Sudden Insight
Rebecca York
New Orleans tarot card reader Rachel foresaw a dark, sexy stranger, but she had no idea Jake would be her soulmate.In fact, when they were both nearly killed, Rachel had a feeling they were never meant to be together.Until they were forced to go on the run and soon each fevered kiss and heated caress had her questioning her views on fate.
“I feel as if I’ve leapt into the unknown.”
Rachel laid her hand on his arm, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. They were wound up in a situation they didn’t understand, chased by a murderer and the cops. But that was only part of it. They still had to deal with their ability to read each other’s mind.
“Sealing the connection between us is our best shot.”
“How do we … do it?” she asked.
“The usual way. With physical contact.” Knowing he had reached the limit of his endurance, Jake hauled her into his arms.
She gasped as he pulled her against him but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she clung to him with a desperation that echoed his own.
Again, it wasn’t simply a guess about what she was feeling. He knew. He knew the exact touches that would bring her pleasure.
Unbearable heat threatened to overwhelm him. He felt as if he would die if he didn’t make love with her …
Just then he sensed her fear and he knew she sensed his in equal measure.
And would he die if he did?
About the Author
Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as REBECCA YORK, is the author of more than one hundred books, including her popular 43 LIGHT STREET series for Mills & Boon
Intrigue. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, she’s also the author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.
Sudden Insight
USA TODAY Bestselling Author REBECCA YORK
(Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York)
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Chapter One
You are going to die.
The words of warning clogged Rachel Gregory’s throat as she sat across from the well-dressed woman who had come to her for a tarot card reading. Evelyn Morgan appeared to be in her late sixties, with dyed brown hair and carefully applied makeup, obviously a woman of a certain age who wasn’t going to let time compromise the image she wanted to project.
And her mind was still sharp, because she instantly picked up on something in Rachel’s expression. Leaning forward, she asked, “What is it? What do you see?”
To give herself a moment before answering, Rachel fiddled with a tendril of dark hair that had come loose from the French braid at the back of her head.
“I think you may have a rough patch ahead,” she hedged as she looked down at the tarot cards again, hoping that her first impression was wrong.
Evelyn Morgan had selected them from the many different decks on Rachel’s shelves, shuffled them, then made random selections before laying them out. She hadn’t pulled the card most people associated with death, a black armored skeleton riding a white armored horse. But the Fool was there, upside down, which indicated the desire to strike out on a new adventure, although the journey could be disastrous.
The Nine of Wands was also reversed, showing that the man in the picture could barely take care of himself. And then there was the Hanged Man, contemplating making a sacrifice for the greater good. The Eight of Cups was also on the table, the card’s image signifying dissatisfaction with the woman’s present way of life. All in all, not a good outlook.
But the cards were never the only indicators for Rachel. She’d been doing this for fifteen years, since her early teens, and she always picked up more from the subject than the pictures spread out on the table.
Trying to pull her thoughts away from the woman’s uncertain future, she said, “You’re a visitor to the city. I think … you used to have a different name. Not Evelyn Morgan. You changed it after you left your previous job.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You got all that from the cards?”
Rachel kept her voice even. “Well, the cards help me to … focus. To understand a person better.”
“I’d call that more than understanding. You’re coming up with facts that I haven’t told you.”
“Are they right?”
Ms. Morgan shrugged, and Rachel didn’t challenge her. She hadn’t expected confirmation. That was another thing about the customer sitting across the table in the comfortable wingback chair. She had secrets that she might or might not be willing to reveal to a stranger. Even when she’d come for a tarot card reading.
In this case, perhaps that was best. Because, if pressed, Rachel couldn’t explain how she dipped into people’s minds. Nothing deep. Only a superficial connection that gave her a glimpse into another person’s biography.
Too bad she didn’t have the same kind of insights into her own life. Or that she couldn’t use the special knowledge to make solid connections with people. Sometimes she thought that she was doomed to drift through the days and years, snatching information here and there but never going deeper.
She’d picked up a bit more from Evelyn Morgan. She had apparently held an important position in a D.C. think tank before abruptly leaving her job and going underground. She’d lived very quietly, because she was running away from something or someone. But what?
Rachel wanted to ask about it, but she kept the question locked behind her lips. She wasn’t doing this to satisfy her own curiosity.
At the end of the session Evelyn paid Rachel’s fee and gave her a generous tip.
“I’d like to meet with you again,” she said.
“Of course.”
“I mean, I was hoping you could come to my hotel room tomorrow night—to discuss something with me in private.”
Rachel looked around the cozy room where she did her readings. Before Katrina, she’d rented space in a coffee shop at the edge of the French Quarter, where the owner had let her read tarot cards for a percentage of her earnings.
After the devastation of the hurricane, when many people had left town, she’d been able to purchase and renovate her own place on Toulouse Street, partly with money an aunt had left her and partly with her own savings.
In addition to the readings that she did in the back room, she had a retail area out front where she sold various tarot card decks, magic wands, tea sets and other whimsical items that would appeal to New Orleans visitors.
“I prefer to work here,” Rachel answered.
“I’m hoping we can have a more private meeting.”
“Everything that takes place here is just between you and me. Nothing you tell me will go any further,” she said reassuringly. Unless, of course, this woman wanted to tell her about a crime.
Ms. Morgan leaned forward and looked toward the door between the reading room and the shop.
“But anyone could wander in off the street and overhear us. Please make an exception for me tomorrow night.” She paused, apparently considering her next words carefully. “It could be significant for you.”
“A business contact?”
“I’m not going to talk about it here. Just give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Rachel nodded. This woman obviously had something important to say. She didn’t want to say it in public, but she was holding her breath, waiting for Rachel’s answer.
“All right,” she agreed, wondering what she was getting into. Because she had the sudden conviction that Ms. Morgan was telling the truth about the information being important to Rachel. Or at least that was part of the truth. The rest of it she was struggling to keep to herself.
They made an appointment for eight at the Bourbon Street Arms.
Ms. Morgan stood and took a few steps, and Rachel noticed what she’d seen when the woman had first entered—that she walked with a slight limp.
A sudden image flashed into Rachel’s mind of a much younger Evelyn Morgan leaping off a bridge just before it exploded. And shattering her leg as she landed.
DRESSED IN A BLACK POLO shirt and faded jeans, Jake Harper was sipping a mug of strong, chicory-laced New Orleans coffee as he looked over the receipts from Le Beau, a restaurant he owned in the French Quarter. It wasn’t his biggest business interest in the city, not by a long shot, but he liked working in the office at the back of the restaurant because the chef served him his favorites, like crawfish étouffée and oysters bienville for lunch.
Acquired tastes for a kid who’d run away from a dysfunctional foster home at the age of fifteen. In the seventeen years since, he’d carved out a niche for himself in the city’s business community. Starting at the bottom, scrounging junk from back alleys and selling it to antique shops and dealers with tables outside the French Market. With his initial earnings, he’d graduated to garage-sale purchases and then estate sales. He’d bought his first antique/junk shop five years later—the same year he’d gotten his GED.
He might lead a comfortable life now, but the early experiences on the streets had made him tough and cautious. And always prepared for violence. In his experience, a situation could spin out of control with very little provocation.
He looked up as Salvio, the headwaiter, knocked on the door.
“Yes?”
“A lady wants to speak to you.”
“About what?”
“Says it’s personal.”
“Young or old?”
The guy grinned. “Past her prime but keeping up appearances.”
Well, it probably wasn’t some chick trying to claim he was the father of her child. Not that he was ever careless about sex. He knew it could get someone into trouble faster than anything else.
Jake leaned back in his seat, wondering what the woman wanted. Maybe a donation for one of the charities he gave to on a regular basis? He’d slept in some of the city’s shelters after he’d left his foster family, and he knew what it was like to live from hand to mouth, which was why he regularly gave back to the community.
The woman who walked in had a slight limp. She appeared to be in her mid- to late-sixties with dyed brown hair and a fully made-up face. She was nicely dressed in a summer-weight black suit and low heels.
She gave him a long look, as though she had been studying him and was interested to find out what he was like in person.
“Thank you for seeing me. I’m Evelyn Morgan.” Her accent told him she was from somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region. Obviously not from a local charity, unless she’d just moved to the city and thrown herself into community activities.
He stood and shook hands. “What can I do for you?”
She half turned and glanced over her shoulder. “I’d rather not talk about it here.”
“Uh-huh.” He waited for more information.
“There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?”
“It has to do with your … past, but I don’t want to say any more.”
He tipped his head to the side, studying her. “That sounds mysterious.”
“I don’t mean to be. Could you come to my hotel room tomorrow night at eight?”
He might have declined, but something about the way she lowered her voice made him hesitate. That and the sense of urgency she gave off. He was good at picking up vibrations from people—favorable and unfavorable. That was one of the reasons he’d been so good at climbing the success ladder. He usually knew when to trust someone and when to run as fast as he could in the other direction.
This time, he wasn’t quite sure.
“You’re not going to give me a clue?” he asked, calling on the charm that was part of his persona. When in doubt, sweeten them up with a little honey.
“I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it here. But it’s something you’ll want to know.” She said the last part with conviction, then gave him the name of her hotel and her room number, before exiting as quickly as she had come, making him wonder what was really going on.
He waited a beat, then walked through the restaurant to the front door, staying in the shadows under the wrought-iron balcony above. She was about ten yards away, walking at a leisurely pace, stopping to look in the window of an art gallery. She turned her head one way and then the other, as though she was examining the paintings in the window, but he had the feeling she was really looking in the window’s reflection, making sure she wasn’t being followed.
He wasn’t certain how he surmised that, but he was pretty sure it was true.
What was she up to? Some kind of scam? After watching her continue down the street and turn the corner, he went back to his office and sat down at the computer. When he put in the name Evelyn Morgan, there were several hits, but none of them seemed to match up with the woman who had come to him with her mysterious request.
Probably she’d taken the name recently.
He paused, wondering why he’d come to that conclusion on very little evidence. But he thought it was true.
He could skip the meeting, but the whole situation intrigued him, and somehow he knew he was going to keep the appointment.
IN PORTLAND, OREGON, a tall, white-haired man who now called himself Bill Wellington clicked on an email that had just arrived in his in-box.
Once, his office had been within sight of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. He’d headed up a clandestine agency called the Howell Institute that had taken on some interesting jobs for the federal government and other entities that wanted discreet, reliable services performed.
Now he was nominally retired, living across the country, enjoying long lunches at the club and golf lessons—activities he hadn’t had time for when he’d been playing the power game. He’d worked hard for thirty years, and he was taking advantage of the perks he’d earned. Like the name he was currently using. He’d been Bill Wellington for only a few years. When he’d been at the Howell Institute, he’d been someone else, a persona that he preferred to keep buried.
His occupation had put him in danger. In fact, he still had a few loose ends to tie up. And the email he’d just received had to do with one of them.
It read:
The woman you’re looking for is going under the name Evelyn Morgan. She is currently in New Orleans, registered at the Bourbon Street Arms.
Because he’d learned not to get excited until he had all the facts, he went on to read the rest of the text, taking in details of her movements since she’d arrived in the Crescent City and studying the attached video clip that had been taken from across the street as she stepped into a restaurant called Le Beau.
The picture certainly looked like his former executive assistant, with a few years on her, although she’d dyed her hair brown and had some facial surgery to change her nose and her lips. But even with physical therapy, she hadn’t been able to completely eliminate her limp. She’d been a daredevil in her time, and she’d shattered her right leg leaping off a bridge just before it had gone down in an explosion.
She’d been careful to stay out of circulation for the past five years, but Wellington had his sources, and he’d been confident that he’d eventually catch up with her. One of the men he kept on retainer had finally located her. She’d had a top-secret security clearance, and he’d trusted her with all sorts of confidential information—unfortunately.
She’d left with files that a more cautious man would have destroyed years ago. But Wellington was too much of a pack rat, and he wasn’t willing to just forget about projects that might come back to haunt him in the present D.C. atmosphere where politicians set up a circular firing squad at the drop of a scandalous whisper.
He sat back in his chair, trying to put himself in Morgan’s place. She was up to something, but did it involve putting the screws to her own boss?
For what?
Money.
He had no intention of paying. And no intention of leaving her roaming around on the loose where she could make trouble for him or drag the good name of the Howell Institute through the mud. He could have used the operative who’d sent the report on Morgan for the next part of the assignment, but he’d always found it better to compartmentalize. He went back to his computer and opened another file—this one a list of men he’d used for supersensitive assignments in the past. All of them were efficient and reliable.
Carter Frederick was in the New Orleans area, which meant he could get on the job quickly.
Wellington had never met the man in person. In fact, he dealt with him only through an alias—the Badger. Frederick didn’t know who he really was and never would.
After dialing the number beside the name, he waited until an answering machine picked up.
“If you know your party’s extension, you may dial the number at any time.”
He punched in 991 and waited for a set of clicks.
Frederick came on the line. “How may I help you?”
“This is the Badger calling. I have a problem in New Orleans. A rush job.”
“That will cost you.”
He didn’t like the guy’s assumption that he was in charge of the conversation, but he was willing to overlook that, if he got results. “Not important. I’m having issues with a former employee. I want you to find out what she’s doing there and what she knows.”
“About what?”
“It’s your job to get that from her.”
“Better tell me a little bit more, so I’ll know if she’s spinning some kind of wild story.”
“If I knew why she was in town, I wouldn’t need you to question her.”
“Okay. You got her location?”
He gave the hotel’s name and address.
RACHEL SAW A FEW MORE clients, one a woman who came to her every few months for advice. She was glad to focus on the familiar customer so that she didn’t have to think about Evelyn Morgan.
But finally she was alone again and unable to shake the sense of dread that had dogged her ever since she’d read the woman’s cards.
She’d been sure Ms. Morgan was going to die. Could she tell her that, and maybe help her prevent it, if she did another reading when they met again tomorrow night?
After closing the shop, she went up to her apartment and busied herself fixing tuna salad, which she spread on some fresh greens and ate on the second-floor terrace adjoining her apartment while she looked through a catalog of new-age books she was considering for the shop.
Finished with the light dinner, she washed the dishes, then sat up in bed and read a romance novel for a while. She liked them for the intensity, for the emotions of the characters in relationships she was never going to have. Tonight, though, she was unable to keep her mind from wandering to Evelyn Morgan.
She finally gave up and lay in the darkness, trying to calm her nerves with relaxation exercises, but she knew she was definitely going to say something to Ms. Morgan tomorrow.
The decision was like a giant weight lifted off her chest. It was the right thing to do, and she was able to relax.
With a little sigh, she closed her eyes, and for a few hours she slept peacefully. Then she woke. Or did she?
She was lying in her bed, only she had the strange feeling that she wasn’t really conscious.
Before she could puzzle that out, a shadowy figure stepped into her bedroom. A man. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she knew he was large and solid.
She lay rigid as he walked toward the bed. In a shaft of light from the street, she got a look at him. He was tall and a little rough around the edges with dark hair and dark eyes.
He stood staring down at her, then glanced over his shoulder at something she couldn’t see.
“We have to get out of here.”
She shrank back. “Why?”
“They’re after us.”
“Who?”
He made a sharp gesture with his hand. “I don’t know, but we have to leave before it’s too late.”
There was no reason to believe him. Then from downstairs, she heard the sound of a door quietly opening, and the realization of danger almost choked off her breath.
“Come on!”
He reached out and grabbed her arm, and a blaze of sensation shot through her, as if she’d suddenly grabbed a live electric wire, and the current was sizzling along her nerve endings.
But it was more than a physical reaction. So much more. Part sexual. Part longing. Part intimacy. None of which she could explain.
She’d never met this man before. Was he even real?
Yes!
It was like when she was reading the cards and she got a sudden insight into the person sitting across from her. Only this was so much deeper.
Did he feel it, too?
Yes.
He hadn’t spoken. But she had heard the word in her head.
Before she could stop to consider that, he was urging her to leave.
Come on, he said again, another mind-to-mind communication.
She’d never experienced anything like it, nor did she know what to make of it.
But she got out of bed, wearing a sheer white nightgown that did nothing to hide her body from him.
He gave her a long, hot glance, and she knew that under other circumstances, they would be heading back to the bed, not away from it.
Instead, he led her quickly to the French doors.
They stepped out and ran across the roof, just as a man burst through the doors behind them, and she knew that if they didn’t get away, they were dead.
The man who had first come to her room jumped nimbly down to the street level and held out his arms.
Without hesitation, she gave him her total trust, jumping into his embrace, crashing against him. He staggered back but kept his balance. When his arms came up to enfold her, she burrowed into him, feeling safe and at the same time more terrified than she ever had in her life. Not just because someone was after them. It was him. Them. Whatever was between them was going to change her whole life, and she couldn’t stop it.
He lowered his mouth to hers for a hard, frantic kiss. As the contact deepened, something strange happened. She felt as though she was looking right into his mind, and the experience was like nothing she had ever imagined.
She opened for him, tasting him, taking in the flavor of man and fine wine.
She was so wrapped up in the experience that she had forgotten all about the guy on the roof, until his shadow loomed over them.
She saw it, even with her eyes closed.
Breaking away, she gasped.
Even though they were supposed to be running from an intruder, they had gotten wound up in each other. Now they were trapped.
She woke with a start, the dream leaving her feeling disoriented and scared and exhilarated, all at the same time.
She lay in bed, breathing hard, going over the details of the encounter. The man who had first come to her room had been familiar. She should know him. But she couldn’t dredge up his name.
He had come to warn her that they were in danger. Was it a premonition? Or had she made it all up because she was upset about Evelyn Morgan?
RACHEL WAS RESTLESS ALL the next day and feeling as though she wasn’t doing her best work for her clients. Finally, in frustration, she closed the shop and changed into a comfortable dress and low-heeled shoes before stopping to put on a little lip gloss and blusher.
The building she owned was several blocks from the Bourbon Street Arms, and she had plenty of time to change her mind as she walked through the winter New Orleans evening, past bars and restaurants, T-shirt shops and strip joints—that rich mix of French Quarter sights and sounds she’d known all her life.
It was still early, and the Quarter was crowded with tourists and locals out to have a good time, many of them walking along carrying cups of beer or mixed drinks.
Everybody appeared to be having fun, but she was feeling as if she were going to her own funeral.
Maybe she should just forget about this meeting, turn around and go home.
Since that wasn’t really an option, she made her way through the crowd, pulled forward by the aura of danger surrounding the woman who had asked for a meeting that evening.
And not just around Evelyn Morgan. Rachel knew deep down that her disquiet had something important to do with herself, as well. And the man who had invaded her dream. Not invaded. He’d been the reason for the dream.
That was a strange notion, but again she couldn’t shake it. Lost in thought, she turned the corner and stopped short, suddenly assaulted by the flashing red-and-blue lights of several police cruisers.
They seemed to be flanking the door of the Bourbon Street Arms, but she couldn’t be sure because a crowd had gathered to watch the action.
“What happened?” she gasped as she stared at the cop cars and the bystanders.
“Don’t know,” a woman answered.
“Some lady’s dead.”
The breath froze in Rachel’s chest. It was Evelyn Morgan. She knew it.
She brought herself up short. She didn’t know that. Not for sure, but she couldn’t drive away the sick feeling gathering in her throat.
Uncertain, she looked around the crowd of gawkers. She could stay here, or go home and turn on the television where she might get more information than by hanging around.
She was starting to back away, looking to her right and left, when her gaze came to rest on a tall, dark-haired man who was craning his neck forward.
His features were a little rough around the edges. As though he’d done more living in thirty years than most men did in a hundred.
He drew near her, and she studied his blade of a nose, his hooded eyes, the shock of dark hair that he obviously had trouble controlling.
It was him. The man in the dream. Standing right on the street only a few feet away.
Oh, Lord, he was here, too, and no way could that be a coincidence.
As she stared at him, she realized what she hadn’t been able to figure out after the dream. He was Jake Harper.
She’d seen his picture in the paper at charity events and at the opening of a new housing development for residents who’d been displaced by Katrina.
He’d interested her, and she’d done some reading on him. She remembered he owned some restaurants and antique shops and also a construction company. But he never talked about his background. She gathered he didn’t come from money, but he’d worked his way into New Orleans society, although getting mentioned in the papers didn’t seem to be his goal. It just happened from time to time.
What was he doing here?
The same thing she was.
As though he knew she was watching, he turned toward her, working his way through the press of bodies.
Just before he reached her, someone jostled her, and she almost lost her footing.
As she fought not to get trampled, Jake surged across the four feet that still separated them, catching her arm to steady her. And as his fingers closed around her flesh, everything changed.
A sizzle of electricity shot along her nerve endings, the way it had in the dream. She tried to jump back, but the crowd around her was too thick, and his grip was too tight for her to escape.
Chapter Two
Jake’s heart was thudding, and at the same time his head was pounding. He wanted to let go of the woman, and at the same time he wanted to keep holding on to her forever.
The contradiction whirled in his brain along with a confusion of impressions that were more vivid than the street scene around him.
A shop in the French Quarter. Tarot cards. Tuna salad on a bed of greens. A woman alone in the swirl of humanity. Not just here but for as long as she could remember.
The thoughts came from her brain.
She was like him. Alone.
Her head turned toward him, her eyes wide with shock, and he knew that she was getting the same kind of impressions from him that he was getting from her.
Impressions and memories. Some of them recent. Others older.
A cute little girl walking home from school by herself. At the movies trying to understand the emotions of a love story. The same girl, sitting in her beautifully decorated room weeping.
Things that would be impossible for him to know, yet he was sure he wasn’t making them up.
And under the thoughts and memories was an aura of danger gathering like a dark cloud around them. Was she going to attack him?
Not likely. They’d met by chance in the middle of a crowd. Or was it by chance? Had someone sent her to ambush him?
Another image leaped into her mind. A woman with dyed brown hair. In her sixties. Walking with a limp. Wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she’d come to see him.
She was the only one who knew he’d be here.
“Evelyn Morgan,” she breathed.
“What do you know about her?” he asked, hearing the shock and uncertainty in his own voice.
He’d forgotten the people around them. Now he remembered they were standing in the middle of a crowd, speaking in low voices, but they might as well have been alone for all the other people mattered.
The woman raised her chin. “She asked me to meet her tonight.”
“Are you lying?” he demanded.
“Why would I?” she challenged.
Could she lie? After all, he’d pulled the information from her mind.
He held on to that extraordinary thought as he kept his hand on her, drawing her back through the mass of people until they had emerged into a clear space in the middle of the street.
A man in a wrinkled shirt strode toward the hotel. It was Detective Moynihan, whom Jake knew from his work with kids at risk in the city. “Detective,” he called out.
The cop stopped and looked at him.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
“You know I can’t give out any information.”
Jake’s hand was still on the woman. He was close enough to reach out with his other hand and touch Moynihan.
He wasn’t sure why he did it, but as his fingers closed on the detective’s sleeve, information leaped into his mind.
Evelyn Morgan. Lying in a pool of blood, her limp body on the floor of her hotel room.
Jake stared at him, struggling not to let the shock he felt show on his face.
“Got work to do,” Moynihan said and pulled away, making for the hotel, leaving Jake alone with the woman.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“Not likely.”
When she tried to wriggle out of his grasp, he held on to her, afraid she might run if he gave her the chance. Or was that her thought?
He wasn’t sure. He’d never been less sure of himself in his life. Well, not in years.
He steered her a little way down the street, under one of the balconies that ran along the second floor of the buildings, providing shade during the day and shadows at night. His head was pounding, making it hard to think.
When they were alone, he dragged in a breath and let it out. “What just happened?”
“Evelyn Morgan was murdered.”
“You picked that up?”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t been asking about the murder. That was a given. He was asking about the two of them.
“Will you take your hand off me?” she asked.
“Why?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He dropped his hand to his side, ready to reach out again if she decided to turn and dash away. At least she looked as confounded as he felt. That was something.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She looked as if she didn’t want to answer, but she finally raised her chin and said, “Rachel Gregory.”
“You have a shop in the French Quarter,” he said slowly as he recalled the mental images. “You read tarot cards.”
She tipped her head to the side, studying him. “You researched me?”
“No. I picked that up from … your mind.”
“Impossible!”
“Is it? Are you saying you didn’t learn anything from me? You’re the … psychic.”
She sighed. “You’re Jake Harper.”
“You got that from my thoughts?”
“Actually, no. From the newspapers. You’re a local celebrity.”
“Oh, come on.”
“What would you call yourself?”
“A businessman.” He swallowed hard. “Let’s cut to the chase. What’s Evelyn Morgan to you?”
“She had a tarot reading yesterday, then asked me to come to her hotel room tonight.” When he raised an eyebrow, she asked, “You don’t believe me?”
“Actually, I do. Did she say what she wanted?”
“No.”
“What time was that? I mean, the reading.”
“Three o’clock. Why?”
“She had a busy afternoon. After she left you, she came to my restaurant, Le Beau, looking for me. She also asked me to come to her hotel room tonight.”
This time it was Rachel who asked, “Why?”
“She said it was something personal. Something she couldn’t tell me at the office. She said she wanted me to meet someone.” He kept his gaze fixed on her. “I’m assuming it was you.”
They stared at each other.
“We need to talk,” he said.
She considered that. “What if I don’t want to?”
“You’re afraid?”
“Aren’t you?” she retorted.
He gave her a hard look. “I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
“Which is what in this case?”
He waited until a couple walking along the street passed them. “I don’t know. Let’s get off the street. Le Beau is only a block away. We can talk there.”
His heart started to pound as he watched her considering the suggestion. What if she said no?
What if she walked away from him? That thought made his chest feel hollow, but he told himself he knew where to find her.
When she finally said, “Okay,” he relaxed a little, yet his nerves were still humming as he turned in the direction of the restaurant.
They walked through the darkened streets, neither of them talking nor touching each other, yet each of them giving the other sideways glances as though that would lead to a sudden revelation.
The restaurant was crowded when they entered, but the maître d’ nodded at Jake as he headed straight toward the back, reassured by Rachel’s footsteps behind him.
They walked into the same office where he’d talked to the now-dead woman.
In addition to the desk and chair, the room contained a small, comfortable seating area with a modern leather sofa, antique tables and an Oriental rug that he’d gotten from an estate sale. To the right of the sofa were a bar and lawyer’s bookcases filled with old, leather-bound volumes that he’d bought when the aging resident of a Garden District Victorian had moved to a nursing home.
Rachel looked around with interest. “You’re doing well for yourself.”
He shrugged. “Moderately. Make yourself comfortable.”
She sat down gingerly on the edge of the sofa, looking as if she could spring up and bolt at any moment. He understood why. The atmosphere in the little room had turned supercharged, as though their very proximity was about to set off sparks.
“I think we could both use a drink,” he said.
“You have some wine?”
“Of course. What would you like?”
“Merlot.”
“You have good taste,” he said, thinking that sounded inane.
Turning, he opened the bar, got out a high-end bottle and removed the cork before pouring them each a glass. When he held one out to her, she said, “Put it on the table.”
“Why?”
“Because apparently we read each other’s minds when we’re touching.”
She’d said what they’d both been thinking.
He kept his gaze fixed on her as he sat down on the sofa, keeping several feet of space between them, even though he wanted to test the theory again.
“You’re sure of that?” he asked.
“Aren’t you?”
“I know what happened, but I’m having a little trouble believing it.”
“Me, too.”
He wanted to ask what she thought had happened, but he kept the question locked behind his lips. Instead, he studied her, trying not to be too obvious. She looked to be in her late twenties, with long dark hair pulled back into a French twist that was a bit undone so that a few wisps of hair hung down fetchingly. Her face was oval, her eyes large and blue. Her lips were very appealing. Too appealing.
He hadn’t brought her to this private room for seduction. Or had he unconsciously had that in the back of his mind? Not a good idea. If touching her hand opened his mind to her, what would kissing her do? What about more than kissing?
He ruthlessly cut off that line of speculation before he could act on the feelings coiling inside him.
Shifting in his seat, he said, “You read people’s minds all the time.”
“I read tarot cards.”
“And you pick up more than what’s in the cards.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged, then gave her the kind of analysis he might give a business associate.
“Well, you support yourself as a reader. So either you’re great at slinging bull … or you give people accurate information. I haven’t seen you putting ads in the Times-Picayune, yet your business is thriving.”
“I’m not into slinging bull.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“But I don’t have to live strictly on my income,” she added, apparently wanting to make full disclosure. “I inherited some money from my parents and my aunt.”
“They’re dead?”
“Yes,” she said without elaborating.
When she didn’t volunteer anything else, he leaned back and tried to relax, which wasn’t easy with whatever was humming between them. He wanted to reach for her. He wanted more than just his hand on her arm, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Not yet.
Of course, maybe she sensed it from the wary look she gave him as she took a sip of wine and set down her glass.
“I think we can assume that Evelyn Morgan wanted us to meet each other,” he said. “The question is why.”
She shrugged one shoulder.
“What if she came to New Orleans specifically to hook us up?” he asked.
“Why would she?”
“You have no idea?”
“No.”
“Even after doing a reading?”
“No.”
“And you never saw her before she walked into your shop?”
She shook her head.
“Let’s stop playing Twenty Questions. I think there’s a way to get some more information,” he said.
When he moved toward her, she tried to scoot back, but he was too quick.
He reached for her shoulder and pulled her into his arms, then brought his mouth down to hers for a kiss that he wanted to be gentle. But gentleness was impossible as he folded her close.
He had seduced many women. He was good at making love and all the preliminaries. The sweet words. The touches. The kisses.
This time, he thought the woman might pull away.
When she stayed where she was, he felt a surge of elation. This wasn’t simply seduction. It was a lot more important than a roll in the hay had ever been to him.
He liked sex as much as any man, but it had never held the kind of magic that people wrote songs about. It was physical sensation, nothing more.
He might have stopped to examine that idea, but he was too caught up in the pleasure of the moment as he increased the pressure, moving his mouth against hers with an urgency that shocked him.
He wanted her with a startling intensity, but a physical joining was only part of it. Sensuality leaped between them, carrying him deeper into unknown territory.
He had pulled thoughts from her mind. Maybe he’d been afraid it wouldn’t happen again. But it did. Only this time there was more depth and clarity.
She had told him her parents were dead. He saw her as a woman in her early twenties standing in a small crowd at a cemetery, watching a coffin being lowered into a grave, and knew that her mother had died of a longtime heart condition. And Rachel had felt guilty because maybe her mom shouldn’t have had children at all.
Her decision, he whispered into her mind
He saw her as a young girl, picking up a deck of tarot cards for the first time and feeling excitement surge inside her as she inspected the pictures and grasped the implications of the deck. This was what she was meant to do!
And at the same time, he heard her gasp and knew that she was pulling the same level of information from him. Things he had never told anybody. Things he had pushed down so deep that he’d thought they were buried for good.
He saw himself as a fifteen-year-old scrounging through Dumpsters at night for food, whacking at rats with a length of two-by-four.
Saw himself bedding down in an abandoned house, with the same two-by-four beside him as a defensive weapon.
Saw himself taking a discarded lamp to an antiques dealer and haggling over the price—getting less than it was worth but enough to keep him alive for a few more days.
“That’s so sad,” she whispered against his mouth.
“It’s not true now.”
“It made you tough and cautious. And determined to stay on top.”
He didn’t want to talk about his sordid past or her analysis of the man he’d grown into. He wanted to focus on what was happening now. In this room. With this woman who called out to him as no other human being ever had.
His head was pounding again, but he ignored the pain.
Wordlessly, he urged her to open for him. After a moment’s hesitation, she did, so that his tongue could slip into her mouth to play with the soft skin inside her lips and sweep along the serrated line of her teeth, tasting the wine she’d just sipped.
She made a small, needy sound of approval as he deepened the contact.
While he stroked one hand down her body, he slid his mouth to her cheek, then found the tender coil of her ear with his tongue.
When she snuggled closer, he wrapped his arms around her and leaned back on the sofa, changing their positions so that she was sprawled on top of him, loving the weight of her small body and the way she fit against him. He wrapped her closer, increasing the pressure of her breasts against his chest, then sliding his hand down her back to her bottom so that he could wedge the cleft at the juncture of her legs more tightly against his erection.
When he did, she moved her hips against him, and he couldn’t hold back a groan.
Her breath had turned ragged. So had his.
With any other woman, he would have been lost in the physical sensations.
Tonight the building sensuality couldn’t stop the other part of it—the shocking part where her mind and his opened to each other in a way that should be impossible.
When a startling piece of knowledge leaped toward him, he stiffened, then sat up so abruptly that she had to steady herself with a hand against the sofa cushion.
In the heat of the encounter, he had forgotten all about Evelyn Morgan. The reason Rachel had come to the Bourbon Street Arms. The reason she was here now.
They were supposed to be figuring stuff out, but it had gone far beyond that. Very quickly.
He heard the accusation in his voice when he said, “You knew she was going to die!”
ONLY A FEW BLOCKS AWAY Carter Frederick sat in the back booth of a bar. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, he fit in with the casually dressed evening crowd. The Jazz Authority wasn’t the most private spot in the world, but he needed a drink.
When the waitress brought him a double shot of bourbon, he chased it with a NOLA ale. He liked the local brew well enough.
He might have asked for more bourbon, but he wasn’t finished working for the night, and he had to keep a clear head. In his mind, he was planning what he was going to say to the Badger, spinning it the best he knew how.
Evelyn Morgan had been a tough old broad. She had narrowed her eyes and refused to tell him why she was in New Orleans. Then she’d come up with some surprising moves.
He’d thought he could handle any woman. Not this one. She’d attacked, and they’d fought. When he’d pushed her away, the back of her skull had come down hard against the edge of the radiator. Too hard. One look at the blood pooling around her head, and he’d known that she was done for, and that he had to get out of there before anyone figured out that he’d been in her room.
Even so, he’d taken precious minutes to go through her stuff and make it look like robbery was the motive. While he was ransacking her luggage, he’d found a daybook with the names of two locals. Rachel Gregory and Jake Harper.
At least he had that much. Not enough to satisfy the Badger, but he’d already put off his report as long as possible. Anticipating a nasty few minutes, he signaled for the waitress and paid for his drinks.
When he was outside on the street, he lit up a cigarette and took several deep drags before tossing it away. Finally knowing he couldn’t delay any longer, he pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed a number in Portland.
The Badger answered, and he started talking before Carter could get any of his carefully planned words out.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m listening to CNN. A woman visitor to New Orleans was killed this evening. I guess you made an effing mess of the assignment,” he said as soon as he heard Carter’s voice.
“Not my fault. Why didn’t you tell me she had martial arts training?”
“News to me.”
The man might or might not be lying. In Carter’s experience, the Badger said whatever was most effective at the time. And he might change his tune if another story was more convenient.
“Nobody can connect you with the incident?”
“I’m clean. I didn’t talk to anyone at the desk. I paid a delivery boy to ask for her room.”
“Okay.”
“Afterward, I went down the back stairs.”
“So you got away, but we’re at a dead end.”
“Not exactly. I got the names of two contacts that she visited in the city.”
They talked for a few more minutes with the Badger pressing him for results and Carter wishing he’d never accepted the freaking assignment.
Not that he had a choice. Once you got on the Badger’s Christmas-card list, you stayed on it.
After hanging up, he clamped his fingers around the phone as he automatically studied the evening crowd to make sure nobody was listening in.
Then he started planning his next moves.
Chapter Three
Rachel dragged in a breath and let it out. “I saw something in the cards.”
“Her death?” he clarified.
“I thought so. But it’s never hard and fast. There are always alternate interpretations of anything I see.”
He swore under his breath. “You were thinking, ‘You’re going to die.’”
“But I couldn’t say it. Not like that.”
“Did you warn her?”
“No.”
His voice turned sharp. “Why not?”
Rachel couldn’t help being defensive. “Would you tell anyone something that devastating? I could have been wrong. I never tell people anything so … upsetting. I let her know she was in for a rough patch. At the end of the session, she asked me to meet her at her hotel room tonight.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You think I’m lying?”
“No.”
They had been so close a moment ago. Too close, and they must have been thinking the same thing. It was time to put up some barriers.
She moved away from him and automatically felt to see if her hair was messed up. Some had come loose, and she worked stray strands back into place.
Her head was throbbing, making it hard to think.
“Coming here was a mistake,” she said as she stood up and smoothed out her dress.
He kept his gaze on her. “Something happened between us. Don’t you want to find out what it was?”
“Lust.”
“You know damn well it was more than that.”
Maybe she did, but she wasn’t going to admit it to him. Not now. Not when she was still shaking inside from the intensity of what she’d felt—on so many levels.
Turning on her heel, she left the office and walked through the restaurant, feeling the eyes of the maître d’ and some of the diners on her.
She kept walking, out onto the street, then headed back toward her building. The shop door was on Toulouse Street. The entrance to her apartment was in a little courtyard with an iron gate. She unlocked it, glad when the light came on as she stepped into familiar surroundings.
She’d fixed up the area with potted plants and patio furniture. Sometimes she sat down here; sometimes up on the upper patio outside her living room. Tonight she just wanted to get inside her apartment and lock the door.
When she was finally feeling safe, she sat down at the table by the window and stared out into the darkened street, trying to figure out what had really happened tonight.
A woman had been murdered. A woman she’d done a reading for a little over a day earlier.
Was Jake Harper’s harsh judgment right? Should she have warned Evelyn Morgan about what she’d seen? Had she played a role in her death by keeping silent? Maybe Evelyn would have left New Orleans. Maybe that wouldn’t have done any good, like in that book Appointment in Samarra, where the guy is heading for death no matter what he does.
She squeezed her hands into fists, grappling with the what-ifs.
She came back to the woman herself. There had been a strong streak of determination in Evelyn Morgan. She wouldn’t have run. She would have stayed around to accomplish her mission—whatever it was—but maybe she would have moved up her timetable. What if the meeting had been last night and Evelyn had left town before her murderer arrived?
Rachel had never felt so conflicted about a reading. True, she’d seen death in the cards before. But not murder.
Well, she hadn’t known it was murder. The cards hadn’t been that specific. And as she’d told Jake, there was always the chance she’d gotten it wrong.
She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to banish the woman’s image from her mind. As she tried to focus on something else, her thoughts jumped back to Jake Harper. Another upsetting subject. For too many reasons.
All her life she’d felt a little apart from other people. No, to be brutally honest, she’d felt a lot apart. People made connections that she simply couldn’t manage herself.
Over the years she’d had lovers. The physical part had been all right, but she’d longed to find a soul mate—someone who would understand her and be there for her no matter what happened.
It had never come to pass. Somehow, she always put emotional distance between herself and other people because it felt as though something was missing in the relationship. Did she create that? Or was she missing some cues about human relations that came easily to everyone else?
When she and Jake Harper had met on the street, when they’d touched, she’d felt a zing of awareness that was totally alien to her.
She’d wanted to burrow into his arms. At the same time, she’d wanted to run from him. But she’d gone back to his restaurant, and when he’d started stroking her and kissing her, everything from the encounter on the street had only become more vivid.
She’d felt a need for him that burned in her brain and in her blood. Even though it had frightened her, she’d clung to him.
The need had been the same with him. She knew it from the way he’d kissed her with an urgency that took her breath away. And from what she’d read in his mind. He was a man, and lust should have been enough to keep him focused on what they were doing.
Instead, when he’d stumbled on the information that Rachel had anticipated Evelyn’s death, he’d pulled away.
Because he was shocked that she hadn’t warned the woman? Or because the intimacy had triggered that Vulcan mind-meld thing, and he’d been as confounded by it as she?
She wanted to ask him. At the same time she heard an inner warning to stay as far away from him as she could.
And then there was the headache. Had the intimate contact been responsible for that, too? And made it hard to think clearly?
Trying to wrest her mind away from Jake, she crossed the room and turned on the television set. The hotel death had made the evening news.
But there wasn’t much more information than they’d picked up on the street. A woman had been found dead in her hotel room when the maid had come in to turn down the bed and put a piece of chocolate on the pillow.
Rachel fired up her laptop and got a web account of the incident. When she didn’t find anything new, she picked a deck of tarot cards from the shelf beside her easy chair. She had collected them over the years. There were modern interpretations. Fantasy versions. A Gothic deck with witches and vampires. But she usually ended up going back to the Rider-Waite deck because that was what she’d learned on, and she knew the cards so well.
She had never been good at doing readings for herself. Particularly anything formal. Instead of laying out one of the classic patterns, she shuffled the cards and cut, pulling out one at random.
The Lovers. Oh, great. Apparently she couldn’t get away from the heated scene between herself and Jake Harper.
Were they getting together again?
She shuffled a second time, and got the Magician. Did that mean she wanted to find a new direction in life? The card said that everything she needed was there—if she wasn’t afraid to reach for what she wanted. She had the tools and the power. Or did she?
IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, Mickey Delaney sat in front of the television set, waiting for Tanya to come home from one of her shopping trips. She liked to buy things. A lot of the time it was things she didn’t need, like clothing or jewelry, but he didn’t complain. What was the harm? If it made her happy, let her spend money. They could always get more.
“Yeah, money’s not a problem,” he said aloud just before an item on CNN caught his attention.
He’d turned it on because he liked to keep up with stuff. Now one of the talking heads was giving an account of a murder in New Orleans.
“The woman found dead in her New Orleans hotel room yesterday has been identified as …”
“Evelyn Morgan,” Mickey said.
The name had leaped into his head before the guy said it.
He didn’t know why, but he waited to see if the announcer said the same thing.
“Evelyn Morgan.”
“Okay!”
“She has no known relatives, and her reasons for being in the city have not been established, but it appears that robbery was the motive.”
Mickey was still focused on the way he’d picked up her name. It was like knowing the phone was going to ring and knowing who would be on the other end of the line, but this seemed more important than a phone call.
A little jolt of fear sizzled through him.
Was Evelyn Morgan going to mess up what he and Tanya had? Was that why he’d known her name?
Mickey shook his head. Sometimes when he woke up, he had to pinch himself because he couldn’t believe that his new life was real. As a kid he had to endure the constant fighting of his parents. He was using drugs by the time he was fourteen. When good old Mom and Dad had kicked him out, he’d hooked up with some of the dealers on the street in Baltimore.
Big business for the bosses. Small potatoes for the working stiffs.
He’d met Tanya Peterson at a Twelve-Step meeting after he’d gotten into some kind of do-good program run by a city charity.
They’d helped him clean up. Gotten him an apartment. But he’d known he was going to slip back into the bad life—until Tanya.
The first time they’d met, they’d clicked in a way he didn’t understand. It had been like a hit of some exotic drug, and he’d wanted more. Their thoughts had started running along the same lines—just like that.
They’d robbed a tourist down by the Inner Harbor, then gotten a hotel room where they could be alone.
They’d taken the money and headed for Chicago. Followed by Atlanta. New York. Cleveland.
Now they were back in Baltimore in a furnished Federal Hill town house they were subletting by the month because Tanya had gotten a yen for Maryland seafood.
She was going more on whims lately. Which was starting to worry him, and he hoped to hell that she wasn’t going to screw things up for the two of them.
When the door opened, he looked up. She had a couple of shopping bags with her, from Nordstrom and Macy’s and a couple of those high-priced women’s specialty shops.
She dropped the bags on the floor and crossed to him, just as the guy on TV started in about the murder again.
Tanya went very still. “I don’t like that at all.”
“It’s nothing to do with us,” he answered, hoping it was really true.
“I think you’re wrong. It’s got to do with us, and it could be … bad.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. But we’re going to find out before everything changes.”
The warning sent a shiver over his skin. He loved things the way they were. No way did he vote for any changes. Well, if he could have anything he wanted, he’d like it if Tanya could just relax and take things the way they came. But he didn’t hold out much hope for that.
THE MURDER OF EVELYN MORGAN and the encounter with Jake Harper had put Rachel in a strange mood. Usually she looked to the future. Now, before she went down to open the shop, she started rummaging in the storage closet at the back of her apartment, where she kept some of the mementoes she’d brought from her parents’ house after Dad had died.
She took out an old photo album and thumbed through it, studying the pictures of herself and her parents when she’d been a baby. They looked so proud and happy to have her.
Seeing their faces gave her a little pang. Things hadn’t turned out the way they’d expected. She hadn’t exactly been the daughter they wanted. She’d never been warm and cuddly with them. She hadn’t made friends with kids in school, and when she’d gotten interested in tarot card reading, she’d seen their disapproval. At least they hadn’t forbidden her to work with the cards, but they’d insisted she graduate from college before she could become a full-time reader. Which was why she had a useless degree in history.
She turned more pages in the album, looking at pictures from the early life that she barely remembered. There was a picture of her at about age three with Mom outside a white building, with a plaque beside the door. She could see the word clinic, but she couldn’t read the name of the place because a tree branch partly hid it.
She clenched her fists in frustration. Intuition told her the name was important, but it looked as if whoever had taken the picture had deliberately made the sign unreadable. Could someone scan the photo and enlarge it?
Maybe, but she wasn’t going to take it to a photo shop or a computer store. That would be dangerous.
Dangerous?
She wasn’t sure where that conviction came from, but in this case, she trusted her instincts and went back to the albums, looking for a picture taken at the same place. When she couldn’t find any, she gave up.
Finally, she snapped the book closed and sat with it on the table in front of her, staring into space, thinking about Jake Harper—the subject she’d been trying to avoid since last night.
JAKE HAD PLENTY TO DO TO keep himself busy over the next twenty-four hours. Like several businesses to run. With the restaurant, his assistant, Patrick, who’d been trained in one of the country’s top cooking schools, did the major work like ordering supplies and overseeing the kitchen.
But Jake was the one who knew antiques, and he did have to inspect an out-of-town shipment that a dealer had given him first dibs on.
He was usually good at bargaining. This time, though, he couldn’t focus on Victorian desks and Queen Anne dining room sets because his thoughts kept zinging back to Rachel Gregory.
Finally he made an offer on the furniture, just to satisfy the dealer. When the guy’s eyes widened, he knew he’d paid too much, but he wasn’t going to go back on the deal.
He left as quickly as he could, hardly aware of his surroundings as he started thinking about the woman from last night again. They’d been heading for lovemaking before she’d left. And it was his own damn fault that she’d fled. Maybe if he hadn’t been so harsh, if he’d just kept his damn mouth shut, they would have ended up finishing what he’d started.
Or would they?
He’d wanted her—more powerfully than he’d ever wanted any other woman. Yet at the same time, as the heat had built between them, he’d felt the edge of danger. If he made love with her, it was either going to be the best thing that had ever happened to him … or the worst.
And when he’d read the information about the dead woman in Rachel’s mind, he’d used the excuse to pull away.
Unfortunately that hadn’t stopped him from thinking about Rachel, almost to the exclusion of everything else.
Telling himself he wasn’t obsessed, he searched her on Google and found out that she’d been reading tarot cards in the city for about fifteen years. She’d started as a teenager on summer school breaks and quickly developed a reputation that brought customers coming back and recommending her to their friends, just as he’d surmised.
She’d stayed through the aftermath of Katrina, and she’d been able to pick up property in the French Quarter at a reduced price—leaving her in a very good financial position. She made money from her readings and also from the tourist items she sold in her shop. And she also had her inheritance.
In addition, she’d made good investments.
Because her profession gave her advance market information?
Maybe.
He laughed. He could use someone like that on his staff, giving him hot tips. But he doubted she’d want to work for him.
He tried to get her out of his mind, but finally he gave up. They’d left a lot of stuff unanswered when she’d fled his office.
What if he went over to her place and asked her some questions? He laughed, then sobered. If he asked for a reading, was she going to make the price so high that he’d turn around and leave? Or was she going to tell him he was marked for death?
He tried to shove those thoughts out of his mind, but he couldn’t do it.
Finally, just before five, he told Patrick he would be out for a while and walked into the street. It was almost dark, and he didn’t need a pack of tarot cards to feel a sudden sense of dread.
He looked around, expecting some kind of trouble on the block, but saw nothing.
He’d planned to stroll to Rachel’s, but a leisurely walk was suddenly out of the question. He had to get there fast. He had a choice of cars and trucks, but since he didn’t need them in the French Quarter, they were all in garages several blocks away. By the time he got a vehicle and drove to her shop, it would be too late.
Too late for what?
He wasn’t sure, but he knew he had to get to her. Now.
He started running, dodging around a couple who were holding hands, taking up the whole damn sidewalk.
“Watch out, buddy,” the man called.
Jake didn’t bother with a reply. He just kept running.
RACHEL HAD GONE DOWNSTAIRS and opened up in the afternoon. She saw her last client at four-fifteen, a woman named Mrs. Sweet, who’d been referred to her by a friend. The new customer was from Denver, and she was excited about coming to New Orleans to see “the great Rachel Gregory.” The adulation from a stranger was embarrassing. She didn’t think of herself as great—just a woman who picked up insights that others might not see.
Trying to live up to the advance reviews, she did her best to give a professional reading. To her relief, as far as she could tell, Mrs. Sweet didn’t have any problems in her future. In fact, her son was going to tell her soon that she was expecting her first grandchild. Rachel was pretty sure it was going to be a boy, but she didn’t go out on a limb and say so, in case she was wrong because she wasn’t exactly concentrating as well as she should. Even when she was focusing on the cards the other woman had drawn, Rachel’s mind kept wandering to Jake Harper.
Had it been a mistake to run away from him? She wasn’t sure, but she had the sense now that she needed him.
For what?
When Mrs. Sweet left, she straightened up the room where she did her readings. Everything here was familiar to her. The comfortable high-backed Queen Anne chairs and square table where she and her customers sat. The muted colors of the stained-glass lamp hanging in the corner. The lacy curtains at the window.
She’d decorated the room for her own pleasure and to create what she thought was a charming atmosphere for clients. Usually, sitting at the table alone gave her a sense of peace. Today she felt restless, as though a thunderstorm was building. Not in the air but in this room.
Which made no sense.
She shuffled the cards again, turning them up at random the way she’d done the day before. She got the Lovers again. Then the Seven of Cups. The card showed a man trying to decide among the objects in several goblets. A castle, jewels, a victory wreath. And one cup with a drape over the top so there was no way to know what was inside.
It all represented emotional choices. Difficulty making decisions. Which was a good description of her present state—at least with regard to Jake Harper.
She was studying the card, trying to see more in it, when a noise in the front of the shop made her go still. She’d locked the door after Mrs. Sweet, but it sounded as if someone was out there, moving stealthily toward the room where she sat.
She might have called out. Instead, she got up and started for the back door. Before she reached it, a man stepped into the room where she was sitting.
He was holding a gun, pointed at her.
“Hold it right there. Hands in the air.”
With no other choice, she raised her hands, studying him. He looked to be in his late thirties. His hair was blond, his eyes were icy blue. She would have noticed him if she’d passed him on the street. There was something in his face that made her shiver. Up close his dangerous aura seemed to pulse around him.
“What do you want?” she asked, struggling to keep her tone even because she sensed that he wanted her to show fear.
He liked a woman’s fear. She didn’t have to read his cards to understand that. Not this close to him.
“I’ll ask the questions.”
She swallowed. “I don’t keep much money in the shop.”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what?” she asked, playing for time. Why? What was going to change in the next few minutes? She couldn’t answer, but she knew it was important to keep him from hurting her. Because she sensed something just outside her reach. Something that would help her.
“You know Evelyn Morgan,” he said.
“I don’t know her.”
“You’re lying. Your name was in her daybook.”
She raised one shoulder. “She came here. I did a reading for her. That’s all.”
“You’re lying.”
She struggled to keep her voice even. “Why would I lie?”
He made a rough sound. “You know she’s dead, and you don’t want to get involved.”
And he was the man who had killed Ms. Morgan, Rachel knew with sudden conviction.
He kept speaking. “Or you have information that you want to keep to yourself. Either way, we’ll get to the truth. Sit down.”
When she moved to one of the Queen Anne chairs, he gestured toward the ladder-back against the wall.
“Over there.”
She sat with her heart thumping inside her chest, watching him as he pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket and tossed them to her. She caught them and clattered them in her hand.
“Put them on.”
His total focus was on her, so that he didn’t see the flicker of movement behind him.
Chapter Four
Rachel clanked the metal cuffs in her hand.
“Stop playing with those damn things and put them on!”
She kept moving the metal links in a hypnotic rhythm, willing him to watch her, holding his focus and struggling not to give anything away.
The man who had appeared behind the intruder was Jake Harper, standing like a coiled spring in the doorway, taking in the scene, a grim expression on his face.
She kept her gaze on the guy with the gun. “I don’t know anything about Evelyn Morgan besides what I saw during the reading.”
“We’ll see. But first we’re going to get comfortable.” He laughed, a grating sound that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “At least I will be. Put on the handcuffs if you don’t want to get shot.”
The man might be enjoying his power over her, but if he wanted information, he wasn’t going to shoot her. She hoped.
Still, questions whirled in her mind. Why had he killed Evelyn Morgan? Because she hadn’t talked? Because she’d told him something incriminating? Or had he gotten too rough and done it by accident?
Her heart was pounding as she lifted the cuffs in her fingers, still making the links click together.
“Stop stalling.”
Instead of snapping one of the bracelets around her wrist, she threw them on the floor, watching from the corner of her eye as Jake silently picked up a heavy glass paperweight from the display shelves.
“You witch. You’re going to be sorry,” the man growled. “Get down on your knees and pick them up.”
As she slipped off the chair, getting on all fours and drawing the man’s gaze downward, Jake leaped forward, striking the intruder on the back of the head with the paperweight. She’d already dodged to the side as the weapon discharged, and the man went down in a heap in the middle of the floor.
Jake ducked around him, pulling her up. “Are you all right?”
The feeling of relief was overwhelming. Relief and more. As he held her in his arms, they exchanged silent messages.
You knew something was wrong.
Yeah.
Thank you for getting here in time.
You kept him busy.
She wanted to stay in Jake’s arms, but she knew that the feeling of safety was only an illusion. They had to get out of here.
Her eyes flicked to the man on the floor, seeing the blood oozing from his hair.
“You hurt him.”
“Not as much as he was planning to hurt you. Head wounds bleed a lot.” She winced.
Jake squatted beside the man, picked up the gun and handcuffs and cuffed the guy to a heating pipe.
Next he handed her the gun. “Keep him covered.”
She accepted the weapon, wondering what would happen if she had to shoot it.
Jake felt for a pulse in the guy’s neck.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.” He rifled through his pockets and pulled out a wallet. In it were a driver’s license and a couple of credit cards in the name of Eric Smithson. He also took the handcuff key.
“Probably the ID’s not in his real name,” Jake muttered. “Give me the gun.”
She was glad to hand it over and watched as he switched on the safety and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans.
“We can’t leave him here,” she whispered as she stared at the assailant. She was still coming to grips with what had happened and what would have happened if Jake hadn’t arrived.
“You want to call the cops?” he asked, his voice hard.
She considered that option. “No.”
“Why not?” he pressed.
She’d always been a law-abiding citizen. Now she heard herself answer, “I don’t want to get myself connected to the Evelyn Morgan case.”
“Agreed.”
“What should we do?”
“Well, you can’t hang around here. Too dangerous. Can you stay with a friend?”
She thought for a moment and couldn’t come up with anyone she could impose upon. Not when she was hiding out from a guy who was probably a murderer. And she was pretty sure Jake could guess what she was going to answer.
When she shook her head, he said, “You’re staying with me.”
Undoubtedly what he wanted.
She swallowed. “Okay.”
“Go up and pack a few things.”
“You know I live upstairs?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t comment as she turned toward the door that led up to her apartment. Jake hesitated, then followed.
She stood for a moment in the middle of the darkened room, feeling paralyzed, her brain in danger of shutting down. Which wasn’t an option.
Grimly she forced herself into action, taking underwear and some practical clothing out of drawers, then throwing a few personal items and some makeup into a small kit.
After she’d stuffed everything into an overnight bag, she looked up to find Jake watching her and holding the gun he’d taken off the assailant.
“What are we going to do with the guy down there?”
He thought for a moment. “Take him to another location and turn the tables on him.”
“You mean question him?”
“Right. I’d like to know who he’s working for.”
“If he killed Evelyn Morgan, won’t he be … dangerous?”
“I think I can handle him,” Jake said, and she knew from the tone of his voice that he’d taken care of a lot of business she didn’t want to ask about.
When she started for the stairs, Jake held her back. “Stay behind me.”
He hurried down the steps, then stopped short as he reached the ground floor, muttering a curse.
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