by Shayla Black
brighten up the alley and exterior tomorrow. And whether it lacked charm or not, he’d make sure the perimeter had a sturdy fence.
“I don’t like it,” Tate said. “It’s too dangerous. This is just two blocks from that woman’s murder yesterday, the one we heard about on the radio.”
The death of Karen Ehlers had made a huge news splash across New Orleans. It had been all over the radio as they’d driven into town. The fifty-nine-year-old socialite had been discovered in her New Orleans mansion, strangled by unknown intruders.
She’d been one of the toasts of the city, known for her philanthropy and love of her home town. Turned out that she’d also been known for something else.
“Belle’s not a hooker,” Eric reminded him.
“She won’t be turning tricks for strange men so that will reduce her odds of being strangled significantly,” Tate added. “That’s true.”
The big guy hadn’t factored him in. Eric was still really mad. And yeah, he hadn’t done the best job of letting Belle know that he would treasure her virginity. Not as bad as Kell, but even so…she shouldn’t have run off.
“But technically, Karen Ehlers wasn’t a hooker. She was a madam.” Tate was always so fucking precise. “Should we knock on the door or something, even if it’s not the front? You two constantly tell me I can’t just hang out around her house and look like a pervert stalker or the cops will arrest me.”
Kellan was still fiddling with the light fixture. It came on suddenly. The old, dusty bulb bathed the door in a hazy, yellow glow. “The bulb was out of the socket. That’s odd.”
At least they could somewhat see now.
An odd banging sounded from somewhere around the house. Eric’s instincts went on high alert. He dashed around the side of the building and looked down the alley. The illumination from the street didn’t penetrate this far back. In fact, it was eerily dark. If anything, the neighbor’s interior lights behind him blinded him just enough to make seeing anything almost impossible.
Still, he could swear he saw a shape moving in that alley in the distance.
He was just about to run after the asshole when he heard a scream from inside the rundown house that made his whole body freeze in terror.
Belle.
They had to get to her.
* * * *
Belle woke from her dream, certain that she was no longer alone in the house. Her hands shook. Her heart drummed in her chest. Pure fear threatened to choke her.
Move! Don’t just lay here.
As quietly as she could, she kicked the covers away and swung her feet, moving slowly so the wooden floors wouldn’t creak. Belle shivered with every step, but forced herself to keep moving. When had the room gotten so cold? She wrapped her arms around herself and she could practically see her breath, as though the air around her was freezing. She’d turned the ancient heater on a few hours ago. Had it stopped working?
In the short time she’d been in this house, Belle had quickly realized that she had plumbing, electrical, and flooring problems. Now she could add the HVAC unit to that long, expensive list. That was before she tackled updating the décor.
Something loud banged downstairs, startling her. She shrieked. Her hands shook in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Fear iced her veins. Someone was in the house.
Where the hell had she put her cell phone? Sir was suddenly right at her heels, yipping up at her. Did he think it was play time?
“Keep quiet,” she hissed under her breath as she remembered she’d left her new cell phone on the charger downstairs since that seemed to be one of the few electrical sockets currently functioning. She’d decided to find the fuse box in the morning and see if she could trip the breakers and get some of the upstairs sockets operational. She’d been too tired to deal with it before going to bed.
The moment her head had hit the pillow, she’d fallen into a deep, thick slumber where she’d had horrible nightmares of dead women swinging from the rafters of her house. Different girls in different eras, but all hanged in the same room from the same beam. Creepy. She’d let Gates’s warning get into her head. Even now, Belle tried to shake away the vestiges of the dreams. They had seemed so real to her.
The lawyer had said young women committed suicide in this house. Her dream had clearly shown a murder. Belle really hoped she hadn’t gotten her grandmother’s gift. She hoped even more fervently that she hadn’t dreamed about her own violent end.
Was someone really in her house or was she just freaked out? Who would have broken in? Squatters? The place had been vacant so long maybe some of the homeless thought they could just move in. Despite what Mr. Gates had suggested, it couldn’t really be ghosts.
She tiptoed through the bedroom and toward the stairs, trying to control her runaway breathing. Until she reached her phone, she didn’t have a way to call 911. Right now, she didn’t even have a weapon to fight off an intruder. What the hell was she going to do? What time was it? She wished she knew if there was any chance that there were still people on the street outside to hear her call for help.
Belle paused, trying to decide if she should risk going for her phone or just get out of the house. Then she realized that everything around her had gone quiet. She didn’t hear footsteps, per se. She didn’t see shadows or movement, but every creak and groan of the stairs brought fresh terror. Was someone here?
Maybe she really was just overreacting because the dreams had provoked her imagination. They’d started as soon as she closed her eyes. One vivid nightmare bled into the next in a terrible montage.
Helplessly, Belle had watched pretty young women being pulled through the house, screeching and pleading and fighting with every step. Each had been utterly helpless to stop a noose from winding around her neck before a dark figure hauled them high up the stairs. Finally, the assailant tightened the rope around the poor women’s throats and shoved them over the banister, leaving them to dangle to their death.
As the last had been pushed, her neck broke. A jarring crack had jolted Belle awake.
Except that noise hadn’t been a byproduct of her dream. Had it? She’d heard another sound awfully like it since she crept from her bed.
Even if the noise had been real, that didn’t mean someone had broken in. Old homes shifted and groaned. She had to get used to that fact. Her newish apartment in Chicago hadn’t been noisy until the middle school kid living with his single mom above her had taken up the sax.
At the top of the stairs—the very stairs she’d seen in her dream—was a small umbrella holder. She’d noticed her grandmother’s canes stashed there earlier in the day and she inched one out of the little bucket triumphantly. At least now she had some kind of weapon.
Sir barked again.
“Shh.” She tried to shush him, but if she died because her puppy couldn’t stay quiet, she was going to kill Kinley. She just was.
She managed to sneak to the first floor, wincing with each step down. Just another few tiptoes, and she would have her phone in hand. If she was simply hearing things, who cared? She was terrified, and if the police laughed at her, so be it. She wasn’t going to put off calling for help just because she wasn’t absolutely positive she was about to be killed.
As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light filtering into the house from outside, she made out the small table in the kitchen where she’d stashed her phone. Ten steps to the table, then she could dash out the servant’s door and call for help. It didn’t matter that she was in her nightgown. This was New Orleans. Surely they’d seen freakier things than a woman in her PJs emblazoned with martini glasses and shoes all over it, decorated with the words Girls Night In across her boobs.
Once she was on the street, she wouldn’t be alone, she prayed.
She was almost to the phone when the light over the back door flickered on, pouring light through the big kitchen window and blinding her for a moment.
Then she felt something—or someone—brush past her. Not around her ankles. Sir cou
ldn’t stir the air like that. No, this had been done by something terribly near her torso.
Belle screamed, the sound coming from deep in her gut. There was another loud crash, then something that sounded like metal wrenching, then a splintering sound. Sir barked madly, placing his little body in front of hers with as much of a menacing growl as four pounds of canine could manage.
Acting on pure instinct, Belle swung out, hefting the cane and trying desperately to whack whoever was coming after her.
“Belle, baby, stop,” a familiar masculine voice commanded. Suddenly, warm, strong arms wrapped around her. “It’s all right. It’s just me.”
Tate? When had he gotten here? How had he found her? Belle didn’t care. She threw her arms around him, taking in his familiar scent, his comfort. His big body was warm and safe against hers.
“Let’s go check the rest of the house to see if there’s any sign of an intruder.” Kellan brushed past her, leading Eric along. “Tate, don’t take your eyes off her. If you see anything out of place, beat the shit out of it.”
After a moment of fumbling against the wall, light flooded the L-shaped kitchen, and she could see again.
Tate’s arms tightened around her. “Baby, what happened? You screamed, and we could hear you from outside.”
“I think someone might have been in the house.” Her words shook. Now that she knew she was safe, the adrenaline bled from her veins, leaving her weak with relief. “We should call the police.”
Though she didn’t know what they could tell her at this point. Whether there’d been some forced entry and where? Maybe she could hope for prints. Or maybe they would tell her there was no sign of anything other than her overactive imagination.
Kellan walked back in the room. “It was just the screen banging open and shut with the wind. Looks like it’s bent and the latch is broken. The door itself was locked but the screen made a hell of a lot of noise. I’ll jimmy it so it will stay secure for tonight.”
“All the downstairs windows are locked,” Eric said a minute later. “I checked. Are you sure someone was actually in the house?”
“I felt someone run past me.” It had been a light touch, a stir of the air, then nothing.
Kellan looked around the room. “Did you do a thorough search of the premises when you got here?”
Why was he using his lawyer voice on her? She’d heard him use that quiet tone on many a skittish witness. “I checked a couple of rooms, but it was getting late and I was too tired to look everywhere. I focused on the office and master bedroom since I’m using them.”
“What is this?” Eric picked up Sir, frowning. “Is this one of those puppies from the wedding?”
She grabbed her dog and held him close, crooning, “Don’t you mind him.”
“It’s possible you’ve had squatters here, Belle,” Kellan pronounced. “This place has been abandoned for months, right?”
“Yeah. I thought of that.” She winced. Tate would remember that she’d inherited the house. They’d done their research—fast.
“We’ll search every room before we go to bed, open every door and every closet. Tomorrow morning, we’ll improve the security. We’ll make a comprehensive list of everything that needs attention and break it out.”
Kellan was in charge. It should have annoyed her that he thought he could just walk into her house and take over, but his authoritative voice calmed more than irritated her. Still, she couldn’t let them stay here.
“Are you okay, Belle?” Tate asked, inching close again.
Was she? She’d been so terrified before they’d arrived. The door banged again and she jumped. Yes, that had been the sound. God, what was she doing? She pulled away from Tate. She’d had a bad dream and convinced herself she was hearing things that weren’t there. The house was old and in need of repair. Exhaustion still weighed on her. She needed to turn on some white noise and go back to sleep.
After she figured out why they were standing in the middle of her kitchen at midnight. “What are you guys doing here? You were supposed to have flown back to Chicago already.”
Eric shook his head as he walked back to the front door. “You were supposed to be on that flight, too, Belle.”
“I canceled my reservation, but not yours.”
They eyed her as she spoke. She wished again that she’d packed a robe. Though the nightshirt covered the essentials, she wasn’t wearing a bra. She worried that her nipples would give away how glad she was to see them.
“We’ll also have to replace the screen and the door,” Eric said, walking back in.
“What?” She better not have heard that right. “That door looked like an original part of the house.”
“Now it’s kindling.” Eric shrugged.
Tate frowned sheepishly. “Sorry. Once I heard you cry out, I didn’t think about anything but getting to you. I’m really sorry about the door, but I was completely justified in breaking it down. Not only was that madam who lived two blocks away murdered just yesterday, but look at the overall murder rate in New Orleans. I probably should have done a quick assessment of the physics of busting that old slab of wood down. My shoulder really hurts. And then you clocked me with the granny cane.”
“He hit that freaking door like a linebacker,” Kellan agreed. “We should be glad there wasn’t a glass screen in front or we’d be stitching him up. You know, a well-placed kick might have worked just as well, man. I’m also pretty good at picking a lock.”
If she let them, they would devolve into an argument about how they should have broken into her house. “I quit, guys. Didn’t Sequoia tell you?”
All three men zipped their gazes her way now, wearing scowls ranging from unhappy to forbidding.
“You quit to the intern. Does that seem like an adult way to handle this situation?” Kellan had dropped the lawyer tone and now spoke in pure, grade-A Dom voice.
She so had a way to address that concern. “The last time I saw you, you and Tate were fighting like a couple of school kids, so don’t you dare accuse me of being unprofessional.”
Eric shrugged out of his jacket. “That was sex, Belle. There’s nothing professional about sex.”
“Damn straight. And I want to know where the guy is,” Kell said, his voice turning deeper, darker. “Why isn’t your ‘friend’ here defending you.”
“Who are you talking about?” She set Sir back down and he did a quick sniff of all three men.
“Kinley said you left with someone you called Sir,” Tate said. “But you were just being polite, right? You’re a very well-mannered woman. You wouldn’t have just met some random man and run off with him. I mean, if you waited twenty-six years to have sex, you’re probably not going to copulate with a stranger.”
“Tate, you’re not helping the situation,” Kellan said.
Oh, her BFF was such an awesome bitch. Kinley had told them she’d run off with Sir without mentioning that Belle had slapped that name on her new dog. She had to hold in a little giggle.
Sir scampered around their ankles as Belle did her best to look innocent. “Of course I’m polite.”
Tate winced as he moved his sore arm. “I simply pointed out that she’s picky. Aren’t you, Belle? That’s not a bad thing.”
“I’ll get you some ice to put on that.” She did feel bad about hurting Tate. She hadn’t exactly held back. “If I have any.”
She practically ran to the old fridge around the corner in the kitchen when the truth hit her. Her former bosses and almost lovers were here. All three of them. She wasn’t sure what to do about it. On the one hand, she’d severed ties with them. None of the reasons why had changed. Except…despite the house being locked up, Belle had still felt something brush past her. Surely the house wasn’t really haunted.
She found a freezer bag in the dusty pantry and dumped some of the cubes from the trays to make a quick ice pack as she contemplated what to do. Let them stay…or make them go.
Tate stood in the doorway of the pantry, his face
a weary mask. “Don’t throw us out, baby.”
Well, she’d never said they were stupid. They’d been smart enough to send in the one she couldn’t turn away. Tate had always held a soft spot in her heart. He was awkward and a little weird and she adored that part of him. He was unlike anyone else.
“Here, put this on your shoulder.”
He took the baggie out of her hand. “I won’t sleep tonight unless I know you’re safe. Please let us stay.”
His dark, soulful eyes searched her face hopefully. Damn, the man was hot and there was something so earnest and sexy about the way he asked. It wasn’t Tate’s instinct to be polite. He was more likely to give a PowerPoint presentation about why he was right. He was thinking their interaction through, being careful with her.
