A Father's Duty

“Did she mention her own name or anyone else’s name?”

“No.”

“Look, I don’t know why you were down there this time of the night, and right now I don’t really care. I’m not trying to prosecute you for soliciting or buying illegal drugs. I just need evidence to put the guy responsible for killing that young woman in jail.”

“Isn’t that the police’s job?”

“Of course, but…”

“But you think you can do a better job of this than they can.”

She exhaled sharply, venting her frustration. “I do my job a little differently than some prosecutors, but I’m not trying to usurp the NOPD’s authority or responsibility. I would like to have your name, just so I can contact you again if more questions come to mind.”

“It doesn’t matter how many questions come to mind. I’ve told you everything I know.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a business card. “But you can reach me at work if you want to waste your time. Crescent City Transports. The name and number’s on the card.”

She reached out her hand to take the card. His fingers brushed hers and she was hit by a jolt that all but sucked her breath away. She dropped her hand, and the card fluttered to the floor as images played in her mind with dizzying force.

A young blond woman, face bruised, her hands and feet tied, her eyes red and swollen. And scared—very, very scared.

“Are you okay?”

The voice cut through the images, and Georgette forced herself to focus on the man standing in front of her. “What did you say?”

“You look as if you’re about to pass out. Do you want me to get a doctor?”

“No, I’ll be fine. I guess I’ve just overdone it a bit lately. Sometimes I forget to eat and my blood-sugar level dips.” That was a lie, but she’d used it before. It was far more believable than the truth.

“Can I give you a lift home?”

“No. I’ll go to the snack area and get some juice from the vending machine. I’ll be fine after that.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

She watched him walk away, still troubled by the force of the vision and the fact that it was somehow associated with the man who claimed to have just stumbled over a dying prostitute in a deserted courtyard.

The gift. That’s what her mother called it when the psychic images took over her mind. Some gift. More like a curse from Lucifer.

She’d spent half her life trying to deny it, the other half trying to escape it. The old ways belonged to her mother and her grandmother before that. They were part of the world of chants, spells and hexes, and they had no role in the life of a junior prosecutor for the New Orleans District Attorney’s office.

Still, the image preyed on her mind. She reached into the pocket of her jacket to search for the card the man had given her, then saw it on the floor by her shoe. She stooped and picked it up. The apprehension hit again, but this time without the visions or the physical impact she’d felt when their hands had touched.

Tanner Harrison. Crescent City Transports, on Tchoupitoulas Street. The guy could be as innocent as he said, but she had a very strong suspicion that he wasn’t.

The gift was often confusing, but it never lied.

TANNER DIDN’T go back to the French Quarter that night. Instead he crawled behind the wheel of his sports car and drove back to his apartment, three third-floor rooms in an aging mansion on Napoleon Street. Like him, the house had seen better days.

There was no way he’d get the victim out of his mind tonight, no way he could forget the fear in her eyes when she’d begged him not to hit her again. His Lily was out there somewhere, likely facing that same kind of fear. She might have already been beaten like that, might even be…

No. He’d told Georgette Delacroix to come right out and say the word, but when it was Lily he was talking about, he couldn’t even think it. He couldn’t begin to understand what had possessed his daughter to fly to New Orleans and take up a life on the streets, but according to his ex, this was all Tanner’s fault.

In all likelihood, it was.

The guilt settled into a gnawing pain as his thoughts shifted to Georgette Delacroix. One minute she’d been firing questions at him, the next she’d looked as if she was in some kind of trance.

She didn’t look, talk or act like an attorney, at least none that he’d ever had dealings with. He’d guess her age as early thirties, and she was tall and shapely, with cold black hair that fell to her shoulders. It was her eyes that had really gotten to him, though. Dark as night, mesmerizing when she’d questioned him, haunting when she’d looked as if she might pass out on him. She was elegant, but exotic—a dangerous combination any way you cut it.

Whatever. Georgette Delacroix was not his problem and he hoped he’d never have to see her again.

GEORGETTE SAT at her desk staring at Tanner Harrison’s card and wishing she’d never met the man or even touched that card. It had been three days since the night she’d encountered Tanner in the hallway at Charity Hospital. Three days since she’d first seen the images of the young woman and felt her fear and desperation.

The images had hit several times since then, appearing at the most inconvenient of times—in a meeting with the D.A., while she was taking a deposition, and in chambers with Judge Colbert this morning. Fortunately they hadn’t been as intense as they’d been at the hospital, but they had been powerful enough to make her lose her train of thought and appear less than totally competent.

Tanner Harrison was somehow connected to the woman in the images. Georgette was certain of that, though she was sure of nothing else. For all she knew, the woman with her hands and feet tied and the woman who’d died in examining room 12 could be one and the same.

Or the woman in the visions could still be fighting for her life. The next victim. The possibility stewed in Georgette’s mind, taking over her concentration until it was useless even to think of writing the brief she’d started a half dozen times over the last few days.

Tanner Harrison, innocent employee of Crescent City Transports? Or, Tanner Harrison, lynch man for the mob? Murderer of young women who crossed the lines Gaspard drew in invisible ink?

She picked up the card and felt a cold, frightening shudder slither along her spine. To play this safe and according to protocol, she should take her fears to the police.

But what would she tell them? That she saw visions? That some unnamed woman was calling to her for help? Let that get back to her boss and District Attorney Sebastion Primeaux would fire her before she could open her mouth to deny it.

But neither could Georgette go on like this. So, it was field-trip time. She’d pay a surprise call on Tanner Harrison, but this time she’d stay in full control while she questioned him. A junior prosecutor on her way up should never have her equilibrium shaken in public.

Georgette planned to make it to the very top of the heap.

Chapter Two

Tanner hung up the phone; he’d been talking to the New Orleans Chief of Police as his newly assigned partner stopped at the door to his office.

“Guess you heard—another tourist died last night from a drug overdose,” Mason Bartley said, leaning his long, lanky body against the door frame.

“Yeah, I just got off the phone with Henri Courville.”

“What did the police chief have to say?”

“That the victim was a sixty-five-year-old retired guy from Champagne, Illinois, in town for a model railroaders convention.”

“Evidently got off on the wrong side of the tracks,” Mason said, “and ended up facedown in a back alley in the Quarter.”

Tanner nodded. “Which is exactly how I’d like to leave Maurice Gaspard some night.”

“Watch it, Harrison. You’re starting to sound like me.”

He sure as hell hoped he wasn’t. Mason had been a two-bit crook up until a few months ago, when he was recruited to join the top secret New Orleans Confidential agency. And while the boss might think he was rehabilitated, Tanner had serious doubts. He’d griped for two days when Conrad Burke had made them partners in this high-stakes case. A lot of good it had done. Burke hadn’t budged an inch.