by Jenna Ryan
“You came back,” she whispered. She knew she should be checking Jimmy for a pulse, but she wasn’t sure her knees would support her. “Was that luck, or did Hazzard talk?”
“Some of both,” Nolan replied. “But mostly it was an old army code.”
He kissed her hair and explained while she endeavored to collect her scattered wits. When she could speak again, she motioned downward. “His name’s James Quinn, aka Jimmy. He and Hazzard were—Duffy!” she exclaimed and, finding she had legs after all, whirled. “Jimmy knocked Duffy out.”
“Knocked me senseless for a minute, not quite out.” The old man appeared in the doorway, rubbing his head and squinting into the bright light. “Please tell me I’m not on the precipice of the famous afterlife tunnel.”
“If you are, we’re all headed to the same place. Go ahead and look.” Nolan released Kate, who’d switched her attention to Jimmy’s prostrate body. “I can tell from here, and with a blinding headache, the guy’s dead.”
Duffy chuckled then winced and rubbed some more. “You should’ve been a mortician, Nolan.”
“Forensic pathologist,” Kate said, still on her knees. “You’re right. He’s dead.” She looked up and back. “You got him between the eyes. That’s some kind of shooting for a man who claimed to be seeing double a few hours ago.”
Nolan made a slashing motion across his throat. Immediately, the light in the graveyard dimmed to an eerie glow. “I want to believe this is over, Kate, but I’m not convinced it is.”
“Neither am I.” When his arms came back around her, she leaned into him. “I guess that doesn’t leave us with many options. We can knock wood, cross our fingers and hope.” Turning, she kissed his cheek. “Or we can do what we all know we’re going to do and contact Crucible.”
* * *
The fog hung around like a sick headache, an unpleasant counterpoint to the throbbing pain in Nolan’s skull. Tylenol didn’t help. In fact, less than half an hour into his meeting with Crucible and company, he was seriously tempted to put a bullet in his brain.
All the pertinent players were present and currently being grilled in various areas of the old church. Killian had Duffy sequestered in the rectory. Miranda was questioning Firko in the vestry. And like a man about to deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon from the mount, Crucible bore down on Kate and Nolan from the pulpit.
“You understand it’s within the bounds of my authority to have you arrested, sent to jail and, when the mood strikes, tried for more charges than I care to name.”
“If that was a question, the answer’s yes.” Nolan wanted to slouch indolently in his seat, but it hurt less to lean forward and rest his forearms on his knees.
Beside him, Kate regarded Crucible with a frown. “Coercion won’t get you the answers you want. Leshad’s the target, not us, so ask your questions and we’ll tell you what we know. Again.”
A brilliant, white smile flashed across the big man’s face. “I like you, Kate Marshall. Jury’s out on you, Nolan, but I’ll withhold judgment until we’ve gone through your story at least two more times. Now talk to me, people. Hazzard and James ‘Jimmy’ Quinn. You say you saw them, Kate, in the hospital the night Phoebe Lessard made her untraceable exit. Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“I trust you understand the ramifications of your allegation, particularly where James Quinn is concerned.”
Nolan raised unpromising eyes. “We understand a lot of things, Crucible. Hazzard’s a hit man. He was hired to off Phoebe Lessard. Jimmy, for reasons still unknown, wanted Phoebe dead. It strikes me as highly probable that Leshad—also for reasons unknown, yet likely connected to the death of Phoebe’s mother, Madeleine, and I’m told, her aunt Helene as well—wanted the same thing. Not sure what if any interest he might have had in wanting Kate dead.”
“My involvement seems to have been strictly peripheral. Wrong place, wrong time.” Kate rocked her head. “I haven’t quite figured out where Tallulah fits in, although I do think Hazzard was sent to San Francisco to kill her as well as Phoebe.”
Crucible nodded. “I’ve spoken to Miranda about Tallulah Black, and I’m fully prepared to accept that her ‘accident’ was no accident. As you’re undoubtedly aware, Tallulah’s sister Twila received a silhouette calling card when she was killed. The fact that Tallulah didn’t was a happenstance we obviously misinterpreted.”
“You’re having trouble making A to B connections here, aren’t you?” Nolan said. “Tallulah didn’t get a card. Moreover, she didn’t mention to the man who found her that she’d been pushed. So where did that leave you? No card, no accusation, no connection. You drew a logical conclusion. Except.”
“Yes, except.” Crucible’s mouth compressed. “It appears Tallulah Black had her own agenda, one that revolved around you, Kate.” His dark eyes met hers. “If you believe in such things.”
She smiled. “No comment.”
They had made no further progress in Nolan’s opinion. Leshad’s identity remained a mystery, Jimmy was dead and Hazzard was caught in the hazy middle between refusing to talk and mumbling about a doll named Billy that had originally belonged to Madeleine Lessard.
For Nolan, the weirdness of that situation was quickly superseded by an entirely new set of questions, ones presently buzzing around the no-longer-smiling C. J. Best. Due to the outrageous actions of his late political aide, C.J. was being scrutinized by Crucible and his team of directors. Unobtrusively scrutinized, but with no wiggle room on Best’s part. If the man had secrets, and what politician didn’t, Crucible would ferret them out soon enough. In the meantime…
Nolan and Kate endured two more grueling hours of hard-assed and frequently tricky interrogation. Crucible granted them a thirty-minute break before going over everything yet again. In the end, Nolan figured—certainly, he hoped—Kate’s part in this complex web of intrigue and murder was done. At least done to the point where she would no longer be a target for Leshad.
“I’m intuiting that Leshad had a far more active interest in Phoebe Lessard than he ever had in me,” Kate speculated at length. “Having Jimmy in his pocket would have been extremely handy, especially if Jimmy acted as C.J.’s principal advisor, which rumor has it he did. So me seeing Jimmy would have been a major annoyance to Leshad. But an annoyance worth pursuing at this point? Unlikely. I think opinion wise, Crucible’s leaning that way as well.”
It was after midnight and still absurdly foggy, with only the occasional glimpse of a crescent moon. At Duffy’s insistence, Kate and Nolan had returned to the Pullman sleeper. The old man had magically spirited a bottle of champagne into a silver bucket then completed the scene by sprinkling red-veined petals—symbolic of a blood orchid, Nolan assumed—from the bucket to the bed.
“Your old friend has the soul of a poet.” Kate shed her coat and, drawing a long, deep breath, twirled in place. “I feel so liberated, Nolan, almost like I could fly.”
“In or out of a plane?” He tossed his jacket onto a chair and began searching for champagne glasses.
Her eyes danced in the pearly light. “Oh, I was thinking in.” Slowly and with unmistakeable deliberation, she began unfastening the buttons of the sexy blue sweater she’d bought on their shopping spree. Like a jungle cat strolling toward her mate, she walked right up to him, lost the sweater and, with her eyes locked on his, wrapped a single, determined arm around his neck. Smiling, she yanked his mouth down for a kiss that sent his blood pressure into uncharted territory.
She bit gently on his lower lip as she eased back. “Tell me, Dr. N, do you know anyone in Scotland?”
Right then, he wasn’t sure he knew his own name. However, that was not the point. “One or two relatives I’ve never met. You?”
“Not even that. Duffy has friends there, though, and he says we should go. Straight to the brooding Highlands. He says we need a respite, to put some time and distance between us and our Leshadowy nightmare.”
Nolan’s eyes gleamed. “Are you sure you w
ant to pursue this thing between us, Kate?”
“Pursue, capture and explore in detail. Call me strange, Nolan, but I find I like intractable men. Or one man, anyway. It’s stimulating.”
He cupped the back of her neck. “I’m not easy, kid, and bear in mind, we both have tempers.”
“As I said. Stimulating.”
“I let a big part of myself die when I lost my father and brother. I might not be able to get it back.”
She kissed him again. “I’m not asking you to be anyone but who you are right now. We’ll do Scotland together if you want to and see where we go from there. Unfortunately, we’ll be leaving with the residue of a mystery still marring our very recent past.”
“The card you found in your coat pocket?”
She set her forehead on his chin. “I can’t figure it. Tallulah had no physical form except at St. Marks. She couldn’t have put it there. And I don’t believe Hazzard did it, because, well, duh. It’s been confirmed that Jimmy was in New Orleans at the time, and he makes no sense anyway. So realistically, who does that leave?”
“Realistically, no one. And no way am I going down the psychokinetic or teleportation roads.”
She raised her head to look at him, eyes teasing. “All of which translates to?”
“How do they get the caramel into the Caramello squares? Some things we just aren’t meant to know.”
“Agreed.” She poked his chest. “But one thing I do want to know is what, if anything, a Scotsman wears under his kilt. Duffy tells me you have a maternal ancestor who belonged to a rather lofty warrior clan.”
“News to me.”
“I want to do the Highland fling.”
Nolan grinned and for the first time in years felt marginally liberated himself. “Now that, pretty Kate, I can do. Or a variation thereof.”
Scooping her into his arms, he followed the trail of blood orchid petals from the hazing light of one room into the shadows of the next.
EPILOGUE
Every time Crucible thought his frustration factor had peaked, a new and unexpected wrinkle appeared to nudge it upward. He’d come to terms, more or less, with the voodoo element. Leshad was superstitious. The two things went hand in hand. More or less.
But now there was Tallulah Black, sister to Twila, the second silhouette calling-card victim. If, as Kate Marshall believed, Tallulah had been pushed down a set of stairs by the hit man Hazzard, why hadn’t she received a calling card? Had she hidden it before help arrived? Had Hazzard neglected to leave it? Or had he simply not had time to do so?
That last theory worked best for Crucible as it also provided an explanation for the fact that Tallulah hadn’t died at the scene of her “accident.” Perhaps Hazzard had been interrupted before he could deliver either the killing blow or the card. He’d question Hazzard about that again tomorrow. He might even let Miranda take another crack at it. If anyone could break the babbling bastard, it was his stunning PA.
That train of thought brought him full circle to the voodoo aspect of the case and a certain creepy little doll named Billy.
To date, Crucible hadn’t seen the doll, but apparently two of Leshad’s hit men had. And both had suffered mentally for the encounter.
He could thank Madeleine Lessard for the doll’s creation—and her daughter Phoebe for nothing at this point.
Why the hell, he wondered, tapping his long fingers on the top of his desk, had James Quinn, aide to senatorial hopeful C. J. Best, wanted Phoebe dead? Wanted it badly enough to ally himself with a man of Hazzard’s ilk. And where did Leshad figure into the picture? Crucible wanted, no, he needed, definite answers to those questions.
Exhausted after two days of nonstop travel, interrogation and speculation, he rubbed his hands over his face and tried to shake the cobwebs from his brain. The directors wanted answers, too. Hence, all he really had were more questions. That and Roy Adelbert Hazzard locked up in a maximum security cell here in New Orleans.
A knuckle rap on the office door signaled Killian’s arrival.
“How’s the prisoner?” Crucible asked when the liaison stepped in.
“Silent for the most part.” Killian’s lips quirked. “Miranda says he doesn’t like the food. I thought you’d want to know that one, and possibly more, of the directors intend to visit him.”
Crucible gave an evil chuckle. “Let them. I know Cutter will be first and last in line. Make sure the talks are monitored, Killian.”
“Already on that, sir.” Killian pressed a finger to his earpiece. A look of momentary surprise flitted across his face. “I’ll tell him,” he said and let his hand fall. “There’s an incoming for you, Crucible, on your private line. The caller says her name’s Phoebe Lessard.”
* * *
Hazzard sat in his sterile cell with its matte black walls, clear door and seven pot lights that shot beams of silver straight down from the ceiling like laser beams.
A face crept through the shadows in front of him. One minute on his left, the next, on his right. Sometimes it sneered, sometimes it scowled, but mostly it smiled a ferocious little demon’s smile straight at him.
He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords refused to work. He wanted to close his eyes and shut the butt-ugly face out, but when he did that the voodoo drums started to beat. He wanted to stick a knife in his chest, but there hadn’t been any sharp implements on his dinner tray.
So he sat immobile on a clear plastic chair and tracked the doll’s silhouette from one side of his cell to the other.
He heard the lock beep but didn’t look at the person who entered until he heard a gentle cough. Then and only then did he wrest his gaze from the wall.
When he saw who it was, he lowered his eyelids in suspicion. “What are you doing here?”
The visitor smiled. “Business. And mild curiosity. I was hoping to get a glimpse of the doll.”
“It’s not here.” Hazzard lied. For reasons he preferred not to analyze, his insides quivered. “It—he comes and goes.”
“Too bad.” The smile widened. “Well then, on to business.”
“Who are…?” Hazzard caught a gleam of metal and, snapping out of his slouch, whipped his hands up. “I won’t talk.” Saliva pooled in his mouth. “You have my word. I swear I didn’t even know who you were until this minute. Jimmy didn’t tell me anything.”
“Jimmy was something of a loss to me. You won’t be.” The gun rose. And silently fired.
Hazzard barely felt the impact of the bullets. But he knew death when it turned its snakelike gaze on him. His clouding eyes swung to the wall and widened. As they did, the doll’s mouth opened in laughter.
It gave him a dying measure of satisfaction to look into the face of his killer and know Leshad saw the same thing.
Scarlet Bells
To Mom. You’ve been gone for ten years, yet never really gone at all.
Evil beauty does deceive,
All and any who believe
In only that which can be seen,
Deny the truth that lives between,
Mind shadows and sly Scarlet Bells,
Whose bright blooms lure dark souls to Hell.
CHAPTER ONE
A foggy day in Boston turned to night in the snap of a bony finger.
Ben Sayer knew he’d passed out. He woke up propped against a dirty brick wall in an alley his hazy eyes didn’t recognize. He could smell the river, though, and see his own breath, so the numbness in his limbs wasn’t necessarily due to loss of blood.
His leather jacket creaked when he moved. He wasn’t alone. Shadowy figures shuffled within the layered fog.
Swearing, he sucked up the pain of two bullets—one in his thigh, one in his shoulder—and made it, swaying, to his knees.
The figures continued to move, shuffling closer. Time to look dangerous.
He located his gun, thankfully still tucked in his waistband. Holding it in the hand he braced against the wall, he fumbled for his phone. Speed dial, he thought fuzzily, was a godsend.
Sweat and blood dripped with each quick beep. Two rings later, his stepsister answered. “My God, Ben, it’s Friday night, twelve hours after the latest time you promised to call. I know there’s a reason, just please don’t let it have blond hair.”
His lips ghosted into a weak smile. “Good to hear you, too, Ro. Got a problem.”
Annoyance immediately gave way to concern. “Are you hurt? You sound hurt. Where are you? What can I do?”
The shapes drifted closer, but a bigger worry right then was the slow crunch of tires on the street to his left. Two doors slammed. A three-second pause, then a pair of powerful yellow lights beamed like snake eyes through the fog.
Okay, well, you had to figure. “Gotta go, Ro. Gotta move.” Ben one-legged it deeper into the alley, half running, half hopping as he checked out the lights creeping closer. “I’m down by the river, near Bethany Mews. Meet me. I’ll try for the roof. Number thirteen. Call when you get there. If I don’t answer, leave fast. Hanging up now.”
His breath came in gasps, tight, he hoped, from the cold and damp, and not because his lungs were filling with blood. Hard to tell. His limbs weighed fifty pounds apiece, and his mind threatened to go black at any moment.
He made it to the mews, a row of filthy, stinking apartments no longer fit for human habitation. Broken windows gaped with side shutters dangling precariously. There was dry rot inside and wet rot out, crumbling walls and mutilated floorboards. What electricity managed to trickle through the system sparked when tapped, and rodents outnumbered the tenants twenty to one.
Ben’s luck, such as it was, held. He passed no one in the narrow hallways or the stairwell. Clinging to consciousness by a thread, he crawled onto a decaying sill, through the window of number thirteen and up to the roof.
He collapsed on ragged shingles with no idea if the yellow spots in front of him came from strong flashlights or curious rat eyes. At this point, he didn’t care. Only one thing mattered. Staying awake and out of sight long enough to see his stepsister, Rosemary, safe.
