Chapter Twelve
In Rick’s living room, Lusinda flopped down on the vinyl couch and dug her cell phone and cord out of her bag. Her phone was probably dead. It had been two days since she’d even thought about charging it. She tried to turn it on. Yep. Dead. She traced the cord of the ragged table lamp to an outlet just behind the couch. After plugging the cord in, she set the phone on the table.
Then she rubbed her face. She thought she’d made a good case for being so conveniently around, as Rick had said. But when he’d thrown it all back at her, it sounded like an amateurish, pathetic attempt at seduction. Maybe that was a good thing. If he thought she was in the throes of a childish crush on him, it ought to be impossible for him to also think she was a cop.
Still in her clothes, she curled up on the opposite end of the couch with her head on the arm and hoped she could fall asleep.
On some level, she was aware that Rick’s bedroom door opened and the shower ran, but she didn’t fully wake up until she heard him walk into the living room. He put the cash she’d given him under her phone, then dropped into the easy chair.
She sat up.
He had showered and changed into pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. There was a small spot of blood on the neck of the shirt and a smear at the edge of his lip. He held the glass of water and sipped from it gingerly. “Sorry about your friend,” he muttered a little sheepishly.
She nodded. They sat there for a few minutes. Finally she spoke. “I’m still waiting for you to tell me what happened.”
He looked up without answering.
“Not this again,” she said. “Do you seriously think I know who beat you up?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well, I don’t, but I’d love to know why you think I do. Am I hanging out with the wrong crowd?” she asked, her tone belligerent. “Is it the way I tilt my head?”
She’d decided to go ahead and push him—hard. If he had made her as a cop, she needed to know. She could inform O’Reilly that she’d failed and he could send in someone who would do a better job. Someone who hadn’t gotten too close to her subject for her own good. “Maybe you really do think I’m spying on your for Beau, or—” She threw up her hands. “Maybe you think I’m a cop.” She lifted her chin.
He sighed and looked into the bottom of the water glass as if he were searching for an answer there.
“Well? You apparently think I sicced Beau on you for some reason. Like ruining my chances with—what was his name? T-Gros?” She laughed shortly. “Sure I could use the money and it was none of your business; but truthfully, I did not want to go in the back with him. And trust me, if I could get Beau to do stuff for me, I wouldn’t waste my wishes on you. I’d be aiming higher.”
He frowned at her.
“Like a full-time job or a car or a nice apartment. You get beaten up—what do I get? I get zip.” She got up and poured herself some juice. “I put a sandwich in here—a ham and cheese po’ boy. I’ll split it with you.”
“Maybe later,” he said.
She came back to the couch with her juice and half the sandwich. “I do think it was Beau who had you beaten up,” she said. “Like I said I heard he wasn’t happy that you gave that kid money to get home.”
“Where’d you hear that anyway?” Rick asked.
“From the George Michael wannabe, what’s his name—Tom, who worked the bar tonight.”
She got nothing out of him but a grunt. He stared at the glass.
“That was sweet of you.”
“Sweet?” He laughed without humor. “Give me a break.” He pushed a scraped hand through his hair.
“Well what do you call it?” she asked, exasperated. “You probably tacked several, maybe a lot of years onto his life by doing that. You certainly didn’t have to do it.”
“I’m beginning to be sorry I did.”
Lusinda assessed him. “What’s wrong, tough guy? Embarrassed by your momentary lapse?”
“More sore from my momentary beating.”
She smiled. “Well, you did a good thing.”
Rick threw himself up out of the chair. “A good thing? Hardly. I just hated to see the kid end up dead, or worse. That’s all.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she insisted. “You did something good. You knew that might happen. Apparently, it was a chance you’d decided to take. The point is, you cared. You saw a kid in trouble and you cared what happened to him.”
Rick refilled his glass and drained it. “He was one kid. There are hundreds out there who don’t have anybody who cares for them. Dozens who’ll be dead in a year. It was stupid of me to think helping one kid would make a difference.”
The bitterness in his voice surprised her. “Really? Are you trying to tell me that’s how you look at it? If you can’t save them all, then why save one? So why Bobby? Why, out of all the kids in the world, did you pick Bobby?”
She took a deep breath and decided to dive into the deep end. “I mean, look at that lawyer guy, Jack Adams. You know who I’m talking about? He was killed by bad dope too. Apparently, the cops think he was murdered. Think how many kids he must have saved, one by one, like you did tonight. I wonder how many kids are alive because of him. Do you think he ever wondered why bother if he couldn’t save them all? Or tried to work out the future value of each kid before he made his decision? He did it because he knew somebody had to. And think about this: what if somebody gave him enough money to get home years ago, or talked to him, or gave him a place to crash when he needed it? Bobby could turn out to be a Jack Adams someday. I think what you did was a very good thing, just like Adams.”
Her pulse was pounding as she waited to see what he would say about his brother, now that she’d brought it up. To give herself something to do, she got up and walked over to the kitchen counter and poured herself some more juice.
She didn’t hear him behind her until he slammed his glass down into the sink. She jumped.
“Don’t talk about—!” He stopped, staring at her. “Just shut up!” he yelled.
She took a few quick steps backward, almost dropping the juice carton. “Hey, what’s the matter with you?”
“You have no freaking idea. You think I’m some kind of saint or something? Like Joh—like Adams?” His fists were clenched at his sides, the scrapes and cuts on his right forearm and knuckles stood out between the veins that bulged beneath his skin. The cut on his lip was oozing blood again.
Lusinda took another step backward and then another. She’d expected a reaction, but not this much anger. She shouldn’t have mentioned Adams. She scooted back over to the couch and sat, pulling her feet up and wrapping her arms around her legs.
“You want to know what happened tonight?” he yelled. “I’ll tell you. I had to take out an undercover cop.” He threw the words at her, his eyes burning into hers, gauging her reaction.
Lusinda couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips. Miller! “What? You killed him?”
Rick laughed harshly. “Maybe I should have. But no, I probably saved his sorry ass too. In the backroom poker game, Beau made him as a cop. I got him out of there and roughed him up a little to make myself look good in case somebody saw us, and sent him packing.”
Lusinda’s stomach did a backflip, leaving her nauseous. “Oh,” she said, trying to think. He probably had saved Fred Miller’s life. How would he react to what she was about to say next? “How’d you know?”
Rick had calmed down. His fists were no longer clenched, and his eyes had changed from burning coals back to black velvet.
“How’d I know what?”
“That he was a cop?”
He looked shocked at her question. “Because…” He paused. “I…recognized him from television.”
“Television?” she repeated, laughing. “When has that jerk ever been on television?”
He looked at her oddly. “What do you mean?”
She replayed what she’d said, her pulse skittering. She hadn’t mentioned Miller’s name, had she? She didn’t think so. But she still had to explain what she’d meant. “I think I know who you’re talking about. Cowboy boots? Stupid grin? I saw him go into the back right before you did. I couldn’t believe he’d been invited back there.”
“Yeah. Me neither. But he was, and he was throwing his weight around, acting like a hayseed.”
She put on a smile. “The only way he’d be on TV would be as one of America’s Most Annoying. So…he’s really a cop?”
Rick nodded, yawning.
She faked an answering yawn, but it immediately turned into a real one. She stretched out her legs, loving and hating the way his gaze followed her every movement. She made a big production out of yawning again. “Oh, I’m beat,” she said. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Sin.”
“I’m just going to curl up here on the couch. You don’t have to stay quiet or anything. Watch TV if you want to. I could sleep through a hurricane, I’m so tired.”
“Nah. I’m tired too. I think I’m going to turn in.” But he didn’t move. He studied her. “Thanks for helping me,” he said.
She raised her brows, but he didn’t say anything else, just turned on his heel and headed off to bed. She watched his fabulous behind until he disappeared through his door and closed it behind him.
She remembered the glass he’d slammed down in the sink. Miraculously, it wasn’t broken. She washed it, dried it and put it away, wiped a few drops of orange juice off the countertop, then rinsed out the dishcloth and hung it over the faucet. The cleaner the apartment, the fewer the bugs.
She curled up on the couch again. Well, she was in it now. No matter what she’d said, she was sure Rick still thought she might be reporting to Beau. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing that she’d discovered tonight. What was the deal with Rick Easterling? He’d rescued a kid, and saved another cop’s butt, all in one night. Not to mention that the previous night, he’d assaulted possibly the second biggest drug lord in New Orleans for touching her.
He hadn’t answered her about who had ordered him beaten. It was a toss-up between Beau and T-Gros. Her money was on Beau, for giving Bobby money to get home. Either way, he was lucky to be alive.
The situation with Miller was a question too. Why had he taken the risk of outing himself by outing another cop? For the reason he’d told her? If Beau had made Miller as a cop, he might have killed him. But there was another possibility. Rick could have outed Miller to keep him from finding out what Rick was really up to. Lusinda squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head.
Despite what else he’d done, Rick had saved a kid’s life tonight. If Bobby had taken Rick’s money and gone home, he’d be one less statistic on the streets of the French Quarter. So her accused dirty cop had performed at least one heroic deed tonight, possibly two.
Lusinda stared out the casement windows at the glow in the sky from the French Quarter. It had an odd watery sheen, from the rainbow reflections of all the neon signs. She thought about the note in the leather jacket pocket. Was she right? Based on Rick’s reaction, she was almost positive she was. Not only that, she was sure his bosses had no idea that he and Adams were related, or he wouldn’t be on this case.
She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but her brain was whirling. Rick Easterling was an enigma wrapped in a whatever-the-quote-was. The things he’d done didn’t add up. In fact, she was convinced that there was a vital piece missing in the equation that added up to Rick Easterling. A good guy wouldn’t expose a fellow officer to the risk of being killed. A bad guy wouldn’t go out of his way to save one teenage boy.
Who was he—good guy or bad guy? She couldn’t tell without a scorecard. Problem was, she was the one who was supposed to be filling in the scorecard.
*
The nightmares were after her again. Her stepfather, dragging her over to the stove and moving the pot of soup off the hot eye. You disobey me, you pay for it. The attacker sent by T-Gros threatening her. Teach you be too good for a paying customer…
Lusinda woke up gasping for breath. Throwing back the thin sheet, she jumped up off the couch. She was suffocatingly hot and she couldn’t breathe. She pulled off the long-sleeved shirt, leaving herself in just the tank top. She fumbled with the handles of the casement windows. Finally, she got them open.
Stepping out onto the tiny balcony, she gripped the cool wrought-iron railing and gulped huge breaths of wet dawn air. It seemed to take forever for her breathing to even out. When she was finally breathing almost normally, she turned her face to the sky and let the rain wash the hot sweat of fear from her skin.
“You okay?”
She jumped and pulled her right arm in close to her body. She felt him standing behind her—big, warm, reassuring. Why did the heat from his body not feel suffocating, but safe?
“Sure,” she said, her voice not entirely steady. “I’m fine.” He put his hand on her bare shoulder and she shuddered. The cool rain on her skin turned warm under his touch. She licked droplets off her lips as she turned around. He was watching her closely, his gaze frankly sensual, and hunger obvious in his velvet dark eyes. The last dregs of her nightmare dissolved into longing.
Did she look as turned on and desperate as he did? Of course she did. Lowering her head to avoid any chance that he might see the truth in her eyes, she sat and dangled her legs out over the balcony, straddling one of the rails. Conflicting emotions swirled inside her like wolves circling, gauging each other’s strengths. She’d anticipated this game of temptation, but she’d be lying to herself if she thought she was still in charge.
“I had a bad dream.” She shrugged and leaned forward, pressing her cheek against the cold metal of the rail and told herself not to think about how sexy he was. Don’t think about a pink elephant.
She looked out over the French Quarter. It was barely the morning side of dawn, and already people were awake, hosing down the sidewalks in front of their stores. Or maybe they hadn’t yet gone to sleep.
“What kind of dream?” he asked, turning around and dropping onto his butt next to her with his back to the railing. He rested his head against the wrought iron.
She saw his throat work as he swallowed, and she wanted to put her mouth there, to feel the muscles move. She longed to inhale his sleepy warmth. She felt like she was still in a dream, that none of this was reality. It would fade, as dreams do.
“Oh you know,” she muttered, never taking her eyes off his throat. “Nightmares.” Then, in a whisper: “Roaches.”
He laughed softly. Lusinda’s throat grew dry at the thought of touching him, of feeling that ripple of laughter against her fingers, her lips, her tongue.
“Do you have a dream bazooka for your dream roaches?” he asked.
She grinned reluctantly. “No. I really should get one. World conquest is easier if you have the right equipment.”
The rain stopped and someone down on the street called out a greeting in French. Lusinda turned her head toward the voice, but her eyes wouldn’t follow. She couldn’t tear them away from Rick’s face.
“Why roaches?” he asked, flicking a drop of water off the tip of her nose with his fingertip. “They’re a formidable enemy.”
“After my father was killed, we had to move. The only vacancy was at the Roach Motel.”
He was quiet for a beat. “I see. I gotta say, if I were a roach, I’d be scared. How old were you?”
Lusinda grimaced. She needed to be careful. He was so easy to talk to. “Look, don’t feel sorry for me. It’s no big deal. I do just fine.”
Rick’s black velvet gaze caught and held hers. “How was your dad killed?”
Her pulse sped up. She’d wanted to get close to him, hoping he’d confide in her, and here she was. She might as well keep going. “He was shot by a cop,” she said, trying to make her voice flat.
He went completely still. “I’m sorry. That must have been tough. Who—? I mean, what happened?”
Lusinda was so acutely aware of him that when a muscle ticced in his jaw, she felt it. She had already pushed him a lot. Did she dare push even more? She swallowed. “My dad was a beat cop. He was murdered by his partner.”
“Murdered?” He sounded shocked. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I was a kid, ten years old. All I knew was that my daddy was dead and it was a cop that killed him. I think the partner must have been mixed up in something—you know—dirty.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, in a hushed voice, he said, “Here? In New Orleans?”
“Uh, no.” She mentally shook her head. She’d almost said Baton Rouge. What was happening to her? She was about to lose her grip on her reason for being here. She kept getting caught up in him, wanting to tell him everything. How much it hurt to know that she would never see her dad again. How sad it had made her to see the light in her mother’s eyes go out, and how she’d finally had enough of her stepfather and had run away when she was seventeen.
“Where?” he asked, his gaze searching her face, lingering on her mouth.
“Look,” she said shortly. “I really don’t like talking about it. If you don’t mind.”
“Sorry,” he said, reaching out to push a strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s talk about roaches. Your goal is world conquest against a creature that survived whatever killed the dinosaurs? I’m guessing that doesn’t pay a lot. How’d you end up at Beauregard’s?”
Really? He was still suspicious of her? She had to watch every word. “Oh you know, the usual,” she threw at him. “High school, some college—work.” She moved to get up, but his hand on her arm stopped her.
“Stay out here for a while. It’s cooler.”
“It is cooler,” she agreed. Reluctantly, she relaxed.
After a brief period of silence, he asked, “How long did you live at the Roach Motel?”
“Oh, about two years, until Mother married Abe the Asshole.” She bit her tongue hard enough to hurt. Stop talking now. This is too dangerous. It’s not worth it.
“Abe the Asshole?” Rick laughed again. Lusinda realized that within the past few minutes she’d seen more genuine amusement on his face—and less anger—than she’d seen since she’d known him. She liked his face when he smiled. It made him look younger and less mysterious.
*
Rick’s amusement faded as he processed the significance of Lusinda’s reference to the man her mother had married. Her stepfather. Her face was shadowed, its fresh beauty marred by a frown. Something had happened to her there, something involving Abe the Asshole.
An unfamiliar emotion settled on Rick’s heart. He had no reason to think Sin needed help. After all, from what he’d seen, she met and dealt with every obstacle in her path head on, with the stubborn determination of a bull. He’d never met anyone so brave, so dogged and at the same time so vulnerable.
He had no reason to assume she’d accept help from him. But he wanted to protect her. He wanted to be the one she turned to, the one she depended on. He looked at her arm, cradled into her tummy. “So was it Abe the Asshole who gave you that pretty little tattoo on your arm?”
She stiffened visibly, and her left hand gripped her forearm, in an increased effort to hide it. “What are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, touching her forearm. “Right here, above your wrist. I saw the scar when you were battling the roach.”
“It’s nothing,” she said coldly.
“Nothing? If it’s nothing, show it to me.”
She pushed back and set one bare foot on the balcony floor, preparing to stand. “I should get back inside.”
He reached over and circled her wrist, pulling it gently away from her body. She yielded. “This is not nothing, Sin.” Looking at the scar made him wince. It was three half-circles, red and stretched, with tiny puckers at the edge of the red. “This was made by a hot, electric stove eye. Abe the Asshole did this?”
Sin jerked her arm away and turned to look back down at the streets of the French Quarter.
Rick studied her profile. Her chin was high and her jaw muscle ticced. She’d obviously said more than she’d intended. It had surprised him when she told him her father was a cop. It chilled him to the bone to hear how her father had died. Murdered by his partner. When she’d said that, he’d seen and heard a deep resolve. Talking about her father revealed the steel that was at the core of her. The scar on her arm had shown him what she had overcome.
She reminded him of himself, except that she had redirected her anger toward roaches, while he had broadcast his—until now. He nodded to himself. Now he had a purpose—to find and punish the person who had murdered his brother. He realized she was looking at him.
“What?” she said.
He frowned. For a few seconds he’d forgotten she was there.
“You nodded,” she explained. “As if you’d made up your mind about something. Not sure where you went.” She smiled artlessly.
He had a crazy yearning to pull her to him and tell her who he was, who his brother was. He’d never talked about Johnny to anyone. The closest he’d come was the conversation he’d had with Carlos in his apartment.
He chuckled wryly. “It must be the rain,” he said softly.
“What do you mean?” she asked, swinging her legs a little, more relaxed than he’d ever seen her.
“All this. The rain, the dawn, the whole—atmosphere here.”
“The French Quarter,” she supplied. “It’s got a kind of sad, determined beauty, doesn’t it? Like an old Madame who still dresses up, puts on her makeup and does her hair. She’s worn and blousy, but underneath, she’s still as strong as she ever was.”
Rick turned his head and smiled at her. “That’s profound for so early in the morning.”
She looked at him sidelong, those green eyes shining like cat eyes in the dawn light. The rain had stopped and the clouds were dissipating. The rising sun picked up coppery highlights in her dark hair and Rick wanted to touch it. He wanted to grab fistfuls of it, turn her face to his, and kiss her until she came just from kissing. He closed his eyes, reminding himself that he was undercover and that he never, never got involved while on assignment.
“Are you ever going to tell me how long you’ve worked at Beauregard’s?”
She shrugged. “Oh, a while. Why?”
“How long is a while? Are we talking a while as in days or a while as in weeks?”
She turned her head and her left brow shot up. “I’m going to guess that you already know. You could ask anyone there. In fact, I’ll bet you have.”
“Nobody at Beauregard’s is interested in discussing you.”
“Ouch?” she said, then: “Stop, please. I’m not used to all this flattery.”
He acknowledged her joke with a small smile. “I think it’s admirable that they won’t talk.”
“Everybody’s just trying to cover their own butts. I know I am and I’d bet some big money that you are too.”
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I’ve heard some wild stories about Beauregard’s. About what goes on behind those curtains. Do you think they’re doing drugs? Do you think Beau sells drugs back there?”
He frowned. “Drugs? No. Why would you ask about that again? You think I know something?”
“You’ve been in the back, behind the curtains. The whole place is so mysterious, you know? I mean way more mysterious than it needs to be, right? What could they be doing, other than poker or a little bit of harmless lap dancing? What did you see?”
“No drugs that I saw.” Suddenly he was angry and he had no idea why. “Look, I don’t know why you’re so interested in those back rooms and drugs, and I sure don’t know why you keep showing up at my door. I can’t decide if I should kick you out or start charging you rent.”
“So, here we are again,” she said. “I can make that question easier for you. Neither. I’m leaving.” She raised her chin. Her mouth trembled for a split second before she clenched her jaw. She scooted back from the railing in preparation for standing up. “In fact, I’m already gone.”