Indeed, the reporters did jump right spryly to avoid getting run over. In fact, they scattered like bowling pins that had a strike ball thrown at them. It would have been deeply satisfying were she not so panicked at being filmed on some major news channel where lots of people might see.
Glancing in her rearview mirror, she winced to see reporters sprinting in various directions, no doubt racing for vehicles to follow her. She stomped on the accelerator and prayed no one would successfully manage that.
The “haunted” bed-and-breakfast she and Gary were supposed to film next wasn’t in the best part of the French Quarter. But she did have to admit it had a deliciously spooky air about it. Overgrown vines crowded the iron gate that blocked the courtyard, and an air of neglect clung to the rusty second-floor ironwork and peeling paint. A pretty courtyard coated with green mildew and overgrown flower beds stretched away behind the gate.
She threw open the back of the van to grab her camera gear and, as she reached for it, spied Gary’s duffel bag sitting on the ribbed metal floor. She probably ought to carry that into his place so its contents could be included in the police inventory of his personal possessions. Later. When the press wasn’t stalking her and Bass wasn’t playing invisible.
Grabbing her camera bag out of the back of the van, she knocked on the B&B’s front door.
A woman who’d seen the back side of fifty but was attempting to hide it beneath garish makeup answered, gushing, “You must be the camerawoman from America’s Ghosts. Carrie Something. I’m Amelie Reigneaux.” She looked eagerly over Carrie’s shoulder. “Where’s Gary Hubbard?”
“I wish I knew,” Carrie snapped without thinking. Oops. She corrected hastily, “He can’t join us today. I’m here to shoot background shots and set shots we can use during voice-over sequences.”
“But I thought Gary would come with you. It’s his show, after all.”
Carrie answered, “I’m so sorry. We’ve had some unexpected complications to our shooting schedule. Can you show me around, so I can pick out some spots to film for background? I’d love to do a preliminary on-camera interview with you. That will help Gary prepare questions to ask you when he’s filming the actual episode.”
Amalie preened at that and ran a nervous hand through her bottle-blond hair.
Carrie stepped inside and wrinkled her nose at the scent of unchanged kitty litter. The front hallway was attractive in a faded-wallpaper-and-old-roses sort of way, and the front stairwell, made of beautifully-joined old cypress, really was gorgeous.
“Gary’s going to love shooting on this staircase,” Carrie commented appreciatively.
“This is one of the places Mignonette shows herself,” Amelie announced. “She’s the ghost. In fact, I’ve made a dress that’s an exact replica of the one she wears. If you’d like me to, I can put it on and re-enact the appearance of the ghost.”
Oy. This woman was obviously a fan of the show and knew the format. Gary often liked to use actors to portray the original historical figures who had later “become ghosted.”
“Umm, great. Gary will decide whether or not to use you in the show.” And no way was she touching that decision with a ten-foot pole. Gary could deal with his own crazy fans, thank you very much.
Was a crazy fan behind his kidnapping? Her gut said no. Those men in black who’d taken Gary had moved as if they knew what they were doing.
“Parlor’s in there,” her hostess said, pointing through an open pair of pocket doors. “That’s where Mignonette appears most often.”
Carrie listened to her hostess prattle on at length about sightings of the pre–Civil War belle who had pined away in this house for her true love and eventually died, herself.
Carrie wondered if the lover had died in the Civil War or from some other horrible nineteenth-century scourge. She tried to interrupt Amelie to ask, but the woman plowed ahead with the tour of the house, undeterred.
The original house had been joined to those on either side of it, and the resulting layout was a warren of narrow hallways that didn’t line up with one another and odd, dark corners. No wonder Gary had chosen this place to shoot. It screamed of poltergeists and apparitions.
It took a while, but eventually, she captured every last mazelike nook and cranny of the home and wrapped up shooting for the day. As night fell, she climbed into the van and stared at the steering wheel. Where was she supposed to go now?
Her mind drew a complete blank. Idly, she looked around the interior of the beat-up van. “What’s your name, old girl?”
She tried to imagine what a twenty-year-old van that had seen a lot of miles and better days would want to be called.
“I’ve got it,” she announced to the vehicle. “You’re Roxanne.” Smiling a little, she coaxed Roxanne to start.
She drove randomly around the downtown area, which was magical at night. Bright neon signs and crowds of happy tourists juxtaposed against shadowed alleys and dawdling natives, all set against the lovely historic architecture created a seductive and moody ambience.
She couldn’t go back to her apartment and the media sharks who would no doubt be waiting for her. She was tempted to go to Bass’s place and seek shelter with him. But she had no idea what was up with him. He’d seemed so interested but then pulled back so quickly.
If only she could tell whether he had seriously been flirting with her or just doing his job, attempting to use pillow talk to get her to confess to kidnapping Gary.
As full night fell over the city, and the French Quarter became more than a little spooky, she pulled into a parking spot on a street at the edge of the historic district. In the peach glow of a streetlamp down the block, she ducked into the back of the van and retrieved Gary’s duffel bag. Maybe there was some clue in it that might help the police find him.
She set aside the goofy artist’s smocks and dug deeper. A spare razor and toothbrush spoke of Gary’s eternal optimism when it came to picking up women. A cheap spiral notebook yielded plenty of Gary’s chicken-scratchings. She glanced through it, and for the most part, his notes seemed to deal with upcoming episodes of the show.
Until she reached the last half-dozen pages.
Words leaped off the page at her. “...one of the greatest undiscovered treasures of our time...priceless...lost since 1795...best lead in decades, possibly ever...”
Whaaat?
She thumbed back a few pages to where the notes about this supposed treasure began. A string of bizarre sentences were painstakingly written down, with at least half the words crossed out and replaced by other words. And they seemed to be...a love letter?
Carrie frowned. The recipient was someone named Pierre. She knew for a fact that Gary wasn’t gay. He was a hound dog after the ladies and had never wavered in that. So who was this Pierre guy? Honestly, the language sounded feminine and old-fashioned. My beggared eyes weep for the beauteous wealth of your soul and my paupered heart yearns to beat in your presence.
Nope. Definitely not Gary’s style. She thumbed forward in the notes. Something about the return of Louisiana to France from Spain. Clearly, this had to do with the treasure hunt.
Which was unlike him, truth be told. Granted, Gary’s work often involved historical tales and events, but the guy was no deep professor of history. He learned just enough to shoot the show and not one fact more.
The last annotation in the notebook was, “Stopped p 16, 6-1802. Arrived in New Orleans.”
Confused, she laid the notebook down. The duffel bag appeared empty and she pulled it close to repack it. It thunked down onto the metal floor of the van and she frowned.
The bag was made entirely of canvas. The metal buckles hadn’t made that sound. She turned the bag over to look at the bottom and it was plain canvas, too.
She turned the bag inside out and stared at a seam that appeared to have a clever fold built into it. She pulled the fold of cloth back. A hidden zipper. A secret compartment?
What did Gary have to hide? Given that his apartment had been ransacked twice, he obviously had something of value that someone else wanted.
She unzipped the secret pouch sewn into the bottom of the bag and slipped her fingers into the crack. Something smooth and cool was in there. It had a sharp edge. Paper. Another, smoother edge. That felt like leather. A book?
Working carefully, she eased out a very old-looking leather-bound book with rough-edged parchment pages. She opened it gently and spied brown handwriting. A journal. A very old one, written in a cramped hand. The tiny writing wasn’t in English, either. She didn’t speak French, but she could guess based on the accents over letters.
Was this what got Gary kidnapped?
* * *
Bass glared at his cell phone and jammed it back in his pocket. Again.
Carrie still wasn’t answering his calls, and he had no idea where she was. He’d spent all afternoon cooped up in Gary Hubbard’s apartment with the crime scene guys trying to figure out why on earth some goons felt obliged to destroy the place. So far, no answer had emerged.
On a personal level, he was worried as hell about Carrie. She’d looked like a firing squad was waiting outside for her instead of a bunch of reporters. Yes, she was an adult, and no, he wasn’t responsible for her. But damned if it didn’t feel as if he ought to be. She’d had a hell of a rough few days, and she was all alone in this town.
On a purely professional level, she was still a suspect in a kidnapping investigation. She couldn’t just take off and not tell anyone where she was going. If she skipped town, she would be in even more trouble than she already was, and she’d looked fully panicked enough to bolt and leave New Orleans when she’d spotted all those cameras.
He hated to admit it to himself, but she was a definite flight risk.
Which chapped his butt, frankly. Hadn’t she found the incendiary attraction between them interesting enough to stick around and see where it went? God knew, he rarely felt something like that with any woman. He knew how unusual, how precious, it was.
What did she have to be afraid of from reporters with cameras? He knew full well why he couldn’t afford to be photographed. Not only did he work undercover as a cop from time to time, but as a SEAL, he seriously had to avoid his face being on public display. The police had spokespeople for a reason. It gave men and women like him a means of staying away from the press while someone else briefed journalists on high-profile cases.
“Hey, Bass,” one of the crime scene investigators called to him.
He moved over to the dresser the guy was kneeling down in front of. “What’s up?”
“There’s a false bottom in this drawer. Looks hastily made and recently installed, like someone was hiding something. See these scratch marks on the interior side of the drawer? They’re not deep and there aren’t many marks, so this fake bottom hasn’t been opened and closed more than a few times.” The guy lifted a thin piece of balsa wood out of the bottom of the drawer, revealing a maybe one-inch deep space. Empty, dammit.
“Maybe the ransackers found whatever was in there,” Bass suggested.
The crime scene guy shrugged. “I don’t think so. The fake bottom isn’t broken and was still in place when I found it. There’s no deep scratching in the interior of the drawer to indicate a violent removal. In my professional opinion, the intruders didn’t get whatever was supposed to be hidden in here.”
“Was the vic into drugs?” Bass asked no one in particular.
A young woman, a rookie to the Missing Persons Unit, piped up. “No evidence of any drug residue in here. Appears Mr. Hubbard drank a fair bit, though.”
Bass turned on the young woman. “Why do you say that?”
“He’s got misdemeanor drunk and disorderlies in a half-dozen cities.”
“What else did you find on him?” Bass asked.
“A bankruptcy a while back. Not long before he got the America’s Ghosts gig. Doesn’t do social media. Never married. Friends are mostly in the entertainment business. I found an article that described him as lacking any discernable talent, but hardworking.”
Bass grinned. “Ouch.” Then, “What about his email?”
“The lab still has his laptop.”
Bass pulled the rookie aside and murmured to her, “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure, B. Whatchya need?”
“Can you run a full background check on Carrie Price? She’s Gary Hubbard’s camerawoman and producer.”
“Already tried. It’s an alias.”
Bass stared at her. “Come again?”
“She’s got no history prior to three years ago when she started working on America’s Ghosts.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Nada. Zip. She doesn’t exist before she showed up on this show.”
“Then who the hell is she?” he burst out.
“You’re the one who’s all cozy with her. Why don’t you charm it out of her?” The rookie waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Carrie was a fraud? Who the hell was she and how in the hell had she conned him so convincingly?
“Keep digging. I need a name. Something concrete on her.”
“Will do, Bass.”
“Let me know the second you figure out who she really is.”
The rookie nodded, studying him a little too intently for comfort. Bass turned away cursing in a steady, silent, well and truly pissed-off stream.
Evening turned into night, and still there was no sign of, nor word from, Carrie.
He finally broke down and got on the police band radio in one of the squad cars parked out front. He tuned to one of the unofficial frequencies and said, “LeBlanc here. Has anyone seen a white van with New York plates in the French Quarter in the past few hours?”
Someone answered quickly, “I saw a van like that parked on a side street near Dauphine and Urseline about a half hour ago.”
“Thanks, man,” Bass replied. He jumped in his Aston Martin and headed for the northeast French Quarter. With every block that passed, his irritation grew more intense. Although whether it was directed at Carrie—or whatever her name was—or at himself, he wasn’t sure.
She’d lied to him...and he’d fallen for it. She’d potentially impeded an investigation by not telling the truth, and now she was hiding from him. He ought to arrest her and let her spend a night in jail thinking about it—
There. He spied a pale shape down a dark side street. Her van. Cripes. This was one of the uglier parts of town. Gang activity and drug deals were frequent in this area, particularly after dark. He pulled a U-turn that would have been illegal were he not a cop and turned into the narrow street. He parked behind the van and got out of his car, stalking up to the driver’s side window with every intent of reading Carrie her rights and placing her under arrest—
She was crying.
The sight of her tears was a punch in the gut. It stopped him dead in his tracks. Then a burst of adrenaline shot through him, flinging him into full combat alert. What was wrong? Who’d hurt her? A need to commit violence, to protect her from harm, surged through him.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of the van with tears streaming down her face, she looked like a lost child. He knocked on the window and she jumped about a foot straight up in the air, reaching frantically for the van’s ignition before she recognized him and rolled down the window.
Good grief. She looked up at him with those huge, sad, brown eyes of hers, and his gut twisted like a rope of toffee folded over on itself. If he arrested her, he might as well kick a puppy while he was at it.
He exhaled hard, and that single breath whisked away his fury and frustration. “What’s wrong?” he heard himself asking in a much gentler tone than he’d planned.
“I tried to go home, but I couldn’t. Reporters were waiting for me and I have nowhere to go and Gary’s gone and I don’t know anyone except you and you’re a cop and you think I’m guilty and I don’t know what to do—”
He cut off her babbling, asking quietly, “Why do you say I think you’re guilty?”
“The way you look at me. Like you’re trying to see inside my head. And...” She hesitated, and then rushed forward, “...and the way you kissed me. I felt you holding back.”
“Maybe I was holding back because I’m a decent guy, and I don’t just fall into bed on a whim.”
“And maybe you don’t trust me.”
She had him there. He changed subjects. “Are you planning to camp in the van all night? I can recommend much safer streets to do that on. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t already been mugged sitting here.”
“Really?” She looked out the windshield as if she hadn’t noticed where she was before now.
“Any street in New Orleans that’s this deserted this early in the evening is a sure bet to be dangerous as hell.”
“Oh.” Dammit, her eyes went all wide and innocent and sexy as hell again.
Business, man. Do not think about what she feels like in your arms, kissing you like you’re some sort of conquering hero. “When I left Hubbard’s apartment about fifteen minutes ago, there weren’t any reporters camped out front. It’s probably safe for you to go home.”
She shook her head. “They’ll be back first thing in the morning.”
“Well, you can’t sit here all night.”
She nodded miserably and reached for the ignition again.
“Where will you go?” he asked quickly. “You can’t leave town.”
“I won’t leave town. Not until Gary comes back, safe and sound. I wouldn’t dream of abandoning the search for him.”
He had to give her full marks for loyalty.
“As for where I’ll go, I’ll find a motel or something.”
He winced. If her taste in motels was as bad as her taste in streets to park on after dark, he didn’t want to think about how much trouble she could land in. Reluctantly, he said, “You can stay at my place. You’ll be safe, and I won’t have to sit up all night worrying about you.”
“I don’t want to impose. I’ll just get a room—”
He cut her off. “I would end up sitting outside your hotel keeping watch anyway. This way, at least I’ll get some sleep. I insist.”
She blinked up at him owlishly. Damn, she was cute when she did that. Irresistibly so.
“I’ll lead the way out of here. You follow me in the van.” He strode away from her before she could object and jumped in his car. He moved ahead of her and waited while she pulled into the street behind him. He led her back to his place.
As he waited for the iron security gate to slide open, he caught a motion down the block that had him reaching under his seat and pulling a pistol into his lap. He chambered a round by feel. The figure melted into the shadows and didn’t move again, which only made his suspicions ratchet up even higher.
Was someone following him or following her? Could be either. He’d made plenty of enemies both as a cop and a SEAL. More likely, it was someone tailing her, though. Although reporters usually didn’t move like Special Forces operators. Maybe paparazzi were that stealthy. But still. The hackles on the back of his neck never lied. And they were standing up right now.
He waited for Carrie’s van to clear the gate before he hit the remote control and the gate started to close. He watched like a hawk to make sure no one slipped in at the last moment.
When the gate clanged shut, he proceeded to the garage and waved out his window for Carrie to follow him inside. While she parked the van, he slipped outside quickly and made a circuit around his property. He knew every possible hiding spot, where every concealing shadow fell, and he checked them all.
Who had that person down the block been? A very sharp reporter? Or someone more ominous? Could whoever kidnapped Hubbard now be after Carrie?
He even let himself out of the compound and took a quick spin around the block in search of the mysterious lurker. Whoever it was, he or she was gone.
His gut was screaming a warning that something was not right. He hustled back to the compound and Carrie. Time to put her and the whole place on lockdown.
He closed the iron security gate and flipped on the electrification. Not only the gate, but all of the decorative iron spikes atop the steel perimeter fence would now deliver a cool fifty thousand volts of get-the-hell-out-of-here to anyone who touched them.
When he stepped into the garage, Carrie was standing by his front door, with something bulky slung over one shoulder. A backpack maybe?
“Stay where you are,” he called to her.
She nodded, and he locked down the garage, turning on motion, pressure and heat sensors that covered both the immediate exterior of the building and the entire interior. He hustled over to her in the thirty-second gap before the system went live.
He unlocked the front door, ushered her inside, and then moved over to the panel in the corner, activating cameras and the house’s security alarm. No one was getting close to Carrie tonight without him damned well knowing about it.
“What’s up?” she asked nervously as he finally turned to face her.
“Just buttoning up for the night.”
“It looks like you put Fort Knox on lockdown.”
He grinned reluctantly. “Call me paranoid.”
“You don’t strike me as the paranoid type.”
He had no intention of telling her about the shadowed figure down the street. The last thing he needed was a panicked houseguest on his hands. “Hungry?”
She frowned. “I am actually. But I’m more interested in knowing why you’re changing the subject.”
“Ever had a po’ boy sandwich?”
She huffed in what sounded like exasperation, but caught the hint that he wasn’t going to answer her question. “No. What’s in it?”
“Po’ boys can have anything from roast beef to hot sausage to hamburger in them, but the classic po’ boy is fried seafood. One of my guys picked up a couple pounds of shrimp from the docks for me this afternoon. Wanna learn how to shell shrimp?”
She made a disgusted face as he showed her how to strip the shell and devein shrimp, but she caught on fast, and in a few minutes, they had a pile of shrimp ready to fry. He set her to work shredding lettuce and slicing tomatoes while he breaded and fried the shrimp in his own mix of spicy batter.
They worked well together in the kitchen. Which was to say, he gave clear instructions and she followed them to the letter.
The act of battering and frying shrimp, and then slicing thin and frying French fries, calmed him, and he felt more in control of his emotions by the time they sat down to eat the crusty French loaves filled with hot fried shrimp, cold, crisp lettuce, fresh tomatoes, and his secret sauce.
Carrie bit into her sandwich and groaned in delight. The sound vibrated right through him, terminating somewhere in the region of his groin. She took a second bite and groaned again. His zipper felt tight all of a sudden as a fast, hard erection filled his pants.
Dammit, he wasn’t going to be able to stand up and do the dishes for a while at this rate.
He was tempted to distract himself by getting good and drunk. But, if that mysterious person down the street decided to get froggy and come mess with him, he needed to be on top of his game. Besides, he wasn’t sure it was possible for him to get drunk enough to not be horny for the woman seated across from him.
“What did you do today after you fled the scene of the crime?” he asked in an attempt to distract himself.
“Hey, I may have fled, but you vanished.”
He shrugged. “I can’t afford for my face to be seen in public.”
“How long have you been a SEAL?”
“I was active duty Navy for twelve years. Nine of which was on the teams. Then I shifted over to the reserves and have been there for two years.”
“How does being a reserve SEAL work?”
“I mostly train active duty guys. I help out with the paperwork and coordinate mission briefings and intel reports. A few times a year, I take vacation or my annual reserve leave and go out on missions.” He added ruefully, “And then I pray I get back home in time not to lose my job with the NOPD.”
“I can’t imagine they’d fire someone with your training and experience.”
He replied, “That may be true, but I wouldn’t want to strain my welcome with the police force. I like the investigative work. It’s relaxing after a SEAL mission.”
She looked amused. And he supposed she was right. Not too many people would find police work relaxing.
She asked, “Have you always worked in missing persons?”
“So far. I hope to move up to homicide in the next year or two.”
“Why?” she exclaimed.
“More variety of cases. More stuff to learn.”
She shuddered. “Better you than me.”
He smiled, relieved that the conversation had, indeed, mellowed out his crotchular discomfort to the point that he could take a chance on standing up. Carrie helped him carry the dishes to the kitchen, and he finished cleaning up while she turned on the television to surf the news.
“I’m going to tune up your van,” he told her. “I’ll be out in the shop if you need me.”
He went out to the workshop to give her van a quick tune-up and re-gap its spark plugs. He had the engine running half-decently again and was just about ready to button up the van and call it a night when a thought occurred to him. It wasn’t exactly ethical to do it. But it wasn’t illegal. And Carrie had shown herself to be a runner.
He went over to his shelves of spare parts and pulled out a GPS tracker.
This was a bad idea.
She would never know about it.
It was just a precaution. So he could keep her safe.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy.
He argued with himself the entire time he was wiring the unit into the van’s electrical system. Good Lord willing, he would never need to use the damned thing. But if he ever did need it, he was going to be exceedingly grateful he’d installed it.
He finished, washed up in the big sink in the garage, and headed back to the house, toweling himself off as he went. He reset the alarm system and went inside.
He’d just stepped into the living room when a gasp of dismay from Carrie had him throwing down the towel and racing to her side. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She pointed wordlessly at the television.
The house she and Gary were living in loomed large on his big, high-definition television. A mob of reporters jostled for position, shouting questions at the NOPD spokesman. Behind the guy, a door opened.
Bass winced as Carrie appeared onscreen and the camera zoomed in on her face. He watched carefully over her shoulder and spotted a big dark shape moving backward fast out of camera range. That would be him. Thank God. His face was never visible on the television. He was in the clear.
He glanced over at Carrie in time to catch her dashing tears off her cheeks. Oh, God. Not more tears. They were kryptonite coming from her.
“Who are you afraid of seeing you?” he asked her directly.
She shook her head.
“Look. I’m a cop. A good one. I’m going to find out eventually, so you might as well tell me.”
Silence.
Dammit, why wouldn’t she trust him?
He opened his mouth to ask her real name. To inform her he had the power to get access to sealed court records and that he fully intended to do so. But the house went black as the power suddenly went out.
He counted to five. That was weird. His backup generator usually kicked in so fast he hardly knew there was a power outage. The room was still pitch dark.
Why hadn’t the emergency generator kicked in?
God dammit.
“Carrie, take my hand.” He pulled her up off the sofa and raced to his bedroom, dragging her along with him. “We’ve got a problem.”