Fallen (3 page)

Sara hadn’t been able to wait. She had to get out. Now.

Sliding her purse strap back up her arm, she took a deep breath, fought the growing sense of panic and hysteria. Tried to drive back the need to run, not walk, away from Naples, her life, her mother’s murder, and painful memories. She was leaving, fleeing to New Orleans really, but she could kid herself that it was logical to seek answers there. That emotion played the smaller factor in her decision.

Yet she knew she was lying to herself, and they had told her in rehab that it was a pattern she needed to break if she intended to live a clean life, free from the grip of painkillers and tranquilizers.

She wanted that fresh start. Now.

Heading toward the front door, Sara reached back and grabbed the newspaper off the sofa, folding it up into thirds. Better not leave that lying around for Jocelyn or anyone else to see. That article sitting in this house revealed too much about her and her fragile state of mind.

And the one big lie she told everyone else, but didn’t actually believe herself, was that she was okay.

That she would ever be okay again.

He wasn’t expecting her. It was obvious by the look of appalled impatience on his face as he stood in the doorway of the gated courtyard. And then there was the fact that he said flatly, “You’re not supposed to be here today.”

Sara shifted, her eyes gritty, hands damp. She’d spent two days driving, and a sleepless night in her new temporary apartment, afraid to close her eyes. It had been a hot and humid walk from where she had parked her car to Gabriel St. John’s apartment in the French Quarter. She was exhausted, and she had a manila envelope full of e-mail correspondence in her handbag that reassured her she absolutely one hundred percent was supposed to be there at one o’clock on Thursday, which it was, and she refused to leave. Would not apologize or stammer or take responsibility for his error.

“This was the time we arranged to meet,” she said, straining for politeness. She would not point out that he had contacted her initially. That he had suggested their collaboration on this project, at no expense or inconvenience to him. That she was the one who had traveled a thousand miles to assist him on his true crime investigation book.

No, she wouldn’t point any of that out, even if she had to bite her lip until it bled.

The sun streamed into the lush courtyard behind him, but he was in the shadow of the building in a bricked passageway, and it was difficult to see his face clearly from behind her sunglasses. But what she could see surprised her. She had assumed Gabriel was older, though she couldn’t pinpoint why she had come to that conclusion when they’d only been in contact through e-mail. Yet there had been something of his words that hinted at experience, a weariness.

It was startling to see in person that he wasn’t much more than thirty. At first glance, he looked even younger than that, his face elegant and youthful, a rare true pretty man, with long cheekbones, rich brown eyes, and lustrous hair, streaked with multiple shades of color ranging from dirty blond to mahogany on the undersides, falling carelessly past his chin in baby-fine strands.

“We’re supposed to meet tomorrow,” he said, his deep voice shattering the illusion that he was innocent and young. There was an edge there that spoke of hard times, disappointment. Stubbornness.

Which almost made her laugh. God, it was like looking in a mirror. This was probably exactly what she looked like to most people right now. Haunted, remote, hovering toward bitter. She didn’t want that label, to descend into a perpetual discontent, not even as she felt herself clinging to the edge of control. So she forced a smile and said lightly, “I guess we have a misunderstanding then.”

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the e-mail from him that she had printed out before leaving Florida. “August 15, one p.m. That’s today.” She handed it to him so he could confirm with his own eyes what he’d written. “I guess it crept up on us.”

Not really. Every day had been a gaping, long, endless fight for her sanity. But it was the socially correct response. Defuse the situation. She certainly knew how to do that. She’d spent her entire life walking on proverbial eggshells with her mother, tamping down the explosions before they could start.

Gabriel didn’t seem to like what he was reading. His jaw clenched and he didn’t look up from the paper. “I’m not ready for you today.”

Sara stifled a sigh, pulling off her sunglasses. She hadn’t expected a diva. From his e-mails Gabriel St. John had seemed like an efficient, clinical crime writer. Exactly what she wanted. Zero emotion. Yet he was scowling at her for no apparent reason whatsoever other than that he couldn’t look at the calendar or enter appointments into his computer correctly.

“Since I drove in from Kenner, got lost downtown after getting off on the wrong exit, and circled the block six times for a parking spot, could we just have a brief preliminary meeting to discuss the project? I can come back tomorrow, but I’d really like to talk today.” Outline and clearly communicate your needs. That’s what they had told her in rehab. She had to stop expecting people to satisfy her wants without ever cluing anyone in to what they were.

“Are you staying in Kenner?” He frowned. “That’s going to be inconvenient. I’d thought you’d stay in the Quarter or downtown. Why Kenner?”

Because it was an innocuous suburb where the airport was, and it made her feel safer. She had been raised in Florida, in the land of the new and tidy, where the chain restaurant ruled. New Orleans scared her. Her mother had despised this city, had never returned once she’d left, and Sara herself was a little intimidated, unnerved by the shabby buildings of the Quarter, the disintegrating sidewalks, and the barrage of odors. Kenner was definitely safer to her mental health.

Gabriel watched the emotions play over Sara Michaels’s face with curiosity. She was not at all what he had expected. Her contact with him had been efficient, brisk, and unemotional, like the scientist that she was. Yet the woman in front of him was a riot of emotions—they played over her face, haunted her eyes, settled into the rigidity of her shoulders. Petite and blond, wearing a billowing pale blue sundress that stopped above her knees, she looked fragile, beaten, like the only thing keeping her from collapsing on the sidewalk was the pure strength of her will.

“The rent was cheaper,” she said.

And he knew she was lying. Which intrigued him. She had intrigued him from the minute he opened the gate, and that was dangerous. He showed interest, any interest, and women responded, with enthusiasm that degenerated into obsessive pitiful devotion that left him feeling guilty and horrified, them heartbroken and ashamed. It was his punishment for falling— inadvertently arousing obsession in women—and he would not, could not, show anything other than a casual business interest in Sara and subject her to that torture.

If he had known what she looked like, if he had seen the pain floating in her eyes, he would never have requested her assistance on this project, but it was too late now. She was here, and he was stuck with her. He was also being rude, which was unnecessary. Nothing was her fault, and she didn’t deserve his animosity.

“Why don’t you come in for a minute?” Gabriel stepped back from the gate. “I apologize for mixing up the days.”

She gave him a brief smile of amusement at that, and Gabriel knew she realized how difficult admitting he was wrong was for him. Pride was yet another flaw of his. It was no secret he had many.

“Thanks.”

It was also apparent to Gabriel as he walked up the curved staircase to his third-floor apartment that he had very little experience with normal one-on-one social and business interactions. He did the vast majority of his communicating online now, and he wrote in solitude. Avoided people. Which was probably why he was so uncomfortable walking ahead of Sara Michaels, why he was so hyperaware of the sound of her breathing, the scent of her perfume, the glimpse of her arm behind him, fingers stroking along the banister as they ascended.

But he was so determined, maybe even desperate, to solve Anne’s murder that he would suffer social discomfort to extract the information Sara Michaels could provide.

He turned back when she gave a startled cry. “Are you okay?” She had stopped walking and was gripping the banister with white knuckles.

She nodded, taking in a deep breath. “I missed a step. It’s slanted, and my foot slipped.” Her hand came up and demonstrated the angle.

“Sorry. Old building. Things have shifted.” Watching her visibly pull herself together, calm herself, had Gabriel feeling that spark of interest again. He didn’t want to feel that. Couldn’t have it. Yet Sara had dark circles under her eyes, and had traveled all the way from Florida to work with him on an obscure true crime book that attempted to solve a century-and-a-half-old case with modern forensics. She had a story, and despite his wariness, he couldn’t help but want to hear it. If he was honest with himself, he’d been curious about her since discovering her mother’s brutal murder in his standard trolling for intriguing cases that could be potential book material. While Sara was the daughter of the murder victim, Jessie Michaels, she was also a forensic scientist, which lent a gruesome irony to the case. Poking around on the Internet and through the newspaper articles had revealed she hadn’t worked in almost a year. She also hadn’t hesitated at all to leave Florida at his request. He wanted to know why.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked.

A hundred and fifty years, give or take fifty years here and there when he’d had to move to alleviate suspicion, but she wasn’t likely to believe that. She started walking again, so he did too. “Ten years.”

“Do you like it?”

Gabriel opened the door at the landing on the third floor and shrugged. “Sure.” He hadn’t thought much about whether he actually liked his apartment or not. He guessed he did. He was bound to New Orleans in exchange for shortening his punishment, and this place was as good as any other to live. He never had any particular desire to move, but whether that was from actual pleasure he took in his surroundings, or a lack of ambition, he didn’t know.

“Who lives on the second floor?”

“A guy.”

She gave him a funny look, staring up at him from two steps below the landing. “I mean, who is he? What does he do? How old is he?”

“I don’t know. He’s in his forties, I guess, but I’ve never really met him.” And he liked it that way. The other tenants left him alone, and he did the same. But his answer obviously bothered Sara, given her frown, and he was acutely aware of how bad he was at polite conversation designed to get to know someone better. Straightforward business, interviewing, fact-gathering, he was perfectly capable of. This type of dynamic, this innocent idle nothing sort of chatter was a challenge. In all personal honesty, he’d never been good at it, even back in the early nineteenth century before the alcohol, the drugs, had gotten the majority of his attention. He had always been more comfortable pursuing his solitary pursuits of music, painting, writing. But he had tried then. Now he almost never even needed to expend the energy to attempt to be normal.

It was hard as hell at the moment, and he was seriously regretting his initial desire to work with Sara Michaels. It had been a definite lapse in judgment, an attempted shortcut he shouldn’t have taken.

“This is a beautiful color.” She gestured to the walls of his living room as she followed him in. Her fingers came up and brushed over the brilliance of his green paint. “It’s so alive.”

It had taken him two weeks and six shades of paint, mixing yellows and greens until he had achieved the perfect eye-popping lime he had wanted. It was ironic that she would notice, because it had been the first time in a century he had allowed himself to touch a paintbrush, to explore color combinations, to bring joy and satisfaction into his life from the act of creating. It had been a celebration of sorts, of hope, that maybe if he solved Anne’s murder, he could pay the debt he owed her soul. This color had appealed to him as loud and vibrant, allowing the light from the two large windows to bounce around all four walls, reflect off the floor and ceiling, and allow his furniture to bask in a warm glow.

“Thank you. I like it.” He did.

“Do you work here in your apartment?” She was glancing around, casual but curious.

“Yes.” The way she turned, ran her eyes over his possessions, assessing and measuring, made him uncomfortable.

No one came inside his apartment except for him. It felt invasive, disturbing. He should have offered to meet her at her hotel, or at a café. That he didn’t know how to act, what to do with his hands, how to lead and direct the conversation, angered him, and he felt the unmistakable desire for a drink. The dryness in his mouth, the tightness in his chest demanded attention, and it was like an insidious whisper in his soul, the promise that everything would be easier, smoother, with a shot of whiskey sitting in his gut.

But he hadn’t touched any drugs or alcohol in seventy-five years, and he wasn’t about to fall for the faulty logic that tried to trip him and drag him back down into the depths of addiction yet again.

“Let me print out the projected schedule I created for this project,” he said, needing to lock and focus on something to halt his wandering mind, clamp down on the craving. “You can take a look at it and we can meet tomorrow. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll go grab that.”

Gabriel moved into his office quickly, wanting to get away from Sara. Only she followed him. He realized it immediately, heard her sandals, the rustle of her dress, felt the air move behind him, aware of the scent of her perfume, a strange olfactory combination that he thought included cinnamon. Ignoring her, he bent over his computer and opened up his documents. He searched for his work schedule, then clicked print. While he impatiently waited for the paper to spit out of his printer, he chanced a glance at Sara.