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“Hey, bro. What up?” the New Orleans cop and former navy SEAL asked him.
“That guy—” he pointed at the perp in the cop car “—mugged that woman—” he pointed at Lissa “—a few minutes ago.”
“Lemme guess. You dived in and saved the day. Dude’s looking a little rough around the edges. Street name’s Julio G. He’s a notorious gangster. We’ve been working on taking him down for a couple of years. Problem is, his flunkies keep taking the fall for him and he keeps slipping out of our net. But not tonight, methinks. Make sure the NOPD doesn’t get blamed for busting him up like that, eh? We wouldn’t want him to get off on yet another technicality.”
Max grimaced. “The girl did most of the visible damage after I took the bastard down. I thought it might be good for her to work out a little of her fear on him before we called you guys.”
Bastien grinned. “I’m beginning to see why my future brother-in-law called you an ice-cold motherfu—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max interrupted. “Listen. I need a favor.”
“Name it. The district attorney’s going to be thrilled that we finally got Julio G. dead to rights. We think he’s top dog in one of the more violent gangs in the area. Not only did you take him down, but you gift wrapped him for the police. No way is he passing off these charges on to one of his boys. We owe you one.”
“I need my name kept out of the police report. In fact, I need all mention of my being involved with this incident sanitized out of the official record.”
“You don’t want any credit at all for catching this slimeball?”
“Nope. None. I was never here.”
Bastien grinned again. “I dunno. The way that pretty little lady’s lookin’ at you, I might rethink that ‘never been here’ thing. She’s one sweet piece of—”
“And that’ll be enough out of you,” Max interrupted.
Bastien frowned. “The woman’s testimony ought to be enough to put Julio away. But if it’s not looking good at trial, I’m gonna have to give your name to the DA and let him call you to testify. We can’t let this guy slip out of our grasp. He’s seriously bad news.”
Max nodded reluctantly. “Understood.” This was the paradox of being undercover and going after bad guys. It became a trade-off of blowing one’s cover versus putting away the scumbags one encountered along the way. At what point was it worth blowing two years’ worth of undercover work to put away one guy?
“Do me a favor in return, bro,” Bastien said.
“What’s that?” he asked cautiously.
“See to it Ms. Clearmont gets home safely. She’s refusing to come down to the station until tomorrow to make her statement, and I’d hate for one of that bottom-feeder’s buddies to find her overnight and take it upon himself to silence her before she can press charges. Given the gang he affiliates with, he’s got some downright unfriendly associates.”
“You protect her. That’s your job.”
Bastien shrugged. “She’s refusing any police protection. Insists on you being the one to take her home.”
Max rolled his eyes. It wasn’t as if he could say no to that. Dammit. “Fine. I’ll follow her to her place.”
“You’ll do more than that if I’m keeping your name off the report. You hold her hand and tuck her into bed. She’s had one hell of a scare, and the way she tells it, she’s got no family or friends in town to take care of her.”
“Why me?” he protested. “I’m on an op and she stumbled into the middle of it...” He left out the part where she was the op.
Bastien threw him a withering look that said he’d thought better of Max than to abandon a lady in need. Max huffed. “All right already. I’ll walk her home and make sure she’s safe overnight.”
“You’ll stay with her?”
Max frowned. “If she’ll let me. And if not, I’ll spend the night outside her place and keep an eye on her. She’ll be safe.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, Bastien. I’ve got her back.”
The cop stared at him intently for a moment and then nodded, accepting his word. “All right. I got me a date to get back to, then. Can’t keep the ladies of New Orleans waiting for all this hotness.”
Max rolled his eyes as the cop strolled away; then he turned his attention back to the problem at hand. Rather, the damsel in distress at hand. Dammit. He really didn’t need to pull babysitting duty when he should be out hunting bad guys. Or maybe being the bad guy would be more accurate.
A soft hand touched his sleeve, and he reacted violently, spinning to face Lissa, who pulled back sharply at his abrupt move. He carefully stilled his entire body and pitched his voice to calming tones. “The police asked if I’d mind walking you home. Would that be all right with you, or would that frighten you?”
“Why on earth would that frighten me? You saved me. You’re my knight in shining armor.”
Oh, God. He was so not a good guy. Were it not for some random creep attacking her, he’d be the one scaring her. He would be the one stalking her without her knowledge, the one peering in her windows with a telescope, the one bugging her house and cloning her computer and cell phone. He would be the one putting that haunted expression in her big dark eyes.
He shoved a distracted hand through his short hair. “Look. I’m going to be honest with you. The police have asked me to keep an eye on you tonight since you won’t accept their protection. Does that freak you out?”
“No freakage. But I hate to impose on you. Keep you from your family...?”
She left it hanging as a question. “No family,” he replied shortly.
“Job? Pet? Girlfriend?”
“None of the above. Correction, I have a job, but I work for myself. Set my own hours.”
“Perfect! You can stay at my place. We’ll make a party out of it.”
Did she have to sound so damned tickled about having a slumber party with him? There was no way he was spending the night in her apartment with her. He might be a cad, but he wasn’t that giant a cad. “I think the police have pretty much wrapped up here. We can go soon. Where do you live?” As if he didn’t know already. Ha.
“I live over the curiosity shop down the block. But I was on my way to the store. I’m out of food. And Mr. Jackson—well, he’s not patient about missing supper.”
He frowned. He’d seen no evidence of a man of any kind in her life. He glanced down to verify that her ring finger was naked. It was. “You have a boyfriend?”
She blinked up at him rather owlishly. “What?” A look of dawning comprehension. “Oh! You mean Mr. Jackson?” Gay laughter. “I’ll introduce you two when we get home. He’s gonna love you. C’mon. I need tuna fish and mayonnaise. He loves my homemade tuna salad and asked after it this morning.”
Something deflated inside Max. Had he actually been a little attracted to her? Hell, how could he not be? She was fascinating in a strange kind of way. The woman had an eccentric style that had nothing to do with regular conventions of society or fashion. A hint of...death...clung to her. Or at least a knowing of it. And yet, within that overriding impression of darkness, a discordant note of happiness was audible. It was entirely at odds with her darker self.
Either that, or the long months undercover had finally gotten to him, and he was losing his marbles. He did a quick mental craziness check. Nope. It wasn’t him. There was something special about her, something alluring, that called to him. Hell, tempted him. This was the way he felt when he found a lost art masterpiece. The discovery brought out the greedy poet inside him.
Or maybe his reaction to her stemmed from the fact that he’d just saved her life. Yeah, that must be it. That had to be why he felt so protective all of a sudden. He was a lot of things, but compassionate was not one of them. And yet here he was, walking his own personal damsel in distress home.
Frowning, he fell in beside her as she strode off down the street. For a woman who’d just been attacked and nearly killed, she’d recovered her mojo damned fast. Either that or she was a fine actress.
“Are you okay?” he asked, blatantly throwing out a trial balloon to gauge her mood and mind-set.
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re here now.”
Well, hell. It kinda made a guy want to puff out his chest and put a little swagger in his step. He glanced down at her and caught her staring sidelong up at him. Their gazes met, and something crackled between them. He could almost see the energy forming a complete circuit between them. Sheesh. His imagination was working overtime tonight. He was a trained covert operative, for goodness’ sake. He didn’t do crackling sexual attraction, particularly not with civilians.
But then she reached out to touch the energy. Her fingertips exactly traced the invisible lines arcing back and forth between them. Crud. Could she physically see the attraction between them? Did that mean she was crazy, too, or was it just him losing his mind? Either way, charges zinged through his body, drawing him to her as if they were opposite poles of human-size magnets. The pull was inexorable and irresistible. And hot. Shockingly hot.
Lust for this woman shot through him along those strange ley lines of sexual energy, and it was all he could do to keep his hands off her. Only the sure and certain knowledge that he would be no better than that sicko stalker behind them kept him from seriously contemplating dragging her up against him, kissing her until she begged him to bed her, burying his body in hers and inhaling all that crackling sexual energy flowing from her into him.
“I’m not a superhero, you know. I’m just a guy.”
“You’re my superhero.”
Huh. He liked the sound of that. Enough that he ordered his raging libido in no uncertain terms to take a hike. Enough that he volunteered to hold the basket for her as he trudged around a local convenience store behind her.
Grocery shopping was a domestic task he had never done before with a woman. It was surreal. Terribly domesticated. So very normal. He had to admit it held a certain charm. Weird charm but charm nonetheless. Or maybe it was just the company he was keeping that made it seem so damned fantastic.
Gah. This was an anomaly. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, she would make her statement, the bad guy would go to jail for a good long time and Max would get back to his regularly scheduled life as an undercover agent. Stalking her.
In a state of minor shock, he carried her plastic grocery bags back to Callista’s Curiosities of the Magical and Macabre and dutifully stood at Lissa’s side as she fumbled at the door with a big old-fashioned key.
“You should let me install a decent security system and a good lock on that door,” he commented.
“Is that what you do? Security systems?”
“Something like that.”
The door lock surrendered just then and granted them access to an incredibly cluttered space. Floor-to-ceiling junk crammed the store. It was enough to make a person feel a little claustrophobic. “Hell of a name this place has. Quite a mouthful.”
“I call it C2M2 to myself,” she replied.
He stopped in the doorway. It felt odd to be entering the place he’d been doing surveillance on for weeks.
“Come in. Please.”
Dammit, if he hadn’t detected that hint of fearful pleading in her tone, he’d have refused her. But as it was, he had no choice. He’d promised Bastien, after all. And truth be told, he wasn’t the kind of guy to leave a woman in the lurch.
She wound across the crowded and cluttered space, heading for a narrow staircase near the back of the store. “I’m sorry in advance for the chaos upstairs. I just inherited this place, and it needs a ton of work.”
She said that as if the downstairs wasn’t a colossal, messy hoarder’s wet dream. He hesitated to see what she considered trashed enough to apologize for. He rounded the corner into her second-floor home and stopped cold. It was a war zone.
The place had been stripped down to the lath and plaster wallboards, and in some places down to bare brick. Corroded copper plumbing was exposed, ancient electrical wires hung in dangerous festoons, bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling provided the only light and the floor was scraped boards. The angle of his surveillance cameras on the shop didn’t capture any of this.
“What the hell happened in here?” he blurted.
“The previous owner started renovations, and I haven’t had time to finish them yet,” she threw over her shoulder as she headed over to a corner that contained a 1950s vintage refrigerator with a rusted door, a hot plate on a wooden milk crate and a metal washtub on the floor under two bare faucets.
“Where did the kitchen go?” he asked cautiously.
“In the Dumpster out back. It was disgusting. I tore out what was left.”
“So I gather.” He picked his way around a pile of debris and across a canvas painter’s tarp stretched over the floor. “And your workmen left the construction site like this? Fire them. I know some good contractors—”
“I’m doing the work myself.”
He stared at Lissa as she shed her coat and hung it on an elaborate wood-and-iron coatrack in the corner. In a properly restored home, it would be a lovely piece. In this chaos, it was wildly out of place.
Good Lord. She was even tinier than he’d imagined, a mere slip of a woman. And she was capable of the heavy labor involved in a complete home restoration? Color him impressed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were a contractor.”
“I’m not,” she answered cheerfully. “But how hard can it be? It’s only hammers and nails and saws.”
Oh, my dear God. Was that what she thought? “And you know how to weld copper and run wiring and hang drywall and know the New Orleans building codes, then?” he asked lightly. He’d renovated his condo when he bought it, but he’d paid experienced professionals to do it and it had still been a nightmare. He’d pitched in to help the crew and had learned a ton about construction, but he wouldn’t know where to begin with this disaster.
“No, but I’ll figure it out.”
He managed to get his hanging jaw closed before she turned around, a small bowl of tuna fish and mayonnaise in hand. Other hand on her hip, she asked, “Now where has Mr. Jackson gone off to?”
If he were this Jackson guy, he’d have run away from home and not come back until this place was put back together. Belatedly, Max answered, “Can you call him on his cell phone? Find out where he’s gone? I know some guys who could pick him up and bring him back here.”
Lissa frowned at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Hey. He’d just offered to burn a hard-won favor from his employer for her.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” she said slowly, as though he were some sort of ignorant child. “Mr. Jackson,” she crooned. “I made you your favorite. Tuna salad.”
Something landed on his shoulder from above, and he dived for the floor, rolling and coming up ready to kill. Jeez. Where had that guy come from? Stunned at the surprise attack, he looked around wildly for his attacker.
Nada. What the hell?
For her part, Lissa laughed and scooped up a...
Son of a bitch.
A cat. Small and black. With one white front paw that looked just like a feline glove. “Mr. Jackson, I presume?” he said drily, lowering his fists to his sides.
“Would you like to pet him? Although I don’t know if he likes men or not. You’re the first one I’ve seen him around. I inherited him with the store.”
“Along with this disaster zone?”
“I prefer to think of it as a project with unlimited potential.”
A cold knot of suspicion started to form in his gut. Had she actually, literally, inherited the place? From whom? And how recently? He’d been under the impression that the store’s namesake would be returning at some point. “Exactly how long ago did you inherit this place?”
“Let’s see. It’s been almost a month.”
He closed his eyes in chagrin as acid frustration ate its way through his gut. A month. The past few weeks of grueling round-the-clock surveillance had been for naught. She wasn’t the person he was supposed to be following. She wouldn’t have any contacts. She was useless to him. Worse, the trail had gone cold, then.
“Who owned this place before you?” he asked in resignation.
“My aunt. Callista Clearmont. She willed it to me right before she died suddenly.”
His one and only link to the next level of hierarchy in the mob he was infiltrating was dead? A stream of violent swearing erupted inside his head.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured automatically. Crap, crap, crap. How was he going to track down Callista Clearmont’s mob connections if the woman was dead? Why hadn’t anyone told him?
Unless the niece had inherited the mob contacts, as well...
Lissa turned away. Her shoulders gave a suspicious heave, and she sniffed loudly. Oh, no. Not more female tears. He had no defense against them. They scared him to death. Frantic to distract her from launching into full-blown waterworks, he asked quickly, “You said she died suddenly?”
His question did the trick. Lissa turned back to face him, another one of those delicate frowns of hers puckering her creamy brow. “She called me. Told me she was going to die any minute and that she’d willed everything she owned to me.”
“Was she sick a long time?”
“Oh, no. She was in perfect health. We all thought she was going to outlive the rest of the family.”
His internal antenna wiggled abruptly. Could it be? Had the mob or one of its enemies killed her? “What were the circumstances of her death, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“She died in her sleep, supposedly. A customer found her after she didn’t come downstairs for an appointment to do a reading.”
“A reading?”
“She was a psychic. I think that customer had asked for a crystal ball scrying. She also read palms very well. The last time I talked to her, she claimed she’d had a vision. That a spirit told her she was going to die within a day or two and to put her affairs in order.”
A spirit, huh? More like a mob informant, perhaps? “Who were your aunt’s clients? Did she keep a list of them?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t found it if she did keep one, though. Her business papers are, well, a little disorganized.”
If the shop downstairs was any indication of how the woman had done business, any kind of organized client list was probably a long shot. With a list, though, he could maybe identify Callista’s mob contact and find the next level of hierarchy in the secretive Russian gang he’d spent the past two years infiltrating.
“Are you hungry?” Lissa asked, startling him out of his train of thought.
“You don’t have to feed me. I’ll grab something on the way home.”
“It’s the least I can do for you after you saved my life.”
“I wouldn’t go that far in describing what I did. I only interrupted a mugging. Any passerby could have done the same.”
“They could have, but that doesn’t mean they would have. He was going to kill me.”
How did she know that? Was she a psychic, too?
“I was just planning to heat up some leftovers. Let me fix you a plate.”
“Can I help, umm, prepare it?” He eyed the hot plate and metal washtub askance.
“Nah. I bought a Monte Cristo sandwich earlier and I’ll just pop it in the microwave. It’s a lot more than I can eat alone. I’ll split it with you.”
“Sure. If you’ll let me buy the next meal.” The words were out of his mouth before he stopped to think about them. There couldn’t be a “next meal” for the two of them. She was an innocent, not mixed up in her aunt’s mess and of no use to him. He would deliver her to Bastien in the morning, and then he would get the hell out of her life and never look back.
Chapter 2
Lissa’s hands still shook a little as she handed a paper plate with the batter-dipped, multilayered, fried ham-and-cheese sandwich to “Max Smith.” Which totally wasn’t his name. It didn’t take special powers to hear the evasion in his voice when he’d given her the name.
She was more rattled by tonight’s attack than she wanted to let on, even to herself. Thank God this stranger had been there to swoop in and save the day. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened had he not come along.
Speaking of which...“I’ll be right back,” she blurted. “There’s something I have to do.”
Max looked up at her in alarm. “You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Heavens no.” She ducked into what would have been the spare bedroom had her aunt not gutted it and dug around in her big trunk of art supplies for a sketch pad, pastels and her set of drawing pencils. Tucking that under her arm, she scooped up her easel and wrestled it out into the main room.
Max leaped to his feet to rescue the easel from her. “Where do you want this?”
“Over by the lamp. I’ll need the light.”
“Drawing something, are you?”
Crap. She couldn’t admit she wanted to capture the face she’d seen in her attacker’s mind as he’d attacked her. “It’s, umm, therapy. Helps me calm down when I’m upset.”
“You’re an artist, then?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I’m just a dabbler.”
She pulled a stool over in front of the easel he set up for her. In a few minutes a face started to take shape. She turned out to be a pretty girl, not unlike herself in features and overall coloring. Which was frankly creepy. Was her attacker a serial killer, maybe?
Once she’d captured the girl’s initial bone structure, she pulled out the pastels and really brought the face to life, drawing quickly and surely from memory.
“Who’s that?” Max eventually murmured from directly behind her.
She jumped, startled. She’d been concentrating so hard on the picture that she’d forgotten he was there.
“I have no idea.”
“It’s just a random sketch?”
There was no way she could explain it without sounding like a crazy woman, so she didn’t even try. Instead she lied. “Yes, it’s just a face.” And if she were a normal person, that was all it would be. Right, then. She’d determined to be normal; therefore, this was just a face.
Except why did the girl’s eyes stare out at her from the paper beseechingly, following her as she shifted right and left, checking the sketch’s perspective and making tiny corrections to the features?
It. Was. Just. A. Face.
Max moved in close behind her to study the sketch. “She’s pretty. You have a good hand for portraiture. You’re sure you’ve never seen this person before?”
Rather than answer his question, Lissa leaned forward to release the sheet of paper from the easel’s clips. “Here. Lay this on the floor in the corner and spray it with the fixative in the can over on the end of my work table while I put my art supplies away.”
It physically hurt Lissa to deny the girl’s fear and pain coming off that sketch. She had to get away for a minute and catch her breath. You poor, poor thing. Lissa jammed her pastels and pencils in a drawer in her dresser and slammed it shut. She wasn’t a psychic anymore. She didn’t listen to dead people anymore, and she didn’t draw the faces of murderer’s victims anymore. She was just a regular person living a normal life.
If only her gift didn’t seem to be tied to violence. Maybe she would have been able to live with predicting the sex of babies and telling people when to ask for a promotion at work. But her visions were, almost without exception, tied to death. She saw dead bodies. Sensed killers. Heard dead people. Saw death moving in to claim people. With a sigh, she returned to the main room.
Abrupt exhaustion swept over her. It was as if her psyche had held all her reaction to the earlier attack at bay until that sketch was out of her system. Now she felt on the verge of collapse.
“Are you okay?” Max asked quickly. The guy was pretty perceptive himself.
“I’m a little tired all of a sudden.”
He nodded knowingly. “Aftermath. The adrenaline drains away, and you feel like death warmed over.”
“Yes. That.” She sighed.
“Did your aunt leave a working bathtub in this wreck?” he asked.