Hall, Jessica Read Free Page A

hurry. He hauled the box downstairs and slipped
out into the alley, then tossed the remaining bottles through the windows
before he looked up to see how the second floor was burning.
    He saw bloody fingers appear in a gap between the boards over the
windows. They clenched the edge, straining at it.
    She was alive. She was trying to get out.
    "Playing possum on me, sneaky little bitch." Billy ran
around the side, checking the street from the corner before he slipped out to
the front of the warehouse. She wouldn't be able to get out the windows, but if
she got down the stairs—
    Isabel knew Caine. She'd tell Caine.
    His hands shook as he frantically searched his pockets, then found
the key he'd been given. He shoved it into the lock and turned it, but he used
too much force and the key snapped in half. "Goddamn." He
tried to pull out the broken bit, but it was jammed, along with the lock.
    Dumb-ass firemen wouldn't notice it, Billy decided. Heat and smoke
were pouring out of the first-floor windows; in a few minutes the whole place
would go up. The important thing was, Isabel wouldn't be walking out of there
alive. She wouldn't go tattling to Caine on him.
    He could almost feel his daddy's big hand clap him on
the shoulder. One less whining bitch in the world—you done good, son.
    Watching the fire and imagining the woman inside burning made the
last of the bad feelings go away. He had a whomping hard-on for some reason,
though. That was fine with him; he'd nail Cecilia as soon as he got home. The
distant sound of an approaching siren made him dart back around the building
and trot down to where he'd parked his truck.
    Billy climbed in and started the engine, and rubbed his palm
against his crotch. His dick was so hard he might not be able to wait until he
got home. He'd just drive down a ways from the building, park, and watch it
burn.
    Just to be sure.
     
    "Mind telling me why we're responding to a
ten-twenty-six?"
    J. D. Gamble glanced sideways at his partner, Therese Vincent.
"The warehouse belongs to Marc LeClare."
    "Ah." Terri watched a mother pushing twins in a double
stroller cross at the light in front of them. "Cort busy again?"
    J. D. nodded. "Fire safety conference in Biloxi."
    "He call?"
    The light turned green, and he cruised through the intersection.
"Yeah."
    "So Cort sends us to do his job, as a favor to your dad's
college buddy." She shook her head. "That makes perfect sense. Should
we stop by the firehouse and fill out his reports for him afterwards?"
    "Cort types better than you."
    "Monkeys type better than me." J. D.'s partner studied
her painfully short fingernails. She kept them that way
to avoid biting them. "J. D., have I mentioned lately that your brother is
an asshole?"
    His mouth hitched. "Several times."
    Although it was only eight a.m., and most of the shops remained
closed, a few hard-core early birds had already hit the street. As he turned on
to Bienville Street, J. D. spotted a couple wearing feathered masks, drinking
coffee from Styrofoam cups as they peered through the lacy wrought iron grille
guarding an antique store's display windows. Even if the biggest party on the
planet weren't in progress, no one would have given the masked tourists a
second look. Mardi Gras was a year-round business in the Vieux Carre.
    Terri took out a cigarette, but opened the window halfway before
she lit it. One of the tourist shops was already playing zydeco, and the zippy
little riffs echoed on the nearly empty street. "Your folks throwing the
usual soiree next weekend?"
    The annual Noir et Blanc Gala, held at his parents' Garden
District mansion on the weekend after Mardi Gras started, was as legendary as
his father's restaurant. Though tourists flocked daily to the Krewe of Louis to
order from the all-French menus, the family party was restricted to five
hundred of the most prominent members of New Orleans's first families. Dress
was strictly regulated to two colors—black and white—and many of his