Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set (13 page)

"Sure it is." She stood up and put her hands on
her hips. "So how far do you think it is?"

"Hard to tell without knowing what kind of lights those
are, but we should get there by morning."
 
Liz's jaw dropped.

"Kidding," he said with a grin. "Just
kidding."

"You have the weirdest sense of
  
humor, Zach Fortier."

"I know." He lifted an arm. "But I also have
a warm spot here if you'd like to take
 
advantage of it."

She rubbed her cold bare skin and regarded him a moment, clearly
tempted. Then,
 
giving in, she stepped
into the shelter he offered.

"There," he said as if to a child.
"Better?"

"Much."

They started forth, arm in arm, and after a distance, Liz
said, "I'm glad you came
 
along,
Zach. Very glad."

"Hmm," he responded, then pressed her smaller body
closer to his and they kept on walking.

Christmas tree lights, Liz noticed as they got closer, the
small, twinkling kind people put up for festive occasions. This meant they
weren't as far away as it first seemed. She refused to admit it to Zach, but
weariness was overtaking her fast. The day had held one crisis after another,
and so much had happened, she'd nearly forgotten she'd just buried her mother
and that her father was in Bayou Chatre without his medicine.

But now, walking silently in the warmth of Zach's arm, with
only night sounds and the soft scratching of their feet upon the ground, it all
came back. Had her father encountered troubles, too? Had his angina acted up?
Was he even now in his boat, clutching his chest, cursing himself for leaving
his nitro behind?

She reached in a pocket of her overalls and rolled the vial
between her fingers. Why had he gone on this crazy trip to a nonexistent
island? Why had he forgotten his pills? Why the hell didn't he carry a cell
phone?

That last thought sent a gurgle of laughter to her lips.

"What is it?" Zach asked.

"Nothing. Just a stupid thought."

"No crime in that."

Soon, a low irregular roofline came into view. Zach stopped
so abruptly Liz almost stumbled. He put his hand over his eyebrows.

"Well, I'll be a . . ."

"Is it?" Liz said, realizing they were seeing
a
 
zydeco joint they'd gone to as kids.
"Is it
 
really?"

"Harris's!" they cried simultaneously.

"We're gonna eat crawfish after all, cher. And Harris
cooks them up a whole lot better than I do."

Liz was ready to break into a run, but Zach hesitated and
looked back. "I'd swear we'd gone a lot farther north than this." He
shrugged. "It's been a long time. I've probably gotten the location
confused."

As they reached the disreputable looking tin and mud
building, Zach remembered Harris's had been a private club of sorts, where
outsiders, particularly Anglo-Saxons were not welcome. He'd been a scrawny
stringbean of a kid then. He, Jed, Liz, and whoever else felt like tagging
along, would sneak into Harris's with badly faked IDs that the door people
accepted without question and drink tap beer, and listen to the zydeco bands.

Liz had barely been a woman, but soft and curvy, with wild
curly hair that drove men just as wild thinking about running their hands
through it. He'd gotten into more than one brawl with a guy who'd decided to
try it out.

But this was the nineties, when all things Cajun and Creole
were cool. Harris's was probably a new in-spot catering to yuppies seeking the
exotic in music and food.

As they neared the door, Zach reached back to check his
wallet, figuring prices had gone up, too. Beer'd hardly be twenty-five cents a
glass these days and there might even be a cover charge.

A tower of a black man, with arms as thick as an ancient
cypress and a face that said 'Mind your manners or answer to me,' blocked their
way. "The password," he demanded roughly.

On the other side of the door, Zach saw people buzzing
about. A basketball game was on the television and the most mouthwatering
smells he'd inhaled in all his blessed life wafted to his nose.

"Password," Liz whispered. "I'm
starving."

Password, password. He hadn't been here in nearly ten years.
Even if he could dredge up the last one he knew, it couldn't still be current.
Besides, this gargoyle scowling down at them didn't look like he understood
English, let alone French.

"Tell him we know Harris," Liz urged, still
whispering as if the man's ears were so far from the ground he couldn't hear
them.

Zach gave her a quelling look.

"Tell him," she repeated.

"The guy's probably dead," Zach said, whispering
back even though he knew it was foolish. He looked up, pasting on his best,
nonthreatening smile. "
Un petit tombe dans le bois
," he
offered.

"What kinda fairy password is that?"

Zach shrugged. Liz let out a sad sigh. The man's face
screwed up with bewilderment, making him even uglier, if that was at all
possible. He turned his massive head on his equally massive neck and, giving a
pretty fair imitation of Zach's bad French, bellowed, "Harris, you ever
hear this 'En pettit toobay dan le boys' stuff?"

"The little tomb in the woods? That's one I ain't come
across in a long time. Eight, ten years at least, for true."

Zach leaned forward, sneaking a look around the human
roadblock. An aged black man, his face a mass of wrinkles below a cap of curly
pure-white hair, popped his head through the throng
 
surrounding the bar.

"Harris!" Liz cried in delight.

The old man turned and said something to an unseen person,
then walked from behind the bar toward the door. The closer he got, the surer
Zach was that this was Harris. The guy must be a pure immortal. Shorter,
definitely shorter, but just as wiry, and Zach would bet he could still give
that baseball bat he kept behind the bar a helluva swing, if need be.

"Who you be, boy?" he asked, his voice still deep
and booming, sounding well able to hold a strong bass note during a jam
session. "You ain't a revenuer are you? Hear tell they got hold of that
there password some years back."

"Revenuer? Hell, no!" Despite the warning glare
from the gargoyle, Zach stepped forward, hand extended. "It's Zach ...
Zach Fortier. Don't you remember me, Harris? Used to come here with my friends
all the time when we were kids."

"Zacharie?" Harris squinted, looking up to take a
closer look in the muted light. Then his wrinkled face broke into a grin.
"
Oui, oui
, it is you."

Harris nodded to the bouncer, who backed away and melted
into the shadows, motionless, almost like a statue that had come to life for
the occasion and now wasn't needed.

Opening his arms wide, Harris enclosed Zach in a
bone-crushing, good ol' boy hug. "You old troublemaker," he
exclaimed, slapping Zach's back. "Good to see you, boy." Stepping
back, he
 
looked Zach over, then patted
his stomach. "Filled out a mite, ain't you?"

Resisting an urge to suck in his gut, Zach forced a chuckle.
By then, Harris's eyes moved to Liz with a frank up-and-down gaze. "And
who is this pretty lady, here?"

"Liz Deveraux," Zach said. "We used to come
here a lot . . . back then." Abruptly, he realized that in the whole
scheme of life, their time together had been very short.

"Ah,
oui
," the old man replied, peering at
Liz with great interest. "The girl what came back from death. We been
waiting for her."

Liz went kind of white at the remark. "It was all a
misunderstanding," she said, laughing uncomfortably. She spread her arms
wide. "I've been alive all this time. See?"

Zach wondered what the "waiting" part of Harris's
remark was about, but his stomach was growling, his flask almost empty, and he
was down to his last cigarette. He told Harris this.

"And food," Liz pleaded. "Crawdads, red
beans, rice, whatever you have."

Harris wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders and
guided them toward the door. "How 'bout some good 'n' spicy shrimp gumbo,
like only Harris can fix it?"

"Wonderful," Liz crooned, her pink little tongue
sneaking out to lick her equally pink lips.

Kissable lips, Zach thought, very kissable. And as they
stepped into the warm room, alive with cheering game viewers crowding the bar,
and rich with the aroma of down-home cooking, it was easy to believe he'd
stepped back in time.

"Umm," Liz said, shoveling in another mouthful of
gumbo. She'd forgotten how wonderful Southern cooking was, and was making up
for lost time.

"Don't forget to chew," Zach said. He was slouched
in a big barrel chair, sipping on a ginger ale and vodka, and even though the
room was dim, she could see his eyes boring into her.

"Don't you have better things to do than examine my
every move?" she asked in a mild tone. "Like watching the game?"

"Game's over," he replied. "Besides, you're
better looking than the basketball players."

His attention made her a bit uncomfortable, but she was
enjoying herself too much to let it get to her. Which in itself was reason to
be uneasy. A woman grieving for her mother and worrying about a father with a
bad heart and no medicine out in the bayou shouldn't feel this good. But the
big, red-plaid jacket Harris had found for her smelled of fresh tobacco and
cypress smoke and reminded her of her father. And eating spicy gumbo and
crumbly cornbread amid the mingled scents of freshly poured beer and simmering
food, with a zydeco band tuning up on the floor, brought back the forgotten
comforts of her girlhood.

Seize the day, she thought, taking in another piece of
cornbread.

"Why aren't you eating, Zach? The food's great."

Zach gestured to the half-empty bowl in front of him.
"That's my second helping, 'case you hadn't noticed."

She nodded and took another spoonful of gumbo. "Harris
always cook like this?" she asked between bites.

"Long as I remember."

"You'd think with food this good the place would be
packed."

"It is. People all over when we came in." Taking
another sip from his glass, he looked around. "Where'd everyone go?"

"My point. We're the only ones here. Why do you think
that is?"

"It's late, it's far out, everyone went home."

She glanced down at her watch. "At nine o'clock? On a
Friday night?"

"How should I know the vagaries of the restaurant
business, Liz?" He took another drink from his glass. "I'm just a
dumb PI, not a gourmet."

"Who happens to run one of the biggest security
agencies in the country."

He put the glass down and propped his elbows on the table.
"Now how do you know that?"

"Investments are my business. I look for going concerns
all the time." She waved an arm around.

"Like Harris's."

"You didn't answer my question."

Before this his attention had contained sexual undertones,
but she heard something new now. More precisely, renewed. He'd renewed his
hostility. "It .. . It's . . . I get calls. Others wanting a going place
to put their money. They ask if you're ever going public."

"Others, huh? You don't have any interest
yourself."

"Oh, yes. If you ever decide, please let me know."

"That would be insider information, wouldn't it,
cher
?"

"No, no," she said with feigned cheerfulness,
wishing he'd let the subject drop. "Not under certain circumstances."

"Right, there's always those circumstances."
Returning to his slouch, he sipped his drink, then sipped again.
"Shouldn't you lighten up?" Liz asked.

"I've got it under control." He took out a fresh
pack of cigarettes that he'd purchased from Harris, unwrapped it with overdone
care, then took one out and lit it before speaking again. "You knew where
I was all along, didn't you?"

She met his gaze. Direct, straight on. A shimmer of blue
escaped from his eyes into the muted light of the room. "Yes, Zach. Yes, I
did. . . I'm sorry."

He surprised her by laughing. "No big deal,
cher
,
no big deal." Then he dragged from the cigarette, leaned back again, and
blew a long puff of smoke to the ceiling. "I just wanted to know, is
all."

"Well, now you do."

She went back to the gumbo and cornbread, but shortly after
she pushed it away, having lost her appetite. The weariness she'd felt in the
last leg of the hike to Harris's returned.

The band started playing, and the music was so lively it
perked her up. Harris had turned the bar over to the statuelike giant and
joined the jammers to strum on an old string banjo and croon throaty tunes in
Acadian French. Before she knew it, her foot was tapping, her fingers drumming
out the melody. There was something so elemental about Cajun and Creole music.
Like the food and the smells, it took her back to the days before she'd left
Louisiana and reminded her there had been much that had been good about it.

"You remember how to two-step,
cher
?"

She looked over at Zach, who was again regarding her
intently, his hostility apparently gone, if his appreciative gaze was any
measure.

She grinned. "I'm not sure, but I'd like to give it a
try."

He took her hand and guided her out on the dance floor. She
followed his lead, letting his expertise make up for her rustiness.

"Now, this is like riding a bicycle," he said, as
the pattern of the steps came back to her. "And a lot more fun."

They finished that dance and entered the next one, alone on
the floor. Harris watched them from the stage, grinning from ear to ear, and
after two or three lively songs, the next one slowed into a haunting French
melody about a beautiful woman.