by Cindy Dees
“Oh, no. I saw the diary just yesterday. It’s perfectly safe.” In fact, it was locked in Bass’s desk back in the SEAL operations center.
“It’s a priceless artifact. Legend in my family is that it holds the clue to finding a great treasure.”
“The same treasure Gary’s hunting on this season of his show?” Carrie asked.
“Exactly! He said he’s basing his entire show around dear Mignonette’s secret. I don’t understand why Gary hasn’t come to see me, yet. He was very excited to return here and film Mignonette’s story.”
Carrie sighed. “Gary is missing. We don’t know when he will return, and that’s why there’s a delay in shooting the show.”
“Is that why all these big, strong men are here? They’re protecting me?” Amelie exclaimed.
In point of fact, they were protecting Carrie, but she wasn’t sure it was worth splitting hairs with their dotty hostess. She said carefully, “We’re concerned that treasure-hunters may try to come after Mignonette’s secret, and it made sense to up security until we figure out who’s interested in the treasure besides Gary.”
“Oh, dear. Oh dear, oh dear!”
Carrie fanned Miss Amelie some more and was greatly relieved when Bass turned the corner carrying a tray with several cups of tea on it.
He fussed over the older woman, unfolding a linen napkin over her lap and handing her a teacup and saucer. Amelie simpered, enjoying the attention.
Carrie took one sip of the syrupy sweet tea and set her cup down, suppressing a grimace. “You were telling me more about Mignonette.”
“She didn’t write about treasure exactly. She more hinted at it than wrote about it,” Amelie replied.
“Do you have any other writings from Mignonette? More diaries, maybe?”
“No, but we have a whole pile of letters she got from relatives in France. They were royalists, you know. Had to go into hiding and flee with their most valuable possessions.”
“Is the treasure something of theirs, then?” Bass asked.
Amelie laughed. “Oh, no. It belonged to the royal family of France.”
Carrie dived in. “Any idea what it was?”
“Well,” Amelie said conspiratorially, “the story in our family goes that it was part of the French royal regalia. A crown or scepter or something like that. It belonged to King Louis himself.”
“Which one?” Bass asked.
Amelie threw him an exasperated look. “Does it matter? All the French kings were named Louis.”
Carrie threw a warning look at Bass for him to behave and interjected soothingly, “Did Mignonette keep the treasure? Maybe hide it somewhere in this house?”
“Oh, no. My relatives have torn into every wall and ripped up every floorboard in search of the treasure. It’s definitely not in this house. Besides, Mignonette never possessed the treasure. Her lover had it.”
“Pierre-Clément de Laussat?” Carrie asked. “The last French governor of Louisiana?”
Amelie sighed. “That’s him. So romantic and tragic, their love.”
Carrie got the distinct impression from Mignonette’s diary that the guy had been married and refused to leave his wife for her. Which wasn’t exactly the stuff of romantic love stories. She glanced up and caught Bass’s wry gaze. They shared mutual mental rolled eyes.
“Did Mignonette have any idea what happened to this supposed treasure?”
“The family legend is that her lover gave it to her father to hide where only he could ever find it again.”
“Her father the merchant. With ships?” Bass asked.
“Correct,” their hostess answered. Amelie finished her tea and declared herself exhausted. She put up a rather theatric act of being too weak to make it all the way back to her room under her own power, and Bass volunteered one of his men to walk her back to her bedroom. Carrie bit back a grin at the guy’s long-suffering look over his shoulder as he walked Amelie and her ridiculous ghost costume out of the parlor.
Bass burst out, “How are we supposed to find something—and we have no idea what it is or if it really exists—that was last seen over two hundred years ago and could be hidden anywhere along the entire length of the Mississippi River or the whole of the Caribbean?”
Carrie swiveled to stare at him. “Why do you care about finding this supposed treasure at all?”
“If I knew what people were looking for, I’d stand a much better chance of identifying who took Gary.”
Carrie tilted her head thoughtfully. “What if you made everyone believe you knew what and where the treasure is? Wouldn’t that have the same effect of drawing the kidnappers out?”
“How would we get the word out?” Bass asked curiously.
She replied, “What if we give a press release that there’s treasure, say, in this house? Wouldn’t that force the kidnappers to come to us?”
Bass commented, “We could make a big fuss over security. Not let anyone into the building.”
Carrie nodded. “We could say that because of the time-sensitive nature of the treasure hunt, the show is going to resume filming in Gary’s absence. That would put huge pressure on the treasure-hunters to come here for the treasure.”
Bass nodded. “My guys already know the layout here. We’d have the tactical advantage. But we’d need other people around to disguise our presence here.”
“What can I do to help?” Carrie asked promptly.
“Make as big a production as possible of your filming. Close down the entire street outside. Make a movie set of the place.”
She laughed. “Well, that would be a stretch for a television show of this type, but I’ll do my best. I can call in a few favors. I ought to be able to get light booms, power generators, maybe even a makeup trailer. A bunch of films get shot in New Orleans, and there should be plenty of movie supply companies. As long as no big production is filming in town right now, there should be plenty of equipment sitting around, ready to be rented. Best case: I can have them here sometime tomorrow.”
“Perfect.” Bass turned to his guys, and they began walking through various scenarios for how and where to trap whatever treasure-hunters showed up. Carrie got lost quickly in sight lines and fields of fire and dozed on the couch while they planned. She sure wouldn’t want to be whoever got caught in their web.
She was deeply asleep when Bass woke her sometime later, murmuring that she needed to go to bed. Stumbling up the stairs and down the long hall to her room, she turned right when Bass told her to and fell into bed, asleep within seconds of her head hitting the pillow.
* * *
It ended up taking two days to arrange for all the snazzy filming equipment to show up in front of Amelie’s house. But when it arrived, it was a zoo.
The commotion drew local photographers and news crews, all of whom were dying to know what the fuss was about. Bass called in the NOPD spokesperson to read a prepared statement to the crowd. As expected, a buzz went up at the mention of a priceless, long-lost treasure being hidden in the house.
As the press conference dispersed, Carrie, watching from inside with Bass, muttered to him, “You do realize every nutball in New Orleans is about to show up here, right?”
He grinned ruefully. “Oh, yeah. But I figure the serious players will wait until late at night to make a run at the treasure.”
The New Orleans police had their hands full through the afternoon maintaining a security perimeter around the bed-and-breakfast. Amelie got a new case of the vapors every hour or so, but the woman was obviously thrilled at all the publicity her place was getting.
Meanwhile, Carrie decided to take advantage of all the cool movie equipment and set up a number of elaborate shots she wouldn’t normally be able to pull off with her single, shoulder-held camera. If these New Orleans episodes of the show ever did make it to television, they were going to be spectacular.
>
She was exhausted when the last crewmembers finally left the house a little before midnight. She had a ton of great footage to rough cut and send to New York, but that could wait until tomorrow.
It had been a disappointment to wake up alone in bed this morning. But then, she and Bass hadn’t exactly parted on good terms the last time they’d been in a bed together. No way was she going to tell him her real name. From that, it would be only a hop, skip and a jump to the whole sordid story of her past. Well, the whole story that the police in New York were aware of. Nobody knew the whole story except her. And Lonnie Grange.
The mere thought of him gave her chills. She wasn’t a violent person, but if anyone had ever been in need of killing, he was that guy. He’d stripped away her innocence. Taught her fear. And he’d taken away any chance of a normal life from her. That was probably what she resented the most. She’d grown up wanting to have a family some day. A home. Kids. Roots.
But all of that was gone.
Tired after a long day of shooting, she headed for her room, pausing to stare at her door, then at Bass’s door. With a sigh of defeat, she turned left and went into her room.
She pulled up short at the sight of Bass just stepping out of her bathroom with a towel wrapped round his hips. Yowza. Talk about a rack of abs that wouldn’t quit. She struggled to lift her eyes away from his godlike torso to speak to him.
“What are you doing in here?” she stammered.
“I thought I told you I was trading rooms with you. My old room faces the courtyard, which is patrolled by one of my guys at all times. It’s a lot safer than this room with a window facing the street.”
Her stomach dropped in disappointment. He really didn’t want anything to do with her. Not since she’d refused to tell him her name. Now that he knew the full extent of her inability to trust him.
“Sorry. I forgot in all the chaos. Where’s my stuff?” she asked in resignation.
“Across the hall. I moved it for you.”
“Thanks.” She backed toward the door. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”
He didn’t want her any more. They’d had sex, he’d scratched that itch, she’d screwed up, and he’d obviously moved on. She was just another notch in his bedpost. Fine. If that was how he wanted things to be, so be it.
She marched across the hall and closed the door behind herself.
If only she didn’t have an uncontrollable urge to fling herself across the bed and sob into a pillow. She tried telling herself sternly that he wasn’t worth crying over. That sleeping with him had been a giant mistake. That he hadn’t earned her tears.
But it didn’t help. The tears still came.
It was a long, lonely night.
Chapter 10
Bass sat under Carrie’s window, pulling a shift in the courtyard, watching the light in her room go off. Then on for a half hour or so. Then off again. She couldn’t sleep either, huh?
What the hell was he doing? He knew better than to get involved with her. Even if it had become clear she wasn’t part of the kidnapping plot, it still was a lousy idea to get involved with any woman, given his line of work.
As the night aged and cooled, he occupied himself with trying to imagine a hypothetically normal life with Carrie. Being a cop might even become just a job. Something he left at the office at the end of the workday. If he had a family to go home to, maybe he could finally learn to set aside the cases, even if just for a few hours every day.
The Navy’s psychologists told him he was too invested in his work. That he should get a hobby and have a real social life. Hell, he spent hours and hours restoring cars, didn’t he? That counted, didn’t it? Although it was a pursuit he did alone. It didn’t exactly check the having a social life box. Carrie was what the shrinks were talking about. A living, breathing, walking, talking human being to spend time with.
He did enjoy being with her. She was witty and sweet, and they fit together in bed—both physically and emotionally.
Even if she were to agree to give up her nomadic lifestyle and settle down in New Orleans, could he give up his obsession with his work? Could he walk away from being a superhero out to save the world?
The very thought gave him the heebie-jeebies. His entire adult life had been spent doing one thing—chasing bad guys. Was he even capable of sustaining a long-term relationship of the romantic variety?
More to the point, did he want to find out?
He knew as well as any shrink that the only way to answer the question would be to try. Carrie was exactly the kind of woman he would want to try with if he ever did go for it and dive into a deep, meaningful relationship...with one glaring exception, of course.
He would never, ever, be able to trust a woman who couldn’t—who wouldn’t—tell him her real name.
An ugly sensation nibbled at his gut, and it took him a while sitting in the shadowed corner of the garden to identify it. Fear. Not the pulse-pounding, adrenaline-induced, about-to-die terror that happened in the field if a guy wasn’t properly trained or if a hostile got the jump on him.
No, this fear was a great deal more insidious. It crept through his skin and wormed its way into his gut, coiling like a snake waiting to strike.
Surely he wasn’t this terrified of a little thing like Carrie Price.
Which was, of course, an evasion from the truth. He wasn’t scared of Carrie. He was scared to death of how she made him feel.
Feelings got in the way of doing the job, of catching the bad guy and solving the crime. Hell, they got in the way of pretty much everything. Life was so much simpler without a bunch of messy feelings cluttering up the works.
Dawn was just starting to lighten the sky in the east to dull gray when his cell phone buzzed. Who was calling him at this time of night? It was a police number. “Detective LeBlanc.”
“Sorry to bug you, sir, but Homicide has a body that roughly matches the description of your missing TV show guy.”
“Where’s the body now?”
“Washed up on the north shore of the Mississippi. We can wait for the medical examiner to compare dental records and run DNA, but I thought it might be faster if you came down and took a look. Corpse still has a face. Fish didn’t get it, yet.”
That was a small silver lining on some potentially very bad news. He radioed the SEAL due to come on watch in an hour and asked him to come downstairs early. As soon as the guy arrived, Bass bugged out and headed for his Hummer. It was a short drive with no traffic to where the body had been found.
He jumped out at the edge of a cordon of crime scene tape, ducking under it to join a cluster of cops and crime scene investigators standing around a blue tarp draped over a bulging shape.
“Hey, Bass. Thanks for coming down to peek at our dead guy.”
“No problem. Thanks for the call.” He knelt down and lifted the corner of the tarp to peer at the body.
Homicide detectives vowed that they eventually became immune to looking at dead and disfigured bodies, but he had yet to develop that tough hide. Sure, he’d seen corpses in his military work. But those were casualties of conflict for the most part.
Setting aside the twisting tightness in his gut, he studied the bloated, waterlogged features. He even pulled out the folded picture of Gary Hubbard that he kept tucked in his jacket pocket to compare it to the corpse.
“Not my guy,” he announced. “You’ve got a John Doe on your hands.”
“Damn. I was hoping this would be an easy one,” the detective in charge muttered. To the medical examiner standing by patiently, the detective said, “Bag him and tag him, boys. John Doe.”
Bass chatted with the homicide guys for a few minutes, making nice. He’d made no secret of wanting a transfer into the elite division, and the homicide guys seemed interested in him, too. He’d finished his master’s degree in criminology a few months back and now had al
l the prerequisites to transfer over.
“Sorry to drag you out of bed so early, LeBlanc,” the chief inspector told him cheerfully.
“No worries. I was on a stakeout anyway. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
The cop slapped Bass on the shoulder and strolled back to the crime scene.
Bass pointed his vehicle toward the B&B, arriving in the middle of an uproar. “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
The guy he’d left on the watch explained, “Carrie snuck out of the house on us. She’s gone.”
“How the hell did that happen?” Bass exclaimed. “We’re supposed to have eyes on her twenty-four seven!”
One of the other SEALs stood his ground. “Our perimeter was set up with an eye to keeping bad guys out, not to keeping good guys in.”
Bass cursed, furious with his men and furious with himself that he hadn’t seen this coming. He knew she was a runner.
“When did she leave?” he asked tersely.
“Best guess is she slipped out right behind you. It would explain why we didn’t think anything of the motion detectors alerting. We thought they were you. The sound of your Hummer must’ve masked the sound of her van.”
She had about an hour’s head start on him, then. Where would she go in the early hours of the morning? Knowing her, she would go back to her place to get her stuff before she left town. She didn’t carry much, but it was all she had in the world. It would be important to her.
“I’m heading over to her place. Call me if you hear anything at all.”
“Maybe call the police and have them search the traffic cameras for her van?” one of the SEALs asked.
“I could, but the department may not have the resources to do it if they’re tracking someone else already.” Besides, it wasn’t the NOPD’s job to pick up the slack because his SEALs had gotten tricked by a lone civilian female with no covert training whatsoever.
He raced outside and jumped in his Hummer, pointing it at her place. It was about a fifteen-minute drive, and he chewed on his irritation at her for bolting the whole time. She had to quit running away on him like this!