by Rebecca York
Jack gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Nice of you to join us. We’re pretty busy in here.”
Alex shrugged. He and Jack had a pretty prickly relationship. “The next time we get a guy with a knife, you can take care of him.”
“Not my job.”
Alex didn’t bother to answer. He already knew that Jack was pretty busy—mixing drinks and pushing drugs. A dangerous combination. It was only a matter of time before the little squirt got himself into serious trouble.
They stayed out of each other’s way for the next half hour. Then a group of five overdressed older businessmen, looking like they were out slumming, came into the bar and took a table on the right. After the scantily clad cocktail waitress wrote down their drink requests, she headed for Alex. But Jack signaled her to come to him instead.
“I owe you one,” he said to Alex as he scanned the order, then began making Hurricanes. Alex gave him a thumbs-up and went back to work on a batch of Margaritas for some wet-behind-the-ears college kids. But he kept tabs on Jack. The guy bent down below the level of the bar. When he came back up, it looked like the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt was bulging just a little. As he mixed one of the Hurricanes, a fine mist of white powder fell from underneath the cuff into the drink. Not powdered sugar, Alex thought as he watched the bartender stir the stuff into the drink.
He’d bet his nonexistent New Orleans P.D. pension that it was Category Five.
The prime targets for this deadly designer drug were older affluent men. It aroused them sexually—allowing prostitutes to prey on them—but if too much was contained they could die of heart attacks. The cop in him wanted to warn the businessmen. But, since Wiley’s heart attack, nobody else had ended up in the hospital. And giving out warnings would jeopardize the joint undercover NOC-PD operation.
So he watched the waitress swish her hips over to the table and chat with the guys while she distributed the drinks. He kept an eye on the men, seeing the symptoms develop in one of them, the same signs he’d seen in Wiley. The guy with the spiked drink got red in the face, shifted in his seat and began talking pretty loudly.
Obviously embarrassed, the others in his group tried to calm him down, but he wasn’t willing to be restrained. Over the next twenty minutes, he became increasingly obnoxious.
When a little working girl at a nearby table caught his eye, he left his friends and went over to sit with her. Probably they were glad to get rid of him.
Mentally taking notes, Alex watched the guy indiscreetly paw at her in public before they headed for the front door.
Alex wanted to find out where they were going. Since the crowd in the bar had thinned, he tossed an “I’ll be right back” in Jack’s direction.
Before the other bartender could object, he hurried down the hall toward the men’s room, then made for the back exit where he ducked into the alley, gagging at the smell of garbage bags waiting to be picked up in the morning. The couple had gone out the front door. He charged down the alley and through a passageway that led from a private garden back to the street. There he scanned the crowd. But his quarry had disappeared. He couldn’t take a chance on passing Tony at the door. His only option was to search in the opposite direction—toward the far end of Bourbon Street where the lights were lower and the crowds were thinner.
He thought he’d lost the pair. But his luck held and he caught a glimpse of the happy couple just turning the corner.
Probably the guy wouldn’t realize he was being followed. But the woman might catch on. Playing safe, Alex hung back, watching them make for a sprawling stucco building with Ionic columns holding up a small portico in front. When they disappeared inside, he hugged the shadows across the street and strolled past, looking at the name above the door. The McDonough Club.
He blinked, thinking he’d read it wrong. But the words stayed the same.
He’d heard of the place. It was an old and distinguished men’s club, named after one of the city’s benefactors. Could the working girl really be planning to take her date here?
Well, they’d gone inside. He’d report that at the morning meeting and check out the vital statistics on the club.
Meanwhile he’d better get back before he lost his job.
By sprinting all the way, he arrived at the alley door of the bar about ten minutes after he’d left. Ducking into the men’s room, he took a couple of deep breaths and washed his hands. When he glanced at his watch he saw that it was half past midnight. In a couple of hours he could go home and catch a little sleep. Then it was on to his other assignment—playing truck driver.
Jack gave him a dirty look when he returned. But he pretended to be oblivious.
He was hoping that the rest of the evening would be less eventful. But no such luck. Twenty minutes later, as he drew another draft of beer, his attention zinged to the front door when three dark Latino men swaggered into the bar. All of them were large and muscular, with slicked-down black hair, new jeans and dark T-shirts. Actually, Alex was surprised when Tony stepped aside and let them in, since they looked like trouble.
They took a table in the back, speaking Spanish and acting as though they owned the place. As he glanced at them from time to time, Alex began making connections. They looked as if they could be some of the Nilia rebels due to arrive in town.
The rebels were the reason the Department of Public Safety had opened this new branch of Confidential in New Orleans in the first place. Their leader, Ricardo Gonzalez, aka “Black Death,” was bent on overthrowing the government of a country that reminded Alex a lot of Venezuela. Gonzalez wanted to squelch the peaceful democracy that existed there and grab the considerable oil resources. And he was willing to use any means at his disposal, including wiping out whole villages to make an example of them.
CIA agents who had been in-country following his movements had discovered that a group of Gonzalez’s men was headed toward New Orleans.
Alex watched them without being obvious. He’d heard that everyone who worked for Gonzalez had a scorpion tattooed on his upper body. If he tore the shirt off one of them, would he find the mark?
He was pretty sure there wasn’t much chance of undressing any of them in here. He saw that Rich Stewart had drifted into the bar and was glad the other agent was keeping tabs on the action, since the newcomers’ behavior was definitely something to worry about. Looking up, he saw one of them deliberately bump his chair into that of another patron, apparently for the sheer pleasure of seeing if he could start a fight.
The other guy moved out of the way, and the group went back to their drinks—until one of them made eye contact with a blond coed. When she smiled at him, he made a spontaneous decision that he was going to separate her from her boyfriend.
Clearing a path through the bar, he moved in on the kids, leaning over the girl with his big hand on her shoulder and his fingers coming down over her breast.
Rich and Alex exchanged glances. Rich edged a little closer to the group, but stayed out of their way.
With the noise level in the room, it was impossible for Alex to hear anything that was being said. Still, it was obvious that the college boy was mad as hell—but also afraid to tangle with the hulking Hispanic.
Alex clenched his fist around the spout of the soda and soft drink dispenser, wishing that he could help the kid out. But he’d already called enough attention to himself for one night.
The other members of the macho group sat back, enjoying the fun, laughing among themselves. But just as their amigo was about to chew the kid up and spit him out, the others mercifully stepped in to drag their cohort out of the bar. And Alex breathed out a little sigh. Disaster averted, and he hadn’t even stuck his nose into it.
He glanced up, seeing Rich give a small nod before following them into the street. Mason stayed where he was. Over the past few days Alex was getting the impression that his specialty was avoiding trouble.
Alex spent the next half hour tending bar and feeling almost like he was on break.
B
ut his antenna went up when another prostitute walked through the door. She’d picked a slow time, which immediately made him think she was one of the police recruits getting some training when there wouldn’t be too much chance of fending off propositions.
She was wearing a lot of makeup, but as she stood inside the door scanning the room, Alex got a good look at her face.
His heart clunked inside his chest, then started up a rapid beat that made it hard to breathe.
The prostitute was Gillian Seymour. He’d know that fiery redhead anywhere, even dressed in a low-cut blouse, a miniskirt that barely covered her crotch, fishnet stockings and little black boots.
While he’d still been with the N.O.P.D., he and Gillian had dated. Well, that was a pretty mild word for the torrid affair that had rocketed to life between them.
Truthfully, she’d been the best thing in his life at the time. But even as the two of them had driven each other to ecstasy in bed, he’d known that he was no good for her. So he’d broken it off.
For a painful second he allowed himself to envy his boss. Conrad Burke was married to a wonderful woman named Marilyn whom he’d met on one of his previous assignments. They were raising a set of twins—a boy and a girl. That was the way life was supposed to be. A man and a woman fell in love, settled down and raised a family.
Unfortunately it hadn’t been that way with his own parents. Mom and Dad had each been married five times. Alex was their oldest kid. The one who’d been born while they weren’t hitched to anyone. And he couldn’t even keep up with all the stepsisters and brothers from the various unions—the shortest of which had lasted four months.
As a kid, he’d been shuffled from one parent to the next and back again—often feeling like he’d gotten lost in the cracks of his parents’ new relationships.
And he’d vowed never to do that to a child of his own. He knew he wasn’t a suitable candidate for marriage. It just wasn’t in his genes. So he’d always kept his dealings with the fair sex superficial.
Which was what had scared him about Gillian. He’d wanted her on a level that he wasn’t prepared to accept—which had finally sent him running in the other direction.
But in the two years since breaking off the affair he’d thought of her often. And when he’d heard she’d entered the police academy, he’d wondered if her idealism would last once she started patrolling the city’s mean streets.
How long had she been in uniform? She’d have started out as a beat cop. But if she was already doing undercover work, then someone had noticed her potential and put her on the department fast track.
Which was too damn bad. She’d burn out as fast as he had if they kept pushing her into the “choice” assignments. And one thing he knew from the way she clasped her hands together in front of her; she was nervous. Which proved she was too green to be playing the tricky undercover part of a prostitute.
He studied her for half a minute. Lord, that red hair looked like it could set the place on fire. Or burn a man’s fingers. And the skimpy outfit displayed the nicely curved figure he remembered very well.
Under the makeup that she’d applied with a trowel, he could see that her features were still striking.
He kept his gaze on her, willing her to look in his direction. He knew the exact moment when she spotted him standing rigidly behind the bar. Her jaw didn’t exactly drop open. But she froze, standing near the doorway for a couple of electric seconds, then tilted her chin up and looked deliberately away.
It was all he could do to keep from charging around the bar and demanding to know if she’d lost her mind.
But he stayed where he was, his eyes narrowing as he watched her survey the room, then head for a table where two guys were sitting. Both were wearing short-sleeved, button-down shirts. Both looked like they’d had about three drinks too many. The French Quarter had that effect on civilians, Alex mused. There were too many bars, too many strip joints, too many places to score a cheap drink or your drug of choice. Hell, you could even buy liquor in a plastic cup from bars right on the street and walk around with the booze in your fist.
With a saucy smile Gillian started up a conversation with the woozy duo. It didn’t take long before she’d struck up a deal with one of them. As Alex watched in horror, she strolled out of the bar with the guy.
He cursed under his breath. He’d already taken one unauthorized break that evening. He should stay at his post until closing time. But he was damned if he was just going to stand here worrying about Gillian.
Daring Jack to stop him now, he walked to the back again, then hurried around to the street, thinking that he’d like to throttle Gillian Seymour.
Chapter Two
Outside, noise and heat and the smell of the nighttime crowd enveloped Gillian. But it wasn’t the crowd that worried her. The look in Alexander McMullin’s eye had curdled her stomach. And he wasn’t her most pressing problem.
That would be the inebriate with his hand on her arm, a hand that was inching toward her breast.
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go back to my hotel room and have some fun.” The invitation was issued in a drunken slur.
“I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression,” Gillian answered, politeness taking over from her former party-girl persona. “But I have to go home to my sick mother.”
The man’s hammy hand tightened on her arm and he leaned forward, his bourbon breath almost choking her. “You said you’d put out.”
In her peripheral vision, she could see several spectators taking in the little drama. But nobody sprang to the aid of a working girl.
When the bad actor dug his fingers painfully into her flesh, she came down on the toe of his shoe with one of her stiletto high heels and he yelped, letting go of her arm.
“You whore! What the hell do you think you’re doing? We had a deal.”
“I’m an independent contractor and I can choose what jobs to accept. If you can’t behave yourself on the street, what are you going to do in a hotel room?” she asked.
He blinked at her, apparently sobering up quickly. But before he could answer, she dashed away, hoping nobody in the crowd was planning to follow her.
Her first night as a prostitute, and she’d blown it. Well, not exactly, she corrected, cringing at her choice of words.
She sent an invisible dagger in the direction of Lieutenant LeBarron, who was probably home in bed at this very moment.
From the second she’d come under his command, he’d taken an interest in her career, which meant he’d urged her to grab this “choice” assignment.
It wasn’t easy being a female cop in a big-city police department. The guys forced you to prove yourself—over and over. You had to shoot better than they did. Hold your own in hand-to-hand combat and stand up to their locker room comments. This assignment was a chance to show what she could do. And to shut off the supply of a dangerous new drug threatening the health and welfare of her city. Category Five was what they were calling the highly addictive drug that they suspected was being riddled by prostitutes to increase their business.
Truthfully, she’d been nervous about playing her assigned role, which was why she was out here tonight—practicing.
She’d known that a supersecret government agency called the New Orleans Confidential was teaming up with the N.O.P.D. for this operation. She hadn’t known that Alexander McMullin was working for that agency. But there was no other explanation for his presence behind the bar in Bourbon Street Libations. She knew the man pretty well. He was a straight arrow and he certainly wasn’t working as a bartender because he liked mixing drinks.
Once, when she’d been in a squishy, sentimental mood, she’d looked up his name in a baby book. Alexander meant “Great Protector.” It fit. Except where she was concerned. He’d sworn to protect humanity. With a capital H. The big picture. He just wasn’t too good when it came to relationships with women.
As she headed for the darkened side street where she’d parked her car, she found there was
no way to avoid thinking about him.
“Damn you!” she muttered, then pressed her hand against her mouth. Mom hated cursing, and she rarely indulged in bad words, even mild ones.
But apparently Alexander McMullin brought out the worst in her.
As he’d stood with the solid barrier of the bar between them, she’d felt those blue eyes of his pierce all the way to her soul. And she hadn’t liked the sensation. Because it made her feel as though she was back where she’d been two years ago.
For long stretches of time, she’d been able to forget about him. Then he’d come leaping back into her mind. Something as simple as a whiff of spaghetti sauce could do it. He hadn’t been much of a cook, but that had been his specialty.
He’d said one of his stepmothers had taught him to make it. When she’d asked how he’d had more than one—he’d clammed up. Which wasn’t unusual, because he never talked much about his family. Except another time when he’d said he’d arrested one of his half brothers. For car-jacking. From what she gathered, he hadn’t gotten his values from his parents or siblings. And, as far as she knew, he tended to avoid them. And long-term commitments, as well.
She grimaced. Two years ago he’d broken her heart. And she damn well should have known better.
They’d had a relationship that had been as fast and furious as it had been passionate. And then he’d told her it wasn’t working for him.
Before they’d dated, she’d heard a lot about Alexander McMullin. He was tall of body, lean of hip, a real heartbreaker with wavy jet-black hair, a firm jaw and sensual lips. Other women she’d known had gone out with him. And the relationships had always ended the same way. If he was interested in you, he gave you the big rush.
Then he left you with your head spinning, wondering what went wrong.
She’d boldly told herself that she was the woman who was going to change things. For a while she’d dared to hope that she was the exception to the rule. She’d lasted longer than his average. Over four months. But in the hidden depths of her soul, she’d been waiting for the crash. Still, it had been a bitter shock when he’d told her it wasn’t working for him anymore.
