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  “No, no. Of course not.” She blotted her damp face on her shirt sleeve, and quickly moved far away from the closet.

  “What in hell has gone on here?” Fortier’s focus had turned to the mess she’d created. “This place is chaos.”

  Shel brushed a hand through her hair, scooting more than a handful into her eyes for protection.

  The look on his face said he wasn’t listening to her. He shook his head, clearly disgusted by the room’s condition. “I do hope you’ve found something…useful.”

  She felt a pain in the palm of her hand. She looked down and saw she still clutched the bracelet with the picture of the sad-looking little girl. The pointy tree charm had sharply imprinted itself in her flesh as if to drive home a literal point. She crammed it into her pocket realizing at once that she would find the child. Perhaps doing so would help her put old ghosts to rest. And then there was the money, the very good money…

  He turned to face her, and his forehead wrinkled with the return of his cynical tone. “Or perhaps you’re going to tell me the rat did all this…?”

  “No,” Shel quickly said, stepping toward him. She glanced at the bottle of absinthe still situated on the table, quietly cursing it and simultaneously swearing off it for all eternity. Attempting to shirk her foolish feeling, she shifted the subject back to his wife and child, utilizing a voice she hoped sounded more confident than she truly felt. “Is that the list?”

  He nodded, and numbly handed her an envelope. She quickly unwound the clasp and briefly examined the printed sheets.

  “So here are my rules,” she said, tucking the envelope into her jacket. She met his eyes. “You don’t contact me, I contact you. And nobody knows about our deal, understand?”

  “My lawyer—”

  “What you do with your lawyer is your problem. I don’t want to deal with him, period.”

  “I have some rules, too,” Fortier told her, his voice gaining strength. “I’ll honor your request to not hound you for the details, but you keep me in the loop. I want to hear from you, often.”

  Shel appeared to consider his request for a few moments. At last she nodded.

  “Also, you work alone, understand?” He held her gaze. “No subcontracting, no bringing anyone else on board, and above all, you mustn’t contact the authorities.”

  “That’s an odd stipulation,” she said, shooting him a look of mistrust.

  “If it comes to that, I’ll do it myself.” His tone made it very clear. “Do we understand each other?”

  “We do,” she said at last.

  He extended his hand for a handshake to seal the deal, a move she pretended to not notice. Instead, she zipped her jacket and looked toward the door, performing all the obvious prerequisites for her departure.

  “Where will you look for Kathleen and Harper?” Fortier asked, bringing her back to the subject on his mind. “Do you have enough to go on?”

  “Only what you’ve shared with me.” She motioned toward the piles of Kathleen’s belongings that surrounded them. “Naturally, I have no way of knowing what is missing from all this. Do you know what she took with her?”

  “This is only a fraction of everything I’ve given her.” His voice held a hint of ownership that didn’t sit well with Shel. “As far as anything missing, I can’t account for her sizeable wardrobe and jewelry collection.”

  “And what about your daughter’s belongings? Any favorite dolls missing?”

  “No.” He first shook his head, and then looked puzzled. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s talk about the money she may have had.” Shel waited several seconds for him to answer. “Does your wife have access to banking? Did she have her own lines of credit?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Which part? The banking or credit cards?”

  Richard Fortier looked at her blankly. “Why would she need any of that? I’ve always given her everything she wanted.”

  “So, no cash?”

  “None from me, but she may have cash,” he slowly stated, his expression turning grim. In a low tone, he added, “Understand that she duped dozens of men. She could have access to funds I don’t even know about.”

  She’d already considered the point. No matter what cash she had on hand, considering her wealthy lifestyle, Shel doubted Kathleen would be comfortable without the means to which she’d become accustomed. In Shel’s previous work, she’d learned that people with expensive habits often made desperate bids to maintain such a lifestyle. But Kathleen was different from other marks she’d tracked before; she had a talent that could generate a decent income if any baby-blackmail plan failed her. She was an artist. Professor Artello had said Kathleen’s fan base came from all over the South. So many possibilities, if Kathleen were alive…

  “Well?” Fortier sounded somewhat impatient, jarring her from her strange reverie.

  “I have some ideas.” Shel nodded, her confidence building as she stepped high over the carnage she’d created.

  By the time she hit the hallway, her spirits had improved significantly, and why not? A grand payday was just around the corner. She bit her lip to keep from smiling, which would be inappropriate as hell.

  Appearing stunned at the mess—and perhaps his entire life of late—Fortier followed her as she trekked down the extensive staircase, then the hallway that led to the front door of the house. He hurried to keep pace with her. “When can I expect to hear from you?”

  “Soon.” She pushed open the front door and then the wrought-iron gate, and stepped outside.

  He reached out for her arm. Not keen on being touched, she stared at his grip on her forearm for a moment and raised her gaze to meet his.

  “Do you think you can honestly find my little girl?” His eyes were suddenly glassy. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple wildly bobbing. Another round of nosy tourists emerged from a darkened street, headed toward the mansion. He ignored them. “Can you bring my Harper home?” he asked, his voice cracking. He held her arm firmly. His sadness seemed to surge through his touch.

  At last, she nodded. “I’m going to try.”

  “Try real hard, Ms. Carson.” He released his hold on her.

  Shel stepped backward off the curb, relieved to be leaving the morbid home, its accompanying darkness, and its owner, the heartbroken father who practically bled sadness. Each step she took away from Fortier’s depressing aura seemed to give her strength, even hope. An undercurrent of quiet wickedness spread through her, possibly at the prospect of earning so much money for such an easy job. She turned away from him, a small smile twitching her lips.

  “I will.” The timbre of her voice reflected her rising confidence and a cheerfulness not suited to the bleak atmosphere. She called to him as she started across the street, “Don’t get too far away from your checkbook, Fortier.”

  Chapter Six

  The Internet connection in her hotel room was sketchy at best. After three complaint calls to the front desk, Shel trundled into the downstairs lobby wearing pajama pants, a tank shirt, and slippers, her laptop tucked under one arm. Disregarding stares from the desk attendant and a few partiers stumbling in at two a.m., she dropped into a plush lounge chair and fired up her computer. Satisfied with the improved signal, she settled in and went to work. By five o’clock, she’d narrowed her list to a few solid prospects. At seven, with a squirming duffel bag in tow, she checked out of the hotel and hailed a cab.

  “Louis Armstrong,” she told the driver as she slid into the backseat.

  She turned around and gazed wistfully at her old car still parked in the hotel’s side lot. When the car stalled out for the last time that morning, she’d stripped off the license plates and the VIN panel and left it for dead. Such an improper goodbye for the only thing she’d ever truly owned, but these final sentimental feelings lasted only a moment before she moved on. She’d already given up her studio apartment in Shreveport. Having abandoned the car, there was nothing to stop her from collecting her fee fro
m Fortier and starting over without so much as a backward glance.

  The cab driver didn’t budge, only stared at her in the rearview mirror. At last, he asked, “What’s the deal, lady?”

  “Car died,” she said, assuming he’d noticed her waxing poetic gaze at the old clunker. “Fought the good fight, but it’s sincerely a piece of shit.” When the driver kept staring, she continued, “Look, it’s not worth the price to spring it from the parking lot, but if you want it, it’s yours.”

  Clearly brimming with impatience, he asked, “I meant what’s with the bag, lady?”

  She looked down at her curiously bulging duffel. Newton’s muffled howls told her he was staging an active protest for release from his stuffy confines. She grinned. “Yeah. You think you could swing by a pet store on the way to the airport?”

  The plastic pet taxi she purchased at the store was only a moderate upgrade from the duffel bag, or so Newton expressed his opinion of it. He glared at her when she placed the carrier on the airport counter.

  A clerk quickly approached her. “Welcome to AirGold, where every day is golden! How can I help you?”

  Shel felt compelled to shield her body from the rays of customer service sunshine beaming through every pore of the perky blond woman. She squinted and forced a polite smile. “What have you got going to Florida real soon? I’m thinking Sarasota or the Keys.”

  “Only charters to both Sarasota and the Keys. I can find you a flight into the state and you could arrange flights or a car from there.”

  “Okay,” Shel said, mentally doing the geography. “What have you got?”

  “All sorts of flights.” The chipper chick beamed a smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial. She clacked away on the keyboard, continuing in her Louisiana drawl, “The next flight goes to Orlando.”

  “Ooh.” With dread, Shel envisioned a jumbo jet chock-full of noisy, frolicking children on their way to meet the world’s most famous mouse. “What’s next soonest?”

  “Let’s see…we’ve got Orlando, Orlando, Pensacola, another Orlando, Fort Myers—”

  “Hey, Fort Myers—we’ve got a winner.”

  The woman’s happy expression turned to one of concern when she noticed the pet taxi. Her downturned voice delivered the news inside a bizarre brand of baby talk directed at the cat. “Hey, little one. Your mommy’s going to have to buy two seats. The airline just won’t permit animals to travel cargo. You’ll get banged around down there.”

  “What if I sign a release?” Shel asked.

  As if on cue, Newton howled. The clerk’s eyes went wide.

  Shel didn’t bother to excuse her poorly received joke. “That’s fine. Two seats.”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got.” Again, the clerk clacked away at the keyboard. “Coach is pretty full.”

  A new thought crossed Shel’s mind, one that she’d never considered in her entire life. “You got anything first class? And I don’t want to make a bunch of stops.”

  “There’s a nonstop flight departing in a few hours. The first-class rate is eighteen hundred dollars.” The clerk paused before adding, “Each.”

  “Eighteen hundred?” Shel whistled. “I don’t suppose the cat could fly coach.”

  “The airline won’t permit that.”

  Another joke had fallen flat. Shel quickly got over it and pulled Fortier’s envelope out of her pack. After a few moments of blindly fishing, she presented the woman with her shiny new AmEx. “So what do you get for that price?”

  “Ample leg room, deluxe seats, premium snacks, cocktails—”

  “Catnip?” Shel nodded toward the carrier, but could almost hear stereo crickets in the background. The girl looked utterly blank.

  Shel muttered, “Tough crowd.”

  Onboard, she quickly warmed up to the perks of first class, downing two mimosas before the plane taxied off the runway. Not that her career—or budget—generally allowed for it, but she’d never been too big a fan of flying. She hoped the drinks would take the edge off. Newton, strapped into the seat next to her, still glared at her from his plastic cat jail. So far, he’d mewed his disapproval of everything.

  “No whining in first class,” she quietly told him.

  When Newton issued another, louder protest, she draped her jacket over his carrier to muffle the sound.

  Shel settled back in her oversized leather seat with extra legroom that Fortier had paid a handsome sum for. She figured he was probably used to such airline bills and probably wouldn’t give it a single thought. Staring out the window at the clouds, she contemplated her mission that had begun with a simple question: how had Kathleen Fortier chosen what to paint?

  Shel rubbed her tired eyes. Getting inside the head of this artsy, cultural, snooty woman would be trickier than tracking down some simpleton at a strip club to settle his casino debt. Shel would be the first to admit that going off similar architecture in waterfront towns with an ample supply of art galleries was shaky methodology at best. But how else could she get to know Kathleen Fortier apart from her husband’s horrid description? It was really all she had to go on.

  Shel had studied the funny, charming paintings and tried to get over her difficulty imagining an uncaring wife and mother painting such lovelies. Despite her presumed ills, Kathleen appeared to have painted for the love of the work. An artist like that could stray as far as she wished from home, but could never get too far away from a paintbrush.

  In her own way, Shel understood this better than most. It was her love for cop work that kept her in the game, albeit a cheap version of her former career, with looser ethics and a far shadier clientele. It was, in fact, the barest semblance of her former life. Still, there was semblance. Doing something you knew how to do—something you were good at—was important. She seemed to be remembering that only over these past few days.

  Also, Shel considered the bracelet she’d pocketed at the mansion, mainly the picture of the child. Shel had other pictures of the kid that Fortier had included in his package, but the trinket nicely fit inside her jacket or jeans pocket, which was better than lugging the larger photographs around. Shel thumbed the charms for the hundredth time before taking another look at the tiny, silver-framed photo and the child with the sweet face and pensive expression, much like the photographs of her mother.

  Before she’d found the bracelet, or it found her, she’d pegged Savannah and Charleston as her best choices. The artsy cities boasted a similar feel to that of New Orleans and oozed a similar brand of Southern hospitality. Searches of both cities revealed strong interest in Kathleen’s art. Again, she was thinking of the woman’s livelihood, unless, of course, she was holding out for big money à la baby blackmail, as Richard Fortier seemed to strongly think. Shel tried not to be distracted by Kathleen’s motivation for disappearing with the child, but it would certainly help to be able to gauge the woman’s need to make money versus her desire to blackmail her husband.

  Time and time again, a simple fact bothered Shel: anyone trying to lay low would not go where they would be recognized, if only by a tiny scrawled name in the corner of a painting. It was this worry that had Shel punching holes in the only theories she had about where she’d find Kathleen. It seemed evident that Kathleen wasn’t stupid. The woman had vanished well enough for her husband to contact a private investigator, and that said something.

  Shel didn’t feel a need to factor in what Fortier had told her about his wife despising water; Kathleen wouldn’t be the first person to try and throw someone off her trail by laying false groundwork. It was the stuff mystery books and Lifetime Television flicks were made of.

  Thanks to the palm tree charm, her primary focus had turned to Florida. She’d spent a good part of last night on the Internet exploring galleries and finding big interest in work similar to Kathleen’s in places like Siesta Key, Biscayne Bay, and Key West. Tourist towns meant transient populations, which meant Kathleen could live for months without being discovered. The lead felt as promising as anything else she’d c
onsidered.

  Shel had never been to Florida. In fact, she hadn’t been out of Louisiana for the past dozen years. It was her habit to find folks or track down property inside of twenty-four hours for a quick payday. The lure of big money for this particular job had her constantly fantasizing about a fresh start. The money alone wouldn’t change her life, but the idea of it had inspired a bout of optimism, something she hadn’t experienced in years. Also her focus felt sharp. She was determined to do this one right, whether or not her exit plan ultimately included a pocketful of Fortier funds, though it would surely be nice if it did. Given that she presently had some money, she had the luxury of time and careful consideration.

  It crossed her mind that Kathleen might share a similar desire to start anew, at all costs, also with or without money. Closely trailing that thought was another, stronger, more practical one, which was that she would be wise to quit attempting to think like Fortier’s wife. It was imperative that she not identify with the woman on even the remotest level if she hoped to remain objective and in Fortier’s employ. He was the man with the cash and Kathleen had kidnapped their daughter. Shel couldn’t help but bristle at that part. She’d known some plenty hateful people in her life, but none so hateful they’d steal a child just to spite their spouse. Shel’s head felt tired. There was much to consider.

  Just find her, she reminded herself.

  Her head grew fuzzy with mimosas. In the event she exhausted her supply of uppity, beachy, artsy cities in Florida, she’d move on and give Fortier’s AmEx a workout in South Carolina and Georgia. The mission was on autopilot for now. She downed the rest of her drink, set the glass next to Newton’s carrier, and closed her eyes to rest.

  On her arrival in Fort Myers her operation immediately hit a snag. No cab driver seemed in the mood to trek all the way to Siesta Key. Tamping down a slight buzz from the drinks on the plane, Shel caught a hotel shuttle to nearby Naples. According to the map she’d picked up, Siesta Key was two hours north, and the Keys four to the south. Perfect. Of course, so was Fort Myers, but the beach city would be crowded with leather-skinned twenty-somethings on spring breaks gone months into overtime.