Phantom of the French Quarter. Colleen Thompson

crucial, unteachable ingredient: a real connection with the audience. She’d finally discovered such a bond while sharing the stories she’d collected volunteering in the old French Quarter nursing home where her grandmother spent her last days, a place Caitlyn had gone in the hope of learning something of the woman she and Jacinth had never been allowed to know.

      A die-hard history major, Jacinth brushed off the tales Caitlyn collected as “unsubstantiated melodrama,” but even she had been unable to hide her excitement over one involving their own ancestor, Victoria Villaré, who had allegedly used a secret passage to spy on Union officers who had occupied her home during the Civil War. For long months after hearing of it, the sisters had searched in vain for some sign of a hidden doorway, but for Caitlyn, the proof had never been the point.

      A block from the cemetery, they found a parking space. As they climbed out, thunder rumbled, and Reuben asked, “You sure about this? It’s gonna be a night fit for one of them ole rougaroux you like to scare the tourists with.”

      When an image of Megan Lansky’s bone-white corpse flashed through Caitlyn’s mind, she shivered at the thought of the legendary Cajun werewolf, a zombie-like monster said to drain its victims dry. Though the French called them loup-garou, the Cajun version was every bit as frightening. But rougaroux weren’t stranglers, nor were they controlled by tiny old ladies who used creepy anagrams as names and claimed mortuary numbers as their home phone.

      Reaching onto the backseat floorboard, Caitlyn grabbed a pair of umbrellas, along with her flashlight, and forced herself to grin at Reuben. “You know as well as I do,” she said, her voice only a bit shaky, “these ‘dark and stormy nights’ are great for business—and if I don’t get back on the horse tonight, I’m afraid I’ll never set foot in this cemetery again.”

      Twenty minutes later, she was sharing her great, great, great grandmother’s story with the dozen or so tourists who joined her not fifty yards from the spot where she had found the body. Senior citizens, urban hipsters and lovers of the paranormal, she held them all spellbound as they stood beside the wall vault containing the remains of more than a dozen Villarés, including the famous Victoria, Caitlyn’s grandmother Marie…everyone except her father, whose body had never been recovered from the swamp, where he’d been murdered by a fishing buddy.

      As thunder rumbled all around them and the low clouds’ bellies flickered with lightning, only Reuben Pierce seemed immune to the mood she was creating. He constantly wandered the group’s perimeter, aiming his flashlight between rows of tombs, and bristled when another tour group encroached on their territory.

      Edging closer to where he stood while her clients took pictures of the surrounding tombs, she whispered as the wind gasped through the nearby treetops, “Relax, it’s only Mumbling Max. You know how he’s been lately.”

      “Mumbling Max” Lafitte was the guide who’d taught her the ropes for Paine, a balding, gray-haired man whose uninspired performances quickly convinced her that she could do a whole lot better. Dull as he was, Max had hated being outshone by a young upstart—and hated it even more when his boss repeatedly humiliated him about it. To get even with her, Max was always horning in on her tours, trying to drown out her stories with his drone.

      A cool breeze stirred her hair, a welcome breath of fresh air that was quickly followed by the rain.

      “Last week’s offer stands,” Reuben said above the patter on the tops of their umbrellas. “You say the word, I’ll have that weasel scamperin’ outta here like—”

      He never had the chance to finish, as a deafening explosion and a blinding white streak filled the air. With a reflexive shriek echoed by the scattering tourists, Caitlyn dropped the flashlight and her umbrella, and ran, instinctively avoiding the sharp crack of falling wood from the lightning-struck tree.

      But she only made it a few steps before something struck her. With a pain like a hatchet splitting her skull, the chaotic scene fell silent and all the world winked out.

       Chapter Four

      Before Marcus’s stunned eyes, the night shattered into stark frames. Blackness and confusion. Lightning flash-lit still shots.

      A dark figure dragging off a fallen blonde. Dragging her away to—

      No! Shaking off the shock of the ear-splitting boom, Marcus didn’t think but reacted solely on instinct. An instinct to protect Caitlyn Villaré at all costs.

      Hurtling through the pitch dark, he struck like a guided missile. The force of his leap knocked the kidnapper off his feet.

      Knocked him down and made him drop her as the rain crashed down in blinding sheets. Marcus ducked two broad swings before coming up with a spinning hook kick that should have taken his opponent’s head off.

      Instead, he heard a startled grunt and felt the impact as his foot struck either the man’s shoulder or his chest. Rather than staying to throw more punches, Marcus’s opponent turned and vanished, out of sight and out of reach.

      But had he left for good? Or was he only waiting for a second opportunity?

      And how could Marcus follow and catch him, when he couldn’t possibly leave Caitlyn lying, crumpled and unconscious, in the rain?

      AS HE PACED the cramped motel room hours later, Marcus’s pulse throbbed at his temples and his heartbeat boomed in his ears. What the hell had he done? Had his lonely, nomadic existence worn him down so badly that he’d decided to crush it out like a burned-down cigarette?

      If I wasn’t a criminal before, I am now, he realized, as he stared at the beautiful blonde woman sleeping in his bed. Still, for all his remorse, his fingers itched to touch the shutter button, to record the contrast of the angel in repose against the grungy hell of this bottom-rung dive.

      Great idea—give them proof you’re an obsessed animal.

      Regardless of the temptation, he knew it would be days before the lens arrived to fix his camera, and probably only hours before he was taken into custody for kidnapping.

      How would he explain the drastic steps he’d taken to safeguard Caitlyn Villaré—or the unanswerable yearning that her presence, the very thought of her, set off in his soul?

      Insane. You’ve had some kind of break with reality. Wasn’t that what the shrinks would say when he tried to make them understand? The cops and the DA would have another name for it, especially once they discovered the charges against him back in Pennsylvania.

      Murder, arson—each flare of memory seared his awareness, choked him with the bitter ash of regret.

      But he had to keep his mind on present problems, such as the item he had accidentally scooped up in the cemetery while collecting the things that had spilled from his camera case. The new evidence that had driven him to risk contacting Caitlyn again.

      He thought, too, of the low-life motel clerk, the one witness who had seen him walking in supporting Caitlyn.

      “Your girl have one too many?” The skinny kid had laughed, his beaky nose poking through a screen of greasy hair and his vintage heavy-metal T-shirt as holey as his black jeans.

      “Just tired,” Marcus had assured him.

      The clerk’s leer said that he knew better, and he’d handed Marcus a card with his name, Craven, and a number scribbled on it. “You decide you need somebody to drop her somewhere later, just text me your room number. For a little cash, I’m your man to make things happen. Anything you want.”

      Marcus had passed Bird Beak two twenties to ensure that he wouldn’t be disturbed, but he had to take it on faith that Craven was exactly what he appeared to be: an opportunistic lowlife who would sooner sell his grandma than talk to the police.

      As light rain pattered against a grimy window, Caitlyn moaned and shifted. Marcus’s relief slid free in a sigh, because if he’d been wrong and she failed to regain consciousness, if she—he scarcely dared to think it—died, all of this would be for nothing, and he might as well go turn himself in.