Cover Me (13 page)

“Great,” Ray growled. “Hennessey belongs is prison, and I’m planning to put him there. There is no way he’s going to be governor if I have anything to say about it.”

“Good luck with that. You’ve only got six months.” Remy chuckled.

“Check back with me in six weeks, smart-ass.”

“I don’t know. You should have seen Hennessey when Barnaby and Barrow went down.” Remy punctuated
his words by pointing at the picture of Hennessey on the newspaper’s front page. “He didn’t even blink. He acted as if he didn’t even know those two lowlifes. It’s like he’s made of Teflon.”

“We’ll see what he’s made of. So can I count on you to help me?”

Remy grinned sheepishly. “Love to, Ray, but Carlotta and I are eloping next week. She’ll kill me dead if I even look like I want to
change our plans.”

“Congratulations,” Ray said, then added, “Wait a minute. You’re planning to elope? Isn’t that kind of missing the point?”

“We’re getting married in Houston, then flying to Cancun for a week. Want to put all this off for a week or two and go with us?”

“I think I’ll stay here and tackle Hennessey. I don’t want him to get one millimeter closer to the governor’s mansion.”

“You call Teague Fortune if you need anything,” Remy said. “He’s a good guy. Plays his cards close to his chest. You can trust him.” Remy gave Ray Fortune’s number, then looked at him.

“I wish I could be here, Ray, but true love wins out. Carlotta and I did our part. We took down Barnaby. I’ll be back two weeks from today if you need me then.” Remy held out his hand. “Good to see you,
man.”

Ray shook Remy’s hand. “Thanks. And thanks for starting the cleanup for me. It’ll be easier now that Barnaby and Barrow are out of the way.”

“It’ll be a banner day when Hennessey goes down. Say—” Remy looked at him “—have you seen his sister, Molly, since you’ve been here?”

Ray made a show of getting out his wallet. “Nope. I just got here yesterday.”

“You ought to check
on her,” Remy said. “She was nice. Too bad she’s got a son of a bitch for a brother.” He touched his forefinger to his temple. “Call me if there’s anything I can help you with
over the phone.
”

Ray smiled. “Will do. Thanks, Remy.”

After Remy left, Ray stared at Hennessey’s photo. Ray had been the only one on the investigative team who’d actually worked at the LDAT offices. He’d never
told Remy or Mack about Molly or what he’d done, although they knew that Hennessey’s cute college-age sister was volunteering at her brother’s office. He’d never told them how he knew about the secret meeting called by Hennessey to plan the diversion of grant moneys. Afterward, when the planning meeting turned out to be a poker game, and Mack had casually mentioned Hennessey’s sister and suggested
that pillow talk was never reliable, Ray had clenched his jaw and kept his mouth shut.

He didn’t have to be told that it was his fault Hennessey, Barnaby and Barrow had come through Katrina smelling like roses. Or that he was responsible for Remy and Mack losing eight years of their lives. Bringing Hennessey down would go a long way toward making it up to both of them.

Right now, though,
two people had said he needed to check on Molly, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

Chapter Two

That afternoon, Ray was loitering across Canal Street from the building that housed the Hennessey law offices when Molly Hennessey walked out through the tall glass doors and turned left on Canal. She had on a short, flouncy skirt and platform heels. From his vantage point, her legs were just as long and toned and the rest of her just as slender and perfect as he remembered.

As he watched, she stopped at the corner, checked the Walk/Don’t Walk sign, sent a hurried glance up and down the street, then ran across to the neutral ground barely in time to miss the traffic.

Ray took a deep breath and stuck his phone into his pocket. He arched his neck, plastered a
Me? I’m just walking down the street
look on his face and set off on a collision course with her. He
walked as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Just as the light changed and Molly headed across, Ray caught a glimpse of a man he’d noticed earlier hanging around the attorneys’ building. The man lumbered awkwardly into the neutral ground. Soft and sweaty, with thinning wisps of brown hair blowing straight back as he stumbled up onto the curb, he was hardly noticeable—unless you knew him.

And Ray knew him, although he couldn’t think of his name. Before Katrina, he’d been a two-bit private detective who’d done some quasi-legal work for Patrick Flay. There was no way it was a coincidence that he was tailing Molly.

Ray slowed his pace, grabbed his phone and snapped a couple of shots of the P.I. Just as he finished, he ran smack into Molly as she hopped up onto the sidewalk.

“Oh,” she cried as her purse hit the sidewalk upside down and the contents spilled everywhere. “Oh, no!”

Ray dropped to his haunches and snagged several escaping pennies, dimes and quarters. Molly crouched, too, balancing precariously on the platform heels. She grabbed the purse and righted it, shoveling as much back into it as she could.

“Sorry,” Ray muttered, not sorry at all.
He hadn’t meant for her purse to spill—hadn’t meant to literally run into her, but it was better than the clumsy, choreographed collision and fake apology he’d planned. He picked up a lip gloss that rolled to rest against the toe of his shoe. The tube was pink with red letters proclaiming
Sweetest Strawberry.

He stared at it, then at her lips. So that was why she’d always tasted like that.
A scent memory fed him flashes of them kissing and laughing and rolling around in bed. A spear of lust hit him in the groin. He groaned.

Molly lifted her head and he fell right into her dark eyes, just as he had the first time he’d met her. He swallowed and dragged his gaze away from hers, quickly checking on the P.I. The man was waiting for the light to change with his phone next to his
ear. He spoke urgently as he squinted at the two of them. When he realized Ray was looking at him, he glanced behind him, as if considering retreating. But he stayed put.
Barny.
The lowlife’s name was Barny Acles.

Ray turned back to Molly as her expression morphed from blank through surprise to irritation. Her head jerked slightly backward and she wavered on those silly heels.

“Ray?”
she whispered, her face blanching. Then she shook her head and laughed shortly. “Sorry,” she said, closing her purse and rising. “For a moment there, I thought you looked familiar.” She slung the straps of her purse over her shoulder and smoothed the front of her skirt.

Ray stood, too. “Hi, Molly,” he said lightly. “Sorry about—” He gestured vaguely.

“Ray?” This time the word came out
as a hoarse whisper. “Ray Storm?” She looked up at him as if working to convince herself that her vision wasn’t playing tricks on her.

He nodded, smiling. But inside, he steeled himself. As soon as she decided that it really was him, she was going to do one of two things: slap him or turn on her heel and walk away. Hell, she’d probably do both. “It’s me.”

She shook her head and kept
on shaking it—slowly and steadily. She took a step backward and angled her head. He watched a muscle twitch in her jaw. Her pale skin began to regain its color, starting with splotches of pink in her cheeks. “So you’re not dead,” she said tightly. “I should have known.”

He held his breath. This was the deciding moment. To his surprise, she didn’t slap him. She merely executed a spectacular
pirouette and walked away.

“Molly, wait.” He reached for her arm.

She jerked away and squared her shoulders. That gave him enough time to jump in front of her. “Come on, Molly. Let’s talk. Catch up.”

She whirled back to face him, the sudden dampness in her eyes catching the late-afternoon sun. He felt a pang in his chest.

“Catch up?” she echoed. “No. I don’t want to
catch up
with you. So if you didn’t die, I guess that means you just up and left. Went back to wherever it was your family lived. It must have been nice to have someplace to go to escape the
inconvenience
of Katrina.”

She swiped at her cheeks. “I’m not crying about you,” she said defiantly, her chin going up another millimeter. “It’s just—even after eight years, I still hear about someone I knew who
died in the flooding. Or somebody I thought was dead shows up.”

That last had a bitter flavor to it.

She gestured, open-handed, toward her eyes. “It’s kind of an emotional roller coaster.”

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he tried.

She glared at him. “Congratulations on living through the storm, Ray Storm.” With that, she turned on her heel and flounced off.

Ray watched
her until she entered a drugstore. Then he looked back at the neutral ground, but Acles had disappeared.

* * *

M
OLLY
H
ENNESSEY
CLOSED
the front door behind her and took a deep, shaky breath. She set the bag from the drugstore on the kitchen counter along with her purse, then held out her hands and watched them quiver.

Ray Storm was the last person in the world she’d expected to
see today—or ever. She still had nightmares about the last time she’d seen him—the day before the storm. The day she’d realized that the only reason he’d slept with her was to get evidence that her brother was skimming federal grant moneys from the Louisiana Disaster Avoidance Task Force, or LDAT. Stupidly, she’d given him every last bit of information she’d known.

She hadn’t heard a word
from or about Ray since Katrina. She hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d thought he was dead. In the chaos that reigned once the flooding started, thousands of people were left wondering about friends, neighbors and family. A significant fraction hadn’t made it. She’d grieved for Ray until anger finally replaced the sadness. Anger at him for using her teenage rebelliousness and her self-righteous outrage
at her brother’s thievery to get evidence against him. Anger at him for making her fall in love with him.

No.
Not in love. She shook her head as she headed for her bedroom to change, kicking off the heels. It had been a hard lesson to learn at age eighteen that the man she’d given her virginity to had used her to get proof of the discrepancies she’d found between funds received and funds
used for the LDAT program. Once he had them, he was practically out the door.

Then, as soon as Katrina had hit, he’d disappeared. She’d feared the worst. Now she knew. Of course he hadn’t died. He’d just escaped back to wherever he’d come from. He’d deserted New Orleans. He’d deserted her. He didn’t deserve her love.

But damn, he’d looked great today. Really great. Same thick black hair,
same dangerously dark eyes and the same crooked smile that had never once failed to melt her heart. His lanky body had filled out in the past eight years. He was still lean, but in a hard, silk-over-steel, grown-up way.

Then he’d had the gall to offer her a cup of coffee—to
catch up.
Catch up! Like coworkers who’d lost touch. Her fingers curled into claws. If she had a do-over and longer
fingernails, she’d claw his eyes out for walking out on the devastation and sadness of the storm. For walking out on her.

She closed her eyes and tried to banish that first shock of recognition when she’d looked up from her spilled purse. But the darkness behind her closed lids made a nice canvas on which to display his handsome face.

It had taken her a long time to get over his callous
betrayal. She’d been only eighteen. He’d been her first lover. She remembered the tender surprise and chagrin on his face when he’d realized that.

She’d grown up a lot during the past eight years. She’d dated some pretty fine men, but no matter how much she cared about them, she’d never been able to commit to the long haul. The memory of Ray’s crooked, dimpled grin always got in the way.

Okay. That was enough thinking about Ray Storm. It was Wednesday night and she had a date—with herself—to watch her favorite cooking competition show. She needed something for dinner that was portable, satisfying and yet with zero calories. That was the only way she’d fit into the red designer dress she planned to wear to her brother Martin’s $500-a-plate gubernatorial campaign kickoff dinner
on Friday night.

Just as she opened the refrigerator to check if the lettuce in her crisper had turned to slime, her doorbell rang. Frowning, she glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was after 7:00 p.m. She rolled her eyes. It was probably some kids selling candy for a school fundraiser or hawking subscriptions to the daily paper.

She went to the door and looked through the peephole but
saw nothing. She put the chain on and opened the door a crack. “Yes?” she said, letting impatience tinge her tone.

“Molly, hi.”

The familiar voice sent a shiver up her spine. It was Ray. How had he gotten her address? As soon as the question flitted through her mind, she berated herself for her stupidity. He was an FBI agent. He probably had a file with everything from the address of
her first-grade teacher to the date of her last period.

“What are you doing here?” she asked tiredly.

“Open up. I need to talk to you.”

She peered through the tiny opening allowed by the chain. He was standing a nonthreatening foot and a half away from the door. “I’m not dressed.”

That crooked smile raised the corners of his mouth. “Ha. That shouldn’t be a problem. From what
I remember, you probably have two closets full of clothes in there.”

“Bite me,” she said and pushed the door closed. But she didn’t walk away. Her mistake.

“Molly, please.”

Her heart gave a little jump. He’d closed that nonthreatening eighteen inches by at least twelve. It sounded as though he’d put his mouth to the crack between the door and the facing.

“This is important.
I need to let you know about something.”

With a sigh she opened the door again, to the width allowed by the chain. “Tell me,” she said.

“Come on, Mols. Let me in. I promise I’ll be good.”

“I swear, Ray, if this is a trick of some kind—”

“It’s not.”

She heard the serious tone in his voice. “Come in and close the door. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get dressed.”

He stepped inside. “Don’t bother. This isn’t going to take but a minute. Besides,” he continued, eyeing her from head to toe and back up again, “you’re more covered up than you were this afternoon. That skirt couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches long.”

She compressed her lips. “If you’re claiming to be the fashion police, I’ll need to see your badge.”

He shook his head, his mouth
quirking in that smile. “I’ll be serious.”

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “What is it?”

“Are you aware that you’re being followed?” he asked.

“What?” Molly wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it sure hadn’t been that. “Followed? By whom? Other than you, that is.” She sent him a look designed to let him know she hadn’t been fooled by their accidental meeting.

He inclined
his head, acknowledging the truth of her statement. “Okay, I deserved that. But I swear, you’re being tailed. The guy is a P.I. who has apparently moved
way
up in the world since Katrina. Back then his targets were generally found sneaking around cheap motel rooms.”

“Ray—” she said warningly.

“His name is Barny Acles. I saw him this afternoon when I ran into you.”

She lifted her
chin. “What made you think he’s following me?”

“He was right behind you crossing Canal, and I think he recognized me. That should have made him back off, but it didn’t. At least not right away.”

“Why?”

“He used to do some work for Patrick Flay. So he knows who I am.”

She rolled her eyes. “I meant why is he following me?”

“Hell if I know. Would your brother put a tail on
you?”

“My brother trusts me,” she said, suddenly hit by the memory of the last time she’d seen Ray. Her brother had trusted her then, too, but she’d nearly betrayed him.

“What about safety?” Ray asked. “Although, I’d think Martin Hennessey would want someone better than Acles if his purpose was to keep his baby sister safe.”

“Martin is not worried about me. He announced his candidacy
back in January and it’s March now. I’ve been safe so far.”

Ray nodded, looking thoughtful. “Maybe he received a threat against you. Maybe it’s the incumbent, hoping to get something on you so he can knock Martin out of the race.”

“Something on
me?
” She laughed. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

He grinned, exposing that dimple in his right cheek, and her heart skipped a beat.
She hadn’t meant to draw him in with a shared memory. It was too intimate. Sadly, he had known her well enough to know that there was nothing anyone could
get
on her. Even sadder, he knew that it was still true, even after eight years. “How do you know this P.I.?” she asked.

“He’s one of the few things that hasn’t changed a bit around here in the past eight years. He’s still as sneaky and
doughy as he was before Katrina.”

“Doughy?” she echoed.

“You know, soft and pudgy and sweaty.”

“Oh,” she said, sidling toward the front door. She needed him to leave. His tall, lanky frame filled up her house. He was too tall, too good-looking and too sexy. The longer he stayed, the less she’d be able to resist him.