[Bayou Gavotte 03.0] Heart of Constantine (26 page)

“Why would anyone want to kill you? It must have been an accident.” The dog shoved his nose under Zeb’s hand, and he almost dropped the folder. “Stop that, Lawless,” he said, pushing him away.

“An accident?” Marguerite knew an urge to clobber someone.

“A mistake, I mean. A bodyguard is a great idea.” He scowled at Reuben. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

Unbelievable. “For cripes sake, Zeb! If you would just tell us what you know, maybe I wouldn’t need a bodyguard.”

Zeb gave a hopeless little shrug. “I can’t do that. It’s nothing to do with you or Constantine. It’ll be over soon. Just stay safe a bit longer. Please.” He scratched Lawless behind one floppy ear.

“It does have something to do with Constantine,” she said. “I told you about the reporter who showed up on the mound. His name is Nathan. He didn’t just happen to show up. He was sent there by an informant. Someone’s been feeding Nathan all kinds of potentially damaging information, such as suggesting Constantine made Pauline kill herself.”

Zeb shrugged indifferently, but his aura said otherwise. He subdued it quickly and said, “People are always saying Constantine killed someone or other. Some of it’s probably true.” Pause. “But not Pauline. She was harmless. He wouldn’t kill her.”

“It seems that
someone
did,” Marguerite said. “Someone who also has something against Constantine.” Pause. “I’m not saying it’s only about Constantine, but he’s definitely part of the picture.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Zeb said again. The instability in his usually tidy aura showed that his confusion was genuine. Lawless shoved his cheek against Zeb’s hand, and another printout slipped partway out of the folder, and then another. “Stop it, Lawless! I’ve got to run. Marguerite, don’t tell anyone you saw me here, or I’m totally screwed.”

Marguerite’s eyes darted over the sheets of paper about to spill onto the floor. “What do you have there?”

“Don’t ask me that.” Ghastly bursts of misery reamed his aura. Dank green shame clouded it. Marguerite grabbed a page and pulled it out.

Torture porn? She shuddered. Pauline’s abusive husband had been into this sort of garbage. He’d even tortured Pauline a couple of times, and it had taken her years to recover from the emotional trauma. “Have you gone completely nuts?” demanded Marguerite. “Where did you get this? My God, what would your father say?” Oh, shit. Now she sounded like Lavonia, but Zeb should be interested in normal sex with girls his own age, not this sort of trash. She’d never seen him so distraught, or his aura so drained.

“Don’t tell him,” he said. “Please don’t. I can’t let him see me with this stuff.”

God, no
. “I won’t tell him.”
You have to tell him
, admonished a voice inside her.
He’s the boy’s father.

No, this couldn’t be what it appeared. She simply refused to believe it of Zeb. Such… such filthy tastes didn’t match his aura at all.

Still, she needed some answers right now. She tore up the offending picture but clutched the bits in her hand. “Come to my office.”

“Why?” Zeb was calmer now, beginning to be mulish.

“Because I intend to discuss this with you in private. I have enough problems with the media without someone finding out I concealed this from your father. Who, by the way, is across the street having brunch.”

“I know,” Zeb said. “That’s why I have to get out of here and off campus in a hurry. I’m supposed to be running errands for him.” He glanced at the doorway. Reuben grinned a warning. Zeb blew out a breath and turned back to Marguerite. “I’ll leave by the entrance at the back of the building so he won’t see me.”

“I’m not letting you go anywhere with this trash.” She set the book she was returning on a table, grabbed the folder, and headed past Reuben into the hall. The bodyguard herded Zeb and Lawless out as well. “And you are damn well going to explain it to me.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Zeb said.

“Put it through the shredder, of course.”

There was a brief silence. His aura cleared measurably. “That’s a good idea. I didn’t think of that.”

Marguerite mulled this over until they got into her office. Reuben leaned his broad shoulders against the door and stood there looking gorgeous and deadly.

She fed the first few pages into the shredder. “You
want
to destroy this stuff?”

“Of course.” Zeb’s aura had recovered some of its usual poise. “That’s why I was taking it out of the building. Here, let me do it.”

“You didn’t print it here? Or bring it in?”

“Of course not.” The shredder jammed.

“It only takes five pages at a time,” Marguerite said, and Reuben placidly took charge of the paper, separating it into piles of five sheets and passing them to Zeb bunch by bunch.

“Of course I didn’t print it,” Zeb repeated. “What sort of lowlife do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re a lowlife at all, Zeb. I both like and respect you, but I lose patience when my life is threatened and you are acting all suspicious. If it isn’t yours, where did you get it from?”

His mouth worked. She waited. Reuben sent a text message and received an answer, but his bored expression didn’t change. He must be used to this kind of scene. “It doesn’t matter,” Zeb said.

“Of course it matters.” She ran through the Psych area in her mind. He’d been in the far end of the reading room. Who had offices down there? It couldn’t be Eaton Wilson again, because his was at the other end of the hall.

“Door on the right at the end was a bit ajar,” Reuben said helpfully, passing Zeb another five sheets.

“Lutsky’s? Oh, come on. Don’t tell me he’s into this—”

“Shit?” provided Reuben.

“Exactly,” she said. “I guess anything’s possible, but—” She would have known if Lutsky was into torture. He had such an obvious sort of aura.

“The Pontificator?” Reuben guffawed. “Naw.” He raised an incredulous blond brow at Zeb. “Really?”

“Not that I know of,” Zeb said. “That’s why I was taking it out of his office. So nobody would find it there.”

“It was planted there?” Marguerite asked.

Zeb nodded. Lawless rubbed his cheek against Zeb’s arm and wagged his tail.

“You were protecting Dr. Lutsky? I thought you hated him.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he should be outed as a perv if he isn’t one.”

That was more like the Zeb she knew. She let out a long breath of relief. “Up on the mound,” she said. “You were protecting Dr. Wilson.”

“How do you know?” Zeb sighed. “Yeah. He’s a doofus, but he’s not a perv either.”

“And someone else, too, the person who made the mask.”

Briefly, confusion clouded Zeb’s aura; then he said, “No, only Dr. Wilson, because he made the beads, but I was hoping no one would figure that out. The rest of the mask doesn’t matter. My mom and I made it for a Mardi Gras parade years ago, but it’s been stored with the university costumes and float materials. Tons of people have access to that storage.”

She digested that. “This porn is another of the practical jokes you were talking about last night, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Zeb said. “Look, I really gotta go.” He shot a glance at Reuben, shrugged, and with an air of resignation began to fold his aura around himself.

“Where were you last night?” she said. “Eaton Wilson’s van was stolen, and it’s still missing.”

“It’ll be found within a day or two. In the meantime, I disabled it,” Zeb said, calmer and more focused as each second passed. “It won’t be a problem anymore.” His aura muffled itself like a blanket. She could scarcely detect it now. He was trying to protect himself… from what?

Reuben? Did he think she really meant to let Reuben beat him up? Maybe he thought Constantine had ordered it, but he wasn’t about to give in to threats. A little prickle of pride stirred within her.

Courageous or not, he had to be made to see reason. “That was no practical joke, Zeb.”

“I realize that, but there’s no reason to kill you. Like I said, it was a mistake. Not part of the plan.”

Marguerite said slowly. “Then what was he planning? Why steal the van?”

Zeb spread his hands. “I don’t know. Something else to make Eaton look bad, I guess.”

Over by the door, Reuben stood solid and immovable as a tree. His aura showed no sign of impending violence, but of course Zeb couldn’t see that.

“He couldn’t have expected me to follow him on my bike,” Marguerite said. “I think… I think he came to search my house again. He probably thought I was still out with Tony, or even that I was spending the night with him. Tony has such a rep as a player that it wouldn’t be surprising. Whoever it was came back afterward and checked out the house, but as far as I could tell, he hadn’t taken anything.”

“I don’t know what he was looking for.” His aura folded close, his vibes still and ready. “Makes no sense.”

“Maybe it will, if I have a little more info. Why can’t you tell me, Zeb? Who are you protecting Eaton and Lutsky from?” It was a pointless question. The blanket of his aura had turned to granite. He would go down fighting rather than say. “We can’t let this go on. I don’t know who else is in danger, but you can’t protect the whole world.”

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll find a way.”

“Why not tell Constantine? We were up half the night talking about this. He’s prepared to handle it. That’s what a vigilante does.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Zeb spoke through clenched teeth, and that carefully constructed wall of determination wavered and shook. He still had his voice under control, but she knew—just
knew
—he was close to tears. Contemplating a beating from Reuben didn’t break his aura, but this did.

Her heart wrenched. “Zeb, we want to help you, not hurt you.”

The words came out on a howl of pain. “What does it matter if I get hurt? I’ll think about going to Constantine. I
have
been thinking about it.”

“You have?”

“Of course! I’m not stupid. It’s just that—” A whisper of anguish, and the granite slammed shut. “I can’t. Not yet.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

O
rdinarily, Constantine would have enjoyed his conversation with the writer from
Rolling Stone
, but today he couldn’t think of anything but how he was going to handle Marguerite. He had to believe his guide, believe in himself, get up the guts, and make love to her.

When his cell phone chimed—
Reuben
—he put up an apologetic hand and read the text, which, when translated from Reuben’s shorthand, said,
Pontificator says your chick owes him.

Owes him what?
Constantine replied.

The shorthand translated into
Info re fucking you.

What in hell? This seemed so bizarre that he asked Reuben to type it longhand. Same damn thing.

She denied it.
Reuben went on.
I threw him out of restaurant.

Reuben wouldn’t have mentioned this if he didn’t think it mattered. So far, he’d been loyal and persistent and always did as he was told, which in this case included reporting whatever struck him as unusual about anything and everything.

He stood, walking away from the writer, and dialed Reuben’s number. “Can we talk?

“Have to be later, dude.”

This was only to be expected; Reuben was sticking to Marguerite until relieved of that responsibility. “You think she was lying?” Why else would he text about it?

“Could be,” Reuben said. “Hard to say.”

“Thanks, bro.” He hung up, pondering. Lutsky was so desperate for information about Constantine that he might be willing to take it secondhand—although the sex angle was a new one. Lutsky was a lunatic, though, not worth a moment’s thought.

As for Marguerite, she hadn’t come on to him—in fact, she’d done her best not to.

It made no sense, but he didn’t have time for it now. He shrugged internally and returned to the interview.

A while later, Reuben texted again, saying they had run into Zeb and asking whether he should use force to bring him in.

No
, he texted back. Marguerite would never forgive him if he or any of his people harmed Zeb. He texted Lep to be sure Zeb was shadowed at all times and went back to the guy from
Rolling Stone
.

“Let’s go,” Marguerite said to Reuben. “I have to talk to Constantine about all this.” She handed him a box of books and papers.

“Sure,” Reuben said, and opened the office door.

She gave Zeb a quick squeeze. “I’ll tell him what you said. Come downstairs with us so I can give you an excuse for being here in case we come across your dad. How did
you get into the building? You’re not supposed to have a key.”

Zeb rolled his eyes, and she didn’t push it, wondering how many other buildings—and vehicles—he could open at will. When she tried to return the money he’d given her last night, he told her to keep it for now. “My old man’s pissed off enough as is. He might take it and put it in a savings account for me or something equally stupid. At least I can count on you to give it to me when I want it.”

“Definitely,” Marguerite said. By the time he took off through the parking lot at a run, the granite had softened a little.