Authors: Sandra Brown
Sadie had had no intention of settling down. And then he’d courted her, tugged her along, and she could still feel the heat of his hands, the way he touched her, still feel his breath against the back of her neck, still feel that moment when he’d make her fall apart, sublime, and then put her back together again. He’d made her hope.
He’d been running the show, still, when LaCroix had butchered her sister, cut her from her navel to her neck, sliced her up and laid her out in a dirty alley, laid her out on a heap of trash for the world to see.
Phin had known Abby was in trouble. He hadn’t stopped the investigation—and all for nothing. LaCroix managed to disappear, conveniently, just as the police were closing in.
Until now. She forced herself not to glance over at the house, at LaCroix’s place.
Three years it had taken to find LaCroix’s hideaway. To make this plan.
The
tap tap tapping
of the blind man’s cane echoed off the almost-empty square, and she snapped open her easel, letting him know of her presence. She’d tried to talk to him, but he’d studiously ignored her, and she knew he wasn’t deaf. He thought if he ignored her, she’d go away.
Too damned bad.
She felt a twinge of guilt. He was blind. He was a vet, if that cap and those patches on his shoulder were his and not something he’d bought from Goodwill. He bothered her, and she couldn’t put her finger on why. For four days, she kept thinking of Phin when she saw him, which was ridiculous; he was at least twenty years older than Phin’s thirty-six. Phin was tall and broad-shouldered and tan, close-cropped dark hair, hands that played her as well as this man played the guitar. But the hands were the only thing they had in common. This guy curled in on himself, nearly broken, it seemed; he had a long, ratty gray ponytail, plaited with something that looked like it had crawled up in there and died. His fuzzy, bushy eyebrows that sat above those mirrored glasses looked alive, like they would fall off and sprout legs. Where Phin had been lithe, athletic, predatory…this guy was nothing but disarray and vulnerable…and he made her sad.
There were a handful of early-morning tourists, taking advantage of the light breaking over the cathedral for photos, but not another single busker had ventured out here, yet. It was too early for the real crop of tourists to wander out of their hotels, ripe for plucking. And still, there he was, shuffling forward from the shadows on the side of the cathedral.
It wasn’t this man’s fault he had set up in the only place in the square that had a direct line of sight into LaCroix’s home. The. Only. Spot. He probably just liked the shade, the acoustics. He was a blind vet, for God’s sake, she told herself. Not Phin, the bastard who was two thousand miles away in San Francisco. He just reminded her of Phin.
She shuddered, remembering his heat, the feel of the length of him pressed against her, skin to skin, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to stop the tears.
He’d let Abby die, may he rot in whatever hell he’d crawled into.
When the vet reached her, she expected aggravation. Not fury. Even though buskers were territorial, what could one spot possibly matter over another, five feet away, to a blind man? He was being silly.
She would be patient. She would be kind. She would be pleasant. But he was not getting this spot. She was not missing that signal.
* * *
He folded his cane, anger showing as he clacked the sections together harder than necessary. He’d spent three nights of determined research and paying bribes, trying to figure out what she had planned. He hadn’t slept. Had barely eaten. And as soon as he spoke, she’d recognize him, and his own game would be jeopardized.
Who the hell was he kidding?
She probably wouldn’t recognize him from his voice.
He
had known when
she
was simply walking on the other side of a crowded fucking square filled with people from all over the world. He’d have known her in the pitch-black. And she’d sat right near him for four agonizing days, had heard him playing and hadn’t even begun to suspect. He hated her for that.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, coming up out of her chair to stand in front of him, where she barely reached his chin, her face tilted up so close, he could see how weary she was. “I just need this spot for a couple of days, tops, to get the light just right on that building I’m painting. Well, I guess you can’t tell which one—but this is the only spot in the whole square with this view.” She pushed earnestness hard, like a car salesman who knows he’s lying, and she tried smiling brightly and flirting, then remembered he was blind. Her face fell as he didn’t answer, and she tried for
cheery
. “And I brought a picnic lunch, to thank you. I hope you don’t mind sharing.”
“I
mind,
” he said, straightening up, crossing his arms at his chest as her eyes narrowed, first at the tone, then the words.
* * *
He…
unfurled… .
One moment, he was bent over, looking war-worn and haggard and old and blind, and then he straightened up and squared his shoulders, feet planted, arms across his chest and Sadie knew she was in trouble. Something was wrong here, and it took a heartbeat more to really
hear
the voice and ignore what she was seeing.
“Phineas Michael Donnelly. You
bastard,
” she snapped, balling her fist, wanting to hit him. “Have you been having fun here? Is this some kind of joke? How’d you know I would be here?”
“I’ve been here for eight months, Sadie,” and his voice dropped to that lethally cold tone she hated. “
Eight months,
and you’re not about to waltz in here and screw this up. Go home. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching?”
“I can be wherever I want, Phin. I’m on vacation.”
“Oh, please. You just happened to be here, painting the building that Louis LaCroix owns? What do you plan to do, Sadie? Confront him? Turn him in? The police know he’s here. He’s well protected.
Go home
.”
“They’ll believe it when I catch him red-handed.”
“You’re waiting for a signal—a red handkerchief hung on the balcony.”
She slanted her eyes at him, livid. “How in the hell did you know that?”
“It’s my job to know.”
“Why?”
When he didn’t answer, she pressed closer, letting all of the anger of his betrayal pour through her. All of the years of dreaming of him at night, wishing…wasted years. Damn her stupid heart. “Who. Are. You. Working. For?”
“LaCroix,” he said, his voice as flat as the flagstones where they stood. “I’m telling you, for old time’s sake, Sadie. It’s a trap.”
She felt light-headed. Disconnected. She couldn’t believe it.
Was
he
why LaCroix got away from the police three years ago? Had he been lying to her then, too? Was everything they’d had a complete farce? She remembered laughing as she chased him one spring day, not unlike this one. Tackling him while he held her keys out of reach, a gleam in his eye. Kissing him, then. Craving him, all over again.
Even here. Even now.
She itched to take a swing at him, but she remembered how fast he could move and she held still. “I knew you were heartless and ambitious, letting Abby go back in there, but I never dreamed you could be the enemy.”
Her heart hurt, so much. How stupid was it to still have hoped?
Something flexed in his jaw, like he was holding on to his temper by extreme determination, but he just leaned forward, smug, and said, “Well, darlin’, now you know. Go home.”
“How do they know I’m here?” LaCroix had not been there, the times she’d been inside. No one else knew her real name, or how she was connected to LaCroix.
He turned, unfolded his cane and tucked back into himself somehow, suddenly the old, blind vet again, as seamless as air. “Because,” he said, as he
tap tap tapped
his way away from her, “I told them.”
* * *
He’d walked away. It had taken everything he had, but he’d left her there, tears streaming down her face.
Good.
She’d stay away. She’d be shocked and angry and it would take her maybe a day to recover. She wouldn’t get the signal she was waiting for; he’d seen to that.
Phin clicked on a pin light: it was twelve hours after his confrontation with Sadie and he was now beneath LaCroix’s house. Underground—a place most people would never have believed existed in the Quarter, given how far below sea level the city was, and how common the flooding, even in light rains. Most people did not know there were vaults below the streets that held all of the electrical and cable conduits which wired everything; city code prohibited any wiring above ground.
There were things about the Quarter that went beyond the eye, and tourists rarely ever saw that side, unless they were unlucky. Instead, they experienced the beautiful hotels, the antique shops, the galleries, loud bars and restaurants. Few were ever invited into the homes that were also a part of the Quarter—buildings which had been a part of the fabric of the Vieux Carré so long, people had forgotten how many times they’d been updated and remodeled. Renovation upon renovations, and often the original floor plan was lost in history. There were even old Underground Railroad passages; it was blasphemy, that LaCroix used some of the hidden passages—buildings connected to buildings in ways that weren’t obvious from the street—to move his “merchandise” without anyone on the outside able to hear or see.
It had cost Phin the better part of his cop pension to get his hands on the plans he’d needed.
He slid a makeshift plywood door aside and held quiet a moment, patient. Listening. He’d connected two passages over the past couple of months from two very old tunnels, both left off the later plans LaCroix had used and had based his own renovations on.
LaCroix screamed obscenities at someone three floors up, and then a
slap
echoed and everything went dead silent. Phin tensed, waiting for noise to cover his movements. There were more girls above; some locked in rooms, some shuttled out in the night. He’d tipped off the police, and they claimed their hands were tied without hard evidence, and no one had any intention of getting any, from what he could see. LaCroix had paid off someone fairly powerful to keep the warrants at bay. It was how he’d kept the police at a distance in San Francisco when Abby was murdered.
Phin pinched the bridge of his nose to ward away the memories, and there was more yelling again above him. Chairs shuffled about, then a crashing sound, like a vase hitting a wall. Someone had pissed LaCroix off. He listened, praying Sadie had heeded him, when Abby hadn’t.
It took him nearly an hour to move through the vaults and tunnels below the house, to make his way through ancient rooms, cobwebbed over, slick with mold, and up into dingy crawl spaces and finally easing into the dark kitchen, quiet for the night, the cook having been sent home every day at 10:00 p.m. He exited the hidden passage into the pantry, and he had to let his eyes adjust before moving forward, making sure he made not a single sound to betray him.
“So this is why you wanted me to stay away,” Sadie whispered in the dark and his heartbeat ratcheted to the sky as panic flooded him with adrenaline. When he got his bearings, he realized she was sitting on the floor of the big pantry, dressed in black, her red hair hidden beneath a black cap. She had night vision goggles. And a gun.
How the hell?
“You’re not here because you work for LaCroix, Phin,” she said, quietly, deadly. “You’re here to kill him, too.”
* * *
This was the Phin she remembered: clean-shaven, cropped hair, murderous expression that she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. He held out his hand and Sadie gripped it, letting him help her stand, holstering the FN pistol.
“I nearly killed you, just now,” she seethed, the shock of that still sending tremors through her as she stepped so close, she could feel the heat radiating off his body. “You should have told me earlier.”
“For the love of God, Sadie.” His fury pulsed through the small room. He paused to crack the door and keep a view of the kitchen. “Get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late. We’re working this together.”
A crash sounded above them, in the main salon; LaCroix, unhapy with an answer some male voice had just given him, too muffled for Sadie to hear.
“So what? Now you trust me?”
“I made calls today, Phin. You cashed out your pension. You filed a will. A
will
. Left me everything else. You
ass
. You came here to die.”
There was a long silence as he stared at her and she stared right back. He was killing her, here.
“No,” he answered finally. “I came to finish the job. I can’t get close to him without him recognizing me. I tried getting him away from his men—never works. The odds aren’t good.” He grabbed her shoulders, squeezed. “I’ll finish it, Sadie. I can’t handle it if you’re here, in danger.”
“Those odds are better now.” She grinned, and he arched an eyebrow and she pointed up at the ongoing tantrum. “LaCroix thinks all of his victims have escaped—he thinks someone on the other end of the tunnel he usually smuggles them out of left a door open. He’s going ballistic because he can’t find them.”
“His men are looking?”
“Yep. And everyone he can call on for favors. Which means they’re spread out throughout the Quarter, right now, chasing ghosts.”
He stared at her a moment, soaking it in. Then he grinned, that slow, sexy grin, the one where his eyes danced at the possibilities.
“Which means he’s down to what? One or two bodyguards?”
“Two, from what I can tell.”
“Good. Now, you can get out that way,” he said then, angling his head toward the door.
“No. You don’t get a choice about this, Phin.”
He went completely still. “You either trust me, Sadie, or you can shoot me now.”
“This is
my
fight, Phin. I lost everything when he killed Abby.”
“So did I,” he said, but he closed his eyes, his face a blank mask.
“I’ll just follow you in, anyway. You can’t stop me.”