Bayou Payback. Joanna Wayne

      She left him to his admirers, called a taxi and went back to her condo. For all she knew, she’d just killed her relationship with Lee.

      But when she crawled into bed alone, it was the stranger with the whiskey-colored eyes who tiptoed into her mind and stayed around for her dreams.

      IT WAS THIRTY MINUTES past midnight when Remy finally pushed away from the desk in his hotel room. He’d spent the past three hours staring at his findings, which never fully solved the puzzle of exactly how deep Lee Barnaby had been involved in the pre-Katrina police corruption. Weary, Remy stood, stretched and then walked to the window.

      He’d chosen an old hotel on the outskirts of the French Quarter, not for its quaintness or its reasonable price but because he liked the way the pace here slowed to a skulking crawl.

      The bars were not as noisy as the ones on Bourbon Street. The inhabitants were an eclectic mix of cultures, socioeconomic levels and gender preferences. He could easily go unnoticed here.

      But it was another part of the city that called to him tonight. Remy headed to his truck and took the short drive to an area that had taken the brunt of the flooding when the levies were breached.

      What-ifs tormented his mind as he drove the once-familiar streets, finally stopping in front of the hospital where Carlotta had worked as a nurse. She’d loved her job.