A Cold Day In Hell

For CameronRex and Chairman Liao.

Always an inspiration!

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Love and thanks to Jill Marie Landis,

friend and fabulous writer.

Your encouragement, input and partially

successful attempts to teach me how to “be”

as well as “do” helped me reach my goals for

A COLD DAY IN HELL!

1

Pointe Judah, Louisiana

Late November

They never should have been there.

“Stop walking. Now. Stand still, dammit!” Aaron Moggeridge shouted at the retreating back of Sonny DeAngelo.

“Sonny,” Aaron yelled. “I’m out of rope with my mom. If she finds out about this, I’m toast. She’ll kick me out of the house.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sonny said. “I got a lot more worries with my uncle. How would you like to have Angel trying to straighten you out? And Eileen’s too soft to quit on you. Shit, come on, will ya?”

Aaron pulled a foot out of the sucky mud and stomped it down on a white cypress stump. “We’re lost,” he pointed out. At least Sonny had quit walking away. “Do you know which way to the bayou?”

Bayou Nezpique had been behind them when Sonny had insisted on striking out into swampy ground, but who knew where it was now? “You don’t have a clue, do you? I told you fooling around in swamps was a bad idea. Why did you really want to get into this stuff? And don’t give me that ecosystem crap again.”

Sonny turned around and retraced his steps, smacking his sodden sneakers through a thin layer of brown water covered with frothing scum into the bottom sludge. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

“You’re like a stupid kid,” Aaron said. “Jumpin’ in puddles. I’m calling for help. It’s getting dark, Sonny. You want to be out here in the dark? It’ll get colder and it could rain buckets. Where’d you think all this water came from? It’s almost December and we’re getting a helluva lot of rain.” He reached for his cell phone and started punching in numbers. He was scared. Sonny was a city kid, a New Yorker; he didn’t know shit about a Louisiana swamp.

“C’mon,” Sonny said. He poked at Aaron’s cell, messing up the number. “If we call home like a couple of scared girls, we’re done for.”

“Look around,” Aaron said, raising his arms. “We don’t know where we are. It’s gonna get dark. This isn’t Brooklyn, it’s a swamp. Y’know what kind of stuff hangs out in swamps?”

“Pretty much what hangs out in parts of Brooklyn.”

Sonny kept his head shaved and oiled but the shadow of his thick black hair always showed. It came to a point in the middle, in front. His eyes pissed Aaron off. They looked innocent. Big, brown and soft, and they lied. Sonny DeAngelo was the toughest kid he had ever met. Sonny was seventeen and Aaron would be before long, but most of the time Aaron felt like Sonny was years older.

“Okay,” Sonny said, his voice dropping. “I’m an ass, just like you say. But we’re in it now and we gotta get out, so quit panicking and start working with me.”

“Shit!”

“Shit, what now?”

“I know this place. I’ve lived here all my life and I know where I don’t go. This is a big don’t go. But I let you talk me into it. You don’t get to tell me to work with you, because you don’t know jack shit. You work with me, ballhead.”

Sonny grinned. “Sure thing.” He posed like a scarecrow with its head on one side, and his thin black sweater hung from his arms and body. His flat belly showed above the black pants that hung on his hip bones. He pointed one long forefinger. “I do know where we are. I didn’t tell you in case you chickened out, but there’s a guy I want to get a look at.”

What Sonny had just said didn’t compute for Aaron. He shook his head.

“I’m not making this up,” Sonny said. “We got to that busted dock and I knew we had to come this—”

“What guy?” Aaron asked. “What guy, Sonny? You didn’t say anything about looking for a guy.”

“He lives around here. The bartender at Buzzard’s Wet Bar told me about him.”

“Buzz’s? You were at Buzz’s?”

Sonny shrugged. “I just wanted to see what it was like in there.”

“If someone squeals on you, Angel’s going to take you apart. It’s gonna be ugly.” Aaron made a circle, searching for something familiar, anything that would steer them out of there.

“We gotta concentrate,” Sonny said. “That broken dock where I stopped? Back there on the bayou? That was the marker for us to head into the trees. His place is around here and we’re going to stumble right over it any second now.”

“Liar,” Aaron said. “Ecosystems.”

“They said I wouldn’t do it,” Sonny said. “I’m gonna show them. Wait till I prove it to them tomorrow. There’s no such thing as voodoo. Or a root doctor.”

Aaron moaned. “A root doctor? You’re off your head. If one of those guys was around here—and he isn’t—I sure as hell wouldn’t be stopping by for a visit. I’m calling Matt Boudreaux.”

“The police chief?” Sonny’s voice squeaked. “For crissakes, let’s move. All I want to do is see where this guy lives and get me a memento.”

Aaron looked up through the trees. They weren’t dense but they were all he could see in any direction. Cypress, their feet in standing water. Moss hanging like grey-green slime. Broken stumps scattered. “A frickin’minefield,” he muttered. “If there…whatever you’re looking for, how will you prove you saw it?”

“If I take a bit of wood back and say it’s from his house, they’ll have to believe it. Maybe I’ll haul along a dead rat, too.”

“You don’t know a thing about this place,” Aaron said. “Okay, we’ve got to choose. Back the way we came or straight on.”

“Straight on,” Sonny said, frowning now. “We’ll get out to an old logging road eventually. I just want to see his house and—hey, we can ask him how to get out of here.”

“Our bikes,” Aaron said. “We’ve got to find them or we’ll never get home. That’s it.” He gritted his teeth and dialed 911.

“Don’t,” Sonny whispered. “Please don’t do that. You know I’m supposed to behave while I’m here. That’s why I’m here. Uncle Angel’s—”

Aaron held up a palm. “No signal,” he said. His skin felt tight. Just like he’d been expecting, raindrops began tunneling down through the trees.

He heard a sound that didn’t fit. One look at Sonny showed he had heard it, too. With a finger to his mouth he got to Aaron, took his arm and backed him into the nearest cover—three tall stumps crowded together.

The sound came again and again, then turned into a steady splashing and stumbling racket.

“If that’s your root doctor, there’s no use hiding. He already knows where we are.” Aaron spoke softly through barely moving lips.

“And if it’s somebody else?” Sonny said against his ear. “Give me the voodoo man over some others it could be.”

“What d’you mean?”

Sonny’s features weren’t as clear anymore. The light was just about all sucked out. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going to try running to that tree, the really big one there. If we split up, we’re more difficult to catch. That’s if there’s someone planning to catch us. If it was Angel, he’d be calling our names.”

“I wish it was him.” Aaron twisted the neck of Sonny’s black sweater and hung on. “You’re not going. We stay together.”

The splashing, the cracking of branches stopped abruptly.

“We can take him,” Aaron murmured.

“Not if he’s got a gun.”

Aaron felt puzzled and said, “Root doctors don’t carry guns.”

“You know any of ’em well?”

“Never met one.”

Only the creaking of winter-pale tree limbs and the slapping of raindrops broke the silence, these and the critters on their way home. Those raindrops whirled, catching what light came from above.

The splashing started again, then stopped—then started.

Sonny put his mouth to Aaron’s ear again. “He doesn’t know where we are for sure. He may not be looking for us at all. Hang on. I think he’ll go away.”

Aaron nodded and held his breath. With his body so quiet, his heart slammed at his eardrums. He took another breath. “Nothing now,” he murmured. They were in big-time trouble. Getting out of there was all that mattered—as long as they could do it alive.

He pulled way back between two trunks and inched around, looking for any movement. The cracks through the stumps weren’t big enough to see through. He worked slowly sideways until the fingers of his left hand touched the smooth edge of a cypress.

Sonny caught at Aaron’s right shoulder but he shrugged him away.

A loud click, a crack, a flash of light, and Aaron could have sworn he felt the bullet slice through the air close to his face.

“God.” He froze in complete panic for a moment, then rolled back the way he had come. He and Sonny didn’t speak. The time for that was over.

They were trapped with a shooter who was just waiting for them to make a tiny move.

“Strangers a-coming!” A man’s full, deep voice sang out the words and Aaron squeezed his eyes shut. He felt light-headed.

“Strangers a-coming!” Louder, even richer this time. “What they want? Who break the peace? You be sor-ry!” The laugh that followed started with a gurgle and hurtled up the scale.

“That’s not the guy with the gun,” Aaron said. “He’s behind and to the right. This one’s…” He wasn’t sure where the guy who had shouted was, but there were two men out there.

Sonny put his fingers in his ears. He didn’t look gutsy and fearless anymore.

Aaron gripped his arm. “I think the screamer’s way over to our left now. Maybe he’s trying to help us.” He let out a yell and ran toward the big voice.

Air burned his throat and his eyes. But he shouted and screeched louder and louder.

He saw a searing flash, just like the other one. It definitely didn’t come from the same direction as the mouthy guy.

A thud into Aaron’s back, way to the left side, spun him around. “I’m shot!”

There was pain. Dull pain. Then numbness, heaviness.

He hit the scummy water, face-first, before the lights went out.

Sonny turned one way, then the other. Don’t let him be dead.

A racket set up, like nothing he’d ever heard before. The clink of sharp things rattling together, and bells—or at least metal clinking on other metal surfaces.

Coming out of the boggy haze, a figure loomed. Tall, in a fever of movement. Great head shaking, voluminous cloth billowing behind, and a glow that picked out a bumpy, shiny red face with holes where the eyes should be.

The creature paused, humming, shaking his noisemakers softly. At first Sonny thought the freak’s head looked big because he had a mass of shaggy hair, then he saw a bulbous, colorful turban built up to outlandish proportions.

And Sonny heard more splashing, this time made by someone fleeing, throttle wide-open, from the red, shiny-faced guy. Suddenly he realized that the creature wore a mask—a bright red mask, with a skeletal face painted in black.

Sonny had to get Aaron.

He had to get the hell out of here, they both did.

This was the voodoo man. And damn if it didn’t look like he was staring at Aaron, but hadn’t noticed Sonny.

Long arms shot out. Spiking his knees skyward with each step, he made for Aaron. In the glow that went with him, he twisted his hands this way and that. Fingernails inches long, glowed white and clicked together. The tips glinted silver.

Amid unearthly sounds, the man—if that’s what it was—reached Aaron, stooped and brought his head close, listening. Even at a distance, Sonny saw him nod and hoped it meant Aaron was alive.

With both arms, the man scooped up Sonny’s buddy as if he was a baby. Scooped him up, holding Aaron’s left side tight with both hands.

Sonny saw blood drizzle through the fingers. “Oh, my, gawd,” he muttered. Aaron was done for. They were probably both done for.

“Chuzah, me,” the man cried. “He wants you to follow.” And he loped rapidly away. “Come you—the other boy hidin’in the three stumps. That one back there with the gun, he gone, but he could come back.” All that rattling came from garlands of bones, little bones, big bones, skulls, strung around the man’s neck and waist. The bells were gold, Sonny saw them glitter. He shouldn’t have pushed to come here. Look what he’d done to Aaron.

Sonny couldn’t make his feet move. He couldn’t feel his feet or his legs, but he felt how he was rigid and his blood fluttered in his veins.

“You follow Chuzah. Now! This boy bleedin’ to death.”

2

Eileen Moggeridge slammed the door of her van and locked it, keeping her right hand on the gun she carried in her jacket pocket.

Tonight she had met with someone she’d thought she would never see again. He had stood in this parking lot, nodding toward Poke Around, her gift shop, with a smile on his face. “I’m happy for you, Eileen. I only ever wanted the best for you—and Aaron.” And the smile was sad, his expression guilty, apologetic, humble.

As far as she could remember, he’d never regretted a thing he did and she didn’t believe he’d changed.

He wanted something, and it wasn’t an opportunity to take back responsibility for the family that was no longer his.

Chuck Moggeridge had left her, and Pointe Judah, several years ago. There had been talk about another woman but Eileen had not known who that was. Didn’t want to know, didn’t care. Chuck had beaten and humiliated her one time too many and she still hated herself for not getting rid of him a lot sooner. In the end, her so-called husband had barely beaten Eileen to a divorce lawyer.

Now he was back.

He had called from his car in the parking lot, asked her to talk to him, “Tell me about Aaron. Just for a couple of minutes. He’s my son as well as yours.”

His car had been parked only slots away from hers in the Oakdale Mansion Center lot, but Chuck didn’t know what she drove anymore. Or he hadn’t, but did now. Eileen had walked to her van and seen him hurry toward her. She got quickly behind the wheel, locked the doors and opened her window a crack.

For too long they had looked at each other.

Strange how two people who had made a life together, made a child together, could become strangers.

He didn’t ask to get into the van with her, or for her to go somewhere with him. At least he knew better than that—tonight. Eileen didn’t trust him not to push for more, not when his parting words had been, “I know my responsibilities. You should have let me know he was in rehab. Aaron’s had a rough time and he needs his father. It’s good to be back so I can make things right.”

Lies. Mostly lies.

How had Chuck found out about Aaron’s problems with alcohol? They weren’t an issue anymore. Aaron had gone through rehab—quietly, although she didn’t fool herself that no one knew—and he was just fine. When he had needed Chuck, the man hadn’t been around and now she wanted things to stay the way they were.

She had met Angel DeAngelo—his first name was really Christian—through his nephew Sonny. Sonny and Aaron had become fast friends and Angel had stepped up to give masculine support to Aaron when needed. Eileen liked him—a lot. Sonny wasn’t nearly as high on her list. Surly and silent around her, he was an Aaron-rescue. Aaron had a history of championing misfits.

She held the gun so tight her fingers ached.

The thought of being afraid of Chuck was not new. When they’d been together she dreaded the sight of him and never knew what he might plan to do to her. But she hadn’t worried about him since he’d made a complete break. His timing for coming back couldn’t be worse. She raised her face, grateful for the fine moisture on her skin.

If she didn’t get back inside the shop, Angel would arrive before her and ask where she’d been. She wasn’t ready to tell him.

Eileen and Angel had moved slowly together, each of them scalded by past experience, but she wanted them to have a chance at something more and she thought he did, too—if he could ever stop thinking of her as his good buddy. Most afternoons, around closing time, he stopped by for coffee but their conversations tended to revolve around Aaron and Sonny.

Damn Chuck for showing up now. He shouldn’t scare her, but he did.

The rain had eased off, but the evening remained damp, the air heavy. Eileen hurried away from her van toward the lighted windows of Poke Around. The shop was in what had once been the conservatory of the beautiful old Oakdale Mansion and she had strung white icicle lights around the roof and outlined the windows with twinkling multicolored strands.

Chuck’s call came only moments after Eileen’s employee, Suky-Jo, had left. They had been stocktaking—not so easy when the shop was crammed with holiday merchandise. All but the low lights were off in the patisserie and the new salon that flanked her place. Old friends ran the salon and Eileen had an investment in that, too.

The business was hers—at last.

Eileen could not get over the excitement she felt whenever she looked at the shop. Her shop. She had come a long way from being Chuck’s mostly ignored wife, the woman who belonged at home—who mustn’t ask for anything, so got nothing.

Angel’s offices were also in the Oakdale Mansion Center. He was the operations manager for her brother’s construction firm and worked late. Then he liked to walk over and pick her up. Within the hour he’d be at the shop door. She wanted to see him. In the months since they had started their tentative relationship, her need to be with him grew daily.

They circled each other and knew that’s what they were doing. Eileen wondered how much longer Angel would be satisfied with being her close friend. She couldn’t face the question tonight.

Her cell phone rang in her purse and when she looked at the readout she saw Angel’s number.

“Hi,” she said, smiling to herself.

“Where are you?”

Eileen frowned and slowed her pace. “Where I almost always am.”

He took his time to respond. “And that is?”

“You’re not interrogating a suspect in your former life.” He admitted to several years’ service as an ATF—alcohol, tobacco and firearms—agent but wouldn’t discuss what he’d done before that. “I’m at the shop,” she said. Or she soon would be.

“No you’re not. What’s going on?”

Eileen’s scalp prickled. She felt colder than she should on a humid night. He’d never spoken to her sharply like that. He had no right to. A few feet from the sidewalk, she stopped and stared at the shop. Angel stood inside the door, staring out, his face set, hard and cold, the way she’d seen it several times before, but never when he was speaking to her.

He had his own key.

In a way, since Aaron and Sonny met, they had almost become a family—with some notable things missing.

His tone turned her stomach. It also made her angry. “What do you think is going on, Christian?” She winced. Her habit of calling him Christian when she was either really happy or really unhappy with him gave her away every time.

He kept the phone at his ear but didn’t say anything. So far he didn’t know she was only yards away and staring at him.

Angel was one of those men who took up a lot of space. When he walked into a room, there was a subtle change in the atmosphere. People looked at him, and conversation faded.

Eileen crossed her arms. The open line between them unnerved her. She tapped a hand at her throat. When she and Angel had met, she and Matt Boudreaux, the local police chief, had seemed to be moving toward a serious relationship. But Matt had been taking his sweet time, often treating her as if they’d been married for years—and she shouldn’t mind a broken date, and another and another. Eileen’s patience had run out. She would always love Matt in a certain way, but Angel’s attention had eventually distracted her.

Sometimes she thought Angel didn’t trust that it was over between her and Matt. He’d never made a romantic move but he did give the impression that she was his property.

Suddenly, Angel slipped his phone into the breast pocket of his dark blue shirt and stood with his big arms spread. He gripped the door frame on either side. Those arms and shoulders weren’t just big, they were massive. She thought about his arms and the way they moved—too often. Just touching him messed with her mind.

Eileen put her own phone away. She had about thirty seconds to see his face, his usually cool gray eyes, before she approached the door and he saw her.

She paused again. Cool didn’t have anything to do with his face now. Emotions, none of which Eileen wanted to explore, passed over his features. She could see a white line around his compressed lips. Below his rolled-up sleeves, the muscles and tendons in his arms stood out. He squeezed the door frame.

That’s enough. Where does he think I am? Or maybe that should be, who does he think I’m with? She hated the thought because playing the field wasn’t her style.

She arrived in front of him and they stared eye-to-eye through the glass. He wore his dark blond hair short and at the moment it stuck up as if he’d pushed at it. He had thicker, darker eyelashes than a man should have and he lowered them to half-mast so he could fix his gaze on her face.

Before she could find her keys, he swept open the door and stood back.

Eileen walked inside and he locked up behind her.

“You’re early,” she said.

“So you thought you had more time to get back before I found out you’d left?”

“Hey, buddy.” She walked to the back of the store where a soft red velvet couch stood, and threw down her purse. “You’re out of line. I’m not having a wonderful evening and I don’t need you to make it worse. I had to step out and deal with something. That’s all, and I don’t have to explain every move I make to you. Can I get you an espresso or a glass of wine—or a beer?”

“No.”

She turned toward him and found that in his naturally uncanny manner, he’d closed the space between them soundlessly. Although she was a tall woman, she was forced to look up at him. “A woman doesn’t belong out there alone, in the dark,” he told her. When he narrowed his gray eyes they became almost black. “It probably used to be that folks didn’t have to lock their doors around here, or worry about crime. Times have changed.”

“I walked to my van. Then I walked back from my van when I’d finished my business. Really, I do appreciate your concern.” She tried a smile, but his expression didn’t change. “As I said, thanks, but I’m a big girl.”

“That depends on what you mean by big girl.”

There would be no discussion about what he thought it meant.

Angel rubbed his face. “I tried to check on Sonny but his cell’s off. You know it bothers me when he does that.”