“What do you want me to do with it?”
“Hmm? Oh, your hand.”
Akela smiled, surprised she had caught him off guard with such a simple statement.
“I want you to press it against your outer thigh.”
She felt her skin rasp against the silky material of her nightgown as she pulled her hand close against her side and splayed her fingers against the flesh of her thigh.
“Now…slide it upward.”
She closed her eyes, listening to the throb of her heartbeat, the easy, sexy cadence of his voice, then trailed her fingers upward.
“No, no…slower…”
Akela shivered as she slowed the movement of her fingers. Up over her hip…her abdomen…the outer swell of her breast.
“What are you wearing?”
“A nightgown.”
She heard his quiet chuckle. “I can’t see you, Akela. You’re going to have to be more descriptive than that.”
“What do you see me wearing?”
“A white silky number with too much material.”
Her nightgown was cream colored, but otherwise he was on the mark.
“I want you to take it off.”
Akela glanced toward her bedroom door. Despite the monstrous size of the house, she’d always been aware that she wasn’t alone there. She’d never given herself over to self-pleasure, even in her teenage years when the simple feel of a pillow between her legs had threatened to topple her over the edge.
“Have you done it?”
“No. Wait.”
She reached down and bunched the silky material in her hand, tugging it until she finally pulled it up over her head, tousling her hair in the process.
“There.”
She could have sworn she heard him groan.
“Are you still lying on your stomach?”
“Yes.”
“Okay…I want you to put your hand where it was before.”
She did so, noticing the heat of her own skin beneath her palm.
“Gently shift your fingers so they’re cupping your breast….”
Akela spread her fingers and worked them in between her body and the mattress, caressing her own breast. She gasped when a bone-deep shudder rushed over her body.
“Is your nipple hard?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want you to focus your attention there. Bring your finger and thumb together until you’re pinching the pink flesh….”
She followed his directions like a woman who had no control over her own body. And for a moment she felt like it wasn’t, in fact, her own fingers plucking her puckered flesh, but Claude’s.
“Harder…”
Akela pressed her face into her pillow to muffle her shallow breathing as she pinched her own nipple to the point of pain. It didn’t escape her notice that it brought her exquisite pleasure.
“Don’t press against the mattress.”
Akela licked her lips. “What?”
“Your hips. Don’t press them against the mattress.”
How did he know that’s what she was doing?
She stopped.
“Now, what I want you to do…”
Akela methodically, slowly, followed each of his murmured commands, moving her hand over to her other breast, pausing in between the two mounds of flesh until she thought she might cry out with the need to have him touching her the way he was having her touch herself. For long moments he left her with her fingers splayed against her stomach, feeling her own quick, shallow intakes of breath.
Then, finally, he was directing her farther south, toward the triangle of hair hungry for attention she had so far denied it.
“Are you wearing panties?”
“Hmm? Yes.”
“What color?”
Akela had forgotten. She had to look down. “Black.”
“Mmm. Good.” Was it her or had his voice gotten softer? “For now I want you to work around those sexy panties…No, no…keep your thighs together….”
He directed her fingers up over the elastic and against the soft cotton until she was probing her swollen flesh through the material.
“Easy…easy…”
He must have caught on to how close she was to crisis, because his command came at just the right time to keep her from toppling over the edge into searing sensation.
He asked her to move her hand back up to her stomach, where he made her pause until she got her breathing back under control.
“Are you ready?”
Akela wanted to ask what for, but couldn’t seem to squeeze the words out of her throat.
He chuckled softly. “I’ll take that as a yes. Now…”
At his command, she slid her fingers back toward the top elastic of her panties. But instead of bypassing the entrance, he directed her this time inside them, moving lower and lower still, until her fingers touched her springy curls.
“Spread your legs for me now, Akela. Yes, yes, that’s it….”
She did as he bade, finding that even as she did so, she instinctively lifted her bottom farther up into the air as if seeking a meeting he wasn’t there to give her.
“Slide your fingers into your soft folds….”
She did as he asked, her heart nearly exploding in her chest, a light sheen of sweat clinging to her skin.
“Are you wet?”
Akela moaned. “So wet…so hot.”
It was a long moment before he spoke again and she was half afraid she’d lost him. Then he came back.
“Now, with your first two fingers, I want you to find your sweet bijou….”
He directed her to thrust them deep inside her dripping flesh while pressing her hips into the mattress.
Just like that, the world exploded into a cloud of red-hot sensation. She cried out into her pillow, burying her face deep in the soft material as her flesh pulsed around her own fingers.
“Thrust them again, Akela, baby…thrust them again….”
She did as he asked, surprised that the movements drew out her orgasm until she was bucking against the mattress and her own hand, wishing all the while that it was him.
Finally she collapsed, spent, against the bed, her breath coming in rapid gasps. She rolled over, her thighs spread wide, her chest heaving. She had no problem at all imagining him on the other end of the line, his hand grasping his own rigid member at the root, spilling his seed all over his muscled stomach. She wished she were there to spread the warm proof of his passion over his skin, to run her tongue over him, lick him clean.
She hadn’t been aware she’d said the words aloud until she heard his very vocal groan on the other end of the line.
“Now I’m putting my mouth over the top…flicking my tongue around the head…sucking….”
Akela’s own hand remained between her legs, fondling her slick flesh as she whispered to him.
Only after she was sure he had come, did she slowly remove her fingers from her panties, running her fingertips over her stomach and up to her breast.
“Claude?”
“Hmm?”
“Good night.”
He chuckled quietly. “It’s definitely much better after having talked to you.”
She smiled and disconnected the call, holding the phone between her breasts for long, silent moments. Then, finally, she put the receiver on the nightstand and rolled over, hoping that in her dreams her own hands would be replaced by Claude’s.
14
ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES of being an FBI agent was access to considerable resources. Each city and county had to account for every lab test, every autopsy, a monetary value placed on each item and coming out of a fixed budget. But with federal involvement, Akela was able to green-light direct funding of New Orleans’s criminal investigation unit.
She had already been through the preliminary information Chevalier had passed on to her, but she had the feeling that she hadn’t had access to everything. Wishful thinking? Maybe so. But she also knew that the jaded detective was collecting onl
y the evidence that would place Claude behind bars for a long, long time to come. Anything else would be easily allowed to fall by the wayside because, as Chevalier had so conveniently put it, “Why cloud the issue?”
It was just past 7:00 a.m. She’d purposely got an early start that morning after putting in a phone call and finding out the NOPD head forensics expert in charge of the case liked to come into the “office” in the dead of night, when she felt her biorhythms worked more efficiently. She would be calling it a “night” at around eight or so. So if Akela wanted to talk to her, it would have to be now.
Akela flashed her ID at the security guard posted outside the crime laboratory, then pushed open the door to the examining room, struck immediately by the smell of cleaning solution and blood.
“Dr. Landau?”
The sound of metal clanking against metal then a muffled, “Back here.”
Akela navigated the large room, around tables and counters and large wastebaskets in the general direction she thought she’d heard the voice. There, positioned over a body with her magnifying glass hovering over an open chest cavity, sat a woman of about her age, her brown hair pulled back and under a blue protective cap, her clothes covered by a blue smock, rubber gloves on her hands. Akela forced herself not to look directly at the body of a middle-aged man and put the tray of coffee and doughnuts she held down on a nearby table.
“Mmm, thanks,” Julie Landau said without looking up at her. She blindly reached for one of the coffees, popped the lid, then took a long pull from it.
Akela looked around the quiet area, careful not to specifically acknowledge much of what she was looking at. The first time she’d had to ID a body, she’d upchucked everything on the sidewalk outside the medical examiner’s office. She knew better than to challenge that gag instinct now.
Landau finally pushed the magnifying glass away, slid her own reading glasses to the top of her capped head, then looked at Akela.
“Not a lot of people know how to do that.”
“Do what?’
“Keep quiet.” She smiled then took off her rubber gloves one by one. “They’re usually reminding me of who they are or asking questions when I’m obviously absorbed in something else.”
She reached for something on a counter to her other side and handed Akela a folder.
“I think this is what you’re looking for.”
Akela read the file folder label marked Laraway, Claire, then opened it, scanning the top page as Landau swiveled around on her stool and checked out the doughnuts. She chose a sprinkle-covered one, shook it then bit into it.
“It says here you found a hair inside the neck wound?”
Landau nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t belong to the victim or the suspect.”
Akela stared at her. She’d been told that there had been no trace evidence from an outside source. “How can you be sure?”
The forensics expert raised a brow. “Because I identified two types of hair from the bed and the one in the wound didn’t match them. And there was only one specimen.”
“Which would indicate…”
“That there was a third person involved.”
Akela’s chest lightened as she read the rest of the material. The investigation indicated that the killer had been left-handed, given the depth and sweep of the wound. Claude was right-handed. But, of course, that bit of information meant little because he could have done it that way to throw off the investigation.
She shivered.
“Can you tell if the hair belongs to a man or a woman?”
“Not yet. I’ve sent it to Virginia for further analysis.” She chewed on her doughnut. “I will tell you I believe the hair was planted.”
“Planted?”
“Mmm.” She used her pinkie to wipe a pink sprinkle from the side of her mouth. “There was something about the way it was placed, nice and neat and with the follicle attached, inside the wound that set off an alarm or two.” She squinted at her. “I’m trained to pay attention to those alarms.”
A planted hair indicated premeditation. Given that the entire case against Claude hinged on the murder being a crime of passion, there was no room for premeditation.
Akela smiled at the doctor.
“Looks like I gave you the info you were looking for.”
“Pardon me?”
She polished off the doughnut, scrubbed up and then reached for a fresh pair of rubber gloves. “You hoping the guy didn’t do it?”
Akela closed the file. “Let’s just say that there are a few other things that set off an alarm or two of my own. And I’m trained to pay attention to those alarms.”
CLAUDE KNEW it probably wasn’t the best idea he’d had, but he’d already proven his inability to sit around and let his fate be decided for him. Hell, given that he couldn’t truly trust his own brother in the situation, he had only himself to rely on.
He jimmied the lock on the door to the apartment Claire had shared with a woman named Joann Bennett, a skill he’d picked up on the street long ago. He’d watched a woman he guessed was Claire’s roommate leave a few minutes ago, probably on her way to work. Since Claire’s body had been flown back to her home in Toledo, Ohio, life, he guessed, had to go on as usual.
He slipped inside the small, dark apartment and stood still for a moment, allowing his eyesight to adjust. A look around showed a modest place decorated with bright colors. In the corner was a collection of boxes. Claire’s things? Claude suspected they were. Probably Bennett was already in the market for a new roommate. After all, dead roommates couldn’t help make the rent.
He opened the top box, peered at the various photo albums and high school yearbooks there, then moved the box aside and opened the next one. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Something, anything to prove his innocence would do the trick. But exactly what that something would be, he didn’t know.
During his questioning of those who had seen Claire with friends that night, he hadn’t leaned of a boyfriend, longstanding or otherwise. Of course, he couldn’t actually approach her roommate or any of her friends himself, not without fear of scaring them off, seeing as his picture was featured on the cover of the only city newspaper. So he’d taken this chance.
He heard a key in the door lock.
Damn.
He quickly put the boxes back together and ducked into one of the two bedrooms that looked as if it may have been Claire’s, given the way it was cleaned up with no personal touches remaining. He closed the door partially and stood off to the side, watching as the woman who had left earlier returned, holding a drugstore bag. Apparently she hadn’t gone to work.
Claude debated what he should do from there. The roommate disappeared inside the bathroom and moments later he heard running water. He stepped to the window. The apartment was on the first floor, but there were bars on the window that had been painted over.
He heard a knock on the apartment door. Looking in that direction through the window, he saw none other than Akela checking her watch.
He couldn’t question the roommate, but Akela most certainly could.
AKELA FELT the unmistakable feeling that she was being watched again. It might be the middle of the morning, and broad daylight, but just being at this end of the Quarter, outside the main drag, with sparse foot and car traffic, put her on edge. She checked her firearm, then readjusted her suit jacket.
“Miss Bennett?” She addressed the young woman who answered the door. “It’s Agent Akela Brooks with the FBI. I spoke to you on the phone this morning.”
“Yes. Come in.”
She followed the young woman inside the small apartment. “Thanks for agreeing to see me. I understand that police have already been by and it must be difficult for you to relive the incident….”
The young woman shrugged. “Claire didn’t live here all that long. Two months.”
Akela took her notepad out and jotted down the information. “You weren’t friends before then?”
“No. We met through an a
d I put in the paper looking for someone to share the rent.” She gestured toward one of two doors. “Like I’m doing again.”
“You two didn’t become close during those two months?”
Akela already knew that Joann Bennett hadn’t been with Claire the night she met Claude. But other than that, she knew little about Claire beyond that she was a paralegal and had been checking into taking a few prelaw courses at Tulane. At twenty-seven, perhaps she’d decided that the life she’d mapped out wasn’t quite panning out the way she’d hoped and she’d decided to promote herself from paralegal to lawyer.
“No, we didn’t. I spend a lot of time over at my boyfriend’s place.”
“The two of you never went out?”
“No. I mean, maybe lunch once or twice. But while I never saw anyone, I got the impression she was involved with someone, too.”
Akela noted that, then pointed toward the boxes. “Are these her things?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with them. I talked to her mother yesterday, but she didn’t seem all that interested in Claire’s personal belongings. Her sister is supposed to be calling me sometime today or tomorrow. I’m going to ask if she wants me to ship the things to her. I can only imagine how much it’s going to cost me.”
Akela stepped closer to the boxes in question. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Sure. Go ahead.” She glanced toward the small kitchenette. “I was just going to make some tea. Would you like a cup?”
“Yes. That would be nice, thanks.”
Akela opened the top box and thumbed through a photo album filled with pictures probably taken during Mardi Gras a couple of years back.
“She kept a diary,” Joann said, bringing in a plate of cookies. “I think it’s in the third box down.”
Diary.
Akela frowned. “Did you tell the police about it?”
“Yeah. The detective, Chevalier, didn’t appear all that interested, though.”
Of course, Chevalier wouldn’t be interested. He already had his killer—or would when he arrested Claude, anyway.
Joann went back into the kitchen as Akela moved the top two boxes out of the way. She found a leather-bound journal near the top of the third one. She opened it and read the date on the first page. A year ago. She turned away from the boxes and closer to the front window where the light was better. The entries were written in neat script, all in black ink. Seemed Claire Laraway had passed penmanship with flying colors. She leafed through the entries, paying close attention to any entries that appeared different than the others. She found one twenty pages in. The words were cramped as if written in a hurry.
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