by Cynthia Eden
Wasn’t he? “Tell that to the bastard I beat to death.”
She didn’t even flinch. “How many lives have you saved since you became a doctor?”
“What is this? Some kind of balancing the scales bit? Life doesn’t work that way.”
“No, it doesn’t. But you can’t let one horrific thing destroy you. That’s not how life works, either. If that were the case…” Her hand pulled away. She turned her back on him. “I would have been destroyed years ago.” Her steps weren’t as fast now. But they were just as certain. “Splitting up is fine. Especially if you feel the urge to get…space, I believe you said…from me. I can handle myself for the rest of the night. You go your way. I’ll go mine.”
He stood there with his hands fisted at his sides, and he felt like an absolute asshole. Why? Because he was pretty sure he’d hurt her feelings. She’d pushed him into doing the one thing he’d dreaded most…
Blood on my fingers. Skin sliced open…
But…
But I did it. He’d sewn up the guy and hadn’t lost his mind. Hadn’t gotten trapped in a terrible flashback or blacked out or even hurt the vic like he’d feared. Like a shrink had once told him would happen.
I did it.
Chloe was slipping underneath some heavy tree that hung over the edge of the thick, wrought iron fence that surrounded this portion of Jackson Square. Joel sucked in a deep breath. One that did nothing to calm him as he watched her. Did she seriously think he was just going to leave her alone?
No. I would never leave her unprotected.
Joel bounded forward, ducking under the broad limbs of that tree—and found her…
Scaling the fence?
In her high heels?
She was a shadowy form clinging to the limb of a tree and half-hauling herself over the top of the fence.
Some of the tension that had filled him since the knife attack eased. “I expected you to be a secret acrobat. Figured you’d just do some fancy roll over the fence.” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. His vision had adjusted a bit more to the darkness there and he was pretty sure he was on eye level with her ass.
“I could use a boost. If you don’t mind.” Her voice was ever so prim and proper.
“And where should I put my hands for that boost? Not a lot of options are available at the moment, and it seems like I have to—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Joel. Just put your hand on my ass and push me over!”
A half-grin slid across his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.” He put his hand on the rounded curve of her ass and gave her a quick push.
She seemed to shoot over the fence.
Too hard.
“Chloe!” He grabbed the branch and his foot shoved against the wall. In the next breath, his feet were slamming into the ground on the opposite side of the fence. “Chloe, are you—”
She was brushing off her dress. “I’m perfectly fine.” The moon shone down on them. “You didn’t have to follow me. I thought we were splitting up.”
“Changed my mind.” He moved closer to her. “Is this a safe place?”
“Safe is a relative term.”
“Why the hell did we need to run from the Serpent?”
“Because the cops are going to be swarming the club any moment.”
As if on cue, he heard the shriek of sirens. “Why are cops going there?”
“Because someone called them.”
“It’s like pulling teeth. Very slowly and painfully.” Joel sawed a hand over his face and the stubble that covered his jaw. “Who called the cops?”
“Can I trust you?”
“I’m your partner! If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?”
“Kingston.”
His hand slammed down to his side. “You think you can trust that jerk? He’s the one who battered Eli’s face to hell and back.”
“No.”
He waited. She didn’t speak. “More, Chloe,” he ordered, demanded, pleaded—almost all the same thing with her.
“No, Kingston is not the one who hit Eli. There weren’t any marks on Kingston’s knuckles. If he’d been the one to punch Eli so hard, then his knuckles would have been bruised and scraped.”
“Fine. So he got one of his flunkies to do the job.”
“That’s entirely possible.”
“And you still trust him? What kind of relationship do the two of you have?”
She turned away. Began walking slowly through the Square. Now that they were inside the walls, she didn’t seem as worried about rushing through the night. “We don’t have a personal relationship. We have a business arrangement. He comes to me when he needs certain insights, and I go to him when I want to experience a better understanding of the criminal world.”
“How many times has he put a blindfold on you?” Now where the hell had that question come from? Joel was sure there had been something else he meant to ask.
She stopped walking. “You sound jealous.” Chloe peered over her shoulder. “There is no need for that. I’ve never slept with Kingston. I don’t intend to do so.”
Good to know. Better than good. Yet he still had so many damn questions. “So you just let the guy blindfold you in the past because…?”
“He was taking me to see a certain portion of his business. The location of that business was confidential. He thought the blindfold would stop me from being able to ever get there again on my own.”
A sigh slipped from him. The scream of sirens was even louder now. “Let me guess, he was wrong.”
“Absolutely.” She skirted around a fountain. Headed toward a bench and a stone walkway. “I could find my way back there anytime I wanted.”
There was a lamp shining over the bench. The light fell on her. Made her dark hair gleam.
“You still didn’t tell me who called the cops. Did you do it?” He’d made it to her side.
She peered over at him. “I did tell you.”
“No, sweet—” He caught himself at her frown. Had he been about to call her sweetheart? Joel cleared his throat. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Sure, I did. Kingston.”
He blinked.
She kept staring steadily at him. Joel quickly replayed their conversation in his mind…
“Who called the cops?” His question.
“Can I trust you?” Her ever-so-cautious reply.
“I’m your partner! If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?” His grating demand.
“Kingston.”
Well, damn. She hadn’t been saying that she trusted Kingston. She’d been saying he called the cops. “Why would a guy like him alert the cops?” Before they’d left the club, Joel thought Kingston had made his opinion of law enforcement—and their involvement—pretty clear.
She leaned toward him. Put her hands on his chest. Brought her face in all close to him. “Because,” she whispered, “he is a cop.”
Joel shook his head.
“Undercover. Actually, more FBI than NOPD.” She was still close. “But please keep that information strictly confidential, would you?”
That jerk…that arrogant SOB had been undercover?
“Don’t worry. It will appear that someone else called the cops. The blame will be placed on one of the players at his VIP game. Maybe it will even be placed on you or me.” A shrug. “But Eli will be questioned by the FBI. And I imagine that Kingston will manage to maintain his cover.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Keep me in the dark. I need to know important shit like this. Before we went in the Serpent, I should have known the truth about him.”
“But if I’d told you all of this before, your reaction to Kingston would have been different. You needed to treat him with suspicion. You needed to act as if he was the enemy.”
“It’s called trust,” he forced from between clenched teeth. “I believe we addressed it before and—” He broke off. Chloe wasn’t listening to him.
Her head
had angled toward the bench. “Something is there.”
He frowned at the bench. “Looks like someone just left a piece of paper on the bench. No big deal.”
But she was pulling away from him. Creeping toward the bench.
Fine. If she was going to look, he’d play along. The closer he got to the bench, the better he could see—
It was a card. Not some piece of paper.
Death.
A curse broke from Joel as he realized that he was looking at another one of those cards, a tarot card. Beneath the light, he could see that a black knight was riding on a white horse, and under the horse’s hooves, the word Death was clearly written.
Wonderful. Fantastic.
He lifted up the card, holding it only by the right edge, and as he angled it beneath the light, he realized that the knight’s face? It was a skeleton. “Yeah, this shit isn’t good.” His head snapped up as he studied the darkness around him. “Who the hell is there?” Joel called out.
“We should leave.” Chloe bumped into him.
He didn’t see anyone in the dark. Didn’t hear anything. “Maybe this was left by one of the people who set up a table in the Square during the day.” He’d passed by before and seen plenty of psychics and fortune tellers working with tourists. Could have just accidentally been left by one of them, but…
But we found the other tarot card in the alley behind the strip club. What were the odds of them randomly finding two of those cards? He’d bet astronomically low.
The shadows didn’t move.
“If you want to threaten us, show yourself!” Joel blasted. “Don’t just leave some random-ass card for us to find. Don’t taunt us with the Death card!”
“We need to go. I don’t think he’s here any longer.”
He?
“Come on. Marie should be waiting.”
He pocketed the card. Stayed close to her as they got the hell out of there. When they exited near Decatur Street, sure enough, Marie and the limo were waiting. She had the back door open.
“Trouble?” Marie asked as she caught a look at their faces.
“Nothing too major,” Chloe replied as she slid in the back.
Marie pinned Joel with a hard glance.
“Oh, right, definitely, not major.” His jaw hardened. “Unless you count a knife fight and some asshole in the Square threatening us with Death as not major.”
“Get in,” she urged.
Like he needed to be told twice.
The door slammed behind him. Moments later, the limo raced away.
Chapter Seventeen
“It wasn’t a death threat.” Chloe smoothed her hands over the sides of her dress. “That wasn’t the intention of the card.”
“It’s a card with a skeleton on it, and the word Death is big and bold at the bottom.” Joel was sprawled on the seat across from her. “Seems like a pretty clear threat to me.”
On the surface, certainly. “Last night, I went to see an acquaintance who has expertise with tarot cards. I’d done research with her a while back, and I wanted to make certain I still had a proper understanding of the cards. While I do possess some knowledge about tarot, I wanted to know more.”
“That’s where you were last night?”
“Yes.” The cards were a taunt. Not a threat. Or at least…not a threat, yet. Perhaps. I don’t want to be wrong on this. “What you see is not what you get with a tarot card. The Death card doesn’t actually translate to a real, physical death. I suppose it could in certain instances, but it is very unlikely—”
“You believe in this psychic stuff?”
“I believe in many things. However, I don’t think anything psychic is at play here. Someone is using the tarot as calling cards. Someone is sending us messages.”
“The Bad Deeds killer?” His fingers drummed against the leather.
She swallowed. “A possibility.” She truly hated that name for the perpetrator.
“More like a probability, don’t you mean? Seeing as how the first card was found at the strip club? The Devil card that he left for me.”
“You assumed it was for you.”
“Because you told me it means feeling trapped, enslavement—and, yes, with my past, that certainly fits the bill for me.” His voice was dark and grim. “But that would mean the perp out there knows about me.”
The car drove slowly through the city. “I also told you the Devil card could be about seduction.”
“Yeah, that was the part I liked.”
“Sometimes, though, seduction can have a darker edge. The interpretation can differ from the meaning of the Devil card that I told you.”
“How does this not surprise me?”
“I wanted to be sure. That’s why I checked with an expert.”
“Keep talking, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart?”
“Slip of the tongue,” he muttered. “Just keep going.”
“The card may not have been for you. The message could have been for me. For us both. Depending on who is getting the card—the message is different.”
“Cut to the chase. What’s the full message?”
“Cards are always about interpretation. In this case, I was told we could interpret it to be about…temptation.”
The tension in the car—already high—seemed to notch up even more.
“Temptation,” he repeated.
“It can be a card that references seduction. Seduced by material items, yes, but also…physical pleasures.”
He surged toward her.
She couldn’t help but tense.
“You’re telling me that card is some kind of warning about the attraction I feel for you? It’s saying I’m being tempted?”
She wet her lips. “We’re being tempted.”
“So some all-knowing jackass out there realizes I want you?”
That we want each other. She held that response back. “It’s possible it could have been a warning not to act on our attraction.” She was using some of what she knew—suspected—for this assessment. Not just the card.
“So someone wants me to keep my hands off you?” His hand rose. Curled along the nape of her neck. “Am I supposed to listen to the warning?”
“That is your choice.”
He didn’t lower his hand. He did begin to sensually knead the tense muscles in her neck. Odd, she hadn’t even realized how tense they were until he’d begun stroking her.
“What’s the meaning of the Death card?” Joel asked. “You said it’s not always about someone dying?”
“That would be quite literal. The cards don’t usually work that way.” She found herself arching into his touch. “It is about an ending though. It could be the end to a particular chapter in a person’s life. The end to a relationship. Big, important change.”
“Anything else?” His fingers kept up their careful work.
“The card symbolizes letting go of attachments. Severing the ties that you had in place.”
“So someone is severing ties with you…or with me. If you want to get all symbolic.”
“Yes.” Her voice was husky.
Joel edged nearer. “Or maybe we just have a crazy killer on our hands. Some guy who has been watching you way too much. He’s playing a game with you. He told Cinnamon that he wanted you to come and get him. The very fact that he left the card in the Square—don’t you see? He had to be there. Hiding in the shadows. He was watching you. Stalking you.” His words deepened. Roughened. “Then he left the Death card. To me, it’s not about symbols. It’s about that prick saying that he’s coming…and he’s coming to kill you.”
***
The night had certainly not gone as planned. The card in the Square had not been expected. Mostly because she didn’t think the man who’d left it had been in the Square when she’d been there. She thought he’d been there before her. That he’d left the card, knowing she’d take that escape route. Knowing that she’d find the card.
If that was the case, he was anticipatin
g her movements.
Which meant he was far more clever and dangerous than she’d realized.
It also meant there wasn’t time to waste.
So at three a.m., she found herself standing in front of Joel’s door. When they’d returned to the property, he’d left her without a word. Not that she could blame him for his anger. She had manipulated him. She’d pushed him to treat Jimmy’s wound. She’d thought it would help Joel. Sometimes, the only way to confront a demon was to face him head on. But…
Not her call. Not her choice.
So she was going to do something that she rarely ever did.
Her hand lifted. She rapped gently on the door.
He could be sleeping. She should have considered that possibility before she’d crept all the way over to his place. He was probably exhausted, but adrenaline had kept her up so she’d assumed that he would also be—
The door flew open. “You do not want to be here right now.” A low, angry growl.
Her hand was still in the air. Curved in a little fist that hovered near his chest. The lights were on behind him, so she could easily see that he wore only a pair of faded jeans that clung loosely to his hips. His chest was bare. Muscled. Flexing. A faint gleam of sweat covered his shoulders and she wondered what he’d been doing—
“Thought the scars didn’t matter to you.” Deep and dark.
“What scars?” Chloe asked absently because she’d just been counting that wonderful six pack of his and— “Oh, right. Yes, what about them?” Her gaze flew up to meet his.
A muscle twitched in his ever-so-clenched jaw. “Leave, Chloe.” He started to shove the door closed.
“But I came to say I’m sorry, and I don’t say that very often.” She caught the edge of the door. “I apologize, Joel.” He’d apologized to her earlier, and now it was her turn. Tit for tat, as the saying went. A real partnership.
His head tilted. “Just what is it that you are apologizing for?”
“You didn’t want to work on Jimmy’s wound. I pushed you. In my defense, I thought I was helping, but you didn’t ask for my help, and I had no right to put you in that situation.”
He laughed, but the sound was far from humorous. “This may be the worst apology that I’ve ever heard.”