Witness on the Run

by Cassie Miles

  He guided the SUV to a stop at a red light and turned toward her. “She’s not altogether different from you. Your plan is to run—to disappear by using aliases and disguises.”

  His comparison was accurate. Like Charlotte, she planned to leave New Orleans and move to a different location where she’d take on a new identity. She’d start over and find a way to survive, trusting no one, taking care of herself. For years, her identity had been based on those principles of self-sufficiency, but her plan had never felt so lonely.

  Aunt Charlotte was a cautionary tale, and Alyssa didn’t want to dive down the same rabbit hole.

  Chapter Ten

  Without a clear destination in mind, Rafe drove in a northeastern direction while he observed the traffic in his rearview mirror, making sure they’d escaped the church without picking up a tail. The similarities between Alyssa and her aunt had not been wasted on him. Though he suspected that Charlotte had always been a borderline criminal and Alyssa seemed to have a clear grasp of right and wrong, they were both stubborn, fiercely independent and determined to take care of themselves.

  His thinking was colored by how much he’d come to like Alyssa after observing her for sixteen days. More than her green-eyed beauty, he appreciated her spirit and her intelligence. She could think fast, which was sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Her impulse to chase after the skeletons had almost led to her capture.

  Likewise, her independence held an element of danger. She trusted no one. He hated to think of the deep disappointments she must have experienced to build such a solid fortress around her heart. From the early abandonment by her father to the current debacle with Aunt Charlotte, Alyssa had been duped and discarded. No one stood beside her. Even her mom was gone. And Max Horowitz, her kindly boss who helped her through college, had disappeared.

  Rafe couldn’t expect her to trust him, but he had to keep her safe. Not only was that the job he’d been hired to do, but he cared for her. The real question was: Should he hand her over to the FBI? Law enforcement could protect her better than he could...if they hadn’t been corrupted like Woodbridge.

  After driving a few more aimless miles, he was certain that they were being followed. And he had a pretty good idea who was driving the bronze sedan with the tinted windows. Rafe cranked the steering wheel and made an unexpected left turn. The sedan dodged through traffic to follow.

  Alyssa yelped from the passenger seat. “What are you doing?”

  “Shaking a tail.”

  Any attempt to outsmart Jessop with defensive-driving techniques seemed futile. They had both been given the same training at the FBI. Each could anticipate the other’s moves. The best way to escape was luck, the whims of traffic and skills Rafe had picked up when he was undercover as a race car driver.

  “Is it Jessop?” Alyssa guessed.

  “Probably.”

  “But that isn’t a bad thing. Over breakfast, you mentioned setting up a meeting with him to get more information. What changed your mind?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  During the few months Rafe had been part of the New Orleans office of the FBI, he was mostly undercover and out of contact with the other agents. He didn’t know Jessop well, but he didn’t want to poison Alyssa’s mind against him in case it was necessary to transfer her into FBI custody.

  She twisted her shoulders, craned her neck and peered through the rear window of the SUV. “Is he still following us?”

  “I don’t see him,” Rafe said, “but he could be behind that truck.”

  “You asked both me and Charlotte about Jessop and about Diamond Jim Davidoff. There’s a connection between them, right?”

  She was too intelligent to believe an ill-formed lie. “Yes.”

  “I’m guessing that Jessop—an FBI agent who knows you—was the person who referred Diamond Jim to you. That means that Mr. Davidoff is your client.”

  “Now that you’ve solved that mystery, I have another—”

  “It’s not solved,” she said. “Not until I know why Davidoff hired you to be my bodyguard. His interest is probably motivated by the seven million, six hundred thousand dollars, but that doesn’t explain why he wanted the decor to look like my bedroom.”

  “A talk for later.” He set the conversation aside, hoping to distract her. “We have a different issue. Jessop is back.”

  “Which car?”

  “The bronze Lexus.”

  “How can you tell? I can’t identify the driver through the tinted window.”

  “An assumption,” he said. “I remember the car from when we worked together, and I can’t think of anyone else who could have followed us from the church.”

  With a sigh, she said, “There are just so damn many bad guys.”

  “As long as you trust me, we’ll be okay.”

  He expected her response to be the oft-repeated statement of being able to take care of herself, and so he was surprised when she reached across the console and touched his arm. “Trust is important.”

  “It is, cher.”

  “That stuff Charlotte said about you and me wasn’t true, was it?” Her fingers lightly squeezed his forearm. “I’m not interested in a relationship. Are you?”

  “I’m French,” he reminded her. “I’m always interested.”

  “Okay.” She withdrew her hand. “How do you plan to meet with Jessop? If you pull over and let him catch up with us, he’s going to grab me and sweep me into custody.”

  “You’re right.” And there was no one else in the local office that he implicitly trusted. Much of his undercover career had been in Florida until a long-term investigation into a smuggling ring had blown up in his face. That was one of the reasons he’d decided to quit the FBI.

  “I don’t want to go back to the house and hide. What if Jessop tracks us there?”

  Again, he agreed with her reading of the situation. He couldn’t leave her alone and unguarded at the house. But he couldn’t allow her to meet Jessop in person. “I know a place where you can be part of the conversation but protected at the same time.”

  “And where is this magical place?”

  “St. Louis Cemetery Number Three on Esplanade.”

  Over the years, Rafe had used the aboveground cemetery as a rendezvous for informants, suspects and—once or twice—girlfriends. His family had a mausoleum, and he knew his way around the place. As a kid he’d played hide-and-seek among the tombs during the interment of an aged uncle or a reckless cousin.

  “Let me get this straight.” Alyssa cast a skeptical gaze in his direction. “You think a graveyard is a safe meeting place?”

  A simple “trust me” wasn’t going to ease her mind. “Allow me to explain with a short history of St. Louis Cemetery and my family.”

  “By all means.”

  “Cemetery Number Three opened in 1854, and the Fournier mausoleum was built two years later. My pirate ancestor, Jean-Pierre, had passed away in 1812, leaving his family with treasure but not respectability. His wife argued with the priests about burial for her husband in the existing cemeteries and decided on a more humble resting place. By the time Cemetery Number Three was laid out, the Fournier family was solidly established in New Orleans society, and one of my aunts wanted a big, showy, ornate monument.”

  “Your roots go deep,” she said.

  “Oui. There are so few of us left.”

  “I still don’t know why you want to meet with Jessop in the cemetery.”

  “Every soul in New Orleans knows where the cemetery is located, and the Fournier mausoleum stands out. The walls are sun-bleached marble. Above the entrance is a peaked arch with a frieze of a sailing ship flying the Jolly Roger. Posed on top is a statue of a winged angel with a sword.”

  “Got it,” she said. “It’s easy to find.”

  “At the cemetery, I have an edge—an all-access park
ing sticker that allows me to drive onto the grounds. Also, most important, I have a key to the Fournier monument.”

  “Why’s the key a big deal?”

  “While I talk with Jessop, you will be safely locked inside the mausoleum.”

  “With dead people?” Her voice elevated several octaves. “Oh, I don’t think so. Not that I believe in ghosts or zombies.”

  “At present there is no coffin in the tomb.”

  “If there’s no coffin, who’s buried there?”

  Not wanting to give her another reason to be nervous, he decided not to go into details about the process of interment—waiting for the corpse to decompose, removing the coffin and returning the bones to the mausoleum. The remains of at least thirty-two people were housed in his family’s mausoleum. “No need to be afraid, cher. The Fournier dead are very well behaved.”

  “Look at my face, Rafe. I’m not laughing.”

  She folded her arms across her middle and sank down in the passenger seat. With her long blond wig and pink dress, she looked like an angry sunbeam. He hadn’t expected Alyssa—a down-to-earth accountant who planned for everything—to be superstitious. But he trusted her ability to cope. Meeting Jessop at the Fournier tomb was a good solution.

  Without further discussion, he used his hands-free phone to connect with the number he had for Jessop. Rafe wanted to keep this conversation and the subsequent meeting short and simple. His plan was to use Jessop to find out who was after Alyssa and what they wanted from her.

  As soon as Jessop answered, Rafe said, “Stop tailing me.”

  “Why would I be interested in following you?”

  “In your bronze Lexus,” he said. “In three blocks, I intend to merge onto the bridge. If you follow, we won’t meet. If you do as I say, I’ll arrange to sit down for a brief parley.”

  “Who’s the girl, Rafe? Who’s the blonde that followed you out of the church? I know Alyssa is a brunette, but she could have been wearing a wig.”

  “Don’t follow.”

  As Rafe disconnected the call, she pulled the blond curls off her head and combed through her sienna-brown hair with her fingers. “So much for my Baby Doll disguise.”

  “It served the purpose,” he said as he drove onto the bridge. “Look through the back window. Can you see the Lexus?”

  When she unfastened her seat belt and leaned over to look through the seats, her arm brushed his shoulder, and he felt an electric surge. Her crazy aunt had been strangely accurate when she predicted a relationship—not that he was looking for anything long term, but he wanted to go deep and know her in a meaningful way.

  “I don’t see Jessop,” she said.

  “If we’re lucky, he’s already stopped following us.”

  Rafe checked his rearview mirror, making sure they weren’t being followed. On the other side of the bridge, he parked the SUV on a side street and called Jessop again. The FBI special agent answered quickly and started talking right away, issuing demands and threats. His technique failed to impress Rafe. They’d gone through the same interrogation training.

  He cut through Jessop’s chatter with a terse instruction. “Meet me at the Fournier mausoleum in St. Louis Cemetery Number Three at noon.”

  “That doesn’t give me enough time.”

  “This is your only chance, mon ami.”

  Rafe ended the call and turned to Alyssa. “You were smart to bring your backpack.”

  “I like to be well prepared and organized. It’s what I do.” She cracked open the passenger door. “I bet you want me to climb into the back and change out of this glaring outfit into something more subtle.”

  “S’il vous plaît.”

  As soon as she got into the back of the SUV, he redirected his route toward Esplanade Avenue. Situated between Lake Pontchartrain and St. John’s Bayou, Cemetery Number Three had been badly flooded during Hurricane Katrina, leading to horror stories—mostly untrue—about floating coffins and decomposing corpses. These were not tales he’d pass along to Alyssa.

  Glancing into the rearview mirror, he had a partial view of her shoulder and her lacy white bra before she slipped into a blue T-shirt and a denim jacket. Last night when he rescued her from the skeletons and had to remove her clothing, he’d seen more of her body. But she’d been unconscious. This glimpse was more exciting. Even the khaki shorts seemed sexy.

  He tore his gaze away from the mirror and concentrated on what needed to come next. He had promised Davidoff that he would send a photo of Alyssa by noon today in order to prove that she was alive and well and not captured by Woodbridge or anyone else.

  Davidoff remained a puzzle. His concern for Alyssa, the fact that he’d hired Rafe to protect her and his insistence on making her comfortable with a bedroom decorated like her own seemed like the actions of someone who cared about her—the father who had stepped out of her life but continued to love her? Charlotte probably could have explained Davidoff’s interest in her niece, but she chose to keep her secrets.

  “I’m ready.” Alyssa poked her head between the front seats. “It took a million wet wipes to get the goopy makeup off my face, but I’m clean.”

  “I like your face without makeup.”

  She patted his cheek. “And I like your scruffy look. Are we almost there?”

  “In a minute.”

  “Should I duck down and hide?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  He’d taken the quickest route and doubted that Jessop could have arrived before him, but there was always the possibility that the FBI agent was working with someone else. Keeping Alyssa hidden from the feds, her crazy aunt and Davidoff was vital. If no one knew where she was, they couldn’t hurt her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Crouched down in the back seat of the SUV, Alyssa tried to regain the emotional balance and determination she’d lost when she came face-to-face with her aunt...her dead aunt. Impossible! Everything has turned upside down. Her plan to leave town and start over seemed less positive and more futile. The example of Charlotte’s wasted life reminded her that escape was impossible. The bad stuff would catch up, no matter where she ran.

  What was her alternative? She couldn’t stay here and wait for Woodbridge or Jessop or anybody else to grab her. She needed another plan, and that meant gathering more information and hoping that something would make sense. The meeting with Agent Jessop seemed like a good starting place, but she wasn’t real happy about the idea of hiding out in a tomb.

  “We’re here,” Rafe said, “entering the City of the Dead.”

  “You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it.”

  She raised her head just high enough to peek out the window as the SUV turned at the entrance to St. Louis Cemetery Number Three. Outside the curlicue wrought iron gate, piles of bouquets from last night’s parade were stacked in remembrance. The flowers were already starting to rot, giving off a pungent odor that penetrated the car and overpowered the air-conditioning.

  She pinched her nose. “Why are the flowers outside instead of on the graves?”

  “The cemeteries used to stay open for All Souls’ Day and Day of the Dead, but the celebrations got too wild and destructive, especially in Cemetery Number One, where the voodoo queen Marie Laveau is interred.”

  That site was supposed to have voodoo magic. “I heard that if you mark three X’s on her tomb, she’ll grant one wish.”

  “And so the desecration became standard practice. C’est triste. It’s sad. I regret the lack of access for the general public, but I’m glad there will be no graffiti to scrub from the Fournier monument.”

  Alyssa crouched lower and pulled the backpack over her head and shoulders while the official at the gate checked Rafe’s identification and waved him through. He drove slowly, dropping casual facts like someone who had given this tour many times before. “The layout in Number Three is more organized than
in the other two, and the statuary and tombs are more elaborate. If you look on the left, you can see a nearly life-size bronze of Padre Pio, who was famous for his stigmata.”

  She peeked through the window as they drove on a narrow street—Rafe referred to it as an aisle—between rows of tombs that were roughly the size of camping trailers but made of marble and stone. “How many crypts are there?”

  “Over ten thousand burial sites and more than three thousand wall vaults,” he said, “plus a Greek Orthodox section and mausoleums housing nuns and priests who had no other place to be buried.”

  Flowers had been left outside the doors to many of the tombs, and the urns had been decorated with colorful displays of posies, feathers and beads. They drove past a woman and child who sat close together on a marble bench. Other people strolled along the aisle beside the grass border, not a crowd but a respectable number for a Sunday morning at the beginning of November. During her time in New Orleans, Alyssa had come to appreciate the city’s acceptance of death as a celebration of the moment when a beloved person is freed from the bonds of earthly existence. Grief was inescapable, but Alyssa liked to imagine her mom at a wake filled with singing and dancing. Mom would have loved to have her coffin paraded in a jazz procession with trumpets, trombones and tambourines.

  Carved stone tombs were much more interesting than being buried in the ground, but she still didn’t want to be locked inside one. Peering through the car window, she nodded to a marble statue of a serene Virgin Mary with her hands outstretched and shot out a little prayer, asking for strength.

  She cleared her throat. “How is Jessop going to find your family’s tomb in the midst of all this?”