Her Secret Spy

Normally she would take offense at him calling her place a wreck. Even if it was true. She preferred to think of it as a work in progress. “Aunt Callista left the tub. Probably because it’s cast-iron and weighs a ton. I couldn’t even move it to scrape the linoleum from under the claw feet.”

“Then I suggest you go take a nice, long soak in a hot bath and go to bed.”

“Thanks for everything you’ve done for me. If you don’t mind, I’ll let you see yourself out. You’ve been more than kind, particularly since we’ve never met before tonight...” She trailed off, tilting her head to one side and staring at him as a little voice inside whispered that he knew her better than she could possibly imagine.

What was that all about?

She moved into the master bedroom and closed the door. Callista had not messed with the apartment’s original cast-iron claw-foot tub, and Lissa planned to take full advantage of that tonight. A bath was just the thing for quieting the voices rioting in the back of her head, clamoring more loudly than usual for attention.

* * *

Max waited until after the light went out under Lissa’s bedroom door to get up from the silly Victorian sofa and ease down the stairs. He avoided the step he’d registered as the squeaker on the way up and crept downstairs to the shop. Now to have a look around and see if he could figure out where Callista might have put her complete customer list.

Surely the woman had kept such a thing. Based on the criminal clientele he’d been told she served, she’d have been insane not to keep the names tucked away somewhere for self-protection, if nothing else. Of course, if she’d had a decent dead man’s switch in place based on such a list, Callista probably wouldn’t be dead now.

He reached the shop floor and looked around in dismay. How did a person even begin searching this maze? He started at the back corner and worked his way around the edges of the surprisingly large space. His mind boggled at the variety of odds and ends. He felt a little like Alice must have when she’d first fallen down the rabbit hole.

He examined an exquisite collection of small enameled boxes. As an art dealer, he would pay double what Lissa had them marked for, and he would mark them up even more for resale. He made a mental note to mention it to her in the morning.

Oh, wait. He couldn’t say anything about her merchandise pricing, lest she figure out he’d been snooping.

He refocused his mind on the client list and resolutely ignored a pair of actually quite nice landscape paintings hanging on the far wall from the stairs. They were oil paintings, the technique modern, and the sensibility for light and movement was top-notch. He would love to take a closer look at them in full daylight. If the color held up to bright light, the paintings and the artist could be quite a find.

But he wasn’t an art dealer anymore. At least not until he cracked the Russian crime syndicate that had swallowed his entire family whole.

Callista’s list, dammit.

He moved to the counter and made a cursory search of the cabinets there. Surely Lissa had already searched this, the most logical place to look for her aunt’s business records.

No surprise, he had no better luck than she’d had at locating Callista’s books. He looked around the store in the darkness. Where would he hide if he were a ledger, journal or notebook of some kind?

Something shifted in a corner near the ceiling, and he did a double take. For a second there, he thought he’d seen a faint movement. Or maybe a flash of light. Hell, if he didn’t know better, he’d say he’d seen a ghost. However, he did know better, and he didn’t buy any of that woo-woo stuff. It must have been cast from a passing car or something.

He glanced around behind the counter and spied a short door tucked back under the stairs to Lissa’s apartment. Hmm. A closet perhaps? He opened the door and was surprised to see another set of stairs, this one leading down. Nobody in New Orleans had basements. The place was built on a swamp, prone to flooding and gradually sinking even farther below sea level than it already was. A waterproof basement would be prohibitively expensive to build, the sort of thing only a bona fide nutball would even attempt.

But as sure as he was standing there, he was looking at stairs leading down. He pulled out the tiny LED flashlight attached to his key chain and pointed it into the dark. A dozen steps led into a low, cramped space that looked for all the world like some kind of vault. The walls looked like steel-reinforced concrete. He felt the nearest one and was startled to register some sort of thick sealant or covering on the surface. Windowless and stuffy, it felt like a prison cell.

Or a secret storeroom. Did the mob move contraband through here? Drugs, maybe? What in the hell was this place?

It was not nearly as cluttered as the shop was. Big wooden crates were stacked along one wall, and several old steamer trunks sat along the opposite wall. He moved to the crates first and was surprised to see everything from wrapped curios to bottles of wine. But not just any wine. This stuff was old, French and had a famous label that would fetch thousands at auction if the dates on the labels were real. The stuff had to be illegal. He was no great connoisseur of wine, but to his knowledge the vineyard itself was the only importer of this brand to the United States. Based on the amount of dust on the bottles, the wine had been there for some time.

He had a look in the nearest steamer trunk. Max opened the heavy lid and was gratified to see the thing filled to the brim with papers. Bingo. This was exactly the kind of place Callista might have hidden her client list. He picked up a fistful of papers and began to read.

A magic spell. A recipe for a love potion of some kind. A ritual for luck described in details. Seriously? C’mon, Callista. Give up your client list already. A chuckle sounded nearby, making him whip around in the dark, swinging his flashlight wildly back and forth.

And then he realized it was the furnace kicking on. This place really gave him the creeps. That haunting face Lissa had drawn must have gotten under his skin more than he wanted to admit. Those eyes—they watched him pleadingly, begging for help. Thank God he’d gotten to Lissa before that bastard had dragged her off to heaven knew where to do heaven knew what and put a similar expression in her eyes.

He shook his shoulders hard, trying to rid himself of the sensation of something or someone watching him. He was a professional, for goodness’ sake. Trained for most of his life in the art of covert operations. He was a man of cool logic and action. He did not do ghosts, and he did not do supernatural. Period.

* * *

Lissa’s eyes opened drowsily as a hand caressed her forehead. She was too sleepy to bother pushing away the spirits tonight. “Is that you, Aunt Cal?” she mumbled to the room in general. “I’m fine—I promise. That lovely man, Max, or whatever his name is, took care of me. Did you send him to me?”

Another whisper of touch across her cheek. She would take that as a yes. “Thanks.” She sighed.

The ghost caressed her cheek again, this time beseechingly. It wanted her to listen. Reluctantly, she woke up more thoroughly, sitting up in bed and speaking directly to the invisible spirit hovering nearby. “Listen, Aunt Callista. About the whole psychic thing. I’m giving it up. I want to know what it’s like to be normal. To live like other people. Maybe find a nice guy and settle down. Have a family. I can’t keep talking to dead people and have a regular life. I know it’s selfish. But I’ve given my whole life to helping dead people. It’s time for me to live a little.”

The ghost of her aunt, if that was who’d woken her this morning, did not deign to answer. There were no more gentle, loving touches on her skin.

Lissa flopped back to her pillow, trying to enjoy the warmth of the morning sun streaming through her window. But that girl’s face from her attacker’s mind still lingered. She’d dreamed of her last night, too.

It had been awful having to endure the girl’s screams and cries for help. Help that had never come. Lissa shoved away the memory of her death, also dreamed about in vivid, high-definition color and surround sound. That was the worst part of dreaming. Lissa had no control over it, and the spirits seemed determined to take advantage of her weakness to torture her.

The nameless, but no longer faceless, girl was dead, and nothing would bring her back. The good news was that her killer was in custody and not likely to go free anytime soon. Lissa could let it go. Justice had been served. So the powers that be could just leave her out of the matter.

She sat up with conviction and threw back the antique quilt that had supposedly been made by a great-great-great-grandmother of hers. She had places to go and things to do. Determined to focus on those, she swung her feet to the cold wooden floor. This room needed a rug. A nice thick Persian one that she could dig her toes into.

What to wear? Max had promised to come back this morning and escort her down to the police station. She wanted to look her best for him, since she hadn’t exactly been in top form last night.

Lissa, my dear, she told herself, you have a crush on Mr. Smith. A big, fat, juicy one. And normal women acted on their crushes. They put out signals and feelers, and maybe even asked the men they liked out for a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. He did say last night that the next meal was on him. That meant he was open to the idea of seeing her again, right?

If only she’d had a more normal life, maybe she would know how to land a man like Max Smith. As it was, she stood in front of her closet and panicked. Then she moved into the bathroom and stared at the mirror over the sink and despaired. She couldn’t do this. He was so out of her league. She was an amateur at romance, and he was obviously a world-class master of the art.

Master of romance didn’t quite capture the raw magnetism of Max Smith, or whatever his name was. The Max part felt right, but the Smith part felt slightly off. Although now that she was living a normal life, she probably should ignore the intuition and just accept his name at face value.

Not that all intuition was bad, though. Last night, as he’d walked her to the store, there’d been a moment. The kind of moment she’d fantasized about. That instant of connection as eyes met and instinctive recognition of true love broke over both parties. As angelic hosts sang and heavenly trumpets blared to announce the miracle. Or something along those lines.

The moment had left her breathless and thinking the kind of racy thoughts she’d rarely had time for before she’d set aside her unfortunate gift.

Resolutely, she picked up a tube of eyeliner and prayed that it would cooperate with her this morning. The makeup gods were capricious demons from time to time.

As she carefully accented the roundness and width of her big dark eyes, she allowed herself to remember her other dream from last night. The one about Max. Who knew a girl could make herself blush just by dreaming about a man she’d just met? Except in her dream they’d known each other—or at least had a connection—for a long time.

She stared critically at herself in the mirror and then down at her pitiful selection of lipsticks. She wanted to come off breezy. Demure but sexy—whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Why was she going to all this trouble for this guy?

She’d always subscribed to the notion that any man worth her love would adore her just the way she was, with no makeup and her curls sticking out all over her head and a smudge of paint on her nose. Apparently that notion had flown right out the window at the first sign of a hot guy. He was not out of her league, darn it! She deserved any man she was attracted to.

But an insidious thread of doubt whispered warnings of what he would think if he knew about the circumstances of her conception and birth. She was tainted. Had bad genes. Her stepfather said once that they would come through in the end. The comment, uttered in anger, had stuck with her ever since. Was he right?

The sun shone a little less brightly through her window.

Max was, of course, punctual to the minute. She waited by the shop’s main entrance, picking at the black widow’s weeds she’d opted to wear. The old-fashioned dress swathed her in gloom and made her look at least a decade older than her twenty-six years.

“Going to a funeral after you make your statement?” he asked drily as he strolled down the sidewalk toward her.

Rendered speechless by his easy elegance in those flannel trousers and crisply starched dress shirt, she could only stare at him. How had she missed these movie-star good looks last night? She’d noticed that he was hot, but not that he was drop-dead gorgeous. She must have been in worse shock than she’d realized.

One of his eyebrows twitched. “Everything okay?”

“Umm, no. Yes.”

“Which?”

“I’m a little flummoxed by how handsome you are today.”

“Oh.” He fingered his jaw. “I shaved this morning. It’s nothing.”

Right. Because a simple shave had peeled back the troll’s face to reveal this prince beneath. She said lightly, “I believe a sincere yowza is in order, sir.”

“Well, thank you. And may I say you make a fetching widow.”

She grinned up at him. “Nice try.”

He shrugged. “Surely you know how beautiful a woman you are. Great bones. Perfect skin. Striking coloring. I have an eye for these things, you know.”

“And how’s that?” she asked as they strolled down the street.

“I have a good eye for beauty. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you so.” He stopped beside a low-slung, sleek sports car and opened the door for her. Startled, she sunk into the plush quilted leather interior. He was wealthy? She hadn’t seen that coming. It disappointed her a little. She wouldn’t want him to think she found him interesting just because he had money.

“Does your car have a name?” she asked as the vehicle purred away from the curb.

He frowned. “No.”

“Every car has one, you know.”

“A name?”

“Yes. You’re doing this beauty a great disservice by not taking the time to learn hers.”

He grinned over at her before accelerating out into a busy thoroughfare. “What would you call my car?”

She leaned forward to lay both palms flat on the dashboard. She listened for a moment and then broke into a big smile. “Of course. Her name is Lola. She’s Italian.”

“Most Ferraris are.”

“You’re making fun of me,” she accused.

“Are you one of those people who names everything?” he asked, without sounding at all like he was making fun of her.

She shrugged. “Only the things that need names.”

“And I suppose you skip people’s and animal’s given names entirely and make up endearments for them?”

She scowled, sensing that he was subtly poking fun at her. “Yes. And I’d call you Curmy.”

“Like Kermit the Frog?”

“No. Short for Curmudgeon.”

He laughed aloud. “I could live with that.”

“Fine, Curmy. How long till we reach the police station?”

“About...ten...seconds,” he answered as he decelerated quickly and swerved into a parking spot in front of a rather nondescript building obviously built in the modern-utilitarian 1970s.

“Lord, that’s an ugly building.” Of course, it wasn’t just the dreadful architecture. An aura of suffering and human evils hung over the place like a shroud. Hastily, she closed her mind’s eye, snapping it shut like a cheap door.

“No kidding it’s ugly,” Max muttered fervently as he helped her out of the car. “You’d think in a town like this that the builder would have given at least a tiny crap about his building not looking like a three-story wart.”

His hand came up to touch the small of her back as he escorted her into the police station, and her breath caught a little at the way her entire being focused on that light contact between them.

The actual taking of a statement took about two minutes. But then she came to the tricky part. “Officer Leblanc, have there been other girls in the past few years who went missing?”

“Of course,” the handsome Cajun replied.

“I mean any who look like me. You know. Similar height, build and coloring. Close to my age. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“My attacker. He...” She searched for the right words that didn’t come right out and say she’d picked a vision out of his brain. “He...indicated that I was not his first victim.”

“What do you mean?” As she’d expected, the cop jumped on her comment aggressively.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she demurred. “I...” Crap. She had no words to get around the truth she was determined not to reveal.

Thankfully, Max dived in and rescued her. Again. “I have to agree with her. I saw the way he was manhandling her. He was no amateur. He knew exactly how to subdue her. Could you just look into other missing persons reports, Bastien, and see if any other petite redheads have gone missing?”

“Fine. I’ll take a look.”

They had to wait around for a while as a lineup was prepared for her, and then Detective LeBlanc put her in a nasty little room with no lights and a big window. She knew the drill from watching television. Five surly-looking men filed into the room on the other side of the one-way glass, and she immediately pointed out suspect number four.

She was led out, and Max was brought into the room. He came out in about ten seconds, as well. She didn’t even bother to ask him which guy he’d picked. They’d both gotten up-close-and-personal looks at her attacker last night. The lineup was purely a formality.

And then they were done. An odd sense of panic washed over her. There was nothing else to tie Max to her life. He could drop her off at the curiosity shop and drive away, never to see her again. She didn’t even have his real name, let alone his phone number. If only she had more experience with men. Maybe she would know a smooth way to ask him for his contact information. Something that would let her keep in touch with him. She had a serious crush on him and craved more of him desperately.

They parked down the street from her shop a little before noon. He did not invite her out to lunch as she’d hoped he would. There was no small talk, nothing to indicate he had any personal interest in her whatsoever. That was what she got for dressing like a mortician. She should have gone with her first impulse to dress up for him.

“Here’s my card,” he announced without preamble. “It has my private cell phone and personal email address on it. If you ever get in trouble, ever need help, give me a call.”

She took the white rectangle despondently. Not a “Call me if you want to have coffee or go out for a drink.” Just a “If you get in trouble...” It was pro forma polite behavior, not a sincere offer to see her again. Well, hell.

She climbed out of the car, insisting he not get out and come around to help her. She watched the sleek black car pull away from the curb and dart into the city. And she was alone once more. Except today it hurt even worse than usual.

* * *

Max watched the small black figure retreat in his rearview mirror, her shoulders slumped in defeat, her entire spirit shrinking in on itself. He was a horrible human being. She’d obviously hoped he would throw her a social bone and show even the tiniest spark of interest in her.

Thing was, he was interested. And, furthermore, he did give a damn about her. And that was exactly why he had to stay away from her. To cut off even the most casual contact between them. He had to break any link between them before she got seriously hurt. For he and his dangerous, fake life would do just that if he let her into it.

He parked in front of his restored French Quarter condo, pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. In rapid Russian, he said, “Hey, Peter. It’s me. There was some trouble last night.” Peter Menchekov was his boss nowadays, ever since the mobster who’d controlled Max initially had been killed in a government raid a few months back.

At least he no longer worked for the more violent psychopaths who populated the lower rungs of this crime syndicate. He’d finally moved up the ranks to quiet, thoughtful men who wore expensive suits and weren’t prone to fits of temper. But he sensed that he was still far from the top of this sprawling organization. There was someone hiding at the apex of the pyramid. The ultimate predator and mastermind of the whole organization. Until he learned that person’s identity, his work was not done.

“What kind of trouble was there, Masha?”

He winced at his childhood nickname. It was the common Slavic shortening of his full name, Maximillian. “The girl, the one whose store you wanted me to watch, is not the person we thought she was. The store’s owner died a month ago, and this girl is the new owner. She just came to town. She knows nothing.”

“The order I got was to watch the store. Not to watch the store’s owner,” Peter correctly observed. “Continue the surveillance.”

“There’s a small problem with that. The store’s owner met me last night. It was an accident. A guy mugged her, and I had to stop him from killing her.”

A pause while his boss considered that. “All the better. Infiltrate her store. Find out everything she knows about what goes on in the store and whether she plans to continue running it the same way as her aunt did in the past.”

An interesting word choice, that. Infiltration, huh? That smacked of military training. Or espionage school. Who was Peter, really? Max made a mental note and added it to his growing list of suspicions that this was no simple Russian crime gang.

Why was the crime syndicate so interested in this silly little shop, anyway? What was so special about it?

He’d figured his boss would want him to stay in direct contact with the store owner, now that he’d met her. Which was why he’d put off making this call. The last thing he wanted to do was play Lissa Clearmont. She struck him as a kind and decent soul, innocent and deserving of an honest man. Not a con-man schmuck like him messing with her for his own nefarious ends.

“Understood,” he replied shortly. He couldn’t bring himself to say any more politely, and he dared not say any more impolitely.

“Good hunting,” Peter said briskly, ending the call.

Max jammed the phone in his pocket. Good hunting, indeed. He’d be hunting a babe in the woods. This was going to be a massacre of that poor girl’s heart.

Chapter 3

People had a tendency to underestimate her, and Lissa used it to her advantage from time to time. Like the older man in a suit who walked into her store that afternoon, asking after an obscure African fertility statue, almost as though he didn’t expect her to have any idea what he was talking about.

She’d seen it in the showcases somewhere, but couldn’t remember exactly where off the top of her head. Aunt Cal’s ghost was usually around and happy to point out where to find some trinket or another. Not that Lissa particularly wanted any ghost’s assistance, no matter how helpful it might be. Sure enough, a light hand nudged her down the second aisle and to the right.

She left the man happily examining the foot-high statue, which she personally considered one of the ugliest items in the entire shop, and returned to the cash register. She was a little disappointed when he didn’t buy it but was encouraged when he said he would send his grandson in to look at it the following day to see if it was the one the younger man had been looking for. She could use the sale.

Finishing the renovation that Callista had started upstairs was costing a great deal more than she’d anticipated, and she hadn’t even started hiring the various contractors she now knew she would need to finish the job and pass the city building inspection. Yet again, her tendency to leap before she looked had bitten her in the tush.

Business was slow today, likely on account of the football play-offs, and she closed up early. Mr. Jackson shared a TV dinner with her as she settled in to watch an old black-and-white film noir.