Oceans of Fire (52 page)

Practically everything dirty in New Orleans led back to this place, this man. Kurt Saunders. He sold property and stole it back. He was behind most of the gambling, whores, and drug trafficking. His house was in the most elite part of the Garden District and he rubbed shoulders with politicians and celebrities. Men like Saunders didn’t come down easily, but it was just possible, as she was helping out a friend tonight, she might also stumble across something to do with Joy’s disappearance. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least.

Flame focused back on the stalker. She felt him. Knew he was somewhere close to her, but she couldn’t pinpoint his location. He couldn’t have a scope on her, she wasn’t visible from the ground. He
had
to be the man from the gas station. He hadn’t shown any interest in her at all. She tapped her thigh with her index finger, replaying the small moment over and over in her mind. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him as he was deep in the shadows and he seemed to blend into the night. What made him memorable to her?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing
. She sighed and rubbed at her temple. She was getting a killer headache, something that often happened when using psychic talents for long periods of time.

A splash of lights and sudden flurry of activity at the gate, accompanied by the ferocious barking of the dog, had her crawling across the tower roof to peer over the edge. The guards had arrived, guns in plain sight, as the gate swung open, allowing a black town car to sweep onto the circular drive.

Flame narrowed her vision, studying the car. She’d seen it before. A photographic mind helped keep small details filed away until she needed them. The car always had the same driver. He stayed out of sight except to open and close the door for his passenger. Parsons was an older man. Flame guessed him to be somewhere in his sixties. He carried a silver-handled cane, but she doubted he really needed it. He liked the distinguished look and the deference everyone gave him. He had come three nights in a row to three different clubs to hear her music—but so had a lot of others.

She made a face as the driver opened the door and Parsons emerged wearing his trademark long coat, his silver hair gleaming in the lights flooding the entryway. It didn’t surprise her in the least that the man knew Saunders. Parsons was the head investigator for the DEA and was more than likely investigating Saunders for laundering money while playing friends with him. In the clubs he held himself aloof from everyone else, insisting on extra attention. He brought his grown son a couple of times, but most of the time he surrounded himself with other businessmen, hardly deigning to notice most of the locals. He and his son had sent her a drink twice.
And his son had dated Joy Chiasson
. That alone put them on her radar screen.

She watched Parsons until he disappeared under the roof of the giant, columned porch. With a little sigh she crawled back to the skylight. Why was it that in every town there were men who believed themselves above the law, had such a sense of entitlement? She didn’t get it, probably never would get it. Dr. Whitney, just like these men, was a respected professional. He had the ear of people in high places. He had trust and even a high security clearance, yet he was a predator, ruthlessly destroying the lives of others to further his own cause. Saunders was another such man; and Flame had no doubt, just by observing him in the clubs, that Parsons was the same, even though they were on different sides of the law.

“It’s like a damned secret society,” she whispered under her breath. “To get in you just have to screw everybody.” And why did people believe that sharks like Whitney and Saunders would eventually be brought to justice? In her experience they were
never
brought to justice. They schemed and muscled and killed and grew fat on their profits and everyone turned a blind eye. More than likely Parsons would end up dead someday, alligator bait in the bayou, while Saunders got fatter off of his illegal profits. Her headache was getting worse and if she didn’t tamp down her anger, the house was in for an unexpected shaking. Did Louisiana get earthquakes? She hadn’t bothered to check.

The light in the room below went off suddenly, alerting her to the fact that Saunders was heading downstairs to greet his guest. The door to the office closed and she could hear the distinct click of a lock. Immediately she moved to the skylight and peered down. Sure enough, the tower room was empty.

Flame smiled, forgetting all about her headache. Securing a little justice went a long way in curing headaches. Staying low to prevent skylining her body, she examined the skylight, looking for evidence of magnetic switches or motion detectors inside the frame. It didn’t seem possible that Saunders could be so arrogant as to not install security on the skylight itself. Surely he wasn’t that stupid. She’d come prepared for a difficult task, but she found nothing to do but use her laser cutter to open the glass dome. Before lifting the glass free with the attached suction cup she once more checked for security, this time using all senses, not just visual.

The sound was much too high for the human ear to detect. Flame froze without pulling away the glass. Saunders was using an old-fashioned ultrasonic motion detector. It was placed inside the skylight where little would disturb it. She rarely encountered them anymore because they were just too sensitive and often produced far too many false alarms. And that meant when she lifted the glass away the slight rash of air into the room would trigger the alarm.

It was a simple enough device. A transmitter sent out a frequency too high for the human ear and the receiver picked up the sound waves reflected in the area under protection. Motion would cause a shift in the frequency of sound. The larger the object the greater the shift in frequency. Most detectors were configured to ignore the small shifts that might be caused by insects, but a larger shift would trip the circuit and set off the alarm.

“You have the old Doppler effect going, don’t you, Saunders?” Flame murmured aloud, under her breath. “Well, sound just happens to be my specialty, you cheap slimeball. Your little old detector is simply comparing the frequency emitted by the transmitter when no motion is detected to the frequency of sound that results when motion occurs. And that, my lovely little mark, is easy enough for someone like me to work around.”

She cocked her head to one side, pressing close to the dome to listen, determining the pattern in the high-frequency sound. With no motion present, the sound bouncing back was an even, steady configuration. She simply had to find that exact frequency and pattern and make certain that nothing interrupted it when she removed the glass and dropped down into the room.

Flame nearly laughed. Here she was with all the latest high-tech equipment a cat burglar could possibly need and she had to run into someone with an old-fashioned setup. “ ‘Cuz you’re just too cheap where it counts, Saunders. You think because you rip off a lot of really nice people that makes you smart. It only makes you a mark, just like the ones you steal from.”

It was gratifying how all those government-given talents came in handy when she went to work. Dr. Whitney and his little team of scientists would be so pleased to know their work had gone to a good cause.

She maintained the high-frequency pattern as she pulled the circle of glass away and set it aside so that the sudden air shift wouldn’t trigger the alarm. She dropped a line slowly, still careful of the pattern, as she lowered her body into what Saunders believed was his impenetrable fortress. Landing lightly, she began a thorough search of the room, all the while making certain the high-frequency signal remained a nice steady pattern. Saunders had money in the bank, but everything he stole was going to be in the tower room, in cash, hidden away.

She found the safe behind a section of wall panel looking just as smooth as the rest of the walls, but as she tapped lightly with the pad of her index finger along the textured surface, she could hear the slight differences in sound. It took only seconds to locate the hidden mechanism to slide the panel aside.

The safe gleamed at her, outrageously shiny in order to provide as many great fingerprints as possible should it be broken into. Flame smiled at it. “Hello, baby. Mama’s come to free your soul.” She peered closer. “You’re a primo model, aren’t you, hon? I’ll just bet you’ve got a few layers of hardplate behind the door, don’t you? I’ll also bet you have a few ball bearings in the hardplate to chew up the drill bits too. That’s just not nice, but then, I’m not going to drill into you. That would hurt, wouldn’t it, gorgeous?”

The safe also had a remote relocking device. If she punched out the combination, the remote relocker would engage, but she had no intention of cutting out the lock. She did everything by sound. She closed her eyes as she spun the tumbler, listening for the drop in sound. The first number was six and dropped easily into place. Flame spun the lock and heard the drop at nine. The third number was six. Scowling, she wasn’t surprised when nine came up again. Four more times the numbers repeated.

“Idiot. You’re such a freakin‘ cheesy sleazebag,” she said as she swung open the safe door. Four briefcases fit snugly into the safe. All four had combination locks. She didn’t bother to ascertain they contained cash. It stood to reason they did. Scooping out all four, she secured them to her belt and carefully, without haste, put everything back exactly as it had been.

The climb hand over hand up the rope back to the roof was easy enough, and she kept the high-frequency pattern going in a nice steady beat the whole while. Back outside, she restored the skylight glass, using a high-end glue to replace the cutout, and holding it in place until it sealed. They would find out, but it was always fun to make them work a little to figure it out.

Stashing the four briefcases in her bag, she crawled quickly to the hook, retrieved the anchor, and shoved it in her bag with the other tools. She left the line, to provide the illusion of an expected escape route to whomever the Whitney Foundation had sent against her. Let him wait for her. If she was really lucky, when the break-in was discovered he might even get caught.

She slipped the pack on her back and slithered over the roof to the front edge. It was a long drop to the ground, but she had no intention of going down that way. She’d already calculated the jump between the tower roof and the small guesthouse at the back of the property Saunders used for his playtime. During surveillance she’d seen his men bring several different women there. Saunders liked to play rough.

The women always came out looking battered and bruised rather than happy with whatever he paid them.

The distance between the tower and the guesthouse was far too great for anyone to believe she could use it as an exit. A sweeping lawn and several flower beds separated the two buildings. Flame straightened up, a momentary risk as she took a running start across the tower roof to leap for the roof of the guesthouse. She landed in a crouch, gaze already probing the darkness for danger.

Best scenario, the theft wouldn’t be discovered until morning and she could leisurely get away, mask the sound of her motorcycle, and hope one of Saunders’s really alert guards didn’t spot her. If so, well, that was one of the reasons for having the motorcycle in the first place.

Flame ran along the side of the guesthouse to the back of the property. The guards occasionally gathered to play a game of cards where Saunders never bothered to look for them. She made out two large men sitting in the gazebo housing a hot tub. Saunders went for the intimidation factor in his men, wanting them pumped up to bully people with appearance alone. She could hear the murmur of conversation as they discussed a club in the French Quarter they both were particularly fond of.

She moved past them easily, creeping along the hedge until she found the small rock painted white to make it easy to spot in the dark. She’d dropped the rock there hours earlier to mark the only place along the back fence she could go over and be in a clean landing spot inside the thick foliage surrounding the brick wall. Pocketing it now, she looked left and right, listened for a minute, and leapt over the fence, landing blind on the other side. She remained crouched, her heart beginning to accelerate again. Whitney’s man would know she was up to something by now, that she would never stay inside the estate grounds so long. He was probably stalking her.

She sent every psychic and natural sense she had out into the night, searching for information, listening for the sound of footsteps, of the whisper of clothing sliding through vegetation. Even the sudden silence of insects would tip her off to the other’s location, but she heard only the regular sounds of the night.

Flame didn’t wait for the alarm to be raised behind her. Staying low in the shadows along the brick wall she moved quickly, keeping to the foliage as much as possible, all the while scanning the area for sound or movement. She shushed several guard dogs as she passed more houses. When she was three blocks from Saunders’s estate, she halted. She had to cross the street to get to the park where she’d left her motorcycle and the lamps were spilling light brightly across the paved road.

She waited there in the darkness. The feeling that she wasn’t alone crept in. The weight of the four briefcases was heavy on her shoulder, but she could use it as a weapon if necessary—if she got that close.

Soft male laughter reached her from deep within the trees of the park. “You may as well come on over,
cher
. Aren’tcha getting all hot and bothered standin‘ there wonderin’ whether or not I’ve got me a gun?”

CHRISTINE FEEHAN

I live in the beautiful mountains of Lake County, California. I have always loved hiking, camping, rafting, and being outdoors. I’ve also been involved in the martial arts for years—I hold a third-degree black belt, instruct in a Korean karate system, and have taught self-defense. I am happily married to a romantic man, who often inspires me with his thoughtfulness. We have a yours, mine, and ours family, claiming eleven children as our own. I have always written books, forcing my ten sisters to read every word, and now my daughters read and help me edit my manuscripts. It is fun to take all the research I have done on wild animals, raptors, vampires, weather, and volcanos and put it together with romance. Please visit my website at
http://www.christinefeehan.com
.