LITMIR.BIZ

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she mouthed, afraid to actually put voice to the word again, lest saying it might destroy it.

      Then she met Dixon Lloyd’s gaze and saw a glint of triumph lighten his dark blue eyes. He was playing on her emotions, trying to catch her off guard.

      She straightened and lifted her chin. “I am home. I don’t want your help and—” she drew in a breath that caught in a sob “—and I don’t need your—protection.” She crossed her arms. “I want you to get—out!”

      She dug her short fingernails into her arms and glared at him until he lowered his gaze and dropped her cell phone back into her purse. He looked at her again, started to speak, then apparently thought better of it. He walked past her out of the living room.

      His footsteps echoed and faded as he descended the stairs. For a couple of seconds, there was silence. Rose stiffened and held her breath, listening, until she heard the front door open and close. She let out a careful sigh, and winced as the throbbing in her head flared again.

      He’d nearly caught her off guard with his clever mention of home. But how? Why had the word affected her so?

      What she’d told him was true, as far as it went. Maman’s house was her home. It had been for the past twelve years.

      But before that …

      Rose closed her eyes against the pulse that beat painfully in her temple. She needed to follow Detective Lloyd and make sure he’d left, then lock the door and put the chain on, but she couldn’t face the stairs. The headache was making her feel light-headed. She needed a migraine pill.

      She made her way to her bedroom and swallowed a tablet without water. Turning out the light, she lay on the bed in the dark for a few minutes until the pounding in her head ebbed from horrific to nearly bearable.

      Finally, shading her eyes with her hand, she forced herself to stand and make her way carefully down the stairs.

      When she checked the door, she found that the detective had thrown the latch. She locked the dead bolt and put the chain on, then slowly climbed the stairs again. She made her way into the kitchen. She fumbled in the cabinet for a box of crackers and grabbed a soda from the refrigerator. She took the food into her bedroom, where she forced herself to eat the crackers and drink a few sips of soda. The chilled cola eased her stomach a bit. She lay down and tried to relax, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold the nightmare memories at bay.

      Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss. Rissshhhh, rozzzzzsss. The whispers took eerie, ghost-like form and swirled around her like banshees. Blood fell like rain, washing over her vision and bringing with it the sharp, bright glint of light on slashing metal.

      She moaned and covered her head with a pillow.

      A long time later, the silvery flashes faded along with the whispers, and Maman’s soothing voice slid into her dreams, soothing the pounding in her head and erasing the vision of the slashing, searing knives.

      DIXON WALKED AROUND the outside of Rose’s home, assuring himself that all of her lights were out. He glanced at his watch. It was only eight-thirty. He waited a few more minutes, to be sure she hadn’t turned them out in preparation for going out. But the house remained dark and quiet.

      When he’d come down the stairs, he’d expected her to be nipping at his heels, making sure he left. But she hadn’t followed. He didn’t like that she’d trusted him to leave.

      However, because she hadn’t followed him, he’d had a couple of seconds to check out the official-looking form he’d noticed on the foyer table when he’d first come in. He’d scanned it quickly, with the help of the high-intensity laser light on his keychain. The form was a permit renewal for a vendor space on St. Ann Street, signed by Rose Bohème.

      The name on the form was Renée Pettitpas, but the renewal date was after Maman Renée’s death. A thrill ran through him as he realized what he was looking at. He glanced back toward the stairs, then back to the form.

      Judging by the diagram, the space appeared to be right in front of the praline shop. Dixon had walked by that small square of land dozens, maybe scores of times in the past twelve years. Had Rose been there every time? How had he not noticed the beautiful black-haired gypsy reading her tarot cards or holding a customer’s palm?

      He was at once gratified and disappointed that he hadn’t sensed her there. Disappointed because he might have been able to close her case years earlier, but gratified that he wasn’t so in tune with Rosemary Delancey that he could have actually sensed her presence in the middle of bright, busy Jackson Square.

      Now he reluctantly headed for his Dodge Charger. He felt an irritating compulsion to stay all night and watch over her. Her reaction to his questions about her attack had worried him. But when she’d threatened to call 911, he’d been forced to acknowledge that the last thing he wanted was to find himself explaining to local uniformed police why he was harassing her.

      And for damn sure he didn’t want Ethan to know what he was doing. Rosemary Delancey was his partner’s first cousin, and in his family’s minds, she’d been dead for twelve years. Dixon didn’t want to give them false hope or listen to Ethan telling him how gullible he was to believe a broken-down addict looking to score a few perks in prison.

      He was going to need more proof than her terror and his obsession before he turned the Delanceys’ lives upside down. He tried not to think about what he was doing to her carefully insulated life.

      Glancing back at the house once more, he noticed that the faded sign was rocking slightly in the wind. Maman Renée, Vodun, Potions, Fortunes.

      Rose had lived here, safely hidden away. It was arrogant to assume that now that he’d found her, she wouldn’t be safe without him.

      FIFTEEN MINUTES FROM the time he drove away from Renée Pettitpas’s two-story shotgun house, Dixon was sitting on the cracked, uneven patio of the home he’d bought out of foreclosure four years ago. He’d finally decided two things at age thirty-two: he wasn’t the marrying kind, and renting was like tossing his money into the Mississippi River.

      He leaned back in the teak chair and took a sip of the brandy he’d chosen instead of a beer.

      He swirled the snifter, admiring its amber color in the reflection of the goldfish pool lights. Amber—the color of Rosemary Delancey’s eyes.

      He’d stood in front of her less than an hour ago, and yet now, the whole experience almost seemed like a dream. He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up the vision of her at twenty-two. The girl whose image had soaked into his brain like her blood had soaked into the hardwood floor of her apartment. But that innocent, smiling girl no longer existed.

      Now all he could see was midnight-black hair, shocking in contrast to her dark red brows, the ugly scar that only made her face more interesting and fascinating, the casual flowing clothes that he was sure Rosemary Delancey, debutante and Carnival Queen, had never even considered wearing.

      He shifted in his chair and reached for his wallet.

      “No,” he said out loud, stopping himself. He stood and picked up the jar of fish food sitting on the glass-topped table beside him.

      “Here you go, Pete, Louie. Remember I told you about Rosemary Delancey?”

      Louis Armstrong and Pete Fountain, his goldfish, were much more interested in the food he tossed them than his conversation.

      “Come on, Louie, you remember. My first homicide. She was the Carnival Queen?” He took a sip of brandy, trying to forget about the photo in his wallet. He didn’t want to look at her twenty-two-year-old face. He was no longer obsessed with that girl anymore. That pretty debutante was dead.

      “You ought to see her,” he told Louis. “She walks like she’s on a runway. Her hair is black as night, but those eyes …” He held up the glass of brandy. “See how the pool lights hit the brandy? That’s the exact color of her eyes.”

      Louis gulped down the last of the food floating on the surface of

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