Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  He interrupted her. “Elaborate on that.”

  “My mother was drugged and raped at a party when she was nineteen. Her attacker was never caught. I was the result of that event. But it means I never knew my birth father.” She added reluctantly, “And it means my mother was plagued by conflicted feelings about me and my existence throughout my entire upbringing.”

  Which was the understatement of the century. No matter how hard her mother had wanted to love her, some part of her had never been able to break through the trauma of the rape to truly, unconditionally love Lissa. Her mother’s head was willing to love, but her heart was not entirely.

  Max looked as though his mental wheels were turning a hundred miles an hour, and she continued hastily before he could ask her any more probing questions about that exceedingly unpleasant detail about her past.

  “Number two most important life event—inheriting the shop from my aunt. It gave me an excuse to move across the country and start a new life.”

  “Why didn’t you just sell the shop and stay where you were? That building has great bones and is in a neighborhood that’s gentrifying fast. You could turn a nice profit if you sold it.”

  “I needed the new start more than I needed the money.”

  “Why?”

  She was careful not to even think about her real reasons for the abrupt move, lest they show on her face and Captain Perceptive Pants pick up on them. “My life wasn’t heading the direction I wanted it to in Vermont.”

  “And what direction would that be?”

  She shrugged. “The normal one. A decent living, some friends, a nice guy. Maybe settling down someday.” Suddenly panicked that he would think she was making a pass at him, she added in desperation, “You know. The whole 2.1 kids, dog and a Volvo station wagon routine.”

  He smiled gently at her attempt at humor. “And the third most important thing to happen to you?”

  “I’m still waiting for it.” She wasn’t about to admit that meeting him was rapidly climbing its way onto the list. And she bloody well wasn’t confessing that talking with dead people was the real third thing on her list. “Okay, your turn,” she blurted.

  His facial expression went stone cold, locked and barred, no entrance. When he spoke, it was with great reluctance. “My parent’s divorce changed the course of my life. My father tried to steal my loyalty away from my mother, and the result was that he and I spent a lot of time together when I was a kid. He tried to teach me to be like him.”

  She sensed darkness in that statement. Were she still a practicing psychic and he a client seeking a reading, she would dive into that darkness and explore it, but she was not and he was not. “Did your father succeed in making you like him?” she asked quietly.

  “That’s an excellent question.”

  Good grief. Wave upon wave of darkness shrouded that answer. Clearly Max was deeply conflicted about his father and not at all enamored at the idea of being like him. She noted that he declined to answer her. He continued with his list.

  “The car accident that almost killed my mom and little sister was the second big milestone. It left my mother paralyzed from the neck down. I had to move back home from college and care for her around the clock for four years until she died of complications.”

  “Oh, Max. I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged casually, but she didn’t have to be psychic to feel the pain in the gesture.

  “And the third event?”

  He opened his mouth. Started to say something but stopped. A voice in her head filled in his unspoken words. Meeting you. Was that for real, or was that just her own desires whispering what she wanted to hear?

  “My work, I suppose.”

  “And what exactly is it that you do?”

  “I’m a finder. I locate things for people with a lot of money burning a hole in their pockets. Art, antiques, furniture, information, you name it. I make connections and fulfill wishes.”

  Interesting. “Tell me more about yourself, Max.”

  “Nope.”

  She blinked, startled at the bluntness of his reply. He sounded like he meant it, too. “Gonna make me discover more the hard way, huh? Pass me your hand, palm up.”

  Smirking, he held his hand out to her. She studied the lines on his hand for a long moment. Oh, dear. There was much more than just a split family in his childhood and the tragic loss of his mother. Suffering. Loneliness. Hatred. Hatred? That was interesting.

  His money line was strong. However, his love line was all but nonexistent. She saw a radical life change in his near future. Love was possible, but at great personal cost. And where his passion mound should be, there was only a hard callus at the base of his thumb. She knew from entirely mundane means, namely, working with the FBI for the past decade, that it meant he shot handguns on a regular basis. The irony of a callus over his heart line was impossible to miss, however.

  “See anything interesting?” he finally asked.

  “I see lots of interesting things. That doesn’t mean I plan to share any of them with you.”

  “Hey!” he protested.

  “I thought we already established that all that psychic mumbo jumbo is pure poppycock,” she declared.

  She was saved by the arrival of breakfast dessert crepes, which were as scrumptious as they sounded. She and Max dived in to the clotted-cream-and-strawberry-filled confections in companionable silence for the most part. And what conversation there was stayed safely on small talk.

  She was stuffed when Max finally held her chair for her to stand up. She was going to have to diet for a week to work off that meal. But it had been worth it to get to know Max a little more.

  He drove her back to the shop and dropped her off, and she commenced the tedious process of cleaning up after the damage done by what must have been baseball bats or steel pipes. The vandal or vandals had been thorough. Even the walls had gaping holes in them.

  Once the debris was swept into a single pile, she began the even more tedious process of inventorying everything that remained and then guessing at what had been broken based on the bits she sifted through. If only she knew the inventory better. She was sure to forget something, and without a list of merchandise made by her aunt, she was bound to lose a fortune in any insurance claim she filed.

  Where had Max run off to, anyway? Hopefully, their conversation over breakfast hadn’t scared him. She’d gotten the impression that he liked kissing her nearly as much as she liked kissing him. But he’d driven away from the shop a couple of hours ago like the devil himself had lit a fire under him. Like things were moving too fast for him. Like she’d spooked him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Max jogged up the front steps of a conservative, yet opulent, house off Saint Charles Avenue, uptown. The neighborhood was known for its grand mansions and Old South elegance. This home fit right in.

  In stark contrast, however, a pair of thugs, dressed in the requisite leather coats and sporting shaved heads, stood on the Grecian portico, guarding the double entry doors. They were an ugly accoutrement marring an otherwise beautiful work of Southern architecture. But then, he never had gone for the whole Russian mobster look, personally.

  “Masha!” Peter Menchekov greeted him warmly. “What brings my special problem solver to see me at my home on a Sunday morning like this?” Although Menchekov’s tone was jovial, a warning that this interruption of his personal life had better be important underlay the words.

  Briefly, Max told him about the break-in at Lissa’s shop and the calling card left behind by Julio G.’s boys. He finished with, “Here’s the thing, Peter. If we want this shop to stay alive as a dead drop for our people, we need to back off Julio G. and his gang and make it clear they are not to mess with this place.”

  “An excellent point. Above my pay grade to make the call on whether or
not we keep it as a drop location, though. I’ll have to pass the question up the chain of command.”

  He would take that as confirmation that his conjecture had been correct. The curiosity shop was important to the mob because of its value as a place where messages could be passed securely.

  “Thanks, sir.” It was frustrating not knowing whether or not the higher-ups would choose to protect Lissa. The police were right. He couldn’t take on an entire gang by himself. Not that it would stop him from trying, of course.

  Peter was speaking again. “Callista Clearmont was a longtime friend of the family. I expect the bosses will take care of her niece. Particularly after the way Callista died.”

  Max went on mental full alert. He asked carefully, “Was there something unusual about the way she died?”

  Peter shrugged. “Word on the street was that she was murdered.”

  “The way I hear it, the police didn’t think so. They didn’t even order an autopsy.”

  Peter shrugged again. “I’m just saying. I personally find the circumstances of her death suspicious. I saw her one week before she died, and she looked to be in perfect health to me.”

  Lissa had hinted that her aunt’s death had come as a surprise. “Would you like me to look into her death further, sir?”

  Peter’s eyebrows lifted. “I was not aware you had those kinds of resources. But by all means, yes. If you can find out exactly how she died, I would be interested to know the cause. And I know the big boss would love to know what really happened.”

  It was right on the tip of his tongue to ask who the big boss was and why the man would love to know how Lissa’s aunt had died. But Max bit it back. He dared not raise any suspicions in Peter’s mind.

  He pondered how to pull Peter back to the main topic, which was identifying why Lissa and her shop had been targeted. Had it been a random chance kind of attack, or had someone else pointed and shot that psycho at her?

  He probably ought to take the attacks at face value and let it go, but his instincts suggested that perhaps there was more than met the eye here. He didn’t want to traumatize Lissa any further by spouting conspiracy theories about the mugging and break-in without any proof.

  “It is possible that Julio and his boys are attempting to test the boundaries of our territory and are probing a perceived weak spot in the wake of Callista’s untimely death?” he asked Peter.

  Max watched Peter’s face closely. The man gave away no hint of having been behind the woman’s death. But then Max hadn’t expected that he would give anything away.

  “Another interesting question. I will have some people put out feelers into the other syndicates operating in New Orleans. We took a big hit when that arms deal last year turned out to be a federal bust. It is possible that Julio might perceive us to be weak. We must, of course, counter this notion. Strongly.”

  Thank God he’d risen above the level of hit men and street soldiers in this gang. He hesitated to think about the orders that might have already gone out to that cadre to reassert the position in New Orleans of the Bratya—the Brothers, as this particular crime organization referred to itself.

  “...having a party next week here at the house,” Peter was saying. “You should bring the niece with you. What’s her name? Lissa? Yes, bring her along. We’d like to meet her.”

  We, who? Would one or more of the upper-level executives of Russian Crime, Inc., finally show themselves, perhaps?

  Max smiled pleasantly. “Of course. She’d love to meet you, I’m sure.” But inside he cringed. No way did he want to embroil Lissa in whatever might have gotten her aunt murdered. But it wasn’t as if he had any choice now. Peter had given an order, ever so politely but an order nevertheless. He showed himself out of the house and left Peter to his brunch.

  Max had two more errands to run today, and the first took him to Bastien LeBlanc’s auto shop. It was a big metal building with living quarters built into one corner of the spacious shop. The guy loved restoring cars better than life, supposedly.

  “Hey, Bass!” he called as he stepped into the shop.

  Bastien, tank-shirted and bleary-eyed, poked his blond head out the living area door. “What do you want on a Sunday morning, bro? I ain’t feedin’ y’all. I’m too damned hungover to cook.” The Cajun was also renowned among his peers as a hell of a fine Creole chef.

  Max grinned. “I was hoping I could talk you into looking at the death of a woman named Callista Clearmont. She died about a month ago. Was there an autopsy?”

  “The aunt of that girl you rescued? Why you pokin’ aroun’ in her business?”

  “Humor me, will you?”

  “I’m not your personal research service, bro. Call Jennie and Perriman if you want that. They’ll hook you up after you helped them out like you did last year.”

  He sighed. He had considered calling the navy special ops support team. Their computer wizard, a young woman named Jennie Finch, was the best researcher he’d ever run across. She could tease information out of a computer like nobody’s business. And the unit’s leader, Navy Commander Cole Perriman, was as sharp a special operator as he’d ever met.

  But it was a favor he was loath to burn just yet. As he neared the top of the Bratya organization, he wanted to know he had a SEAL team in his back pocket if the need should arise. After all, his own covert employer had declined to support this op he was running on his own.

  “Or you could call your own government agency,” Bastien suggested.

  “I’m deep undercover. Can’t break cover to talk to them,” he replied. In truth, it was more complicated than that. He’d tried to sell his employers on his theory that a Russian crime syndicate might actually be funding a much more sinister ring of Russian spies, but the CIA had completely discounted his theory as ridiculous. His handler thought he was running the op for reasons of personal revenge and had wanted no part of it.

  Truth be told, that had probably been an accurate observation by his CIA handler. Hence, this op was completely off the books. The CIA didn’t know about it, and he intended to keep it that way.

  “What are you messin’ around in, anyway, bro? Dis’ swamp you swimmin’ in dangerous?”

  He’d discovered that Bastien’s Cajun drawl grew noticeably thicker when the guy was at his sharpest mentally. “Nah. No gators in my swamp.” He added drily, “But thanks for asking.”

  “Look. I know you’re deep inside the Russian mob. I know you had Commander Perriman and his boys arrest you and throw you in jail along wit’ them other mobsters to protect your cover. But that was almost a year ago. How long you plannin’ to stay undercover? A man can only take so much before it starts to mess wit’ his head.”

  And therein lay the crux of his dilemma. He still had more to learn about the mob his father had been so closely tied to. A mob that his father had trained him to run one day. A mob that he believed had killed his mother and might even have killed his father.

  Max declared, “I’m all right, man. I’ve got you to keep me sane, right?”

  Bastien snorted. “Callista Clearmont, huh? Was it classed a homicide?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Great. So there’s not even an autopsy to look at.” Bastien shrugged. “I’ll see what I can dig up. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

  Max thanked the cop and left quickly, taking the back alley out of Bastien’s place. No sense making it easy for anyone to tie him to one of NOPD’s finest.

  Now to find Lissa a decent door. One that would keep out thugs intent on scaring the snot out of her and ruining her life. He planned to order the installation of cameras and a loud-ass alarm system for her, too.

  And while he was out, he needed a sniper tripod that would fit in the window of the place across the street from the curiosity shop. He’d rented the place a few weeks back and had set up a
one-man surveillance operation on Lissa Clearmont. He was going to turn it into a one-man protection operation, now. If anyone tried to mess with her a third time, they were in for a nasty surprise.

  Next time any of Julio G.’s boys came around to mess with Lissa, they’d have him and a custom Barrett sniper rig to contend with.

  * * *

  Lissa looked up as Max called out a greeting from the front of the shop. “I’m back here,” she told him. She climbed to her feet, her back creaking from a long day spent picking up broken bits off the floor. A thrill raced through her at the sound of his voice, erasing the day’s aches and pains from her mind.

  “I brought you a present.”

  “Please God let it be painkillers and a bottle of bourbon,” she joked. She rounded the big armoire at the end of a row, and there he stood, with a giant door propped beside him.

  “It’ll need trimming down to fit, but I’ve got a circular saw in the truck and all the hardware we’ll need to hang it.”

  “You have a truck?”

  “I use it in my work. Most pieces of furniture and art won’t fit in Lola.”

  She stared at the beautiful oiled oak door panel. A large oval glass inset was covered with an intricately patterned wrought iron grill that she could hardly fit her pinkie finger through. Nobody was breaking through it anytime soon. It was both beautiful and functional. “Where on earth did you find that, and on such short notice?” she asked.

  He shrugged modestly. “I told you I find stuff professionally. I know people who can get me pretty much anything if it’s to be had in New Orleans.”

  They spent the next hour measuring, cutting, drilling and screwing. At the end of it, she had a very fancy new door for the curiosity shop. It added an air of elegance to the whole place that she thought the resident ghosts would rather like. Even Mr. Jackson gave it an approving sniff and rubbed up against it briefly.

  “What do I owe you for the door?” she asked Max after they’d stood back to admire their work.

  “Nothing. Consider it a housewarming gift.”