Undercover Encounter

by Rebecca York

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pam was standing in the doorway, a shocked look on her face. With her was the young girl Lily, whom Gillian had tried to help. The girl looked scared enough to wet her pants, right then and there.

  “You told me we’d be safe here,” she whispered.

  “We are safe here, aren’t we?” the other woman asked, directing the question to Gillian.

  “Yes, Pam,” she answered, so Alex would know who had just shown up. This was a complication that neither one of them needed, but at least it wasn’t Gaspard.

  “Who’s with her?” Alex demanded, his voice low and urgent in her ear.

  “What are you doing here, and why do you have Lily with you?” Gillian asked. After the last conversation they’d had about the young girls, Pam was the last person she would have expected to side with Lily.

  “First things first,” Pam shot back. “You’re obviously up to something.”

  “So are you,” Gillian answered.

  Pam stepped into the room, bringing the girl with her, then shut the panel.

  Thinking that she would be out of this whole situation in a few hours, Gillian made a split-second decision. “I’m working for a government agency, getting evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  She couldn’t tell them the real reason, but the photographs on the desk gave her a good cover story. Gesturing toward them, she said, “Getting the goods on guys who frequent this place.” Then, switching the subject back to Pam, she pressed, “What about you? You’re not the typical slave girl around here. You’re too aggressive. And you keep turning up in places where you shouldn’t be.”

  Pam lifted one shoulder. “You’ve got that right.”

  “Are you working for the Feds?” Gillian tried.

  The other woman laughed. “Hardly.”

  When Lily cringed, Pam sobered. “My little sister was a runaway who got hooked in by Gaspard. She smuggled a note out to me. But before I could get to her, she died.” Pam kept her gaze on Gillian, and she understood that going into details in front of the girl was a bad idea. She also understood the emotions coursing through the other woman because she’d felt something very similar. “I came to get even with the bastards who run this place. I help get the underage girls out of here, when I can. And while I’m at it, I’m transferring some funds to my own account, so I’ll be set up when I leave.” Pam turned to Lily. “You’ll stay here until the coast is clear. Then I’ll get you to the back door and you can go home.”

  “My father will kill me,” the girl mumbled.

  “Who is your father?” Gillian asked, thinking that when she got out of this house, she was going to make it her personal business to arrest the guy for negligence.

  “It’s not his fault,” Lily protested.

  “Just give me his name, so I can make sure you get home,” Gillian tried.

  “Tanner Harrison,” the girl whispered.

  Gillian’s exclamation was echoed by Alex’s curse. Neither Pam nor Lily heard him, though, because it came directly to her ear through the receiver she was wearing. Tanner Harrison was one of the other New Orleans Confidential agents. She knew he’d been out of town on an assignment.

  Lily tipped her head to one side and studied Gillian. “You look shocked. Like you know him,” she murmured.

  “I don’t know him. But I’ve heard of him. He works for a government agency, doesn’t he?” she asked, falling back on the generic term she’d used earlier.

  “Yes.”

  “How did he let this happen?” she asked in a tight voice.

  The girl quickly jumped to her father’s defense. “It wasn’t his fault. I was living with my mom. In London. My stepfather…” Her voice trailed off, then she started again. “I couldn’t stay there with him in the house. So I came here looking for Dad. But he was out of town. Then I ran out of money…”

  “I’ll get you to your dad,” Gillian promised.

  In her ear, Alex was speaking. “I’ve got to tell Stewart about this. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Get the girl to the front door, and Rich will drive up with the van.”

  She couldn’t acknowledge his statement or his order, not without giving away that he was eavesdropping on the conversation. Could she trust Pam? She didn’t know for sure. But so far the woman had helped her out. So she said, “You stay here with Lily. Let me make sure the coast is clear. Then I’ll have a friend meet her at the front door.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Rich. He’s someone I work with.”

  She debated leaving the packet of pictures, then decided she’d better take them with her. Scooping them up, she slipped them into the waistband of her slacks, then she turned toward the door.

  “Wait right here, and I’ll get Rich,” she said, then exited the room. After taking a few steps away from the door, she breathed out a little sigh.

  MAURICE GASPARD was on his way down the hall toward the office. There was something about the conversation with his boss that had disturbed him.

  He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. But he knew that he was working for a ruthless man and that he had to protect himself. Like it might be useful to have some of those blackmail photos in his possession. And some of the cash that was kept in the office.

  He was about to turn the corner when he heard the office door open.

  Thrusting only his head forward, he saw Gillian Stanwick step into the hall and say, “Wait right here.”

  He didn’t catch all of the last part, but it had something to do with a man named Rich.

  Who the hell was Rich? That boyfriend of hers that Babs had told him about? He’d wondered if the whore was lying because she was jealous of Gillian’s new importance in the house, but now he didn’t know.

  He had never been happy about Cynthia’s hiring the woman. He could go after her now. But it was more important to get the man—who was certainly in the room.

  So he waited for her to disappear, then pulled the gun he kept tucked in a shoulder holster under his arm and rushed toward the office.

  “Freeze,” he shouted as he opened the door. Then he blinked. It wasn’t a man in the room. It was two girls— Pam and Lily.

  Before he had time to rearrange his thinking, something flew through the air, hitting him in the face. When it covered his head and shoulders, he realized it was a comforter.

  “Run,” Pam shouted.

  While he was still pulling the damn thing off, he heard their pounding feet.

  “GO,” PAM ORDERED, pushing Lily toward the back of the house. “The other way. He’s between you and the front door. You have to get out the back, while you can.”

  The girl gave her a terrified look, then started for the kitchen and into the back hall. Pulling open the door, she stepped into the alley. But a flash of movement stopped her. Someone was coming.

  She was trapped. She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go forward.

  Her only option was to duck behind a smelly garbage can, where she waited with her heart pounding.

  “You’re late,” a voice said in the darkness, and she recognized Madam Dupré, the old bitch who ran the house.

  Peeking around the trash can, she saw the woman and a man whose white shirt stood out in the light from overhead.

  “I can’t just walk away from my job,” he said. “I have to wait until there’s a break in the action.”

  “The point is, Jack, do you have the merchandise?” the madam said.

  “Yes. And you have the money, right?”

  “As always. Let’s get this over with. I want to go back inside.”

  The two figures moved closer together.

  In the next second, a man wearing a mask stepped around the corner. A gun in his hand glinted in the light from the overhead bulb. Both the madam and the man named Jack looked up.

  “What…” Jack had time to say before Lily heard two spitting noises. From the movies she’d seen, she guessed she was hearing bullets from a silencer.

&n
bsp; Jack and the madam both fell to the cement.

  Lily couldn’t hold back a gasp.

  The man with the gun whirled toward her, taking in the inconvenient fact that he wasn’t alone. In that split second, she was already running for her life. Something whizzed by her head, but she didn’t look back, silently praying that she could get away. And when she reached the crowds on Bourbon Street, she knew she’d made more than one miraculous escape that evening.

  GILLIAN WAS STANDING by the front door, looking for the van. It hadn’t come yet. What the heck was holding Rich up? Hadn’t he gotten the message? Or had he parked a couple of blocks away and gotten caught in traffic?

  She heard footsteps and thought it might be Alex coming down to supervise. He was still shaky and needed to stay out of sight. She could handle this on her own. She whirled, an annoyed comment on her lips. It died before she could speak.

  It wasn’t Alex in the hallway behind her.

  Instead she was facing Maurice Gaspard, and he was holding a weapon.

  Suddenly she was sorry she was on her own.

  Even in the darkened hallway, she could see his expression was fierce. “I knew Cynthia never should have hired you, you sneaky little bitch. What the hell is going on?” he growled, leveling the gun at her middle, where she knew it would do a great deal of damage. A belly shot led to a slow, painful death.

  Through her dry lips, she answered, “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ You and the other two girls were in the office. What were you doing there?”

  “I didn’t know it was the office. We like to go there to unwind.”

  He laughed, a sound like fingernails on tin. “What were you really doing, chère? Looking for money? Or is that where you take your boyfriend?”

  “What boyfriend?”

  “The one Babs told me about. You think she believes that you’re finished with him?” he asked, punctuating the question with a jerk of the gun.

  Behind him, she saw a flicker of movement and she knew it was Alex creeping down the hall.

  Realizing they had an opportunity to get a confession on tape, she said, “Babs is a liar. And a cheat. Do you know she got a hold of some Category Five and gave it away?” she asked.

  “That’s a lie. The Category Five is locked up,” he said, then scowled. “How do you know about that?”

  “Everybody knows about it,” she tossed out, lying through her teeth. “Have you tried it? Does it make you hot?”

  “I don’t take that drug!”

  Gillian moved her shoulders in a sexy shrug. “Well, that doesn’t matter. I don’t have any boyfriend. Actually, you’re the one who fascinates us. Pam and I go into the office to talk about you. About how much we’d like to make love with you. Why didn’t you ever come up to my room the way you promised?”

  He gave her an assessing look. “I’ve been busy, but maybe you should spread your legs for me tonight.”

  She struggled not to react to the crude suggestion or the tone of his voice, but his smile told her he knew how it had made her feel.

  “And after that, I’ll turn you over to Tony the Knife. He likes to carve people up, chère. You should have seen what he did to the last poor bastard he worked on. Sid Laurent.”

  Behind Gaspard, Gillian saw Alex stiffen.

  “What did Laurent do to you?” she asked.

  “Not to me. To the people I work for. He was in charge of the initial distribution of the drug. And he calculated the dosage wrong. Men were getting too much and getting sick. He paid for the mistake. Just like you’ll pay for your snooping around here.”

  She was confused. She’d thought Laurent worked for the D.A. He worked for the drug dealers, too? She didn’t have time to ponder that.

  Alex had started moving soundlessly down the hall again. He was almost on top of Gaspard, his arms raised.

  Then one of the old floorboards made a small creaking sound and Gaspard was momentarily distracted. She used that split second to kick out at his leg—throwing him off balance—just before Alex brought his fists down on the man’s head.

  He gasped and fell, the weapon discharging as he went down, but the bullet went into the wall.

  Upstairs women began to scream, and they heard running footsteps in the upper hall.

  “Stay up there, if you don’t want to get shot,” Alex shouted, then grabbed Gillian’s arm, guiding her toward the back of the building.

  The door was ajar and they fled into the night.

  But they had taken only a few steps when a grisly sight greeted them. Jack and Madam Dupré lay on the ground, both bleeding from chest wounds.

  Kneeling down, they each checked one of the victims. Gillian found that the madam was dead.

  But as Alex bent over Jack, he shouted, “He’s still alive. Call an ambulance.”

  The man’s eyes fluttered open. “Too…late,” he whispered.

  Gillian knew it was true. She knelt beside Alex who was saying, “Tell me who did this to you.”

  Jack tried to focus on him. “What…you…doing…here?” he whispered.

  “I’m on this case.” Alex spoke rapidly. “I was undercover in the bar. If you tell me what happened, I’ll get the bastards who did this to you. There’s no sense in your protecting anyone now.”

  A trickle of blood oozed from Jack’s mouth as he tried to speak. “The Cajun…mob…”

  He stopped speaking again and Gillian thought they had lost him. But his lips moved again. “The head kingpin is Jerome Senegal. And the mob’s not working alone. They…have a partner. His name is…”

  He never finished the last word. But in his dying moments he had given them the lead they needed to plan their next move in shutting down the drug network.

  Sirens blared in the distance. Suddenly the alley was lit with the flashing lights of police cars.

  Rich came running down the alley. “I got jammed up on a one-way street. When I got to the front door, nobody was there. Where’s Harrison’s daughter?” he demanded.

  Gillian shook her head. “Gaspard found her and Pam in the office. I hope she got away.”

  “I hope she has sense to go back home,” Alex said.

  Uniformed officers poured into the house, rounding up the girls who were in various states of undress. Babs gave Gillian a dangerous look as she was herded off with the others in a paddy wagon.

  But the girls were the only catch of the night. Gaspard had disappeared. And Pam was nowhere to be found. Apparently she’d gotten away, too. Or perhaps she was hiding in some secret passageway in the house. And she would emerge when it was safe.

  Good for her, Gillian thought.

  Before the department had hustled her away for debriefing, she’d been able to get one important message to Alex.

  “I won’t put anything in my report about Babs giving you the drug,” she’d said.

  “I appreciate that,” he’d answered, his voice tight.

  In the next moment, Lieutenant LeBarron led her off to a debriefing room. And Conrad Burke, head of New Orleans Confidential came in to take charge of Alex.

  AFTER ENDLESS HOURS of answering questions and filling out forms, Gillian was finally free to leave.

  She knew Alex had gone off to the Department of Public Safety, and she suspected that she wasn’t going to see him again any time soon.

  But as she stepped out the staff entrance, a car pulled up beside her and the door swung open.

  When she saw Alex was behind the wheel, her jaw dropped open.

  “Get in,” he said tersely.

  She might have refused. Instead she slid into the passenger seat, then looked at him questioningly. “Where are we going?”

  “Not far.”

  He didn’t speak again, and she sat beside him with her nerves screaming, casting furtive glances at the tense set of his jaw. She’d told him they had things to talk about. Now she was afraid to hear whatever he had to say.

  He drove to a house she had never seen not far from th
e French Quarter, unlocked the gate to the moonlit courtyard and led her inside. It was so strange to see the moon again, after she’d been inside for weeks.

  “Where are we?” she asked as the gate closed behind them.

  “My place.”

  She looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings, listened to the sound of a fountain gurgling somewhere nearby. “You didn’t live here the last time…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Not long after we broke up, a friend steered me to a sweetheart of a foreclosure sale. I’ve been fixing the place up ever since.”

  “Oh.” When he made no move to go inside, she looked around at the neatly tended flower beds, then spotted the lion’s head fountain attached to one wall.

  “It’s easier to talk out here—in the dark,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  Wondering what he wanted to say, she dropped into a vintage metal lawn chair and looked at him inquiringly.

  He paced the length of the patio, turned around and came partway back, running a hand through his hair before he cleared his throat. “My parents weren’t married when I was born. They got hitched, but it didn’t last. They divorced—then each found different mates.

  “My mom and dad have both been married five times. His shortest marriage was four months. I’ve got so many stepsisters and brothers that it’s hard to keep up with them. Half brothers and sisters. And kids who might be the son or daughter of someone Mom or Dad married. Sometimes, I think I’m related or semirelated to half the city’s population.”

  He had never revealed any of that. She could only stare at him as he made a snorting sound and continued.

  “I shuffled around a lot from one house to the other. So I never had a feeling of stability. A lot of times, I felt like I was the last one in line for attention.”

  “Why are you telling me?” she asked, unable to keep her voice steady.

  “Because I come from a background where I’ve seen more marriages that go to hell than work out. And I know what it does to a kid who grows up being shuffled around from family to family and ignored or worse most of the time. I swore I’d never do that to a kid of my own. I swore that I’d never give myself the chance to do it.”