Diabolical (Shaye Archer Series Book 3) Read online

  Someone was in his house.

  He looked at the security panel in the hall, its green button the only light in the dark, and silently cursed himself for forgetting to set the alarm. He grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand and called 911. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed, careful not to make a sound, and eased the drawer of the nightstand open. The loaded pistol lay at the back of the drawer where it always had. Warren couldn’t even remember the last time he’d removed it, and hoped it was still in good working order.

  The 911 operator answered and Warren whispered to her his name and address and told her there was an intruder in his home. The operator immediately dispatched the police and told him to stay on the line until they arrived. Walter moved to the far side of the room, between the bed and the wall, and crouched down, aiming the pistol at the door. If anyone entered the room expecting to find a helpless, sleeping old man, they were in for a rude awakening.

  Another creak filled the still air in the house and Warren knew the intruder was coming up the stairs. He sucked in a breath and clenched the pistol with his right hand, his left hand still clutching the cell phone.

  “Mr. Thompson? Are you still with me?” The operator’s voice sounded as if it was being broadcast in stereo and Warren hurried to disconnect the call before the intruder could zero in on his location.

  Faint footsteps echoed on the bare hardwood floor of the hallway, approaching the bedroom. Warren crouched even lower, until he could barely peer above the top of the bed. His heart pounded so hard that his chest started to burn. He tried to take a deep breath to calm his nerves, but he couldn’t do it. His chest ached and his vision blurred as he struggled to take in air, but it was as if he were underwater. He was drowning in an open room full of air.

  Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes, making his already blurry vision even worse, then his arms went limp and the pistol that had been trained on the door fell over onto the bed, his hands so weak he could no longer hold it.

  He was having a heart attack.

  What were the fucking odds?

  Reagan Dugas lifted her head and groaned. The headache that had been plaguing her for days had grown in intensity until now she felt as if her skull were being pulled apart. She struggled to push herself up from the stone floor but barely made it halfway before she started retching.

  He’d drugged her again.

  She never knew when the food he brought her would be laced with whatever put her out, but she always knew when he’d done it. The headaches were awful, but they weren’t the worst part. She checked her legs and chest and found three new puffy red lines cut into the flesh of her abdomen. Right next to the new marks, old ones were in various stages of scarring, each set of three giving her a clue as to the length of her captivity. She had no idea exactly how long she’d been trapped in the tiny room. With no light and no watch, every minute was the same. Except when he came. The endless minutes in a dark hole were bad, but they weren’t as bad as the man.

  The last thing she remembered of her life before was sitting at the construction site and watching skaters at the docks. She was pretty sure the skaters were street kids, and she’d wanted to go over and join in, but had been afraid to approach them. In hindsight, she probably should have. Maybe they would have warned her that someone was kidnapping street kids.

  The man who’d grabbed her that night on the dark street wasn’t the same one who held her captive now. She’d overheard a conversation between the man who grabbed her and someone else she couldn’t see. A lot of what they were saying didn’t make sense, but enough did. Those men kidnapped kids and sold them, and the man who had her now had bought her from them.

  When that realization had hit her, she’d cried until she had no tears left, then she’d gotten mad. Mad at her dad for leaving. Mad at her mom for hooking up with a man who beat her to death. Mad at her aunt for marrying a perv who’d crawled into bed with her and wouldn’t get out until she threatened to scream. Ever since she’d hit puberty, men had looked differently at her, including the one who’d killed her mom. Whenever it happened, she felt the need to shower. It was only a matter of time before one of them forced himself on her. She was surprised it hadn’t happened before her uncle made his attempt.

  So she’d left.

  But now she wondered about her choice. That woman from social services, who’d visited after her mom died, had given her a card. It was tucked in a pocket of the backpack she’d taken when she left her aunt’s house. She’d even pulled it out once. But she hadn’t called. The horror stories she’d heard about foster care had trumped what she thought she’d encounter on the streets.

  She’d been so very wrong.

  Shaye pulled a brush through her wet hair and tossed the towel on the side of the tub. If she didn’t do laundry soon, that towel would be the only semi-clean thing in her apartment. The last time she’d visited, Corrine had suggested that Shaye hire someone to take care of the domestic things that she didn’t want to be bothered with. That was Corrine’s polite way of saying Shaye was a slob, but then Corrine was anal to the point of arranging her clothes by season, purpose, type, then color.

  Shaye supposed she should look for a cleaning service at least. It didn’t take a lot of time to clean her apartment, but it was time she’d rather spend doing other things, and her list of things to do had grown astronomically over the last couple weeks. The five-person crew that cleaned Corrine’s house was too much for Shaye’s tiny apartment, but maybe they could send only one or two of them. She made a mental note to call and ask.

  She headed out of the bathroom and into the living room, plopping down on the couch. It had been a long, exhausting, frustrating day, filled with disappointment, anger, and douche bags. Every time she thought about that stunt Vincent had tried to pull, she got angry all over again. Which only pissed her off even more because then Vincent had gotten to her more than once. Given her penchant for perfect recall, Vincent’s action had managed to ruin her entire afternoon.

  She turned on the television and scrolled through the options, finally settling on a forensics show. The things that could be accomplished with science today amazed her almost as much as the blatant stupidity of many criminals. Of course, stupid criminals weren’t something she was going to complain about. It was the smart ones who were the real problem.

  She glanced at her laptop and thought about checking email but she didn’t feel like it. There wasn’t a single thing she could think of that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Besides, if it was an emergency, her cell phone was never far away. She leaned back on the couch and watched as a crime scene unit processed a bedroom where they suspected a murder had occurred.

  In minutes, she drifted off to sleep.

  The stone floor was so cold she couldn’t sit on it without shivering. She hadn’t seen the sky in years, but she knew right now it was swirling with angry gray winter clouds. When the man came, the freezing air blew in with him. New Orleans wasn’t as cold as the places she’d seen before on television—the ones covered in snow and ice—but sometimes you needed a coat and heat or a stack of heavy blankets to keep warm. She didn’t have any of that.

  For all she knew she wasn’t even in New Orleans.

  When she’d first been taken, she’d been drugged for a long time. A girl at school said she wasn’t supposed to know about drugs but she’d seen her mother take the different-colored pills, then act weird and sleep for a really long time. One time her mother had been especially aggravated with her and she’d told her to take one of the pills. She didn’t remember going to sleep, but she was sick to her stomach when she woke up and her head felt like it would explode.

  The man never made her swallow anything, so the drugs must be in her food. At first, it had taken days for the poisons to work their way out of her system. Now she didn’t feel groggy and spacey for more than a couple hours after waking up. She thought that meant it wasn’t happening as often, but then, maybe she’d gotten used to it.
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  Even though she had no way of knowing for sure, she thought she was still in New Orleans, or at least in Louisiana. The man had a Creole accent and he brought her shrimp and gumbo to eat sometimes. Besides that, something inside her just felt like she hadn’t left the state.

  Not that it mattered. No one was coming to look for her.

  She went to school for a while, but then people started asking questions that she didn’t want to answer—mostly about her mother—so she’d stopped going. It didn’t surprise her that no one came to check. Her teacher had called her “disruptive,” whatever that meant, and asked to speak to her parents. She didn’t have a father. Not that she’d ever known, anyway, and when she’d asked her mother about him, she’d never gotten a good answer.

  Her mother never knew where she was and never asked, but this time was different. This time, she’d been gone for a long time. Her mother had made her go with the man, but surely, she realized that he’d never brought her back. But then, if she was still smoking that stuff and taking the pills, she might not care. The smoking stuff cost a lot of money. So much money that her mother traded their food money for it and they went hungry for days. With one less mouth to feed, her mother could buy more stuff. The stuff always made her happier than food.

  She pushed a small pile of straw together and sat on it, but the thin strands didn’t provide much insulation against the cold stone. The only clothes she had was what she wore now, a pair of jeans that were too big and a T-shirt that was too small. She couldn’t even remember what she’d been wearing when the man took her, but she’d been through several sets of clothes since then. They were always used and rarely fit, but she was used to that. She’d never had new clothes that fit properly.

  She sat in the silence and listened for the dreaded thunder. If it rained too hard, the floor flooded. She could only stand for so long before her weak body gave out and she had to sit. But the thought of sitting in cold water when she was already freezing brought tears to her eyes, and not many things did that anymore. Cold water and the red dress were the only two things that still made her cry, and sometimes she worried that even those things would no longer matter. That she’d give up entirely and figure out a way to end it all.

  She knew how. She’d seen it on television. Two long cuts across her wrist would do the trick.

  So far, she’d always found a reason not to do it, but she was afraid that might change. Lately, the man had looked at her with his dark eyes and instead of just raw fear, she’d felt her skin crawl and then the overwhelming feeling of wanting to cover up her entire body so that he couldn’t see any of it. Something else was coming. She didn’t understand what, but she knew it was different from before.

  A thunderclap boomed overhead and she pulled her knees up to her chest, lowered her head to them, and began to cry.

  Shaye jerked awake, her heart racing. She tried to force all the details from her dream into her awakened mind, but they were already slipping away. Damn it! Her frustration grew as the harder she tried to remember, the quicker she forgot.

  She’d been back in the stone room again and it had been cold, but there was more this time. Things about her mother that she’d never dreamed before. But now she couldn’t remember them. She rose from the couch and headed to the kitchen to fix herself a snack. Then she’d head to her office and work.

  There was no use to try sleeping again.

  Not after one of the dreams.

  6

  Belles Fleurs Plantation, 1936

  The Haitian boy hid in the shrubs and watched the plantation owner through the window of the big house. The owner was in the fancy room with a huge desk and bookcases. The Haitian boy knew it was supposed to be a place to work, but the owner had never worked a day in his life. Everything that hadn’t been given to him, he’d taken. He was evil and cruel, but he wasn’t the only one who could use those traits to make himself rich and powerful.

  He watched as the man left the room. It was dinnertime, and he’d sit in an even fancier room while servants fed him, his pathetic wife, and the weak boy. The man would return to the working room when dinner was over and unlock the cabinet that held his expensive whiskey. He’d pour glass after glass and if he was in a foul mood, which was usually the case, he’d head upstairs and beat his wife or son, or he’d leave the house and beat one of the workers.

  The Haitian pulled a burlap bag out of his pocket and jiggled it in his hand. The whiskey bottle would work. The locked cabinet presented no difficulty, nor did the window. No one would ever know he’d been inside.

  He smiled. The owner’s son believed they had conjured a demon, but that was a lie. His great-grandmother didn’t know how to make demons appear, but she knew everything about the old magic. A person could do anything with roots, if they knew how.

  Even kill someone.

  7

  Saturday, July 25, 2015

  Ninth Ward, New Orleans, Louisiana

  Shaye hesitated before entering the apartment building. She’d been here once before, to the apartment that Lydia Johnson, her biological mother, had occupied. Nothing had been familiar, leading Shaye to believe at the time that she’d never lived there. The date in Clancy’s journal and Lydia’s occupancy date of the apartment confirmed what Shaye had felt. She’d never been inside the apartment until the night she entered it with Jackson.

  But Lydia had lived here for twelve years. In that time she must have talked to someone, maybe even mentioned Shaye during a drug-induced haze. If Shaye could figure out where Lydia lived before she moved here, maybe it would spark Shaye’s memory of her past. If she could remember her time with Lydia, then she might remember her time with her captor. All the answers she needed were right there, locked away in her fragile mind. If she could just figure out a way to access them, all of this could be over.

  Healing could begin.

  She took in a deep breath and blew it out, then walked into the building and headed toward the apartment her mother had occupied. She stopped at the apartment across the hallway from her mother’s old unit and knocked on the door. She heard movement inside and after a short wait, the door opened and a woman peered out at her through the crack in the door, the chain latch still in place.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked, looking her up and down.

  “My name is Shaye. I’m trying to get information on the woman who lived across the hall from you—Lydia Johnson?”

  “Already talked to the cops. Didn’t know nothing about no Lydia then. Don’t know anything now.”

  The door slammed, and Shaye heard the dead bolt slide back into place. She stared at the door for several seconds, assessing the situation. The apartment manager had told her the woman had occupied the apartment across from Lydia’s for four years. How was it possible that she didn’t know who Lydia was?

  The bottom line was it wasn’t possible.

  The woman simply didn’t want anything to do with the police or anyone else. Unfortunately, it was common behavior. People didn’t want to get involved, especially when they could lose their benefits if someone clued in to any illegal activity. Like Lydia being a junkie.

  Shaye sighed. Given what she was up to, Lydia probably hadn’t spent a lot of time chatting with other residents. But still, four years? Surely there was a conversation in the laundry room or in the back courtyard smoking at some point. She moved on to the next door and knocked again. It was a long shot to get information, but damn it, it was one of the only things she had to go on.

  An hour later, she slumped into the drivers’ seat of her SUV, completely frustrated. She’d been through the entire building. Of the people who’d bothered to answer their doors, none had claimed knowledge of Lydia Johnson. They were lying, of course. Shaye could see the distrust and fear in their expressions. But what could she do about it?

  Nothing. That’s what.

  She started her car and pulled out of the parking lot. While she was on this side of town, she’d stop and see Hustle. She hadn’t ch
ecked on him in person in a while, although she’d spoken with Saul regularly and he’d reported the teen was doing fine. Seeing Hustle doing well would definitely improve her day.

  It was just shy of 1:00 p.m. when Shaye parked her SUV in front of the Bayou Hotel. She yawned and blinked several times, trying to get her tired eyes to focus correctly. After the dream and her impromptu hour of work, she’d never managed to get back to sleep properly, instead tossing and turning the rest of the night, barely dozing and jumping awake at every little sound. Consequently, she was exhausted but knew if she tried to sleep, her overly active mind wouldn’t allow it. By tonight, she’d be so tired her mind wouldn’t have a choice. She was already counting the hours until her collapse.

  She hopped out of the car and headed inside. Saul occupied his usual perch at the front desk and smiled at her as she walked inside.

  “I was wondering when you would pay us a visit,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t sooner,” she said. “I’ve had some stuff…”

  “You don’t have to explain things to me,” Saul said. “Besides, I’ve got this under control.”

  She smiled. “I knew you would or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  At the center of the human trafficking case that Shaye had assisted the New Orleans police with was a street kid named Hustle. He’d helped Shaye on her first case and when his friend Jinx had gone missing, he’d sought out Shaye to see if she could help. Jinx had lived through a terrifying ordeal but was now reunited with her aunt, a good woman who would give Jinx the life she deserved.

  Hustle had been happy for Jinx, but worried about his own future. With no parents and still a minor, he should be a ward of the state, but he’d fled foster care to escape an abusive foster parent and had zero intention of returning to the system. During the investigation, Saul had not only given Hustle a place to stay while Shaye looked for Jinx, he’d saved Hustle’s life by shooting one of the kidnappers as he was about to kill Hustle. Then Saul had gone a huge step further and agreed to foster Hustle when all the dust had settled and Jinx was safe.