“Be nice.”

“Seriously?” Angel looked over her shoulder at her old man as he followed her into the hospital. Dax had already been there to visit Dillon, but this was the first chance Angel had. She’d tried to send him off to do whatever he needed to do, but he’d insisted on going with her. “Did you just come because you think I’m going to cause a scene? What kind of person do you think I am? I have more compassion that that.”

“I know you do, baby. You and Kat are just like…”

“Oil and water?” she finished.

He grinned. “I was thinking more like dynamite and a match.”

“Shut up.” She rolled her eyes at him and shifted the flowers she was carrying in her hand to the other one as she pushed the elevator button. They rode up in silence and got off on the ninth floor. Dax sent Kat a text that they were there and she was smiling when she pushed open the waiting room door…until she saw Angel and then the smile fell. Angel was determined for this one meeting between them to go smoothly though. She stood up and held the flowers out to Kat. “These are for…you.”

The edges of Kat’s lips curled up as she took them. “Thanks. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Well, I wanted to…show my support for you.”

“I’m going to go in and see Dillon,” Dax said. They both turned on him and he grinned before slipping through the door. Kat sighed and stuck the flowers up to her nose before sitting down. Angel sat down next to her and for several awkward minutes, they sat there in silence.

“How is he?” Angel finally asked.

“About the same,” Kat said.

Another awkward silence and Angel said, “David told me that you’re going to give him part of your liver.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s…admirable.”

Kat snorted like she was trying to suppress a laugh. “Thanks.”

“Kat, there’s something I need to say to you…”

“Let’s not do this, Angel. You don’t have to say anything.”

“But I do. David told me what happened to you that day and I can’t stop thinking about how awful it must have been for you. I can’t stop thinking about how horrible I was. I want to apologize, but that just seems so…I don’t know, the words just don’t seem like enough.”

“It’s fine, Angel. It was a long time ago.”

“It’s not fine. I put my hands on you when you were suffering an unimaginable loss. I didn’t give you the opportunity to explain. I told David horrible things about you…”

Kat smiled and said, “Are you trying to apologize or make me dislike you even more?”

Angel sighed. “I’m trying to apologize, but it seems so lame at this point.”

“It’s fine,” she said again, “I accept your apology. You were just looking out for your family.”

“I was being a snotty, irrational bitch.”

“That too,” Kat said, still smiling. Angel smiled back and said:

“I do lose my mind when it comes to my family.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Kat said. “But it’s over…”

“Is it?”

“Excuse me?”

“David doesn’t seem to think it’s over. He still loves you, Kat.”

A muscle in Kat’s cheek twitched. Angel wondered why she always had to try so hard not to show emotion. “David and I will figure all that out, but thanks for your concern.”

“I’m not being nosy, or pushy…he was just so broken when you left before, Kat. You’re not planning on leaving again when Dillon is better, are you?”

Kat chuckled again. “Not a bit nosy, or pushy.”

“I’m not trying to start a fight. I just don’t want to see him hurt, again.”

Kat bit down on her lip and Angel wondered what she was biting back. “I’m not going to hurt him,” she said, “But I’m also not going to justify my life to you, Angel. Even before that day at the clinic, you had already made up your mind that I wasn’t good enough to be a part of the Brady family. David’s a big boy, he gets to decide what he wants.”

“You’re right.” Kat furrowed her brow and looked at Angel suspiciously.

“What do you mean, I’m right?”

Angel laughed. “Just that you’re right. David is a big boy. He is also smart and mature and kind and capable of making his own decisions. I’m sorry if my concern for my brothers comes off as snotty and hateful sometimes…” Kat raised her eyebrows. “Fine, most of the time. I’ll stay out of it, as long as he doesn’t get hurt.”

Kat laughed. “That’s a veiled threat if I ever heard one. But I get it. Thanks for the apology.”

Angel nodded. “So…when is your surgery?”

“I’m not sure yet. They’re still working me up. Hopefully soon; I need to get back to work.”

Dax came back into the room then. “The bar is taken care of. You don’t have to worry about getting back to work any time soon.”

“Well, there is my brand-new catering business. Sorry, it’s not making you much money with me sitting in here every day.”

Dax sat down next to Angel and took her hand, almost absently. Angel loved the way he did that, like he was just compelled on some kind of primal level to touch her when she was close. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll work it all out when Dillon is better…and you, I hear? Is that surgery you’re having major?”

“It’s not bad,” Kat said. “I’ll be in the hospital for about five days after.”

Dax whistled through his teeth. “That sounds major to me. I’m glad you’re doing that for him, though, Dillon’s a good guy.”

“When he’s sober,” Kat said, rolling her eyes. “Hopefully he’ll stay that way and not pickle my liver too.”

“I think you giving him part of your liver and saving his life might be a big incentive.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a smile. She stood up and said, “I better get back in there, he usually wakes up yelling for his pain meds about this time.”

Dax and Angel stood up too. “Let us know if you need anything,” Dax told her as he gave her a hug. Angel’s stomach still clenched when he touched her…but she was trying. When Dax let go of her Kat said:

“I will, and thanks for the flowers, Angel.” Kat took a step back when she said it, like she was afraid Angel was going to try to hug her. Angel almost laughed. A friendly conversation was practically a miracle. She wasn’t about to try to touch her.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Tammy and Harley both send their love and they also said to call them if you need anything. We didn’t want to all bombard you here.”

“I appreciate the thoughts, thanks.” Dax and Angel stood there and watched Kat go back toward the ICU. Once she was gone Angel said:

“How do you suppose she’s paying for the operation?”

“She has insurance, I think…from her job in L.A.”

“But what about Dillon? I had a case a while back where this man died because he didn’t have medical insurance and the hospital refused to do the surgery without a huge deposit. I found out that transplant surgery can cost something like a quarter of a million dollars, or more.”

Dax suddenly looked worried. “Her biggest complaint when she first got here was that Dillon’s medical bills were eating up all of her cash. I have no idea how she’s going to pay for it.” The crease in his forehead told her he was going to worry about it until he found out. She was almost sorry she brought it up. Dax had enough to worry about as it was.

* * *

David sat across from the detective at the coffee shop, listening to him talk and trying not to concentrate on the strange way he pronounced some of his words. He was Creole and although his accent wasn’t thick, some of his words made no sense to David and he felt like he was missing part of the point. The man was intense and almost scary…not physically, but there was just something strange about him. At last he took a breath and David said:

“Detective Munroe, I’m not sure how the case you’re working has any connection to the death of Victoria Brown…”

“The body that turned up after the flood was strangled. Her trachea was crushed.”

“Yes, but Mrs. Brown was found in a hotel room in the French Quarter. Your body was found in the swamp…”

“The two women looked very similar. They worked in similar capacities and…”

“How old was the lady you found?” David knew he shouldn’t interrupt, but the man talked extraordinarily slow and David was anxious to get back to Dorchester, and Kat.

“She was twenty-nine.”

Victoria Brown had been thirty-two. “Was she married?”

“Yes. Her husband reported her missing ten years ago, and he’s been looking for her ever since.”

“Ten years ago? She’s been dead that long?”

“Yes. It looks like she was probably buried in a shallow grave near the swamp. The flood pushed the body up and she was found floating by a fisherman. Another day or two and there probably wouldn’t have been anything left, thanks to all the predators out there.”

“That was still eight years after Victoria Brown was killed. Other than the manner of death, I’m not seeing any more connection than she had to the prostitutes that were strangled.”

“I don’t think the prostitutes are connected.”

“But you’re convinced this one was—why?”

“Can I show you something?”

“Sure.” David looked at his watch. He was annoyed that he’d driven all the way to Boston and it was going to turn out to be a bust. He watched as the detective pulled a photograph out of his briefcase and laid it on the table between them. The picture was of a pretty young woman with long, dark hair. She did look similar to Victoria, but not identical by any means. The picture was a boudoir photograph and she was lying on her side, wearing a scant piece of lingerie. David would have questioned the detective’s use of that particular photo had he not immediately noticed the tattoo. It was a heart atop a triangle, and a sword or wand ran across the top of it and through the middle. There was also a symbol behind it that looked like the skeleton of a spine and pelvis. A chill ran down his arms as he looked back up at the man. “That’s the same tattoo that Victoria Brown had.”

“Yes, and in the same place on her body.”

David had seen that tattoo somewhere else as well, Kat had it inked in the center of the lotus flowers and skulls that decorated her right arm in a remembrance of her mother after she found a picture of Victoria with it showing. He got another chill, this one down his spine. Trying to keep emotion out of it he said, “There was something about the tattoo in the interview between Dillon Brown and the police… The detective had asked about her religion and Dillon told him she was Protestant…but the tattoo meant something to the Haitian Creole culture. It made Botts wonder if she was having an affair with a Haitian, but as far as I know, nothing ever came of that idea.”

“Did the prostitutes who were killed by strangulation have any tattoos?”

“Some,” David said. “But I don’t recall seeing this one. I’ll have to double-check…Do you know what the tattoo means?”

“It’s the symbol that honors the Haitian voodoo loa, Baron La Croix.

“What’s a loa?”

“It’s a spirit or intermediary with God or, in their religion, ‘le Bon Dieu.’ They act as a go-between of sorts between the natural life and the afterlife. Each one has a different job, or specialty, something they stand for.”

“What does this La Croix stand for?”

“Death, obscenity, lust, and sexuality.”

“So…you came all the way to Massachusetts to talk to me about matching tattoos?”

“I didn’t come to see you,” the man said as he slid the photo back into his case. “I came to see Dillon Brown. Once I got here, I found out he was in the hospital. Detective Botts directed me to contact you.”

“What do you want with Dillon? What do you think he can tell you that he didn’t tell the other detectives?”

“I don’t know what, or if anything. I just need to talk to him face to face.”

“You might have a long wait for that. Did your department authorize this?” David knew his wouldn’t. Both murders were NOLA’s jurisdiction; the retired Detective Botts took a shine to Kat when she was a little girl and that was the only reason he’d even agreed to talk to David at first.

“No,” the man said. “My department doesn’t even know that I’m here. I’m on a personal leave of absence while I mourn the death of my wife.”

“The death of…she was your wife?”

The man nodded. “She got that tattoo at a shop in the French Quarter right after our son was born. She said it was a symbol of empowerment, something about not losing her sexuality just because she was a wife and a mother. Those didn’t seem like her words to me, but she’d become close friends with a Haitian woman that ran the hotel where she worked and they’d gone together to get the tattoos…”

“Wait, she worked at a hotel?”

“Yes, the other similarity. She worked there for five years before she went missing.”

“Doing what?”

“She was a concierge, just like Mrs. Brown.”

Maybe this wasn’t a waste of time after all. “Have you been to that shop, where she got the tattoo?”

“It’s closed down. I tracked the tattoo artist to another shop in Baton Rouge, but he had left that job a few months before I got there. No one seems to know where he’s gone.”

“What about the woman…her co-worker?”

He shook his head. “Her name was Esther Bordeaux, but she disappeared too, not long after my wife went missing. The police interviewed her a few times after Heather disappeared, since they were so close. She claimed she didn’t know anything and hadn’t spoken to Heather for almost a week prior to her going missing. Then suddenly, she was gone too.” David frowned and the man said, “Mr. Brady, there’s something else. Mrs. Brown worked with a woman named Farah Carre…she was Haitian too.” David nodded. He’d gone over the file a hundred times and he remembered that name as one of the employee interviews. “She hasn’t been heard from in years, and it seems the last anyone heard from her was only weeks after Victoria Brown was killed. The only proof I have of the existence of either of them is interviews with people that worked with them and an employee file on each of them with a photograph.” He reached back into his bag and pulled out a manila file. He opened it and there was a stack of paperwork attached with a paperclip and a small employee photo of a smiling woman with mocha colored-skin, bright pink lips, and a pink head wrap. The name said “Farah Carre.” He moved that file, and the one underneath it was almost exactly the same only it was from a different hotel in the Quarter. The name on that one said “Esther Bordeaux.” David looked at the women in the small photographs. Other than the color of their lipstick and head wraps, they could have been the same photos. It was definitely the same woman…or her identical twin.