by Linda Ladd
“It’s true, it’s true, I swear to God.”
“That his real name?”
She hesitated. “No. His real name is Louis D’Angele.”
Okay, he knew that much to be true. Claire had found that out in Paris. Maybe it all was beginning to make sense. Claude had told him that her file was off limits except for those at the highest security levels in the French military and law enforcement agencies. Claire had found out that Pierre Dubois had no background information on record. Now he was fairly confident that Creedy was telling the truth. But not enough to let down his guard.
She obviously sensed his indecision. “I can prove it. I’ve got my credentials. Over there, hidden in that plant. Dump it out. My badge is in the bottom, under the dirt.”
Novak glanced behind him and saw a terra-cotta clay pot planted with a small Boston fern. It was sitting on a white hutch against the wall. He kept his weapon beaded on her chest, reached out, and dumped the fern. The dirt spilled out all over the counter, along with a black leather folder. Keeping one eye on the girl, he flipped it open. She was telling the truth. Lydie Creedy was from Interpol, all right. What the hell was she doing in south Louisiana?
Lydie seemed to realize that he was beginning to believe her. She visibly relaxed. She reached up with both hands and wiped the wetness off her cheeks. “Pierre and I were assigned down here to look for one of our agents who turned up missing. Her name is Cecilia Gomez.”
“What’s this got to do with Andrea Quinn?”
Lydie kept wiping at her eyes. To no avail, the tears kept falling. “Pierre used to work undercover in Jonas Quinn’s organization before Quinn pulled his operations out of Paris and set up shop in Australia. Pierre liked Andrea a lot, felt sorry for her because of her father’s criminal activities. When he found out that Andrea was going to school down here at Tulane, he called and recruited her to keep her eyes and ears open around the campus for any word of Gomez. Andrea was intrigued and jumped at the chance.”
“Okay, go on.”
“So Andrea heard a rumor that Cecilia was interested in the guy who ran that restaurant, Tit Tats, so Andrea got herself hired on down there to watch this guy named Daddy. We figured him as the perpetrator. Pierre was against Andrea getting that deep into our investigation and tried to convince her it was too dangerous, but she wouldn’t listen. So I got a job there, too, to keep an eye on her and to watch our suspect. And then suddenly, one day Andrea disappeared, just like Cecilia. We can’t find her. We can’t find either one of them.”
Lydie Creedy had poured all that out haltingly and between lots of choked sobs. Novak believed her. Nobody could cry like that without good cause. “Andrea’s parents hired us because they think she’s either dead or kidnapped by enemies of her father, mob guys, or even worse. Guess you don’t know anything about that, either, right?”
“We know her father, of course. Like I said, Pierre went undercover and worked for him awhile, posed as a gunrunner. That’s how he met Andrea.”
Novak contemplated her. “How exactly does Tit Tats fit into all this?”
“Weird things started happening to girls who lived in Andrea’s dorm. Right on her floor. Most of them had dropped out of school and started working at Tit Tats. That’s when we decided we needed to go in there undercover. Then, just a few days ago, a new girl got hired. Name of Tammy Jones. Pierre and I both were instantly suspicious of her. She asked way too many questions. Seemed overly interested in what we knew about the same girls we were looking for. I fed her some stuff about Pierre and Andrea getting into it, trying to get some kind of reaction. She didn’t show anything, so I figured she was just nosy. Last time I saw her, she was leaving work late one night. I haven’t seen her since.”
“That’s because she’s my partner, and she’s damn good at her job. She was onto you, too.”
“Really? She’s an undercover cop?”
“Not a cop anymore.” Novak got impatient then, but he sheathed his weapon. “What about Adonis? Who murdered her?”
“Who’s Adonis?”
“She’s the young girl we found burned up outside her barn tonight. Just a couple of miles up the road.”
“Oh, God, no. Not that little frightened waif of a kid with all the animals she’d stuffed?”
“Yeah, that one. And she was a good friend of mine. Tell me now if you know anything about that. We’re wasting too much time, damn it.”
Lydie said, “Well, we’ve got a pretty good suspicion now about who’s behind Cecilia’s and Andrea’s disappearances. That’s why we relocated down here and rented out this farm. I’ve been waiting for Pierre to get back from Geneva with orders, and then we were going in. Now I’ve got to get back to New Orleans. I can’t miss my plane. I’ve got to make funeral arrangements for my husband. I’ve got to call his parents.” She started crying again, heartbroken tears that were more than real. Novak wasn’t in the mood to be sympathetic.
“Tell me what you’ve got. My partner and I will go in and get them.”
Lydie considered him, apparently not sure what she should do. “We aren’t a hundred percent on this, but there’s a property just up the bayou from here that we think might be where they’re taking victims. We can’t prove it. We’ve been there looking around but haven’t been able to search. Just a hunch. We’ve been watching the place because a couple of kids from Tulane showed up there one day and walked out into the swamp behind the house. We’ve seen them go in out there more than once while we were on surveillance.”
Lydie sighed some more, shook her head, and pushed back her red hair. “We’re pretty sure now that we’re dealing with some kind of homegrown devil-worshipping cult. That’s the last thing Cecilia reported before she disappeared. Her GPS went off the grid at the same time. Andrea managed to follow a girl named Pru down here once, too. We watched the place and snooped around some, but we haven’t had enough proof to call in the locals to help us.”
“Tell me exactly where this place is and then you can take off. Let my partner and me handle it. If we get into trouble with the cops, you and your organization can back us up.”
Lydie didn’t look so gung ho on the idea. She just stared at him.
“Look, Andrea’s been gone for days. Two other people, one of them your own husband, have already died horrible deaths. Tell me where the hell it is, or Andrea’s gonna end up dead, too. If she’s not already.”
“Okay,” Lydie said, but it came out hard. “I’ll tell you, but I can’t help you. I can’t miss that plane. He’s my husband. I’ve got to go to him.”
“Just tell me where you think they’re taking them.”
“All right. It’s just down the road from here. That house that’s got the gingerbread kind of trim and blue shutters with little shapes cut out of them. Sometimes we saw kids going into the swamp behind your friend’s place, too. That Adonis girl. We went up there not long ago to take a look around, just before we left for Paris. She gave us some water, but everything seemed all right. She said her name was Diana.”
Novak frowned. Diana? That didn’t make any sense. But the first place Lydie mentioned sounded like Mary Lou Picard’s place. And her property bumped up to Adonis’s land. There had to be something out there between them, maybe the place where they kept the girls captive. After a few more questions, he left Creedy sobbing some more, her face hidden in her hands, and then headed at a run for his truck, turning his phone back on. He got Claire’s message to get over to Mary Lou’s place because something was dead, but he couldn’t get through to her cell phone.
She wasn’t answering.
Chapter Eighteen
Groggy, disoriented, barely able to lace her thoughts together, Claire slowly began to come around. Her throat felt bruised and swollen, and it hurt to swallow. The sharp and stabbing pain in her throat made her more alert. That’s when she knew that she had better get herself together, and fast. She kept her eyes half closed, trying to pull her ragged thoughts back together enough to fight, becau
se she knew she was going to have to. Somebody had choked her into submission, and they meant to do her great bodily harm. No question about it. The kind of harm that meant exsanguination and burning at the stake, or even worse. She would have to use her head, but she sure as hell wasn’t gonna lie down and die. She tried to move her hands and feet slightly and realized with a burst of relief that she was not bound or tied up in any way. Okay, and thank you, God. That boded well for her being able to affect an escape. She took a bracing breath, sought to forget the deep pounding bongos going off behind her forehead, and opened her eyes a little more.
Bleary images, everything blurred and fuzzy and hard to make out, but she finally made out a man’s face. It was leaning in very close and looking straight down at her. Struggling to think, to figure out who had her captive, who had choked her, she finally realized who it was. Relieved, she recognized the security guard from Tulane. The guy at Wall dormitory where the girl named Pru attacked her and then jumped to her death. Jasper. That was his name. Jasper Danforth. Her heart gave a leap. Thank God, the cops had found her.
“Help me up,” she mumbled out somehow, still attempting to clear out the dizziness and cobwebs inside her brain.
Jasper’s face dissolved into a big smile. “Okay, sure, I’ll help you up, all right. Get the hell up on your feet, bitch.”
Then she was jerked off the ground by the front of her jacket and given a mind-jarring shake. That’s when she realized by the lack of heft on her belt and ankle that she had been disarmed. Jasper quickly got around behind her and pressed his forearm hard against her throat again. He did it expertly, just like before, and then Claire knew he’d had lots of practice subduing and assaulting women. Then slowly, gradually, he increased the pressure until she couldn’t breathe anymore. She grabbed his arm, desperately trying to force it off her neck, but she couldn’t. He was way too strong. His biceps were enormous.
Seconds passed while he laughed and played with her inability to breathe, until she felt all conscious thought going black at the edges and nearing losing consciousness, but then he let up slightly on the intense pressure before she passed out. He knew exactly when and how to keep her conscious or make her go limp. He had done this many times before; he got off on it. Claire sucked in air through her bruised gullet when he released the flex of his right arm, choking and coughing and trying to pull in enough oxygen to keep her brain alive and functioning.
“Now you’re gonna have to behave, aren’t you? I got plans for you, detective. Oh, yeah, the fabulous and famous Claire Morgan who always gets her man. I saw how you and that big guy looked down on me that day. You probably thought I was a joke, right? That I’d never make the grade at NOPD? That I was nothin’ but a loser? Well, you’re the loser now, darlin’. You came along at exactly the right time. You’re gonna be our next Sacrificial Lamb, and we’re gonna bleed you dry, every single drop of your blood. But first, I’m gonna have my fun and games with you. That’s my price in all this demonic worship crap. I get to play with our Lambs before they bite it. Isn’t that right, Lilith?”
Lilith? Claire managed to clear her vision enough to see his accomplice. A girl had walked up now and was standing right in front of them. Nev Collins stared right back at her. She was smiling, too. Spacey, annoying, flirtatious Nev, right there, grinning, practically rubbing her palms together in gleeful anticipation of what they were getting ready to do. Claire shut her eyes again and tried to think straight. Thank God, they had not tied her up. That was the one good thing, among lots of really, really bad things.
Danforth suddenly released her again and shoved her hard toward Nev. Claire stumbled and almost fell to her knees but righted herself and pretended to be woozy and disoriented. They probably thought she didn’t have any fight left in her, not with Danforth continually choking her into submission every few minutes. They probably thought she would just do whatever they said out of fear. All their other victims had been young, frightened, innocent girls, some probably hooked on drugs, the perfect kind of victims for lowlife scum like Danforth. Claire was not gonna go down easy. Her best bet at the moment, though, was to play along, act scared, be meek and subservient until they let down their guard. All she needed was an opening. Just for a second so she could act.
Okay, truth be told, she was pretty damn scared, but she sure as hell wasn’t meek, and she sure as hell wasn’t gonna let them tie her up. And Novak was out there somewhere, and he’d probably already gotten her message to come to the Picard house and get the dog. If they were still at the Picard house. She didn’t know how long she’d been out or exactly where she was. Oh, God, what if they’d taken her somewhere else?
Idiot Nev had decided to taunt her. The girl’s voice came off very high pitched and excited and nothing like the way she’d spoken when she was in Claire’s vehicle that first day when Claire and Novak had met her on the Tulane campus. She got right down in Claire’s face, too. Good, the closer she was, the easier it would be for Claire to jab her thumbs in Nev’s eyeballs. “You didn’t have a clue about us, did you? You’re really pretty stupid to be such a hotshot cop. I was a lot more worried about the big guy. He was way too quiet and he didn’t react to my come-ons. He is a whole different ball game.”
Danforth decided to chime in. “Yeah, how you got that reputation for being smart I’ll never figure. Good God, what’s it take for you and that Novak guy to catch onto us? I thought sure you’d figure us out when that bitch Prudence took a dive out that window. Didn’t you even notice that she did that the minute Nev and I showed up at the door? She knew what we were capable of. Nev and me, we laughed about that later. That you two didn’t even notice that she was so terrified of us. Didn’t have a clue what was goin’ on. Talk about stupid.”
Claire just listened to them, said nothing, did nothing, but she shifted her hands slightly and her heart sped up when her fingertips felt the shape of her stun gun keychain still inside her jeans’ pocket. They hadn’t realized what it was when they’d disarmed her. She didn’t move for a moment, waiting for the right opportunity to pull it out.
Claire dropped her head slightly as if having trouble holding it up, and tried to figure out where she was and the best way to get out. It looked like she was in some kind of barn. It was painted up like the Devil Dead bar, with glowing pentagrams drawn on the ceiling and the walls and the floor. There was a loft, it looked like, and she felt like there was probably a door behind her at the front, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see any other door. She’d have to go out the front.
“Guess what? You’re gonna be our little sex slave for as long as we want you to be, just like Diana was and all those other girls. Then when I get tired of you, you’re gonna be dead meat, throat cut, bled out, or maybe, since you’re so special, we’ll burn you alive like we did to poor old Poppy. You’re at the end days of your life, detective. How does that feel?”
Poppy had also been at the dorm that day of Pru’s death. She was Nev’s roommate, Claire remembered. She had been with them when Pru went out the window to her death. Claire decided that it was time to get in their faces. Make them angry. Angry people did stupid things. “Right now? I feel like you’re both stark-raving lunatics.”
They both found that funny. They got a good hard laugh out of it.
“So you do have some fight left in you, huh? Well, that’s good. I like women to fight me. Gives me a reason to slap them around and make them grovel and crawl around on the ground. As if I ever need a reason.” That was dirtbag Danforth. “Poppy didn’t have the nerve to fight so I got bored with her real quick.”
“You let him mess with your own roommate?” Claire said to Nev, figuring she was the one more apt to make a mistake. “You’re sick, Nev, sicker than he is.”
Nev appeared rather offended but that was good. “We’re not sick, you bitch. We are doing exactly what Satan tells us to, just like I always have. I’ve been worshipping him for years, and now I got Jasp to help me. Lucky for us you happened along. Thought
we were gonna miss the full moon, and then here you came, just in time to be our blood sacrifice. And now we’ve got you all to ourselves. All we gotta do is dump your car and nobody will ever know what happened to you.”
Claire said nothing but inched her fingers closer to the opening of her pocket.
“Poppy was just so damn stupid that it was pitiful. All she had to do was to make sure our Lamb didn’t get away, but she couldn’t even do that. So we chained her to that barn door and made her pay. But then you and the big guy had to show up and all hell broke loose when you called the cops and the fire department. We just went over here to the neighbor’s barn. You know, that woman and her girl. We broke in a couple of days ago so we could use their barn for our ceremonies. Too many people were showing up at Diana’s so we had to move. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were when you actually showed up here, all by yourself and just in time to be sacrificed. It’s just our good karma. Now everybody’s gone home again, and here you are out here, at our mercy, just like it was meant to be. Nobody knows we’re here, so we can play with you as long as we want to.”
Danforth laughed and roughly forced Claire down on her knees. Then he jerked her back up by her hair and shoved her back hard against the wall, knocking the breath out of her again. He stepped back and pressed his gun barrel to the center of her forehead.
“Okay, now it’s time for you to take off your clothes. I want you naked.”
Claire stared impassively at him, waiting for a chance to get to the stun gun.
“Do it. Or I’ll do it for you. I’ll cut everything off you, one piece of clothes at a time.”
Nev stepped up close then and suddenly sent a stinging slap hard across Claire’s face. Claire’s teeth cut into her lips and she tasted the coppery and metallic taste of blood. Then Nev stepped up close to her again. “You really think you’re something, don’t you? You sure had Jasper wigged out, thinking you were so damn dangerous to us, that you were gonna figure out everything and we had better cut our losses and get the hell outta here. Oh, yeah, the great detective that got her picture in all the newspapers. Well, know what? That made me sick. You make me sick.”
