Goes down easy(29)

“Mittens?”

Perry nodded, shrugged. “It’s cold outside.”

“I’m calling in a unit to go over the kitchen,” Book said, grabbing his phone from the holster at his waist. “Lock up the shop. Don’t let anyone else in, and you two stay out of the kitchen as well. I’ll get a unit out here ASAP. And a patrol car to check up and down the block, find out what anyone may have seen.”

“What about her walking stick?” Perry asked.

Book frowned. “What about it?”

“She’s had it with her ever since getting her foot stitched.”

The detective ran both hands down his face. “Damn. It’s on the kitchen table. I just saw it. I didn’t even think.”

Perry swallowed hard, fought back tears. “What do you want me to do?”

“You stay by the phone. I’ll make the calls and secure the kitchen,” Book said, already halfway there. “And then I’ll be at the Times-Picayune offices.”

Perry turned to Jack. “Does he really expect me just to sit by the phone?”

But Jack didn’t answer because now he was the one pacing.

“Jack! What am I supposed to do?”

He stopped, looked back up. “You do what Book says.”

“And you?”

“I figure while he’s at the newspaper, I’ll pay a visit to the Taylor home.”





BOOK LEANED against Della’s kitchen door, his hands on either side of the new window, bearing his weight. Her walking stick lay on the table behind him—a big fat reminder of the support she’d provided him with the last two years.

He thought back to yesterday morning, to their time in bed before she’d had him find the stick in the attic. He knew she’d been trying to help, to make him feel better.

He just didn’t see how anyone could understand the guilt he lived with when he didn’t understand it himself. Then again, he hadn’t given her a chance.

Of all people, Della would be the one to see the pent up emotion and the history behind what he’d stored. But now she wasn’t here.

He’d been harsher than he’d meant to be, when all she’d been was concerned. Yeah, he knew he put in too many hours. Thing was, it was never enough.

Didn’t the fact that she wasn’t here prove it?

He’d brought her home this morning, after her visions during the warehouse visit had proved to be too much. He’d made sure Kachina would be around until Perry returned. All of that, and Della still wasn’t safe.

He hadn’t been able to keep her safe when that was the one thing he knew how to do. Was trained to do. And yet, his experience didn’t mean diddly.

She’d been snatched out of her own kitchen with her niece not fifty feet away, and a brand-new door between her and the world.

He didn’t even want to think what she was going through. As strong as she was, she was still so fragile. So sensitive to the world around her.

He knew she was a survivor.

He just didn’t know if she’d come home the same woman she’d been when she’d left. That frightened him, because that woman was the woman he loved.

And he didn’t know what he’d do without her.





14





AFTER DIGGING furiously through papers stashed in his computer case like so much loose change—a mess Becca would kill him for making—Jack located Dawn Taylor’s home address in his notes.

He couldn’t remember when or where he’d found it, or why he’d written it down. He was just damn glad that he had.

His GPS navigator mapped out the drive, leaving him free to work at making sense of everything that had happened in the last two days. The fact that Eckhardt had been held at the warehouse—and recently—was indisputable, as was Della’s vision of the severed finger before Perry had even found the damn thing.

What he was having trouble reconciling, however, was Della believing Eckhardt to be dead, then believing him to be drowning. And since nothing about her way of looking at things was scientific, there wasn’t much he could do with the information but file it away.

If he’d been anywhere else, he might have started searching bodies of water. But New Orleans sat smack in the Mississippi delta, way too close to where the mouth of the river said hello to the Gulf of Mexico. And then there were the area’s lakes and bayous and swamps…a needle in a haystack would be easier to find.

Most of all, however, he couldn’t figure out what the kidnappers expected to gain by grabbing Della—except for the obvious. They’d taken Della to keep her from revealing to the police her visions about Dayton Eckhardt and his whereabouts. And damned if that wasn’t eating at Perry.

Perry had barely been able to talk to the officers who’d responded to Franklin’s call. And Jack hadn’t been able to hang around for support. He’d wanted to be there for her; it killed him to leave. But he’d had this one window of opportunity to act.

He was supposed to stay out of the way, to mind his own business.

Like he could. Like he would. Time was still on Della’s side, and Jack wasn’t about to waste a second more than he already had.

He circled the block before parking two houses down and across the street. The neighborhood wasn’t what he’d expected, and the house certainly wasn’t one he would’ve imagined belonging to a reporter and a warehouse foreman.

Then again, the posh modern house could easily have been widow’s spoils. Or a kidnapper’s booty. Except that there hadn’t been a demand made or paid out. Cindy had filled him in when he’d talked to her earlier today. She’d been glad to get the update, to see that he’d been busy.

Yeah, he’d been busy…cleaning up broken glass, replacing and painting doors, sitting for a psychic reading, falling for the psychic’s niece and losing himself in her body. Not exactly how he was supposed to be earning his per diem.

To be fair, he had spent time in interviews, researching newspaper archives, following what leads he’d managed to turn up. Right now, however, none of that seemed like enough. If he’d done enough, he wouldn’t be in the middle of breaking and entering and putting his PI license on the line.

It was almost as if he was losing his edge…

He’d knocked at the front door, watched for movement at the neighboring houses, checked the garage windows and a couple that were hidden by high growing hedges before making his way to the back of the house.

The door nearest the driveway opened into a utility room that opened into the kitchen. He found nothing on any of the entrances indicating an alarm, but he still planned to get in and get out quick like a bunny.

Problem here was, he had no idea what he was looking for. It wasn’t like he expected to walk into the dining room and find Dayton Eckhardt digging into a bowl of gumbo.

Or to find a war board set up in Dawn Taylor’s den outlining each step of the kidnapping plans. Though he wouldn’t mind discovering a series of arrows on the floor, pointing his way to the end of the maze.

The biggest challenge to digging up clues was deciding what was a clue and what wasn’t. The obvious didn’t always pan out, even while those were the easiest onto which he could hook his trailer. Yet it was the tidbits of what seemed like useless minutia that often held the keys to opening the biggest doors.

But when he took his first step into the kitchen, he slammed to a halt, all thoughts of clues and minutia sailing right out the window of his mind. Della sat blindfolded at the eating nook table, her hands bound to the frame of the white garden chair.

She frowned and tilted her head to one side, listening as if knowing someone unexpected had arrived. He started to speak, to let her know he was there, but didn’t have time. A twenty-something punk slacker stepped out of the pantry and back into the room.

“Dude.” He dropped the box of Raisin Bran he held. He dropped his jaw as well. “What the hell are you doing here? No one’s supposed to be here.”

He was a scrawny pup, wearing black slip-on Vans, baggy khaki-colored jeans and a white logo T-shirt over a long-sleeved striped one. A black skullcap sat snugged low over his ears, causing the ends of his hair to stick out from beneath like so much dry straw.

He wasn’t wearing anything over his face, which meant any second he was going to snap to the fact he’d just been made. And if there hadn’t been a Browning automatic stuck barrel-down in his waistband, Jack wouldn’t have hesitated asking him the same.

“Just doing my job,” he finally said, and when he did, Della smiled.

“What the hell is your job? Who the hell are you?”

Obviously a brighter bulb than you, kid. Might be a good idea to get the players straight in whatever game you’re playing. Jack opened his mouth to answer, to talk the kid out of his gun and his hostage, but Della stopped him.

“He’s the one who holds your fate in his hands.”

Her voice came from that low, calm and soothing, but totally spooky place, the one she’d reached into when she’d spoken during Jack’s reading. And he could see trepidation in the kid’s eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” the slacker boy sneered, gesturing with the gun he’d tugged from his pants. “You. Sit. And tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”

“I’m here for her,” Jack said, glancing at the eating nook’s cushioned bench, then pulling out a second chair from under the table. “What else?”