Deadly Night

THE DEATH DEALER

THE LAST NOEL

THE SÉANCE

BLOOD RED

THE DEAD ROOM

KISS OF DARKNESS

THE VISION

THE ISLAND

GHOST WALK

KILLING KELLY

THE PRESENCE

DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

PICTURE ME DEAD

HAUNTED

HURRICANE BAY

A SEASON OF MIRACLES

NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

EYES OF FIRE

SLOW BURN

NIGHT HEAT

And watch for the continuation of the Flynn Brothers trilogy…

DEADLY HARVEST, November 2008

DEADLY GIFT, December 2008

As always, to the incredible city of
New Orleans, especially to Mary LaCoste,
aka Scary Mary, who gives the most delightful
tour, and to Betty Titman, who gives real
credence to “Southern Hospitality.”

To Mac, sexy, funny, dynamite voice
and an all around great guy.

The Flynn Plantation
Outside New Orleans
1863

I
t was there….

Home.

Everything he knew and loved, so close.

Sloan Flynn sat atop Pegasus, the tall roan that had taken him from the battlefields at Sharpsburg, Williamsburg, Shiloh and beyond, and looked to the south.

Farmland. Rich and fertile, as far as the eye could see.

When he turned to the north, though…

Tents. Arranged in perfect military order. Campfires burned; weapons were being cleaned. One view was of beauty, peace and perfection. The other promised a land drenched in the blood of its sons, a land laid to waste.

He had no more illusions about war. It was ugly and brutal. It wasn’t just death. It was maimed and broken men screaming on the battlefield. It was a man walking blindly, crying out for help, because cannon fire had burned away his vision. It was the earth strewn with severed limbs, with the bodies of the dismembered, the dead and the dying. And, in the worst of times, it was their loved ones, as well, weeping over them.

Any man who still saw war as a way to solve differences had not been at Sharpsburg, Maryland, had not seen Antietam Creek running as crimson as the Red Sea, so choked with blood that it looked like a garish ribbon across the landscape.

Sloan had begun the war as a cavalry captain in a Louisiana unit. But that had been then. And this was now. Now he was militia, assigned to Jeb Stuart and the Army of Northern Virginia. They’d been sent south to scout out areas of the Mississippi, but this morning they had been recalled north.

It would be so easy to just go home….

But a man didn’t quit a war. He didn’t wake up and tell his commanders or his men that he knew war was wretched and created nothing but misery, so he was leaving. He fought, and he fought to win, because winning, too, was war. The indignant rallying cry to support the great cause of states’ right, which had once rung as clear as a bugle’s call in his heart, was now a silent sob. If they could go back—if they could
all
go back—and drag the politicians and the congressmen out to the battlefield and force them to look at the mangled and crimson-soaked bodies of their sons, they would not have come to this.

But they had. And now they were gearing up for another confrontation. They weren’t going to try to take back New Orleans. Not now. They were gathering to head north. General Robert E. Lee was ordering troops from all over the South to head north. He wanted to take the war to the cities, farms and pastures of the Union. His beloved Virginia was in tatters, stripped again and again of its riches, marked by carnage.

Sloan looked longingly once again in the direction of home.

The Flynn plantation wasn’t one of the biggest, wasn’t one of the grandest. But it was home. And it was
his.

She would be there. Fiona MacFarlane. Fiona Fair, as they liked to tease her. In truth, though—and secretly, because of the war—she was Fiona MacFarlane Flynn.

It had been so long….

Her own home, Oakwood, had fallen into ruin soon after the war had begun, so Fiona had come to stay at Flynn Plantation, his family’s home. It wasn’t grand—his family hadn’t come to Louisiana with money; they had come with a desire to work—but there was room for Fiona. There would always be room for Fiona.

The plantation was barely hanging on now, he knew. Despite the war, he had exchanged letters with his cousin Brendan, a lieutenant with the Union army, and he knew the property wasn’t doing well. Since New Orleans had fallen under Yankee control, Brendan had spent time out at the plantation, and his letters had been honest. The two men might be mortal enemies on the battlefield, but they were still cousins, which made the correspondence dangerous for them both. Brendan had written about “Beast” Butler, Union military commander in the parish, and how he had warned the family to avoid contact with the Union forces at all costs.

And if that warning had come from a Union officer…well, Sloan didn’t like to think about what that meant.

Sloan hesitated for a moment, knowing he should be riding north; his reconnaissance mission had yielded a promise of heavy skirmishing if the troops were to approach too near to the heart of the parish.

But he was so close…

To home.

To Fiona.

He could steal an hour. Just an hour. A host of soldiers riding in would bring instant reprisal, but he could slip in alone.

No. This was war, and he’d been given his orders.

He kneed his horse and started south, despite the warnings in his head.

Soon the long drive shaded by the oaks stretched ahead of him. From this vantage point, the house was still beautiful. Graceful, built in the classic style, with a hall that ran front to back to facilitate the breeze wafted up from the river, bringing the cooler air. The wraparound porches on the first and second floors were still covered in ivy, and a hint of flowers could be seen. As a child, he had helped build this house. It was home, and the mere sight of it sent a river of bittersweet nostalgia sweeping through his system.

He didn’t ride up the front drive; he detoured through the surrounding grove, passing fields that were overgrown and neglected. There, Sloan left Pegasus tied to a tree, then made his way to the stables directly behind the house. Henry, their caretaker, was there, a lean man of mixed Choctaw, Haitian and probably German blood, a free man of color, and the real boss of the place for as long as Sloan could remember.

“Henry?” His voice was soft but urgent.

Henry, busy repairing a saddle, looked up with a smile, his features ageless and strong. “Sloan?”

Sloan slipped from behind a bale of hay.

Henry dropped his leather needle and rose, and the two men embraced. But Henry withdrew quickly, his features grim.

“There’s a couple of soldiers up to the house,” he warned Sloan quietly. “They just got here this morning.”

Sloan frowned. “Soldiers? Why?”

“Why?” Henry echoed bitterly. “Because they own the place now that New Orleans surrendered.”

Sloan frowned, refusing to let himself think about Beast Butler’s warning for the moment. “What about everyone else? Is anyone left in there? I heard the news about Ma. Brendan wrote me last summer, when she died.” Even if he’d known in time, he wouldn’t have been able to attend her funeral. He had been watching the soon-to-be-dead massing at Sharpsburg. “But what about Fiona and Missy and George? Are they still here?” Missy and George had been with the family as long as Henry had.

“Yeah. They’re all still there,” Henry said, looking uncomfortable. “But Miss Fiona, she told me to come out here and stay out of the way, ’less she calls for me.”

Sloan looked at Henry, and he knew, because he knew Fiona, why she had given the order. She was afraid it might not be the cream of the Federal troops who had come to the house. She didn’t know what they wanted, and she didn’t want Henry getting killed if she needed to defend herself.

Sloan looked off into the distance. Henry still seemed distinctly uncomfortable. What the hell was going on here?

“Henry, what is it? What the hell is it?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Nothing. It’s just…Well, it’s been a long time since you’ve been home. A year, almost.”

Sloan stared at him. “What does that have to do with anything?” he demanded.

“Brendan…he ain’t around right now, neither. He’s been away. When he’s here…well, this place belongs to his kin, so the troops, they leave it alone.”

“And?”

“I just said, ‘he ain’t been here for a while now.’” Henry drew a deep breath. “It ain’t good. It just ain’t good. The Yankees is one thing. They be good men, and they be bad men. But there’s bad men from right here, too. Bad men who don’t care for no cause, just for making money. I go into town when I can, and I try to listen, see what’s up.” Henry looked away for a minute. “There’s one local fella…he finds girls. Finds them for this officer. Then…they ain’t seen again. I try to trip him up. Sometimes I can. I hear things, like where folks is gonna be. And I try to keep us clear of it, since I can’t stop it. But there’s folks what like to let other folks know what’s going on, like when women are alone…. Miss Fiona, she don’t like to believe it, but she be gettin’ in trouble if she not careful.”

Sloan felt his heart trip. Good old Henry, trying to keep Fiona out of harm’s way. But she was apparently convinced she could deal with the enemy soldiers on her own. Fear cascaded in icy rivulets through his blood.

He turned and headed out of the stables, but Henry tried to stop him.

And Henry was one big son of a gun, so Sloan turned and landed a hard punch to the other man’s jaw. He felt bad when Henry went down with an audible groan, but this was one battle he had to fight on his own. He wasn’t about to drag Henry into it.

Sloan drew his gun, a repeating rifle taken off a dead man at Sharpsburg, and headed for the house. As he did, he heard the scream. And then, there she was, racing out to the upper level balcony from the master bedroom.

Fiona.

Her beautiful deep red hair was streaming out behind her, her features contorted into a mask of fear, her slim body tense with desperation.

Hard on her heels, a man was chasing her. Laughing at her obvious distress.

Raising his gun to his shoulder, Sloan started to run.

The Flynn Plantation
Present Day

It was high excitement. It was subterfuge. It was the biggest adventure of her life.

Sheila Anderson slipped through the darkness, armed with her flashlight. She could feel the note burning in her pocket.
Meet me at the Flynn place. Midnight. I figured out the truth behind the legend.

She didn’t know who had sent the note, but she assumed it had to be a fellow member of the historical society—maybe even a secret admirer. With Amelia Flynn dead and the new owners of the Flynn plantation coming to town to claim their inheritance, the society had to find a way to purchase and preserve the house. Neither the state nor the federal government was proving helpful. There were a lot of old places in the New Orleans area, and money talked loudly. The area was coming back in a big way, and there were too many corporations trying to buy up land along the river. The historical society needed a break, some piece of information about the house’s past important enough to make sure that
they,
who loved history and all it stood for, could keep the place from going on the block before they had enough time to raise the money to buy it themselves.

So here she was, slipping through the darkness. Making her way through the old family cemetery, shielding the narrow beam of her flashlight so no one would spot her, looking for the truth behind the legends surrounding the plantation in the hope that it would be enough to ensure the house’s historical standing.

It was frightening, but it was also fabulous. Better than a movie, better than a roller coaster. The old Flynn plantation had always been surrounded by ghostly tales. The locals all claimed it was haunted. The Flynn family had all but exterminated itself here, and that was just the beginning of the story.

The truth behind the legend.

It was such a great legend, too. There had been one woman and two men. Cousins, fighting on opposite sides in the War of Northern Aggression, as they called it down here. The men had met back at the estate and killed one another over her. She had died, too, and it was said that her screams could still be heard, while a figure made of white light raced along the upstairs porch.

Sheila paused, letting the atmosphere of the place seep into her. Anxious, she was almost afraid to look through the trees toward the house, where it sat in lonely darkness. With Amelia Flynn dead, her friend Kendall Montgomery was no longer staying there as a companion to the woman who had lived through decade after decade in that house, then died in the very room where she had been born.

The heat of the day had faded, merging with the dampness off the river, and now the land was rolling in fog. The gravestones and the mausoleums rose against the mist and the darkness, and a sliver of moonlight danced across the marble.

There was no ghost to be seen that night, but even so, Sheila could feel her heart beating rapidly.

“Sheila, over here!”

She jumped, startled. But the voice—a man’s voice—was real, and she smiled, aware she was about to find out the identity of the person who had decided that she should be in on such a valuable discovery, historically speaking.

A rush swept through her.
This was it!
She was about to help make history.

“Where?” she called out, then started hurrying through the overgrown brush, dodging sarcophagi as she went. She tripped over a broken gravestone, and her flashlight went flying. She heard the lens break, and now all that was left to guide her was that sliver of moon, doing its best to pierce the rippling fog. Her heart thundered as she lay on the ground and thought of the woman in white who raced across the upper wraparound porch.

She got quickly to her feet, fear outweighing excitement for a moment.

“Sheila!”

She could hardly see her way, what with the fog and the darkness, but she knew the cemetery well, having walked it often enough in daylight. But now she was disoriented. She moved carefully in the direction from which she thought she had heard the voice. She stumbled again, but this time she caught herself against a crumbling mausoleum before she fell.

A cloud moved across the moon, and she was left in total darkness.

“Sheila?” It was a whisper this time, but close.

“Come on, help me out here,” she called. “I lost my flashlight.” She was surprised at how tremulous her voice sounded, and realized that she actually was afraid. In seconds, what had been minor trepidation rose to the level of sheer panic. Coming here had been stupid, she realized, and she had been an idiot. Running around a cemetery in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night after getting an unsigned note. What had she been thinking?

She was going to find her way back to her car, drive home, have a huge glass of wine and chastise herself severely for being such an idiot.