Chapter 4
Blowback.
An interesting concept. It hadn’t been on anyone’s radar screen until terrorists had struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then the idiots in the media interviewed the military, who had coined the term.
Blowback meant something you did could backfire and return—with a vengeance—to haunt you.
Unintended negative consequences.
The CIA trained Afghan men during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the days of the Cold War, when limiting the spread of Communism was a priority for this country. Later those same men took their experience and unleashed it on American targets.
Blowback. Big time.
“That’s biting the hand that fed you.” He chuckled, then amended his statement. “No, it’s cutting off the hand that fed you. That’s blowback. It’s worse than what you put out in the first place. It intensifies with time, feeds on hate.”
He looked out the window at the heat shimmering upward in moist curls from the damp pavement, bringing with it a whiff of the loamy soil in the planters, thinking.
Another interesting aspect of blowback was its unexpectedness. It wasn’t the old “you reap what you sow.”
Not at all. Things done with the best of intentions—even love—could boomerang after sulking in the shadows for years.
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
That was certainly an aspect of blowback in this case. He couldn’t help being pleased with himself. The Maxwells were experiencing big-time blowback.
The past was coming back to haunt them. No. Torture them is a better way of putting it.
Death would be the ultimate price for crossing him.
Too bad no one would be smart enough to figure the blowback angle. It was a killer concept.
Accurate.
Deadly.
Utterly fascinating.
“I’m finally enjoying myself.”
Shane stood beside Brianna and Taylor, waiting for Caleb Bassett to answer the bell at the Creole town house on the fringe of New Orleans’s French Quarter. The paint on the building once had been a warm coral, but it had faded to a dirty, nameless shade. It was cracked and peeling in so many places that the building appeared to be molting. The rancid smell of garbage spilling from an overturned trash can across the narrow street reminded Shane of the places he’d visited in Third World countries.
Shane rang the bell again, conscious of Taylor looking up at him. On the flight from Miami, she’d sat in stony silence and let Brianna do the talking. He didn’t press it.
The one thing he had on his side was time.
“Why would he leave if he told us to come over?” Taylor asked.
After they’d checked into the Windsor Court Hotel, Shane had called Caleb Bassett, father of the woman who might be Vanessa’s daughter. Renata was unavailable, but Caleb said he would be willing to talk to them.
Where in hell was he?
Unexpectedly, the door swung open. A handsome man with thick black hair burnished with silver at the temples beamed a grin worthy of a televangelist. He was dressed in a maroon something—would it be called a smoking jacket?—and black velvet Hush Puppies.
“Shane Donovan.” Shane extended his hand. “This is Brianna Maxwell and Taylor Maxwell.”
“Caleb Bassett.” He bowed slightly to the women while he shook Shane’s hand with a firm grip. “Come on in. I have tea ready.”
Tea? What a brilliant idea.
Shane waited for Brianna and Taylor to enter, already dreading interviewing this man. His shit-o-meter had just gone off the chart.
This kind of man would be hard to judge. Shane could already see Bassett had a certain quality some people would find charming. And he knew how to exploit it.
So did most con artists.
They followed Caleb, as he wanted to be called, down a narrow hallway with wood floors so highly buffed that Shane could almost see his reflection. The living room—Caleb called it the parlor—was a sunny room facing an immaculately maintained rear garden.
The room was decorated in what Shane assumed were period pieces, possibly authentic antiques. The kind of prissy French furniture upholstered in brocade that made a big man like Shane think twice before sitting down.
He planted himself on the end of a chaise across from Caleb and near Taylor who had taken a French chair with flimsy wood legs. Brianna had seated herself next to Caleb and she was saying something about how lovely the home was.
“You were expecting something less … refined?” Caleb asked.
“Well, we weren’t sure—”
“Security, my dear.” Caleb leaned closer to Brianna. “The Quarter is rife with crime. From all appearances, we wouldn’t have anything to steal, would we?”
Got that right.
Brianna giggled and Taylor managed a smile. While taking in as much of the rest of the room as he could without making it obvious, Shane kept his gaze on Caleb, who was now offering them tea.
No family photos. Nothing that seemed really personal.
The place reminded Shane of a movie set except for a trace of something in the air. It might have been incense except Shane had spent too much time in Colombia not to recognize kick-ass marijuana.
He listened to Caleb describing the crumpets, scones, and pastries on the coffee table in front of them. A multi-tiered dish held a variety of bite-size sandwiches on bread with the crusts cut off. Shane couldn’t help recalling afternoon gatherings in foreign embassies when he’d been with Special Forces. You’d need a mountain of those things to equal half a sandwich.
Real men did not eat cucumber sandwiches.
As he listened, Shane detected more than a hint of the deep South in Caleb’s voice. Arkansas. Alabama. Maybe Tennessee.
Linguistics wasn’t his expertise, but he’d been in enough dangerous places to know to listen to the difference in intonation that could warn you about a person’s background.
In some places like the Middle East and South America, the slightest difference in pronunciation indicated a person was from another tribe—an enemy. Mistaking someone for a member of the wrong group could prove to be deadly.
The world had gone global in many aspects, yet in other ways the world seemed to be hunkering down into nations within nations, split-off states, tribes—and in America—gangs.
“Milk in your tea, Shane?” Caleb was asking.
Shane shook his head and waved off the cube of sugar Caleb was offering with silver tongs. Caleb reached for one of the cucumber sandwiches.
“Just a scone, please.”
“I was expecting Vanessa,” Caleb said, taking Shane by surprise.
Vanessa? Not Mrs. Maxwell? “She had pressing business. That’s why she sent us.”
Shane knew Vanessa had spoken with this man on the telephone. Obviously, she hadn’t told him about her failing health. Equally as apparent, this was a guy who liked to get real chummy.
He was already using everyone’s first name—as if they were his friends. Basset’s friends? Now there’s a depressing thought.
“We want to verify that your adopted daughter is my mother’s—”
“Oh, she is. She is,” Caleb cut off Taylor. “We discussed it on the telephone. Your mother agreed that it would be just too much of a coincidence for me to have adopted Renata in such a small town as Titusville just after she’d given birth less than twenty miles away.”
“Me?” Taylor asked. “Don’t you mean ‘us?’ Weren’t you married when you adopted Renata?”
Damn good point. Taylor had picked up on his word choice.
“Of course.” Caleb sounded unfazed. “But Mary Jo has been gone so long now. I’ve been a single father since Renata was five. There hasn’t been an ‘us’ for almost thirty years.”
“You never remarried?” This from Brianna. “A man of your taste and refinement?”
Shane nearly choked on his scone and was forced to wash it down with a swig of tea. Caleb went for it, beaming a white-toothed grin at Brianna. Who could blame him? She was a knockout with a ready smile, unlike Taylor who rarely smiled.
“I was too busy raising Renata and working to bother with romance.”
Yeah, yeah. Right.
“What proof do you have that this baby you adopted is Vanessa Maxwell’s daughter?” Shane asked.
“Proof?” Caleb asked as if Shane were speaking in tongues. “I explained that a fire had destroyed our home. Everything we owned went up in smoke. I couldn’t even save our wedding album or the family photographs.”
Well, hell. This just kept getting better and better.
Shane had to give him credit, though. The man sounded sincere, but with this much money at stake anyone could deliver an Oscar-worthy performance.
“What year was that?”
It took Caleb a second too long to say, “Nineteen eighty-seven.”
“That was in Titusville?”
“No. No. We were living in Brigg’s Crossing.”
“That’s in Alabama, too?”
“No. It’s in Arkansas near Little Rock.”
Shane nodded, thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to verify the fire. Of course, what the family photographs would have shown was a whole other question. He reached into his sport coat’s inside pocket for the small pen and notepad.
“Look, we’re going to need to verify a few facts before—”
“That’s not what Vanessa said.”
“My mother is a little impetuous at times,” Taylor informed Caleb in the same cool tone she used on Shane so often. “That’s why we’re here.”
“It’s a fact finding mission,” Brianna added in a voice meant to defuse the tension.
“We need to prove or disprove your claim,” Shane said, again wishing they had time to run a DNA test.
“I’m not claiming anything,” Caleb said.
“You contacted Missing!,” Shane reminded him.
“I thought Renata deserved to meet her real mother.”
Shane said, “There must be something we could take back to Mrs. Maxwell that would verify your statements.”
“Talk to Renata,” Caleb said with a wave of his hand toward the garden beyond the window.
“She’s here? I thought you said—”
“At this time of day? No. She’s out shopping. But she lives in the slave quarters out back.”
Beyond the small garden was another house. Even at this distance, Shane could see it had been meticulously restored, unlike the outside of the compound facing the street.
“When do you expect her to return?” Taylor asked.
“She usually comes home between four and five.”
Brianna checked her Rolex. “She’ll be here any minute. It’s almost five now.”
Caleb smiled at Brianna, and Shane detected more than a casual hint of interest in the older man’s eyes. “Five in the morning. You know, just before sunrise.”
“She can’t possibly be shopping until then,” Taylor said.
“Shopping? Of course not. She’ll leave the shops and go directly to the club. Her act starts at eleven and finishes at two.” Caleb crossed his legs and gazed at the toes of his Hush Puppies. “You might want to watch her dance at Puss ’N Boots.”
The luminous dial on Renata’s watch told her it was almost seven o’clock. How long had she been locked in here? She’d dozed off, losing track of time.
That terrible man—what was his name—hadn’t left her, had he?
No. That wasn’t what this jerk wanted. Since she’d bought her first bra at Walmart when she’d been twelve, Renata had known what men wanted.
Sex.
Once you got with the program life was simple. Most of the time.
Dick-breath Caleb could complicate things, but only if she let him. This man was another story. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had kinky sex in the past, but she’d done her level best to stay out of dangerous situations.
Until now.
“Hey! Hey!” She banged on the door and screamed at the top of her lungs.
For all the good it would do. She’d been taken to a shanty supported by rickety wooden stilts deep in the swampy part of the bayou. Nobody was around to hear her except the alligators.
And the mosquitoes. She’d given up swatting them. They buzzed through the cracks between the shack’s wooden slats even though someone had tried to plug the gaps with flypaper.
She hadn’t lost her mojo, had she? A dancer at the club told Renata a mojo was a good luck charm that came in the air. You couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, but your mojo protected you, bringing good luck.
Where was her mojo when she needed it?
The dull thud of boots clacked against the wooden floor. A second later the door opened enough to let in a shaft of light from the lantern, the only light in the one-room shack. A fresh stream of air rife with the mossy, pungent smell of the bayou hit her damp body.
“Ready to do what I say?” asked the gruff voice.
Fuck off and die! Renata silently swallowed those words.
“Yes. I’ll do whatever you want.”
The door flung back, hitting the wall with a splintering sound like wood shattering. A gush of dank body odor engulfed her.
A meat hook of a hand grabbed her long hair, flung her sideways, then dragged her from the closet. He pulled her across the rough plank floor. A splinter stabbed into her butt with the force of a knife.
“Ow! Ow! Stop!”
She couldn’t perform tonight with a red mark on her ass. But he didn’t pay any attention to her. The beast kept yanking on her hair until she thought he intended to scalp her.
Suddenly, Puss ’N Boots seemed a distant memory.
He let go of her hair and grabbed her arms, hauling her up to her knees, her face smack against the worn denim covering his crotch. He was fully erect, a bull of a man, suited to whores in Cajun dives along the bayou, not her.
In her own right, Renata was a class act.
Using both hands, he kept her face buried against his cock, her lungs forced to inhale the foulness of his body. His chest was bare and slick with oily sweat dribbling down from a damp mat of curly chest hair.
She opened her mouth wide and bit down on his cock. The denim was worn, but enough protection to elicit a guttural moan of pleasure. She clamped down again and used more force this time.
“Motherfucker!” He jumped away. “You’ll pay, bitch!”
“Don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.
The hulk of a man scooted sideways onto a pallet of straw. Even from a few feet away, she smelled the rank odor of mildew and sex.
“Strip,” he ordered, the words coming from between clenched teeth as he gripped his sore dick with both hands.
She heaved herself to her feet, her legs numb and tingling from being imprisoned in the closet for so long. Swaying from the effort, not from any attempt to titillate, she slowly pirouetted, running her hands down her hips. The splinter in her ass throbbed like a tooth in need of a root canal, but she didn’t dare stop to pull it out.
“Come on, big guy. Keep that boner up.”
She flung her sheer blouse over her head and it swished through the heavy air. A kiss of coolness caressed her uplifted breasts, and she sighed, managing to turn the sound into a moan of delight.
What would satisfy him? she wondered with renewed desperation.
She unzipped her dress a scant inch at a time, revealing a navel that had become her trademark. Diamond studs circled her outtie belly button, surrounding a larger diamond dead in the center.
With a flourish that masked a surge of pain from the splinter in her butt, she managed to fling her gown aside.
“Oh, yeah, babe. Gimme more, else’n I’ll cut your pussy to ribbons.”
She had no doubt he meant every word. With a few more gyrations, she shed the high heels that had caused blisters on her toes. Could she do this?
She was down to the demi-bra that shoved her boobs skyward and a G-string. She strutted across the coffin of a room, then pivoted and headed back. A dark cloud of mosquitoes hovered overhead like a curse.
From the bleak shadows a foot shot out. She stumbled and fell facedown in his lap. That’s when she felt the cold, sharp blade of the knife.
With one precise flick of the blade, he inserted it between her breasts and slit the clasp on her bra. Her boobs tumbled forward, hitting him in the face. Beneath her tummy, a dangerous erection prodded at her.
He sucked one nipple into his mouth while his broad hand shot between her legs, then found the opening. He stroked gently for a moment, his lips suckling with the same cadence, and she prayed her mojo had returned.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured as if she were enjoying this.
A second later, he flipped her onto her back and one swipe of his knife cut the G-string. He rammed into her like a bulldozer. Something ripped inside her, forcing out the scream she’d promised she wouldn’t let come.
Tiny pinpricks of light exploded in the darkness behind her closed eyelids. Maybe Caleb was right, she decided.
Enough of this shit.