Bayou Bodyguard. Jana DeLeon
Cypriere. A knock on the adjoining door brought her out of her thoughts and she shoved her gun back into the suitcase before calling for him to enter. When he stepped into the room, the walls seemed to close in around his large frame. She sucked in a breath. If Brian Marcentel didn’t scare an intruder away, she wasn’t sure what it would take.
“You okay in here?” Brian asked as he surveyed the room, probably memorizing every square inch.
Justine nodded. “Just getting set up for the ghosts.”
Brian stared. “You’re doing what?”
Justine pulled a box of salt from her suitcase and began to sprinkle it around items sitting on the dresser. “You put salt around things so that in the morning, you can see if they moved.”
“And you think things are going to move on the dresser?”
“I hope not! But if someone is in here besides me or you, I want to know about it.”
Brian narrowed his eyes. “So then, how would you know if it was ghosts or people?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Justine replied. “I don’t want either of them in my room.”
“People are more dangerous.”
“That’s what I’ve got you for, right?”
“Yeah, but I won’t be with you every second. Do you have your nine with you?”
Justine froze and set the salt on the dresser.
“I know you have a nine millimeter registered,” Brian continued. “You had to know they’d check you out.”
Justine blew out a breath. Of course they would. Olivia had been held hostage by a crazy man and almost killed. They had proof that someone aside from Wheeler was contributing to the problems at laMalediction and Olivia was married to a cop. It would be foolish to think she’d get involved with anyone concerning laMalediction without her fiancé running a thorough background check.
Which meant Brian knew everything about her, too. At least, everything they’d found. How deeply had they looked? Past her name change and into her childhood? Could they even access those records? Olivia hadn’t seemed to know anything about her mother when she’d mentioned her earlier. Maybe no one had made the connection to the person she was for the first eighteen years of her life.
“I have my gun,” Justine finally replied.
“Do you know how to use it? And I don’t mean just the basics.”
Justine nodded. “I took lessons at the shooting range, and I practice twice a month. I’m not going to win an Olympic event, but I can take a man down if necessary, and I’m not interested in shooting to injure.”
The hint of a smile crossed Brian’s face. “I’ll make sure I announce myself before entering rooms.”
Justine waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, I promise to look before I shoot—for a second, anyway.”
Brian took another look at the salt and frowned. “Well, if you don’t need me for anything, I’m going to unload the security equipment from my Jeep before that storms gets going.” He pointed to the lantern on the nightstand next to her bed. “I understand the electricity around here is a temporary thing, especially in storms. There are matches in the nightstand drawer for when you need them.”
Justine glanced outside at the ever-darkening sky. “Thanks.”
Brian gave her a single nod and left the room. Justine watched as he closed the adjoining door then stepped over to the window. The black clouds swirled above the estate like angry pillars of smoke. Justine had seen those clouds often enough to know a heat thunderstorm was on the way and it was going to be a doozy. They were common this time of year, and usually nothing to worry about.
Until now.
Now, she was closed up in a creepy house with a hulking policeman, and in no time she would certainly be without electricity. She watched as Brian pulled a box out of the back of his Jeep, placed it on the front porch then went back for another. Rental houses, security systems, a bodyguard from her past…it was more than she’d bargained for, that was for sure, but then she hadn’t expected to feel so edgy, either.
She could blame the feeling on sharing close quarters with a cop, or on the fear that he’d remember her, but that wouldn’t be completely true. One thing Justine never did was lie to herself. Like it or not, her uneasiness came from knowing that Wheeler hadn’t been the lone gunman. That someone else had access to laMalediction and could still enter undetected.
And more importantly, that Olivia’s dreams continued.
She heard a creaking sound outside the bedroom door and stiffened. A single glance out the window confirmed that Brian was still unloading boxes. It could just be the house settling, but every instinct inside her screamed that it wasn’t. Silently, she eased her gun from the suitcase and crept to the door.
She peered into the hallway, but it was empty. Then at the end of the hallway, a shadow slid out of an open doorway. Tightening her grip on her pistol, she slipped into the hallway and inched toward the doorway. The shadow lengthened for a second, then disappeared back into the room. All thoughts of safety aside, she sprinted down the hallway and burst into the room, but there was no one in sight.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm her racing heart. A quick survey of the room told her nothing. A couple of cardboard boxes and a small table lined the far wall, but otherwise, the room was empty. She crossed the room and took a closer look at the boxes, even shifted the top one of the stack, but all she found was a thick layer of dust that caused her to sneeze.
She slowly walked around the room, feeling the walls, looking for an entry point, but the plastered walls looked seamless in every aspect. The single window in the room was closed and locked, and when she attempted to open it, it held fast, glued into place by ancient paint. Frustrated, she blew out a breath. Building construction and hidden passageways were not her forte. Justine had never set foot in a place so grand that it housed servants, much less provided them hidden passageways to conduct their daily work while remaining invisible to visitors. Still, for someone to have disappeared so quickly, shouldn’t she see a sign somewhere?
She walked back to her bedroom, trying to put this latest occurrence into perspective. Maybe something blowing in the wind had passed the window in the room, casting a shadow into the hall. Okay, so the window was at the completely wrong angle and there hadn’t been even a breath of wind when she looked outside, but wasn’t that just as plausible as a disappearing person, or even worse, a ghost?
Or maybe her overactive imagination played a trick on her. She wasn’t given to fancy, but it wasn’t impossible. A lot was riding on her work at laMalediction. That, coupled with Olivia’s unnerving behavior earlier and the unwanted introduction from her past, was certainly enough to put her on edge.
She crossed her bedroom and looked out the window in time to see Brian locking his Jeep. He didn’t look even remotely disturbed or alerted to anything out of order. Sighing, she slipped her gun back into her suitcase, disgusted that she’d allowed herself to be so easily spooked.
And that’s when she noticed the piece of folded paper on the nightstand.
Her breath caught in her throat. That paper hadn’t been there before, but now it sat perched on the thin layer of salt she’d poured earlier. She knew she shouldn’t touch it. She should call for Brian. Let him do his cop thing with fingerprints and such, but she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for it, opening it.
She gasped as she looked at it. Tears stung her eyes at the picture of her mother, secured in a straitjacket, locked behind bars, her face still fresh with bruises from the “helpful” law-enforcement officers who had dragged her away.
“I know who you are.”
The words were written just above the photo.
She crumpled the paper and tucked it in her pocket.