Keeping Watch

by Jan Hambright

  She rushed for the phone, scooped it up and screamed “Fire” into the receiver. She was trapped in a prison of her own making.

  This wasn’t how she was supposed to die.

  ROYCE PUSHED THE GAS PEDAL to the floor and shot down Canal Street with an unsaid expletive on his lips.

  He’d missed Adelaide’s urgent phone call by thirty seconds. Thirty blasted seconds. And she didn’t pick up when he called back.

  Was she still alive? Or was he too late to save her from a monster determined to have her?

  Braking, he roared onto St. Charles Avenue and immediately slowed down, spotting the fire trucks two blocks ahead. His mouth went dry, his nerves spinning off on a twisted tirade of their own.

  She’d reached out to him, and he’d failed. He pulled up to the curb, jumped out of the car and ran to the scene, slowing only when he spotted her wrapped in a blanket, standing on the sidewalk next to a fireman.

  Relief washed away any remorse still thundering in his head, and he pulled in a breath, but the release of tension was short-lived when he spotted two officers standing next to James Tansy’s empty patrol car.

  Refocusing his attention on Adelaide, he saw her turn her head in his direction. They made eye contact. Urgency put some hustle in his steps, and he didn’t take his eyes off her until he reached her side.

  “What happened? Did Tansy apprehend him before he got to you?”

  She shook her head. “He tried, but—” She dropped her gaze to the sidewalk. “The guy was too strong. Tansy never made it into the house.”

  Royce went numb, searching for the answers faster than she could give them. Reaching out, he grasped her by the shoulders and locked his stare on her face, on the smudges of soot across her cheeks. “He set a fire?”

  “Yes. When he couldn’t get into my bedroom, he—” Her voice broke, and he pulled her into his arms.

  “Later. You can give me the details later. Right now you’re safe. I’m not going to leave you alone again.”

  He was caught up in the feel of her; in the midst of all the chaos, he was grounded.

  Royce glanced at the fireman over the top of Adelaide’s head. “What’s the nature of the fire?”

  “Arson, judging by the burning containers of paper set on fire throughout the house. She was found clinging to the windowsill half in and half out of a second-floor bedroom window. She’d barricaded herself in the room. We got her down with a ladder and put the fires out before the home was involved. This fire wasn’t set to kill her, or destroy the home. It was meant to terrorize, even drive her outside.”

  “What about the officer posted to protect her? What’s his status?”

  “EMS rolled to the hospital with him. Someone tried to take his head off with a baseball bat, and damn near succeeded, but he’s hanging on.”

  The fireman turned and headed for his truck, where he paired up with another fireman dragging hose toward the rear of the house.

  Adelaide opened her eyes and pushed back from Royce. As much as she liked the security of his arms, she had to warn him. Had to make every attempt to save the woman in her drawing from a horrible death.

  “I might know what he was after. I have it right here.” She reached into the pocket of her robe and fingered the folded sketch right next to the cell phone that had saved her life again. She pulled the drawing out and handed it to him.

  “I sketched this tonight, right before he broke in and came after me. She’s his next victim, Royce. Victim number two. We have to find her before he kills her.”

  Chapter Five

  Adelaide toweled her hair and left the sanctity of the tiny bathroom, feeling and smelling less like a chimney, and more like herself again.

  Royce and a fireman had escorted her back into her damaged house so she could grab some personal items and pack some clothing, which at the moment was spinning in the washer.

  She glanced up at Royce, who paced back and forth in front of the picture window of the safe house he’d taken her to shortly after the fire. Chief Danbury had finally realized the danger Adelaide was in and recommended Royce take over and protect her until the maniac was caught.

  The air in the room hummed with tension that snapped the second he saw her. He stopped in his tracks, crossed his arms over his chest and spread his feet wide.

  She wanted to collapse under the pressure of his scrutiny, but there was nowhere to run. He was her best line of defense against a killer who seemed determined to have her, and who would ultimately get his wish if her sketch held true.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Much.” She stared at the files he’d spread out on the coffee table in front of the sofa and dialed in the spot she knew she’d be occupying for the next hour while he picked her brain for details she wasn’t sure she had.

  That was the problem with skeptical people, they wanted proof, and there wasn’t time to dish it out. Another young woman’s life was hanging in the balance.

  “Have any missing women been reported?” She headed for the galley kitchen and a cup of the coffee she smelled brewing.

  “Nothing so far. I’ve been on the phone with Detective Hicks twice already this morning.”

  In a bustle of frustration, she opened and closed one cupboard after another in search of a mug, finally giving up to lean against the counter in frustration.

  “We have to find her, Royce. We have to get to her before he does.”

  Royce stepped into the kitchen and took a cup off a rack on the countertop next to the coffeemaker.

  Adelaide bit back a sigh and pushed away from the counter.

  “Look. I know this is driving you nuts, but we can’t find someone who hasn’t been reported missing yet.” He filled her cup and put the pot back on the warming plate.

  “What about getting her picture on the morning news?”

  “And sending every woman in New Orleans into a panic? It’s a drawing, Adelaide. A piece of paper—”

  “Until it’s not. Until it’s someone’s daughter, sister, mother.”

  Royce turned on her and grasped her shoulders between his palms.

  Awareness raged through her body, stealing the last of her already-in-the-tank composure. She stared up into his face, seeing his teeth clamp together briefly before he pulled in a breath. Her skin heated where he touched her and she swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry, Adelaide. I know how much you want to prevent anything from happening to her, but cops don’t prevent crimes for the most part. We’re minutes away, when seconds count, we arrive in time to clean up the mess, and try to make sure the guilty party pays for what they’ve done.” He released her, picked up the cup of coffee from off the counter and handed it to her.

  Reaching out, she took it and gazed up at him, realizing he was frustrated, too. That in his line of work the answers didn’t come in crystal-clear form, cut-and-dried, who done it, and you’re off to jail to do your time.

  “What about Officer Tansy? He had to have seen the man who tried to kill him.”

  “His condition is critical. He’s in a coma. Come on, sit down. I’ve got something else to tell you.”

  Worry attached itself to her nerves as Royce steered her to the couch.

  “Clay Franklin is dead.”

  “How?”

  “We’re not sure of the cause of death yet, but they pulled him out of Lake Cataouatche yesterday in the same car someone tried to run me down with in the alley beside your house.”

  “The killer who wants me killed Clay Franklin?”

  “Maybe, but I’ve yet to establish anything other than the car as a link between the two men. We have a search warrant for Clay’s house. We’ll execute it this afternoon.”

  “I’d like to see Officer Tansy. There’s a chance I can pull an image of the creep from inside his head and put together a composite.”

  She saw Royce tense, saw hesitation set his body and features in stone. “Please,” she begged, willing to take it up a notch.

  He ph
ysically relented before he verbally did. “It can’t hurt. We’ve got nothing.” He stood up.

  She put her cup on the coffee table and pushed up onto her feet, anxious to get out of the tiny house and back into the world outside. Outside where she could counteract the sensations he churned up in her. Sensations of need and desire she couldn’t understand or explain, but they were there, had been from the first time he touched her.

  What bothered her the most was the intrinsic feeling they were being driven together by some unseen force. Something outside their power to resist.

  ROYCE HATED THE SMELL OF hospitals, had since he was a kid when he watched his little sister recover from the trauma she suffered during her abduction.

  The physical trauma at least.

  “Room 433.” The nurse pointed down the corridor from behind the tall counter of the nurse’s station.

  “Thanks.” He focused on the end of the hallway, on the uniformed cop guarding the door to Jim Tansy’s room. A precaution at the moment, in case the killer happened to return for another try.

  Royce sobered, sensing Adelaide next to him without touching her. Neither one of them was safe as long as the maniac who tried to kill them was on the loose. The same myriad thoughts had to be bumping around inside her head.

  He fought the urge to take her hand. To squeeze it in his own and reassure her that he could protect her.

  Royce brushed his jacket aside and showed his badge to the officer guarding the door. “Any change?” he asked, hoping Tansy was alert and talking. “None.”

  They stepped through the open door into the private room, almost colliding with a man dressed in khaki and blue, carrying a toolbox and wearing a grungy ball cap that barely concealed his scraggly blond hair. The patch over his left shirt pocket read Maintenance, and the name badge underneath it read Derrick.

  “Excuse me,” he mumbled, head down, as he sidestepped around them and vanished out into the hallway.

  Curious, Royce turned and followed him, watching him walk down the corridor and around a corner. “Was there a problem in here?” he asked the officer.

  “Yeah. The television wasn’t working. He fixed it.”

  “I didn’t know comatose patients liked to watch TV.”

  “Doctor’s orders. Apparently the constant sound of the boob tube can sometimes help them come out of the coma.”

  “Huh.” Royce turned back into the room, feeling like he’d just been duped. But he wasn’t a doctor, what did he know?

  Adelaide had pulled a chair next to the bed, and she was already opening the large sketch pad they’d grabbed at an art supply store on their way to the hospital.

  “Officer Tansy. I’m Adelaide Charboneau, the NOPD sketch artist.” Her voice was pleading…anxious…excited. “I’m here to sketch a composite of the man who attacked you last night.”

  Royce settled at the end of the bed with his back against the wall. It was a long shot, but a degree of hope pulsed in his head, dulling his skepticism.

  “Relax and picture his face for me. Was he clean shaven? Or did he have facial hair? Can you see the contours of his chin and cheekbones? Describe his eyes for me.”

  Tension flared in his body as he watched her take pencil to paper and begin to draw. He couldn’t see the image emerging on the paper, and it was all he could do not to move over for a look. Her process seemed orderly, even reasonable.

  An almost inaudible shriek derailed his train of thought. Adelaide launched up out of her chair and dropped the sketch pad as if she were holding a poisonous snake.

  “What the…” He pushed away from the wall and reached out for her. She stepped into his arms as he stared down at the grotesque face she’d drawn in the center of the pad.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what he saw.”

  Doubt raced through Royce’s brain, erasing the progress he’d made in believing in her claims.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. An alarm on the machine at the head of Tansy’s bed went off.

  Royce stared at the monitor, at the heart rate line spiking across the screen. It went flat, setting off another alarm, a high-pitched hum.

  Officer Tansy was dying.

  The officer on duty bolted into the room with a couple of nurses right behind him. One of them turned and raced back out into the hallway. “Crash cart 433.”

  Within seconds the room filled to capacity with medical staff, all scrambling to save his life. Royce picked up the sketch pad from the spot where it had been kicked into the corner in the commotion and pulled Adelaide out of the room and into the hall.

  Every muscle in his body was rigid by the time they reached an empty waiting room across from the nurse’s station and ducked inside.

  “Adelaide, what is going on?”

  She dropped into a chair and stared up at him. “That’s what he saw last night. I can’t explain it.”

  Royce sat down in the chair across from her, holding the sketch pad in his hands. “You have to tell me what this is.”

  She reached for the drawing.

  He handed it to her and she studied the image.

  “My best guess is it’s a Songe mask of some kind. They’re rumored to be worn over the face during some voodoo ritual ceremonies. This one would have been worn by a male in the hierarchy. The size of the center crest from the forehead to the crown determines the magical power of the mask, and the man who wears it.”

  Royce didn’t like the sound of that. Now they could be dealing with some sort of nut job who thought he had magical powers while he hid behind a gruesome mask.

  Sick bastard.

  “How do you know this stuff?” It was a legitimate question in his mind. This wasn’t information that came at a person during the normal course of a day, so how and why did Adelaide Charboneau have it?

  “I took a semester of cultural anthropology last year before I joined the department.”

  “Was that to get an understanding of your…talents?”

  She glared at him. “Yes. I was curious about my ability, and needed an accepting environment in which to explore it, and to answer my own questions.”

  “Any idea what sort of ritual this mask is used in?”

  She glanced at it, and he witnessed a repulsed shiver. “None, but it could be almost anything, from a reproductive ritual, to a blessing over a newborn child, to a death mask.”

  “Wait. These masks are worn during sex?” Her cheeks roared to a shade of pink he found beyond sexy.

  “No. Just in the ritual dance beforehand.”

  Oh, hell. “You took that course at Tulane?”

  She glared at him and raised her chin. “You’ve been combing my personnel file, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m being thorough. I’d be negligent in my duties if I left anything to chance.”

  The frown on her face deepened into disgust he could feel in the air around them.

  “While we’re on the subject, I found something interesting in the photograph taken of you on the morning you were discovered abandoned in the church.”

  Her features softened, and he instinctually wanted to brush her shoulder with his hand. “In the bottom of the frame there was a gris-gris voodoo doll. Do you still have it?”

  A humorless chuckle rumbled in her throat. “That was thirty-three years ago. There was no doll.” Her jest was well executed, but her eyes went wide with surprise.

  “You didn’t know about it, did you?” She flinched, and rocked back in the chair where she pulled in several deep breaths.

  “No. My adoptive parents never told me about a gris-gris doll.”

  He suddenly felt like a jerk for laying the information on her uncensored. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is it locked up in an evidence facility somewhere?”

  “Not that I know of.” Where would something like that go after the fact? “It was most likely turned over to your adoptive parents, along with your other belongings.”

  Her green eyes took on a misty qu
ality he could almost interpret as reminiscing. “It must have been left with me by my birth mother. That would mean that my mother still might have it.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “Will you go with me to get it?” she asked.

  He watched a hopeful smile part her lips. Lips he willfully wanted to taste. There it was again, an insatiable need he’d been able to control up to this point, but not this time, not anymore.

  “Yes.”

  The room around them fell away. He came to his feet at the same time she did. Their gazes locked on one another in a heated exchange that could singe brimstone.

  “What the hell.” He pulled her against him, feeling the satisfying jolt of contact.

  She raised her face to his, her eyelids closing in seductive submission.

  Inches separated them, then centimeters, until he brushed her mouth with his. Heat blasted his senses. He deepened the kiss, spurred by a moan of pleasure from deep in her throat.

  Need drugged him, turning his thought processes upside down. He locked his arms around her, and parted her lips with his tongue. Damn, she tasted sweet. He gorged on her, breathing her in, dissecting her sexy flavor, zoning out on the smell of her heated skin as it teased his senses mercilessly.

  Primal need pulsed in his groin, turning him rock hard, before a measure of rationalization slammed him back to earth.

  He pulled away, breathed in and staggered back, watching Adelaide’s eyelids flick open in drunken surprise.

  She melted into the chair behind her. “What was that?” she asked, staring at him, her breath coming in little puffs.

  Unsettled, and more than a little uncomfortable, Royce lowered himself into the chair across from her. He didn’t have a logical explanation for what had just happened between them. He fell back on his training.

  “Stress. It can make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. We’ve both been under pressure with this case, and having your attacker still at large, well…” If she was buying his lame excuse for kissing her, it didn’t register on her face.

  About to attempt a second try at a reasonable explanation, he was interrupted by the officer guarding Tansy. He stepped into the waiting room.