year, and usually nothing to worry about.
Until now.
Now, she was closed up in a creepy house with a hulking policeman, and in no time she would certainly be without electricity. She watched as Brian pulled a box out of the back of his Jeep, placed it on the front porch then went back for another. Rental houses, security systems, a bodyguard from her past…it was more than she’d bargained for, that was for sure, but then she hadn’t expected to feel so edgy, either.
She could blame the feeling on sharing close quarters with a cop, or on the fear that he’d remember her, but that wouldn’t be completely true. One thing Justine never did was lie to herself. Like it or not, her uneasiness came from knowing that Wheeler hadn’t been the lone gunman. That someone else had access to laMalediction and could still enter undetected.
And more importantly, that Olivia’s dreams continued.
She heard a creaking sound outside the bedroom door and stiffened. A single glance out the window confirmed that Brian was still unloading boxes. It could just be the house settling, but every instinct inside her screamed that it wasn’t. Silently, she eased her gun from the suitcase and crept to the door.
She peered into the hallway, but it was empty. Then at the end of the hallway, a shadow slid out of an open doorway. Tightening her grip on her pistol, she slipped into the hallway and inched toward the doorway. The shadow lengthened for a second, then disappeared back into the room. All thoughts of safety aside, she sprinted down the hallway and burst into the room, but there was no one in sight.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm her racing heart. A quick survey of the room told her nothing. A couple of cardboard boxes and a small table lined the far wall, but otherwise, the room was empty. She crossed the room and took a closer look at the boxes, even shifted the top one of the stack, but all she found was a thick layer of dust that caused her to sneeze.
She slowly walked around the room, feeling the walls, looking for an entry point, but the plastered walls looked seamless in every aspect. The single window in the room was closed and locked, and when she attempted to open it, it held fast, glued into place by ancient paint. Frustrated, she blew out a breath. Building construction and hidden passageways were not her forte. Justine had never set foot in a place so grand that it housed servants, much less provided them hidden passageways to conduct their daily work while remaining invisible to visitors. Still, for someone to have disappeared so quickly, shouldn’t she see a sign somewhere?
She walked back to her bedroom, trying to put this latest occurrence into perspective. Maybe something blowing in the wind had passed the window in the room, casting a shadow into the hall. Okay, so the window was at the completely wrong angle and there hadn’t been even a breath of wind when she looked outside, but wasn’t that just as plausible as a disappearing person, or even worse, a ghost?
Or maybe her overactive imagination played a trick on her. She wasn’t given to fancy, but it wasn’t impossible. A lot was riding on her work at laMalediction. That, coupled with Olivia’s unnerving behavior earlier and the unwanted introduction from her past, was certainly enough to put her on edge.
She crossed her bedroom and looked out the window in time to see Brian locking his Jeep. He didn’t look even remotely disturbed or alerted to anything out of order. Sighing, she slipped her gun back into her suitcase, disgusted that she’d allowed herself to be so easily spooked.
And that’s when she noticed the piece of folded paper on the nightstand.
Her breath caught in her throat. That paper hadn’t been there before, but now it sat perched on the thin layer of salt she’d poured earlier. She knew she shouldn’t touch it. She should call for Brian. Let him do his cop thing with fingerprints and such, but she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for it, opening it.
She gasped as she looked at it. Tears stung her eyes at the picture of her mother, secured in a straitjacket, locked behind bars, her face still fresh with bruises from the “helpful” law-enforcement officers who had dragged her away.
“I know who you are.”
The words were written just above the photo.
She crumpled the paper and tucked it in her pocket. She’d burn it at the first opportunity.
But no matter what, she wouldn’t be scared away from laMalediction. Whoever had left the paper was brazen, especially with the cop right outside, and that told her one of two things: he was either crazy or desperate.
Either could work in her favor.
BRIAN TOSSED HIS GUN and keys onto the bedroom dresser, then stepped into the tiny bathroom to turn on the water in the bath, wishing like hell someone had thought to update the antiquated bathrooms in the main house to include showers. Taking baths in a relic of a house in the middle of nowhere and babysitting angry women with a fear of cops—he’d reached an all-time low. Granted, this job gave him the opportunity to take a much-needed break from police work, and for that he was grateful, but it came with other complications that he was usually able to avoid.
Like angry, beautiful women with a fear of cops.
He tensed for a moment and rubbed the two-day growth on his jaw. Where had that beautiful part come from? Granted, when Olivia had told him she’d hired a historian, he’d been expecting the gray-haired-librarian sort. A dark-skinned Creole beauty with green eyes, miles of black, wavy hair and a body that was toned to perfection had never entered his mind. Not to mention there was something familiar about her. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it would come to him eventually.
He stepped back into the bedroom and grabbed some clean clothes from his duffel bag just as a huge bolt of lightning struck outside. The lights flickered twice, then went out completely, leaving him in total darkness. He took a couple of steps to his right, trying to feel for the lantern in the inky, black room, and banged his knee on the nightstand. Mentally cursing himself for doing the very thing he’d warned Justine to be prepared for, he located the matches and lit the lantern.
He placed the lantern on the center of the nightstand and tossed his clean clothes on the bed. It was probably a bad idea to submerge yourself in a tub of water during a thunderstorm. Pulling the heavy drapes to the side, he peered outside at the rain that poured from the sky. These blinding-heat thunderstorms that blew in off the Gulf of Mexico were nothing new to him, but while normally he could ignore the storm and go to bed, being at laMalediction spurred his thoughts to all the things a storm this bad implied.
Communication would be nonexistent, and if there was an emergency, he wasn’t certain they’d be able to make it down the path to Cypriere, even in his Jeep. It was also far easier for someone to hide in a blinding rainstorm, both their movements and the noise they made, so he needed to be more alert than ever.
Brian released the drapes, but as the heavy curtain slipped back into place, he saw a flash of white across the courtyard. He yanked the drape back again and focused on the area behind the fountain where he’d seen the white object, but there was nothing there.
He waited a couple of seconds and was just about to chalk it up to debris blowing in the storm when he saw it again, this time clearer. It was a tall figure wearing a long, white robe. He couldn’t see a face, but he had no doubt the object was human. The person stood just at the edge of the woods, motionless in the storm as the white robe whipped around him.
Brian dropped the drape and reached for his gun. No way was someone standing out in that rainstorm to bring a housewarming gift. After his conversations with John
