by Jenna Ryan
Crucible’s dark eyes glinted. “For what it’s worth, I agree with him. I think she’s with Tanner and probably very much alive. The question is, where are they? Coffee, strong and black,” he told the server.
“Mocha latte, double cream with a drizzle. What?” Killian demanded when Crucible frowned at him. “I need energy. I spend the bulk of my days in motion. By the way, Miranda’s flying in tonight.”
Crucible drummed his long fingers on the table. Having his PA, Miranda Montgomery, in New Orleans would lessen the load considerably. “Any word on Madeleine’s daughter?” he asked.
“Our last extremely vague report put Phoebe Lessard in Santo Domingo.”
“And our still highly suspect political figure?”
“Holed up in his Garden District fortress.” Killian sniffed the latte that appeared in front of him. “Sex and coffee in copious quantities,” he remarked with a humorous tilt of his brows. “This city has its merits after all.” The humor faded at Crucible’s continued stare. “Sir, I can’t spy on Cutter for you.”
“I don’t want you to spy, merely observe.”
“I do that anyway.”
“Closely.”
Suspicion stole across the liaison’s face. “Why?”
“Because I want to know who I can trust, Killian, and who I can’t.” Crucible’s gaze bored hard into his. “Beyond a Leshad-ow of a doubt.”
* * *
Rosemary spent two of the most bizarre days of her life—and all things considered, that was saying a lot—in and around the Hotel Marie.
The resident caretaker kept a vigilant watch from the sagging verandah. A sensory one, she presumed, since every time she passed him, both his eyes and his mind were firmly closed.
The locals he’d deemed to be guests drifted through the shadowy ground-floor rooms like swamp vapors, seldom speaking and always, it seemed, heading away from her.
She noticed that Tanner kept his distance, as well. She knew he watched her. She often felt his dark eyes following her, yet any time he saw her looking back, he switched direction.
She thought she could deal with his indifference, maybe even come to accept it. But then she’d go to bed and dream. And in her dreams, Tanner would be shirtless and working. Sexy, silent and, damn it, still watching her with those amazing eyes of his.
In sleep, thunderbolts charged the air around them. The atmosphere would thicken, light would fade to shadow and her heart would begin to pound. If that wasn’t enough, the walls of the old hotel would start to creep inward, bringing her and Tanner close enough that she could reach out a finger and trace it over the sleek line of his chest and shoulders. Slide it across his injured cheek, to a mouth she wanted quite desperately to kiss.
And that was only a prelude to the sex she wanted quite desperately to have since the first time they had actually kissed. Which was not, Rosemary reminded herself, a loop she should be trapped in at this point in time.
“Seriously losing focus,” she berated herself on the morning of their third day at the hotel.
It struck her, just for a moment as she crossed the ground-floor lobby and heard the elevator cage door stutter open, that something imperative wanted into her head. But then she spied Skeeter in her peripheral, carrying a hatchet, and whatever had been scratching at her brain vanished.
“Lucien says there’s no one on the long road.”
Tanner’s voice directly behind her didn’t make her jump, but it took her several seconds to will her slamming heart out of her throat and back into her chest.
“How is it,” she whirled to demand, “that I inherited all these super Spidey senses, and you can still sneak up on me like that?”
He inclined his head to her ear. “Super Spidey work boots, angel. They provide great grip and allow for endless sneaking.” A rod and reel appeared in front of her. “Wanna catch something different for dinner? Kraft mac and cheese and dirty rice’ll do you fine, but only for so long.”
Rosemary examined the sad-looking pole. “I heard one of Lucien’s guests offer to make shrimp gumbo last night.”
“Faux shrimp gumbo.” Tanner turned her toward the rear of the hotel. “I don’t care what anybody says can be done with tofu, if it’s not possible to make a decent salad, then you can rule out any kind of gumbo. I want bass or catfish, something I can descale, debone and grill.”
She raised her gaze to his. “Not that I disagree, but I think the rain’s coming back.”
“Good rain or bad?”
“The forecast didn’t specify.”
“You listen to forecasts?” She would have glared at him if her mind hadn’t taken a sudden sideways tilt and made her frown. “Well, that was weird.”
“Do I want to know what ‘that’ was?”
“Not sure exactly. I’ve had a strange feeling for a few days now.” Tipping her head back and forth, she attempted to recapture the sensation. “I can’t quite get a grip on it. I start to, but then Lucien rolls by, or Skeeter, or one of the vapors slinks through, and poof, it’s gone. Except with Skeeter, and the vapors, I check my back for an hour afterward.”
“Those ‘vapors’ are transients.” Handing her one of the two poles he carried, Tanner dropped an arm over her shoulders and kept her moving. “Similar to the street people you’d see in a city, except they live in the swamp.”
“They project very unusual thoughts, Tanner. Like can you make a poppet out of wood, or create one in your own image? Can a mojo bag be used for good as well as evil purposes? And was Peter Piper’s claim nothing more than a huge global fraud? Because it’s not technically possible to pick pickled peppers.”
“It’s possible,” Tanner allowed. “Someone just has to pickle them before they’re picked—say from a roadside stand or a store.”
“Nuh-uh, that’s cheating. You have to start from the premise that Peter picked his peppers from the vine.”
“Plant.”
“Semantics.”
“Not to a true gardener.”
“Are you a true gardener, Tanner?”
“No, but I imagine some of your vapors are.”
Feeling more relaxed, she laughed. “Okay, enough with the vapors and Peter’s peppers. You said fishing, right? From a dock?”
“Unless the boat’s still intact. Highly unlikely.”
They’d reached the rear of the building. Leaning on a low sill, Rosemary peered out at the choked waterway behind the hotel. “See those big black things hanging over the trees? Those are some wicked rain clouds.”
He pulled her through the exit door. “That’s only a problem if you have hydrophobia. You haven’t been bitten by anything rabid lately, have you?”
“Does kissing you count?” she returned sweetly. And where on earth had that come from? “Never mind.” She waved the question off. “Forget I asked.”
But some questions were simply too loaded to dismiss. Tanner caught her arm, halting her on the overgrown path. “If it’s all the same to you, angel, I’d rather keep kissing out of the conversation. I’ve spent two very long days now trying not to think about having sex with you, because I’m not stupid enough to believe anything between us could start and end so simply.”
“It could if we…No,” she conceded. “I guess it couldn’t. It might if I was someone who’d…Uh, Tanner?” Her eyes locked on a point several yards farther down the path. All the way to the bobbing boat dock, in fact. “Please turn and tell me you see a woman with no eyes standing next to the dock, pointing downriver.”
When he looked, Rosemary could tell by the subtle tick in his jaw that he did.
“What’s she holding?” he asked.
“Foxgloves. She calls—called—them scarlet bells.” It hit her like a laser beam and glued her to the spot. “What direction is Mad Mama’s shop?”
“The way she’s pointing. Northwest.”
Every bit of warmth in Rosemary’s body flowed out as the blood in her veins iced over. She saw it, or thought she did, the way a person mi
ght catch a glimpse of some dreadful scene a split second before a door slammed shut and blocked it from view.
“Desdemona. I—it’s gone now, Tanner, but for a moment I saw blood and a smoking gun.” Her eyes snapped to his. “And Desdemona lying on the floor of Madeleine’s shop!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Are you sure about this, Rosemary?” Tanner used the Hummer’s off-road capability to traverse a muddy stream. “It’s possible Des has been taken to a hospital by now. You said you thought she was badly injured.”
Rosemary regarded her cell phone. “I said I thought she was in a coma, but between what I saw in my head and this text message I received from Flora after we saw Madeleine’s ghost—can’t believe I actually said that—the bayou is where we’ll find her.”
Tanner’s thoughts detoured to the mysterious woman named Flora. Desdemona had only mentioned her a few times, saying that Flora kept to herself and didn’t possess any exceptional mental abilities.
“People like her, they come and go from the swamp their whole lives,” Desdemona had remarked the night before he and Rosemary had left Snake Scream Swamp. “It’s how some of us are built. Take me and Billy, for example. We gotta get out from time to time. Trapped just ain’t a good way to feel.”
It was a sentiment Tanner understood well. He’d felt trapped and irritable working for Crucible, more so near the end than at the beginning. He’d also discovered he had an active resentment for subterfuge. Suspicion was one thing. Screwing with friendship took it a giant step beyond any place he’d ever wanted to go.
He gave a stationary log a wide berth before steering back to shore. “When did Flora text you, Rosemary?”
“The message is dated two days ago, late afternoon, but I swear it didn’t appear until after we saw Madeleine near the dock.”
“Most of the Marie’s in a cell-phone dead zone.” Tanner steered with his knee while he tied a rolled bandana across his forehead. The heat was a bastard this deep in the swamp, and for all the difference it made, they might have been breathing water rather than air. “You’re lucky her signal got to you at all.”
Rosemary twisted her own hair into a long ponytail, pulled on a Saints ball cap and tugged the tail through the back. She regarded her phone again. “I’m thinking Madeleine had a hand in the ‘getting to me’ part, but I’m too worried about Desdemona right now to dwell on it. Flora’s text message says that Desdemona drove her son’s Jeep from the shop to her—Flora’s—home. She also says Desdemona had a head wound and a lot more blood on her than she should have had considering her arm was only grazed by a bullet, and the injury to her head came about from a blow to the back of her skull.”
“Could be she wounded her assailant before he got off a clear shot.” Tanner shrugged. “Woman’s pretty handy with a rifle.”
“We also don’t know where Billy was while her assailant was doing whatever he was doing. And I can’t believe I said that either.” Rosemary pressed on a nerve behind her ear. “God, Tanner, she’s got me half-believing that doll can think and move. Why are we stopping?” she asked, dropping her hands when he halted in a small clearing.
Tanner reached behind him for a bottle of water. “We’re taking a time-out until the traffic clears.”
“Traffic. In the swamp.”
Amused by her dry tone, he took her chin and turned her head. “This is rush hour in the bayou, angel. You don’t want to be venting much road rage on those guys.”
Her gaze landed on a cleverly camouflaged trio of sleeping reptiles. “Alligators. Lovely.” She glanced up. “I’m amazed the rain’s holding off. More of Madeleine’s doing, do you think?”
“I doubt it. The weather’s notoriously fickle in these parts.” Vague amusement boosted up to a grin. “Why are you pushing on my hand, Rosemary?”
“Because I think you’re going to kiss me, and I’m pretty sure that’s a bad idea.”
“I wasn’t planning for a potential kiss to escalate into me hauling you into the backseat and having my way with you. Not that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind a time or two, but it wasn’t the plan.”
“Tanner, you don’t plan sex or kisses. At least, you shouldn’t. Moments like that just happen.”
“They do if they’re allowed to.” His amusement fading, he grazed his lips over her cheek and down to the corner of her mouth. “Life’s nothing more than a series of random moments strung together. We might as well enjoy the positive ones because there are bound to be an equal number of negatives tagging along in their wake.”
He felt her neck muscles start to relax, saw her eyes close. “You remind me of Papa Lucien’s vapors,” she murmured. “Except your thought processes are a lot more complicated. I’m not sure I want to understand you, Tanner. Maybe I wouldn’t want to even if I could. But you do have a point about the traffic.”
Now, rather than push his hand away, she danced her fingers over his forearm. Her eyes opened halfway, and she angled her head in an invitation he didn’t trust for a minute. Not when he spied the sly gleam deep inside them.
Then again, he reflected, what could it hurt? Shoving wisdom and years of hard lessons learned aside, he opted to take what she offered—full and hungry possession of her mouth.
A blast of hot wind outside blew strands of Spanish moss across the windshield. Tree trunks creaked as if in warning. So—leaning into a kiss with a woman who tangled his senses and twisted him into emotional knots? Probably not the smartest thing he could do.
Skimming his thumbs over her cheekbones, he ventured in deeper. What remained of his rational mind craved more of her, all of her. Lust and something darker gripped him as her hands explored his chest and strayed painfully lower.
An alarm shrieked deep in his brain. It cautioned him to shake the blood fever she’d become out of his system while he still could. Be fine, he thought, if he could figure out how the hell he still could.
When he raised his head slightly, she smiled. “Don’t think so, pal. You started this, and I’m not finished enjoying myself yet.” Her eyes sparkled. “You’re more decadent than chocolate cake.”
She was more intoxicating than dark rum. And if he didn’t stop tasting her, he’d be too hammered to think, let alone drive.
Even knowing that, however—and he was lucky to know anything through the sexual haze that fogged his brain—he found himself pushing her up against the door and plunging in deeper.
This time, when his hand brushed her breast, she didn’t slap him away. In fact, she arched herself against his palm and made a purring sound in her throat.
“My great-grandmother warned me about men like you, Tanner.” Letting the sparkle in her eyes deepen, she used her teeth to nip him. “Love ‘em hard, leave ‘em wanting more, and never look back.”
“You look back, angel, you see things you might not like. I don’t want to screw you up, and I sure as hell don’t want to screw myself.” Although he had a feeling he already had, but that was his problem, not hers. And not entirely her doing.
With a sigh of regret, she bit his lip again and eased herself away. “Not that taking this into the backseat doesn’t have its appeal, but I think we’re okay to move on now. Road’s clear, even if my head isn’t.”
Neither was his, but while that situation was unlikely to improve in a hurry, the sight of Rosemary’s iPhone on the dash planted the picture of an injured Desdemona in his mind, and he cursed himself for becoming distracted.
“Shit. Not you,” he said when Rosemary’s eyes narrowed. “I let Des slip out of the foreground. I don’t do that.”
She adjusted her ball cap. “We all do that from time to time, Tanner. We’re human. Sometimes lust gets the better of us. Plus, alligators make formidable roadblocks. We’ll tell Desdemona about it, and she’ll laugh.”
He’d go with that, Tanner decided, because if he didn’t, guilt, his own formidable enemy, would creep in and cripple him, or try to.
For a moment, he replaced Desdemona’s face with the
image of a friend who’d betrayed both him and Ben. A friend who’d taken that betrayal a step beyond the mere execution of a job and turned his sights on an innocent old woman. A friend dispatched to murder Rosemary on behalf of a madman.
A friend he knew he’d have to kill.
* * *
It amazed Rosemary that Tanner was able to follow the convoluted directions Flora had given them in her text message. But somehow he managed to find her cabin in the swamp. He threaded his way through endless stands of cypress and sycamore trees, maneuvered around waterlogged live oaks, waded into and out of two steaming streams and finally forged a path along the weed-encrusted shoreline to Flora’s home on stilts.
The place was tiny and difficult to distinguish from the surrounding foliage, even at close range. Inside, it had three distinct levels, all of them as cluttered as Madeleine’s shop.
“Ignore the mess,” Flora instructed, and led the way to an add-on bedroom with a low ceiling and a blacked-out rear window.
Desdemona lay on an iron cot, her body covered with a tie-dyed throw. Her hands were folded over her stomach and a white gauze bandage circled her head.
“I’m convinced she fell, and that’s how most of the damage was caused.” Flora gestured Rosemary into the room while she and Tanner hung back. “The bullet that grazed her arm sliced into the flesh. It probably startled her into stumbling backward. She was fairly delirious when she got here. I told you in my text message that there was a substantial amount of blood both on her body and on her clothing. I don’t believe all of it was hers. Can you sense what happened?” she asked Rosemary, who’d sat on the bed and picked up one of Desdemona’s hands.
“No. All I’m getting is static. That could be because she’s unconscious rather than sleeping.” Rosemary regarded Tanner. “We need to get her to a hospital. Which one’s closest?”
“St. Margaret’s in Bluewater. It’s a drive.”
Flora linked her fingers at the waist of her green dress. “I don’t drive, or I’d have taken her myself. If not to Bluewater, at least to the clinic in Nightshade.”
