Prologue

      New Orleans

      Dallas McFarland was history. They had lost all swaggering, hot-eyed six feet of him at a fender bender over on Canal. McFarland had been trapped in the mob of gawkers that had gathered when a minivan had run a light and smacked into a panel truck. So much for his celebrated reputation as a private investigator.

      Chortled wasn’t a word that Christy Hawke ordinarily associated with herself, but on this occasion it seemed appropriate. She did feel like chortling. McFarland had been a thorn in her side from the day she had opened her own agency, robbing her of one client after another.

      Not this time, thank you. She intended to demonstrate her worth, win this contest of skills, and secure the job she badly needed. Make that desperately needed.

      But not by being overconfident, Christy sharply reminded herself. She and her subject might have accidentally shaken McFarland, but there was always the chance that Christy could also be given the slip. Not that her young target had manifested any sign yet of being followed. With all the negligent ease that only a teenager is capable of, she continued to wind her way through the tourists sauntering along Decatur Street, never once turning her head.

      “Hey, my daughter is tricky,” Marty Bornowski had gruffly cautioned them. “You wouldn’t be the first tail this kid has managed to ditch. That’s why I need the best and can afford to pay for it. So, providing one of you can show me whether she’s still meeting this little punk on the sly, you get all the work I can throw your way.”

      Christy wasn’t forgetting the warning as she kept her objective in sight. However, it did seem to her that if his daughter was determined to evade her father’s surveillance, she was going about it all wrong. Because there was no way, absolutely no way, that Brenda Bornowski could blend with any crowd, not even here in the French Quarter where the eccentric were hardly remarkable.

      From her chunky shoes to her black leather miniskirt, and cropped hair, with spiky tufts shaded from orange to silver-blond, Brenda proclaimed her presence. Then went on to confirm it with a lavender-blue mouth and a particularly vivid shade of green fingernail polish. And that didn’t take into account her triple-pierced ears, pierced nose, pierced lower lip and conceivably other pierced areas not yet evident to Christy.

      Interesting, she thought. It was just possible that Brenda was carrying more metal on her body than the heavy equipment her father used in his asphalt business, which had Christy wondering if she ought to start paving roads herself. Had to be a lot more profitable than private investigating, at which she was barely surviving. And that was on the good days. She had yet to determine if this would be one of them. That depended on Brenda.

      Ah, the Jax Brewery! That was where they were going. She watched Brenda cross the street and head toward the blocky, multi-storied structure that had been converted from an old brewery into a trendy shopping mall. Following at a safe distance, Christy quickly checked the street behind her before swinging onto the center after her subject. Wonderful! McFarland was still missing in action. Brenda Bornowski was hers!

      Brenda started up on the top level and worked her way down from shop to shop, Christy drifting after her. The girl seemed in no hurry. She tried on an awesome jacket in an explosion of colors, which she didn’t buy. She chatted on her cell phone, presumably to a girlfriend and examined a selection of lingerie so blatantly erotic in nature it would have made a Bourbon Street stripper blush. And as she continued to aimlessly wander the mall, chewed her way through a bag of licorice sticks acquired from a candy stand near the elevator.

      What Brenda didn’t do was meet anyone, male or female. Nor at any point did she indicate the slightest concern over the possibility that she was being shadowed. Which, even as careful as Christy was to remain unobserved, should have been her first clue that trouble was on its way.

      The problem wasn’t Christy’s lack of alertness, however, but the mounting tension that accompanied it. This was always a threat to concentration. She couldn’t help it. She had so much riding on this contest that she risked taking the brim off her baseball cap from tugging on it, a habit whenever her nerves were under siege.

      Come on, Brenda. Make my day.

      Things got a bit more interesting when they returned to the ground floor and her subject took them into a bookstore. A bookstore? It didn’t strike Christy as Brenda’s kind of scene. Had to be the young clerk and his eager smile. Sure. The two of them lost no time engaging themselves in a leisurely conversation, Brenda leaning against the counter as she flirted with him.

      Christy went into action behind the paperbacks. From the shoulder bag that was far too large for her petite frame, but contained all her essentials, including her Glock semiautomatic, she removed a pocket-size tape recorder and dutifully reported the encounter in a low murmur.

      “Don’t think this can be the, uh, little punk she’s meeting. No tattoos. At least none currently visible. I’d say he’s harmless…”

      By the time Christy replaced the recorder in her bag, her subject had left the counter and was strolling up one aisle and down the next. Christy followed, pretending to examine the titles. When they reached the end of the last aisle, Brenda abruptly swung around and faced her. Except she wasn’t Brenda. Same chunky shoes, same black leather miniskirt, even the same hair, but definitely not Brenda Bornowski.

      Christy must have clearly registered her shock since a gleeful grin appeared on the girl’s face. And that’s when she understood two things. The conversation on the cell phone upstairs had been a lot more than just gossip. A cunning Brenda, spotting Daddy’s tail, had summoned Best Friend to the mall.

      The second thing Christy understood was that she should never have taken her eyes off her subject. Not even for those forty-five seconds with the recorder, because that’s all Brenda had needed to pull this switch on her.

      Gone!

      But maybe not. From the corner of her eye, Christy caught a flash of orange and silver blond through the expanse of glass at the side of the store. Brenda was outside and on her way to the top of the levee!

      And I’ll be damned if I lose her.

      The little stinker was far too important to Christy, which was why she streaked out of the store, out of the building, toward the river.

      Above the blare of a Dixieland band playing on the Brewery’s restaurant terrace came the hoot of a steamboat whistle. It announced the imminent departure of one of the replicas of the old paddle wheelers that offered hourly excursions along the river. And Christy knew, just knew, that Brenda was making for that vessel.

      Determined not to let her quarry escape, she struggled, squirmed and squeezed her way through the tourists that jammed the area. Progress, she was making progress. She