Navy Seal Cop. Cindy Dees

Alley, but it looked completely different this morning. It was still narrow and historic looking, but the fog and mysterious darkness were gone, replaced by street artists setting up easels and clipping sketches to the wrought-iron fence of St. Anthony’s Garden. A clerk was opening up a hat shop on the corner, and in the bright light of day, the alley looked completely harmless. A few pedestrians strode past, not meandering as if they were there to visit the alley, but passing through en route to somewhere else.

      “Why isn’t the alley blocked off with police tape? Isn’t it a crime scene?” she asked.

      “The NOPD can’t officially investigate a kidnapping for forty-eight hours. A crime hasn’t technically taken place yet. I’m going ahead with the preliminary work unofficially, based on that video of yours. Which the forensics guys haven’t verified as being authentic, by the way.”

      “It’s authentic!”

      “I believe you,” he said soothingly. “But you also have access to high-tech equipment that could doctor film images easily. The NOPD will have to verify that tape before they act on it.”

      She huffed, annoyed. She had no reason to fake Gary’s kidnapping.

      Bass was speaking again. “...besides, I went over every inch of the alley last night and didn’t find any evidence whatsoever.”

      How could a crime have happened in this exact place just last night? Life had gone on completely unaffected by Gary’s abduction. It didn’t seem fair, somehow.

      “...and how deep in the alley were you when those men approached Gary?” Bass was asking.

      “Oh. Uhh, down this way.” She walked nearly halfway down the alley. Using lampposts as references, she estimated where Gary had been standing when the attack happened. “Gary was about here, and I was about twenty feet back that way.” She pointed to where they’d come from.

      “I’ll pretend to be Gary, and you go stand where you were,” Bass directed her. “I’m going to call your cell phone, and you talk me through what happened.”

      She backed away from him. Her cell phone rang, and Bass’s voice caressed her ear. “Can you hear me?”

      “Loud and clear,” she managed to choke out. “Can you hear me?”

      “I’ve got you five by five.”

      As she recalled, that was military speak for him hearing her just fine.

      “Talk me through it,” he murmured in her ear.

      She gulped at his sexy drawl. “Umm, Gary was walking backward slowly. He got to where you are now and stopped to talk about the ghosts from the old prison. That’s where they jumped him. Right where you are now.”

      Bass stopped moving. “Then what?”

      “I stopped as well to film what I thought was a staged attack. When they grabbed him, they started moving away quickly. I couldn’t run after them or my camera would jiggle too much. I wasn’t using a steady cam rig last night.”

      “What’s that?”

      “It’s a harness a cameraman wears. The camera’s mounted to it. The harness compensates for my movement or shaking in the camera to keep the filmed image perfectly steady. Hence the name.”

      Bass turned and started walking away from her swiftly. “Follow me at the speed you were walking last night. I want to time how much of a head start the kidnappers had on you.”

      She did as he ordered, dismayed at how rapidly he pulled away from her and disappeared around the corner at the far end of the alley. She started counting seconds in her head as she continued to walk at the speed she remembered moving last night. About here, she’d sped up some. Not too fast. About like that.

      Fifty-five. Fifty-six. She reached the end of the alley and Bass stepped out from behind a building on the corner. “Almost a full minute,” she said in dismay. “God, if only I’d known he was in real trouble, I could have run after them. Maybe seen a getaway car. Gotten a license plate.”

      “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Bass replied. “You might have ended up kidnapped right along with your boss. Or, if you had caught up with them, even worse could have happened to you. For all you know, they were armed and dangerous. At least this way, you survived to report the crime.”

      “Aren’t there traffic cameras or something you guys can pull footage from to find out where Gary went once he and his captors reached this street?”

      “We’ve got partial closed circuit coverage of the city, but far from every block of it is covered. The cameras here point into Jackson Square, not up and down Chartres Street. I put in a request last night for the footage to be pulled, but I’m not hopeful it will help. Plus, it’ll take a day or two to get it.”

      “Who on earth wants something from Gary? He’s just a schlocky ghost hunter with a moderately successful TV show. It’s not like he’s rich or anything. He’s perpetually broke, in fact.”

      “That’s what I plan to figure out.”

      She stared up at him entreatingly. “You have to find him. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

      “Tell me this, Carrie. Do you think you might be in danger, too?”

      Shock passed through her body like a wave of icy water. “Me? Why me? I’m nobody.”

      “Are you sure the two of you didn’t see something, maybe film something, that someone didn’t want seen?”

      “No, I’m not sure. We’ve been filming here and there around New Orleans. Background shots for filler during the show’s voice-over narrations.”

      “I’m going to need to see that footage. All of it.”

      “Uhh, sure. It’s back at my place.”

      “Then that’s where you and I are headed next.”