by Cindy Dees
Bastien was surprised by the relief that flooded his gut. It was none of his business who she slept with. Still. He was glad she wasn’t involved with her boss.
“How did you come to be associated with the show? Were you assigned to it by the network?”
“No. Gary hired me. He told his bosses he wanted to work with me, and they reviewed my portfolio and agreed to hire me.”
Huh. So she owed her job to him. Did that reduce her viability as a suspect? Or perhaps she resented him because of it. Aloud, he asked, “What all do you do for Mr. Hubbard...as his coworker?”
“I film the show and direct him from behind the camera. Then he and I do the initial post-production editing and cleanup.”
She continued, “We shoot anywhere from three to ten episodes in a single location, and then we usually return to New York. The editor there cuts together the shows and Gary records any voice-overs they require.”
“How long have you two been in New Orleans?”
“About two weeks. We spent a week checking out spots to film, and the plan was to spend about three weeks filming for the show.”
How had this glorious creature been in his city for two weeks without him knowing about her? His radar for beautiful women must be slipping. Usually he was the first to know and the first to make a move. Not that he was sleezy about it. He liked women, and they liked him. He just didn’t like to get too deeply involved with any one woman.
Consciously suppressing his natural tendency to turn on the charm with the lovely Miss Price, Bastien asked, “While you were scouting locations, what did Mr. Hubbard say about this supposed treasure he’s tracking?”
“Not a word. He’s keeping whatever he knows about it completely to himself.”
Too bad. A rich treasure would certainly constitute a motive for kidnapping or worse. “Has Mr. Hubbard suggested on the show that the treasure is valuable?”
“This season hasn’t aired on television yet. But in the episodes we’ve already shot, he has indicated that the treasure is priceless.”
“Who all has seen the footage shot so far?”
“Gary, me and the production crew in New York.”
“I’ll need names of everyone on the crew.”
“Umm, okay. I can get that for you in the morning. I think I know everyone, but I may be missing someone who has access to the footage.”
He nodded and then said, “So you’ll be in town a few more weeks?”
“Assuming Gary shows up soon and we can resume filming on schedule.”
“What if he doesn’t show up?” he responded casually.
Horror filled her eyes, and then tears followed. He saw a lot of tears in his line of work and had become hardened to them long ago. But this woman’s unshed tears brimming in her stricken eyes twisted his gut painfully. He bit back an urge to tell her not to worry. That he would find her boss for her and bring him back to her. But he knew better than to make promises he couldn’t necessarily keep.
She choked out between sobbing gasps of air, “Gary’s like a father to me. He can be a pain in the butt, but he has a good heart, and he looked out for me when I needed it—”
She broke off. An interesting choice of words. Had she been in some kind of trouble that Hubbard rescued her from?
On the weekends, Bastien pulled reserve duty in a Navy SEAL unit, and his teammates often accused him of being a suspicious bastard. He assured them it was merely his cop’s instinct. And right now, that instinct was firing on all cylinders. There was a story behind this young woman. He would bet his police badge and his Budweiser—his SEAL insignia pin—that she had secrets to hide.
He asked, “Have you and Mr. Hubbard had any disagreements recently? Any falling-outs?”
She answered without hesitation, “We fight all the time. Gary always thinks he knows better than me how to stage and film the show. But he has no artist’s eye whatsoever, not to mention no training as a camera operator.”
Hmm. No evasion in her answer, but an admission of friction. He couldn’t take her off the suspect list yet. Too bad. His gut feeling was that she was not part of the kidnapping plot. But he only trusted gut feelings when they involved guns pointed at him or bad guys sneaking up behind him. In the world of law enforcement, it was all about evidence and cold, hard facts. Which was, of course, part of the allure of it to him. No need for messy things like emotions and relationships.
He stood up and fished a business card out of his wallet. “Here’s my phone number. Call me if Mr. Hubbard shows up or contacts you. If you think of anything else that might help me locate him, call me any time, day or night.”
“When do you sleep?” she asked.
One corner of his mouth curled sardonically. “I don’t.”
“You’re a cyborg, then?”
“Something like that.” He had to give her credit. She had a quick wit. When she wasn’t hiding things or scared silly, she was probably an entertaining person to be around. “Don’t worry about waking me up. If you hear from him or think of something, call me right away. Time is the enemy in missing persons cases.”
She nodded her understanding and reached for his card. Their fingertips brushed and he caught her fast, light inhalation. Attracted to him, was she? Aww, baby. It’s totally mutual.
An urge to reach out, cup the sweet curve of her cheek in his hand, to lean down and brush those berry lips with his, to whisper in her ear that he would make everything all right, nearly overcame him.
Damn, she was messing with his head! It must be the fact that he couldn’t have her that was making her so completely irresistible. But he had a hard rule about not dating on the job, and he wasn’t about to break it. Not for her. Not for any woman.
Not that he actually dated much at all. What with working long hours as a cop and longer hours on the weekends training SEALs, he didn’t exactly have a thriving social life. Throw in the occasional deployment with the SEALs where he could be gone anywhere from a few days to weeks, and it wasn’t worth the effort to try to sustain relationships in between the demands of his twin careers.
He supposed he technically could be accused of serial dating a long string of women. But he didn’t engage in actual relationships with any of them. At best, a few of them rose to the status of friends with benefits. But he’d learned a long time ago never to give away his heart to anyone. He’d seen the devastation love wrought, and he wanted no part of it.
He followed Carrie out of her apartment and down to the second-floor landing. “Who lives in this apartment?” he asked, pointing at the locked door there.
“Gary. The show’s producer rented this whole building for the month we’ll be in town.”
“Do you have a key to his place?”
“I do. He’s forever misplacing his keys and locking himself out, so I’m the designated spare key lady.”
Did she realize that having access to his home made her more of a suspect? It connoted more of a personal connection between them than she’d admitted to so far. The vast majority of abductions, and murders for that matter, were committed by people close to the victim.
He waited while she fumbled around in her fanny pack and found the spare key to Gary’s apartment.
She reached out to unlock the door and he forestalled her, grabbing her wrist quickly and saying sharply, “Let me do that.”
“Why?”
“It’s unlawful trespassing for you to enter without the owner’s permission. I can legally enter to search the premises in an emergency. And given that we have film of the man being abducted by force, I’d say that qualifies.”
In reality, he didn’t want her tampering with any evidence that might incriminate her. Not to mention he wanted to make sure there were no hostiles lurking in the abducted victim’s home.
He stepped in front of her and eased the key into the lock. He turned the knob s
ilently and pushed the door open by slow degrees. No movement on the other side, no sound. No reaction at all. He eased the door further open.
He gestured for Carrie to stay back and slipped inside the darkened apartment, identical in layout to the one upstairs.
Hubbard’s apartment smelled like beer and stale pizza and was beyond slovenly. The place looked like it had been tossed. Seat cushions were on the floor, the contents of drawers spilled out, and everything thrown off the shelves. Television was still here, so not a robbery.
If the place had been searched, it had been a hasty search. A quick once-through looking for something specific. Had whoever tossed it found what they were looking for? It did look like the whole place had been searched, which led him to believe the searcher had not found what he sought.
He hadn’t sensed any stress at all in Carrie when she handed over the key. His gut was at it again, proclaiming loudly that she hadn’t had anything to do with this ransacking. Shut up, gut.
It took him under a minute to clear the entire apartment, with just a main room, bedroom and bathroom to check out. It was empty.
He didn’t spot any clothing, personal items or toiletries to indicate that Miss Price spent any time down here. Again, relief flowed through him. Dammit. He lectured himself forcefully. Not. His. Business.
He moved back to the entry door and switched on the lights. “He’s not home.”
“May I come in?”
“No. I don’t want you to disturb the crime scene.”
“Crime scene—” She rounded the corner to stand in the doorway and stared inside in dismay. “What happened? It looks like a tornado hit.”
“I’d say someone searched the place. Could Mr. Hubbard have done this, or was it likely an intruder?”
“He’s a slob, but he’s not this bad.”
“From where you’re standing, can you identify any of your employer’s possessions that are missing?”
She looked around helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. I’m coming out and I’ll seal the door until the crime scene guys can get over here and have a look at the place. I’m going to ask them to lift fingerprints and do an inventory of possessions. Maybe they can identify who did this. It’s likely whoever searched this place was involved in Mr. Hubbard’s disappearance.”
He jogged down to his car and brought back supplies. He pasted a red paper seal to the door and frame, so if anyone opened the door they would break the seal. Then he put a big yellow X of Crime Scene Do Not Cross tape over the entire entrance.
“I’m the only other person who lives in this building,” she commented after he was done. “You could have just told me not to go inside.”
Yes, but she was a suspect. He shrugged. “Gotta follow procedure.”
She walked him down to the street-level exit. He turned to face her and her eyes were big and dark with worry, and maybe fear.
His gut twisted at the sight of her looking so lost and vulnerable, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Try to get at least a little sleep. You will need stamina over the next few days if Mr. Hubbard has, indeed, been kidnapped.”
If possible, her eyes got even bigger and more worried looking.
“Call me if you hear anything at all tonight or if you remember something that might help me find your boss. Hell, call me if you’re scared and can’t sleep.”
She nodded doubtfully.
“Promise?”
“I guess.”
“Promise me,” he repeated. He was making a mistake, to press her like this. He was skirting dangerously close to forming a personal connection with her.
“All right. I promise.”
Why in the hell he’d felt compelled to extract that promise from her, he hadn’t the slightest idea. And frankly, he had no desire to examine the impulse any more closely. There was something about her that made him want to protect her.
Weird. He’d never lived to protect women before. In fact, the women he worked with—attached as support staff to his SEAL unit—were badass in the extreme and fully capable of protecting themselves. They would laugh their heads off at him going all protect-the-little-lady on a crime suspect. Even if she was both little and a lady.
He desperately hoped she was actually a damsel-in-distress. But he feared Carrie Price was simply a talented con artist. God knew, he had plenty of experience with those.
Chapter 3
Carrie tried to sleep, but every time she dozed off she dreamed of men in black whisking her away and carrying her down into darkness cold enough to freeze her lungs. She woke up gasping for air, so terrified she pulled the covers all the way over her head and cowered under the blankets, clutching her stuffed turtle close like she had when she was a frightened child.
As dawn crept around the flimsy curtains and the city outside her window began to wake, she gave up on sleeping. She called Gary’s phone, and when there was no answer, she went downstairs to check the seals on his door. Please be home. Please be home.
The red seal was still in place, the yellow crime scene tape undisturbed.
Damn.
Real dread for Gary’s safety roared through her, and her legs barely supported her weight as she fought the urge to cry. This was her fault. If she’d realized the abduction was real she could have run forward, fought the attackers. Two on two, Gary might have stood a chance of escaping.
Who was she kidding? She barely weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet and didn’t know the first thing about self-defense. And Gary was no spring chicken. Still. There had to have been something she could have done.
Heart heavy, she went upstairs and called the television show’s executive producer. It was barely 7:00 a.m. in New York and the guy didn’t pick up, so she left an urgent message that Gary was missing and appeared to have been kidnapped.
She played the videotape again, unable to watch it now without spotting that distinctive twist and lift move put on Gary’s hand behind his back. She couldn’t stop watching the tape. Over and over, she watched the black shapes appear, move in behind Gary, grab him, and rush away into the night. But no matter how many times she watched it, the outcome was the same. Gary was gone.
There had to be something useful she could do to find him or at least prove he was indeed missing.
Had he received threats he hadn’t told her about? He had seemed distracted ever since they’d arrived in New Orleans. But she had put it down to his obsession with finding his lost treasure and proving that the last governor of Louisiana had been no friend of Napoleon’s.
When critics lambasted him online for perpetrating a giant historical hoax, he’d muttered a few cryptic comments about having tangible proof this time. A few nights ago, when he’d come home late, more drunk than not, he’d even mumbled about being close to finding an incredible treasure while she’d taken off his shoes and tucked him into his bed.
What did you get yourself mixed up in, Gary?
She was choking down some dry toast when it belatedly dawned on her that Gary had put a duffel bag in their van yesterday as they’d left for the Pirate’s Alley shoot. She raced downstairs to the garage and threw open the back of the van.
Opening the drab olive canvas duffel, she spied Gary’s laptop sitting on top of a pile of his filming clothes—flowing artist’s smock shirts with open collars that he thought were appropriate for a master ghost hunter. Personally, she thought they made him look like an old hippie.
She grabbed the laptop and headed back upstairs to try to break into it. Detective LeBlanc might have told her to leave it alone, but she had to do something to find her boss. She couldn’t just sit back and wait for two days until the police got around to declaring him missing.
A computer hacker she was not. However, she knew Gary pretty well, and she doubted he was the kind of guy to get too creative with his passwords. How hard coul
d it be to figure it out? She tried a dozen combinations of his birthday, address, and the name of his childhood pet, a mangy mutt he still talked about, forty years later.
Not that she could fault him for over-loving his dog. Her best friend, Shelly Baker, had often declared that the only reason she didn’t kill herself was because her cat would miss her too much. If a pet was a kid’s reason to live and sole source of love, Carrie supposed that was better than no love at all.
Her own parents and her older brother had been okay. They’d been average people with average expectations of her. As long as she passed her classes and didn’t get into trouble, they didn’t pay much attention to her comings and goings.
She’d tried to talk to them about Shelly when things had started getting bad at her friend’s house, but they’d told her to keep her nose out of it and that how Shelly’s mom and stepdad raised her wasn’t anyone else’s business.
She added Gary’s agent’s name to the mix of possible password combinations, and on about the sixth try, his computer popped open.
Yaaasss! She fist pumped the air.
The past several days’ worth of emails didn’t yield anything that screamed of threats from a potential kidnapper. Gary got several hundred emails a day, though, and it was going to take a while to read through his entire backlog of emails and deleted messages.
She pulled out her cell phone and Detective Leblanc’s business card. Reluctance roared through her. He was an authority figure and scary to boot. But he’d been adamant that she call him if she found anything new and that he would be mad at her if she didn’t call. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m., though, and he’d been at her place until after three. Maybe she should let him sleep?
No. He’d said to call any time.
She dialed the number before she could second-guess herself.
“Detective LeBlanc.” He sounded alert and not half dead like she would if she were woken from a deep sleep.
“It’s Carrie Price. I found Gary’s computer and figured out his password. I’m into his email.”
“I told you to stay out of his place.”