His name was Michael Crowley, and when the call came through, he was at his computer in the back room of a rented shotgun in that part of New Orleans known as the Irish Channel. All he had to do was glance at the number on the phone and he knew they had trouble.
He listened for a moment, then put in a call to Lance Palmer. “The Charbonnet Street house has been compromised. A man and a woman. They sound white.”
“Fuck,” said Lance. “It’s Alexander and the girl. How the hell did they find the house?”
Crowley could hear Palmer shouting to Hadley in the background, “Where’s Fitzgerald?” Hadley’s reply was muffled by the slamming of doors, the slap of running feet.
Lance said, “He’s closer to the Ninth than we are, if he’s in Marigny. We’ll meet him at the house. Let’s go.”
Crowley said, “You want me to head over there, too?”
“Negative. Keep monitoring the microphone feed. You can relay it to us when we get to the house. I don’t care what it takes. I want those two dead.”
The moonlight shining through the empty windows was bright enough that they didn’t need the flashlights until they reached the stairwell, where the walls were only gutted to about halfway up. Jax Alexander slipped his Beretta back into the waistband of his khakis and flicked on his flashlight, holding the fingers of one hand splayed over the glass so the light came out diffused and tinted oddly red by his flesh. Tobie, following him up the stairs, did the same.
Nothing in the house seemed familiar to her, not even when they reached the second floor and found the walls there still intact. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom. The first two bedrooms were empty. But in the third bedroom, the largest, they found a stained mattress thrown on the floor in the corner. There was a folding table, too, set up near the curtained window.
Jax walked over to finger the heavy drape. “It’s a blackout curtain. Someone obviously wanted to make sure no one knew they were in here.”
Tobie let her gaze rove over the litter of items on the table: a pair of wire cutters and a couple of screwdrivers, a coil of wire, and a few snips of stripped wire. A canvas bag lay on the floor, next to the empty blister pack from a card of nine-volt batteries and the discarded packaging from a couple of cheap, throwaway cell phones.
“What’s this?” she asked, hunkering down to look at a scattering of silver splatters on the floor.
“Someone’s been soldering in here.”
Straightening, she was reaching for a book she’d spotted on the edge of the table when he said, “We need to back out of here fast.”
She swung around to look at him. “Why? What is it?”
“This place is a bomb factory. Did you touch anything?”
Tobie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “The book,” she said, realizing she was still holding it.
“Bring it.”
“I don’t understand.” She shoved the book into her bag as they headed back toward the stairs. “How does this fit in with any—”
He pressed a finger to her lips, silencing her as the distant creak of a board cut through the stillness of the night.
Her gaze flew to meet his. There was someone downstairs.
Rather than click off his flashlight, he carefully set it down on its face, reducing the light to a small, softly glowing ring. She did the same. Then, slipping the Beretta from its waistband holster again, he thrust out his left hand, his fingers splayed wide in a silent message. Stay here.
She expected him to creep down the stairs. Instead, she watched, bemused, as he laid down on his stomach at the top of the stairs and began to inch down the steps head first, his elbows splayed wide so he could hold his Beretta at the ready.
There hadn’t been another hint of movement from the first floor. She was beginning to wonder if they’d simply been spooked by the sound of the ruined house settling when she heard another creak, this time from the stairwell directly below.