Phantom in the Night

  Nathan had no doubt a weapon was hidden in the car any more than he doubted the possibility of easily finding it.

  Narrowing his eyes, Nathan steeled himself for the coming fight. He had the wire ties and a shop rag tucked inside the waistband at the small of his back, ready.

  The driver got out, scanned the tight area, and dismissed any threat as nonchalantly as he had before. No bodyguard would be better than a lazy one. The driver stalked around to open the passenger door.

  Nathan made his move the minute the driver turned his back to him. Launching himself from the shadows, he slammed the bodyguard against his head to daze him and kicked the back of his knees, taking down two hundred fifty-plus pounds in less than three seconds. The guard's head bounced against the ground, finishing him off.

  The shocked expression on Bennie's face lasted the same three seconds before he produced a switchblade.

  Nathan was faster. He wrenched Bennie's arm up and back. When the pig opened his mouth to scream, Nathan shoved the shop rag into the gaping hole, then hit Bennie upside his head hard enough to knock him out. He loaded Bennie into the backseat, where he wire-tied his hands and feet, then lifted the keys off the unconscious driver and drove the Hummer away.

  Nathan planned to find out how Jamie had become entangled in Marseaux's plans. Who had drawn his brother into this bunch? The NOPD and DEA had never been able to nail Marseaux. If Nathan uncovered anything that would help put the drug lord away, he'd send the evidence to someone.

  That is, if there was anything left of Marseaux to arrest once Nathan was through with him.

  He wended his way through the streets, where the midnight crowds could fulfill their fantasies with easy sex and euphoric drugs. He parked the Hummer next to Le Morte Noirthe Black Deaththe name he and Jamie had jokingly dubbed the Javelin after a late-night cruise for frog hunting.

  Pushing the memory aside along with the bitterness that followed, he unloaded Bennie, then drove the Hummer a mile away to what was left of the Ninth Ward, where he'd grown up.

  Local chop shop owners wouldn't believe their luck when their street scouts found this sitting duck out in the open. They'd have this baby fully dismantled in twenty-four hours... or less.

  Nathan hiked back to his car and fired up the Javelin. He drove a circuitous route until he reached his carefully thought-out lair. The last place anyone would look. He parked behind the silenced printing company abandoned in Katrina's wake.

  After his father died, his mother had worked here to put food in their mouths and clothes on their backs. Jamie and he had run amok in this same parking lot after school, waiting for their mother to come off shift so they could go home and eat watered-down soup.

  He managed to get Bennie out of the car, grunting under the titanic weight. So what if he banged the bastards head a few times? The least of Bennie's worries after tonight would be a painful headache.

  It took several minutes to get Bennie inside the trashed cement-block building and lug him to the proper room, which he'd already set up in expectation of the next couple of hours. Hanging the bastard by his wrists wasn't quite so simple, but a half hour of sweat had Bennie right where Nathan wanted.

  The pig could hang there, drooling, a minute while Nathan finished the last details of his surprise. He grabbed a screwdriver to remove set pins on the miniature stage floor beneath Bennie. The whole contraption was only five feet across. Plenty of room for an entertaining show.

  Manic scratching and chattering from rats looking for a meal and freedom disrupted the peace. Given the number of rats who used to call his house their home, the sound was almost comforting to Nathan.

  He patrolled the exterior once, assuring himself no one was near. The owners had built this far outside the city's center to save money. Nathan appreciated their planning now. He returned to the corner he'd cleaned up for this exercise and sat on a ragged barstool.

  After Bennie, the next on his list was Thibadeaux "FinMan" Finney, an equal-opportunity snitch with ties to any organized crime family that paid his price. He managed to stay alive by keeping a goon squad of bodyguards supplied with drugs. He thought they could keep him safe.

  But there was nothing and no one who could keep the devil at bay once it was time to give him his due. FinMan had a few more hours of peace.

  Then the devil would be beating down his door.

  For now, Bennie had napped long enough.

  Nathan lifted a pitcher of cold water sitting at his feet and splashed him in the face. Bennie came to, spitting and coughing, slinging wet hair from his eyes. Water dripped from his chin onto the plywood board thirty inches below his dangling feet. Chicken wire with small holes surrounded Bennie in a circle five feet in diameter, six feet off the floor.

  Bennie still wore his boxer shorts just because Nathan didn't want any more information on that flaccid body than he already had. Especially with a barrel gut on Bennie that hung out like biscuit dough from a half-popped can.

  "What the hell is this? What do you want?" Bennie shouted curses and demands without relief. He twisted back and forth, causing the ropes tied to his wrists to cut his skin.

  The only light in the room shined on Bennie, right into his eyes. Nathan kept the hood of his sweatshirt jacket on and moved close, but not close enough for Bennie to get a glimpse of someone from his past just yet.

  Nathan curled his lips into a smile of contempt, ready to get down to business. "Bennie!" He waited for Bennie to shut up, then said, "Heard about all the homeless boys you've taken in. Real benefactor, aren't you? Bet they didn't think so after you raped them. I tried to copy the way you tied them up when you left those kids alone. Did I get it right?"

  "Fuck you, asshole. You're a dead man," Bennie warned, but his voice quivered when he delivered that boast. He squinted into the light.

  "What do you know about Nathan Drake?"

  Sweat poured down Bennie's face. "Stone-cold dead. You working with that DEA bitch? I had nothing to do with Drake."

  Could the attractive B&E poser who broke into his mom's house be DEA? "What DEA bitch?"

  "Gimme a break. Like you don't know. Everybody knows her. She's been busting everyone's balls about Drake. What? She wag her hot butt at you? Huh? You get any of that? If not, you lose. I heard she'll swap that ass for any amount of information." His nostrils flared as he fought even harder against his bindings. "I'm gonna kill that whore and you, too, if you don't let me go."

  This piece of shit deserved some serious lead therapyif only Nathan had a gun.

  Bennie's lucky day.

  Nathan had never enjoyed shooting a man, but that feeling might pass once he faced Jamie's murderer. He reached up and pushed the hood off his head and leaned forward to let the light catch his face.

  Bennie gawked. His beady eyes rounded to the size of black dimes. "You ain't dead," he whispered. "Men at the docks that found you said you had a hole in your head. Deader than a doornail."

  Frantic clawing broke through the red haze of anger Nathan barely kept tethered. Bennie's gaze shot straight down to the origin of the soundthe plywood floor beneath his feet.

  A thin piece of wood that was a removable false bottom to the enclosure.

  " W-w-what's that?" Bennie stuttered, not quite as cocky.

  He'd find out soon enough. "Who sent the shooter? Who wanted me dead?"

  Bennie trembled. His gut heaved with panicked breaths. "I-I don't know."

  "I think you know something." Nathan reached down and stuck his fingers into the holes he'd cut for a handgrip and slid the board out of the way.

  Bennie's eyes bulged and sprung tears.

  Two years ago, Jamie had researched everyone he could on Marseaux's payroll while Nathan took his place during the trial What Jamie had lacked in street sense he'd made up for with amazing research and computer skills that led to an interesting tidbit on this warthog.

  Bennie feared rats more than death.

  The floor of the enclosure moved with wall-to-wall stree
t rats, hungry and vicious rodents. With the lid out of the way, they started biting at each other and crawling all over one another, leaping.

  "Get me outta here." Bennie swung back and forth, kicking his feet.

  Bad idea. That excited the rats even more.

  "Not until we finish chatting, Bennie. I've got plenty of cheese and nowhere to go until you tell me what I want to know." Nathan swung the cheese down to where Bennie's legs dangled.

  One of the smaller rats leapt up to brush Bennie's right foot. He screamed like a little girl and jerked his legs higher, an impressive sight given the girth of his Michelin-style belly. "Marseaux... had to be him."

  Nathan waited for more, but Bennie denied him. He teased the rats with the cheese, stirring them into a bloodthirsty rage before he jerked it up and hooked the string to the front of Bennie's shorts.

  His captive wailed, jerking his feet up.

  "Scream all you want, Bennie. No one will hear you out here."

  "I-I told you. Help me!"

  "Help you? Like you helped those poor homeless boys just wanting a place to sleep and eat?" Nathan shook with the need to make this pedophile pay for hurting defenseless children.

  Death wouldn't clear his tab, but a dose of terror would be a fair down payment.

  When Bennie couldn't hold his feet up any longer, a rat jumped straight up, claws digging into the pudgy big toe. "That's all I, ahhh" he cried out, eyes and nose running.

  Three more rats jumped, two catching hold. Blood trickled down his foot.

  Bennie screamed.

  While Doughy exercised his lungs and struggled to walk on air, Nathan considered his next options once he was finished here. He fished a business card from the chest pocket of Bennie's jacket and moved the black type under the light.

  TERRI MITCHELL, LAW ENFORCEMENT CONSULTANT.

  Nothing about the DEA, but undercover operatives didn't advertise. The card had a photodidn't do her justiceand a cell number.

  Plenty of information for Nathan to go on to find out what his little B&E babe knew about Jamie's death.

  Nathan put the card away. Bennie was blabbering something about the dead bodies walking around. "Where did these guys see my body? What shipyard?"

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "I'm on the way in, Sammy. What's the status on the container at the docks?" Terri flipped open a notepad as she drove to headquarters. With commuters headed for home clogging the roads downtown, she could have walked from her grandmother's house to the police station faster.

  "NOPD and DEA argued over jurisdiction and right of evidence possession, but we won the battle for once. Captain Philborn ordered a tractor trailer to pick up the container. It's on the way to our secured yard right now. I got a note here for you somewhere." The sound of paper ruffling and low muttering followed.

  "I'm not surprised the captain got his way. He's pretty persuasive." Terri swerved into a faster lane.

  "Nice to see us get a break once in a while, but only fair since the tip came from a contact that belongs to one of our guys. Damn, where is that message?" More fumbling noises.

  "Clearly belongs to the NOPD," Terri agreed, not the least bit guilty about her role in all this.

  After Sammy called this morning to alert her about the drug bust at the docks, she'd phoned the head of the BAD agency, Joe Q. Publicyes, that really was his name and anyone who teased him for it regretted the error shortly thereafterfor some assistance. Joe had a friend in the DEA who owed him a favor so the pissing contest was shut down quickly. She'd had just enough time to get Grandma to a doctor's appointment and back, grab a late lunch, and change into her just-the-facts charcoal gray suit. One with pants instead of a skirt this time.

  Joe hadn't jockeyed the container out of the DEA's hands just to give the NOPD first shot. He wanted the contents examined by a BAD representative first, and she intended to be the one he sent in. She needed first crack at it to see what else might be inside besides the drugs.

  Could this be the shipment Conroy had been trying to tell her about the night they were ambushed? The one with something more than a shipment of cocaine, something deadly? If Conroy had lived, Terri would have met the woman who told him a bizarre conspiracy story that involved secret material being transported with one of Marseaux's drug shipments.

  One thing bugged Terri. Why had the snitch waited so long to make the call to tip NOPD about the drugs? Why now?

  "Here it is." Sammy triumphantly read off Brady's name and phone number.

  "Anyone else call?" She'd deal with Brady in due time.

  Maybe he wanted to talk about the body... or drinks. She hoped not.

  "Someone called here asking about you this morning."

  "Yeah? Who?"

  "Didn't say. The call was routed to me. This guy wanted to know if you were with the NOPD. I told him you consulted. Then he asked what kind of consulting work you did. I told him I couldn't share that type of information."

  "Good. Probably someone I interviewed about that body from the docks, which reminds medid the DEA find the body?" She tapped her brakes and grumbled at the sluggish movement. Terri hated the traffic but loved the city. Good thing, since she wouldn't move away from Grandma, who had lived in the French Quarter since long before it became chic to own a condo there.

  "Nope, nothing yet on the stiff. And that guy who called asking about you, I don't think he was someone you interviewed."

  "Why not?" She lifted her cup of coffee and took a sip.

  "He asked if you consulted on B and Es."

  Terri spewed coffee on the steering wheel and cursed. Good thing she'd only taken a sip. She stuck the cup back in the console cup holder and grabbed a napkin, wiping her pants leg.

  "You okay?"

  No. She swiped her hands and steering wheel, then growled over the spots on her clothes. "Yeah, I'm fine. Someone cut me off and I spilled coffee. That guy sounds like some lunatic. Just ignore it. I'll be there in a few minutes."

  She hung up and brushed her palm across her forehead and the top of her hair. How had that perp found her? And who was this character? Why would he track her down at the police station?

  He wasn't behaving like a common thief. He was starting to sound like a stalker.

  Or someone from another agency.

  And he was really starting to tick her off.

  She parked the car outside in the lot reserved for everyone working in the temporary precinct and moved as quickly toward the two-story building as her leg would allow her. Her leg muscles seized up when she sat for more than fifteen minutes and hurt like a son of a gun when she stretched them.

  Once she reached her desk, Terri eased down onto the chair, grimacing when she hit that one point in bending that turned her stomach with the sharp ache.

  Her phone rang before she had her hands free. If this was that thief from the Drake house, she'd...

  What?

  She didn't know, but the minute she did he'd get an earful. Snatching up the receiver, she answered briskly: "Terri Mitchell."

  "This is Sammy."

  She stretched her neck to see around people between her and Sammy's desk, where he grinned and flapped his hand in a wave, "What do you need, sweetie?"

  "You got a visitor on the way up."

  "Who?" But she knew the answer before Sammy said, "Josie Silversteen from the DEA's office."

  The woman was already leaving the elevator, snapping toward Terri with determined steps. Five-eight even without the slut shoes she strode forward on, Josie's navy-and-red-striped business suit fit her perfectly shaped body. She had the look of a corporate viper with an ax to grind.

  She paused at Terri's desk and gave her a withering stare. "Want to tell me what happened to that Drake body?" Long brunette hair swept across her shoulder when she leaned her head down and made a show of wiping off the wooden chair situated for visitors.

  Terri blinked a minute, trying to get her bearings. What was Satan's spawn doing here? What would m
ake the Queen Viper come down from on high to visit the little people?

  Josie snapped her fingers in the air as she sat down in the chair, somehow without splitting the overly tight skirt. "Mitchell, you here or what?"

  Terri blinked twice and quelled the look she really wanted to give Josie. "I'm here."

  Josie let out that irritating noise Terri hated. The one the sounded like a gruff spurt of steam escaping a teapot. "Do I gotta repeat myself?" she said in a Jersey snark." What's the matter? Can't you follow along or what? Here, I'll use small words so that you won't get lost again, capisce?"

  Terri curled her lip at the sarcastic terror who had given one hundred and ten percent to making every day of Terri's life at the DEA miserable. Josie had even campaigned for her position from the first day Terri spent in the hospital after the attack.

  And got her job, damn them all.

  Silversteen could put on that phoney street slang, but she was from old money in New Jersey. Why couldn't she have stayed in the lap of luxury and not been a sandspur in Terri's hide?

  "Okay, real slow this time, Mitchell"

  Terri glared at her. "This isn't the morgue. What? You get lost or something?" She mimicked Josie's accent. "If you got stiffed on a body, that's your problem, not mine. No pun intended." Terri tapped her fingers on the desktop, ready to end the unscheduled meeting.

  "Very funny, Mitchell. That Drake killing is our"Josie tapped a maroon fingernail against her chest"jurisdiction. Did one of these NOPD boys pull a fast one?"

  "Why would they?" Terri slapped her hand down on a stack of reports and leaned forward. "Look, I'm busy and not interested in your missing body. Why don't you call Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin to put together a search party for the hospital bathrooms and stop wasting my time?"

  Josie studied her perfect manicure. "You re the last one to see the body. In fact, Brady said you were giving the corpse hot looks. Never been into necrophilia myself, but I guess it's hard for a gimp to get laid."

  Terri's face flamed with embarrassment. Beautiful, wealthy, and not half bad at her job, Josie went right for the buttons that destroyed feminine confidence in other women and never missed an opportunity to exploit a weak spot. Terri clutched the edge of her desk to keep her fingers busy so she wouldn't use anything around her as a weapon.