Possession (8 page)

“I didn’t think so.”

Neither of them said anything for a long heartbeat of time, nothing but the
whoosh-whoosh
of the ceiling fan breaking the sound of their breathing.

“When you’re ready to turn yourself in…”

“You’ll be the first one I call,” he told her.

She nodded, unable to ask for more than that, which she wanted not because of the political clout that would come with such a move and not even because of what they had shared together in this very bed. But rather because she knew she’d be the only one who could keep him safe.

“If I need to get in touch with you?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t answer for a long moment. Then he pulled her cell phone free from her waist holder and entered a number.

“My cell.”

She smiled as she took the phone back. “Wouldn’t Chevalier be interested in knowing I have you on speed dial?”

“Chevalier?”

She nodded as she put the cell back in her holder. “The NOPD detective working the case.”

“I’m familiar with the name.”

“You two have run into each other before?”

Claude shook his head. “No. Not that I know of. But I have a feeling our paths will cross before this is over and done.”

“I have a feeling you’re right.”

Akela made out the sound of an airboat motor nearby. She told herself she should hurry out to meet her ride, to protect Claude, but since he wasn’t making any moves, she wasn’t in any hurry, either.

Instead she reached out for his hand again and squeezed it, searching for something more to say. “Let me know if you come across anything.”

Even as she said the words, Akela couldn’t help thinking they were empty ones. Unless someone stepped forward and confessed to the murder, there
was probably very little to uncover that could clear Claude’s name.

The reality of the situation made her throat tighten.

But she couldn’t, wouldn’t think of that now. Now she needed to meet her ride and pretend all was right with her world, despite that Claude Lafitte had turned it upside down.

“Go,
chere
,” he said, bringing her palm to his mouth and kissing her there, then on the inside of her wrist.

Akela was filled with the desire to kiss his mouth, but realized the sound of the boat was getting closer.

She got up and hurried out of the cabin without looking back, her secret hope being that when she saw the room again, she would be doing so as a guest and without the cloud currently hovering over Claude Lafitte’s handsome head.

I
N SOME RESPECTS
, Quarter residents weren’t all that unlike bayou natives in that they didn’t turn in one of their own. Oh, everyone knew who he was, no matter his attempts at disguise or to blend into the background. He’d spent too much time there to expect otherwise. But no one went out of their way to point that out. They seemed to feel that whatever was going on was his business and so long as he didn’t cause them any trouble, he was free to move about at will.

Claude had counted on this when he’d returned to the city the night before, after Akela had left him at the cabin. And it had served him well so far. He’d checked into a small hotel he hadn’t frequented before on the outskirts of the Quarter, requesting a room near the back of the place with a quick escape route, parking a car he’d borrowed from a bayou friend nearby.

Now he stood in the darkened doorway of a bar,
staring at the entryway to Hotel Josephine across the street and up a couple of hundred feet. While he’d had luck in keeping to the shadows, he’d had no luck in figuring out a way to clear himself beyond trying to find the real killer himself. He’d carefully chosen those he’d questioned. Perhaps a little too carefully, because no one claimed to have seen her before the night he’d met her.

Could she have been a socialite slumming it? A good girl on the prowl for a bad boy for a few hours?

She wasn’t from the area, of that much he was sure. Otherwise all he’d learned was that she’d been with a couple of girlfriends at the club where they’d met, who had taken off with their own companions for the night before Claude had sat next to her.

His cell phone vibrated in his back pocket. He pulled it out, frowned, then greeted his brother.

“Thierry,” he said quietly.

“Where are you?”

Lately this was how their conversations had progressed—or, more accurately, regressed. They seemed to have traveled back in time to a place where Claude had constantly been getting into trouble and Thierry had been not just his brother, but his protector. He had been a teen and their mother had died of cancer, with neither of her sons having been aware of her condition.

The news had devastated Claude, while his older brother rolled more easily with the punches.

“Nearby,” he said.

“So you’re not in the bayou anymore.”

More of a statement than a question.

“You’re more at risk in the city.”

“So I am.”

“You don’t seem very concerned.”

“Because circumstances would dictate that I don’t have anything to fear.”

“Come on, Jean-Claude, innocent men are executed every day. You know that.”

“Yes, well, I don’t plan on being one of them.” He moved the phone to his other ear, watching as a couple paused outside the quiet doors to the Hotel Josephine, then continued on, tourists indulging in gossip rather than lovers looking for a room. “Have you spoken to that lawyer, John Reginald?”

“Yes,” Thierry said. “It appears he’s not making any better progress than you are.”

Not that Claude had expected him to. For all intents and purposes the NOPD had their man. Him. And they were quickly building a case around that one scenario alone.

“What do you plan to do now?”

“How about dinner at your place?”

Silence.

He paced a short distance away from the doorway. “Whatever I can.”

“Have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to the deal?”

The deal. His bid to buy his brother’s half of Lafitte’s Louisiana Boats and Tours.

“No. But I take it you have.”

“Look, I think you should consider letting me sell it outright.”

Claude felt as though he’d been stabbed in the back again. But this time by his own blood.

“We’ll talk about this later.” When he had regained control over his life.

Thierry’s heavy sigh filled his ear. “Yes, well, just be careful, ya hear? And for God’s sake, don’t go getting yourself into any more trouble than you already have.”

“Hard to imagine, that,” he said, then rang off.

He stood holding his telephone for a long time. Everything was on the line with this. Everything depended on him clearing his name. His freedom. His livelihood. He couldn’t imagine selling a business he’d helped build from scratch to an outsider. He’d put too much into it.

Not much had been happening at the Hotel Josephine since he’d been watching it. He supposed part of the reason might have to do with someone
having been murdered there, but he was pretty sure that Josie usually did more business than he was seeing now. While potential customers seemed to linger outside, they didn’t go in. In fact, in the hour that he’d been standing there he had yet to see anyone resembling a paying customer go in or out of the place.

Which wasn’t helping him at all.

An NOPD squad car cruised slowly by. Claude backed farther into the shadows, watching as the driver appeared to stare straight at him, then continued on down the road. He had his hair pulled back and a leather cowboy hat low on his forehead, dark sunglasses blocking his eyes, a black leather vest and bolo over a Western shirt rounding out the look of a mysterious Southern gentleman out for a good time.

He’d never carried a gun. Oh, sure, he owned three or four, but aside from an antique Derringer he kept in a case over his desk at his office, the others were stored at his cabin at Barataria Bayou. He’d never really had much use for them outside target practice. And he didn’t think it a good idea to take up the hobby of packing heat now. It would only get him into more of that trouble his brother mentioned, namely because the men he had to fear held guns of their own. And
the last thing he wanted was to end up in a shooting match.

An image of Akela in her unfastened bulletproof vest checking her firearm came to mind.

As a rule, he preferred his women feminine, probably because his mother hadn’t been. She’d been a combination of Ma Kettle and Annie Oakley, chewing on chaw and spitting. He’d asked her once when he’d been ten why she didn’t work on her appearance more. She’d stared at him as if watching a few of his marbles roll free.

“You really think the way a woman looks matters in the scheme of things, child?” she’d asked him. Then wearing that expression that told him he still had a lot to learn in life, she’d shaken her head and walked away, leaving his question right where it was without an answer.

Akela Brooks was as far away from overtly feminine than any female he’d met in a long, long time. Yet somehow she was the most feminine woman he’d ever lain with.

Claude crossed his arms over his chest, wondering if that even made sense.

But the fact remained that up until now, up until her, he’d been drawn to women who wouldn’t dream of being seen without their makeup on. To whom sexy lingerie was a calling, not just a ward
robe choice. Women who smelled of costly perfume and powders, not a simple citrus lotion. And definitely none of the women he’d dated before would want to hold a gun, much less know how to use one.

Akela…well, Akela was presentable, but she didn’t do anything more than the bare minimum to make herself attractive.

Yet he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. About how her mouth bowed open when he filled her. About how her fingers dug into the base of his back, clutching him close as she ground against him. About how the more he had of her, the more he wanted.

Of course, no good could come out of their rendezvous beyond momentary sexual satisfaction. What made it strange was that he wanted more beyond that.

The longest relationship he’d been in up to that point had been in his early twenties and had lasted six months. But sex hadn’t been involved in that one. He’d gone through a period when he’d thought he might like to get married. Thierry had been engaged the first time and made the option look not only palatable but perhaps preferable.

“Just think, li’l bro,” Thier had said. “You come
home to find a beautiful woman waiting for you every night.”

Then his brother’s engagement had ended and he’d made the mistake of having sex with his own object of affection, finding her as warm as a northerly wind in December.

He’d never given marriage another thought, even when his brother had finally found the right woman and settled down two years ago.

Claude had settled on seducing every member of the bridal party, married or otherwise.

Yet he wanted to see Akela again.

He scratched his chin and grinned. Of course, some of that fascination might have a lot to do with much of his own future being in her hands. But not even he could delude himself into thinking that was all there was at work here.

He pushed from the door and strode in the opposite direction, away from the hotel, although he couldn’t be sure where he was going. But anywhere away from his current thoughts would do for the time being.

A
KELA CLIMBED
from her plain FBI sedan, scanning the familiar area of the Quarter around the hotel with careful deliberation. Claude was here somewhere. She could feel it. Oh, probably not within
the immediate area. But he was in the Quarter, probably trying to prove the innocence he proclaimed.

It was an innocence she was becoming far too invested in making everyone else see as the truth.

She checked her firearm, closed the car door, then stepped down the walk toward Hotel Josephine. She wasn’t used to being this emotionally involved in a case. Or perhaps involved wasn’t the right word—unless it came to her professional standing. In that regard, she supposed she was irrevocably tied to the outcome of Claude Lafitte’s case, if only because she’d been taken hostage by him and his arrest would look good in her file.

But her connection to Claude Lafitte went far beyond that now, didn’t it? Not that she kidded herself into thinking that they had any sort of relationship in the traditional sense. On a normal day, during the course of a normal relationship, there would be dates and phone calls and perhaps even flowers. There had been none of that where she and Claude were concerned. Rather what did exist between them was some sort of sexual vacuum that cut her completely off from everything with which she was familiar.

Their time together on the bayou seemed as surreal as a dream. And the person she’d been there was just as unreal.

Right now none of that mattered, though. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it. Namely, she was going to continue looking for Claude as if she hadn’t spent a blissful hour with him in his bed the previous day. And if she just so happened to come across evidence that might help in his case then that would be an extra.

With the double doors to the hotel open, she stepped inside the empty lobby, immediately noticing how quiet it was—not that it had been a bustling spot before, but now there was no sound at all. No ringing telephones, no customers coming and going. Nothing.

She headed to the counter, looking for the pretty woman of mixed heritage she’d met the other day: Josie Villefranche. She was nowhere in sight. She stared down at the guest book, noticing that for the past two days the register was empty but for one random entry the day before. More than likely a tourist who hadn’t known that one Miss Claire Laraway had been murdered in Room 2D.

“Can I help you, Agent Brooks?”

Akela looked up to find Josie coming in from the back, probably the kitchen area. She wiped her slender, slightly tanned hands on an apron, then ran the back of her wrist across her damp brow.

“Looks like business isn’t going very well.”

Josie frowned and kept her wary gaze on her. “Tends to happen when there’s been a murder in the place.”

“Sounds like you’re familiar with the experience.”

Josie shrugged and closed the guest book with a dull thud. “Let’s just say that this place has seen its share of tragedies over the years.”

“Josie Villefranche…are you related to the original owner, Josephine Villefranche?”

“Her granddaughter.”

“I see.” Josephine Villefranche, it was rumored, had been one of the Quarter’s most successful madams at a time when that was saying something. She’d had the most beautiful girls and the most elite clientele.

And, if Akela wasn’t mistaken, she had also experienced something along the lines of what her granddaughter was going through now when one of those girls was murdered by a member of that elite clientele.

Akela asked, “You alone here?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being alone here?”

“No.”

That intrigued Akela.

“I’m capable of protecting myself.” Josie pulled a sawed-off shotgun from behind the counter.

Akela considered the firearm, picking it up and cocking it with one arm before handing it back.

“That’s an illegally altered gun you’ve got there, Miss Villefranche.”

“So sue me.”

That got a smile from Akela that Josie returned.

“Do you think that Lafitte committed the murder?” Akela asked point-blank.

“Everyone’s capable of just about anything. That would be my experience.”

Cagey woman, this Josie Villefranche.

“But if you were the arresting officer…”

“I’m not.”

“If you were…”

“If I were, I’d be looking in a couple of other directions.”

“Such as?”

Josie shrugged, leading Akela to believe that she knew more than she was sharing—which didn’t make much sense. Josie had been questioned at length about the circumstances surrounding the murder. But had she revealed all pertinent information?

She took out her notepad and thumbed through notes she’d taken from Chevalier.

“You were familiar with Lafitte, am I right?”

Josie sighed. “Look, I’ve already told the cops everything.”

“Cops hoping to convict him of the crime.”

“You’re not?”

Now there was a question. “Let’s just say I’m trying to keep an open mind about that morning’s events.” She turned a couple more pages. “Was there any one person Mr. Lafitte used to bring here more frequently than others?”

When Josie didn’t answer right away, she knew there was.

“Who is it, Josie?”

“Look, I don’t want to be getting Claude into any more trouble than he’s already in.”