He punched in 991 and waited for a set of clicks.
Frederick came on the line. “How may I help you?”
“This is the Badger calling. I have a problem in New Orleans. A rush job.”
“That will cost you.”
He didn’t like the guy’s assumption that he was in charge of the conversation, but he was willing to overlook that, if he got results. “Not important. I’m having issues with a former employee. I want you to find out what she’s doing there and what she knows.”
“About what?”
“It’s your job to get that from her.”
“Better tell me a little bit more, so I’ll know if she’s spinning some kind of wild story.”
“If I knew why she was in town, I wouldn’t need you to question her.”
“Okay. You got her location?”
He gave the hotel’s name and address.
Rachel saw a few more clients, one a woman who came to her every few months for advice. She was glad to focus on the familiar customer so that she didn’t have to think about Evelyn Morgan.
But finally she was alone again and unable to shake the sense of dread that had dogged her ever since she’d read the woman’s cards.
She’d been sure Ms. Morgan was going to die. Could she tell her that, and maybe help her prevent it, if she did another reading when they met again tomorrow night?
After closing the shop, she went up to her apartment and busied herself fixing tuna salad, which she spread on some fresh greens and ate on the second floor terrace that adjoined her apartment while she looked through a catalog of new age books she was considering for the shop.
Finished with the light dinner, she washed the dishes, then sat up in bed and read a romance novel for a while. She likedthem for the intensity, for the emotions of the characters in relationships she was never going to have. Tonight, though, she was unable to keep her mind from wandering to Evelyn Morgan.
She finally gave up and lay in the darkness, trying to calm her nerves with relaxation exercises, but she knew she was definitely going to say something to Ms. Morgan tomorrow.
The decision was like a giant weight lifted off her chest. It was the right thing to do, and she was able to relax.
With a little sigh, she closed her eyes, and for a few hours she slept peacefully. Then sleep morphed into . . . something else.
She was lying in her bed with her eyes open, only she had the strange feeling that she wasn’t really conscious.
Before she could puzzle that out, a shadowy figure stepped into her bedroom. A man. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she knew he was large and solid.
She lay rigid as he walked toward the bed. In a shaft of light from the street, she got a look at him. He was tall and a little rough around the edges with dark hair and dark eyes.
He stood staring down at her, then glanced over his shoulder at something she couldn’t see.
“We have to get out of here.”
She shrank back. “Why?”
“They’re after us.”
“Who?”
He made a sharp gesture with his hand. “I don’t know, but we have to leave before it’s too late.”
There was no reason to believe him. Then from downstairs, she heard the sound of a door quietly opening, and the realization of danger almost choked off her breath.
“Come on!”
