Obsession

20

DREW’S HEAD HURT LIKE HELL and he didn’t feel exactly threatening in the towel around his hips, but all that melted into the background in light of the scene before him. Philippe holding Josie by her soft curls, the white sheath she’d worn earlier hanging low to reveal her precious nakedness to the world.

“Release her. Now.” He shoved the gun harder against the assistant manager’s head.

Philippe let her go.

Drew knew a moment of relief so powerful he let his guard down.

Philippe went sailing over the desk, the lockbox in hand as he scrambled for the open door.

“Shoot him!” Josie shouted.

Drew stared at her. He remembered Dick Rove accusing him of being capable of murder. While his stint in the military had resulted in his share of gunfire, he knew the severity of the consequences.

Sirens sounded from somewhere in the distance.

“We know who he is now, Josie,” he said quietly, putting the gun down as Philippe gained his footing. “The police will find him.”

“The hell they will,” she said, yanking the gun from his hands and taking aim.

Philippe turned at the door as if to give a triumphant grin before he disappeared into the crowded street beyond. And Josie squeezed the trigger, at the last second adjusting her aim so that she didn’t hit him in the head and chest, but rather the groin.

It was enough to take the man down, screaming.

Josie dropped the gun to her side. “That’s what you call Creole justice.”

IT WAS SAID THAT PROBLEMS somehow looked better in the light of day. “Sleep on it, everything will look better in the morning,” people said.

But this morning, everything looked worse.

Drew stood on the street a couple of buildings up from Hotel Josephine, an officer having given him a pair of uniform slacks and a T-shirt, though his feet were still bare. Josie was next to him in her sheath and a police blanket. The N.O. Fire Department was putting out the last of the flames Drew hadn’t even known had been raging on the fourth floor. Sooty water trickled through the lobby door and over the curb, making its way toward the sewer drain a ways down. What hadn’t been burned had suffered major smoke and water damage.

A black cat rushed up from behind one of the two fire engines positioned in front of the hotel and wound around Josie’s ankles, her legs bare but for the string of shells she always wore. She smiled at the cat then swept it up into her arms, rubbing its face against her cheek.

“Jez.”

Drew was amazed at how much like a Caribbean priestess she looked in that one moment.

“Miss, do you have the address of the place you’ll be staying?” a fire captain asked, taking off his hat and dragging the back of his hand across his brow.

“I’ll be staying here,” Josie said simply.

He shook his head. “This structure is uninhabitable. While you were lucky that only the fourth floor has burn damage, the place is a security risk until you can get someone in here for repairs.”

“She’ll be staying with me at the Marriott,” Drew said.

The fireman nodded.

“No,” Josie said, looking up the street at where her friend Anne-Marie was hurrying toward them. She immediately enveloped Josie in a hug, then got the abbreviated version of what had happened.

Philippe Murrell had been taken away in an ambulance, handcuffed to his gurney, an armed police officer along for the ride to the hospital and to the county jail after that. Not only had he been responsible for many of the problems Josie had encountered lately, including the voodoo rituals designed to scare her off, but it appeared he was to blame for the prostitute’s murder, if not the killing of the first girl.

“I’ll be staying with my friend,” Josie said quietly when the fire captain cleared his throat.

Anne-Marie blinked, looked at Drew, then agreed. “Yes. Here’s my contact info…”

Drew didn’t hear the rest of what she said, namely because he was trying to work out why Josie had refused to stay with him.

His gaze met and locked with Josie’s as she put the cat down.

He didn’t understand. Had he done something wrong? The intimacy they’d shared, the connection they’d made…he couldn’t have imagined it.

As he looked into Josie’s liquid brown eyes, he knew that he hadn’t. She loved him. And his heart responded in kind.

Why, then, did he get the inescapable impression that it was over?

“Are you ready?” Anne-Marie asked.

Josie didn’t appear to hear at first, then she slowly tugged her gaze away from Drew’s and nodded. “Yes.”

But Drew wasn’t ready. Nowhere near ready. He wanted to haul her to him and hold her so tightly that she could never walk away from him.

He wasn’t sure who was more surprised when he did just that, folding her into his arms, breathing in the smoky scent of her hair and skin, wishing for everything he was worth that the fear filling him was a figment of his imagination.

“Come back to Kansas City with me,” he said, grasping her arms. “I’ll take care of you.”

She smiled in a way he hadn’t seen her smile before. With sadness. With love.

“No, Drew…I can’t.”

She freed a hand from the blanket and cupped the side of his face, running her thumb along his jawline.

“This is home for me.”

Drew felt like he’d been sucker punched. “Josie, the hotel is gone.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she shook her head. “The Josephine will go on, Drew. Just as she always has.”

She removed her hand, her eyes beseeching. “We both knew from the beginning that this would end. That you would go back to Kansas City. The circumstances may have changed, but that never has.”

Had she just said it was over?

“I’m coming back,” he said resolutely.

She smiled wearily and tucked her chin into her chest. “I love you, Drew. Remember that always.”

And just like that, she turned and walked out of his life.

“JOSIE! MON DIEU, what’s going on?”

It took a moment for Josie to register that someone had directed a question toward her. She’d just left Drew standing looking at her as if she’d removed his heart straight from his chest. And she felt like someone had done the same to her.

Saying goodbye to him had to be the most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life. Including watching the Josephine burn. Never would she have believed that to be possible. The hotel was her family, her legacy. And Drew…

Drew was the love of her life.

She found her hand moving as if on its own accord to her flat belly beneath the blanket, hope blossoming within her that she’d be blessed with a small reminder of him, of their sweet time together.

“Jesus, girl, are you okay?”

Josie blinked at the woman in front of her. She hadn’t realized that she was there until then.

Her cousin.

To her surprise, Sabine hugged her almost as tightly as Drew had moments before.

“A friend ran to my place to tell me the news.” She held Josie at arm’s length. “Are you all right?”

Josie nodded, the genuine concern on her cousin’s face was too much to bear in light of everything else happening.

Sabine’s gaze went to the hotel and the firemen swarming around and through it.

“Is the hotel…I mean, will…”

Josie should have known there was an ulterior motive for her cousin’s appearance. Oh, sure, she hadn’t wanted to see Josie injured or harmed, but her ultimate goal was always the hotel and whatever money she could milk out of it.

Josie thought of the money in the lockbox she’d safely placed in the bag over her shoulder. Should she offer her cousin a cut? Pay her off and get her to release all claim?

Sabine pulled her to her side and they both stared at the Josephine.

“I’ll help you put her to right.”

Josie squinted at her.

“What? You think I’m only interested in the cash? The Josephine is…well, the Josephine. The Quarter wouldn’t be the same without her here.”

Josie wasn’t sure which shocked her more: that Sabine was saying the words or that she apparently appeared to mean them.

“I mean, if you’ll let me help you…”

Josie stared at her. It had been a year since Granme had passed. A year of troubles and hardships, including from the woman at her side. Did Josie dare invite more?

She smiled. “I’d love it if you’d help,” she murmured. “After all, this is a family thang.”

They laughed together and Josie felt some of the weight lift off her shoulders.

As they continued walking in the direction of Anne-Marie’s place, the other two women chatting about what had happened, Josie looked over her shoulder at the Josephine, where the charred fourth floor was still emitting smoke.

For a startling moment, she could have sworn she saw her granme there, her arms crossed, smiling down at Josie. And instead of smelling smoke, she detected narcissus.

Then she looked at where Drew still stood, staring at her helplessly.

It took every ounce of effort she could drag up, but she managed to turn and continue walking, determined not to look back again.