“By the book, Agent Travelli. Just like you said. Name withheld. Do you realize what’s going to happen to me if this ploy of yours doesn’t work? I’ll be writing fucking parking tickets on Bourbon Street.”
“Trust me on this one, Detective. If we take a fall on this case, you can blame it totally on the FBI.”
There came a deep laugh, throaty—sleepy. “You can count on that, Travelli. I’ll see it written on every station bathroom wall in this district and seven others.”
BY NOON OF the next day the media swarmed like locusts around the Eighth Precinct, demanding information—name and photograph—of the suspect the NOPD had supposedly apprehended. Killroy offered his normal plastic smile and waved their questions away with hands that were sweating with nervousness and the intense humidity of the midday sun. Diane Sawyer and Geraldo Rivera had done their best to book Killroy and Costos on their shows.
To Anna, it seemed as if the entire city had let out one great sigh of relief. She felt guilty over it. Guilty that she allowed tens of thousands of innocent women to let their guards down when she knew deep in her gut that the French Quarter monster as well as Barker’s assailant were still out there—lurking—laughing to himself because the NOPD had arrested the wrong man.
The next few nights saw only the normal incarceration of drunks and pickpockets and domestic disturbances. Wires in place, Armstrong gave Janet Beech, an undercover cop passing as a hooker, a fleeting smile. “You know exactly what to say if a suspicious perp propositions you, right?”
“I’m done for the night,” she said, lowering her mouth closer to her halter collar.
Armstrong shook his head. “Why don’t you just wave a red flag over your head and let him know we’re about to bust his sorry ass?”
Janet tossed her dreadlocks and cocked her hip. “You can kiss my ass. I’m out there risking my neck and you’re sitting in some squad car eating a beltbuster and drinking root beer.”
Anna sat in a chair near the door, legs crossed. There was that quivery little feeling in her stomach. Something was going to happen tonight. Gonzales would make a move, thinking he was safe. And so would the killer. The night was hot and still, the full August moon glowing like white neon over the city. Her dad had always called such a night “Hunter’s Moon.” Something about a full moon brought the lunatics out to prowl.
Finally, Armstrong stepped back. “Okay, ladies. Go strut your stuff. And I do mean strut. I want you on the street corners swiveling those hips like there’s no tomorrow.”
Sherry Ritchy, with a yellow sheet as long as Anna’s leg, gave Donovan the once-over. “Clean sheet after this, right?”
“Cross my heart…just as long as you stay out of trouble. Haul your little butt back to Hallsville and work at Wal-Mart.”
Donovan looked back at Anna. “Costos called. He’s hung up on a case. You might as well go back to the hotel and wait.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mike?”
“I got enough on my hands right now without worrying whether or not some FBI special agent gets her head cut off.”
THERE WAS SOMETHING about New Orleans at night that brought out the dark psyche in a person. Every street and alley. Every building, old or new. Streetlights and old coach lamps. Laughter in the darkness. Jazz drifting out over the murky river and the crowded city of ancient tombs in the cemetery. It all had a certain rhythm to it that Anna had never experienced anyplace else.
Yeah, it was home. As a student at Tulane she’d smoked her sweet Mary Jane and obliterated herself in New Orleans’s famous Hurricane drinks. She knew the old warehouses where voodoo priestesses gyrated over bloodied goat heads and stabbed needles into straw dolls and burned black candles.
At two A.M. Anna parked her rental car at the corner of Royal and Pauline Streets. She noted immediately that the old street lamp had been broken. The moonlight overhead painted the brick street with what looked like a thin coat of milk wash.
That feeling she had experienced in Donovan’s office gnawed more strongly at her. Not just a tickling in her belly any longer. But a hard grip of dread and anticipation that made beads of sweat crawl down her scalp.
It was the eyes that had continued to bother her. That brief glimpse of the killer’s eyes she had viewed through Bobbie Cox as they paused on her doorstep with keys in hand. Those eyes had been familiar. Very familiar. There had been no trepidation in Bobbie’s soul before she was slaughtered. Only an odd exuberance.
Surprise, Mama, I’m home! Happy Birthday!
Dr. Montgomery had drilled into her head the first day of training in the PID that everyone is born with the gift. Call it hunches. Coincidence. Serendipity. Instinct. Guardian angels whispering in one’s ear.
At times, when she least expected it, those feelings had shimmied up her spine like icy fingers, stopping her in her tracks, breath held in her lungs, heart banging in her ears.
She hadn’t honed her talent well enough to predict catastrophe before it happened. But she had been disabused of the idea that destiny was an entity that shouldn’t be fucked around with. It wasn’t destiny that chose some poor schmuck to have his head blown away in a drive-by shooting. Destiny was not being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Such destiny was death by evil. God simply blinked, and in that infinitesimal moment Satan himself snapped his fingers and obliterated a soul.
However, she had, over the last years, learned to recognize the foul stench of impending evil—but only when she focused on it. Not easy. A little like a one-hundred-pound weight lifter attempting to heave a five-hundred-pound barbell.
But tonight, the stench drifted to her as vaporous as the fog slithering through the streets. As filthy as the dark brown river slapping against the piers.
Donovan and Armstrong, Costos and Killroy might well entrap Angel Gonzales with their decoy whores. But the French Quarter monster was on the hunt again. She could feel his presence. It crawled over her skin like the fine point of his weapon.
She moved silently along Pauline to the alley that led to Bobbie Cox’s apartment. With any luck, and no disturbances, she just might be able to grasp enough of the dreadful event to help the case. The police tape had long ago been removed. There remained no evidence whatsoever that a brutal murder had transpired here days ago. Life goes on…and on…and on….
But not for Bobbie or J.D. Damascus’s family.
She instinctively reached for her gun—reassuring to know it was there as she breathed in the tainted scent of sour beer and urine and him as she moved down the dark alley toward Bobbie’s apartment. She already dreaded the coming experience. Feared the horror. The pain. The spiraling of the soul leaving the twitching mutilated body of a human being.
Pausing.
Anna narrowed her eyes, the rise of heat through her body causing sweat to pool in her armpits and run down her ribs.
SHE IS QUITE beautiful, he thinks. Always thought so. Hard not to appraise Anna Travelli and not get a hard-on. Therein is the problem. The others had not interested him in that way. He would never fuck a whore. Cut off their heads, yes. But fuck them, no.
He stays close to the shuttered buildings, where the moonlight cannot reach. The light of the moon stirs his blood, and his hunger. He can smell her perfume. Nothing floral for this one. It is the feel of feminine masculinity about her that intrigues him. She would not scream and beg for her life. She would fight him as powerfully as a man. She might even kill him.
A tantalizing thought. Someone really should kill him. His soul is more than worthy of Hell.
And so he follows, creeps around the edge of what once had been an old mill house and presses his body hard against the aged, sharp bricks. Watches as she pauses, reaching for the gun in the shoulder holster beneath her lightweight jacket. She senses him. He can tell.
Her head turns slowly and she looks back down the alley. He stands very still, not breathing, simply admiring the reflection of moonlight on her face and hair that shimmers like fiery gold.
Again she moves, nearing the whore’s apartment. He wonders why she has come here, alone. In the dark. What does she expect to find here that the police have been unable to locate?
She steps around a corner, disappearing from his sight. Taking a deep breath, he slowly releases it, and follows.
IT WAS THE sudden overwhelming sense of menace that made Anna grab again for her gun. Foolish of her to have ignored her own perceptions. They had screamed at her like a thousand sirens the moment she’d stepped from the car.
As he moved up behind her, she drove her elbow hard into the pit of his stomach, slammed her heel down as hard as she could on his foot. The animal-like howl erupted in her ear, but his hands continued to claw into the flesh of her throat, cutting off her breath as she struggled to shift her body enough to aim the gun—impossible.
She fired the Glock anyway, heard the bullet ricochet off the metal roof of a building, a ping and whine that echoed up the alleyway. The shock of the gunfire momentarily startled her assailant enough that she was able to throw her head back, ramming it into his chin with such impact she heard his teeth smash together.
Her knees buckled. Her weight dragged him down, his feet entangled with hers as they hit the ground, rolling. She dug her fingernails into the backs of his hands and swung the butt of her gun as hard as she could into his cheekbone.
She heard shouting, the blaring of sirens, the banging of running feet on the brick alleyway. The dark suddenly became a collision of red and blue lights, streaks of flashlights, and shadows of uniformed officers surrounding her, all with their weapons aimed at her and the man beneath her.
“Drop it!” an officer shouted. “Drop the gun!”
Anna rolled to her back, clutching her throat, which was slick with blood. “FBI,” she cried as she lifted her shield in one trembling hand.
Then Donovan was suddenly there, backlit by flashlights as he dropped to one knee beside her, his expression concerned.
“Okay,” she managed, closing her eyes. “I’m okay.”
She rolled to her side, then rocked to her knees, the gun still in one hand as she looked down into Angel Gonzales’s face.
Mike gently helped her to stand as the accompanying officers rolled Gonzales to his belly and handcuffed his wrists behind his back.
Anna dropped onto the steps outside Bobbie Cox’s apartment, her legs bent at the knees and one hand still clutching her gun. Mike sat beside her and they watched as Armstrong dragged Gonzales to his feet and began to recite him his rights.
Mike looked at her finally, his disapproval apparent. “I’d ask you what the hell you were doing out here alone, but I don’t expect it would make much difference.”
“We all have our stupid moments, Donovan. Now isn’t the time or place to rub it in my face.”
“Nice collar. Chalk up another one for the infamous Special Agent Travelli.” He released a relieved sigh. “Damn glad this is over with.”
Anna slid the gun into the holster, then slowly turned her gaze up to Mike’s. He tossed her a bottle of Purell to wash the blood from her hands and throat.
Detective Michael Donovan stared at her…saying nothing.
JERRY STOOD AT Anna’s side as the doctor at Charity Emergency finished his delicate task of stitching closed the claw marks on Anna’s neck. There were bruises as well. Her throat had swollen so badly she could hardly swallow. The physician suggested they should keep her overnight to be on the safe side, but Anna refused.
Silent, slightly drowsy from the painkillers the doctor had provided, Anna left the hospital at Jerry’s side, his arm wrapped protectively around her, his face still white with fear and concern.
She knew his thoughts. Thank God that he was keeping them to himself…at least for the moment. She was in no need of an argument. Too many thoughts still raging in her brain.
He did not return her to the St. Louis Hotel, but took her straight to his apartment a few blocks down from the courthouse. Typical bachelor pad. Slightly unkempt; Mardi Gras photographs on the walls; unwashed dishes in the sink.
He walked her directly into his bedroom, sat her on the bed, and proceeded to remove her gun holster, then her bloodied shirt. She was too damn tired, and hurt too damn bad, to stop him.
He removed her Nikes then wriggled her tight jeans down her legs, tossed them into a pile of his own unwashed clothes near the bathroom.
She attempted a smile. “You always were a lousy housekeeper. With your money, you could afford a maid.”
“I wouldn’t trust my own mother alone in this apartment. I’m not in the habit of allowing strangers into my place to happen upon some kind of information that could blow one of my cases.”
He returned from the bathroom with a damp cloth, pressed her back on the bed so her head rested on a down pillow. He mopped her face, still streaked by blood, sweat, and tears, and he tried to smile.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an FBI agent cry.”
“Don’t rub it in, Costos.”
Jerry gently sat on the bed beside her, his fingers lightly touching the deep, crusting gouges on her neck. “Christ Almighty. He almost killed you.”
Anna reached for his hand, curling her fingers around his own, and tried to smile. “Please. Let’s not go there. Right now I don’t need to hear how a woman has no place in the agency. I don’t want to hear how you would suffer if I were killed. I do understand how you feel, Jerry. Completely. But like I’ve said to you a thousand times: I’m no different than any other cop. We have a job to do. Every time we strap on a gun and take on a suspect, we put our lives on the line. It doesn’t matter if I’m a woman. Men die, too. Good men. In the line of duty. They leave wives and children and parents behind…because they want to make the world a safer place for their families. Where would the civilized world be without us?”
She blinked sleepily. The searing pain on her neck and the ache between her shoulders were duller now. Soon the memories of the attack would be quieted. Soon the realities of the case would return.
Focus. She didn’t want to think about those realities now. Focus. On here. Now. On the man who looked at her with such craving and love in his eyes she felt her heart melt.
Struggling to sit up, she slipped her hands around her back and unclasped her bra. She lay back down and lifted her arms to him. “For old time’s sake,” she whispered.
Jerry unsnapped his jeans and slid them down his hips. He tossed his shirt aside, lowered his body gently down on hers, and buried his head in the crook of her neck, his breath warm and moist against her ear.
“I love you. I’ll never stop loving you,” he murmured.
She slid her fingers through his thick, dark hair. It slightly curled around her fingers. And she realized, in that moment, that the thoughts that had fractured through her mind in those terrifying moments at Gonzales’s hands, that it had been Jerry’s face that had flashed before her eyes. Images of his smile. His tenderness. His teasing. And his heartbreak.
As he lifted his head, her lids fluttered open, looking through the dark into his eyes that regarded her with so much desire her heart felt, for an instant, as if it had stopped beating entirely. An ecstasy of emotion flooded through her as he brushed her mouth in a tenuous kiss.
“I love you, Anna,” he told her again, the pain resonating so in his voice that tears rose to her eyes.
He moved. Peeled her panties down her legs, which she opened freely, sighing as his fingers stroked her, sliding into her, until she was wet and slick and aching.
“For old time’s sake.” He smiled, sinking his body deeply into hers, fingers twisting into her hair. He moved against her, tenderly at first, until the strain of passion overcame them both. Until their bodies writhed with remembered fervor, and fever. Seeking. Sliding. Insistent. The tip of his penis teasing her entrance, but barely, until their groans quickened and her body moved as abandonedly as his. Until the end came much too swiftly for them both and the fall back to earth was like snow drifting from heaven.
Quiet, motionless, they lay together. Arms and legs entangled. She closed her eyes—so easily she could give in to the painkilling drug the doctor had pumped into her veins. So easy to glide away into oblivion, forget the last hours. Forget the last years. Forget Jerry Costos…just for a little while.
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Jerry rolled to his back, pulled her against his side, and cradled her as he stared at the ceiling, releasing a sigh of relief.
“We got him, Anna, thanks to you. You deserve one hell of a commendation.”
“No,” she whispered, lifting her head to look into his eyes. “You got Gonzales, Jerry. He’s still out there, the French Quarter Killer.”
His gaze hardened and he looked away. “You’re wrong.”
Laying her head on his chest, she listened to his heart thud. “I hope you’re right,” she said, and nothing more, just lay unmoving until his breathing became deep and his arms around her relaxed.
As easily as possible, she slid from the bed, slipped on her clothes, and checked her watch. Just enough time to get back to the hotel, collect her belongings, and catch the five A.M. flight back to Quantico.
She paused at the bedroom door—told herself not to look back. But she did anyway. Jerry appeared to be sleeping—but she doubted it. He would watch her walk out of his life once again, knowing that it had been inevitable.
Anna blew him a kiss and whispered, “For old time’s sake.”
Then she silently left the apartment.
Too damn bad they could never make a go of it.
HE WHISTLES TO himself as he folds the newspaper in half and tucks it under his arm. The stewardess for Delta Airlines requests that all first-class passengers board. She flashes him a smile and says, “Good to see you again. Have a great flight.”
He gives her a wink and a smile, shifts his fine leather briefcase to the other hand before moving down the long boarding tunnel to the waiting 727. There really isn’t a reason to read about the Gonzales bullshit. Jerry Costos and Mike Donovan will pat themselves on the back and New Orleans will breathe easier for a while…but only for a while. Of course he’ll be back. When the time is right.
Lover Beware Page 18