LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 2

      Bastien stared down at the frightened young woman before him. She was a tiny little thing. And right now, scared out of her mind, she looked about twelve years old. Scratch that. She was too hot ever to be mistaken for a child. She was petite but she had curves in all the right places. Her hair was brown with gold streaks and currently pulled into a high ponytail that hung long and smooth down her back. Her eyes were big and dark, and her skin had a beautiful olive undertone. He’d place her ancestry as at least partially Mediterranean.

      She was the kind of woman a man looked at twice. Maybe had some dirty dreams about. Had he met her in any other setting—at a bar or with a mutual acquaintance—he’d have done his damnedest to charm her into his bed.

      Did she realize she was wringing her hands again? He really shouldn’t stop her—they were a useful body language tell—but damned if he could stop himself from reaching out to take her hands once more, rescuing her reddened fingers from death by squeezing.

      Thing was, he was no rookie. He knew better than to fall into the whole comfort-the-family-member thing. It wasn’t his job and could end up being a giant distraction when it came to finding missing persons. He had become a cop to solve problems. To use his military training to catch bad guys. When he was on duty, he was all about the job. Put the pieces together. Solve the crime. Move on to the next case. He did his best to stay away from all the messy human emotions that came with his line of work. They were nothing but a distraction.

      However, he wasn’t entirely without basic human decency. And that forced him to feel at least a little sympathy for this young woman in the face of her fear. Still, this was work, and it was not his job to pat her hand and say, “There, there.” It was his job to find the guy in the video.

      And like it or not, he was sitting in front of his only currently identified suspect. She wasn’t much of a suspect as they went. After all, she’d come forward to the police with direct video evidence of the crime. But, he couldn’t rule her out, either. She was a known close associate of the missing person.

      He prompted her, “Can you think of anyone who would want to do Mr. Hubbard harm?”

      “That’s a complicated question where Gary Hubbard is concerned,” she finally offered up.

      “Why’s that?”

      A sigh. “His television show has devoted fans and equally devoted haters. There’s a whole group on social media devoted to debunking his ghost sightings.”

      Seriously? Ghosts? He schooled his face to give away nothing and nodded encouragingly.

      Another sigh from the young woman. “Gary has a big personality. He likes to play jokes on people and delights in poking at people’s most cherished beliefs. He’s a bit of a curmudgeon in that regard.”

      “Give me an example.”

      “He tries to refute generally accepted versions of history using communication with ghosts to dispute commonly held understanding of famous historic events. He did a series of shows about the founding fathers and talked to ghosts of their slaves to prove what a good deal it was to be one of their slaves. Gary got hundreds of death threats over those shows.”

      “When did these episodes air?”

      “At the end of his first season, six years ago. The public outcry was what got his show renewed, in fact.”

      Damn. It was old history, then. That didn’t sound like a motive now for kidnapping and possibly worse. But he asked nonetheless, “What’s the most recent scandal he’s stirred up?”

      “Well, this season, he’s working on a treasure hunt having to do with the last French governor of Louisiana in 1803. The guy supposedly worked for Napoleon, but Gary got it in his head that this guy, Pierre Clément deLaussat, was a secret French royalist.”

      Still didn’t sound like motive for kidnapping or worse. What was he missing? He prompted, “And this is controversial because...”

      “Gary claims to have been approached by the ghost of deLaussat’s mistress, who told him deLaussat was in possession of a great royal French secret that he hid in New Orleans.”

      “Are you kidding me?” Bastien blurted.

      The young woman winced. “I wish I were.”

      “I hardly think the reputation of some guy who lived in the early 1800s is worth committing a felony over.”

      “You would think, wouldn’t you?” she responded. “But Gary’s detractors get wired way tight when he attempts to challenge history.”

      “If he’s using conversations with ghosts as his rationale, I can see why they get up in arms.”

      She looked up at him, her chocolate eyes worried. “Enough to harm him?”

      That was the question, wasn’t it? He summarized: “So far, all we know is that two guys grabbed him and took him away from Pirate’s Alley. Maybe they wanted to get more information from him. Or hell, I don’t know, maybe they wanted him to perform a séance.”

      She snorted. “Gary wouldn’t know how to do a real séance if a ghost jumped up and bit him in the butt.”

      “Duly noted,” he replied dryly.

      Her gaze snapped to his, and a moment of humor shone in her eyes. It lit her entire face, transforming her into a fey creature for an instant. Whoa. He could almost believe in ghosts and otherworldly beings when she looked at him like that.

      Kidnapping. Investigation. Ask questions. He dragged his mind back to business and managed to come up with, “You said he’s on a treasure hunt. For what? How valuable is it? Maybe someone snatched Hubbard to get at a rich treasure.”

      “I don’t know what the treasure is. He won’t say. He’s releasing clues in each show this season and plans to do a big reveal in the season finale.”

      Bastien frowned. “How can you not know? Aren’t you working closely with him on the television show?”

      “You’d think.” Bastien detected a hint of bitterness in her voice. So. She wasn’t happy that the boss was keeping secrets from her. Unhappy enough to provide a motive for kidnapping, maybe?

      He asked, “Has Mr. Hubbard received any recent threats? Maybe letters or emails?”

      “I don’t know. He handles his own correspondence. I’m just the cameraperson, and I do the first post-shoot editing.”

      Did that mean she was responsible for dubbing in ghosts? He was tempted to ask, but he wasn’t here to argue with a ghost hunter over the existence of ghosts. “Do you have access to Mr. Hubbard’s email account?”

      “No.”

      “Too bad. Normally, we have to wait until a subject

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