The Devil's Work

by Linda Ladd

  Overhead lights flared on, and Novak jerked around to find Kellen standing in the adjacent veranda doors. He had a .357 Magnum in his hand, and it was pointed at Novak’s chest. Novak already had his .45 beaded on Kellen’s heart. Behind Kellen, the woman jumped to her feet, clutching the baby to her breast. Novak’s jaw almost dropped when he saw her face. It was Alcina Castillo, and she was anything but dead. She stood there, gaping at him, the woman they had protected, searched for, mourned for, and for whom Eldon Osceola’s nephews had died. She had been in on this thing from the beginning. She had betrayed them all.

  Kellen’s words were jeering. “So you haven’t figured it all out yet after all, I see. You should have let us be and not come here. Now you’re going to die.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll take you out with me, Kellen.”

  “No, you won’t.” Kellen grabbed Alcina and jerked her over in front of him. Then he used her as his shield as he placed his gun at the side of the baby’s head. The child started struggling and crying. Alcina looked terrified.

  “No, please, Max, no, don’t, please don’t shoot Rosa,” she begged, but her voice sounded dead, as if she’d already given up.

  Novak stood ready to fire, but he couldn’t believe Alcina was standing there, alive and well. He had been so certain they had killed her when they’d taken her off his boat. Had Kellen coerced her to come here with him somehow? Novak didn’t know what to think, but Kellen was not going to hurt that baby.

  “I will kill the baby, you know I will, Novak, and then I’ll kill Allie. Put the gun down or I’ll kill them both. You know I will.”

  “And I’ll blow you to hell.”

  “Put down the gun, or I’ll kill them both.”

  Cursing inside, Novak knew he couldn’t risk it. Waiting, his weapon steady on Kellen, he hoped the other guy would save his own life and take off. So Novak stood there, thinking this was a good time for Desoto to show up and make a quick kill. That was his specialty. He didn’t, however, and Novak was pretty sure now that Kellen was not making empty threats. Why he had Alcina there in the house with him, Novak didn’t know. Alcina acted coerced and cowed, maybe even drugged, and the baby was screaming her head off. Novak and Alcina both knew Kellen would do it. He was that cold blooded. Novak raised his hands and let his .45 dangle off his trigger finger.

  “I knew you’d blink. You’ve got scruples, and that’s going to get you killed. Put your gun on the floor and kick it toward me.”

  Novak stood not five feet away from them, and he could probably make it to Kellen and disarm him. He was quick for a man his size, had worked at that, but he was going to get shot if he lunged at him. He bent over and placed his weapon on the floor and slid it toward Kellen. He stayed down low, poised and ready to attack before Kellen could get off a shot.

  “Pick up his gun,” Kellen ordered Alcina.

  Alcina moved forward and picked it up with one hand, holding the sobbing baby in her other arm. She backed away with the weapon, but she was pointing it at Novak. Novak watched her face a second, not sure if she would shoot him or not. She did not look calm anymore or like she had handled guns before. He moved his gaze back to Kellen. Kellen was smiling.

  “Now this is more like it, right, my man? Will Novak at my mercy. You’ve been a thorn in my side, but you should never give up your gun. I should know. Allie’s too much of a coward to shoot you, don’t worry about that, but it’s going to give me great pleasure to put you down.”

  “We all thought you were dead, Alcina,” Novak said to the girl but continued to watch Kellen’s gun hand. “Pedro wept for you. He thought he’d lost his sister.”

  “It was her idea to play dead. She figured you might lose interest and quit coming after us if your client was murdered. But no such luck, huh? You came at us even harder. I’m surprised you made it all the way down here, all the way into my damn bedroom, but hey, she told me you were good. You were also good at rescuing your partner and destroying the business I worked years to build. I got to make you pay for that. Then I’m going to track down all those guys who helped you take my ship. I always get payback, Novak. No matter how long it takes. I always win in the end.”

  Where the hell was Desoto? Novak had to make his move, because Kellen was getting angry. His face was flushing a darker shade, and he kept shaking his head. Then he raised the gun to Novak’s heart. Novak had no choice. He ducked and went at him, trying to take him down before he pulled the trigger, but didn’t make it. The gun went off as Novak forced Kellen’s arm up and tackled him. They went down to the floor together, but not before the fires of hell ripped through Novak’s side and blew out a huge chunk of muscle. It felt like a steel machete swiping off his flesh in a single slash, and the hard impact of the slug sent him spinning over and landing facedown. He grabbed the gaping wound in his side as another shot echoed in his ears.

  Novak tried to crawl for cover but didn’t have the strength. He rolled over onto his back and vaguely saw Kellen lying on the floor beside him, dead, most of his jaw blown off. The smell of gunpowder and smoke and blood and his own gore filled the room, and the baby was shrieking and Alcina was standing there holding Novak’s smoking .45 in her hands. Then she dropped the gun with which she’d killed Max Kellen and cradled and comforted the terrified baby. Novak dropped his head back down onto the floor and shut his eyes, pretty sure he was about to die. A second later, he was sure he was dead, as his mind faded to black.

  Epilogue

  The next time Novak forced his eyelids open, the first thing he saw was Lori’s concerned face looking down at him. He closed them, feeling as if he would throw up. Then he tried to move, and it felt like his body had been sawed in two with no anesthetic.

  “Better not move around too much. Trust me, you don’t want to do that or you’ll lose the rest of your blood.”

  He opened his eyes once more. Lori was smiling. He shut them again.

  “It’s about time you woke up, Novak, you big baby. You’d think somebody had blown your whole side off with a .357 Magnum or something.”

  “Yeah,” he rasped out. “Water.”

  Turning, she picked up a plastic pitcher and put the straw to his mouth. Novak sucked up a few swallows of ice water, and then turned his face away as she put the pitcher back on the table. “Where am I?”

  “Guatemala City. You’ve been unconscious for three full days. You had emergency surgery, and they got you all stitched up, but you’re going to be laid up for months, my friend. I figured you could stay with me at my place in New Orleans, if you’ll act nice and not be a bother.”

  Novak frowned, trying to think what had happened. It started coming back, slowly, like a film in slow motion. “Kellen’s dead.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say he is. Half his face was blown off, according to your little assassin friend.”

  “Desoto? Is he here?”

  “Nope, he’s gone home. He got you here alive somehow, bound you up so you didn’t bleed out first, and then hit you with some morphine he got somewhere and flew you back down here in a helicopter. It couldn’t have been easy, considering he’s half your size. I guess he had some help toting you around. Good thing he did or you’d be six feet under by now.”

  Novak kept his eyes closed, not sure he wanted to hear the gruesome details. He’d been shot before and injured in other terrible ways, but he hadn’t awoken in this kind of pain, not ever. “How about getting me some painkillers, Lori?”

  “You’ve got a cool little button right here that you can push whenever you want to take a hit. Want me to push it?”

  “Push it and hold it down.”

  “Don’t be a baby.”

  Novak knew it would be morphine, and he wanted as much of it as he could get. He tried not to move because it nearly killed him when he did. Then he remembered Alcina.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “Alcina? She came along an
d helped Desoto hold in your blood—at least, that’s what he told me.”

  “We thought she was dead.”

  “Well, we were wrong. She’s already told me the whole sordid story. Want to hear it?”

  “Not especially. I want you to press that button again.”

  “C’mon, Novak, suck it up. You need to stay awake. Doctor said so.”

  “Press the damn button.”

  She did, but it took a while for the agony to die down and not by much. While he lay there, groaning, Lori told him what had happened.

  “I’m going to make this short and sweet, okay. It’s complicated so I have to, and besides that, you’re going to pass out on me anytime now.”

  “I can only hope.”

  “You cracked a joke? Now? I am impressed.”

  “Where’d we go wrong with Alcina?”

  “She was lying her head off from the beginning, that’s how we went wrong.”

  Novak shut his eyes as she started pushing his hair back off his forehead. It felt good, and her fingers felt cool against his hot forehead. He didn’t want her to stop doing that, but he felt woozy. He wished he would just lose consciousness.

  “According to her, she was taken into that compound to work with the babies when she was sixteen. That’s when Kellen was down here for a while after Ramos recruited him, to take over in Fort Myers. He saw her and wanted her. You know how beautiful she is….”

  “Not as beautiful as you.”

  “You’re flirting with me? That’s a first. You are delirious, or you’d never say that where I could hear it.”

  “Just keep doing that to my hair and pushing that button. That’s all I ask.”

  “Anyway, he seduced her and took her for his lover. She says she had no choice, but I think she did. It kept going like that until Ramos decided it was time for Kellen to take charge of things in Florida because the adoption thing was getting so lucrative. So he left her at the compound. Thing was, Alcina was pregnant by then and went back home to her parents. They freaked out, I guess, and married her off to some guy named Castillo who had the hots for her.”

  “Talk faster, I’m about to crash.”

  “Kellen found out through his guys in the compound, so he sent his thugs down to get her, but she ran away with Pedro and wouldn’t go with him, so they killed her husband and took Rosa back to Kellen. She says she needed a way to get to Rosa, so she told that doctor friend of hers, Eloise somebody, that they stole Rosa, which was basically true. She just left out her connection to Kellen, and that he was the father.”

  “Cut to the chase, damn it.”

  “Anyway, Ramos put that hit out on her with the gangbangers, but Kellen got to her first and forced her to come back here when we took him down in Florida. She and Rosa were on the boat with Claire, but Claire never saw them. By the way, Claire and Black send their love, and said they’d send the jet back for us so you can recuperate at the lake house with them. Black’s going to tend you himself. I think that sounds like a good deal. Better than my apartment, for sure. I’ve never been to Missouri.”

  Novak listened to her, but she began to fade in and out, and he couldn’t comprehend much anymore. He just wanted her to keep stroking his hair and touching his face. He must love her, he thought, and then he felt vaguely alarmed at the idea. Then he let all thought go and drifted down into the dark, deep waters of his mind.

  If you enjoyed The Devil’s Work, be sure not to miss all of Linda Ladd’s Will Novak series, including

  NO FRIENDS

  Mardi Gras whips New Orleans’ French Quarter into a whirlpool of excess, color, booze, noise, motion. So the woman in the sights of Will Novak’s binoculars stands out. She’s bruised, barefoot, wearing a man’s raincoat. And she’s looking right at him.

  NO FAITH

  In a moment she’s fleeing into the crowd, but Novak knows she’s not gone for good. When she comes back, it’s with a gun to his head—and a story about crony politics, a crooked judge, a kidnapped whistleblower, and children in deadly danger. Novak can’t let this one slide.

  NO FURY

  Through the grit of Houston’s underbelly to the grime below Beverly Hills’ glamor, a trickle of rot connects the powerful to the desperate and corrupts the men and women who are supposed to stand against it. Deceit is everywhere. If he’s going to do right, Novak is going to have to do it alone. . . .

  A Lyrical Underground e-book on sale now.

  Read on for a special excerpt!

  Chapter 1

  Below Will Novak’s balcony, the final day of Mardi Gras was in full swing. Crowds walked along the narrow width of Bourbon Street, laughing and talking and enjoying the famous New Orleans celebration. The French Quarter was alive with excitement and good cheer, which put police on alert for inevitable drunken altercations. That’s why Novak was watching. From where he sat in a chair drawn close to the wrought-iron rail, he could see several drunks stumbling around inside the crowd and others who looked well on their way to inebriation. His apartment was at the top end of Bourbon Street, so the riotous mass moved down the street in one direction like ants headed to a piece of pecan pie. Across the street, a jazz band was playing, filling the late night with the sounds of saxophone, piano, and bass fiddle.

  Novak enjoyed the music, thinking the band was pretty good, as he swept his binoculars over the boisterous crowd as it moved along the ancient street with its old-fashioned lampposts and multitude of bars and novelty shops. The New Orleans Police Department had hired him on a temporary basis to spot probable troublemakers and report their locations to street cops. He’d been at it for a long time. Glancing at his watch, he found it was almost midnight. Eventually all the fun going on now would wane and the people would gradually disperse, but not yet. Maybe in another hour or two. He hoped so. He was dead tired.

  Late February in south Louisiana was sometimes chilly; he had put on a leather jacket because of the nip in the air. The cold was not bothering anybody else, who kept warm by drinking beer and the sheer exhilaration of the moment. Unfortunately, nobody was calling it a night yet. Pushing, shoving, and hair-trigger, testosterone-fueled fistfights had been a regular occurrence all week long. At such occasions, Novak always watched first for the glint of steel. Knives were easily hidden under coats. This late hour was when either guns or knives were apt to be whipped out and innocent passersby hurt. Novak wasn’t the only observer on the street. There were many others just like him with bird’s eye views of the action. He leaned back in his chair and adjusted his earpiece and microphone headset.

  Loud shouts caught his attention, and he swung the glasses to a commotion starting up right across the street. A young woman stood high on a second-floor balcony opposite him. She looked as if she was smashed but didn’t know it yet. She was having a good old time, giggling and waving at the men below her on the street. A crowd had already gathered, mainly because she kept pulling up her sweatshirt and showing her bare breasts. The guys below hooted and clapped and sent forth all manner of encouragement. She obliged their fervor by whipping the sweatshirt off over her head and shimmying for anybody inclined to take a look.

  Skin shows were not unusual during Mardi Gras week. The guy standing on the balcony with her didn’t appear to mind much, flinging off his own shirt in a show of support. His hairy chest didn’t garner as much interest. Both leaned over the railing, blowing kisses and tossing strings of colorful beads to their drunken admirers, which immediately caused fights for possession. People were just damn stupid sometimes, but no real harm was done with something like that. He called in the incident. A two-team unit was dispatched to break up the crowd below, and then they’d have to climb the narrow interior stairs to the woman’s apartment and order her to cover herself or go to jail. They had already warned the same woman earlier that evening. They might arrest her this time. Novak didn’t care much, one way or the other. He riveted
his attention back on the street. Many people carried red Solo cups so they could guzzle beer while they walked. Mardi Gras had always been a big drunken party and a giant headache for the NOPD. Tonight was no exception.

  Novak was working solo. He hadn’t been on a gig by himself in a while, not since he’d signed up with Claire Morgan’s private investigation firm. His partner was unavailable, off to Italy with her husband, Nicholas Black. They had been tied up in Rome for days now, fighting Italian government red tape as they tried to adopt a ten-year-old boy named Rico. His parents had been murdered during a particularly bad case that Novak had been involved in, and since it had wrapped up, Claire and Black had given the kid a good home. They wanted him to stay there.

  They were due back soon, though, and Novak was glad. He missed Claire. She was quite a woman, all things considered: tall, natural blond, athletic, good-looking, and sexy without knowing it. More important, she was a damn good detective and a damn good friend. He could count on her when things got sticky. Compared to most of their cases, tonight’s gig was a breeze. Sitting in his own apartment watching people having fun was something he didn’t usually mind.

  Novak had lived in New Orleans since he was twenty-one and back from a childhood spent on his father’s sheep ranch in Australia. He was well acquainted with the Fat Tuesday celebration. He didn’t use his French Quarter apartment much, preferring his old plantation called Bonne Terre, down in Lafourche Parish. He’d inherited both properties the day he was born. In fact, he owned the entire building on Bourbon in which he sat, not to mention a fortune held in bank accounts that he rarely spent. His mother’s wealthy Creole ancestors had owned the once-profitable sugar plantation since Napoleon Bonaparte reigned in France. Both properties were shabby now but worth millions in modern real estate markets. It was location, location, location. Novak would never sell either.