He sounded so sincere, his voice full of emotion.
“We’re not judging you, Carl,” Quinn told him.
“I have never taken another man’s life. I have never ruined a man or a woman. I throw men out if they act with cruelty, you understand? My girls work for me because they know I will protect them and that I am fair and honest.”
“Carl, honestly, we’re not here to judge or punish you,” Quinn said. “But you know something.”
“I know that I don’t know something and that I don’t want to—and it’s scared the hell out of me!”
“What is it that you don’t know?” Quinn asked.
“Start at the beginning,” Danni suggested. “You were at Leroy Jenkins’s house to buy some drugs when Leroy was talking about breaking into the Simon house, right?”
Carl stared at her a moment and then looked down, his shaved head low. He took a breath. “Leroy, he was talking about something big going on, something that would make Mistress LaBelle and all the other priests and priestesses—and vampire groups, covens and all else—look like child’s play. He was going to be richer than Midas. He was going to have all kinds of power, just through breaking in, hurting no one and getting some antique bust. He was bragging like crazy. So I took my stuff, put my order in...and left.” He inhaled again, and exhaled. “I came back a few days later. When I was almost there, I saw that big black limo Eyes drives around in. He never gets out of the car—I seen the inside of it once. It’s all plush and nice, has a refrigerator between the seats in the back and a work tray. He always just sits in there and lets his bodyguards do his dirty work. Anyway, I seen it driving away from Leroy’s place—after I heard gunfire. So, I didn’t go there. No sirree, I was smart and I got myself away as fast as I could.”
“But you know the car belonged to Eyes?” Quinn said.
Danni thought he seemed a little disappointed. That he was wondering if they’d gone through all this to discover what they already knew.
Carl nodded solemnly. “I figured I hadn’t been seen. That I could just get out—and the police would take things from there. And the police did come. I heard the sirens while I was heading out. I figured the whole mess wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“But you were wrong?” Danni asked.
He nodded again. “First, I get this message that I didn’t think anything about.”
“What was the message?” Quinn glanced at Danni. She knew the two men—Carl and Shumaker—hadn’t been in collusion, but Shumaker must have recognized the potential in Carl.
Carl spoke at last. “It was a text. It was on my phone.” He grinned sheepishly. “I read it a bunch of times after that. It said, ‘You could be among the chosen. Give over to the power. Answer to the nature of the beast, and you will survive. You can’t handle the power. It will kill you. I know how to wield the power.’”
“Do you still have this message?” Quinn asked him.
Carl reached into his pocket. He produced his cell phone and handed it to Quinn.
“There’s probably no service out here,” Natasha said, rising to attend to the now-boiling water.
“I can bring up old messages,” Quinn murmured, touching various icons on the phone.
Danni watched as he brought up the message. Like Quinn, she looked for an ID. The phone announced that it was Unidentified.
“Then what happened?” Quinn asked.
Carl shrugged. He almost smiled. “Check out my answer.”
Quinn’s thumb stroked over the phone, bringing up the reply.
She read, “‘Hey, you sorry asshole, I’m all the power I need and I want no beasts in my life. Go fuck yourself.’”
They both looked at Carl, containing grins.
“And then?”
“Then I get a call at work. I have a legitimate business, you know—an office, staff. My secretary put it through. There’s some guy on the other end telling me I’m a sinner and that God has already damned me to hell. I have one more chance. Come into the fold with all the fold desires.”
“And what did you say?” Quinn asked.
“I said—” he hesitated, looking at Natasha and Danni “—I said again what he should do with himself. So then he tells me I better prepare my soul for an unwelcoming hell—that I know about the bust, and the bust knows about me.”
“What did you do?” Danni asked him.
“I hung up.”
“And then what?”
“Then one of my girls, Shirley, comes in to see me. She shows me a text message she got from Unidentified Caller. The message said, ‘You’re going to die because your boss is a Big-Ass Mo Fo.’”
Danni felt a chill seep into her bones. “And?”
Carl White shuddered, and it seemed that the whole shack trembled.
“I told her that she worked for me, that I’d protect her. But...” He paused, gazing up at them, his brown eyes damp as if tears threatened again. “But,” he said in a whisper. “She died. She died this morning.”
“How?” Quinn asked.
Carl swallowed visibly. “Her family called around ten. They don’t know exactly what happened. She worked at the club last night until about 3:00 a.m. and then went home. Her cousin went over there early—they were supposed to go to a studio together. He was having her do some backup for a recording. She had a voice like a lark, Shirley.”
Quinn leaned forward. “Carl, how did she die?”
“They’re doing an autopsy on her. She was dead in her bathtub, eyes open in the water. She drowned, they guess, but how does a girl just get into a bathtub and drown? I guess they’re suspecting that she overdosed on drugs, but Shirley was one of those smart girls who didn’t do drugs. She wanted to sing, you know? So there’s Shirley—a good girl—dead. And I heard about the shoot-ups with Butt Kiss and something going down around Numb Nuts and I figured that this beast, this bust, whatever it is, has my number. But if I’m going to die, I’m going to do it with my high priestess knowing what’s been happening and doing the right things for my soul.”
Quinn sat back, turning to Danni. “Eyes doesn’t have the bust. He thinks one of the others has it.”
“He thinks Carl has it.”
“Holy Mother!” Carl breathed. “I don’t have that thing. I’d never have that thing! But if the bastard thinks I’ve got it, I’m dead. I have faith. I have my faith—this is my faith. Natasha is all goodness and I come to her. But now, I—I’m afraid.”
“We’re not going to let you die.”
Carl shook his head sadly. “Do I look like I’d go easy, man? But there’s something out there, and it don’t matter how big or tough you are—it can get to you.”
Quinn spoke with strength in his voice. “Carl, I don’t care how big and bad this thing is—we can fight it. But you’ve got to trust me.”
Natasha had poured mugs of tea and went about serving them as if they were having a social chat.
Carl looked at her beseechingly as she handed him his. “You listen to Quinn, Carl. You listen to him, and you help him and Danni, just like I said.”
“First, I need to keep this phone,” Quinn said. “I’m pretty sure the caller is using pay-as-you-go phones that can’t be traced, but who knows. They have digital teams that can do amazing things.”
“Okay.” Carl seemed uncertain. “Cops. You gonna call the cops on me? You want me to tell ’em I was buying drugs?”
“This isn’t a drug bust, Carl. It’s a murder investigation—and much more.”
“I’d rather go to hell than Angola State Prison.”
“You’re not going to prison. Your clubs are legal and no one’s going to bust you for pot and cocaine they can’t produce. I need—”
He broke off as a phone rang. Danni jumped up and slid a hand into her pocket, but it wasn?
??t her phone that was ringing; it was Natasha’s.
She answered it, listened then frowned and hung up. When she spoke to them, her voice was obviously controlled through force.
“That was Jez. He said there’s a car coming down the dirt road.” She looked at Quinn. “He made it out to the highway but...someone shot at him from the car. They let him go. He’s on I-10 heading back to the city. He says he’ll call police, but they’ll never make it out here in time.”
Quinn rose in a flash, putting out the lantern. “Carl...” He paused, as if searching for someplace a man of Carl’s size might hide. “Let’s get outside, under the pilings. Now!”
Although the fire still burned in the hearth, the little place seemed very dark. Danni felt Quinn’s hands on her shoulders as he urged her up and out the back door that led to a porch directly over the water. Natasha’s place sat partly on land and partly on pilings over the bayou.
A three-quarter moon was up.
Quinn prodded her. She half jumped—and was half pushed—into the bayou.
As the water, cool by night, swept around her, Danni could make out trees, dripping with moss and bowing low as if the weight of the world lay upon them. She sucked in her breath, fighting a wave of panic. She’d grown up in the city, not in the bayou, although she’d been out here now and then—often enough to know that snakes and gators did prowl the area. It was their home, after all.
Her feet sank in muck.
But they’d all plunged into the water in the nick of time.
She heard the rumble of tires over the grass and bracken on the overgrown path.
The high beams of a car nearly blinded her and she sank lower into the water.
She clearly heard car doors opening.
And then the unmistakable snapping of foliage as men exited the car and made their way toward the little shack in the bayou.
Chapter Eleven
QUINN LISTENED AS footsteps approached the house. The headlights went off, giving him an advantage in the darkness. He heard the men as they entered the little shack and drew his finger to his lips, hoping that Danni—or any of the others, for that matter—wouldn’t cry out if something slithered by in the water.
They were all dead silent.
He waited until he heard the men enter the shack. When they’d done so, he gripped the flooring and heaved himself up. Dripping, he crouched low and moved over to peer through the window.
Two men were in the shack. They both carried guns—Smith & Wesson pistols with silencers, although there was no reason for silencers out here.
They held their guns easily and he had a feeling that they were fairly competent with the weapons.
He debated his next movement, not wanting to shoot men in cold blood. But then again, if he let them, he knew they’d shoot down their little group in the bayou.
“There’s no one in here,” said the first, the taller of the pair.
“Check under the cot and under that pump,” said the smaller, broader man. “They’re here somewhere. There are still three cars parked out on the road to that hut thing the voodoo priestess uses. If you see Big-Ass Mo Fo, remember, just wound him. They want him alive. The others—get rid of them any way you can.”
As he listened, Quinn realized that he could hear someone moving stealthily around the side, toward the rear of the shack and the porch that stretched out over the bayou.
“Shh!” said the taller guy. “Artie’s out there. Something must’ve caught his attention.”
“The back,” the shorter one said.
As he spoke, Quinn heard a startled scream from below.
Danni.
He took aim and fired into the house, double, and fast. He had no real shot but was rewarded by a scream as the short guy gripped his calf and the second screeched—shrieking as he surged forward, hands on his buttocks. Quinn turned and saw that someone else was in the water now. Carl White was slumped over and Danni was struggling with a man on her back while Natasha pulled at his hair.
Leaping into the water, Quinn had no choice but to thrust Natasha aside and grapple with the man throttling Danni. He hauled him off, but the guy was a brute. They went down in the water together. The man had a knife and tried to slice him with it as they fought, but Quinn refused to release his grasp on the man’s throat—a grasp that kept his combatant beneath the water.
The thug went down hard; even with the strength he fought to maintain, Quinn found it difficult to render him unconscious. But when he heard muffled screams coming from above the water again, he managed to jackknife his knee into his opponent’s jaw, and the guy finally went down. When Quinn came up, he saw that Danni was struggling with the tall man from the shack, while Natasha was being drowned by the shorter one.
He thanked God that his piece worked wet or dry—he had a clear shot at the short man who had nearly killed Natasha.
He fired, hitting him in the brain. He didn’t dare assure himself that Natasha was alive. Instead, he dove down, his hands snaking around the other man’s ankle. He jerked him off his feet, forcing him to release Danni. She surged for the surface.
He turned. There was a gun in his face.
The man took the time to smile. He fired.
It was a misfire.
Quinn lunged at him, throwing him to the muck below and slamming him down with his own weight.
He had to rise for air. When he did, he saw Danni, drenched and grim, staring back at him. She screamed and threw herself forward; his opponent had risen but before he could take aim to fire again, Danni pushed him off.
Quinn felt a savage fury that these men sought to dispense death as if human life meant nothing. This time, his force sent the man deep into the muck, and he smashed his fist into the killer’s face, holding him there.
When he ceased to move, ceased to struggle, Quinn fully rose. Chest heaving, he looked around. Danni was watching for him anxiously, sodden hair plastered to her face. Natasha had rolled Carl over and was trying to drag him to the rise of the shack’s porch. She could never handle such a weight.
“You okay?” he asked Danni.
She gave him a white-faced nod and he hurried to Natasha. She had a gash on her forehead and was gasping for breath. Quinn took Carl White’s water-borne weight and told her, “Get out. I have him. Get me...blankets.”
With a tremendous effort, he lifted Carl’s weight, prodding him up onto the porch platform. Danni had clambered to her feet and caught Carl, rolling the big man so he wouldn’t plunge back into the water. Quinn leaped up himself, crawled on his knees to Carl’s side and immediately began CPR. Danni was versed in the procedure, and started to count and press on Carl’s chest while Quinn breathed into the man’s mouth. A moment later, as he rose and Danni pressed, Carl suddenly coughed and a stream of water spewed from his lips. He coughed again.
Natasha had rushed out with a blanket. “Thank the Lord by any name you call Him!” she whispered, falling down to wrap the cold man in the warm blanket.
As Quinn stood, stretching his back to shake the pains he’d just noticed, he heard sirens.
“The cops are coming,” he said.
“Yes, Jez would have called them.” Natasha looked down. Two of the dead men were bobbing to the surface. “We’ll be in a station giving statements all night—but thank the Lord again, we’re alive to do it.”
He glanced over at Danni. She was pale and quiet and once again sodden. She had the unique ability to somehow look beautiful in such a state. Maybe it was more than beautiful; she had an air about her that was almost beyond anything carnal. Then again, he hadn’t felt that way when he’d watched her while they were dancing to the voodoo drums.
He’d felt entirely carnal then.
He gave himself a mental shake. Yes, indeed, she was proving herself to be Angus’s daughter at
every turn.
It had just been a hell of a lot easier and more straightforward to work with Angus.
“I’ll get him into the shack,” he said.
He hunched down and lifted Carl White—who had to weigh a good three hundred and fifty pounds. He felt his muscles straining, but he got the man inside and placed him on the sofa between the chairs. The fire was dying down; he got it going again. They should probably get Carl to a hospital, and he wondered how they could manage that. They needed to keep him hidden—as well as the fact that men had come to the bayou and died there.
“How are we going to explain this?” Danni asked, warming herself before the fire.
Quinn shrugged. “I hope we won’t have to, since Larue will be with them.”
“How do you know that?” she asked him. “Born-again ESP?”
He smiled at her. “Nope. I know Larue. When Jez called it in, Larue was alerted, and he’ll be with the squad cars headed out. This is tearing up his city. He’ll be here. Mark my words.”
He was grateful to discover that he was right.
Larue’s car was in the lead, followed by two others. There were six officers all together, but Larue waved the others aside and approached Quinn, where he awaited him on the path.
“How many dead?” Larue asked, stopping in his tracks.
“Three. They wanted to take Carl White with them and kill us. I didn’t have a choice. Carl’s inside. He was struck by something—to keep him quiet, I imagine—but he nearly drowned.”
“Danni Cafferty?”
“She’s fine. Drenched, but fine.”
“And Ms. Laroche?”
“Natasha is fine, too.”
“Okay, so what the hell happened?”
He indicated the bayou behind him. “I haven’t fished out the dead men. Carl White is in the shack, along with Natasha and Danni. We went there to talk after the ceremony. Next thing I knew, Jez called to warn us someone was coming—with guns. We hid in the water. I thought there were only two, but there was a third. I injured the first two, but the third guy was attacking the women. When I fought with him, the others limped bleeding into the water and kept trying to kill us. They didn’t mean to kill Carl, but in their struggle to kill us and our struggle to survive, he inhaled a lot of the bayou. He’s breathing now, but still unconscious. He needs an ambulance. And I think the others are dead—at least they quit trying to shoot, strangle and drown us.”