Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(2)

The point was she had put a lot of work into becoming a different woman, into building herself into a new person. A real new person. And leaving behind that bastard and the places he’d taken her was a big reason she had done that work.

But then the weather had turned at the end of the month, and Maureen learned that November in New Orleans could be, if it wanted to, as cold and gray and wet and bleak as November in New York. And at the turn in the weather had come her dark turn of mind. This year should have been much different from the last. She had expected it to be different. She deserved it to be different. And when it wasn’t, she got pissed. More than pissed. Angry. Incensed. Furious.

*

The woman Maureen had been watching for more than an hour got up from her barstool, bringing Maureen back to the present. This woman was not Madison Leary. This woman was not part of a murder case. This wasn’t police work. This was something else. Something private.

Just for tonight. Which was what you said the last time, Maureen thought.

The woman pulled on her coat, flipped her long black hair out from underneath her collar, gathered her phone and her purse, and headed for the door. The bouncer opened it for her, letting the cold outside air rush into the barroom as he said good night. Maureen pulled the hood of her baggy black sweatshirt tight against the back of her neck. She longed for her father’s old blue pea coat, the one she had lost last November. The one she had left in a bloody heap on the floor of a Staten Island emergency room, soaked in Frank Sebastian’s blood.

She drew her hands into her sleeves. She carried a weapon in the front pocket of her sweatshirt. She savored its weight on her lap.

A man Maureen had also been watching emerged from the dim and narrow hall that led to the restrooms. He froze, his face scrunching in anger, when he saw the empty barstool. He looked around the bar. Maureen could tell it was all he could do to keep from screaming the woman’s name. They’d arrived at the bar at different times, the woman first and the man about twenty minutes later. Right away they had fallen into a bad argument, quickly enough that Maureen knew it was the continuation of a previous fight, badly enough that the bouncer had come over from the door to check on them. Maureen hadn’t been able to hear much of what they were saying, but she’d heard enough to know that the man had followed the woman here from another Frenchmen Street bar she’d left to get away from him.

After the bouncer’s intervention, the man had moved away down the bar, pretending, Maureen could tell, to watch the funk band that had taken the stage during the argument. But throughout the set he had kept a close eye on the object of his ire, glaring at her over his shoulder, his silver-labeled bottle of Coors Light raised to his lips.

From where she sat in the corner across the room, Maureen could see the wheels turning in his head. She could read his thoughts. She didn’t like what they told her. Her fears were confirmed by the fact that the woman had waited until the man was out of sight to make her move for the door. She wasn’t leaving. She was escaping. She was fleeing.

The man gave up searching the bar. He made for the door, shouldering people out of his way. He hurried out in pursuit, Maureen knew, of the woman who had slipped away.

She grabbed her cigarettes and slid off her barstool, pulling on her gloves and moving for the door as quiet as a shadow. She raised her hood over her head, slipped her hands into the pouch of the sweatshirt, gripping the weapon hidden there, a telescoping baton with a weighted tip called an ASP. She kept her head down as she passed by the bouncer and out the door. A few paces ahead of her on the crowded sidewalk, she spied the angry man searching for the frightened woman.

Like she had with the others, she’d take him from behind, start with a quick strike to his knee. A man who can’t stand can’t fight back. Then, before he even hit the ground, she’d go for his throat. For control of his voice, his breath, and the blood rushing to his brain. Destroying the knee hurt him, and it gave her strategic advantage. But compressing his throat in the bend of her elbow, strangling him? That was what induced the panic; that pressure conjured the terror. The terror was what she wanted. Terror left a lasting impression. She knew that from experience.

Maureen would make sure he never found the woman he pursued. Not tonight. Not ever. And that he’d never know what hit him.





2

Hours later, on a quiet residential street, a couple of blocks away from the late-night bustle of Frenchmen Street, Maureen climbed into her beat-up old Honda, the door creaking as she opened it. She sat in the driver’s seat, the door open, one foot out on the sidewalk. She found her cigarettes and lit up. She was not quite ready to drive home. Too much to drink. She needed more time than one cigarette would give her, but that eight to ten minutes would have to suffice. What she should do, she thought, was call a cab. Maybe she would.

She put her head back on the headrest. Yeah, maybe a cab was best. In a minute, though. After this cigarette.

With her right hand she felt around on the Honda’s passenger seat. Where was her gum? She always had gum in the car. Right? Where the f*ck—no, wait—that was the patrol car, that was when she always had gum. Nothing but empty cigarette packs on the Honda’s passenger seat. Well, whatever. Fuck it. If she wasn’t going to be driving or kissing anyone, she didn’t need the gum. Her eyes closed, she smiled. No, no kissing anyone tonight.

Only one man that night had attracted her attention.