Cindy Dees - Her Secret Spy

Oh, wait. He couldn’t say anything about her merchandise pricing, lest she figure out he’d been snooping.

He refocused his mind on the client list and resolutely ignored a pair of actually quite nice landscape paintings hanging on the far wall from the stairs. They were oil paintings, the technique modern, and the sensibility for light and movement was top-notch. He would love to take a closer look at them in full daylight. If the color held up to bright light, the paintings and the artist could be quite a find.

But he wasn’t an art dealer anymore. At least not until he cracked the Russian crime syndicate that had swallowed his entire family whole.

Callista’s list, dammit.

He moved to the counter and made a cursory search of the cabinets there. Surely Lissa had already searched this, the most logical place to look for her aunt’s business records.

No surprise, he had no better luck than she’d had at locating Callista’s books. He looked around the store in the darkness. Where would he hide if he were a ledger, journal or notebook of some kind?

Something shifted in a corner near the ceiling, and he did a double take. For a second there, he thought he’d seen a faint movement. Or maybe a flash of light. Hell, if he didn’t know better, he’d say he’d seen a ghost. However, he did know better, and he didn’t buy any of that woo-woo stuff. It must have been cast from a passing car or something.

He glanced around behind the counter and spied a short door tucked back under the stairs to Lissa’s apartment. Hmm. A closet perhaps? He opened the door and was surprised to see another set of stairs, this one leading down. Nobody in New Orleans had basements. The place was built on a swamp, prone to flooding and gradually sinking even farther below sea level than it already was. A waterproof basement would be prohibitively expensive to build, the sort of thing only a bona fide nutball would even attempt.

But as sure as he was standing there, he was looking at stairs leading down. He pulled out the tiny LED flashlight attached to his key chain and pointed it into the dark. A dozen steps led into a low, cramped space that looked for all the world like some kind of vault. The walls looked like steel-reinforced concrete. He felt the nearest one and was startled to register some sort of thick sealant or covering on the surface. Windowless and stuffy, it felt like a prison cell.

Or a secret storeroom. Did the mob move contraband through here? Drugs, maybe? What in the hell was this place?

It was not nearly as cluttered as the shop was. Big wooden crates were stacked along one wall, and several old steamer trunks sat along the opposite wall. He moved to the crates first and was surprised to see everything from wrapped curios to bottles of wine. But not just any wine. This stuff was old, French and had a famous label that would fetch thousands at auction if the dates on the labels were real. The stuff had to be illegal. He was no great connoisseur of wine, but to his knowledge the vineyard itself was the only importer of this brand to the United States. Based on the amount of dust on the bottles, the wine had been there for some time.

He had a look in the nearest steamer trunk. Max opened the heavy lid and was gratified to see the thing filled to the brim with papers. Bingo. This was exactly the kind of place Callista might have hidden her client list. He picked up a fistful of papers and began to read.

A magic spell. A recipe for a love potion of some kind. A ritual for luck described in details. Seriously? C’mon, Callista. Give up your client list already. A chuckle sounded nearby, making him whip around in the dark, swinging his flashlight wildly back and forth.

And then he realized it was the furnace kicking on. This place really gave him the creeps. That haunting face Lissa had drawn must have gotten under his skin more than he wanted to admit. Those eyes—they watched him pleadingly, begging for help. Thank God he’d gotten to Lissa before that bastard had dragged her off to heaven knew where to do heaven knew what and put a similar expression in her eyes.

He shook his shoulders hard, trying to rid himself of the sensation of something or someone watching him. He was a professional, for goodness’ sake. Trained for most of his life in the art of covert operations. He was a man of cool logic and action. He did not do ghosts, and he did not do supernatural. Period.

* * *

Lissa’s eyes opened drowsily as a hand caressed her forehead. She was too sleepy to bother pushing away the spirits tonight. “Is that you, Aunt Cal?” she mumbled to the room in general. “I’m fine—I promise. That lovely man, Max, or whatever his name is, took care of me. Did you send him to me?”

Another whisper of touch across her cheek. She would take that as a yes. “Thanks.” She sighed.

The ghost caressed her cheek again, this time beseechingly. It wanted her to listen. Reluctantly, she woke up more thoroughly, sitting up in bed and speaking directly to the invisible spirit hovering nearby. “Listen, Aunt Callista. About the whole psychic thing. I’m giving it up. I want to know what it’s like to be normal. To live like other people. Maybe find a nice guy and settle down. Have a family. I can’t keep talking to dead people and have a regular life. I know it’s selfish. But I’ve given my whole life to helping dead people. It’s time for me to live a little.”

The ghost of her aunt, if that was who’d woken her this morning, did not deign to answer. There were no more gentle, loving touches on her skin.

Lissa flopped back to her pillow, trying to enjoy the warmth of the morning sun streaming through her window. But that girl’s face from her attacker’s mind still lingered. She’d dreamed of her last night, too.

It had been awful having to endure the girl’s screams and cries for help. Help that had never come. Lissa shoved away the memory of her death, also dreamed about in vivid, high-definition color and surround sound. That was the worst part of dreaming. Lissa had no control over it, and the spirits seemed determined to take advantage of her weakness to torture her.

The nameless, but no longer faceless, girl was dead, and nothing would bring her back. The good news was that her killer was in custody and not likely to go free anytime soon. Lissa could let it go. Justice had been served. So the powers that be could just leave her out of the matter.

She sat up with conviction and threw back the antique quilt that had supposedly been made by a great-great-great-grandmother of hers. She had places to go and things to do. Determined to focus on those, she swung her feet to the cold wooden floor. This room needed a rug. A nice thick Persian one that she could dig her toes into.

What to wear? Max had promised to come back this morning and escort her down to the police station. She wanted to look her best for him, since she hadn’t exactly been in top form last night.

Lissa, my dear, she told herself, you have a crush on Mr. Smith. A big, fat, juicy one. And normal women acted on their crushes. They put out signals and feelers, and maybe even asked the men they liked out for a cup of coffee or a bite to eat. He did say last night that the next meal was on him. That meant he was open to the idea of seeing her again, right?

If only she’d had a more normal life, maybe she would know how to land a man like Max Smith. As it was, she stood in front of her closet and panicked. Then she moved into the bathroom and stared at the mirror over the sink and despaired. She couldn’t do this. He was so out of her league. She was an amateur at romance, and he was obviously a world-class master of the art.

Master of romance didn’t quite capture the raw magnetism of Max Smith, or whatever his name was. The Max part felt right, but the Smith part felt slightly off. Although now that she was living a normal life, she probably should ignore the intuition and just accept his name at face value.