by Cindy Dees
She nodded, tongue-tied, and settled for turning and heading upstairs. She was vividly aware of him behind her, with a critical view of her rear end. Not that her behind was anything to write home about. She enjoyed running and tried to keep reasonably toned, but everything about her was small in scale. She could never compete with tall, voluptuous women with miles of curves.
Thankfully, she reached the third floor without falling on her face or otherwise humiliating herself. “Computer’s over here.” She headed for the kitchen table, which she had converted to a workspace. “Watch out for the power cords,” she murmured, stepping over an orange extension cord.
“Roger,” the scary detective replied.
That sounded more military than law enforcement. But then, he took the chair she indicated, and she reached over his shoulder to cue up the tape—and the scent of him knocked all rational thought right out of her head. He smelled like...warmth. His cologne was subtle and spicy and entirely edible. It totally didn’t mesh in her mind with the frowning, badass cop.
“I’m the camera operator for a TV show called America’s Ghosts, hosted by Gary Hubbard. I shot this footage of him earlier tonight.”
Gary’s deep voice filled the awkward silence and his image walked backward down the alley onscreen. She watched Detective LeBlanc from behind without comment, letting him form his own first impression.
The two men in black appeared, Gary turned around, and the men dragged him away. The whole incident took less than thirty seconds to play.
“Again,” the detective ordered, his eyes never leaving the screen.
She leaned forward to restart the footage, and her arm brushed against his, her face coming dangerously close to his ear. She jumped, as alarmed as if she’d poked a bear. She might not take crap from Gary, but cops turned her into a terrified teen all over again.
While the detective watched the video, she furtively watched him, noting the tiny frown of concentration, and the way muscles in his jaw rippled as his face tensed. He must be watching the abduction bit now.
He glanced up and caught her blatantly scoping him out. She looked away hastily, her heart racing as if she’d just sprinted a mile. She felt her cheeks heating up. Sheesh, this man made her uncomfortable.
“You said you can do stop-action on this machine?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to run the last part of the video, where the assailants grab Mr. Hubbard, frame by frame.”
She almost said, “Yes, sir,” but managed to mumble, “Coming up,” instead. She had to reach past him again to operate her mouse, and her left breast brushed his right arm by accident. She sucked in a sharp breath and kept her horrified gaze locked on the computer screen. Thankfully, he just leaned forward to study the screen closely as she advanced the video one frame at a time, each frame progressing by one forty-eighth of a second.
“There. Stop,” LeBlanc bit out, startling her. She stopped the video and stared at the image. The two black figures had a hold of Gary and appeared to be goose-stepping him away from her. She’d already seen it a dozen times.
LeBlanc poked at the screen. “Look at how this one is holding Mr. Hubbard’s hand. He’s twisting your boss’s hand behind his back and forcing his forearm upward with the hold.”
“And that’s significant why?” she asked.
“It’s a technique military members are taught for subduing prisoners.”
She frowned. “Would police use the same grip?”
He grinned up at her briefly, and she gasped inwardly as his smile lit up the dingy apartment. “Naw. Cops use handcuffs.”
“I’ll bet that’s what you say to all the girls,” she shot back. The smart remark was out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—”
“No worries. And no, that’s not in my usual repertoire of pickup lines.”
“You have a repertoire?” Darn it, she’d done it again! This guy was a cop, for crying out loud. Lord, he threw her off balance.
His mouth twitched, hopefully with humor. Great. At best, he thought she was ridiculous. At worst, he thought she was an annoying twit. Not that she could blame him. She was a hot mess tonight.
Frantic to distract him, she mumbled, “What does it mean that one of his captors used some special grip on him?”
The detective’s muscular shoulder lifted in a shrug. “It’s a detail we can use to help identify the assailants.”
“You think that was a real abduction then?” she blurted.
“I do.”
Panic erupted in her belly and promptly tried to claw its way out of her throat. Suddenly she felt light-headed and faintly nauseated. “But who...?” she gasped. “Why?”
The detective surged to his feet, looming over her. He grasped her upper arms in his powerful hands and guided her over to the sofa, where he sat her down. Which was probably wise. The room spun around her and lights danced before her eyes.
“Take a deep breath, Miss Price. Hold it for one, two, three. Now exhale slowly. Three. Two. One.”
He talked her through several more breaths, and they helped her brain engage again. Still. She couldn’t seem to keep her hands from fidgeting uncontrollably. She plucked at the seam in her jeans and then wrung her hands and tugged at her T-shirt. He sat down beside her and his hands closed over hers as she stared at him in anguish.
His gaze wasn’t the least bit gentle. Thank God. She would’ve burst into tears then and there. But maybe that was a hint of sympathy lurking at the back of his deep blue eyes. Huh. The tough guy might just be human beneath that hard façade.
She wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers up over her head, and curl up in a little ball with Mr. Paddles, her stuffed turtle. Which was weird if she stopped to think about it. She didn’t revert to little girl behaviors, well, pretty much ever. Not since she’d run away from home all those years ago. She’d been barely more than a child then.
The detective spoke not exactly gently, but less harshly than before. “The New Orleans Police will do everything we can to find Mr. Hubbard as quickly as possible.”
“You’re sure it’s not a prank?” she asked in a small voice.
“I don’t think it is. Mr. Hubbard’s body language in the video is consistent with genuine surprise and fear as he’s being dragged away.”
“I followed them down the alley. I couldn’t run because the camera would jostle too much, but I walked at a good clip. It was under a minute until I reached the end of the alley. Where could they have gone in so little time? God, I’m such an idiot—” She broke off as it dawned on her she was babbling.
The detective snorted. “With a minute’s head start, they could have thrown your boss into a vehicle and driven away without you ever seeing their taillights.”
Her breathing started to speed up again, and the detective looked her in the eye, took a deep breath, held it, and then released it slowly. Staring at him, she followed along, matching her breaths to his. It was an intimate thing, breathing in concert with him. Their gazes locked—his focused and calm, and hers probably completely freaked out.
In any other circumstances, she would be wildly attracted to a man who looked like him. But as it was, she could hardly keep the panic at bay. And it wasn’t just panic over Gary. Merely being in the presence of this man scared the heck out of her. And not only because he was a cop.
“Why Gary?”
“I don’t know why Mr. Hubbard was a target,” he said reasonably. “You tell me. Was he in any trouble? Did he have any enemies?”
She stared up at him in dismay. They were really going to do this? He was going to question her for real? Lord, she hated questions from police.
Her panic galloped away from her then, and her entire body shook with it. She’d been questioned like this once before, and look how that had turned out. Her best fri
end had died. Because of her. Because she’d gone to the police. Had she done it again? Had she just gotten Gary killed, too?
Chapter 2
Bastien stared down at the frightened young woman before him. She was a tiny little thing. And right now, scared out of her mind, she looked about twelve years old. Scratch that. She was too hot ever to be mistaken for a child. She was petite but she had curves in all the right places. Her hair was brown with gold streaks and currently pulled into a high ponytail that hung long and smooth down her back. Her eyes were big and dark, and her skin had a beautiful olive undertone. He’d place her ancestry as at least partially Mediterranean.
She was the kind of woman a man looked at twice. Maybe had some dirty dreams about. Had he met her in any other setting—at a bar or with a mutual acquaintance—he’d have done his damnedest to charm her into his bed.
Did she realize she was wringing her hands again? He really shouldn’t stop her—they were a useful body language tell—but damned if he could stop himself from reaching out to take her hands once more, rescuing her reddened fingers from death by squeezing.
Thing was, he was no rookie. He knew better than to fall into the whole comfort-the-family-member thing. It wasn’t his job and could end up being a giant distraction when it came to finding missing persons. He had become a cop to solve problems. To use his military training to catch bad guys. When he was on duty, he was all about the job. Put the pieces together. Solve the crime. Move on to the next case. He did his best to stay away from all the messy human emotions that came with his line of work. They were nothing but a distraction.
However, he wasn’t entirely without basic human decency. And that forced him to feel at least a little sympathy for this young woman in the face of her fear. Still, this was work, and it was not his job to pat her hand and say, “There, there.” It was his job to find the guy in the video.
And like it or not, he was sitting in front of his only currently identified suspect. She wasn’t much of a suspect as they went. After all, she’d come forward to the police with direct video evidence of the crime. But, he couldn’t rule her out, either. She was a known close associate of the missing person.
He prompted her, “Can you think of anyone who would want to do Mr. Hubbard harm?”
“That’s a complicated question where Gary Hubbard is concerned,” she finally offered up.
“Why’s that?”
A sigh. “His television show has devoted fans and equally devoted haters. There’s a whole group on social media devoted to debunking his ghost sightings.”
Seriously? Ghosts? He schooled his face to give away nothing and nodded encouragingly.
Another sigh from the young woman. “Gary has a big personality. He likes to play jokes on people and delights in poking at people’s most cherished beliefs. He’s a bit of a curmudgeon in that regard.”
“Give me an example.”
“He tries to refute generally accepted versions of history using communication with ghosts to dispute commonly held understanding of famous historic events. He did a series of shows about the founding fathers and talked to ghosts of their slaves to prove what a good deal it was to be one of their slaves. Gary got hundreds of death threats over those shows.”
“When did these episodes air?”
“At the end of his first season, six years ago. The public outcry was what got his show renewed, in fact.”
Damn. It was old history, then. That didn’t sound like a motive now for kidnapping and possibly worse. But he asked nonetheless, “What’s the most recent scandal he’s stirred up?”
“Well, this season, he’s working on a treasure hunt having to do with the last French governor of Louisiana in 1803. The guy supposedly worked for Napoleon, but Gary got it in his head that this guy, Pierre Clément deLaussat, was a secret French royalist.”
Still didn’t sound like motive for kidnapping or worse. What was he missing? He prompted, “And this is controversial because...”
“Gary claims to have been approached by the ghost of deLaussat’s mistress, who told him deLaussat was in possession of a great royal French secret that he hid in New Orleans.”
“Are you kidding me?” Bastien blurted.
The young woman winced. “I wish I were.”
“I hardly think the reputation of some guy who lived in the early 1800s is worth committing a felony over.”
“You would think, wouldn’t you?” she responded. “But Gary’s detractors get wired way tight when he attempts to challenge history.”
“If he’s using conversations with ghosts as his rationale, I can see why they get up in arms.”
She looked up at him, her chocolate eyes worried. “Enough to harm him?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? He summarized: “So far, all we know is that two guys grabbed him and took him away from Pirate’s Alley. Maybe they wanted to get more information from him. Or hell, I don’t know, maybe they wanted him to perform a séance.”
She snorted. “Gary wouldn’t know how to do a real séance if a ghost jumped up and bit him in the butt.”
“Duly noted,” he replied dryly.
Her gaze snapped to his, and a moment of humor shone in her eyes. It lit her entire face, transforming her into a fey creature for an instant. Whoa. He could almost believe in ghosts and otherworldly beings when she looked at him like that.
Kidnapping. Investigation. Ask questions. He dragged his mind back to business and managed to come up with, “You said he’s on a treasure hunt. For what? How valuable is it? Maybe someone snatched Hubbard to get at a rich treasure.”
“I don’t know what the treasure is. He won’t say. He’s releasing clues in each show this season and plans to do a big reveal in the season finale.”
Bastien frowned. “How can you not know? Aren’t you working closely with him on the television show?”
“You’d think.” Bastien detected a hint of bitterness in her voice. So. She wasn’t happy that the boss was keeping secrets from her. Unhappy enough to provide a motive for kidnapping, maybe?
He asked, “Has Mr. Hubbard received any recent threats? Maybe letters or emails?”
“I don’t know. He handles his own correspondence. I’m just the cameraperson, and I do the first post-shoot editing.”
Did that mean she was responsible for dubbing in ghosts? He was tempted to ask, but he wasn’t here to argue with a ghost hunter over the existence of ghosts. “Do you have access to Mr. Hubbard’s email account?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Normally, we have to wait until a subject has been missing for forty-eight hours before we can use police resources to begin searching for him.”
She frowned. “I might be able to figure out his password. He’s not the most creative or computer-savvy guy on the planet.”
“It would be best if you leave his computer alone for now.” Spotting the stubborn look that entered her eyes, he added, “If you do get into his account, give me a call immediately.”
She nodded, a frankly adorable frown puckering her brow. And, she was back to looking like a nymphette. He would not look at her chest. At a glance it wasn’t anything to write home about, but at a second glance, she was nicely endowed in proportion to her overall smallness. Dammit, he respected women, and he was not going to turn this interview into a leering session.
“Can you think of anything else that might help me find Mr. Hubbard?”
“He’s a big beer drinker. Tends to hang out at microbreweries and in bars that serve artisanal beers.”
That gave him a place to start. He could canvas the local bars. “Do you have a picture of Mr. Hubbard that I could have?”
“Of course.” She moved over to the kitchen sink and lifted out a three-ring binder that she carried back to the sofa.
“You don’t cook much?” he asked.
�
�What?” She glanced back at the sink and down at the binder. “Oh. No. I destroyed a pan once while trying to hard-boil eggs. And it was stainless steel.”
“Impressive.”
“Did you know eggs actually blow up?” she asked indignantly.
He bit back a snort of humor. “Can’t say I did.”
She sat down next to him, and he was abruptly aware again of how small she was. Her face was fine-boned and slightly heart-shaped, vaguely elfin in appearance and utterly lovely. “They make a god-awful mess when they do. Yolk goes everywhere, and it dries on stuff like paint.”
His lips twitched in humor as she rifled through the binder.
“These are publicity photos he sends to fans. Would this work?” She pulled out an eight-by-eleven glossy head shot of Gary Hubbard.
He studied the professional picture critically. “That’s arguably the best photo I’ve ever seen of a missing person. Hell, it’s practically life-sized.”
She smiled back at him. “Let’s just say Gary is not a modest man and leave it at that.”
“Tell me more about him.”
“He’s been a television personality for nearly thirty years. He hosted a string of failed game shows. Tried a talk show, but he wouldn’t shut up and let his guests talk. That lasted only half a season. Then he landed the ghost-hunting gig. He’s been doing America’s Ghosts for six years.”
“Wife? Kids? Business partners?”
“No to all three. He likes to be in control. He’s got a crew back in New York, and they research locations, set up shoots, and help with post-production work, but on the road, it’s just him and me.”
That sent warning flags up in his mind. He asked, “How would you describe your relationship? Just coworkers? Friends? More?” He watched closely for tells of a lie. She was a lot younger than Hubbard and might not want to admit to an affair if there was one.
She startled him by laughing in genuine amusement at the question. “Me and Gary? Together? That’s hilarious. No, it’s a little sick, actually. We’re definitely not more than friends and coworkers. Sheesh. He’s older than my father.”