Obsession (12 page)

The thought that Drew’s sperm was even now making its way toward one of her eggs made her chest feel lighter still.

A sound made her open her eyes.

Only it wasn’t Drew standing gazing at her from the open doorway.

It was Philippe.

D
REW WASN’T SURE
what had hit him. All he knew was that when he opened a bleary eye, he was lying facedown first on the kitchen floor, the tile cool against his cheek.

He felt the back of his head, his fingers coming away with dark liquid. Damn, but that hurt.

He attempted to get up, only to feel the floor shift under him again and force him back down. Oh, boy. This wasn’t good. He remembered the open front door.

Josie…

J
OSIE WAS INSTANTLY AWARE
of how open she was to the man looking at her as if he had a right to. Her legs were spread, her breasts bare.

She quickly lifted to a sitting position and pulled the top sheet to cover herself.

“Philippe! What are you doing here?”

She smoothed her hand over her hair, looking around.

“Has something happened? Is something wrong?”

He hadn’t answered her and his silence made her heartbeat kick up a notch.

She started to get up from the bed, suddenly not comfortable in the prone position while he continued to look at her. “Jesus, Philippe, what’s going on?”

Before she could stand, he was knocking her back down on the bed.

Josie gasped, struggling to turn to face him, but he seemed just as determined to keep her facedown, his weight threatening against her.

“You just wouldn’t do what I wanted you to do, would you, Josie?” he asked, his voice low and menacing.

Fear quick and sure spread through her with alarming rapidity.

“What are you talking about?” She fought to keep the panic out of her voice. “Philippe, let me go, for God’s sake.”

He chuckled into her ear but there was no humor in the sound. “Oh, no, Josie. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

She felt the evidence of his arousal against her bottom. Bile rose up in her throat.

“I…I don’t understand,” she said. “What have you asked me to do that I didn’t do?” She knew she was grasping at straws, but she needed to understand why someone she had thought her friend was attacking her in her own bed.

She thought of Drew down in the kitchen. Surely, he should have returned by now. Had Philippe done something—

“You wouldn’t sell the Josephine.”

The warmth disappeared from Josie’s blood.

“That’s right. That’s the whole reason I was here. Why I ever took a job in this godforsaken place. I was hired to convince you to sell to Dick Rove.”

The name on the envelopes that arrived every week like clockwork.

“But no, you wouldn’t listen to reason. Even as you sank deeper into debt, you held on to this hole-in-the-wall dump.”

He moved to strip the sheet from her body while still holding her down.

“God damn it, Philippe, what are you doing?” She thrashed against him, alarm growing. “You’re gay.”

Again the laugh.

“Rape is about power, Josie. Not sex.” She fought to hold on to the sheet as he struggled to
take it from her. “Not that I am gay, mind you. I just knew that when Samuel died, you would be leery of strangers. An easygoing gay guy who still lived with his mother seemed to be just what you were in the market for.” His words sounded closer to her ear. “Well, I don’t live with my mother. And, as you’re about to find out, I’m not gay.”

Josie wasn’t capable of hearing his words. She was all too aware that she was losing the battle with the sheet and that given his larger size and greater strength, she would be no match against him.

He shoved her face into the linens and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about how he was about to sully the beauty of what she and Drew had spent the night doing.

Blindly, she reached a hand out in front of herself. Her heart filled with hope when she felt the edge of the end table, then the base of a candleholder. Grasping it, and praying that the wick was still burning, she swung it in his direction.

He made a shrill sound and then his hands were no longer on her.

Josie struggled immediately to the other side of the bed and off, glancing over to see melted wax from the candle cooling on his face. He swiped at it, his eyes closed.

The sheet was twisted under his knees so she left it, snatching the sheath she’d been wearing earlier from the floor as she bolted for the door and out into the drawing room beyond. She heard an inhuman roar, then Philippe was crashing against her, toppling her to the floor and taking the table holding the single white candle with them.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” he growled.

He roughly turned her over and tried to force her legs open with his knee.

“This place is falling down around your ears, not even prostitutes want to stay here, except that dead bitch Frederique, and yet there you are, still determined to make it.”

He thrust his hand against her throat, choking off air and causing her to cough. But his mention of Frederique sparked a memory. He’d opted out of cleaning room 2B earlier, claiming that someone needed to man the front desk.

Could he have killed Frederique? Unlike the general public, he had full knowledge of how the first victim, Claire Laraway had been murdered, right down to how she’d been positioned on the bed. Had he orchestrated a copycat killing, taking care of two birds with one stone by doing away with someone helping Josie and guaranteeing the
scandal would chase away any others thinking about staying there?

It seemed so far-fetched.

Then again, what he was doing right now would have seemed the same ten minutes ago.

Her throat burned from the pressure he applied. She started coughing hard, tears coming to her eyes.

Strangely, he loosened his grip slightly. Josie dragged in deep breaths of air.

“Frederique,” she croaked. “What did you do to her?”

The candle on the table they’d overturned during their fall ignited the white tablecloth. The flash of yellow light threw his features into relief as he grinned at her malevolently. “The same that I’m about to do to you.”

The Quarter Killer.

Was it possible that Philippe had committed both the murders of Claire Laraway and Frederique? But Claude had indicated that even though the murders had the same MO on the surface, there were many differences. The first being the rape. The second, the choice of weapon. Claire’s throat had been cut with a clean-edged knife, while Frederique’s flesh had been roughly slit with a duller blade.

Philippe was again trying to pry Josie’s legs apart despite the growing yellow ball of flame to her right. The burning tablecloth had acted like a wick, leading the fire to the curtains. Peripherally, she saw one of the curtains burn from the support poll and land on the settee, where it would most likely set that afire as well.

The Josephine.

She fought against her captor doubly hard.

“Damn you, Philippe! Damn you. May you rot in hell for what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done is nothing compared to what I’m going to do.”

She thrashed her legs, sending him off balance. “Your boss won’t like it if you burn the place down.”

“My boss will probably give me a bonus.”

Josie’s throat was raw with pain where he continued to grip her. “How much is he paying you? I’ll double the amount.”

His full-bodied laugh made her shudder. “With what, Josie? Your good looks?” His gaze scanned her naked frame. “It might have been tempting, once. But since I’m already going to take what you would have given me—”

“Money! I have money,” she cried. “Lots of it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who’s trying to con who now?”

“I’m telling the truth. I went to the bank today and took out a mortgage. The hotel was paid for, free and clear, and I took out a loan to help me get her back up and running again. To bridge the time between now and when business returns.”

She’d also done a lot more to guarantee the Josephine’s survival, but all he needed to know was that she had cash on hand. Lots of it.

“You’re lying.”

“On my grandmother’s grave, I have it.”

He released her neck. She tried to struggle up to a less vulnerable position.

“Where is it?”

“Downstairs. At the front desk.”

He stared at her, apparently unaware of the fire that was growling next to them. “Liar. You wouldn’t keep that kind of money downstairs with the doors open.”

“Think about it. That’s exactly where I would keep the money. Like you, that’s the last place anyone would look for it.”

He removed his weight and lifted her with a hand at the back of her neck. Josie gasped as he shoved her toward the door. She just managed to grab her white sheath before she was stumbling down the stairs. An ominous whoosh sounded behind her as the fire greedily ate everything in its
path in her private rooms, fed by the air circulating through the hotel. Air that had been meant to cleanse the structure of any bad karma.

Air that was now helping in the destruction of the Josephine.

She’d managed to get the sheath over herself just as Philippe shoved her down the last remaining stairs into the lobby. She fought to keep her footing and ran for the desk and the shotgun that was behind it.

He caught the back of her hair, pulling hard. Hot tears flooded her eyes and shards of pain shot up her scalp. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

He shoved her to the side, keeping a hand on her as he procured the cash lockbox and the key for it that she kept in a drawer.

Josie used his distraction to edge a little closer to the desk, to the gun. As he awkwardly attempted to open the box with one hand, he released his grip on her slightly.

She took full advantage of the opportunity and shoved him to the side, grabbing for the gun she’d left unlocked.

It wasn’t there…

A loud click sounded.

“Looking for this?” Drew said, the muzzle of the weapon pressed against Philippe’s temple.

D
REW’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.”

I
T 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.

“J
OSIE!
M
ON
D
IEU
, 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.