Witness on the Run Page 3

  Sometimes it was handy to have an informant who talked to ghosts. “I have an assignment for you.”

  “Sure ’nuff.”

  “I’m looking for someone who was at the parade, near Jolene’s gris-gris shop. This woman is tall and skinny and has curly silver hair. She’s in her sixties.”

  “Prime of life,” Sheila Marie said. “I’ll ask around.”

  “And if I need help from you later tonight?”

  “I’m at Becca’s Bar on Canal.”

  He truly appreciated her help. “You are magnifique.”

  “Betcha say that to all the ladies.”

  “Only you, Sheila Marie.”

  He put away his phone. Stepping lightly, he returned to the bedroom door and leaned against the wall beside it, lurking and listening. Alyssa was half right when she called him a stalker. Much of his work as a PI or an undercover FBI agent involved sneaking around in the shadows, hiding behind other identities and lying. The difference between him and a run-of-the-mill Peeping Tom was that Rafe didn’t get a buzz from watching.

  He wanted to tell Alyssa the truth, but the time wasn’t right, and he wasn’t altogether sure this lady could be trusted. His investigation into her background had uncovered some potentially unusual maneuvering with finances. He knew she had at least one fake passport. And she kept two safe-deposit boxes in different banks.

  Tonight, she hadn’t told outright lies but had been misleading. Most suspicious was her reluctance to call WitSec. That should have been the first thing she did when she regained consciousness. If she’d insisted upon making that contact, his mission would have become even more complicated, but Alyssa never even mentioned witness protection.

  Maybe she didn’t believe the marshals could keep her safe. Given the events of this evening, he couldn’t fault that opinion. Those masked skeletons were clumsy in their approach, but they’d known where she’d be. One of them might have made the anonymous phone call encouraging her to come to the parade.

  From behind the closed door, he heard the bedsprings creak. In bare feet, her movements were a nearly silent shuffle, but he could tell when she turned the knob and opened the closet door. He hadn’t left her defenseless when it came to clothing. Not only had he draped her Scarlett O’Hara rags on a hanger, but he’d added a couple of his own shirts and a pair of gym shorts that would undoubtedly be too big for her. In a pocket of her Scarlett pantaloons, he’d found a slim wallet with a couple of bucks, identification and a credit card. There was also a key chain with a fob and four keys. Though he left those things in her possession, he’d scanned every bit of her stuff until he was dead certain that nothing was bugged. The only item he’d taken was her cell phone, which he’d disabled so her location couldn’t be traced.

  When he brought her here, he made sure they weren’t followed. The security he had arranged at this location was similar to an FBI safe house with alarms, surveillance cameras and sensors. If she opened a door or a window without his authorization, he’d be alerted by a silent alarm. None of his electronics rang through to the police. Rafe didn’t want to share his secret safe house with the authorities or anybody else, not even the man who’d hired him.

  There were a couple of thuds from inside the bedroom, and he heard her curse under her breath. Getting dressed in the dark shouldn’t be that difficult unless she’d decided to put on that old-fashioned corset, which had been complicated and utterly unnecessary for a woman like her. Alyssa didn’t need to cinch her waist. Her natural curves, firm muscles and long legs were spectacular, truly magnifique. Her job as a sous chef at the bistro had taken a toll on her hands and forearms, which were reddened and freckled with spots from grease burns. But her midriff felt as sleek as satin. The bruise on her rib cage where she’d been kicked had infuriated Rafe. There was something deeply wrong about harming such a delicate creature.

  Even if he wasn’t being paid as a bodyguard, he would have instinctively wanted to protect her. The first step would be to identify her attackers. While she’d been lying on the bed in a meditative state with her eyes closed, he’d seen her fists clench and her brow pull into a scowl. He suspected that she’d been touched by a memory. The skeleton she had unmasked might be somebody she knew from Chicago. Unfortunately, she hadn’t chosen to share that information, didn’t want to say the name. She didn’t trust him.

  When he mentioned mug shots, she’d reacted the same way. No police, she’d said. Why not? He didn’t want to believe that Alyssa was on the wrong side of the many crimes her old boss had committed, but she was a skilled bookkeeper, capable of hiding her involvement in money laundering and fraud.

  Her accounting talents had worried Davis James, the man who’d hired Rafe. The client had made a compelling argument about his personal interest in Alyssa and his fear that she might be in danger, but Rafe had smelled a rodent and had used Chance Gregory—a computer genius who occasionally worked for the FBI—to trace his client’s background.

  Chance uncovered a steaming pile of dirt, starting with his client’s name. Davis James was really Viktor Davidoff. He owned six used car lots—Diamond Jim’s—in the Chicago area, and he was the alleged boss of a multimillion-dollar international group that specialized in smuggling exotic vehicles. When Davidoff hired Rafe, he’d refused to reveal how he’d learned that Alyssa was in New Orleans. Who had leaked that vital information? Who else knew her location? How were they connected to the men in skeleton masks?

  From inside the bedroom, he heard the scratchy noise of the window being gradually raised inch by inch. The alarm system connected to his cell phone messaged him with the same info. Alyssa intended to make her escape that way.

  Knowing that she’d need a few minutes to remove the screen and slip outside, he crept down the hallway to the kitchen and out the back door. His lightweight Kawasaki motorcycle was locked in the garage behind the house. For a moment, he considered trailing after her on foot but decided against it. On the bike, he had greater maneuverability and could continue to follow if she hailed a cab.

  Taking a position on the breezeway beside the house, he watched her cross the lawn, stumble on a crack in the sidewalk and hide against the trunk of a live oak until there were no headlights on the street. He imagined her heart beating fast and her gaze darting through the night, looking for skeletons and for him. Her outfit was a little bit crazy. His extra-large black Saints T-shirt with a gold fleur-de-lis drooped over her lacy Scarlett pantaloons. On her feet she wore black dancing slippers with two-inch heels and straps.

  Chasing her down and dragging her back to the safe house was one option, but he knew Alyssa wouldn’t respond to bullying. If he could convince her to trust him, he could keep her safe. And he was curious. A logical, organized person like Alyssa wouldn’t forget about WitSec, and she wouldn’t rush off into the night without some kind of plan. If he followed, she might lead him somewhere that would explain what she was doing.

  When she was almost a block away, he started up his bike and eased into the street. Two blocks away was the streetcar that ran all night on weekends. It was only a little after one o’clock, early for a Saturday. Even in her baggy T-shirt, she wouldn’t stand out in a crowd of partying zombies and ghosts from Día de los Muertos.

  Staying out of sight, he circled the block and found a parking spot where he could see her. He turned off the motor, kept his helmet on and watched as she waited at a stop for the trolley. If she intended to go to her house, she was on the wrong side of the street. Alyssa didn’t make careless mistakes, which meant that her escape included a return toward the French Quarter. An unexpected direction. Maybe she was heading back to the bistro where she worked, or maybe there was a friend who would give her shelter. Countless possibilities presented themselves.

  For sixteen days, he’d managed to watch her without attracting her notice, but now she knew him and could pick him out of a crowd. Surveillance would be ten times harde
r. He took out his cell phone to arrange for a meet with Sheila Marie. He needed backup.

  In the meantime, Rafe would continue to be a stalker.

  Chapter Four

  Waiting for the streetcar, Alyssa kept to the far side of the sidewalk where a break in the shrubs that lined a wrought iron fence gave her a place to hide. Her entire body hurt. From her head to her rib cage to the palms of her hands and the scratches on her knees, she bristled with pain and tension. Taking another pain pill and falling back to sleep would have been nice, but she didn’t have that choice. She had to run. There was no time for slumber—she needed to get away from the danger that had found her in New Orleans.

  Though the night was cool, sweat dampened her forehead. She welcomed the sultry breeze that coiled around her bare legs like a torn veil. The mist limited her field of vision and gave her the hopeful illusion that she was invisible. Except for the squeaky window, she’d been quiet when she slipped outside and fled from the house, but that didn’t mean Rafe hadn’t figured out what she was doing.

  She wished she knew who hired him. His refusal to tell her the name of his client worried her. She hated to think he might be working for someone who hated her, someone she’d testified against. Rafe had fought the guys in skeleton masks, so he wasn’t connected to them. But he admitted he’d been a fed. Agents from the FBI, like the US Marshals, could be after her. Why? Has the whole world turned against me?

  Paranoid and in pain, her life was a wreck. Crouching back into the bushes, she scanned the area. Only a few cars rolled under the streetlamps. She didn’t see Rafe. Not that she trusted her powers of observation. During the time he’d tracked her, she hadn’t noticed a thing. Either he was really good at sneaking around or she was oblivious.

  The clang of the trolley alerted her to its approach, and she limped forward so the driver would see her and stop. When she’d first moved here, she’d memorized the streetcar routes. From here, she’d go about a mile and transfer onto the Canal Street line, which would take her close to her destination. After growing up in a big city, she preferred public transportation to the hassle of searching for a parking space. And she enjoyed the New Orleans streetcars. This one was painted a cheerful red with yellow trim. She hopped inside and slid onto a mahogany bench seat. There were only five other people—a young couple, a nurse in scrubs and two waitresses in pink uniforms with aprons. The young ones were busy staring into each other’s eyes, and the ladies didn’t look like violent criminals. Relax, but don’t let down your guard. She held up her window-side hand to cover her face in case Rafe happened to be outside peeking in. There was no sign of him.

  She really didn’t know what to think of the tall, handsome man who’d introduced himself as a pirate. On the plus side, he’d helped her escape from the bad guys. For that, she would be forever grateful. Then Rafe had taken off her clothes to treat her abrasions. A plus or a minus? Administering first aid counted as positive. Stripping an unconscious woman was...not good. She decided to leave the naked question aside. He’d taken her phone but left her wallet, which gave her enough cash to pay the buck-and-a-quarter fare for the streetcar. Rafe’s really big negative, the one that counted, was obvious: he’d spent over two weeks spying on her. Still, if he climbed onto the streetcar right now and sat beside her, she wasn’t sure whether she’d scream her head off or snuggle into his warm embrace.

  If only life could be more black-and-white with the good people wearing halos and devil horns for the bad ones. Some of the criminals she’d testified against were the very definition of evil. Monsters capable of committing terrible violence, they showed no remorse, possibly weren’t capable of empathy. Rafe wasn’t one of them, thank God. But could he work for them? Money spoke a universal language.

  Hiring a private detective seemed too subtle for those thugs. She figured that if her enemies from Chicago found her, they’d take lethal revenge with a bullet in the gut or a knife across her throat or something more torturous and terrible. A shudder twitched across her shoulders. She couldn’t trust WitSec, not anymore. Her survival depended on her ability to defend herself. During the last three years in New Orleans, she’d prepared a number of escape routes using new identities and different forms of transportation.

  At her house, she had four sets of different license plates for her car, two prepacked suitcases, cash and the paperwork required to start over in another place. Unfortunately, going home was out of the question. The WitSec guy she’d recognized would know her address and would also know where she worked, which meant the emergency evacuation bag she’d hidden in the employees’ locker room would have to be abandoned. Too bad! She had three disposable phones and a new credit identity in that bag.

  Exiting at Canal Street, she blended into the smallish crowd on the street outside a restaurant. Closer to the French Quarter and the downtown area, there were more people—some in costume and some with masks. In her baggy T-shirt, she felt awkward, embarrassed and scared. The creeps in the skeleton masks had drugged her and nearly abducted her. What if they found her again? The fifteen minutes it took for the connecting streetcar seemed like hours. She climbed aboard, relieved when they finally jolted into motion.

  Again, she shielded her face from those who could see her through the streetcar window. Peeking through her fingers, she stared out at the scraggly palm trees that lined Canal Street, barely looking up when a woman with long dreadlocks sat beside her.

  “It’s late,” the woman said. “You hungry?”

  “I am,” Alyssa said, realizing as she spoke that the gnawing pain in her belly wasn’t entirely due to injury. She needed to eat. “I’ll stop at Café du Monde.”

  “The café got the finest beignets in the world.” The woman chuckled, showing off three gold teeth. “You know what to do, how to take care of yourself. That’s good. Rafe said you were a smart gal.”

  Rafe? Alyssa looked up sharply. Her gaze riveted on the woman sitting beside her who could have been anywhere from forty to 140. Strands of gray twined through her dreads, and her eye shadow was purple. She looked like she came from the voodoo shops in her long, dramatically patterned skirt, red and yellow tie-dyed tank top, and abundant jewelry.

  “Excuse me,” Alyssa said. “Did you say Rafe?”

  “Such a pretty man, dontcha think? He tole me not to get you riled up, hon.”

  Alyssa was hit with a sense of déjà vu all over again. Meeting this woman felt a lot like when she danced with a pirate, caught a glimpse of her mom’s ghost and woke up in a bedroom that looked like her own but wasn’t. After the upside-down day she’d had, the approach of yet another odd person should have made her paranoid and scared, but her anger overwhelmed all other thoughts. No way would Alyssa play a cat-and-mouse game with this woman.

  She wanted answers, and she wanted them now. “What’s your name?”

  “Everybody calls me Sheila Marie.”

  “Why did Rafe send you?”

  “Wassamatter. You don’t trust him?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Smart.” Sheila Marie’s eyebrows knitted, and her full lips pursed. “It’s dangerous to put your trust in a man, any man. Rafe Fournier, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Pirate Jean-Pierre, is better than most. He’s a good person but still a man. You know what I mean, hon? Can’t help himself—his brain don’t work right. And that’s why he sent me.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Alyssa said. “He thinks I’ll trust you, a person I’ve never met, who has no credentials.”

  “Credentials,” she said with another flash of gold teeth. “You think I should have a business card? Maybe a diploma?”

  “I want to know what you do.” Was she a psychic, a medium or a voodoo witch doctor with a dozen spells in her pocket? “If you had a business card, what would it say?”

  “Mostly, I’m a helper. I’m good at finding people who have gone missing. The pirate said you were lo
oking for a tall woman with silver curls.”

  Alyssa gasped. Her lungs clenched, and she stopped breathing. When Mom died, she’d tried to contact the spirit world and had thrown away hundreds of dollars on a fortuneteller in Chicago who came up empty. Did Sheila Marie have the answers? Could she make that connection? “Did you find her?”

  “Not yet, it’s only been a couple of hours.” When she stood, her many necklaces and bangles jingled musically. “Come on now, this is our stop.”

  Café du Monde was right around the corner on St. Peter. “How did you find me?”

  “Hush, hush. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Alyssa got off the trolley and walked arm in arm with her strange new companion to Café du Monde, a twenty-four-hour-a-day bakery that was always busy despite the fact that they didn’t serve alcohol. She spotted Rafe standing at the far edge of the patio awning with a white bakery bag in his hand. In his brown leather jacket and blue jeans, he looked almost as dashing as when he’d been costumed as a pirate. Somehow, he seemed taller.

  After he greeted Sheila with a kiss on each cheek and gave her the bag of beignets, he turned to Alyssa. “We need to be moving along, cher.”

  She rooted her dancing shoes to the sidewalk, determined not to go any further without an explanation. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Secrets, secrets,” Sheila Marie said with a snort. “You two deserve each other.”

  Rafe asked her, “Can you stick around for a while?”

  “I’ll do you one better, give you an escort. Follow me.”

  She entered the café, where she greeted several people like they were long-lost friends. When Rafe took Alyssa’s arm to escort her, she resisted. This wasn’t the escape she’d planned. She’d figured out every detail of how she could disappear, and she wouldn’t let a stubborn pirate hold her back. “How did you know I was coming here?”

  “Come with me, and I’ll tell you.”