Possession Read Free Page B

stomach at the thought of all that life being drained from her, and mere minutes after he’d crawled out of a bed they’d shared for the night—a bed he’d had every intention of returning to.
    Instead, he’d returned to find another beautifulwoman holding a gun on him and to learn that Claire was dead.
    His hands tightened on the steering wheel, tension radiating from his every muscle.
    “One of these days your wicked ways are going to catch up with you, Jean-Claude.”
    The warning had come from Thierry’s mouth two years ago, just after his brother had married Brigitte, and Claude had taken his fill of the maid of honor’s generous attentions.
    “One morning you’re going to wake up to find a gun pressed to your forehead by a jealous husband or a jilted lover. Then where will you be?”
    He’d chuckled at his brother, who hadn’t been all that unlike him—at least until he’d met Brigitte.
    Claude ran a hand over his face. Somehow he didn’t think Thier would have predicted things would go down quite this way when he’d forecasted Claude’s doom.
    Some minutes later, as he entered the on-ramp for Highway 10, he realized that without really knowing where he was going, his instincts had sent him in the direction of the bayous, where a man could disappear as easily as a gator in the deep swamps and towering cypresses.
    Another kick to the trunk.
    Claude turned up the music louder and let the car lead him home and to safety.
    As for the woman…he’d decide what to do with her when the time came.

3
    A KELA’S LEGS threatened to cramp up. She struggled against the restraints at her ankles and her wrists, then gave another angry kick at the backseat of the high-end vehicle, glad only that the trunk was large and she at least had a little room to maneuver.
    The best she could figure was that she’d been in the car for at least half an hour, although she couldn’t be sure because she knew that in such situations the passage of time became distorted, so that five minutes seemed like an hour, essentially proving Einstein’s theory of relativity. Around ten minutes into the drive, she’d heard the unmistakable sound of the tires hitting a stretch of elevated pavement, possibly over a bridge. Canal Street? The causeway? The T Bridge? She couldn’t be sure.
    She felt around for the cell phone she managed to shift from her jacket pocket, although she couldn’t read the display. She’d blindly pushedthe 911 button, but with her mouth covered, she couldn’t tell the answering officer where she was. And since caller ID didn’t extend to cell phones yet, it was pretty much a lost cause.
    The car began to slow. Staring up at the dark roof of the trunk, Akela closed her cell phone and fumbled to put it safely back into her right jacket pocket. The small piece of modern technology could be all that stood between her and freedom. And she couldn’t chance that Lafitte would take it away from her when he finally reached his destination.
    Thankfully about fifteen minutes ago he had turned down the volume of the radio so the speakers so near her ear no longer pulsed with the sounds of washboard-heavy zydeco. Still, Akela didn’t think her hearing would ever be the same. She knew why he’d done it, of course: to mask her attempts to make as much noise as she could by thrashing against the trunk.
    The car shuddered, likely having hit a pothole. She squinted into the darkness, listening hard, and heard the unmistakable sound of gravel hitting the undercarriage. They must have moved from a paved road to a cruder means of passage. The car dipped again, and she bounced, her hip coming down hard on what she figured was the nut holding the spare tire in place under the thin carpeting.
    Where was he taking her?
    The sound of gravel was replaced by what she thought might be dirt.
    Fear wadded in her throat. If Claude Lafitte had killed Claire Laraway, what did he have in mind for her?
    Louisiana was not without its serial