The muzzle of a huge Magnum .357 met her, the black eye of the barrel almost touching her nose, and Flynn stopped dead, her arms reflexively moving out to her sides, gun held pointed downward and loose between her fingers.
“Willie Rae Flynn,” Erin Krueger said from behind the gun.
She gave Flynn a smile of dazzling insincerity. Nice teeth, Flynn noted. Nice everything, in fact. Danny had been right that Erin Krueger had looks to die for. Only Flynn imagined people really had died for those looks.
“Didn’t your Mama ever teach you that it’s rude to break into other peoples’ homes?” Erin inquired.
Flynn twitched a smile at her. “My Mama didn’t teach me much of anything, truth to tell. My bad luck y’all picked today to come home early, huh?”
“Indeed it is, Flynn. Now, you’re going to put that gun down. Put it down real slow and easy on the floor. Then kick it over here to me.”
Flynn lowered herself into a crouch, hands still held out on either side of her body, and she laid her weapon on the carpet. She rose again, used her right foot to kick the gun away from her. It slithered across the carpet, thumping up against the baseboard.
“Good. Now let’s walk to the living room. And keep those hands where I can see them.”
Erin stepped to one side to allow Flynn to emerge from the bedroom. Once the PI was in front of her, she pressed the barrel into the nape of Flynn’s neck. The cold steel felt uncomfortable there and Flynn tried not to think about how dumb she’d been to put herself in this position, thinking instead about how she was going to get out of this awkward situation. “I should’ve been more careful,” she said in a conversational tone as she walked down the hallway. “With y’all being ex-CIA, and all.”
“Yes, you should have been a lot more careful. And good for you, finding out that I’m ex-Agency. Did your little friend Danny tell you that?”
So she knew about Flynn’s continuing connection to Danny Cho. That was unexpected and not at all welcome news. “How’d you know about Danny?”
“Oh, I know all about Danny…and about you…and Detective Boudreau…and about your reporter friend, Dana Jordan, too.”
Hearing the mention Dana’s name, knowing that Erin Krueger had been looking into Dana’s life, gave Flynn a hot flush of anger which she tamped down quickly because it was unproductive. “Y’all have been keeping an eye on me. I’m flattered,” she said.
Erin snorted. “Don’t be. In here.”
“Y’all need to be getting some personal shit in here. It’s so bare…” Flynn dropped into a crouch in the doorway, brought her head back with all the force she could muster, ramming the back of her skull into the agent’s midriff. Her breath whooshed out on a pained grunt, her body instinctively doubling over in response to the assault. Flynn rose out of her crouch, and spun around, slammed the heel of one hand into the soft underside of Erin’s jaw—not hard enough to knock the agent unconscious, just enough to stun her. With her other hand, Flynn smashed Erin’s wrist into the doorjamb, twice, hard enough to make the agent yelp with pain and drop the gun. Flynn grabbed it, danced back out of reach. “Not so tough now, are you? Take a seat, Erin. We need to talk.”
The agent sat in one of a pair of matching brocade armchairs on either side of a fireplace looked like it hadn’t been lit in the last decade. She rubbed alternately at her jaw and her wrist, glaring at Flynn with ice-blue eyes brittle now with dislike. Flynn had to work for a moment to reconcile the woman seated before her with the woman she had met in Havana.
“Last time we met, your hair was black, and you were wearing dark contacts.”
Erin twitched a wry smile now at Flynn. “Guess I was more your type then, huh?”
“Y’all turned me down, as I recall. Guess I wasn’t so much your type.”
“Or maybe I just don’t like to mix business with pleasure—” Erin tilted a curious look at Flynn. “You’re pretty good. Faster than I’d have expected. Who trained you?”
Flynn smiled. “The same people trained you, I expect.”
Erin’s eyes widened with sudden comprehension. “Well, shit. You were CIA, too—” she barked a humorless laugh. “I’ve heard the rumors about people like you. Freelancers trained by the Agency. No record whatsoever, you could never be traced back to the Agency, nor to anyone connected with it—am I correct?”
Flynn nodded. “They employed our services when they needed not just plausible, but absolute denial. I’m not even sure your stepfather would have been aware of us, although he has some interesting history in the unit you served with, doesn’t he?”
That struck the chord it was intended to. Erin’s face twitched. She glanced away from Flynn, to the dead fireplace.
“So, now that you know something about me that you didn’t before, how about some quid pro quo here, Clarice? Tell me why y’all really want me to kill your stepfather—the Assistant Director of the CIA? I hear he’s running for the State Attorney’s job in West Virginia. Ambitious fellow. ”
“That’s Richard,” Erin sneered. “It’s like I told your reporter friend—he abused me for years. And I can’t do it myself. I’d be the primary suspect.”
Flynn shook her head. “I think y’all have an agenda, Erin. There are a hundred ways available to you to do this. You don’t need me.”
“You’re over-thinking this, Flynn.”
“Yeah. The Agency also taught me to be suspicious always, trusting never.”
“That must’ve made your life hard?”
“You tell me?” Flynn cocked her head, smiled. “Here you are, an ex-CIA agent turned FBI agent. Y’all went from one cesspool of paranoia to another.”
Erin shrugged. “Maybe I’m comfortable with my paranoia. Are you comfortable with yours?”
“That isn’t relevant here, Erin. Let’s stick to why you think I can—or would—help you to murder the Assistant Director of the CIA.”
“Surely Dana Jordan must have mentioned the little piece of evidence you left at a crime scene—?” Erin made a tsk-tsk sound, smirking now at Flynn. “That was careless of you.”
“A single button doesn’t prove a whole lot,” Flynn pointed out. “Besides, didn’t you ever wonder how your investigation got shut down? Who shut it down?”
Erin took a moment to process this information and then she sucked air between her clenched teeth, closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, she gave Flynn a brief glimpse of the dazzlingly insincere smile. As insincere as it was, that smile could knock most people’s knees out. Flynn wondered what things it had made people do for Erin Krueger in her past life as a CIA agent. “The Agency covered your ass. Of course they did. Did they take out Barbara Calabrese, too?”
“I don’t know. They tended not to share the finer details of their plans with me. I just did what I was told to do. Didn’t ask questions. Took the breaks where I found them.”
“Does Dana Jordan know that you were CIA?”
When Flynn shook her head, Erin frowned.
“Why didn’t you tell her that the Agency recruited you to kill for them? Wouldn’t it be better she thought that than thinking you became a killer of your own volition?”
Flynn blinked at the agent without saying anything.
“Oh hell, no—” Erin shook her head. “It means more to you to have her think you acted on your own, than for her to know you were coerced? Even if it was by the goddamned government? Pride, Flynn. Your pride won’t let you tell her. That’s so—butch of you.”
“I don’t care what it is. Besides, the Agency didn’t make me everything I am. Why should I blame them for it just because it’s easier?”
Erin gave her a long, cool look, and then she nodded.
“Now,” Flynn said with a grim smile, “let’s just imagine for a moment that I agreed to kill your stepfather. What would really be in it for me?”
Erin shifted in her chair, rubbing her wrist and wincing a cold smile at Flynn as she did so. “Let’s say you did kill Richard Cunningham for m
e, yes. I would be in your debt, of course. Any time you needed something that the Bureau could assist you with, you would just need to call me.”
Flynn made an amused frown. “That’s awfully generous of y’all.”
“What can I say? I’m a generous sort of gal.” The dazzling smile flashed briefly on and off again. Flynn was almost getting to like it.
“And if I say no, what then?”
Erin shrugged with one shoulder. “Then I’d have to accept your decision and find another way to kill my bastard stepfather. Like you said—the button isn’t enough to convict you of anything on its own. And any new investigation I tried to open would only get shut down again since the Agency is probably still protecting you. Once you’re in, you’re never really out, are you?”
“Nope. I guess not.”
Flynn had never deluded herself that her one-time CIA masters had entirely ceased watching over her when she walked away from her previous existence. Nor did she delude herself that their continuing interest in her was anything other a result of their own self-interest. She imagined that they were also watching Erin Krueger’s every move for much the same reasons. She stood up.
Erin watched her, frowning.
“I’m going to go collect my gun now and leave,” Flynn said. “I’ll take your piece with me. I’ll leave it at the end of the walkway where you can find it.”
“And my offer?”
Flynn shook her head. “No deal. Y’all have an agenda. I don’t trust that agenda, whatever it is.”
Erin accepted this with a bland expression—and a question. “What is this all about, Flynn—the PI gig, I mean? Why do you do it? Is it some kind of redemption that you’re seeking?” Her mouth twisted into a nasty smile. “Redemption comes at a price, you know.”
Flynn tilted her head into a puzzled expression. “And what would you know about the price of redemption, Agent Krueger?”
In the hallway, she fetched her own gun from where it had fallen, stuck it back into her hip holster, and then she walked out of Erin Krueger’s home without looking back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dana Jordan felt as though her world had fallen out of its normal orbit and was spinning through uncharted space. When she left Flynn on the riverside, she spent an hour walking around in a daze, hardly knowing whether she ought to be hurt, relieved, or just plain angry. The way in which she’d allowed her to be tricked her into kissing Flynn—thinking about that brought a flush of humiliation to Dana’s face. It made her angry, the manner in which it had happened, but she had enjoyed the damned kiss too, and she believed Flynn when she said she enjoyed it.
It wasn’t the first time she had thought Flynn might kiss her. Five years ago, during Hurricane Katrina, they had both narrowly escaped death after the levee gave way, almost trapping them with a flood of canal water. Flynn had driven like a demon to the home of a friend in the Upper Garden District where the flooding was less severe, and there they had remained for the following several days. Flynn had not elaborated on who her friend Danny was, nor on how he could afford to live in a Garden District mansion and surround himself with expensive technical gadgetry, and Dana had the sense that she ought not to pry either. Something about Danny frightened her on a visceral level.
He possessed some highly sophisticated satellite radio equipment, and his own oil generator with enough fuel to last for a week, even running all the technology, and using this equipment, they had listened—with mounting horror—to the drama unfold across the stricken city. Eventually, Danny had been the first to venture out from the house on the fourth morning after the levee breaches. He didn’t return until five hours later, and when he did, he was soaked in sweat and dirty water and his features were drawn and ashen as he had described scenes of near-biblical disaster to the two women.
As she had listened to Danny’s tale, the realization of just how close their own brush with death had been, scared the hell out of Dana. During their last night spent together at his mansion, she had curled up with some blankets on a couch in the living room, and tried to read a book by the glow of a hurricane lamp, the cat named Charlie snuggled beside her, but her mind had kept on returning to just how close they’d come to being swept away by the wall of water rushing over the breached levee. Then Flynn had appeared from the kitchen, a mug of hot chocolate in each hand, and she joined Dana sitting on the couch. For a little while they had sipped the chocolate in silence.
Then Dana had asked, “Are we ever going to get through this?”
“This is New Orleans,” Flynn had told her simply. “We know how to survive here.”
As they talked, they had drawn physically closer until Flynn’s shoulder rested snug against Dana’s and the sides of their thighs touched. Dana had told herself it was because the mansion was drafty, that they were huddling for body warmth, but deep down she had known it was more than that. Even though she had only been acquainted with Willie Rae Flynn for a short while—and under pretty dire circumstances—she had already taken a huge liking to the private investigator.
“I owe you my life, you know that,” Dana had blurted.
That was when Flynn had turned to her and looked so deep into her eyes that Dana was sure Flynn was going to kiss her. Except it hadn’t happened. Instead, Flynn had looked away and abruptly risen up from the couch. Muttering something about ‘checking the doors were locked’, she had practically run from the room. Next day they were able to return to their own homes and although they’d remained friends, and the attraction between them remained also, they had never come quite so close again to acting upon it.
Just wandering around, dreaming of what might have been, wasn’t making Dana feel any better and finally she returned to the newspaper office. There she tried to concentrate on work, but her thoughts still drifted, and each time they drifted back to Flynn, she would end up thinking about the kiss they finally had shared. Then the same opposing sensations of warmth and excitement, revulsion and humiliation, would course through her and she would become angry and humiliated and sad and confused all over again. When she caught herself typing the same line three times, she decided to call it a day. She shut down her computer, walked to Sy’s office and popped her head in there, mumbling some lame-ass excuse about having a migraine and taking the rest of the afternoon off.
He nodded, peering at her with an almost parental concern. “Go home. Sleep. Don’t come back until you feel better,” he told her. “You’re my best reporter. I need you operating at one hundred percent.”
Dana felt worse than ever for deceiving the kindly editor. She slumped out of the newspaper office, never having felt so alone since she had first come to New Orleans. There was no one she could turn to with this. No one she could unburden her confused feelings to. No one who would understand, anyway. Outside, a spring rainstorm was teeming down, the streets awash in rain the color of old dishwater. Rain was supposed to wash the world clean, Dana thought morosely, but this just made the city look dirtier and more sleazy than ever. Puddles slicked the road surface, the oily sheen of the water reflecting the blurry neon signs of assorted bars, clubs, and shops along Magazine Street as Dana jogged to her car. She would head home, she figured, not to sleep off her imaginary migraine but to drown her churning thoughts in a bottle of wine and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
As she pulled out into the suicidal traffic that occurred every time it rained in New Orleans—people in the city seemed to think rain meant you had to drive faster and more recklessly just to prove you were bigger than Nature—the realization hit her that there was someone she could talk to: the friend whom Flynn had spoken about. Ariel Rousseau. Dana recalled that Ariel owned a Voodoo supply store off Royal Street, and she turned the car around to head over that way instead.
The store was closed, a sign hung in the window proclaiming that it would not open again until further notice, with an apology for any inconvenience hastily scrawled below that. Dana started to turn away, but her eye caught the quick movement of a window b
lind above, and she stopped, stepping back far enough from the building that she could crane her neck to look up.
“Hello?” The echo of her voice bounced off the looming walls on either side of the alleyway.
The blind moved again and a figure was silhouetted briefly against the glass. As Dana raised her hand in a hopeful wave, the blind abruptly fell back into place, and moments later a woman appeared downstairs in the store. She opened up the door just wide enough to peer out.
“Ariel Rousseau?” Dana asked hopefully. The woman nodded. “I’m Dana Jordan. I’m a friend of Willie Rae Flynn’s. I was wondering—could I talk to you?”
“Why?” Ariel frowned.
“I just—” Dana sighed. She leaned forward, one hand braced on the doorjamb, and appealed to the store owner. “Look, I heard something from Flynn today, and it’s kind of knocked me sideways. I really need to just—I need to hear something about her that will make it seem better. Do you understand?”
Ariel hesitated, then she nodded. “You found out what Flynn did before she came back to New Orleans, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d better come in.” Ariel stepped back to allow Dana to enter. “Come on upstairs. I was just making some tea. It’s raspberry. You’ll like it.”
Although tea was the last thing on her mind, Dana murmured acceptance as she followed the smaller woman through the cluttered store and up a flight of stairs. If a cup of herbal tea was the price of hearing something—anything —might mitigate this morning’s terrible revelations, then she would drink it, and do so cheerfully. As she followed Ariel, Dana took a moment in which to critically examine the woman. Physically striking, especially her mesmerizing green eyes, Ariel Rousseau exuded an air of easy sensuality, a confidence in her own femininity and sexuality. It wasn’t too hard to figure what Flynn might see in her then. Dana felt a tiny pang of envy.
Ariel glanced at her over one shoulder. “So what do you want to know about Flynn?”
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