Colleen Thompson – Phantom of the French Quarter (страница 7)

Her hand drifted toward the side of her head, and before he could warn her, she was hissing in pain, fingers coming away tacky with coagulating blood.

“Ow…” Her face lost color, putting him in mind of the dead girl’s from that morning. “He—whoever hit me could’ve killed me.”

“You’ve been stirring, making noises. I didn’t think you were under too deep,” Marcus said, but even to his ears, the excuse rang hollow. “And once I’d taken you—because I was afraid he’d come after you again—there was no way I could go anywhere the police could…where they could get hold of me.”

“So instead you disappeared again, like some sort of phantom—only this time, you’ve dragged me with you.” Her expression hardening, she said flatly, “You’re on the run from the law, aren’t you? That’s why you wouldn’t get involved this morning. Why you were afraid to stick around tonight.”

Her eyes flicked toward the softly shifting light of a slow-motion slideshow on his laptop. His photos from the cemeteries, running as a screen saver. But she said nothing of them.

“I was afraid for you this evening,” he insisted. “You have no idea how damned hard I’ve prayed—”

“To what gods, Marcus?” The stone angel’s image, miraculously captured in the instant before she’d knocked the camera from his hands that morning, flashed across the screen. “Do they have a separate pantheon for stalkers?”

“This is the thanks I get for saving you? For watching your every breath these past two hours? I’m no damned stalker, Caitlyn. I swear to you, I’m only—”

She bolted upright, flinging aside a cobweb-thin sheet and swinging her feet to the floor. “Two hours? Oh my God. Poor Reuben—he’ll be frantic. He’ll have called the police. And Jacinth, too—my sister.”

She stood, or tried to, wobbled and then sank down again with a groan.

“I know they’ll be worried.” Marcus struggled beneath the weight of resignation. “I know that, and I’m sorry. But you’d better rest for a few minutes before you call. Before you report…whatever you decide to tell them.”

His gaze locked onto hers and held it. But instead of the accusations, the curses, he’d expected, he saw something soften in her eyes.

“You’re going to let me do that?” she asked.

He nodded. “Of course. Which is not to say I’m going to stick around and wait to be arrested.”

She studied him for several moments. “Why were you out at the cemetery tonight? I mean, your camera is broken, right?”

“I was hoping you’d show up,” he confessed. “I was hoping for a chance to catch you alone for a moment.”

Her brows rose. “While I was leading a tour group?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I never said it was a great plan. But I was thinking maybe afterward you’d let me take you for a cup of coffee.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Reuben would’ve loved that.”

“I was hoping your pit bull would look away for a minute.”

“He’s not my pit bull, he’s my assistant. He’s just a little… He used to be a cop, so he’s naturally protective.”

“Protective’s one thing, but he looks like he enjoys ripping off heads just for fun.”

“He grew up in a shack on Noble Street, smack up against the old projects,” she said. “So what did you expect, a handshake and a warm welcome?”

Worry creased the smooth skin of her forehead, and moisture clumped her lower lashes. “Reuben may look like a tough guy, but he’s going to be absolutely beside himself with me gone.”

“Then call him,” Marcus said. “Tell him you’re all right.”

Caitlyn looked worried. “You’ll really let me do that?”

Marcus nodded solemnly. “I said I would. But if you can wait for just a minute, there’s this one thing I have to show you first.”

“This better not involve any body parts, or I promise you, I’ll scream louder than you’ve ever heard a woman scream before.” Her eyes sparkled like a honed blade. “In theater school, they always called me the girl with the made-for-horror-movie lungs.”

“I remember from the cemetery.” With another smile pulling at one corner of his mouth, he pulled the matchbook from his jeans pocket and tossed it to the bed. “That’s the only thing I’m whipping out. Even if you beg me.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” she murmured, picking up the matchbook.

“This morning in the cemetery, I accidentally grabbed this when I was gathering the stuff that fell out of my bag. I didn’t notice it ’til later, after I’d already left your house.”

She turned the matchbook cover, reading the advertising logo: New Orleans After Dark Guided Tours.

“I worked with Josiah Paine’s company,” she said, her voice trembling, “before I went out on my own.”

“How does your old boss feel about the competition?”

Her gaze dropped, and she ran a corner of the sheet through her fingers, flicking the frayed hem with a chipped pink thumbnail. There was an unconscious sensuality in the small gesture, one that left Marcus too aware of their closeness in this cramped room, of the gulf of need that hollowed him out when he looked into her face.

In his mind’s eye, the thin mattress grew feather-soft and cloud-thick. The worn cotton sheets rewove themselves from sumptuous threads of wine-rich silk. She lay back, her rain-tangled hair brushed to a fine sheen and splayed out against the heaps of fluffy pillows.

Looking away, he bit down hard on his tongue, desperate to bring both his imagination and his body to heel before she noticed and really did scream.

“Paine was furious about it,” Caitlyn admitted in answer to his question. “But he never would’ve lost me if he’d kept his hands to himself.”

Marcus’s focus snapped back to her. “He put the moves on you?” He all but growled the question, a dark possessiveness roaring through his veins. If this Josiah Paine had touched her…

She shook her head, then lifted her hand toward the lump. “Ow—no. I didn’t mean that. He just—he always had a temper. But one day he took it too far.”

“How far?” Marcus ground out.

A delicate flush colored the exposed skin above her breasts. “One night he accused me of holding back tip money.”

“What did he do?”

“The jerk shoved me, and I walked out. Started my own company, Villar-A1 Tours.”

“Revenge?” he asked, as his own subconscious crept in that direction. Imagining himself pummeling a man he’d never met for a woman he hadn’t even known at this time last night.

What the hell’s wrong with me?

Picking up the matchbook and turning it around, she pressed her mouth into a grim line. “Turns out, it’s not as sweet as I expected. Especially not if Josiah’s insane enough to have killed poor Megan Lansky.”

“That’s the dead girl?”

Caitlyn told him about the student who had been reported missing, and how Megan had told her friends she was going on a cemetery tour. “The police thought about mine first, because of the resemblance and because I found her, but what if she went on one of Josiah’s? He leads groups himself some nights—he’s actually quite good—when one of the regular guides takes a night off or he’s short-handed.” She wrapped her arms around herself and added, “His employees tend to quit a lot. Or he gets mad and fires them. He’s kind of famous for it. If I’d known when I first came to town…”

“Then the police are investigating him?”

“I doubt it. He seems to be a drinking buddy of some of the detectives. They acted like his temper’s nothing but an old joke between—”

Cutting herself off, she began looking around, lifting the covers. “I really need to call Reuben. Where’s my bag? My cell phone?”

“Sorry, but I didn’t see them.” Marcus picked up the receiver of the phone at his elbow. With a meaningful look, he passed it to her, and then forced himself to sit there, his jaw gritted, while he waited to find out if she would rain fresh hell down on his head.

CAITLYN FOUGHT TO LOOK AWAY and couldn’t, held captive by the grim resolve on his face. Whatever she did or said, she realized Marcus wouldn’t try to stop her. Wouldn’t ask for help in keeping his involvement hidden, no matter what it cost him.

Though he’d cared enough for her, a virtual stranger, to bring her first the photo and then the matchbook from the crime scene, he expected nothing in return. Not even hope’s ghost lived behind his storm-dark eyes.

Thunder murmured in the distance, followed by an answering frisson of awareness that sparked along her backbone. Alone inside this room, he could have done anything while she lay helpless. Could have but hadn’t, only watched over her instead. Praying she would waken, he had told her.

Surely those details said something about the man he was. Perhaps more than the fact that he was avoiding the police.

Forcing herself to drop her gaze to dial and wait for an answer at the other end, she barely squeezed out a syllable of greeting before Reuben’s worry blasted through the phone line.

“Are you hurt, girl? Where did you go? I’ve been goin’ crazy lookin’. Called out half my buddies from the force to try to find you.”

Her eyes stung at the pain she heard in his voice. Pain that Marcus had inflicted on a man who had shown her and her sister nothing but kindness since the day they had arrived in New Orleans.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “So sorry you were frightened. What about the tour group? Everyone okay?”