Zach stared out of his windshield and shook his head. Almost midnight. Four hours outside Raissa’s shop and no sign of the voodoo princess. Oh, but he’d seen plenty of signs of Agent Fields. If the FBI’s finest had been trained at the art of surveillance, it certainly didn’t show. Agent Fields had parked his car directly in front of Raissa’s shop hours ago, and every fifteen minutes or so, he got out of his car and banged on the shop door.
Stupid. Raissa knew Zach would run her print as soon as he could get it done, so he seriously doubted she was out on a hot date or tossing back beignets and coffee. No, if he had to guess, Raissa had flown the coop—whether permanently or temporarily remained to be seen—but he wasn’t going to waste any more time watching Agent Fields doing nothing.
Zach tapped the keyboard on his laptop once more and got the name he was looking for—the owner of Raissa’s building. He entered the name into the police database and finally came up with a phone number for the man. He was obviously asleep when Zach called but woke right up when Zach identified himself and asked about his building. It took him a couple of minutes to assure the man that the building was fine, and as far as he knew the tenant was fine, but she was a possible witness to a crime and he needed to speak with her as soon as possible.
The owner was only too happy to provide him with Raissa’s emergency contact—Sabine LaVeche.
Zach hesitated for a moment, then told the owner that there was a bum outside Raissa’s shop banging on the door, and if he moved a bit to the left, the owner might end up replacing that plateglass window. He hung up before the owner could ask for details.
A few more minutes of laptop whirling and one more rather enjoyable round of watching Agent Fields make yet another pass on assaulting Raissa’s door, and he had the information he was looking for. Sabine LaVeche, Mudbug, Louisiana. And unlike her friend, Sabine had pages and pages of information. He scanned the info for anything that might be able to help him find Raissa, even if it was only something he could threaten Sabine with.
Another psychic. Great.
And apparently a psychic with a death wish, he decided as he read the police report on what had to be one of the strangest and most convoluted cases he’d ever heard of. Faked deaths and war crimes and crazy aunts and people buried in the backyard of some of the wealthiest people in the parish. Zach would bet anything that Sabine regretted the day she’d decided to go on a manhunt for her family. He imagined that all the inheritance in the world wasn’t going to erase that trauma from her mind.
He continued to scan the screen, hoping for a weak link, something he could use to his advantage. The last couple of sentences made him groan. Cancer. Jesus H. Christ! How was he supposed to strong-arm a dying woman who’d discovered dead bodies in her newly found family’s backyard? That was a level of asshole even he wasn’t going to be able to manage.
He shut the laptop and took one final look at Agent Fields pacing the sidewalk and yelling at someone on his cell phone. Enough of this. Cancer and dead-body-finding aside, he was going to locate Sabine LaVeche and tell her he had an emergency. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
A little less than an hour later, he pulled into the town of Mudbug, what there was of it. It was tiny, just a single row of buildings and a neighborhood that stretched in front of the bayou, the houses there the sort that only old money could buy. He had no trouble locating Sabine’s shop and parked in front. The building was dark, but then that hardly surprised him, as midnight had come and gone over an hour before.
He peeked in the store window, but all he saw was a replica of Raissa’s store in New Orleans. This building had been listed as her home address, so he pressed the doorbell, hoping if she was asleep upstairs she’d hear it. He waited for a while, staring up at the second story to see if a light came on, but the building remained black and silent. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and was just about to dial Sabine’s home phone when a car turned onto Main Street, tires squealing as it rounded the corner.
The car slid to a stop in front of the hotel, and the driver jumped out, looking frightened and frustrated all at the same time. Zach felt his skin tingle and ducked behind his car, peering over the roof. The passenger finally stepped out, and he smiled. He knew it—Raissa Bordeaux. And whatever her middle-of-the-night adventure had been, it apparently required a laptop and an unhappy getaway driver.
He watched as the two women entered the hotel, then hurried across the street, careful to stay out of the glow of the streetlamps. The blinds were closed on the hotel windows, so he slipped by and stopped at the door. Locked. But then, that wasn’t really unexpected. He bent down for a closer look at the handle and realized it was an old model and one easily opened with a credit card.
He pulled his driver’s license out of his wallet and slipped it down the crack between the door and the doorframe. It hung in the frame for just a minute, and Zach mentally cursed himself for choosing his license instead of his grocery-store discount card. At least that didn’t have his name printed on it. He wiggled the license a bit and pressed it down again. There was an audible click and he froze, listening for any noise inside the hotel. When several seconds passed with no reaction from inside, he eased open the door and slipped inside.
There was a dim glow in the room created by a lamp tucked behind a desk in the corner. Zach blinked twice and, after a scan of the room, decided he was in the lobby. The place looked more homey than corporate. With any luck, that desk in the corner would have a nice old-fashioned registration book. He eased over to the desk and pulled out the first drawer. Jackpot. He opened the book and flipped to the last page.
Eighteen fifty-six. What the hell?
He scanned the other entries on the page, then closed the book and shoved it back in the drawer. Obviously it was an old record used for display. He checked the remainder of the drawers but came up empty. Looking over at the computer tucked in the far corner of the desk, he sighed. Hacking wasn’t exactly in his skill set, but it was either that or knock on every door in the building, which would only draw a bunch of attention he was trying to avoid.
He sat in the office chair and turned his attention to the computer. What was a good password?…room service, mudbug, hotel, california. Okay, so maybe he needed a better plan. He sat back in the chair and stared at the blinking password box.
“I never figured you for a breaking-and-entering kind of guy,” a voice whispered in his ear.