Mostly Murder (21 page)

Four hours later, all three of them were back inside Black's walled mansion on Governor Nicholls Street in the French Quarter. They had been bandaged and checked out at the hospital in Thibodaux, and Gabe had indeed suffered the worst of the blast. At the moment, Claire stood alone beside Gabe's bed in the largest and most elegant of their seven guest bedrooms. Gabe lay there in the ornate mahogany antique canopy bed with its magnificent royal blue velvet hangings, very still, very pale, looking like a corpse. She sank down into a cushioned gold-and-white-striped empire chair beside the bed and massaged her temples. Her headache felt like some kind of out-of-control jackhammer. Black had been wonderful, just like he always was when she needed him, and he still hadn't asked her any questions about Gabriel LeFevres. But he would, and she would tell him everything he wanted to know. And there was no way that Gabe could ever go back undercover, not with the Skulls. It was completely out of the question.

Claire turned her head and watched Black where he stood across the room. He was giving orders to the private nurse he'd summoned. Julie Alvarez was an old friend of his from Charity Hospital, a pretty woman with short brown hair and green eyes and very good ER skills. At the moment, Black was swearing her to secrecy. The doctors had set Gabe's arm, which turned out to be a severe dislocation of the shoulder as well as a cracked wrist and elbow. They'd also stitched up dozens of ugly shrapnel wounds on his arms and chest. But he was breathing fine and resting comfortably now. He would be all right, but he had not regained consciousness.

All three of them had been extremely lucky to escape the blast alive. Gabe was terribly wounded, and Black had a deep gash on both his forehead and leg. She had fared better because Black had shielded her from the blast with his body. He was fine, though. Even with his head and thigh bandaged, he was up and walking and talking and giving orders. Thank God. A wave of anger swept through her, and she sat very still and swore that she would get whoever had done this to them. No matter how long it took. Gabe shifted slightly and made painful grunts, but he was heavily sedated and quieted at once.

When she looked back across the room, Black was gone. Julie was sitting in a white easy chair beside the window watching Claire hover over Gabe. Claire had a feeling that Black had reached his limit. She didn't blame him, either, but she was surprised he hadn't demanded some answers out of her before now.

“Don't worry, I'll take good care of him,” Julie said softly. “You probably need to get some rest. Nick's beat, too. I suspect he's waiting for you.”

“It's very important that no one knows Gabe is here. You do understand that, don't you, Julie?”

“Oh, yes. Nick made that crystal clear.”

Claire looked down at Gabe again. The ER nurses had washed off his eye makeup and cut off his braid when they were working on a laceration on his chin, and he looked more like he used to.

“He must be very special to you,” Julie whispered softly.

“He's the closest thing I ever had to a brother.”

“That's pretty much the way I feel about Nick. Please forgive me for saying this, but you might want to tell Nick that. He didn't say so, but I sense he's pretty upset about what happened tonight.”

Claire stared at her. Julie was right, of course. “You'll come and get me if he wakes up and calls for me, won't you?”

“Of course. Nick gave him quite a heavy sedative. I don't think he'll come around until morning. That's a good thing. He's going to suffer a lot of pain when he comes to.”

Claire took one last look at Gabriel, and then she walked down the long white marble hallway to the round master bedroom she shared with Black. She found him there, sitting in a large maroon leather wingchair in front of the fireplace. He still wore the green scrubs provided to both of them by the hospital staff after they'd showered and washed off the bayou mud and the blood from their stitched wounds. He was in profile to her, staring motionlessly into the fireplace grate, where a roaring fire was snapping and popping like crazy. He had a short glass of Chivas in his right hand and held it propped on the arm of the chair. It was almost empty. A little blood had seeped through the bandage over his eye, a tiny spot of scarlet, the size of a dime. He sat utterly still. If he had not shown up and come aboard when he had, she and Gabe would probably be dead. Or injured a lot more severely than they were.

She stood there in the threshold for a moment. Jules Verne was curled up asleep in the middle of the round canopy bed after having yapped incessantly when they'd rolled Gabe in on the gurney and settled him in the guestroom. Poodle stress. It was extremely quiet now, except for a bird chirping outside the open French doors and the breeze fluttering the sheer white curtains and filling the room with cool fresh air. She could hear the distant tinkling of the fountain in the middle of the large and private walled courtyard below their balcony. Juan and Maria had helped them situate Gabe in his room, but then Black had told them they should go back to bed and get some sleep. Dawn was beginning to break now. She could see the graying sky through the giant fanlights over the row of tall French doors leading onto the gallery, but there were few sounds yet of the city bustling awake in the French Quarter outside the tall walls.

She just stood there, head still aching, looking at Black, very glad he was home with her again, very sorry that he'd been injured, and because of her again. She wondered if he had about had it with her and the dangers of her job. But he hadn't asked her to quit, and had even said he would never do that. He had saved her life, and Gabe's. Moving across the room, she stopped in front of him. He looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot from the blast, a black five o'clock shadow darkening his cheeks. He looked so tired, so spent, that her heart clenched. She straddled his lap, careful to avoid his injuries, her knees on either side of his thighs, and encircled his head with her arms. She brought it up against her breasts and kissed his hair.

“I'm sorry, Black, I'm so sorry that you got hurt. I'm so sorry I involved you in all this.”

His next words were muffled against her, but they touched her heart. “No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find a place where you'll be safe.”

Claire put her palms on his cheeks and gently raised his face. “You are my safe place, Black. You are, right here, right now, always.”

His arms tightened around her, and he pulled her closer. She threaded her fingers through his thick hair and told him how much she loved him, something she did not say to him very often. They didn't speak for a little while after that, just held each other, and then he pushed her back where he could look into her eyes. “We can't keep doing this, Claire. You do know that, don't you? Someday, if this keeps up, one of us is going to get killed. Do you even realize how close we came to dying in that blast?”

He was dead serious, sounded almost defeated. They had barely escaped a horrible death, and she knew it all too well. “I do know that. And I know that if you hadn't come out there, Gabe and I would both likely be dead right now. What I don't know is why this happened. I wasn't expecting any kind of danger out there, I swear. But I think it's got to do with Gabe, not me. I think you and I were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's been riding undercover with the Skulls. That's a biker gang here in New Orleans.” She stopped and took a deep breath, shut her eyes a moment against the pounding in her temples. “They must've found him out and been suspicious enough to follow him or something. We didn't expect it. He hadn't even been there very long before you drove up. I swear it, Black. He was a friend to me a long time ago, when I was a child and really needed somebody I could depend on. That's all, that's all it is, all it ever was.”

Black nodded, just a bare shake of his head. “Okay, I don't want to talk about it anymore right now. I want to get in bed and hold you and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow, when we're rested and can think straight, we need to talk about what we're going to do. Right now, let's just go to sleep. It's been a long day for both of us.”

“That sounds good to me.”

So they got up, undressed, and slipped under the soft sheets. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her in close against his chest, and then he fell asleep almost immediately, his cheek on the top of her head. Claire was not so lucky, and she lay there warm and content inside his arms, very glad to just be there with him, listening to his steady heartbeat, and feeling safe again. Finally, long after dawn peeked through the fanlights, she closed her eyes and slept like the dead, too, her dreams dark and disjointed and full of flames and falling glass and Gabe's groans of pain.

When she awoke again, it was early afternoon. They still lay entwined together in the bed, but her head no longer ached. She pulled back and raised herself on one elbow and studied Black. He was still sleeping, his right arm flung over his head as he was wont to do. But she vaguely remembered rousing up not too long ago when he'd left the bed and gone into the bathroom, and then down the hall, probably to check on Gabe. She had gone back to sleep before he returned, but now she eased quietly out of bed and tested her arms and legs and found out that her whole body felt as if she'd been stretched for hours on a torture rack. She made her way to the bathroom and washed her face and brushed her teeth, thinking she should go ahead and take a shower and get dressed. But she didn't really want to, not yet. She still felt sore and exhausted, and she didn't want to face the day, or the serious conversation Black wanted to have.

Claire had a feeling he had reached his breaking point with what she unintentionally but repeatedly put him through. She didn't know why terrible things happened to her so often, tried not to think about the reasons. But she did know that right now the idea of being without Black was the worst thing she could think of. She had let him in, let him get closer to her than anyone ever had. He was her life now, and she could finally admit that. So she slipped back under the covers and lay there close beside him and watched him breathe and tried not to think about anything.

 

After dozing awhile, she decided that it was time to shower and get dressed and check on Gabe's condition but her efforts to slide out of bed were brought up short when Black's fingers tightened around her arm. “Uh-uh,” he said, eyes still closed. “He's fine. Julie's with him. Come back here. I want us to pretend that last night was an extremely bad dream.”

Claire smiled and snuggled back in against him. His arms tightened around her, and he leaned his cheek against her hair. “So? You ready to tell me who the hell that guy is?”

He definitely had a right to know, but she'd promised Gabe she wouldn't tell anybody about him. On the other hand, some maniac had tried to kill them all. Black needed to know, for his own safety. She trusted him. Gabe would understand. He wasn't going back with the Skulls, anyway.

“He trusted me to keep his cover. That's why I didn't tell you about him and why I had to go out there alone last night to meet him.”

“What is he? DEA or FBI?”

“DEA.”

“So what's his connection to you? You work undercover together before? Or was it really a childhood thing?”

“It's a childhood thing, just like I told you. We've never worked together.”

“That outfit he wears? It's a dead giveaway.”

“Well, it worked well enough for him the last two years riding with the Skulls.”

“The biker gang out of Algiers? I've heard about them and none of it is good. They're into drugs and prostitution and God knows what else.”

“He earned their trust, and they respect him. He's tougher than you think.”

“Oh, I think he's tough, all right. But why all this intrigue with you? Is Lafourche working with him?”

“No.” It went against Claire's grain to betray a confidence, but this was different. Gabe owed Black his life. “We told you the truth. It's just like I said. He's an old friend of mine. His name is Gabe LeFevres, and I lived with his family when we were kids, for about a year. It was the only foster home where I ever felt like part of the family. He protected me back then. He was like the brother I never had.”

“Then I guess I owe him, too.”

“You'll like him. He's a great guy.”

“Was it a romantic thing?”

Claire laughed at that. “We were ten. He was nicer to me than anybody I could ever remember, and I adored him. He taught me to fish and shoot a BB gun.”

“What about now?”

“C'mon, Black. It happened years ago. We were just little kids.”

“What were you doing together last night? Was he bringing you in on his case?”

“No. He wanted to make sure I didn't blow his cover. Zee and I ran into him the other day, just by a crazy coincidence. When we went into a bar named Voodoo River looking for our victim's brother, he was in there. It was a little dicey for a minute, but Gabe managed to get those creeps out of there before anything bad went down.”

“How dicey?”

“No blows were thrown, if that's what you mean.”

Black shifted slightly until they were lying on their sides and facing each other. He examined her face a moment, appeared to be thinking about what he was going to say. “And you think those bikers found Gabe out and tossed those grenades at him?”

“That makes the most sense to me. We know you're not the target, and it's unlikely anybody's after me this early in the investigation. My face was on that doll, true, but I was out there alone several times, all night long. He could've gotten to me a lot easier than lobbing a damn grenade on the boat and risking killing other people.”