Never Die Alone

“‘Lord have mercy’ is right,” Aria

“Oh, for the love of Saint Peter,” their mother had admonished. “Girls!” She’d raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if seeing past the plaster and molding she could view heaven. “Why did you give me girls?”

The twins had giggled at their mother’s discomfiture, because truth be told, what would Ellen Mae Allemande Hayward have done with boys? Dealing with all that energy and testosterone? Oh, sure. Hunting, fishing, boxing, and football were not on their mother’s top one thousand things to do. Nope, Ellen wasn’t exactly the den mother or football mom type. She was lucky she had girls. Bria

So, of course, Ellen’s warnings had gone unheeded and added gasoline to the fire of Bria

“Jase Bridges,” she said, feeling her shoulders straighten a tad.

“So you do remember.” His smile stretched.

“Yeah, of course.” As traffic passed, she hoped that she hid any indication of her fascination with him way back when. The rebellious kid who had flagrantly disrespected authority was almost gone. Almost. From first glance Jase appeared to have straightened up from the tattered, I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass eighteen-year-old. But something told her that the same rebel lurked beneath the façade of slacks and white dress shirt with its sleeves rolled up, a bit of a tattoo showing above the bend of his elbow. A rattler, she recalled, coiled around his biceps.

“I overheard your conversation with Detective Bentz.”

“How?”

“I was still hanging around after my interview with him.” He flashed that sardonic grin she remembered. “Yours sounded way more interesting than mine.”

“And you were there . . . Why?”

“Business.”

Huh. Who was this new, older, cleaned-up version of the irreverent kid she once knew? “You eavesdropped?”

A twitch of one corner of those blade-thin lips. “For once I didn’t have to.” He leaned a hip against the side of her Accord. “You were pretty loud.”

“I tend to get that way when I’m passionate about something.” She cringed a little, wondering how many others besides Bentz’s partner and Jason Bridges had heard her.

Again, the eyebrow. Cocked. Silently sarcastic. And irritating as hell.

“Is there something you wanted?” she asked, extracting her keys from her purse. “I don’t think you flagged me down just to catch up for old times’ sake or whatever.”

“I want to help.”

“With?”

“Finding 21.”

Her back muscles tightened. Though she’d take any help she could get in tracking down the 21 Killer, this, ru

“Why?” she asked.

“I’m a reporter.”

“Not a cop?”

“Not yet, though I do have my app in for the public information officer job that’s coming up.”

“So almost a cop.”

“More like maybe-if-he-gets-lucky a cop,” he admitted. He crossed his arms over his chest, the seams of his shirt pulling as he glanced back at the police station.

“Jase Bridges, lawman?”

“Yeah, hard to imagine. I know.” He snorted at the irony of it all, and she felt the corners of her mouth twitch, her first inclination to smile since she’d found Selma De

“But still a reporter.”

“Probably always. No matter what the job description reads.”

Because she was fast ru

Because deep down, she didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust her feelings for him and heard her mother’s warnings ru

So when had she ever listened to Ellen?

She unlocked her car but didn’t get in. “Then you know about 21.”

He gave a curt nod. “It made national news. A bizarre ritual killer usually does. And, of course, I was on the crime beat, so he intrigued me. I was in Sava

“He scared the hell out of me.”

“He scared a lot of people.”

“He still scares me.”

“You don’t think they”—he hitched his chin toward the police station—“got their man.”

“I’m sure of it,” she said, and her thoughts turned dark again. “At least ninety-nine percent. You eavesdropped on the conversation, so you know the details.”

“I heard part of it. Why don’t you fill me in?”

She studied him for a second, decided she had nothing to lose. “The long and the short of it is that I think 21 has come to New Orleans. Why? Probably to show off for Bentz, but who really knows? A couple of girls are missing and we . . . their mother and I, are worried sick that he may have targeted them.” Staring into his eyes, she felt the now-familiar lump form in her throat when she considered the fate of the De

“But you don’t think so.”

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.” Her cell phone rang and she fished it out of her purse to see Tanisha’s name and number appear on the screen, along with the time. “Look, I’ve got to run.” She let the call go to voice mail. “I’m late as it is.”

“Give me a call.” He pressed a business card into her palm before stepping away from her Accord and jogging across the street.

She watched him go, noticing that despite the khakis and pressed shirt, he still had the pace of an athlete, his hips moved fluidly, his stride long. “Get over it.”

She slid into the hot interior and fired the engine, then hit the A/C. It was giving her trouble, oftentimes blowing hot air, other times working, but she didn’t have the time to deal with it, so she took her chances and today, all day, it had complied. She caught another glimpse of Bridges as he disappeared around the corner of the police station and again felt that accelerated thump of her heartbeat.

“Schoolgirl crush,” she reminded herself as she glanced into her side-view mirror and nosed into traffic. She had twenty minutes to get across town where Tanisha would be waiting.

No doubt it would take her thirty.

“You could just call the Baton Rouge PD,” Montoya said as he followed Bentz through the station. “Wouldn’t that be a helluva lot easier?”

“I will.” Bentz skirted a couple of uniformed officers climbing the stairs as he hurried down. “But I’m heading up there anyway. I want to see what they’ve got on the missing De

“You know, just because some crazy-ass chick comes in and starts rattling your cage doesn’t mean she’s legit,” Montoya pointed out, but kept stride with his partner as they reached the first floor.

“We’ll see.” Bentz took a hallway leading to the back door and parking lot.

He was heading for his vehicle when Montoya said, “I’ll drive. That way you can make your calls on the way and it won’t take three hours to get to Baton Rouge.”

Bentz wanted to argue, but his partner had a point. Together they crossed the lot to the spot where Montoya’s Mustang was parked. Unbuttoning his collar, Bentz slid into the hot interior. The truth was that Bria