The Curse of a Single Red Rose (Haunted Hearts Series Book 7) (5 page)

Several minutes later, the breakers had been switched off and on several times, but the building remained dark. His early warning system screamed that something wasn’t right. The glow of the flashlight application on his cell phone cast a dim light on the floor ahead of him. Back in the reception area, he dialed Elsa’s cell phone but got no answer.

She could be ignoring him, but his instincts informed him that she wasn’t. He had come to rely on his sixth sense. If his gut told him Elsa was in trouble, then she probably was.

When he stepped inside her office, he noticed her bag and her laptop case next to her desk. She would have never left them behind. So he was right. Something was definitely wrong.

He searched the downstairs—the lobby, the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, and the laundry. No one was about. The urgency to locate Elsa escalated the longer he searched the darkened hotel.

The unlocked front door bothered him. What if there was an intruder? What if Elsa had confronted him? What if she’d been hurt…or worse? No, he couldn’t think that way. He headed through the lobby to climb the stairs and retrieve his work flashlight from his toolbox on the third floor so he could better search the upper floors and the courtyard.

Visions of Elsa’s broken and lifeless body sprawled on the bricks of the patio screamed through his mind. He shook the gruesome images from his head. Where had they come from? He certainly didn’t wish her dead. No, on the contrary, he wanted her to remain very much alive. Despite his intentions, he had become…he wasn’t sure how he felt about the woman…but he couldn’t get her off his mind when he was away from her. Thoughts of Elsa had become a serious, yet very pleasant distraction for him.

The hotel was quiet. Surely, there should have been the hum of electrical… He stopped the thought. Of course not. The electricity was out. The idea that the outage was not due to a normal circumstance, but rather something paranormal, zoomed through his consciousness.

When he had made it to the top of the stairs, voices bounced toward him from the corner room on the third floor. His back muscles knotted with tension. There was something odd about that corner. Not only had he found the dimensions of the space off from the plans, but also the area seemed to vibrate as if it pulsed with life. He hadn’t told Elsa about the odd sensations he’d felt because he thought she’d laugh at him.

Would telling her about the strange vibes the corner gave off have kept her from exploring the area on her own? Probably not. Elsa was stubborn that way.

As he neared the room, bright light shot blinding rays through the open door, causing an incredible glare. He shielded his eyes and peeked around the jamb into the room. Elsa had her back to the far wall, and a glowing ball of light hovered in the air between them.

It would have been all right with Collin if he had never witnessed another paranormal event again in his life. This was his grandmother’s fault. She’d once foretold that his life would be a magnet for supernatural phenomena. At the time of her telling, his fortune hadn’t seemed so much like a curse. In the midst of a paranormal disturbance, it felt very much like she’d placed a spell on him.

He finally forced his limbs to move forward and opened his mouth to call Elsa’s name, but he stumbled and bumped into a side table. The scene before him glitched and the light began to dissolve. He froze, unsure of how he might be interfering with the moment, fearful of creating a negative energy vortex.

“Wait. Who are you? Who do you want me to stop?” Elsa’s questions came across the room toward him as if riding on waves of energy.

The flashlight she’d obviously dropped on the floor at her feet flickered on. Elsa’s high-pitched scream ripped through the electrified air. In all of his twenty-eight years, Collin had never heard such a soul-shattering shriek that seemed to rush him and bombard his senses.

Before he could stop her, Elsa broke into a run and rushed past him through the door. With one smooth and continuous motion, he followed her out the door, wrapped his arm around her waist, and swung her away from the walkway rail. She would have toppled over the side onto the courtyard below, just as he had seen in his earlier vision, if he had not been there to stop her.

He winced and glanced at the bricked patio three floors below them. Had her momentum carried her over the walkway railing, Elsa would have landed on a busted fountain. The broken concrete with the iron bar sticking out of it… He stopped the thought before it finished developing.

She seemed to shake out of a trance. “Collin, what are you doing here?”

Then, her eyes shifted to his arm around her waist. She pushed him away and stumbled backwards against the railing she’d nearly tumbled over. When she glanced behind her, she hopped a step away from the rail.

“Do you know what just happened?”

Her attention jerked back to him, and her eyes reflected her confusion.

“Who were you talking to in there?” He pointed toward the room she’d just left.

She shook her head.

“There was a huge ball of light in the center of the room…”

Wiping at the corners of her eyes, she sucked back what sounded like a sob.

“You do remember, don’t you?”

“Yes, I saw it. Okay. I admit it. Happy now?” Her clipped tones splashed a fresh wave of anxiety over him.

No, it didn’t make him happy. “Come downstairs with me. No, instead…let’s go across the street, and I’ll buy you a shot of Irish whisky. You look like you need one.”

She gave him the evil eye. “I suppose you’re gonna want me to tell you the whole story.”

He laughed. “I saw some of it with my own eyes, I did. You might as well tell me the rest.”

She seemed to be experiencing a serious internal debate. “You avoided me this morning. Why?”

Her question hit him in a moment of weakness when he wasn’t prepared with an acceptable answer. He hung his head and scratched where his skin had begun crawling like crazy, like ants were having a party on his scalp. “That, I did.” He raised his head to look her square in the eye. “I owe you an explanation.”

Their eyes locked, and he never wanted her to look away. His frank admission seemed to surprise her. The incredulous expression on her face was priceless. When her expression changed to an emotion that was unreadable, he thought he’d lost any chance of talking it out with her over a drink.

“And I owe you one as well.” Her grim countenance softened, and she held out her hand. “I’m still a little shaky.”

He wrapped her hand in his. “We’ll keep each other from falling down. If the truth be told, I’m a bit wobbly myself.”

That was no lie. He needed her to steady him as much as she needed him to keep her upright. He’d come back that evening to remeasure the walls one more time. The trip to the hotel had made him weary, the prospect of confirming his suspicions had made him even more tired, and the letdown from the adrenaline rush had drained the rest of his energy.

She nodded. “That sounds like a plan.”

He retrieved her dropped cell phone from the floor, took her hand, and pulled them toward the French doors that led to the stairs. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t make the journey along the walkway easy either. It was as if her legs were weighted and she could barely make them move. His limbs felt like two heavy tree trunks.

“I need to get my things and lock up before we leave.” Her voice wobbled, and a long uncertain pause followed. “I’d like to get that drink, if your offer is still good, but can we go somewhere outside the Quarter?” She pressed the fingers of her free hand to her temple. “Someplace quiet.”

The night was turning out in a way he hadn’t anticipated, different than he expected, but definitely better. With her hand in his, each of them supporting the other, he could no longer avoid the magnetic tug that Elsa Madsen had on his heart. It had been useless to avoid any personal involvement with the woman.

His grandmother had long ago foretold his romantic future with a golden-haired, spirited woman from another land. Listening to her fortune telling back in Ireland, he hadn’t believed a word she’d said, but Elsa was exactly the woman his grandmother had described.

Chapter Five

After both Audrey St. Clair and Les Wakefield had threatened Sophia Cannon, Nick Moreau had arranged for Sophia and her boyfriend Dylan to use an apartment leased to the city of New Orleans so their names wouldn’t be on any property records or lease agreements. The apartment had been set up for the sole purpose of housing potential witnesses that needed to go off the grid for a while. Dylan and Sophia had wanted to lay low for a few months, if not completely disappear, so Nick had managed to get them the apartment since no one was staying there at the time.

It wasn’t exactly like living in a safe house because they were free to come and go as they pleased. The alarm would alert the nearest district office of a break-in, but it wouldn’t keep Audrey or Les from following Sophia back to the apartment if either of them spotted her around town. Nick was certain that either Audrey St. Clair or Les Wakefield would have found Sophia by now if either of them had been looking hard enough. Sophia had not refrained from frequenting the places she always did.

Actually, Nick had hoped Audrey would show up and attempt to harass Sophia again, but she didn’t. And Les Wakefield? The threat he had posed never materialized, and the city needed the space, so Nick had leased an apartment in his own name and told the couple that they could stay there for a few months as long as they made the monthly rent payment. Those few months had turned into almost a year.

Audrey had disappeared again and Les seemed preoccupied with other pursuits.

Dylan and Sophia had spent the last few months out of town working on a joint project in Natchitoches. They’d arrived back in New Orleans and set up housekeeping in his leased apartment again. Now that Nick was back on the job and they were back in town, it was time the three of them had a long talk.

Sophia had called Nick and summoned him to come for a visit, and the tone of her voice suggested he shouldn’t ignore her demand for an audience. He had arrived as requested, despite the temptation to stubbornly refuse, since he’d needed to talk to them anyway.

Nick leaned on the breakfast bar. At first, he thought it was rude that they didn’t offer him some of their food, but after getting a closer look at their meal, he decided he wasn’t all that offended or that hungry. Dylan’s plate was clean as if the man had licked every bit of pasta sauce off the surface, but it looked like Sophia hadn’t touched hers.

She stood across the bar from Nick, nudging a lump of undercooked, lumpy spaghetti with her fork. “I’m tired of this, Nick.”

Did she mean the spaghetti? No, the irritation in her voice warned him that she was about to spew a royal rant.

“If anyone has been looking for me, they would have found me by now.” Sophia wrinkled her nose and shoved the uneaten food away from her. “I think it’s time we moved out of here into our own place.”

Dylan grunted, but Nick wasn’t sure if he was agreeing with Sophia or not. The man had a disgruntled expression on his face that wasn’t easily interpreted.

Several years ago, Audrey St. Clair had disappeared, and for a long time, the New Orleans Police had considered her a missing person. After months of searching for her without any leads, Nick had assumed that Audrey was dead, and he had suspected her ex-boyfriend Dylan of murdering her just because Dylan wouldn’t tell Nick everything he knew about Audrey’s disappearance.

When a person of interest isn’t forthcoming, that person becomes a detective’s chief suspect until the officer becomes satisfied the person wasn’t involved. It took Audrey’s reappearance to finally convince Nick that Dylan hadn’t killed her. As it turned out, Dylan had kept quiet because he thought he was protecting Sophia when the woman didn’t need his protection at all.

Nick had become so preoccupied with the French Quarter serial murders the previous year that he’d had little time to worry about what Audrey was doing. He’d lost her trail and had not been able to pick it back up again. No one had seen her since she broke into Sophia’s apartment and scared the crap out of her, so there had been little Nick could do.

Sophia continued her rant. “What if they killed her like she said they would just because I told you what I know? If she’s dead, she’s not going to bother me any more.” Her tone revealed her lack of sympathy for Audrey.

“No one knows what you told me except me. I haven’t even made an official report of our conversation for the case file.”

Sophia’s eyes snapped with surprise. “Why not?”

“I’ve only put in the case file what I wanted her to know.”

Dylan rested a hand on the back of Sophia’s bar stool. “Aren’t you being a little paranoid, Nick? Surely, Audrey doesn’t have a spy in the New Orleans Police Department.”

Over the last year, they’d progressed to addressing each other by their first names. Nick wasn’t sure he was used to the familiarity yet. He didn’t think he’d ever be Dylan Hunter’s friend. He liked persons of interest to call him by his last name. The fact that Dylan was no longer a person of interest was a technicality.

He sighed and addressed Dylan’s sarcastic suggestion that Audrey had a spy in the New Orleans Police Department. “No, I’m not saying that she does.”

He struggled to put his scattered half-thoughts on the subject of Audrey St. Clair into a coherent sentence. It had been a few months since he’d given her a lot of thought. “She seemed extremely agitated when she told you the Thoreaus might kill her if they found out she had killed Jamie, didn’t she?”

Sophia nodded. “Like she was about to have a panic attack.”

“She acted like she already knew them, didn’t she?”

Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, she did.”

They had already established these points numerous times, but he asked the questions anyway. Nick needed to stall a few moments while he collected his thoughts and made his defense of his department. “I don’t think she has a connection in the department, but she might believe the Thoreau family does.”

“Do they?” Dylan could ask the most pointed questions.

Nick shrugged and spread his hands in front of him. “They seem to always get ahead of us. The whole clan has been avoiding arrest for years. Every time we think we’re about to close in on them and shut down their operation, they move it somewhere else. Do you know how many empty warehouses we’ve raided?”

He hated to suggest such a possibility, but he had to consider it. It wouldn’t be the first time organized crime had sunk its fangs into the New Orleans Police Department. Nick had thought that era was over, but maybe the Thoreaus had found a new way to infiltrate law enforcement.

Sophia scooted her stool back from the bar. “Until you told me, I had no idea Jamie was one of
those
Thoreaus. It was bad enough that someone died because of our stupidity, but knowing that he belonged to
that
family… That scares me.”

She was being gracious including herself in the stupidity. Audrey had been driving Sophia’s car, and Nick suspected that Sophia had been drugged so she couldn’t or wouldn’t drive. The forensics at the scene suggested that Audrey had run over Jamie Thoreau on purpose. The lack of skid marks was a tell tale bit of evidence.

“If they don’t already know, I don’t want the Thoreau family to figure out who killed Jamie.” He shook his head. “No, you don’t want them to find out who was in the car that night even if you weren’t driving. They might come to the wrong conclusions, just like your stalker did.”

Nick was quite certain Sophia wished she’d never shared an apartment with Audrey. When Sophia had finally told her stalker that she’d never been to Atlanta, the man had switched his attention to Audrey. He still hadn’t figured out who the man was that had harassed first Sophia and then Audrey for months, but he was positive the harassment had to do with Audrey’s association with the Thoreaus.

Until he’d contacted the Atlanta Police Department, he hadn’t been aware there was a cadet branch of Thoreaus in Georgia. After a bit more inquiry and investigation, he had discovered the crime family’s reach extended all the way across the Deep South. It was possible that Audrey had become involved with the Thoreaus while she lived in Atlanta. Jamie Thoreau had spent time there.

The Atlanta police hadn’t heard of Audrey, but she might have used an assumed name. Her parents had told him there was a period of time when she was estranged from them and that she’d never been willing to tell them where she’d been or what she’d been doing. When Audrey had entered Tulane University, she was older than most students. She was already a woman with a past.

If Jamie came to New Orleans looking for Audrey… But Jamie wasn’t the stalker because he’d died before the stalker began his harassment. All of Nick’s reasoning seemed to run in circles, just as it had for months.

No matter her disappointment, Nick had to tell Sophia how it really was. There were few words of encouragement he could give her under the circumstances. But he did have one ray of hope to offer. “She thought you had something she’d stolen from the Thoreaus. I don’t think she’s going to come looking for you unless she thinks you have whatever it is she’s looking for, and without putting the word out that you know what that is or that you have it, she’s going to stay away from you. I think you’re safe as long as she thinks you don’t have what she wants.”

Dylan shook his head. “This is all just speculation, Nick. We have no idea what Audrey is thinking, or even if she’s still alive to think it.”

“I still need to find her.”

Sophia caught Nick’s gaze, a hint of accusation reflecting in her eyes. “Why? She’s alive. There’s no murder case or even a missing person’s case any longer. Are you that determined to find Jamie Thoreau’s killer? You’re not even certain the accident was really murder, and the Thoreaus haven’t made a public stink about it.”

No, they hadn’t. The family had been scarily quiet on the subject of Jamie’s death.

Dylan slipped his arm across Sophia’s shoulder. “He’s right, babe. We have no idea if his family has discovered the truth or any part of it. They could be looking for Audrey or for you or for both of you.”

“I need to find Audrey before the Thoreaus do.”

Her eyes blazed with disbelief. “You think she has a connection to the Thoreaus because you think she ran over Jamie on purpose. You’re hoping she can give you a lead into the Thoreau family. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never implied anything different, Sophia. I thought you knew that.” What was her hang up? It wasn’t like he’d lied to her. “If the Thoreaus are looking for her, they might try to get to her through you.”

“Are they looking for Audrey?” Dylan’s skepticism mirrored Nick’s doubts.

There were always rumors floating around the dark side of New Orleans about the Thoreau clan. No, he didn’t believe the Thoreaus were actively searching for her. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “If they are, there’s been no noise on the street about it.”

Somehow the conversation had gone horribly awry. Not that he’d initiated the discussion.

“When it comes to Audrey, I’m not sure about anything.” The admission was difficult and took a sizable chunk of ego with it when it exited his mouth.

Sophia leaned her elbows on the bar as if she had no more energy to keep herself upright. A serious frown had developed on her face. “What could she have taken from the Thoreau family that’s so important they’d kill her to get it back? I’m the one who moved out. Not her. She obviously thinks I took whatever it is with me when I left. Why would she hide something in my things? That doesn’t make sense.”

Dylan picked up the thread of conversation where Sophia left off. “Why would Audrey want to kill Jamie Thoreau? What was he to her?”

The same questions had been asked a million times, and the answers were undoubtedly linked. Audrey’s time in Atlanta was a big blank. Perhaps, the details needed to be filled in before Nick had all the answers, but Audrey wasn’t around to interrogate.

Dylan placed his hands on his hips. “You really haven’t done anything to try to find her, have you?”

That wasn’t true. Nick had done all he could, considering what he’d had to work with. Dylan had a lot of nerve accusing him of…whatever. The man had impeded his investigation into Audrey’s disappearance the first time when he hadn’t told Nick everything he knew. Dylan had no right to accuse anyone of anything.

Spending the last few months recuperating from a second gunshot wound had paused his investigation into Audrey and her connection to the Thoreaus. He would never use that as an excuse, but it was what it was. Now that he was back on the job, he had to move forward with a new theory or let the whole thing go. His captain wanted his caseload cleared before the reorganization of the division. Like that was going to happen.

“I’ve done everything I could to find her.” Somehow he managed to keep his tone even and only sound a little bit defensive. “I think when you calm down you will realize that.”

Dylan stared at him a minute and then pushed through the door into the living area with Sophia following right behind him. Nick remained in the kitchen for a few moments to allow his pulse rate to slow. He’d had a feeling tonight’s conversation would be hard, and the difficulty of answering their unanswerable questions had far exceeded his expectations.

When he entered the living room a minute or so later, Sophia had stretched out on the sofa, and Dylan was standing next to the practically useless fireplace. South Louisiana rarely had weather conducive to burning wood. It was always hot and humid. Even in winter, the weather could be unseasonably too uncomfortable to burn a fire. How many Christmas days had Nick spent in short sleeves?