
Oh, God. He was so not a good guy. Were it not for some random creep attacking her, he’d be the one scaring her. He would be the one stalking her without her knowledge, the one peering in her windows with a telescope, the one bugging her house and cloning her computer and cell phone. He would be the one putting that haunted expression in her big dark eyes.
He shoved a distracted hand through his short hair. “Look. I’m going to be honest with you. The police have asked me to keep an eye on you tonight since you won’t accept their protection. Does that freak you out?”
“No freakage. But I hate to impose on you. Keep you from your family...?”
She left it hanging as a question. “No family,” he replied shortly.
“Job? Pet? Girlfriend?”
“None of the above. Correction, I have a job, but I work for myself. Set my own hours.”
“Perfect! You can stay at my place. We’ll make a party out of it.”
Did she have to sound so damned tickled about having a slumber party with him? There was no way he was spending the night in her apartment with her. He might be a cad, but he wasn’t that giant a cad. “I think the police have pretty much wrapped up here. We can go soon. Where do you live?” As if he didn’t know already. Ha.
“I live over the curiosity shop down the block. But I was on my way to the store. I’m out of food. And Mr. Jackson—well, he’s not patient about missing supper.”
He frowned. He’d seen no evidence of a man of any kind in her life. He glanced down to verify that her ring finger was naked. It was. “You have a boyfriend?”
She blinked up at him rather owlishly. “What?” A look of dawning comprehension. “Oh! You mean Mr. Jackson?” Gay laughter. “I’ll introduce you two when we get home. He’s gonna love you. C’mon. I need tuna fish and mayonnaise. He loves my homemade tuna salad and asked after it this morning.”
Something deflated inside Max. Had he actually been a little attracted to her? Hell, how could he not be? She was fascinating in a strange kind of way. The woman had an eccentric style that had nothing to do with regular conventions of society or fashion. A hint of...death...clung to her. Or at least a knowing of it. And yet, within that overriding impression of darkness, a discordant note of happiness was audible. It was entirely at odds with her darker self.
Either that, or the long months undercover had finally gotten to him, and he was losing his marbles. He did a quick mental craziness check. Nope. It wasn’t him. There was something special about her, something alluring, that called to him. Hell, tempted him. This was the way he felt when he found a lost art masterpiece. The discovery brought out the greedy poet inside him.
Or maybe his reaction to her stemmed from the fact that he’d just saved her life. Yeah, that must be it. That had to be why he felt so protective all of a sudden. He was a lot of things, but compassionate was not one of them. And yet here he was, walking his own personal damsel in distress home.
Frowning, he fell in beside her as she strode off down the street. For a woman who’d just been attacked and nearly killed, she’d recovered her mojo damned fast. Either that or she was a fine actress.
“Are you okay?” he asked, blatantly throwing out a trial balloon to gauge her mood and mind-set.
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re here now.”
Well, hell. It kinda made a guy want to puff out his chest and put a little swagger in his step. He glanced down at her and caught her staring sidelong up at him. Their gazes met, and something crackled between them. He could almost see the energy forming a complete circuit between them. Sheesh. His imagination was working overtime tonight. He was a trained covert operative, for goodness’ sake. He didn’t do crackling sexual attraction, particularly not with civilians.
But then she reached out to touch the energy. Her fingertips exactly traced the invisible lines arcing back and forth between them. Crud. Could she physically see the attraction between them? Did that mean she was crazy, too, or was it just him losing his mind? Either way, charges zinged through his body, drawing him to her as if they were opposite poles of human-size magnets. The pull was inexorable and irresistible. And hot. Shockingly hot.
Lust for this woman shot through him along those strange ley lines of sexual energy, and it was all he could do to keep his hands off her. Only the sure and certain knowledge that he would be no better than that sicko stalker behind them kept him from seriously contemplating dragging her up against him, kissing her until she begged him to bed her, burying his body in hers and inhaling all that crackling sexual energy flowing from her into him.
“I’m not a superhero, you know. I’m just a guy.”
“You’re my superhero.”
Huh. He liked the sound of that. Enough that he ordered his raging libido in no uncertain terms to take a hike. Enough that he volunteered to hold the basket for her as he trudged around a local convenience store behind her.
Grocery shopping was a domestic task he had never done before with a woman. It was surreal. Terribly domesticated. So very normal. He had to admit it held a certain charm. Weird charm but charm nonetheless. Or maybe it was just the company he was keeping that made it seem so damned fantastic.
Gah. This was an anomaly. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, she would make her statement, the bad guy would go to jail for a good long time and Max would get back to his regularly scheduled life as an undercover agent. Stalking her.
In a state of minor shock, he carried her plastic grocery bags back to Callista’s Curiosities of the Magical and Macabre and dutifully stood at Lissa’s side as she fumbled at the door with a big old-fashioned key.
“You should let me install a decent security system and a good lock on that door,” he commented.
“Is that what you do? Security systems?”
“Something like that.”
The door lock surrendered just then and granted them access to an incredibly cluttered space. Floor-to-ceiling junk crammed the store. It was enough to make a person feel a little claustrophobic. “Hell of a name this place has. Quite a mouthful.”
“I call it C2M2 to myself,” she replied.
He stopped in the doorway. It felt odd to be entering the place he’d been doing surveillance on for weeks.
“Come in. Please.”
Dammit, if he hadn’t detected that hint of fearful pleading in her tone, he’d have refused her. But as it was, he had no choice. He’d promised Bastien, after all. And truth be told, he wasn’t the kind of guy to leave a woman in the lurch.
She wound across the crowded and cluttered space, heading for a narrow staircase near the back of the store. “I’m sorry in advance for the chaos upstairs. I just inherited this place, and it needs a ton of work.”
She said that as if the downstairs wasn’t a colossal, messy hoarder’s wet dream. He hesitated to see what she considered trashed enough to apologize for. He rounded the corner into her second-floor home and stopped cold. It was a war zone.
The place had been stripped down to the lath and plaster wallboards, and in some places down to bare brick. Corroded copper plumbing was exposed, ancient electrical wires hung in dangerous festoons, bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling provided the only light and the floor was scraped boards. The angle of his surveillance cameras on the shop didn’t capture any of this.
“What the hell happened in here?” he blurted.
“The previous owner started renovations, and I haven’t had time to finish them yet,” she threw over her shoulder as she headed over to a corner that contained a 1950s vintage refrigerator with a rusted door, a hot plate on a wooden milk crate and a metal washtub on the floor under two bare faucets.
“Where did the kitchen go?” he asked cautiously.
“In the Dumpster out back. It was disgusting. I tore out what was left.”
“So I gather.” He picked his way around a pile of debris and across a canvas painter’s tarp stretched over the floor. “And your workmen left the construction site like this? Fire them. I know some good contractors—”
“I’m doing the work myself.”
He stared at Lissa as she shed her coat and hung it on an elaborate wood-and-iron coatrack in the corner. In a properly restored home, it would be a lovely piece. In this chaos, it was wildly out of place.
Good Lord. She was even tinier than he’d imagined, a mere slip of a woman. And she was capable of the heavy labor involved in a complete home restoration? Color him impressed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a contractor.”
“I’m not,” she answered cheerfully. “But how hard can it be? It’s only hammers and nails and saws.”
Oh, my dear God. Was that what she thought? “And you know how to weld copper and run wiring and hang drywall and know the New Orleans building codes, then?” he asked lightly. He’d renovated his condo when he bought it, but he’d paid experienced professionals to do it and it had still been a nightmare. He’d pitched in to help the crew and had learned a ton about construction, but he wouldn’t know where to begin with this disaster.
“No, but I’ll figure it out.”
He managed to get his hanging jaw closed before she turned around, a small bowl of tuna fish and mayonnaise in hand. Other hand on her hip, she asked, “Now where has Mr. Jackson gone off to?”
If he were this Jackson guy, he’d have run away from home and not come back until this place was put back together. Belatedly, Max answered, “Can you call him on his cell phone? Find out where he’s gone? I know some guys who could pick him up and bring him back here.”
Lissa frowned at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Hey. He’d just offered to burn a hard-won favor from his employer for her.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she said slowly, as though he were some sort of ignorant child. “Mr. Jackson,” she crooned. “I made you your favorite. Tuna salad.”
Something landed on his shoulder from above, and he dived for the floor, rolling and coming up ready to kill. Jeez. Where had that guy come from? Stunned at the surprise attack, he looked around wildly for his attacker.
Nada. What the hell?
For her part, Lissa laughed and scooped up a...
Son of a bitch.
A cat. Small and black. With one white front paw that looked just like a feline glove. “Mr. Jackson, I presume?” he said drily, lowering his fists to his sides.
“Would you like to pet him? Although I don’t know if he likes men or not. You’re the first one I’ve seen him around. I inherited him with the store.”
“Along with this disaster zone?”
“I prefer to think of it as a project with unlimited potential.”
A cold knot of suspicion started to form in his gut. Had she actually, literally, inherited the place? From whom? And how recently? He’d been under the impression that the store’s namesake would be returning at some point. “Exactly how long ago did you inherit this place?”
“Let’s see. It’s been almost a month.”
He closed his eyes in chagrin as acid frustration ate its way through his gut. A month. The past few weeks of grueling round-the-clock surveillance had been for naught. She wasn’t the person he was supposed to be following. She wouldn’t have any contacts. She was useless to him. Worse, the trail had gone cold, then.
“Who owned this place before you?” he asked in resignation.
“My aunt. Callista Clearmont. She willed it to me right before she died suddenly.”
His one and only link to the next level of hierarchy in the mob he was infiltrating was dead? A stream of violent swearing erupted inside his head.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured automatically. Crap, crap, crap. How was he going to track down Callista Clearmont’s mob connections if the woman was dead? Why hadn’t anyone told him?
Unless the niece had inherited the mob contacts, as well...
Lissa turned away. Her shoulders gave a suspicious heave, and she sniffed loudly. Oh, no. Not more female tears. He had no defense against them. They scared him to death. Frantic to distract her from launching into full-blown waterworks, he asked quickly, “You said she died suddenly?”
His question did the trick. Lissa turned back to face him, another one of those delicate frowns of hers puckering her creamy brow. “She called me. Told me she was going to die any minute and that she’d willed everything she owned to me.”
“Was she sick a long time?”
“Oh, no. She was in perfect health. We all thought she was going to outlive the rest of the family.”
His internal antenna wiggled abruptly. Could it be? Had the mob or one of its enemies killed her? “What were the circumstances of her death, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“She died in her sleep, supposedly. A customer found her after she didn’t come downstairs for an appointment to do a reading.”
“A reading?”
“She was a psychic. I think that customer had asked for a crystal ball scrying. She also read palms very well. The last time I talked to her, she claimed she’d had a vision. That a spirit told her she was going to die within a day or two and to put her affairs in order.”
A spirit, huh? More like a mob informant, perhaps? “Who were your aunt’s clients? Did she keep a list of them?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t found it if she did keep one, though. Her business papers are, well, a little disorganized.”
If the shop downstairs was any indication of how the woman had done business, any kind of organized client list was probably a long shot. With a list, though, he could maybe identify Callista’s mob contact and find the next level of hierarchy in the secretive Russian gang he’d spent the past two years infiltrating.
“Are you hungry?” Lissa asked, startling him out of his train of thought.
“You don’t have to feed me. I’ll grab something on the way home.”
“It’s the least I can do for you after you saved my life.”
“I wouldn’t go that far in describing what I did. I only interrupted a mugging. Any passerby could have done the same.”
“They could have, but that doesn’t mean they would have. He was going to kill me.”
How did she know that? Was she a psychic, too?
“I was just planning to heat up some leftovers. Let me fix you a plate.”
“Can I help, umm, prepare it?” He eyed the hot plate and metal washtub askance.
“Nah. I bought a Monte Cristo sandwich earlier and I’ll just pop it in the microwave. It’s a lot more than I can eat alone. I’ll split it with you.”
“Sure. If you’ll let me buy the next meal.” The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to think about them. There couldn’t be a “next meal” for the two of them. She was an innocent, not mixed up in her aunt’s mess and of no use to him. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, and then he would get the hell out of her life and never look back.
