They were being followed?
He didn’t use his blinker. At the corner of Poydras and St. Charles, he took a quick right and sped up.
The blue car followed suit and made the turn, right behind him. “Don’t look back, but I think we’re being followed.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Adelaide whispered from next to him. “I’ve been feeling it since we got to Clay Franklin’s house.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“You’re the cop.”
Amusement jolted his sense of humor, which seemed to be on life support lately. “You believe we were followed from there?”
“Maybe. I just know I felt like we were being watched.”
“Let’s find out.” Royce braked, and turned back onto St. Charles. Accelerating, he took the left ramp and blended into the stream of traffic on I-10 West. “We’ll try to shake him at the 610 merge.”
His pulse rate ticked up as he pressed the gas pedal to the floor and wove through traffic.
The dark blue car hung with him. Farther back now, but still following.
Royce moved over into the fast lane and watched the speedometer climb to seventy-five miles per hour. In the distance he saw the 610 merge.
Staying in the fast lane, he made the sweeping loop, then cut across six lanes of traffic and zipped down the Monticello Avenue exit on the other side.
A quick glance at Adelaide confirmed what he already knew, judging by the tiny squeal his stunt had elicited from her moments earlier.
“If it’s okay with you, we’ll take Airline Highway out to the 310.”
“Good idea.” She cleared her throat and sat a little taller in the seat.
ADELAIDE’S NERVES WERE A jumbled mess by the time Royce pulled through the expansive iron gates that barred anyone who might dare to drive up the paved approach to the mansion uninvited. She loved her parents dearly, but enjoyed the distance she’d been able to establish between them, both literally and figuratively, since learning about and developing her talent. Her mother was a proper lady, had raised her in the same vein.
“This is a very nice place.” Royce braked in the circle driveway and turned off the car.
“Thank you for driving me out here.” She turned slightly so she could look at him. “I’ve never been very good at rocking the boat.”
“You’re welcome, and I doubt you’re going to end up getting wet. Truth has the power to stir the waters, and calm them sometimes. You’ll do fine.”
She reached for the door handle and climbed out of the car, pondering his words. It was true, the truth was the truth; it could be told, or covered up, but it would always remain the truth.
Her parents must have had their reasons for neglecting to tell her about the gris-gris doll. She sucked in a deep breath and met Royce in front of the car.
The sound of the front door closing with a decisive click pulled her attention to the front gallery and her mother as she moved along the railing, spotting them standing in front of the vehicle.
“Adelaide. Dear.” She waved as she moved forward and descended the wide stairs, striding across the cobbled driveway to where they stood.
“How are you?” she asked, pulling her into her arms. A moment later she stepped back and smiled. “I’ve got a work crew slated to begin on the St. Charles house next week. They’re going to make it as good as new for you, darling.”
She glanced at Royce. “You must be Detective Beckett. My daughter told me about you. Thank you so much for looking after her.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am.”
She took Adelaide’s hand and led her toward the stairs. “Your father is away on business. I took the liberty of having Benet make you some of your favorite finger sandwiches.”
“Thank you, Mom, but we’re not planning to stay long.”
Chloris Charboneau paused at the base of the landing and let go of her hand. “What is it, dear? Is something wrong?”
Adelaide felt the air lock in her lungs, but the feeling of Royce next to her bolstered her courage. “There’s something I need to know.” She stared into her mother’s bright blue eyes.
“In the course of the investigation, something has surfaced. There was a doll…Mom. A gris-gris doll found with me in the church.”
Her mother’s face blanched, making her eyes appear bluer in the process.
“I need the gris-gris doll, Mom. It’s important.”
Chloris took her hand again, and Adelaide felt her mother trembling as she moved her up the stairs and onto the gallery. “Please tell me you still have it.” Mustering gumption she didn’t know she had, she pulled up short, braking her mother to a stop. “I need to know…please.”
When Chloris turned toward her, there were tears collecting on the brims of her eyelids. “Yes, dear. I still have the doll. For some reason I couldn’t dispose of it, even though God knows I tried many times. But I knew this day would come. In fact, I’ve dreaded it.”
Adelaide brushed her hand against her mother’s shoulder. “I’m sure you have your reasons for keeping it from me.”
A brief flash of embarrassment crossed her features and pulled her gaze down. “It is a voodoo symbol, Adelaide. Your father and I did not want that stigma to follow you through your life. I raised you to be a proper lady, and we only wanted what was best for you.”
Her emotions flared, raw and tender, but she reached out and hugged her mother. Tamping down a surge of anger that bubbled across her nerves. She had every right to be angry. She’d been deprived of a pathway to the woman who’d given birth to her. A pathway that had obviously frightened Chloris Charboneau into hiding it.
Adelaide pulled back. “You have been, and always will be, my mother. You didn’t give me life, but you gave me one.”
She reached out and took Adelaide’s hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “Come inside, dear. I’ll fetch it for you. I’ve kept it in the cedar chest all these years.”
Looking over the top of her mother’s head, she made eye contact with Royce and watched a slow smile take his lips. He was right about the truth. Seeking the doll seemed to have released her mom from the guilt of having kept it secret all these years, and for that she was grateful.
AN HOUR LATER, HIS BELLY FULL of watercress sandwiches, Royce opened the front door for Adelaide.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Please, call me Chloris, and do come back again.”
He nodded his appreciation and followed Adelaide out onto the gallery, closing the door behind him.
The air outside had thickened while they’d been inside, and the unseemly presence of dark rain clouds warred unabated with a scrap of blue sky overhead.
A gust of wind ruffled his hair and made him squint to see. “We’re going to get soaked.”
Reaching out, he took Adelaide’s hand and hurried her down the stairs from the gallery, feeling the first raindrop splat on his forehead before they reached the bottom step, then another one, and in the span of a second, the clouds opened up.
Keeping his focus on the car, they made a run for it.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard a loud crack.
A sting burned across the flesh of his left upper arm.
Realization followed, swift and accurate. Gunfire.
He dove for cover next to the car, taking Adelaide down with him.
Adelaide hit hard, the air pushed out of her lungs. Dazed, she rolled over trying to make reason out of nothing, but the sight of blood, dark red and spreading into the fabric of Royce’s shirtsleeve, made everything clear.
“Keep your head down,” he yelled over the drone as he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Someone just took a shot at us.”
Another pull of the trigger, another shot echoed from somewhere nearby, and a slug tore into the sedan, shattering the glass in its path and sending a crystalized shower down around them.
A scream bubbled in her throat, but she held it in, staring at the bullet wound on Royce’s upper ar
m as he punched in 911 and raised the cell phone to his ear.
Worry tensed her muscles, twisting them into knots.
“Detective Royce Beckett, New Orleans PD. There are shots being fired at 9155 Charboneau Court, Destrehan. We are pinned down next to our vehicle. Request officer assistance. ETA?” He got the answer and closed his phone, slipped it back into his pocket and drew his weapon.
Adelaide absorbed the shock of the situation. Royce had been shot. Someone wanted them dead.
“They’re ten minutes out. Do you think you can hang on?”
Another slug ripped into the rear of the car and sent her control haywire. She swallowed hard and focused on him, clinging to a measure of his calmness under fire. They were going to get through this. Weren’t they?
“Do I have a choice?”
He shook his head, and she flinched as bullet number four took out the rear window with a loud pop that jarred her teeth. The gravity of the situation wiped out the safety zone she’d mentally erected around herself, Royce and the car keeping them from being riddled with bullet holes.
Another shot tore into the rear quarter panel.
“He’s on the move. He could be trying to flank us.” Alarm bristled Royce’s nerves and throttled him into action. Help would never arrive in time, and his pistol was no match for a rifle.
“Move.” He took Adelaide by the upper arm and pushed her forward in front of him, protecting her with his body.
Snaking around the front bumper of the vehicle, he pressed her down onto her belly and motioned underneath the car, glad when she didn’t protest, and slid in under the sedan, out of the line of fire.
Raising slightly, Royce crept forward and snagged a glance around the quarter panel on the driver’s side, just in time to see a man clad in dark clothes dart behind a moss-covered pine a hundred feet behind the car.
He pulled back, gauging his line of attack. A warning shot drilled into the tree might convince him there would be a price to pay if he chose to fight. But he was still out of range, and short of rushing him without cover—a stupid idea—he’d have to wait until the shooter came closer to get a round off.
The rain abruptly stopped.
Royce glanced up at the sky for an instant, swearing he could hear the sound of sirens.
Caution pulled his nerves taut as he leaned out for a look, but the shooter had heard them, too, and he was bobbing and weaving as he made tracks through the heavy brush in the opposite direction, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
“It’s clear, Adelaide. You can come out,” he said over his shoulder, but she had already crawled out from under the car. Keeping his pistol ready in case the thug changed his mind, he put his arm around her and pulled her close to him.
“He shot you,” she whispered.
“It’s just a graze. It’ll heal.”
“Thank God you’re both okay!” The sound of Chloris’s voice brought his head around as a squad car rolled up the driveway, followed closely by another one.
Was it possible the driver of the dark blue car that tailed them out of New Orleans was also the sniper who’d just tried to kill them?
How in the hell had he found them?
Worry latched onto his thoughts as he tried to make sense of it, but he would have to do it soon before anything happened to the woman in his arms.
A woman who confused his emotions and spun him in knots he couldn’t untie.
A woman he suddenly needed more than air.
Chapter Seven
Adelaide tried to get comfortable on the sofa and focus on the television in front of her, on the silly late-night show whose host hadn’t moved her laugh-o-meter once tonight.
Behind her at the breakfast bar rimming the kitchen she could hear Royce shuffling through papers in the file he’d picked up at the station on their return from Destrehan. The man who’d taken shots at them had gotten away, without so much as a trace. So much for Locard’s law, “Every contact leaves a trace.”
Agitated, she stood up, picked up the TV remote from the end table and pressed the off button. She felt totally useless at the moment, trapped in the safe house with Royce.
Did he feel it, too?
She glanced at the picture window, at the rivulets of rainwater tracking down the glass, at the darkness beyond.
Wendy Davis was out there somewhere. Cold, wet, alone? A shudder vibrated at the base of her neck and quaked over her.
She put the remote down and went into the kitchen, casting a quick glance at a shirtless Royce, who was absorbed in the paperwork spread out in front of him.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, turning on the gas under the kettle and glancing at the time on the oven clock. It was almost midnight. Well past her bedtime.
“No, thanks.”
She opened the cupboard next to the stove and pulled a tea bag out of its box. Taking a cup off the rack, she dropped the bag in and turned around. She watched him sitting under the pendant light over the bar.
“Are you planning to stay up all night working on the case?” She tried like crazy not to focus on his broad shoulders and bare chest. Instead she trained her focus on the thick white bandage around his left upper arm, the one that covered his ample biceps….
“Maybe. There are so many angles to consider, and I’m having a difficult time staying on top of all of them.”
“Because you’re babysitting me?” She considered him in the warm light shining down from the fixture. It made his skin look bronze and it hot-wired her emotions.
“That’s my assignment, and judging by what has transpired in the last couple of weeks, it’s a good thing you’ve got me keeping watch over you.”
The kettle whistled, and she broke eye contact, feeling a surge of warmth jettison the tingle of guilt nipping at her conscience. She was the center of his attention, when he could be out trying to find Wendy Davis.
She turned off the burner, picked up the kettle and poured boiling water into the mug, then set it back on the stove before she turned around and joined him at the bar.
“Wouldn’t you rather be catching and cuffing thugs than be trapped in this safe house looking after me?”
An amused grin bowed his mouth, and his eyes narrowed as he watched her in an all-consuming sort of way.
She kept her gaze focused on the lines of his handsome face to avoid looking at his naked chest.
“Is that what you think? That you’re preventing me from searching for Wendy Davis?” He cocked his head slightly, his voice low, sexy and laced with challenge. “What if I told you I’m beginning to believe you are pivotal to this case?”
She emotionally pulled back, frightened by the prospect. “I’d say you’re wrong. I don’t know what my role is, or why someone wants me dead, but to put me in the middle of it is…well, it’s….” What was it? “Unconscionable.”
“I’ll rephrase it in clearer terms. You are the center of this case, or at least your perceived abilities are.”
Fear needled her senses, pierced her psyche and drew her emotionally back into the fray. “Because I sketched the women in the crime scenes, my own included, that somehow puts me in the middle of everything? That’s an uncomfortable place to be.”
“Come here, let me show you something.” He shuffled through the papers in front of him until he found the one he wanted, and picked it up. “You’re a Beholder. A term you believe was coined by a voodoo sect called the Materia.”
“Yes.”
“I had the police’s research department dig up everything they could find on the sect, and this is it.” He fingered a couple of sheets of paper. “Paragraphs of information any school kid could find in the study of local history. I have even been advised by the research department to consult with someone in the local voodoo community, a Miss Marie, to get an account of the unwritten lore.”
Curiosity pushed her around the bar and onto the stool next to him. “So you’re beginning to believe in what I do?”
“I’m conflicted.
I don’t know what to think.”
Disappointment chilled the air between them and she felt the temperature drop ten degrees. “Then how is any of this going to make sense to you? It’s like wearing half your skin if you don’t believe.”
Why did she feel compelled to convince him her gift was real? It had always been a secret she was happy to conceal because it offered her immunity, but now she had to make him understand.
“I can prove it to you.” She reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “Please.” The contact seared her fingertips and brought Royce around on his stool.
“Let me sketch a composite of the man who abducted your sister when you were little.”
His brows pulled together, suggesting to her that he was at least considering her proposal.
Royce’s pulse suddenly spiked, riveting his focus on Adelaide’s lips. Who was he kidding? He wanted to kiss her again, needed to kiss her again. Desire flooded his insides and ebbed like a Mississippi River eddy, surging for release.
“Okay. I will give you one shot. After that I never want to hear it mentioned again.”
Her eyes went wide. A smile parting her sensuous mouth, a move that drove his tongue into his cheek as he watched her slide off the stool and hurry into the bedroom for her sketch pad.
In search of a distraction, he slid off the stool and stepped into the kitchen, where he wrung her tea bag out against a spoon and set the mug on the bar.
Adelaide appeared with her sketch pad and a pencil in hand. “Come over here on the sofa and get comfortable.” She patted the cushion next to her.
A growl stuck in his throat as he picked up the cup of hot tea and walked in to the small living area, where he set the steaming mug down on the coffee table before pushing back into the oversoft couch.
This was the last place he’d planned to be sitting, but a commitment was a commitment, and she wasn’t going to stop asking until he cooperated.
“It’s simple. I want you to relax and close your eyes.”
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