"I know that."
"Good, then you've also got a feel for Jake Lewis and some of the NOPD officers."
"Kit's so-called friends."
"They may be friends of Kit, but I don't think you should consider them your friends."
"I've come to that conclusion." Cori idled slowly by Joey's side through the parking lot and toward the Supra.
"I grew up in New Iberia. I have friends there. Real friends. If I wanted to set up a trap, I could count on them not to shoot me in the back."
She saw his point, but she also didn't want to leave the city. Kit was close. Joey didn't believe it was him, but she was still positive. "If you set a trap, who do you think you'll catch?"
"Maybe the people who are torturing you. Maybe the folks who killed Emmet Wyatt. Maybe someone who knows the truth about your husband's disappearance."
"Because you think it's all related."
"I do."
She paused when he opened the car door. "How can we be certain Kit wilt know where I've gone?"
"We'll go back to the French Quarter, and we'll leave a trail of bread crumbs. If Kit is out there, we'll leave him a clearly marked trail to follow."
The idea of another night filled with visitations by a man everyone thought was dead chilled Cori to the bone. But she had to find the truth. She had to. So she could have her life back, or whatever remained of it.
Joey saw her hesitation, and he covered her hand on the top of the door with his own. "We can do this, Cori. You want resolution, we can find that. But you have to be some place safe before I'm willing to risk helping you. It has to be a situation where I have control."
"Okay." She looked into his eyes and saw relief.
"You have to promise me you'll do whatever I say." He wanted the ground rules clear. If he was going to risk Cori and his friends, he had to make sure she would do exactly as be said.
"This time I promise." She held her hands out in front of her to show her fingers were uncrossed.
She looked so childlike, so vulnerable, that Joey couldn't resist. "Even learning to waltz," he said sternly.
Cori suddenly felt his arms around her, holding and guiding. It was only a fantasy, but she knew that she wanted that sensation, if only for one night. "You've got it."
Joey almost bent to kiss her, but he stopped himself. She was a woman near the edge. A woman someone wanted dead. His job was to protect her, to make sure she survived. Kissing her was out of line. Unprofessional. And damn tempting. Instead, he squeezed the hand beneath his on the door. "We can do this."
"Just remember what happened to Hansel and Gretel when they left a trail of bread crumbs," Cori said as she ducked inside the car and let him shut the door.
Chapter Nine
Joey parked the black car in deep shadow by the side of the Twinkle.
"You think Kit will contact Danny?" Cori asked, unsure now that Joey's plan was about to be set in motion.
Joey reached across the car seat and took her hand. "I'm going to be honest with you, Cori. I think Kit Wells is dead. But I do believe someone is imitating him and trying to frighten you out of testifying. Or trying to make you doubt yourself."
"And you think Danny knows who this person is?'' It did not matter that Joey didn't believe Kit was alive. He believed something had happened. That was the important thing. He had finally conceded that she could not have smuggled the chocolates into Chez Jolene in her jeans or shoes. Someone else had put them there. Someone who looked like Kit Wells.
"Danny is my best bet." He'd given the report of the alleged abduction and murder of Kit a lot of thought. If Kit had been killed, as the report stated, then someone had to have tipped the hit man off as to where Kit would be. And everyone would have assumed he would be at his wedding reception. So the person who had set Kit up had been at the wedding. He had called in when Kit left, and the tipster had to know where Kit was going. There was no other way it could work. Jake Lewis and a lot of NOPD officers were on the scene, and they would very likely have known Kit's destination.
"Why Danny?"
"He's the easiest to manipulate. The most believable source. He's been a pimp for the police, selling information for several years now. People like Danny have no loyalties. They sell to the top dollar, so this information would be valuable to him. If I showed up at police headquarters and filed my travel plans with them, it would look very suspicious. With Danny, I can drop a few hints, and he'll know exactly what I'm saying. Once he puts it together, then he either gives it, or sells it, to his buyer."
"And who do you think that might be?"
"Ben DeCarlo." It was the most obvious answer. "He doesn't want you at the retrial. One witness is dead. If you won't testify, then he's only got three to work on."
"Whatever happened to the waitress?" Cori remembered her. She'd been pretty, in a hard kind of way. The shock of the murder had really upset her.
"She's safe, and a lot more cooperative than you are, I might point out," Joey said. He was ready to go inside, but he didn't want to rush Cori. In a short amount of time he'd come to know her pretty well. It was the set of her shoulders, the angle of her head, that told him of her fear. Danny Dupray had revealed some hurtful things to her. Was it more pain she feared? More revelations of a past that didn't exist as she remembered it? Or was she afraid Danny would hurt her?
"What about the other witnesses? Are they safe?"
"They're fine, Cori."
"They'll come back to testify?"
"They've indicated they would." What choice did they have? He didn't ask that question out loud.
They were under the thumb of the federal government. Their lives had been taken, and they were hooked to a federal leash, just as Cori was.
"What would happen if none of us testified?"
He waited a few seconds before he answered. "I don't honestly know. The evidence against DeCarlo was so strong because we had five eyewitnesses to the crime. Five people, from all walks of life, saw a hideous crime committed, and they all gave up their lives so that justice could be done. That was powerful. The jury couldn't ignore it—that you witnesses believed enough to give up everything. That you braved the long reach of the mob to tell the truth."
"But it was the evidence that convicted him, right? The bullets..."
"It was the eyewitnesses who cinched the case." He did not want to downplay her role. They needed her testimony, and the testimony of all the other witnesses, if Ben DeCarlo was going to stay behind bars.
"Why did Emmet Wyatt come back to New Orleans?" This question nagged at her.
"I'd like the answer to that, too. He never notified us that he was coming here. We thought he was in Atlanta. In fact, one of the other marshals had taken a call from him the day before. It was routine, he wanted some travel documents for a vacation to France. He was chatty, informal, happy-sounding. He never mentioned that he'd booked a flight to New Orleans two weeks earlier."
"Why do you think he was in New Orleans?"
Joey looked at the back door of the club, which had opened. Two girls in scanty costumes came out. Both lit up cigarettes and puffed. "I guess they have to come out here to get some peace and quiet,"
he said.
"Tell me what you think about Wyatt." Cori wasn't willing to drop the subject, though she knew Joey would prefer to let it go.
"I think he'd been contacted in some way. I think he was at the docks to make some type of connection with someone."
"He didn't have a dead fiancee or wife who might be luring him back, did he?" Cori tried to make her tone light, but she heard her voice quiver.
"No. No, I don't think Wyatt's tastes ran to commitments of any kind with the opposite sex." He shrugged. "Just a passing observation."
"Who do you think he was meeting?"
Joey had a theory, but not a shred of proof. All he had was a gut reaction. "I think he was trying to take a payoff. I think someone from DeCarlo's family had gotten to him, and he was going to take a lot of money not
to testify. We found out he had two one-way tickets booked to Paris. He wasn't planning on coming back."
"He had sold out." Cori spoke softly, tasting the words as if she couldn't decide on the flavor of them.
"We have no proof of that. It's a theory. My theory. Not the marshals' or anyone else's."
"And you thought maybe I'd been bought off, too, didn't you?"
Joey looked straight out the window, but his lips turned up slightly in a smile. "It crossed my mind.
Until I met you."
"And now?"
"Now I think you're a victim of someone playing a very deadly game."
Cori put her free hand on the handle of the door. Joey still held her left hand, and began unconsciously to massage it. It should have relaxed her, but instead she imagined his touch working slowly up her arm, moving closer to places that suddenly anticipated the pressure of his fingers. "Let's do this so we can get on the road," she said.
"Are you sure?"
The concern in his voice stopped her as she swung her feet to the ground. "I'm sure that this nightmare has to end. I'm not living, and it's not going to get any better until I take some action. Yes, I'm ready."
"Say as little as possible," Joey directed as he got out and locked the car. They went to the back door, and Joey pulled it open, unleashing a cloud of smoke and the reverberating noise of the jukebox.
Cori drew back involuntarily, pushed by a wall of noise. Joey looked at her. "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely." She walked through the door he held open.
She found herself at the edge of a room filled with men. In the darkness, only the stage was recognizable from her prior visit, the long strings of white lights endlessly winking. A few of the men had women with them, but most were alone or in groups. They watched the gyrations of the girl she recognized as Candy as she danced in an outfit made of fake leopard skin. The big bouncer materialized out of the smoke.
"At night there's a ten-dollar cover, each." He gave Joey a wolfish grin and offered a wink to Cori.
"Back so soon?"
Joey handed him a twenty, but kept a grip on it when the man tried to take it from his hand.
"Where's Danny?"
"I think he must be at church." The bouncer smirked.
"We'll wait."
The man walked away, and in a moment a young girl with tired eyes came up to them. "Danny's in his office." She turned around and led the way.
Cori was relieved to step inside the small room and close the door behind her and Joey. Danny Dupray sat at a desk, stacks of money in front of him.
"Make it fast, Tio. I've gotta make a deposit tonight."
"You know anything about a hit on this woman?" He nodded at Cori.
"I know she's an eyewitness against Ben DeCarlo. I'd say more than one party might want to see her dead." Danny counted out another stack of twenties.
"Benny Hovensky was killed this afternoon."
"Ah, too bad. Several of the girls will be sad to hear that."
"So you don't know anything about Benny?"
Danny looked up from his money, the overhead lights slicing down his nose. "You want to know who hired him or who hit him?"
Joey pulled his billfold from his pocket and put a stack of new twenties down on the desk. "Both."
"I don't have that information now." Danny reached for the money, riffled it with his thumb and added it to a stack on the desk. "I can get it. Or some of it." He looked down at the money. "Is there a place you can be reached?"
"She isn't safe in the city."
"That's a revelation." He looked up, his eyes flitting over Cori as if she were no more than another stick of furniture.
"We're going over to the bayous."
Danny's eyes snapped. "Does this place have a phone, or should I strap a message to an alligator's back and hope he delivers it before he eats you?"
"Funny, Dupray." Joey reached across the money and picked up a pen. He wrote a number on the back of a small card and handed it over. "You can get word to me here."
Danny tucked the card into his desk drawer.
"Keep that number safe," Joey warned.
"It'll go with me to the grave."
"If you roll over on me, Dupray, I'll see that you are permanently put out of your misery."
Danny stood up. "If you're done with your threats, I've got a business to run."
Joey motioned Cori out of her chair. "Stay in touch."
Danny saluted, but his eyes were hard.
Joey opened the door and Cori preceded him back into the music and the smoke. She focused on the place where the door had to be and walked straight toward it, aware that Joey was behind her, his broad frame protecting her from any threat.
Stepping out into the night, she expelled the breath she'd been holding. "He never even acknowledged me," she said.
"You're a part of a business transaction, Cori. Nothing more. Nothing less."
The fact was disturbing. Up until Antonio De Carlo's murder she had lived a safe, structured life where everything made sense. People operated within a prescribed set of rules. The Danny Duprays of the world were far removed, and never acknowledged as part of the circle of life.
"How long do you think it will be before he sells that phone number?" she asked.
"Oh, he'll make the call and then hold out until tomorrow."
"We'll be ready by then?"
"We'll have to be."
"It's not a lot farther now." Joey nodded at the sign for Breaux Bridge. The forty-mile stretch of raised interstate that gave access over the Atchafalaya Basin had ended. They were back on solid ground.
Cori felt as if her eyes had glazed over and dried. They burned with weariness, and she knew Joey had to be as tired. The drive had been long, the night dark, and anxieties weighed heavily on her.
She had not asked Joey for the details of his plan. He would tell her when he was ready, or he would not. She had left that in his hands. He had called his office and said he was headed to Texas to take her home. Then he had called his sister and told her he was going to New Iberia. There had been a whispered conversation, and Joey had ended with a soft, "I love you, sis."
Those words haunted Cori. Joey had put himself in danger to protect her. It was his job. He said that repeatedly. But if she had not come back to New Orleans, the danger might have been held at bay.
Except for the fact that someone had uncovered her identity. Someone who knew her past, and was using it to manipulate her.
Kit.
It all boiled down to that single fact. In the past hours she had begun to accept the fact that Kit was not the man she'd thought him to be. She had married an upright, honorable police detective who loved his job and cared about the city he protected. She had never known the dark side of Kit Wells.
She gritted her teeth and stared down the interstate illuminated by Joey's headlights. How deep did Kit's dark side go? Was he trapped in a situation he couldn't get out of, or had he deliberately set her up as a witness, promising to marry her and start a new life with her only to get her testimony? Two days ago the very thought of such a thing would have reduced her to tears. Her heart had been so wounded, so tender where Kit was involved, that the idea of such a betrayal would have devastated her. In a very short time she had toughened up considerably. She was not so much devastated as angry at the idea of having been played for such a fool. Angry at Kit—and at herself.
"Do you need anything? Cosmetics, that type of thing?"
Joey's question scattered her bitter thoughts. She glanced at him. "I have everything I need. But thanks for asking."
"I need a razor and a few things." He pulled into a small drugstore. "Will you stay in the car?"
"Yes." She smiled. "Word of honor."
He killed the engine and looked over at her. "With an attitude like that, you're going to make a great partner."
"You mean as long as I do exactly what you say?"
"You're a smart cookie." He chucked her chin. "Word o
f honor, remember."
She watched as he went into the store, a tall man with broad shoulders and lean hips. A man who was comfortable in his own skin. A skin he was all too willing to risk to protect hers.
He was back out in fifteen minutes with a shopping bag. At the pay telephone he stopped, slotted in a quarter and spoke for several moments. When he hung up, some of the anxiety was lifted from his face.
"Good news?" she asked when he got in the car.
"Very good. Aaron's home off the boat this week. He'll be waiting for us at Henderson. With his boat."
"I thought we were going to New Iberia?"
"Too hard to protect you there. This camp is perfect. The only way to get to it is by boat. And Aaron knows the way."
"How will they find us?" She was suddenly concerned that Kit would not be able to follow. She wanted to see him, but not for the original reason. She had plenty to say to him, and none of it was about how much she missed him. Whatever tender feelings she'd gone to New Orleans nursing, they'd been killed. The truth of Kit Wells and his machinations had destroyed any desires she'd clung to.
The man sliding into the car seat beside her was responsible for her changed emotions, though he'd done none of it deliberately. The truth had come to her slowly, by deed and example. How could she compare Kit to Joey and not see the differences? Right this moment Joey was creating a plan to save her life, at the risk of his own.
Her hand lifted an inch, wanting to touch his cheek, to thank him for his concern, his honor. She dropped it back into her lap and listened to what he was saying. Her life and his might depend on his words.
"We can't make the plan too easy or they'll know it's a setup. Don't worry, Cori. I'll leave plenty of clues."
She settled back into the darkness and tried to imagine the town around them as they passed through Breaux Bridge and headed for Henderson.
"We have to cross the levee." Joey gave that information just as the mountain of dirt loomed up in the night. The sports car seemed to soar straight up at a ninety-degree angle before it crested the top of the levee and came down the other side. The headlights illuminated a fairyland that could easily be inhabited by the darkest of creatures.
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