her instincts, Christy turned her steps in the direction of the mansion. It really was a pathetic sight. The soaring brick columns that embraced the house on all sides were being eaten away by time and weather. Why had Laura repeatedly been drawn here?
The front door was gone. Boards had been nailed across the gap, but the widest of them had dropped, leaving a yawning hole. Christy didn’t hesitate. Popping through the opening, she was inside the house. Or what was left of it.
Resurrection. That’s what the plantation was called, named after the resurrection fern so common in southern Louisiana. But as Christy passed from room to room, she knew that this house would never be resurrected. It was a gray shell, stripped of everything but the dust bunnies.
Gone were the marble fireplaces, the paneling and carved moldings, the chandeliers, the floor tiles and silver locks. Vandals? If so, they had made off with what must have been some pretty valuable treasures.
Even the staircase was missing and if the outline of it in the peeling plaster on the wall was any indication, it had been a grand affair. But at the back of the house she located a plain service stairway that was still intact. Hey, why not check it all out? Which is why Christy found herself climbing the flight to the second floor where things got a bit more interesting. Or uncomfortable, depending on your point of view.
From behind a door that stood slightly ajar came a rustling sound. Spooks? Mice? Or maybe she was just imagining the noise. Either way, she took the precaution of removing the Glock from her shoulder bag. Of course, getting out of here fast would probably have been the smarter thing to do, but if you were a private investigator…well, you were supposed to investigate.
Semiautomatic firmly in hand, she spread the door wide. Behind it was another narrow flight of stairs leading to the attic. Saying a little prayer, she crept up the stairway, emerging at the top in the hollow vastness of the attic.
She could have sworn those instincts had been trying to tell her something. But, of course, they couldn’t have been because there was nothing to find. No spooks. No wild-eyed lunatic leaping out at her. Not even a scurrying mouse. And she could tell because there was plenty of light. There was a reason for that. The neglected roof had opened up in one corner.
Nor had the damage stopped there, as she discovered when she went to look. The invasive rain had rotted the floorboards under the gaping roof both here and on the floor below, collapsing ceilings and leaving a cavity that dropped from the attic all the way to the first floor. A meteorite couldn’t have fashioned a more perfect shaft.
There was an object above the deep well hanging from a rusted nail on one of the remaining roof rafters. It looked like a small bunch of dried plant material. Herbs of some kind? Leaning forward, Christy reached for it. That’s when the rustling she had heard earlier revealed itself without warning in an explosion of sound and motion.
Suddenly, alarmingly, she came under attack. They swooped down at her, beat at her neck and shoulders, flew at her face. It was like a scene out of that old Hitchcock thriller, The Birds. Except these critters, a colony of swallows nesting up in the shadowy rafters behind her, meant her no harm. They were merely frightened and in a hurry to escape.
Intentional or not, however, by the time the last of them had streamed away through the opening in the roof, they had cost Christy her Glock and her shoulder bag. Her balance as well. She lost that just as her fingers snagged the dried plants, which immediately crumbled to flakes.
The next thing she knew, she was down in the hole itself where the flakes had drifted, hanging by her hands from an exposed pipe once buried under the missing floor. It must have been a gas line that had supplied a chandelier suspended from a second-floor ceiling, though explanations hardly mattered when her precarious handhold was the only thing keeping her from a broken neck.
It was a damn silly situation to get caught in, not to mention absolutely terrifying. The pipe seemed solid enough. Problem was, as hard as she tried, grunting, straining, swinging, she couldn’t manage to pull herself up out of that shaft.
This was serious. Her arms were aching by now, her fingers numb. How much longer could she cling to this pipe before her hands began to slip, before she plunged—How far was it? She made the mistake of glancing down and was immediately so giddy that she closed her eyes. That’s why she didn’t see the long arm that reached down from over her head, didn’t know it was there until a strong hand clamped around her wrist.
Eyes flying open, she issued a little yelp of surprise. The hand tugged, urging her to release her grip on the pipe. No choice but to trust him. She did and was hauled up with such force that when her feet touched firm floor again, they failed to support her.
She staggered, slamming against a hard wall which turned out to be a broad-shouldered body. The body had a pair of arms that caught and steadied her in a comforting embrace. At least it was comforting until, dragging her head back, she looked up and discovered that the pair of lady-killer eyes colliding with hers belonged to the Prince of Darkness.
“You have got to stop falling for me like this,” he said.
Chapter Two
It was disgusting that, like half the female population in New Orleans, she should suddenly find herself susceptible to this man. Of course, there was a very good explanation. This was only a momentary reaction because she’d been so shaken by her predicament. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be experiencing all these treacherous sensations. This dizzy breathlessness as the pair of brash green eyes, that didn’t miss a thing, continued to hold her gaze. This sudden heat in her insides as she stared up at the bold face under its thatch of dark hair. And this weakness in her limbs as the powerful arms continued to pin her against his chest.
Okay, so the guy had a blatant sex appeal in a lean body that scraped six feet and moved with a sensual, confident gait. She’d give him that, whatever her earlier denials.
But Dallas McFarland? Come on, he was her rival, her sworn enemy. And nature was playing a mean trick on her, that’s all, one Christy planned to correct just as soon as she recovered her wind.
“Because,” he continued in a deliberately seductive voice, “if you go around dropping into holes just to get my attention, things are bound to happen. Really dangerous things.” And up came that grin again on his wide mouth, the sinful, mocking one.
“I suppose,” she said, finding air at last, “there’s an explanation for why you’re not on a boat with Brenda Bornowski. Why you happen to be—Hey, let me go.”
“That any way to express your appreciation to the man who just saved your shapely little fanny from getting flattened?”
“I’m forever grateful,” she said sarcastically, and then amended it with a grudging, “Okay, I am grateful. Now let me go.”
He released her and Christy moved back out of his reach. Better. Or it would be if those green eyes would stop trying to get intimate with her. “So what did you do with Brenda?”
“Turned her over to one of my operatives when the boat made its first stop. Routine stuff at that point,” he boasted. “She did meet the punk onboard, by the way. I imagine Daddy will be subjecting her to a harsh punishment when he gets my report. Probably deprive her of her credit cards for at least a month.”
He sounded so smug about it, so carelessly confident that Christy wanted to smack him. She had gone and busted her backside, that same backside he had just so familiarly referred to, to win the Bornowski case, and he’d reached out with ease and plucked it from her grasp. It was an outcome that still rankled.
McFarland had a pair of black eyebrows, thick ones that seemed to express his moods. Right now they were lifted in amusement. “Yeah, I know,” he said, reading her thoughts, “you’re wondering how I managed to catch up with little Brenda when you thought you’d left me in the dust back on Canal. It’s called being resourceful—like slipping a couple of twenties to the subject’s best friend beforehand to let you know by cell phone where she’s planning to wind up.