Showdown in Mudbug Read Online Free PDF

the table. “They asked you to kill me?”
    Hank nodded, clearly frightened. “Not you by name, exactly, but they said that friend of my ex-wife’s that was a psychic…but they were clear that it wasn’t Sabine. I told ’em no, straight out. I ain’t never killed no one, and I ain’t about to start.”
    Raissa narrowed her eyes at Hank. “How did you find me?”
    “I remembered Sabine saying your shop name before, so I looked it up.” His eyes widened. “Oh, shit. I led them right to you, didn’t I?” He jumped up from the table. “Jesus, I didn’t even think—How could I be so stupid?”
    Raissa rose from her chair and placed her hand on Hank’s arm. “Don’t worry about it. They know about your connection to me, so they already know how to find me, I’m sure.”
    Hank stared at her for a moment, still not quite buying it. Finally, he blew out a breath and sank back into the chair. “Then why come to me at all? If the Heberts want you gone, and they know who you are and where to find you, they could have already handled this. Why ask me when they already knew I wasn’t going to do it?”
    Raissa sat back down and thought for a minute. “I think, given my connection to Maryse, they figured you would warn me.”
    Hank still looked doubtful. “You’re saying they’re sending you a message? What message?”
    Raissa’s jaw involuntarily clenched. “That if I don’t disappear on my own, they’re going to help me.”
    Zach sat low in his car just down the road from Raissa’s shop. He’d seen her coming down the block and wondered why she stopped before reaching her building. When she slipped the pistol from her ankle holster, he’d been ready to bolt from the car, but something had stopped him. The ankle holster for one. Sure, plenty of people carried in New Orleans, and a single woman living in a downtown apartment would be remiss not to have some form of protection, but an ankle holster was definitely not the most common place for a woman to carry a gun.
    And it was the way she moved—as if she’d been trained for exactly what she was doing.
    Against his better judgment, he’d waited as she entered the alley, giving her ten seconds before he hurried to assist. When the seconds had passed and she hadn’t appeared, he cursed himself and his stupidity and eased out of the car and across the street. He crouched behind a mailbox and listened. For a moment, all he heard was the regular noises of the street—paper rustling on the sidewalk, the sound of car engines in the distance—but then it trickled down to him. The sound of voices.
    So Raissa’s instincts had been right. There had been someone in the alley, but apparently that someone was more interested in talking than in something more insidious. He was just about to move closer when Raissa and a man stepped out of the alley and hurried to her building. Her pistol was tucked in the waistband of her jeans, and she didn’t seem the least bit concernedabout protecting herself from the man who followed her.
    She glanced his way as she unlocked the door to her shop, and he ducked behind the mailbox, hoping she hadn’t seen him. A couple of seconds later, he heard the door click shut. He watched until he saw the light in the upstairs apartment come on. Deciding Raissa was done with whatever she was up to that night, he crept back across the street and climbed into his car.
    Zach hadn’t recognized the man who had been hiding in the alley, but Raissa must have known him well enough to let him in her apartment. Which made him wonder why the man hadn’t called or simply rung her doorbell. Why lurk around the corner, running the risk of being shot?
    Zach looked up at the apartment again. The light was on in the front room, and Zach could make out a silhouette of the man sitting at a table. A minute later, Raissa set glasses on the table and joined him. Surely, if the guy was a friend or boyfriend he wouldn’t have been hiding in an alley. Which