Chapter Two

In direct contrast to my girlie-girl sister, I’d always been a tomboy. I’d liked sports instead of dolls, preferred outdoor games to books. Men were intimidated by my aggressiveness, turned off by my dishwater hair, my crooked nose, and my less than gorgeous face and body. I wasn’t fat or thin, neither short nor tall. I was okay—average, plain.

I wore j eans a size too big, extra large men’s dress shirts, always white so I could bleach out the stains that never failed to appear, even when I hadn’t been near a single thing capable of causing them.

Not that I hadn’t had boyfriends, relationships, sex. Just not lately. When Katie disappeared, I’d dedicated my life to finding her. I hadn’t considered it might actually take my whole life, but if it did, then it did.

Just because I harbored a secret longing for the kind of love my parents had—one that never faltered despite numerous years and the incredible hardship of losing a child—didn’t mean I was going to find it.

Women like me usually ended up living with cats. I didn’t much like cats, but that was beside the point.

Rodolfo was so out of my league it was scary. However—my gaze was drawn to his sunglasses—he didn’t know that.

Still, why so interested so fast? He’d behaved as if he’d been behind bars for several years. I made a mental note to check his background.

“Well… thanks,” I said.

“For manhandling you?”

He sounded disgusted with himself. I felt kind of bad. He hadn’t scared me, much. In truth, I’d enj oyed the last few minutes more than a little. I wasn’t the type of woman who brought out the beast in men. I hadn’t realized I’d wanted to be until today.

“I’ll live,” I said dryly, and inched toward the door.

“The lights,” he murmured.

My hand hovered near the wall. Why did it bother me to leave him in a darkness he couldn’t see any more than he could see my face? I barely knew the man. If he chose to brood blindly in the dark, what was it to me?

I flicked the switch, shut the door, then stood in the hall, unable to walk away. The murmur of the crowd, the clink of the glasses, the warm-up squawks of a new band almost made me miss the sounds from the room marked private.

Rodolfo was talking to himself.

I doubted he’d be happy if he found me hovering out here, so I turned and took one step toward the crowded, noisy bar before I stopped.

I didn’t want to go through there again; I just wanted out. To my right lay the rear exit. I used it, slipping into a dark back alley strewn with garbage. Maybe the crowd would have been a better idea.

I reached for the door just as it clicked shut behind me. I tugged, but the thing was locked from the inside.

“Dammit.” I wished I had a gun.

I’d been certified to carry a lethal weapon in Pennsylvania—I’d taken a class and everything—though I usually didn’t bother. Searching for missing persons and sneaking around taking pictures of cheating spouses or fraudulent employees didn’t call for a handgun.

I could have brought mine along, but the understandable hassle that went with transporting a firearm on a plane just wasn’t worth it. Who knew I’d be creeping around a scary alleyway after dark?

And it was scary—chilly despite the blistering heat of the night, almost navy blue with flickers of silver from a moon too covered with clouds to discern a shape. The stench of rot lingered in the air and somewhere, not too far away, something with more feet than two skittered off.

I might be a tomboy; I might know how to shoot a gun; I could even beat the crap out of someone who outweighed me by thirty pounds—I’d taken self-defense the first time a nut took a swing at me on the j ob

—but I was still woman enough to hate rats. Does anyone really like them?

I forced myself to walk with a confident swagger in the direction of a single dim streetlight. There had to be a way back to Frenchmen Street where I could catch a cab to the brightly lit neon center of Bourbon.

Considering I was the antiparty girl, the notion shouldn’t be so appealing.

I hadn’t taken four steps when the blare of a trumpet and the beat of drums erupted from inside Rising Moon. I jumped a foot, spun toward the sound, and swore I’d caught a glimpse of an animal sliding along the side of the building.

Should I run? I doubted a rat would chase me.

But if that had been a rat, it was the hugest rat ever grown in Louisiana, maybe the world. What I’d seen had looked more like a dog—a big one.

Except a dog shouldn’t make my heart thump so hard it threatened to burst from my chest. A dog wouldn’t hang in the shadows, just out of sight, but rather run out to greet me, or at least try to beg a meal. Unless there was something wrong with it. Like rabies.

Which meant running—probably not a good idea.

Instead, I walked backward. Keeping my gaze fixed on the dark shadows that surrounded Rising Moon, I vowed never to leave home again without my gun.

The closer I got to the single streetlight, the darker those shadows became. The music spilled through the open windows and into the night, nearly drowning the thunderous beat of my heart. Nevertheless, I could have sworn I heard a growl simmering beneath.

I was spooked. That was all. I knew better than to walk alone in dark alleys. I’d just been so desperate to get away from Rodolfo’s muttering that I’d taken the first out I could find. Which was foolish and impulsive—two adj ectives that rarely applied to me. If Matt ever found out about this, he’d smack me upside the head, and I’d deserve it. Hey, if I lived to see him again, I’d smack myself.

At last the streetlight glared from directly above.

A small corridor between two buildings revealed a busy Frenchmen Street beyond. I headed in.

The structures surrounding me were so tall they blocked any trace of a glow; I could see nothing but a blotch of gray ahead. I hurried toward it, even as something entered the alley behind me, its bulk causing the shadows to dance. I couldn’t hold myself back anymore; I ran.

In the tight, enclosed lane, the harsh rush of my own breath echoed in staccato rhythm with the muted thud of my tennis shoes against the pavement and the clunk of my backpack slung over one shoulder.

The end of the alley loomed, seemingly farther away the closer I got. The space between my shoulder blades burned, as if a bull’s-eye had suddenly appeared—a place for the bullet to strike, the knife to plunge, or the wild beast to land, then fall with me to the ground.

I tried to glance around, as all stupid people do when they’re chased, and my toe caught on a crease in the cement; there were a lot of them. I pitched forward; my hands shot out and smacked hard into the buildings on each side. A sliver plunged into my left palm, a ragged board scraped my right, but at least I didn’t fall.

I burst into the open seconds later, sweaty, wild-eyed, and hyperventilating. Using a shaking hand to swipe my tangled, shoulder-length hair from my eyes, I lifted the other and hailed a passing cab.

If I climbed in a little too fast and nearly shut the door on my foot, the cabbie didn’t seem to notice.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Bourbon Street.”

The moon burst from behind all the clouds, bright and eerily silver. I threw a final glance at the alley, which was now lit up like Times Square.

Nothing was there.

I forced myself to face front as the cabbie swung a U-turn, the wail of a sax that sounded more like a howl rising toward the navy blue night.