LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Gone, too,” Salva answered.

      “In your line of work it doesn’t pay to have weaknesses, Maland. The bitch is your weakness. You should have had your fun with her, then killed her.”

      Salva didn’t want to hear what he should have done. Three years ago he had simply taken what he had wanted and damned the consequences. It had always been the Maland way. His little princess had, indeed, become his weakness. But he wasn’t prepared to give her up—not at any cost.

      “She’d only come here if she started remembering. Let’s hope Little Krissy stays stupid.”

      “You have my number. Day or night, call me if you see her.” Salva disconnected the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. Facing his mother, he said, “Tell Porter we’ll hold one more day. If I haven’t received a ransom note, and Kristen still doesn’t turn up on the island, I’ll head for St. Petersburg.”

      “And the Blu Devil? What of our plans for him?”

      “We put them on hold for the time being.”

      “On hold? But we’ve already done that too many times. You promised—”

      “Be patient a little longer, Mother. A Maland’s promise is his honor. I give you my word that the Blu Devil will die. But first, I will see that Kristen and Amanda are brought back to the island. And, if there is punishing to be done, I will see to that, too.”

      Chapter 2

      The dockside stench could curl a sensitive nose at twenty paces. The tourists who frequented the waterfront in Algiers, looking for a taste of culture, complained it griped their bellies and killed their appetites, too.

      Blu duFray had grown up on the docks and, as a seasoned fisherman, he rarely noticed the ripe odor or the refuse and floating beer cans as he unloaded his day’s shrimp catch off the Demon’s Eye—his favorite among the fleet of seven aging shrimpers he owned.

      Today’s heat had crowned one hundred, a humid hundred that had forced Blu out of his T-shirt well before ten that morning. He wiped away the sweat clinging to his neck and glanced around, noting he and his crew were the last to unload their day’s catch. By now the others were either on their way home or on a bar stool at Cruger’s.

      Out of the corner of his eye Blu saw something dark move and he turned in time to see a nun perch herself on a crate outside Thompson’s Fishery. She looked miserably uncomfortable as she fidgeted in the hot sun. She damn well should be, he thought, noting the way the black habit hid all but her small, round face.

      He shook his head, sure she had been sent to sting his conscience and make him feel guilty. Well, it wasn’t going to net her more than a heatstroke, Blu determined. Everyone knew the Blu Devil didn’t own a conscience. And he sure as hell hadn’t reformed like the hungry-for-a-story journalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune had claimed. But whether he had or hadn’t, the damage was done. Since he’d rescued those six kids from a slave trader last year, he’d been plagued weekly by mission-minded angels harassing him to donate a few extra crates of shrimp to their soup kitchens.

      Frankly, Blu was fed up with the whole damn situation. Yes, he’d saved those kids, but there had been a reward, compensation for his trouble, and he hadn’t been shy in accepting it. Still, his picture had been plastered on the front page of the newspaper along with a lengthy article playing him up as some kind of modern-day hero.

      Well, the nun had made a trip to the docks for nothing unless she had a few extra pounds to sweat off, because his pockets were empty for whatever charity she was selling. No one on this side of the river except for Spoon Thompson—the wholesale crook Blu was forced to sell his shrimp to—could afford to ante up weekly for a tax write-off.

      Blu glanced at the nun once more and found her staring straight at him. Oh, hell, she was working him, all right. She had her eye on his shrimp.

      Again, he cursed the unwanted publicity he’d received. If he had known how much trouble those kids were going to cost him, he would have never… No, that wasn’t true; Taber Denoux had earned his iron cage, and those scared kids had deserved a happy ending.

      He was all done questioning his actions. He may not like it, and most of the time he didn’t, but long ago Blu had accepted that a higher power navigated his path. Oui, he was all through questioning why it had been him who had discovered Denoux’s merchandise that night. In all honesty, he’d felt good seeing those kids reunited with their parents, but he’d also been eager to accept the sizable reward.

      Yes, indeed, the Lord did work in mysterious ways—he didn’t owe the bank his soul any longer, his men had regular pay checks, and he no longer had to work a second job.

      An hour later, the shrimp unloaded and the boat cleaned, Mort said, “If that’s it, you mind if I take off for a while? I got something to do.”

      “You got nothing to do, mon ami,” Blu drawled. “What you got is a few bucks in your back pocket and a memory burning your insides.”

      Mort grinned. “She had a pretty smile.”

      “I can’t argue with that.”

      “If you were me, what would you do?”

      Blu had no authority over Mort after hours. He’d been the oldest of the kidnapped kids Denoux had planned to peddle on the slave market—the only one who’d had nowhere to go after Taber Denoux had been put out of business and hauled off to jail.

      It wasn’t as if Blu had any regrets inviting Mort to join his crew. The kid had turned out to be a hard worker. He’d easily earned his wage, plus room and board. But from the beginning Blu had made it clear that Mort was expected to take care of himself. He didn’t want the responsibility or the aggravation of keeping tabs on a teenager. He’d made it clear he didn’t preach morals, give advances, or advice—hell, that would be like satan giving a lecture on the benefits of reading the Bible.

      “You got something more for me to do?”

      Blu shook his head. “No. Cross the river and take her someplace quiet.”

      Crossing the river meant catching the ferry and heading for New Orleans or taking the Crescent City Connection. The girl in question with the pretty smile worked at a hot dog stand along the Riverwalk.

      “I’ll see you later then,” Mort promised.

      “Oui. The Nightwing is all yours tonight. I’m staying at the Dump, again. I got payroll to finish,” Blu explained.

      The Dump—rather, the building in discussion—had been a purchase Blu made with some of the reward money he’d received for his “heroic deed.” The rundown two-story on Pelican Street, a few blocks from where he’d grown up, seemed to be a good investment at the time.

      He wasn’t so sure of that now, though it had certainly pleased his mother and sister. They had been after him to settle down—preferably with a nice girl.

      Blu had laughed out loud on hearing that, then promptly told them both that “settling down” was for old people, and that “nice girls” were for saints not devils.

      He glanced in the direction he’d last seen the nun, but she was no longer there. Relieved the heat had driven her off, he pulled on his gray sleeveless T-shirt and jumped from the boat. Swearing as a burning pain shot into his left leg, he reached down to rub his thigh through his worn jeans as he headed toward the fishery.

      The bullet wound, courtesy of the Denoux ordeal, had been slow to heal. The doctor had told him the infection he’d endured for the four days he’d kept the kids alive had resulted in permanent tissue damage and that he would always walk with a limp.

      The minute Blu walked through Thompson’s front door, Spoon looked up from his desk and grinned. He was a short, wiry little man with gray hair and insightful green eyes. In his fifties, twice married and single once more, Spoon had stepped into his father’s shoes in much the same way Blu had; the only differences

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