Helene knew she’d had too much to drink. That wasn’t wise in a world so far removed from her own.
The Louisiana bayou was her home. Nothing of New Orleans lived there. The city was a viper, a red-lipped lady of the night. She crooked a sly finger at unsuspecting souls, then stood back and laughed as those who dwelled in her dark dens and shadowy cellars crawled out to commit their crimes.
It was overdone, Helene decided. The music, the noise, the lights. The masks, so happily worn by so many of the crazed inhabitants. She needed air and a moment to calm her spinning head.
She needed help.
Drinking herself into a catatonic state wouldn’t bring her sister back, and it wouldn’t do her already damaged liver any good either. Despite the bourbon that clouded her mind and the layers of fog that shrouded the entire French Quarter, she wove an unsteady path through the back rooms of the seamy club that had lured her through its doors three long hours ago.
A small exit opened to a narrow alley. The brick walls and wrought iron blurred from the liquor she’d consumed. The air, cool and damp, slid like soothing fingers over the careworn lines of her face.
A stone archway to her right came and went at the whim of the thickening fog. Tiny balconies with stingy lights and bare, black railings peered down at her. Maybe empty, maybe not. The fog refused to keep still and let her see.
She tried not to stumble as she attempted to follow the music and traffic noise to the street. There were answers to be had here about her sister Madeleine’s murder. Somewhere in this wicked city, there was one person who would listen to her, who would hear her. One person who’d believe.
A rift in the pavement almost sent her to the ground. Although something in the alley began to drag and scrape behind her, a faint glow of light ahead relieved her mind. So did a break in the fog that widened to reveal a single cheerful balcony. There, two levels up, blood-red petunias spilled from a shiny planter box. She smiled, delighted by the fluted heads that hung over the sides, as if waiting to greet passersby.
Different music reached her now, a blend of smoky jazz and cabaret, heavy on the saxophone. Madeleine had loved saxophones, she recalled. And petunias.
A crunch of pebbles close behind her stopped the memory cold. Alarm feathered over her skin. She clutched her sweater tight and forced herself to turn. To look. To see with her eyes what her mind couldn’t make out.
“I have no abilities,” she said to the shadows that shifted and stirred. “I’m not gifted with the sight as my sister was. I am unarmed.”
“So you say, old woman.”
The man’s voice was a distortion. It came from nowhere and everywhere. It chilled her blood and caused her flesh to prickle.
The knuckles holding her sweater whitened. “My name is Helene,” she said clearly. “I mean no harm to anyone.”
His chuckle seemed to crawl right inside her. “That’s not the story I got, Helene.”
She heard a sharp click, felt her heart thump and her organs turn to jelly. More pebbles crunched underfoot.
“Not that I care, you understand.” He chuckled again. “I make it a point not to care.”
She saw his right hand and gasped. Clawed fingers sank into her hair and gave a ruthless yank. A knife blade gleamed. So, for a moment, did his eyes.
The fog ripped apart—a curtain snatched to one side. She spied the petunias again, their deep red color a perfect match for the blood that spilled from her throat onto her desperate fingers.
Those pretty hanging heads watched her slide to the ground. They were the last things her terrified eyes took in.
Except…
Just one glass of wine, Mia thought. Merlot, partly because she was in the mood for plums, but mostly because the undisputed expert at her club had given her a bottle of 1965 from his personal cellar.
The gift told her plainly he wanted a raise. Anticipating him, she’d authorized a 15 percent salary hike that very afternoon. A wine connoisseur who did double duty as her assistant and excelled in both areas was simply too valuable to lose.
She took the carpeted back stairs to the second floor of her sexy French Quarter lounge. The Rose Noire had what she called “layers.” Mia had backlit over twenty subtle alcoves and niches, created atmosphere with lush plants, to-die-for seating and tossed in enough scented shadows to make her Creole aunts weep.
Mellow jazz trailed her up the staircase. Mia wore black because it suited her, but disliking severity, dressed it up with scarlet nail polish, red lip gloss and a pair of ruby-red earrings that peeked out from the long, straight sweep of her dark hair. Razor-cut bangs, also long, framed eyes the color of a Caribbean mist and highlighted the slashing cheekbones she’d inherited from her bayou-born grandmother.
The Rose Noire Lounge, together with the Midnight Moon Tearoom next door, had been her grandmother’s vision. The dream, not quite realized in her lifetime, had been dismissed by her daughter and only child. Mia’s mother had married young to escape the swamp, produced a child of her own to seal the deal, put seven years of half hearted effort into a loveless marriage, and then traded her husband and daughter in for a lesbian affair that had drawn her cross-country from New Orleans to San Francisco.
Mia had no idea where she was now and, frankly, no longer cared. Her father and grandmother had raised her. Although they’d died several years ago, she still had five aunts, her French Quarter club, her tearoom and, currently, a glass of vintage Merlot in her hand. Life could be a great deal worse.
She spotted the fog the moment she entered her office and, pleased, left the overheads off. A mauve bulb burned soft and low on a balcony that invited her to sip her wine in a cocoon of relative silence.
Opening the double French doors, she stood for a moment absorbing the night. It was like stepping into a film noir, a black-and-white world with a punch of red, courtesy of the petunias she’d coaxed from seedlings into a riot of beautiful summer blossoms.
Pleased with a green thumb she hadn’t realized she possessed, Mia took a savoring drink. Because the air smelled delicious, she slipped off her stilettos and gave her hair a liberating toss. Then she caught a muffled thud and lowered her gaze to the alley.
Time froze. The scene below condensed. A single black-and-white frame separated itself from the rest of the film. Nothing and no one moved. Until she blinked. Then finally, slowly, the clock began to tick once again.
She saw blood, a fountain of it, pouring from an old woman’s throat. She spied the terror stamped on the woman’s face. She glimpsed a hand, a man’s. One of his fingers was missing. So, her shocked mind realized, was most of his face.
No, not missing. Covered. Invisible in the darkness of the alley. He had a black cap pulled low over his forehead and a black scarf tied across his nose and mouth.
But his eyes… Now those were clearly visible. Deep gold and exquisitely shaped, they sharpened to a diamond gleam as they followed a line from the old woman’s dying gaze straight to hers.
* * *
Her visitor knocked once. As a token, Mia imagined. She hadn’t had a moment of actual privacy all day.
“Ms. LeMay?” A man’s head appeared around the edge of the door.
Seated in her plush office chair, legs crossed and seemingly at ease, she met his chocolate-brown eyes. “If you’re Crucible, come in.”
He stepped inside, surprising her with his size. At six-five plus, he was large boned, broad shouldered and fit. African American, for the most part, and dressed head to toe in black. Not a flicker of concern registered for the Magnum she held in her lap.
She indicated a deep chair angled across from her. “Have a seat.”
A smile touched his lips. “You’re keeping the desk between us, I see. In the event I’m not who or what I claim to be?”
“I know what you are. Who sent you is more of a mystery.”
His gaze didn’t falter as he set what appeared to be a business card on her desk. He turned it so she could see the sketched outline of a man’s profile.
“We believe this is the calling card of the person responsible for the murder of Helene Dubose, the woman you saw die last night. We have no name. We have no information at all, other than the fact that a card like this has been left at the scene of several murders.”
“How many murders exactly?”
“Including the one you witnessed, six.”
“This was a serial killing then.”
“I would say yes to that and qualify it by adding that the killings have spanned two years and three states. The victims are generally unconnected. The one link we’ve recently established does connect two of the victims. They’re sisters. But even with that knowledge, we’re baffled. On the plus side, we located a witness after the fourth death, which occurred right here in New Orleans.”
Mia’s eyes remained steady, though her gun hand threatened to tremble. “Captain Martin told me about your witness. He was shot in the back of the head while climbing into the police car that would have taken him to the parish precinct. Guess that makes me luckier than him. Or maybe just less of a risk.”
The man called Crucible sat back to study her. “Do you really believe the murderer will assume you didn’t see his face, Ms. LeMay?”
“I didn’t see his face. He knows it, and so do you.”
“And yet you’re holding a gun.”
“I grew up in the bayou,” she said simply. “I’m not naive. Look, Crucible—Is that what I’m supposed to call you? By a code name?”
“I’m a government agent.”
Mia thought his smile had a definite gator-like quality.
“I’m one of several agents,” he explained. “Collectively, you could call us an integrated group of uneasy allies.”
“And as ‘uneasy allies,’ you expect me to believe that whatever plan your integrated group has devised will keep me alive?”
“Uneasy isn’t a synonym for inept, Ms. LeMay.”
“Obviously you haven’t met my cousin Franklin.” At Crucible’s mildly curious expression, she shrugged. “He’s a chiropractor. He creates more spinal problems than he cures. He had a nervous breakdown three months ago.” She swept a hand toward the door. “Judging from the five police officers downstairs, the seven on the street and the three in the stairwell, are we talking about a safe house?”
“That would be standard procedure. Unfortunately, in situations like these, safe houses have a less than acceptable rate of success. Somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty percent.”
Mia tipped her lips into a cool smile. “Not the best odds, but possibly better than my chances of climbing into and out of a police car alive.”
“Yet you did both quite successfully last night. Twice in fact. Once going to the station, and again on the ride home.” He sat forward in his chair. “We have a somewhat different plan in mind for you, Mia. May I call you Mia?”
“It’s my name.” Long lashes veiled her eyes. “Does this plan involve me leaving New Orleans?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Apparently he wanted to dance. Obliging him, she relaxed her smile. “Oh, I think you could, Crucible, if you put your mind to it. Don’t leave all the dirty work to whatever watchdog or dogs you’ve chosen to stick me with.”
“One dog,” he said. “We call him Rogue because that’s precisely what he is. An agent without an agency, so to speak.”
“Like a rogue shark?”
“More like a lone wolf. We trust in his ability to keep you alive and safe.”
“From a serial killer whose face I didn’t see.”
Crucible stared for a moment, before sitting back once again. “Leave nothing and no one behind. Do you know that expression?”
“I’m afraid not.” Though she had to admit it did make a certain macabre kind of sense. “I’ll admit, I saw his eyes, but I’m assuming the missing finger on his left hand, the hand that held the knife, makes a somewhat stronger statement.”
“Not many left-handed murderers would be minus their left ring finger and have gold eyes, to boot. You know it, and he will, too. You’re the first person who’s been able to provide us with any kind of description. The killer won’t appreciate that. Now, do you want the rest of this straight?”
Did she need the rest of this at all? “I prefer straight to sugar coated,” she replied.
Crucible’s dark eyes bored into hers. “We’re not sure that what we’re dealing with here is a single killer. We do however believe that three of the six murders were committed by the man you saw last night.”
“And the other three?”
“Weren’t carried out quite as efficiently.”
Zydeco music, a lively accordion-washboard mix, reached her from the club across the alley. Mia’s heart rate rose to the beat while images of bloodstained corpses formed in her head.
“Are you saying the man I saw was hired? That he’s a hit man?”
“I’m saying there’s a strong possibility we’re dealing with more than one killer.”
“More than one killer, but both or all leaving the same calling card behind.”
“Some people prefer shadow to light, Mia. They also like to pretend their hands are clean. For the moment, we know what we know. We have three efficient and three much cruder murders. We also have six cards with the same silhouette on them, possibly indicating one controlling entity. A shadow, if you will. If such a shadow does indeed exist, he or she is part of a larger picture, one I hope to damage via the removal of the man you saw from your balcony.”
The zydeco tempo picked up. Mia shut it out and calmed her suddenly churning pulses. “You said straight, Crucible.”
“I did, yes.” He backed off, giving her room to regroup and breathe. But only for a moment. “Chances are you’ll be the murderer’s next target, Mia. You think that Magnum in your lap will protect you, but it won’t. You think standard police protection will work, but while it should, it won’t. Standard’s too—”
“Predictable?”
“I was going to say sloppy.”
“I’m getting that you’re not a fan of the police.”
“Police officers do what they do. Murderers, hired or self-directed, likewise. Fortunately, Rogue does what he does better than anyone I know. In my opinion, he’s our best chance of keeping you safe.”
Decision made, it appeared. Mia didn’t bat an eyelash as thunder rumbled low and threatening above the throbbing music. “Is Rogue with you now?”
“No, and I have urgent business in D.C.”
“Busy man.”
“I am.” He stood, waited until she did the same. “I promise you, there won’t be any sloppiness today. Rogue will arrive shortly. He’ll verify his identity to your satisfaction. I’m sorry, but your lounge will have to remain closed tonight.”
No, he wasn’t the least bit sorry. As for his rogue of an agent…
More thunder rolled through the sky. “You think the killer will come back, don’t you?” she said.
Crucible’s eyes moved to the window. “My guess is he already has.”
* * *
Enough of the cloak-and-dagger tactics. There were plainclothes officers everywhere Mia looked and probably more where she hadn’t. She might not be able to open the lounge, but her assistant had had the tearoom up and running since midmorning, and it was bustling.
Iona, one of the room’s two flamboyant fortune tellers, swept through a curtained archway in a colorful broom skirt, multiple scarves and a full complement of dramatic jewelry. “Uh-uh.” She snagged Mia by the shoulders, forced her to execute a one-eighty turn and propelled her to a shadowy corner table. “You’re playing with fireworks, pretty kitten. Gonna get your whiskers singed.”
“It’s ‘fire,’ not ‘fireworks,’ Iona, and I refuse to shut down two lucrative businesses at the height of the season. My grandmother would climb out of her grave and haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“That life that might be shorter than you think.” The older woman shook a stern finger. “I read your tea leaves after you talked to that big man in black today. Trouble surrounds you like a poison cloud, and all the signs point to that cloud closing in on you day by day. Hour by hour.” Sitting, she plunked a heavy elbow on the table and pointed at the ceiling. “Do you hear the thunder?”
Mia heard flutes and trickling water from a trio of fountains. She went stare-to-stare with the fortune teller. “You want to mix tea leaves with rogue agents and card-carrying killers, Iona. All I want is the head of the man who murdered an old woman outside my lounge last night.”
“Could be your head in danger if you don’t get gone from this place lickety split. Me and Crystal can watch over the Midnight Moon, and there isn’t a soul in this hemisphere more hardworking or honest than Henri. He’ll keep the Rose going.” She looked up, pointed again. “That’s two peals of thunder now. You know what it means.”
“It means,” Mia said wearily, “there’s a storm coming.”
“You think that, you’ve been away from your bayou roots too long. It’s time you went home.”
“The choice of destination isn’t up to me.”
“Fiddlesticks.” Iona flapped that away. “Choice is always up to you. Your life, your decision. Now if you want to talk Fate, we’ll turn to the Tarot. I say bayou. Cards might say different.” She held up a silencing finger. “And there it is. Three minutes, three times the thunder speaks its mind. It’s a sign for sure.”
Finally, Mia found herself smiling.. “It’s a summer storm moving northward from the gulf.” Her smile faded when she recalled the open terror in Helene Dubose’s face. “The question is, how much damage will this particular storm leave in its wake?”
* * *
Lightning snaked across a late afternoon sky whose massing clouds had gone from marginally gloomy to downright ominous in ten short minutes. Thunder boomed behind it. Ignoring both, Rick Ryder made a quick sweep of the darkening waterfront before pushing his way into the tavern behind him.
It was a dive, pure and simple. Sweat, beer and something like sour pickles permeated the air. He caught whiffs of smoke, most of it illegal, and wondered vaguely if the people with their heads down on the bar would stumble out under their own steam or wind up being stretchered out by paramedics.
“If you’re looking for me, you’re facing the wrong direction.”
Ryder gave in to a faint smile, but made himself lose it before he turned to a table so deep in one of the corners that all he could make out was the silhouette of its occupant. Figured.
“Maintaining the facade as usual, huh, Grogan?”
“No more than you’re fingering the rules.”
Keeping the wall at his back, Ryder straddled a chair. “Pretty sure you told me once there were no rules. None that you lived by, anyway.” He glanced around the room. “Does Crucible know where you spend your break time?”
The man lifted a half-gone mug of beer, gave the contents a lazy swirl. “I’m off the clock until I decide I’m not. Why’d you dog me here?”
Ryder rested his arms on the chair back. “Word is another calling card surfaced in a French Quarter alley.”
“Words are cheap, and in this case, not your concern.”
Ryder summoned a wry half smile. “Your Spidey senses need a tune-up if you think that, Rogue.”
He saw a gleam of teeth. “Trying to piss me off won’t work, you know that.” He took a slow drink. “Why are you here? Bear in mind, when this beer’s gone, so am I. I’d make it short and sweet if I were you.”
“You know, that’s pretty damn close to why I’m here.”
Grogan’s eyes flicked up as thunder shuddered through the walls of the derelict bar. “Three more swallows, Ryder, and I’m in the wind.”
“I need a favor.”
“I need a good night’s sleep. Since I’m 110 percent sure I won’t be getting one, what’s your point?”
“No point, just a statement of fact. And about as much of an answer as I expected.”
Grogan made a sound of disgust in his throat. “Even if I were inclined to stoop, I’m not in a favor-granting position right now. Got a job happening for Crucible et al.”
“Heard about it.”
“The hell you did. You’re guessing, or bluffing.”
Ryder grinned. “Those are two of my strengths.”
“And giving a damn’s your weakness.”
“You think?”
“Not think—know.” He polished off the beer, regarded the liquor-stained wall. “What’s the favor?”
“The witness, Mia LeMay. I want her.”
Grogan’s eyes shot to Ryder’s face. “You know I can’t…” he began, then swayed a little and frowned into his empty glass. “Damn me,” he muttered. He brought his gaze up. “Damn you.” His voice slurred. His head lolled. “Crucible’s gonna—”
“Oh, yeah, he’s definitely ‘gonna,’” Ryder agreed.
When Grogan’s face hit the table, Ryder stood and stuck a twenty in the man’s back pocket. It might be there when he woke up, it might not. Didn’t matter really. One way or another, Grogan would live. A rogue like him always did.
In terms of his own fate, Ryder figured he was a dead man going in. As for Mia LeMay? Well, even a dead man could use a little company.