She shook her head. “I didn’t hesitate.”
“You can only learn so much from DVDs. Let me teach you how to be better.” He couldn’t help but smile, though he felt deadly serious about the subject matter. Apparently, he was powerless to stop smiling around her. “As much as I love the idea of a magical wizard at the end of the yellow brick road, I believe that teaching people an effective way to kick ass is more reliable for instilling confidence and peace of mind.”
Andi thought about his offer for a second, then nodded. “You’re on. We’ll start tonight.”
Chapter Nine
Gabe
“I was right here, studying that house.” Andi pointed across Esplanade Avenue. “Thinking how I’d paint it.”
Gabe, Marks, and Tyre flanked her in the wide, tree-filled median. Traffic crawled along the narrow street. Parked cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists added to the congestion. With tall palm trees and sprawling oaks on the lawn, the red brick house was majestic.
She’d washed the smudge of paint off her face, and had pulled a brown-leather bomber jacket over her loose white shirt. A breeze tousled shiny strands of her hair. As it fell back in place, the result was a perfect, edgy frame for her serious eyes and pale pink lips.
“What seemed off first?” he asked.
She frowned and bit her lip. Glanced at him, then gave him a small nod before refocusing on the street. “I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. There.”
As she pointed, Gabe looked where she indicated. Her voice, barely above a whisper, was hard to hear with the traffic noise. “About a block and a half away. At the corner of…”
A passing truck, with its engine roaring and radio blaring, drowned her words. As he leaned closer to her, she backed a step away. “Don’t crowd me, Agent Hernandez.”
“Not trying to, ma’am. There’s too much noise. I can’t hear you when you whisper.”
She drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, tilted her face up, and met his gaze with a determined look. “Perhaps you could do something with that mic in your ear,” she said, loud and clear, so there was no missing the words, “so it’s a hearing aid?”
Marks and Tyre turned fast so she wouldn’t see them laughing. In his ear, the open audio carried their chuckling. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing. Your voice drops when you—”
“Fine. I damn well know when and why my voice drops, but—” She lifted her chin, and he realized then how pale she was. “—I can’t seem to stop it from happening.” The flash of fire in her eyes told him she hated it. “Do what you need to do, Agent. Just try not to crowd me. It was there,” she said, pointing again. “Right before the corner of Esplanade and Decatur, on the Marigny side of Esplanade. Where that Yellow VW just pulled away. A van pulled up and I thought I saw them kidnap someone.”
Eyeing a walking tour of fifteen or so people meandering along the sidewalk, a horse and buggy loaded with tourists turning onto Esplanade from Royal Street, and the never-ending traffic, he asked, “Was the area this crowded yesterday?”
Andi gave him a slight headshake. “No. Yesterday was Friday. It happened before most of the TGIF’ers hit the Quarter, before most of the weekenders arrived. A few tourists were crossing the street.” She frowned. “I think they distracted the agents.”
“Back up a minute. What made you notice the van?”
She flinched as a nearby car backfired. Gabe almost reached for her, to reassure her with some kind of contact. Studying her, knowing everything the file had included about her PTSD and her agoraphobia, Gabe knew that standing in the median was terrifying for her. Yet she was doing it.
Damn brave.
“Let’s cross the street, to the sidewalk, Ms. Hutchinson,” he growled. And you’re never going to paint that house, if this is where you’d have to stand to do it.
At a break in the traffic, he led her to the French Quarter side of Esplanade. He placed himself between her and the edge of the sidewalk, with Marks and Tyre on either side of them. Her back was to a brick wall. She had a view of the area in question. “Better?”
She nodded.
“Try to tell me why you noticed the van.”
“It was the sudden movement. It wasn’t that he was driving fast…”
Her words, mixed with traffic noise, trailed when Gabe leaned closer to hear her, his feet a mere eight inches from hers, his head bent down to her, as her voice lowered to a whisper. “What was that last part?”
“It was that he stopped so fast,” she said. “Fast enough for the tires to screech.” Her arms were tightly wrapped around her waist.
Oh, shit. She’s hugging herself.
As she torqued every protective instinct he’d ever had, it took everything in him not to grab her, take her in the shelter of his arms, and hold her tight. Gabe planted his feet and straightened his back as she once again tilted her head up and looked directly at him. She looked irritated—with herself, him, or the situation, he couldn’t tell. “I’m really trying to speak up, Agent Hernandez.”
“Your whispers don’t bother me one bit. You could make up your own sign language and I’d figure out a way to understand it. Okay?”
His comment won him a small smile. “Do you always find a way to joke?”
“That wasn’t a joke.”
She shook her head and drew a deep breath. “At first, my view was partially blocked by that tree. When the tires screeched, I turned, and saw a black van pull along the sidewalk, heading away from the river. A man got out on the passenger side.”
“There were two people in the van?”
She nodded. “A driver plus a front seat passenger.”
“Both got out?”
“Only the passenger.”
“Two men?”
“They were broad-shouldered. Larger than the average woman.”
“Can you describe either one?”
She bit her lower lip. “No. They both wore baseball caps. Driver’s was dark. Passenger’s was black. He wore a long-sleeved dark brown shirt and dark pants. The passenger grabbed a woman walking on the sidewalk, pushed her into the back seat, and got in there with her.”
“Can you remember details about her?”
“She was a lot smaller than him.”
“Are you sure the person on the sidewalk was a female?”
Andi was quiet for a second. “She was walking towards the river. Away from me. Yes. I’m sure. She had on a loose, pale pink dress. A black leather jacket. Maybe she had light blond hair. I just saw a flash of it. She had most of her head covered. A purple head wrap. Not Muslim. Trendy. Like Old Navy. Once she was in the van, they took off.”
“Did she scream?”
She gave him a slow headshake. “Not that I heard.”
“Okay, Ms. Hutchenson. I’ll look around and see what I can find out. Marks and Tyre will stay with you. It’s getting dark soon. Would you like to stay out here or head home?”
I know not to tell you what to do. But please go home. The strain in your eyes tells me you’ve had enough of the great outdoors for one day.
Andi glanced down the street, to where the incident may—or may not have—occurred. She didn’t need to voice her internal struggle; worry and self-doubt flooded her eyes. If it had happened, someone could very likely be in peril. If it hadn’t, her imagination was playing tricks on her, and in her world, her runaway imagination was a scary, scary thing.
“I’ll go home,” she whispered.
As she left with Marks and Tyre, Gabe walked to the spot where Andi said the van had screeched to a halt.
Well, well.
Tread marks blackened the road. It wasn’t a big skid. Just one solid foot of four black marks. Definitely an indication of a sudden stop. It could have been any one of hundreds of cars, vans, or SUVs that had passed in the last few days. Probably, it meant nothing. But—probabilities didn’t always pan out.
Turning from the street, scanning the sidewalk, he saw no evidence that anything had happened there.
; “Tyre,” he said into his audio mic, his eyes returning to the skid marks.
“Sir?”
“When you get back, check to see if there were any missing person reports filed since yesterday that could be relevant. Here and in neighboring jurisdictions.”
“Yes, sir.”
From what he could tell, only one potential outdoor crime camera would’ve picked up the area in question. When Gabe walked into Bailey’s Lounge, where the camera was perched above the entry, he looked at the video monitor set above the bar and the bartender confirmed that Gabe was SOL. The camera’s permanent view was set on the bar’s entryway. Not the area in question.
Pug’s Po-boys, on the opposite block, didn’t have an outdoor crime cam but it had outside tables with a view of the corner. Inhaling the aroma of roasting meat, and scanning the clean restaurant where most of the tables were empty, Gabe introduced himself to a young waitress with blond pig-tails. She wore a t-shirt with a Pug’s Po-Boys logo, a short jean skirt, and red tennis shoes. She eyed him up and down in a friendly, but suspicious way, as he asked to speak to any of the wait staff who’d been working at two the day before.
“Well, Gabe,” she asked, “are you a cop?”
“No. A private investigator, and I’m not investigating anything having to do with you or anyone who works at Pug’s. I’m investigating an occurrence that happened across the street.”
“Like a pickpocketing or an armed robbery?”
“Something like that.” He decided he was hungry, too. He’d last eaten on the plane, and that had been hours ago.
“Well, things like that happen all the time on Esplanade. Cops take their time, unless someone’s shot and bleeding to death on the sidewalk. Took them twenty-three hours to get here when we were burglarized last month. I was around yesterday afternoon. I’m Cat. My brother John was here, too. That’s John, slicing the bread behind the counter. My dad, Pugs, was here, too.”
Cat, Pugs, and John, hadn’t seen anything matching, or coming close to, what Andi had witnessed. The day before had been quiet, and none of the outside tables had been taken at the time in question. As Gabe glanced at a menu, Pugs told him he wouldn’t find a better po-boy in town. “I roast the meat myself. Most shops don’t these days. We deliver in the Quarter and the Marigny.”
“I’ll be calling around eight.”
Gabe left the restaurant. Walking back to the townhome, using the audio mic, he said, “Tyre.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Missing person’s reports?”
“Nothing relevant. I’ll monitor.”
Tell Andi about the tread marks, or no?
With most other clients, it would be an easy question. He didn’t believe in hiding information from his clients. But this client had runaway paranoia fueled by post-traumatic stress.
Don’t tell her. The tread marks, alone, mean nothing.
At the townhouse, after checking in with Marks in the security room, he climbed the stairs. He stepped along the hardwood risers and not on the carpeted runner, letting his footsteps fall heavy so that he wouldn’t startle her. He found Andi in her gym. She was jogging on the treadmill, which faced the open doorway. She pressed the pause button when she saw him, immediately slowing her pace, then stopped.
Holy shit.
Her purple exercise micro top—barely larger than a jog bra—left almost nothing about her breasts to his imagination. Not the perfect swell of them, not that they’d be a bit more than a mouthful for him, not anything but the exact color of her nipples. The micro top didn’t even cover her midriff. Her abs weren’t a he-man six-pack, but she was definitely toned and ridged. Fitted shorts with a rolled waistband hit low on her hips, below her delicious-looking belly button, and just an inch or two down her thighs. Her legs were muscular. Lean, and perfect.
Lifting a towel from the treadmill’s handrail, she glanced his way as she wiped her forehead. “Anything?”
“No one in the area could confirm or deny it. One crime camera could’ve picked it up at Bailey’s Lounge, but it wasn’t focused on the area. I talked to the people at Pug’s PoBoys, where there’s a view of the corner. No one there saw anything.”
A stoic nod concealed all emotion. “Even if it means I’m crazy, I hope that it was just my imagination at play. Thank you. I’m really, really grateful that you tried.”
It hurt him to his core that she was so appreciative, when all he’d done was exactly what any Black Raven agent should’ve done for their client. In the face of her appreciation and worry, he made a decision. “I did see tread marks that are consistent with a sudden, short stop.”
Her eyes gleamed with fresh interest. “Where I said the van stopped?”
“Yes ma’am. But that isn’t conclusive proof of anything. On that busy street, tread marks, without more, simply mean that someone, at some point recently, stopped abruptly.”
“But the tread marks could’ve been made by the van.”
He nodded. “Maybe.”
“So, a woman really could have been taken.” Her voice fell as she spoke. “And no one knows?”
Not what he meant, yet he gave her a slow nod, because the ‘maybe’ he’d given her could mean that as well. “Possibly, though if a woman was there, and taken, she could’ve been an errant wife, or girlfriend, a runaway teenager found by her parents. Several scenarios are possible. If a woman was abducted, someone will report her missing. We’re monitoring missing person reports. No female has been reported missing in this state in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Do you really have that much faith in the system? In missing person reports?”
“Not sure what you mean.”
She gave him a cool look, folded her towel, and replaced it on the handrail. “You’re a private security contractor, for God’s sake. You’re called in when the system has failed.” Leveling her eyes on him, she asked, “Am I right?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
After carefully lining up the ends of the towel, she glanced at him again, vulnerability showing through her eyes. “Let’s try it this way. You read my file enough to be familiar with the facts of my abduction. Correct?”
Oh hell. Wrong move telling her about the tread marks. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ve always had a safety net surrounding me. More so now, with Black Raven, but even pre-kidnapping, I had the cushion that comes with having the constant, loving concern of relatives and friends. The cushion that comes with wealth. Gated neighborhoods, with security. Staff that would notice if I was gone.”
He moved to the side of the treadmill. Gripping the towel-covered handrail, he leaned against it so that he could better hear her whispered words. He was so close, he could smell her delicious, sweet, lavender-tinged perspiration.
“When I was kidnapped, I was in a secure house, in my bedroom, with an alarm system, in a guarded, gated community. I was taken, and no one who made up the considerable components of my safety net knew about it. For hours, no one knew.”
“I know that, Ms. Hutchenson.”
“I’d have died on the levee where he dumped me, but for the fact that Victor Morrissey had a message to give, and the fact that I somehow managed to live until Taylor and Brandon found me.”
He now understood yet another reason why she was so afraid to be alone, why she tolerated the presence of a security team when she obviously considered the agents an intrusion. She remained afraid of going missing and no one being aware of it until it was too late—a fact that hadn’t made it into her file. “I know.”
“Did you really pay attention to the sketches when we were in my studio, upstairs?”
“Yes. They’re unforgettable.”
“They’re real people. Most of them, young ones.” She was now looking at him, leaning against the opposite handrail, her voice barely audible. “They’re runaways—Agent Hernandez, you really have to quit getting so close to me.”
“But you’re whispering again.”
And we�
�re both lucky I have considerable restraint here, because what I really want to do is wrap my arms around you and tell you everything's going to be okay.
She sighed in frustration. “Fine. My therapist says the same goddamn thing. I’ll try to speak up, because having you leaning into my space is…disconcerting.” She cleared her throat. “Some of the people I sketched don’t have a single person looking out for them. Who, exactly, would report one of them missing, if they were abducted? Isn’t it conceivable that someone who lives on the streets could be gone for days, and no one would know? Who, exactly, would file a missing person’s report for someone no one is looking for?”
“That’s a great question.”
“Are you patronizing me?” Her voice was loud and clear. And pissed.
“No. I’d never do that.”
Studying him for a long moment, she nodded. “Good. Don’t.” Turning to the treadmill control panel, she pressed a button and upped the speed to a fast walk. “I’m through with our conversation. I’m ready for my workout.”
“Fine,” he said, realizing her multi-use word was just perfect.
She glanced sideways at him, arched an eyebrow, taking in his polo shirt, slacks, holstered gun, and street shoes. “Don’t you need to change?”
“I will.” He pressed the incline on her treadmill to a slight upgrade and increased her speed to a fast jog. “Don’t fool with the settings. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
His duffel bag was in the security room, where he’d stashed it when he’d first arrived. Using one of the bathrooms on the first floor, he changed into exercise clothes, then went into her kitchen. Opening the pantry, he saw few food options. He’d have to rectify that. He ate a high-protein power bar that he found on the shelf before returning to the gym.
“Warm up’s over,” he said. “Feeling okay?”
She nodded as she slowed the treadmill. Her cheeks were pink. Tendrils of her hair were wet with perspiration. “Fine.”
“Good. Drink some water, then we can get started.”
Turning her back to him, she slowly walked to the shelf where the weights were organized. Her water bottle was stashed on the top shelf.
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