Chapter One

Nelson Latch toyed with the wedding ring on his ring finger. Taking it off, putting it on. Taking it off again. Stuffing it in his pocket.

It’s not like I’m gonna be wearing it much longer anyway.

Still, he kept fiddling with the slim gold band.

He paced his premium suite in Le Lion Royale Hotel. A trickle of rain pattered against the sliding door leading out to his private balcony. Nelson watched the beads weep down the glass. He couldn’t muster any tears of his own, of course. Divorce had never been something he considered a loss.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Divorce always presented new opportunities. Freedom. New women.

Maybe this time he wouldn’t remarry. All his wives turned out to be the same grasping, sniveling type of bitch anyway.

He stepped in front of the gold-framed standing mirror, straightened his collar, and brushed some lint off his sleeve. Then he went back to pacing.

Back to waiting.

Nelson checked his watch, not for the first time, wondering when that damn reporter would show up. “The bitch is late, and she wanted this interview.”

As much as Nelson wanted to walk right out the door and forget Angela Alvarado had ever contacted him, he knew better than to pass up this chance at positive press.

But he’d rather have been enjoying the company of Juniper Johnson. For the past year, she had done almost everything Nelson asked—and she’d received a lot of his cash in exchange. Not that he cared, as long as his money weighed her pockets down enough to drop her pants.

She’ll replace Vanessa once the divorce is final.

He and Vanessa had eight years behind them. But she’d just turned thirty. Any man with half a brain in his head knew what that meant.

Crow’s feet. Loss of muscle tone.

The former college athlete was now a boring housewife, spending more time chatting with her friends than she did seeing to her husband’s needs.

Nelson pulled out his phone and studied the photograph he used for Vanessa’s contact. A yellow wave of revulsion rushed through him. He placed his phone face down on the desk beside his leather briefcase.

And so falls another marriage attempt.

He’d married three women before her, each of them also a college athlete he’d sponsored. They’d all followed the predictable path to mediocrity once they’d gotten a taste of the good life he provided.

He’d hoped for more with Vanessa because he’d met her when she was just twenty-one. Molded her, coached her. She should’ve turned out better, but Nelson was just a man, after all.

Of course, he’d stayed true to Vanessa in body, right up until they’d split.

Now, if Juniper proves less of a needy female, maybe she’ll wear a ring within the year.

And if not, she’ll be a bit of fun for a bit of time.

He’d first met the young athlete at a Tulane function.

His program of sponsorship had won her over, and she’d given him almost full access to her beauty and charm ever since.

He checked his Rolex again. “Where the hell is that damn reporter?” He snapped up his phone and was tapping out a text when a knock sounded on the door.

Nelson paused in front of the mirror again. He adjusted his black tie and straightened his charcoal jacket, admiring his chiseled physique, obvious in the tailored suit.

At fifty-four, he still passed for a decade younger.

Unlike his wife.

He went to the desk and silenced his phone. Then he twisted the dead bolt and opened the door. His charming smile wilted.

“Good morning, Mr. Latch. Sorry I’m late, but—”

“Morning.” He didn’t care to hear the woman’s excuse. Late was late was late. And she wasn’t much to look at, being well into her thirties. Almost nothing at all like her online picture.

The quicker we wrap things up, the better.

“Just you?”

The reporter gently closed the door behind her. “Were you expecting a crew?”

“At least a photographer. This is a headline story for NOLA Daily Dish.”

A smile exuding confidence and control erased the age from her features, and she looked almost, but not quite, in her twenties. “I see your confusion, and I understand your concern. But rest assured, Mr. Latch, I’m a trained photographer, and I’ll take the photographs.”

Her excuse didn’t assure him. “Where’s your camera?”

She dug a cell phone from her pocket. “As high quality as any other camera. Hollywood cinematographers use these to make movies now.”

Unsatisfied with her tardiness, with her using a cell phone for a camera, with the entire interview, which had yet to start, Nelson returned his attention to the rain-spattered window. “Let’s get it over with then. Ready when—”

A buzzing zap cut him off, a shock that made every muscle in his body tighten. It took his breath away. He stumbled into the glass of the balcony’s French doors.

Stunned, he turned to face her.

“Open the balcony door, Mr. Latch.” The iciness in her voice chilled him to the bone. She held out a long metal device with prongs at the end. The prongs moved closer to his stomach.

“What is this?” Nelson acted stronger than he felt, which was a breath away from pissing his pants.

She shoved the device forward. Another burst of burning electricity, this one more intense, radiated across his abdomen. Muscles contracted. It felt like his guts shifted sideways. He wanted to vomit.

“Open the balcony door.” She lifted the prongs toward his face.

His jaw clenched so hard, he thought his teeth might crack. The day Nelson took orders from a woman who hadn’t birthed him would be the day he lost his sanity. He’d never trained to fight, but any idiot could throw a punch. He shifted, but the sharp, shocking pain hit him in the jaw, and the left side of his face bunched up.

He stumbled, the glass door catching his fall. The long handle turned under his traitorous grip. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“You have cost young women their lives, their futures. You need to pay.” Her tone lacked any heat, any passion. “I’ll give you one more chance to make a smart decision. I’m holding an electric cattle prod. All I have to do is press this button down a little bit longer, and you’ll sustain a jolt strong enough to open your bowels.”

“All my girls know what they’re doing. They’re all of legal age.”

“She died for no reason at all, then? You make me want to throw up.”

What the fucking fuck is she talking about?

Then it hit him. There was really only one of his protégées, his selections, she could be here about.

The thought spurred him into action. He flexed his body to twist away from the prod. Another current of electricity shot across his upper back.

“It’s a beautiful spring morning, Mr. Latch.”

It’s raining.

“We’ll conduct this interview on the balcony. Move.”

Spots dotted Nelson’s vision, and the temperature in the suite felt too high. He had to stop and breathe, regroup, fight back.

“Open the door.”

He pushed the door open and stepped into the cool, wet morning. A breeze chilled his overheated skin. The balcony was only a few feet long and hardly wide enough for one person. A decorative feature.

After a single step, Nelson bumped into the rail, which wasn’t very sturdy, but it did prevent him from walking over the edge and falling ten stories.

He peered down at the hotel pool surrounded by a concrete patio and soaked lounge chairs. A strong sense of vertigo overcame him.

“Turn around, Mr. Latch.”

Nelson, now dizzy, shuffled his feet to face his tormentor. An arctic frigidness filled her sharp, chilling gaze.

She’s fantasized about this.

Pollen tickled his nose. Instead of suppressing the reaction, Nelson sneezed right in the woman’s face, hoping she might recoil and allow him a window of attack.

She stood as still as a rock in a river. Mucus freckled her lined face, but she didn’t even bother to raise her hand and wipe off the debris. “Lean back.”

He shook his head. The wet wrought iron of the balcony rail edged against his ass. If he leaned any farther, he’d fall.

The cattle prod pressed into his crotch. “Lean. Back.”

Nelson could feel the heat on his groin. If he made any sudden movement, she’d press the button. So of course he obeyed. “Why?”

“Why what, Mr. Latch?”

“Are you doing this?”

“I told you why. Now lean back.”

He shook his head. “Please.”

“Farther, or I’ll fry your dick to inspire acquiescence.”

“Dammit!” His voice carried through the morning, and he leaned back. “She came to me!”

“But you wanted something in return. Something physical. Sexual. That little girl was no prostitute.”

“I just put my hand on her shoulder when we were talking. It was a…just a friendly pat. That’s all. You’re supposed to be helping me here.”

Then, like dawn over the horizon, Nelson realized she was no reporter. He’d been set up. The bitch in front of him had planned every bit of this.

The woman smiled as he figured out the obvious. “I came here to help. Just not to help you. To help rid the world of men like you.”

“I didn’t do anything to—”

His breath caught as she jammed the cattle prod against his crotch. A sharp sudden flare of pain shot through his groin. He would’ve screamed, but every single muscle in his body seemed to bend toward his dick. Every nerve was on fire.

“Careful. If I hear you speak her name, I might lose my mind.”

You have lost your mind, bitch!

“Goodbye, Mr. Latch.” The prod sparked to life again.

Nelson’s prick buzzed and stung. He squirmed to get away from the torturous device. Over and over, she pressed the button, and he was on fire. Nelson scrambled up the wrought iron to get away, his feet slipping on the slick surface. His only instinct was to escape the electricity digging into his groin.

He forgot the barrier he was trying to put between them was there to keep him on the tenth floor.

There was a single moment in which he felt free, in which he’d made it over the decorative iron, his toes on the balcony. Maybe I can climb down.

But she lifted the prod—she didn’t even hit the button—and pushed against his shoulder.

The woman watched him. Her face filled his vision, even as she fell away.

No, I’m falling.

Rain pelted his face.

He fell forever.

Then she lifted something black and delicate. She dropped it, and it fell after him. Black feathers? Petals?

Then he stopped falling.

Chapter Two

Nothing about this file makes sense.

Special Agent Claire Legacy sat alone in the conference room of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, fingertips grazing the reports line by line. The thin folder held everything about her father’s murder case.

She’d spent the morning comparing the investigative notes in the file against her memories.

Memories from over twenty years ago.

As a law enforcement officer, she understood that eyewitness accounts could turn fuzzy due to a variety of influences. Time was definitely a factor. Emotional trauma another.

When the shooter entered their house and shot her father dead in the living room, Claire had only been five. So the time factor was against her.

Her father had died right in front of her. So trauma was also a factor in her case.

Yet she knew, she knew, she recalled the homicide itself with startling clarity.

And this teeny tiny file fell abysmally short.

Closing her eyes, she stepped back into that horrid memory.

The first gunshot lured her from her room, where she’d been in bed midday with a bad head cold. The scratchy fur of her stuffed cat tickled her neck as she squeezed the animal and walked downstairs.

Her father sprawled on the floor just in front of the hearth, gasping for breath. Blood puddled around his crumpled body and spread across his chest in a wide stain.

Across the room stood a stranger in a long coat.

She saw dappled white hair poking out from under a cowboy hat. A ring on his right hand.

Years later, she figured out that the ring was a signet ring. Ironic that someone who didn’t want to be identified wore a signature on his finger. At five years old, though, Claire had just thought big ring.

The gold glinted as his finger curled around the trigger of the long-barreled gun. It kicked, and fire spit from the barrel.

A bloody and impossibly small hole furrowed into her dad’s forehead. His rattling wheezes fell silent, the sudden quiet ringing impossibly loud.

Claire had remained stock-still as a sixth sense opened up to her.

Ghostly smudges of her father’s handprints appeared on the back of a living room chair. Scuff marks through the carpeting told the story of a struggle. She saw every small disturbance.

Whatever protective mechanism her body had devised had worked, and the intruder had hurried from the house without looking her way, as if he’d never noticed her at all.

The moment had carved into Claire, becoming a core memory.

When the police arrived, she’d told them everything.

Flipping through the scant pages of the case folder, she couldn’t find any notation of her testimony to the cops.

“I came out of my bedroom after hearing something. I saw him. The man with white hair.”

She could still see him.

“He shot my father. Here.”

She ran a finger down the edge of the file folder and touched her forehead with her other hand.

“He wore a gold ring with a design.”

The case file had nothing of Claire’s actual statement. Merely a simple and inadequate note. Child was sick with a fever. Came out of her bedroom and found her father deceased from apparent gunshot wounds to the head and torso.

The word “apparent” rankled Claire. As if a child who’d witnessed someone fire a gun could possibly be mistaken about what she’d seen.

Worse than that was the statement that she’d “found her father deceased.”

I watched him get shot. I remember the noise. And the blood.

But none of that was included in the file.

“I know what I saw and what I told the police.” She clicked her tongue, reading over her interview for the umpteenth time just that morning.

This isn’t adding up. Not even close.

She slapped the file closed. “He was a cop. One of the department’s own. When a cop dies, everyone on the force wants to find out who did it. So why didn’t they do everything they could, and why was my witness statement omitted?”

The lack of heft to the folder proved that the only effort to find her father’s killer was an inadequate, half-assed farce of an investigation.

The door to the conference room flew open. Lost in thought, Claire jumped at the sudden disruption and shoved the folder beneath some paperwork as her partner, Nina Adriano, walked in.

Nina plopped onto the chair beside Claire, chewing on a plastic straw. She set her boots on the table. “So…I didn’t want to admit this to you. You already have a big enough ego. But I took your advice.”

After looking behind her, Claire pointed at herself. “My advice?”

“Went to the Prytania.”

“And you didn’t invite me?”

Nina removed the straw from her mouth. “You would’ve made a better date.”

“You went on another date with that guy?”

If memory served, Nina’s dating adventures in NOLA had resulted in more exercises in self-defense than anything remotely romantic.

“Different guy this time. Still nothing to write home about.”

“Was he dark-haired? Blue-eyed? Tall? Funny? Rich?”

Nina inspected the bite marks mangling the straw. “Yes…but the opposite of all those things.”

Claire pouted her lower lip. “I mean, blonds are cute too.”

A restrained smile touched Nina’s hardpan face. “We watched Charade.”

“With Cary Grant and my queen Audrey Hepburn? What’d you think?”

“I think you’re going to quote the movie at me nonstop now.”

With an emphatic nod, Claire confirmed Nina’s suspicion. “‘We wait. With our mouth shut.’”

Nina shook her head and returned the mashed straw to her teeth. “How was your weekend?”

Before Claire could reply, a gentle knock sounded on the doorframe as SSA Gavin Iverson announced his presence. “Nina, feet off the table.”

She dropped her boots flat on the floor.

Gavin sat opposite them and placed a folder on the table. “Nelson Latch, a prominent business executive, seems to have jumped from the balcony of his room at Le Lion Royale.”

Claire didn’t recognize the name. But she’d caught the key phrase in Gavin’s briefing. “Seems to have?”

“According to NOLA police, who’ve reached out and asked for our help, this is the fourth such suicide of a wealthy and powerful man in the last two years.”

“If they’re requesting our help, they’re not thinking suicide, right?”

Gavin nodded. “Investigators found a black rose near each of the dead men.”

That ties them all together.

“Meaning they’re victims.” Nina finished Claire’s thought.

“Initially, each death had elements of a suicidal or accidental death. But the investigations uncovered unexplained marks that suggested the victims were murdered. In the cases of those who fell to their deaths, including the most recent victim, trajectories don’t add up to jumpers.”

Claire ran her thumb over the turtle pendant she always wore. “Four victims in two years? And we’re only just now being brought in?”

“Each case happened in a different parish. Investigations were rushed due to pressure…local politicians, businesses and hospitality bigwigs, the tourism office.”

Nina sighed. “Please don’t tell me we have to work with Phillip Deveraux again.”

Instead of placating her, Gavin merely offered a close-lipped smile. “New Orleans Homicide debated reaching out to us. The latest jumper made the decision for them.” He slapped his thighs and stood. “I want you two running point on this investigation. Head over to Le Lion and see what you can learn.”

Nina already had the file open in front of her as Claire took out her notebook. Abel Legacy’s case file peeked out from beneath the stack of notes she’d collected.

I’ll find out who did it, Dad. I promise not to let the past just disappear into memory.

She would solve her father’s murder someday, but for now, Claire had an open, active investigation to work.