“Like bothersome rats.”
“We go, they go.” Ryder’s lips quirked. “Eventually. Who’s the head rat?”
“A man named Despar.” Iona sniffed. “He smells like old booze and even older cigarettes. The one called Keen is clean cut and has a less offensive manner.”
“I need five minutes with them.” He made a head motion at Mia. “Are your bags ready?”
“They’re in the storeroom.”
“Two of the female rats have been watching them. Oh, kitten…” Iona’s eyes filled with tears.
Mia dealt with the storm inside while Ryder went in search of Despar and Keen on the street. He rejoined her five minutes later with both officers in tow. All of them were soaked.
“We gave your truck a thorough once-over,” the crusty officer named Despar told him. “It looks good. Still, you get your throat slit halfway to wherever you’re taking her, what happens then? Ms. LeMay’ll be on her own. You should give us something, just in case.”
A smile ghosted around Ryder’s lips. “You’ve got everything you need.” He nodded at the man’s trench coat. “Your cigarettes are getting wet, Sergeant.”
And his hands were dirty, Mia noted. Dirty, wet and stained with nicotine. She should probably be grateful Despar wasn’t Crucible’s rogue agent.
With the rain falling in buckets and several last-minute details to sort out, darkness had fallen by the time she and Ryder reached the New Orleans city limits. They listened to Ella Fitzgerald on his iPod and didn’t talk much for the first part of the trip.
“Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” curled like a mesmeric vapor through her head. Iona’s fortune-telling counterpart occasionally performed the song in the manner of a New Orleans torch singer at the Rose. A little dry ice, a little red and black haze, and the crowd was hers.
Easing her mind back, Mia noticed that Ryder looked in the rearview mirror far more often than he looked at her. A sigh rose. If the sudden horror that had invaded her life wasn’t bad enough, now her ego was being slapped down as well.
Eventually, the pounding rain set her frayed nerves on edge. Lowering the volume, she shifted to regard him. “Is being the strong silent type your nature, or are you brooding over an assignment you’d rather have refused?”
He flicked her a brief look. “What makes you think I didn’t want this assignment?”
“I don’t think anything. It was a question. Some people prefer the vibe of the city. In New Orleans, it’s all about courtyards and cafés and the kind of music that lives and breathes. It’s about sex and sin and decadent food.”
“It’s about bourbon, Mia.”
“That, too,” she said. “Bourbon and beignets are particular favorites of mine.”
“Thus the reason for owning a tearoom and a bar.”
“People do what they do in the Quarter, Ryder. Everything there has color, flavor and heat. That’s the vibe. Only vibe you’ll find in most bayou towns involves alligators, insects and snakes. Swamp’s even more of a creature feature.”
“I don’t mind taking a break from the kinds of creatures that live in cities. An alligator’s dangerous, but no more so than a crackhead with a loaded gun.”
“Or a masked man with a knife?”
He held up his left hand. “Still have all my fingers.”
Pulling the visor down, Mia regarded the road behind them. “You also have the edge here. Crucible told me to trust you, but how do I know I can trust Crucible? Or the police for that matter. Sergeant Despar hates both of you.”
“Sergeant Despar hates the world.”
“And himself, judging from his two pack-a-day habit.” Lowering the window, she let the first hint of the bayou inside. “On that subject, a few of Despar’s men were drawing comparisons between the killer I saw last night and Jack the Ripper. Between that and the things Crucible told me, I’m getting that some of the earlier murders were a bit more gruesome than Helene Dubose’s.”
Ryder glanced in the rearview mirror. “The first was the worst.”
Something in this tone brought a chill to her skin. “How did he or she die?”
He frowned. “Didn’t Crucible go over any of this with you?”
“As I’m sure you know, Crucible’s a man of very few words. All he told me was that the man I saw is very likely not the only one using the silhouette calling card. He also said that two of the six victims were connected, but not in a way that gave him anything to go on.”
Ryder shrugged. “The connection Crucible mentioned didn’t come about until last night. Helene Dubose had a sister named Madeleine. She was the first victim.”
“The first and the worst.” Still facing him, Mia set aside the distant rumbles of thunder from yet another storm. “What was done to her?”
“Sure you want to know?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“The killer cut off her tongue and gouged out her eyes. Then he tore a strip from her dress and used it to tie a stick-figure doll around her neck. The doll had gray hair, black holes for eyes and Madeleine’s blood dripping from her mouth.”
Mia made herself nod, but she could imagine Iona hissing at her. It’s bad magic, kitten, in the wrong hands, in the wrong mind. It’s the bokor. Sorcery. It’s what many would call black voodoo.
Mia’s expression gave nothing away as she regarded him from under her lashes. “Are you messing with my head, Ryder? Or is it closer to the truth to say that someone tried messing with yours, and now you’re doing the same thing to me. You want to know if I’m susceptible to the lore of the swamp, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” Ryder kept his voice noncommittal, but a chuckle slipped out. “You’re good, angel.”
“Not angel,” she said firmly. “I’m a lot of things, but even my grandmother, who loved me, wouldn’t have called me that.”
He glanced at her in the washed-out light of a two-lane highway that was fast becoming a river. “I’ll rephrase. You have the eyes of an angel.”
She laughed, and the sound shot an arrow of lust straight at his groin. He realized he’d need to control that fast, and he managed—barely—not to wince.
“Let’s go with ‘no comment’ for the moment,” she said, “and get back to Helene Dubose’s sister. Did Madeleine’s murderer really leave a voodoo doll tied around her neck?”
“A crude one. If such people exist in areas like this, the experts concluded that the doll was nothing more than an amateurish attempt to muddy up her death.”
“Get everyone focused on the voodoo aspect and hope it would lead the authorities down a false path.” Ryder didn’t miss the small shiver that ran through her. “I imagine it worked to some extent.”
“Yeah, it worked, even on people who should have known better.”
“People like you?”
“The mind’s a powerful weapon, Mia. Controlled, it’s your best ally. Derailed, even a little, you wind up fighting not only yourself, but also the person who caused it to go off. Why did you shiver a minute ago?”
Those sea mist eyes sparked. With what, he wasn’t sure. “Iona warned me you’d be trouble.”
“I heard ‘dark’ and ‘dangerous’.”
“You also went outside to talk to the officers who were watching me. Iona’s a hit-or-miss fortune teller who swears she has the ‘sight.’ Who knows, maybe she does from time to time, but the fact is I have five Creole aunts in the bayou. Two of them live in the swamp. I’m not what you’d call a believer, but I’m not overly comfortable with the idea of a murderer, shadowy or otherwise, who tosses magic—especially old magic—symbols around as if they meant nothing.” She glanced into her visor mirror. “Flip side, a murderer, shadowy or otherwise, who truly believes might be even more terrifying.”
Ryder studied her back. “Translated, that means…?”
The sly look she cast him tied his belly in knots and almost caused him to overshoot a sharp bend in the road.
“I’m open to a number of possibilities.
Voodoo is a dark and dangerous practice. So is murder. You know, Ryder, you really do have the most amazing eyes.”
And all his fingers intact. Although he might be in danger of swallowing his tongue if she looked at him like that again. “I read your police statement, Mia. I know what you saw in that alley.”
“It was…grisly. Efficient, but horrible.” She adjusted the angle of her visor.
He glanced over. “Problem?”
“I see headlights.”
“We’re on a highway. It’s night.”
Her expression held a grim warning. “I’m not stupid or blind. I know you’ve seen them, too. If you haven’t, you should be sweeping Crucible’s floors, not guarding his witnesses. The lights have been there for the past thirty minutes. The driver’s not gaining on us, but he isn’t dropping back either.”
He could tell her she was being paranoid, but the lie would be too obvious. So he cut the taillights on his truck and nodded into the murk ahead. “Rain’s letting up, but I’ve been hearing thunder since we turned off the main highway. Whoever he is, we’ll lose him.”
He wished he could say the same for the unexpected twist of guilt in his belly.
His beeping iPhone would have been a welcome intrusion if his conscience hadn’t been clawing past the barrier he’d erected. Shoving it back, he regarded the screen and thumbed the line open.
“Not now,” he told the caller.
“Oh, excuse me.” The man on the other end responded with a layer of sarcasm he didn’t need to hear. “My misunderstanding. I thought I was running the show here.”
Ryder made a point of not looking at Mia. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Actually, that’s my question, or one of them. Is she with you?”
“Well, duh.” Were the headlights gaining, or was the phone call making them feel closer? And why the hell did his mind conjure images of voodoo dolls and black magic spells? “Look, you need to trust me,” he said. “I’ll get the job done.”
“You damn well better,” the caller spat. “It’s my life on the line here. You screw this up, I’ll make sure yours joins it.”
“I screw this up,” Ryder fired back, “and I’m a dead man. Later.”
Breaking the connection, he tossed the phone back on the dash.
Mia removed her gaze from the visor mirror. “Let me guess. One of Crucible’s integrated group members doubts your ability to protect me.”
“If by that you mean are the directors at odds, the answer’s yes.”
“That isn’t a particularly reassuring statement given my current situation. Is Crucible a director?”
“He’s their leg man. It’s complicated.”
“Like you.”
Grinning slightly, Ryder shook his head. “Mia, I’m Jack climbing the beanstalk. The directors are the giants at the top.”
“Again, not especially reassuring.”
With only his running lights to guide him, he almost missed the poorly marked exit ramp. “Depends how you look at it,” he said. “After all, who lived and who died in that story?”
“That analogy only works if Jack and Jill are climbing the beanstalk, but then not only would we be mixing fairy tales with nursery rhymes, we’d also be trying to grow a beanstalk in the bayou, and why in God’s name am I doing this? Saying this?” She drilled her index fingers into her temples, paused and peered upward through the windshield. “Is that thunder getting louder?”
“No idea. I know the road’s getting thinner.”
“And bumpier.”
Add in the heavy air, the thickening plant life and the brackish smell of swamp water, and Ryder knew they’d arrived. Unfortunately, when he looked back and spied the headlights behind them, he realized they hadn’t done so alone.
* * *
Crucible strode past an animated group of tourists, through the cemetery gates and straight to the raised crypt that was beginning to feel like a weird second boardroom these days. He closed the door with his boot.
“Would you mind telling me just what the hell is going on?” He thundered out the last part of the question, coupling it with a laser-sharp glare that would have sliced many agents in half. “Why are you here, and where’s Mia LeMay?”
The man on the far side of the raised coffin tapped out a cigarette. “I was blindsided. What can I say?”
“You can start by telling me how much liquor it took to turn the brain of one of my best agents to mush.”
Grogan’s expression didn’t alter. “Look around you, Crucible. Reason it out. You’re standing in front of Madeleine Lessard’s coffin. Her sister Helene will be joining her in a few days. Who the hell do you think drugged my beer, then got me rolled and damn near dumped in the river?”
Crucible’s gut cinched, but he kept his voice low and level. “You let Ryder drug you?”
“Did I say ‘let’?” Grogan held his glare. “Guy’s a ticking time bomb. Worse than that, he’s a guided missile in human form. He’s got a purpose, thanks to a dedicated killer. He’s got knowledge, thanks to you. He’s got weapons, he’s got a plan, and like it or not, Crucible, he’s also got your witness.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lightning shot into the swollen black water of the bayou.
After passing through three towns the size of postage stamps, Ryder wound his truck along a mud and gravel road beneath a canopy of dripping cypress trees. Owls, invisible in the lush greenery of the branches, hooted two by two. Leaves rustled, insects chirped, and close by, something long and silent cut through the water with barely a ripple.
The sights, sounds and smells of a hot summer night blended into a sweet tug of memory that reached up and grabbed Mia by the throat. This wasn’t the bayou of her grandmother, but it whispered “home,” and for a moment she felt safe in its familiar embrace.
The moment shattered as a pair of headlights slashed across the road in front of them, and she remembered why they were here.
“Town’s that way,” she told Ryder when the road forked. She tried to make out a sign that either the wind or pranking kids had angled skyward. “Blackwater, Louisiana. Population—no idea. Something with a five in it.” She dropped back in her seat. “Please tell me we’re going to a motel. Camping’s pure hell at this time of year. The mosquitoes are wicked, and I smell a swamp nearby.”
“Yeah? I smell a bar.”
Mia stared, exasperated. “Do I seriously have to run the list of why going into a bar is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard?”
“Sign I saw said drinks and rooms—as in not camping—available.”
“What sign?”
He turned onto a gravel road currently lit by a hazy three-quarter moon. “The one you missed because your eyes have been glued to the visor mirror for the past twenty miles.”
Probably true, she acknowledged. But one of them had to watch their backs. “Fine.” She folded her arms. “What’s the bar called?”
“The Honey Tree.”
“Really?” Delight elbowed annoyance aside. “It sounds like something out of the Hundred Acre Wood.” When Ryder’s brow furrowed, Mia gave her head an amused shake. “Oh, come on. Even little rogues must have had a close encounter with Winnie-the-Pooh at some point in their lives.”
“We met once or twice.” He grinned. “I was all about the Heffalumps. You?”
“Eeyore and the Pack Rats.” She pointed through the windshield. “Big hole ahead.”
Swerving around it, Ryder watched layered black clouds rimmed with gray inch toward the moon. “We’re in the eye of a storm. We’ll be lucky to reach the Honey Tree before the rain starts again.”
She sighed. “Were you born a pessimist, or does your line of work merely strip away all optimism?”
“I’m a realist, Mia. Be glad I am. Cops who look for sunshine and lollipops often wind up dead before the sun sets or the lollipops are half gone.”
Mia shrugged. “Gray skies it is.”
Pessimist or realist, the break lasted long en
ough for Ryder to locate the well-hidden Honey Tree. Spanish moss hanging from the limbs of the live oaks that crowded it on two sides all but covered the ramshackle roof.
Mia imagined the idea had been to replicate an old paddle wheeler; however, years of neglect had given the place a haunted look, as if giant spiders had crawled out of the swamp and spun webs over the entire structure. One hurricane-force blow, she reflected, and the Honey Tree would be reduced to a pile of cobwebbed toothpicks.
“This must be a local watering hole,” she remarked, climbing from the truck. “If you live here, you know about it. If not—keep on driving, folks.”
“I’ve seen less welcoming places.” Joining her, Ryder stuffed a gun in the back of his jeans. “Several of them much better hidden.”
“Better hidden than this, and even the locals would pass it by. I just stepped in a hole, didn’t I?” Without looking down at the stilettos she’d known she shouldn’t wear, Mia eased her foot from a six-inch-deep ooze of mud. “Iona’s right. I’m out of practice.” Turning, she noticed a cockeyed sign with a half-lit sycamore tree and the letters Hon-- --ee flickering across the face. “Rooms should be interesting,” she mused. “I wonder if they put chocolates or gris-gris on the pillows?”
Ryder set a hand on her back. “Refresh my memory. What’s a gris-gris?”
She started to say it was a voodoo amulet, but several fat drops of rain plopping on her head changed her response. “Looks like the break’s over.”
The clouds simply opened up. By the time they reached the door, they were soaked to the skin.
Mia wrung her hair out on the sagging porch. Lowering her eyes, she spotted something and stopped abruptly, blocking Ryder with her body. “You don’t want to walk there.”
“Broken board?” He looked past her shoulder. “Or, in this case, soggy tobacco pouch?”
“Oh, I think it’s a little more significant than that.” Because he was so close, Mia reached up and stroked a finger along the side of his jaw. Turning her head, she whispered, deliberately provocative, “Consider your memory refreshed, Ryder. That soggy pouch is a gris-gris.”
* * *
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