Colleen Thompson - Phantom of the French Quarter

Reuben flipped his phone shut and in a take-charge voice said, “Police are on their way. They’ll want to talk to us.”

Something in Marcus froze at those words. To hide his reaction, he turned away and scooped up his rattling Nikon, along with several small items that had fallen from the camera bag.

“Sorry I ran into you. It was just so—so awful, seeing her, that I—” the woman said before Reuben overrode her, his flat brown stare boring into Marcus.

“What’re you doing out here at this hour?” The huge man sounded coplike himself, suspicion tightening his clean-shaven jaw.

Marcus raised the camera in answer, then tossed back the question. “And the two of you were out here because…?”

“We were looking for a lost—” the woman started.

“That’s none of his business, Caitlyn,” Reuben warned her before his voice softened. “You’re hurt.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m…” She glanced down at a few drops of blood that had seeped through the torn material at her knee. Shaking her head, she said, “Never mind that.”

She looked into Marcus’s face, her expression a brand of innocence he’d forgotten existed in the world. “I’m Caitlyn Villaré, from Villar-A1 Tours. This is my assistant, Reuben Pierce.”

Considering the difference in their ages and the man’s obvious protectiveness, Marcus would have been less surprised to learn that Reuben was a doting father or an uncle. But not a sugar daddy, not to this angelic-looking blonde.

“We were looking for something one of my clients lost here last night,” she told him. “A ring.”

“I’m Ethan. Ethan Thornton.” The lie came smoothly, honed by years of practice at using different names in different cities. Only this time, for the first time in memory, he felt the kick of conscience. “I have an interest in funerary art.”

“You have an interest in taking pictures of dead girls, too?” Reuben challenged. “Maybe setting up your own—”

As Marcus fixed him with another cold stare, Caitlyn cut him off. “Reuben, this is horrible enough without you pointing fingers. I’m sorry, Mr. Thornton.”

Reuben’s expression said he wasn’t, that he remained suspicious. But at least he backed off, muttering only a face-saving “Cops’ll be here any minute. Guess we’ll leave the questions to them.”

The three of them stood in awkward silence, avoiding eye contact as they waited for—and, in Marcus’s case, dreaded—the first sirens to pierce the delicate veil of birdsong.

Caitlyn glanced down at the body, then looked away quickly and hugged herself as a chill rippled over her flesh. “I’ve never seen someone—I mean, I was with my mother when she died of cancer. But that was nothing like this.”

Reuben took her arm and steered her toward a stone bench. “Here, why don’t you sit down? You’ve had a shock, and you’re still bleeding. And there’s no need to stand there looking at…it.”

“Her,” Caitlyn corrected, ignoring the damp slab of concrete he was indicating. “She’s still a person, isn’t she? We can give her that much, at least.”

Still a person. Soft and serious, her words slipped beneath Marcus’s armor, beneath the skin itself. And he couldn’t help but wonder, could a woman who found humanity in a grotesquely altered dead girl see a man like him, a man who’d fallen so far and so hard, as—

Too dangerous to go there, to allow himself to feel. At the moment, thinking was required. Thinking and watching until he finally found the right moment to fade into the background, to move on to the next city and forget those glassy, green eyes…along with their living mirror image in the face of Caitlyn Villaré.

“Tell me more about the man who fled the scene before the officers arrived, the one who told you his name was Ethan Thornton.” In the airless interview room at the police station, Detective Lorna Robinson leaned her considerable weight onto her forearms, flattening her flesh against the table. With her cropped, red-streaked hair and her chunky wooden jewelry, she locked in on Caitlyn with a striking hazel gaze a few shades lighter than her rich brown skin. “Could you describe him for me again?”

“Tall and on the slim side. His eyes were almost black.” Caitlyn closed her own eyes in an attempt to find the words to describe him. Exhausted as she was from her interrupted sleep and the backwash of emotion, she wanted nothing more than to finish this discussion and go home. “His hair was wavy, long and dark brown.”

“How long, would you say?”

“It brushed his shoulders, I think. A little tousled but clean.” There was so much more Caitlyn couldn’t find the words for. How his hands were long and elegant as a sculptor’s. How his gaze shifted, stone to liquid, with currents of thought running deep and swift beneath the espresso-colored surface.

How the sight of him, the rich timbre of his voice and the way he carried himself had sent attraction knifing through her. But she said nothing, knowing the tidal pull could only be an illusion, that shock had been what left her quaking—the discovery of a body that looked more like a sister to her than dark-haired Jacinth ever had.

A need to call Jacinth had Caitlyn’s stomach clenching. But if she did, her older sister would rush home from the summer seminar she’d just begun teaching in Mississippi—and they desperately needed her earnings to pay the looming tax bill on the house.

Besides, Caitlyn was tired of being protected. Even more than that, she was sick of being treated like brilliant brunette Jacinth’s idiot blonde sister, despite the fact that she’d graduated with high honors from a well-respected theater program last year, and had gotten a successful business up and running, mostly on her own, within months of her arrival in this city.

“Still with me, Ms. Villaré?” Straightening, Detective Robinson tapped a pen against her notepad. “I asked, how was this Mr. Thornton dressed?”

Caitlyn frowned, considering. “His jeans were pretty faded. The shirt was loose, long sleeved, open at the throat. It was white, and kind of old-fashioned. He looked old-fashioned, too.”

The detective looked up from her scribbling. “I thought you said he was young.”

Caitlyn shook her head. “He was young, no more than his late twenties. It was just—the hair, the shirt. He might have stepped out of the Renaissance, or a pirate movie.”

Detective Robinson smiled. “You have a very different way of describing people, know that?”

Caitlyn shrugged. “Even storytelling has its occupational hazards. So what did Reuben tell your partner about Mr. Thornton?”

When he’d been ushered toward a different interview room, Caitlyn had protested, but Reuben had shushed her. The retired cop had told her in his brusque voice, Don’t worry, chère. It’s just procedure. And it’s not like either of us has anything to hide.

“Right now, I’m only interested in what you think.” Annoyance furrowed Detective Robinson’s brow. “You’re sure you didn’t see him leave? Or hear a vehicle or something?”

“At first I thought he’d gone off with one of the officers or something.”

“We’ll work on tracking him down. Would’ve made it a lot easier if he’d shown up in the system under the name he gave you.”

“You mean he lied?” She knew it was ridiculous, but Caitlyn took the deception personally. The stranger had looked straight at her, with those ink-dark eyes, and he’d lied to her point-blank.

A spark of humor lit the detective’s eyes. “You really are young, aren’t you, hon?”

Caitlyn barely had time to feel insulted before Robinson added, “I can tell you from experience, there’re plenty of citizens out there who aren’t too eager to get involved in police matters. For a whole variety of reasons.”