Page 1 of After The Storm

Chapter One

In the distance,the raucous sounds of revelers celebrating Mardi Gras in the French Quarter filled the air as Kate Sheridan paced across the old wood floor of her living room waiting for more information to come, terrified by what the first text she received minutes before said.

Something is wrong. Jonas isn’t answering his door but I know he’s still in his office. I’m calling the police.

Over and over, Kate checked her phone for another message from her co-worker Minnie Donner but saw nothing except the first dreadful text. Jonas Flynn, her employer, was a lawyer and often kept strange and awkward hours when he was deep in working on a case. She didn’t want to overreact to his not answering his door when Minnie knocked. Jonas routinely got lost in work and didn’t hear the phone ring right next to him, much less a knock on the door a few yards away.

Minnie was just being silly. He probably answered the door right after she called the police and now she’s standing there with New Orleans finest having to explain why she bothered them needlessly on one of the busiest nights of the year. Minnie just didn’t know how Jonas operated since her boss made sure he never worked past six.

Everything was fine.

Kate stopped and looked down at her phone once again. Nothing.

She wondered if maybe she should call her. Now that she thought about it, she should have done that right off. If she had, she could have stopped Minnie from making such a fool of herself over nothing.

I should call her. Just to put my mind at ease. God, I really don’t need this kind of craziness on Fat Tuesday, of all nights. Didn’t she remember me telling her I had plans to go out with Eve and her cousin tonight?

As she scrolled through her list of contacts, her phone vibrated against her palm, sending a shiver of fear through her. Quickly, she swiped to her message screen and saw another text from Minnie. Her heart slamming against her chest, she read it, her eyes racing over the words.

Jonas is dead. Found murdered in his office. Two shots to the head. The police say one of his clients was found dead about an hour ago in his home in Slidell. Why would someone want to kill them? I’ll call you when I’m done with the police.

Staring down at her phone, Kate tried to form a complete thought but one word repeated on a horrible loop over and over. Murdered. And she knew just who the client was too.

The walls began to feel like they were closing in on her. She needed to get out of that tiny apartment. But everything had changed now.

Jonas’s warnings to her about his case raced through her mind, and fear began to take her over. Was she in danger now too?

This case is huge, Kate. This is bigger than anything I’ve ever done, but it’s more dangerous too, so I don’t want you to speak a word about this to anyone. Understand?

She’d nodded her understanding when he made those cryptic statements to her, never giving them much thought as she continued to prepare the brief he needed for later that day for another far less interesting case. She hadn’t even thought he was serious when he claimed it was dangerous. Jonas Flynn handled basic, everyday lawsuits. Everyone knew that. What could be so dangerous about suing someone for workplace injuries?

Whatever he’d been doing with that client, it had gotten him killed, and now Kate wondered if it would get her killed too. She’d been his only legal assistant, so anyone who wanted to get rid of all the people who knew about that case would assume she knew all that he’d been up to.

The truth was, though, that Jonas had kept virtually every detail of this case to himself. Unlike usual, he hadn’t made her do much of the work for this client he at first called Mr. X. He wouldn’t even tell her the foundations of the case. It had taken him months for him to finally even let her know the man’s name.

Not that it would matter now.

She threw a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, a pair of underwear, and her toothbrush in her bag and hurried out of her apartment. Running down the stairs from the second floor of the house she lived in, she ran out to the road and prayed the streetcar would arrive in the next few minutes. As she stood waiting for it, she looked around and worried whoever had killed Jonas and his client could be nearby waiting to kill her.

Stop it! You’re being paranoid. Nobody wants to kill you.

Kate looked off in the distance and saw the streetcar slowly making its way toward where she waited. Damnit, why were they always so slow? Never before had she wished New Orleans had a much faster form of transportation.

Like a bullet train.

She rummaged through her purse to find her pass just as the streetcar stopped in front of her, and she hurried on and found a seat close to the driver, somehow thinking that might help her. One look at the thin older man guiding them toward the French Quarter told her if something happened she’d likely have to protect him instead of vice versa. The strongest thing about him was the dayglow green safety vest he wore.

A group of drunk tourists in town for Mardi Gras talked loudly at the back of the street car about which stop to use to get back to their hotel, distracting her for a moment from the awful events of the night. When they piled out onto Canal Street, she followed them in the hope of getting lost in the crowd.

The mob of partygoers in the French Quarter provided her with the anonymity she needed, and soon she arrived at Lafayette’s, the bar Eve had said she and her cousin would be at all night. The typical Bourbon Street party spot, it possessed little charm and far too much neon lighting, not to mention the loudest band they could squeeze into the space.

A stunning brunette, Eve towered in four inch heels that made her legs seem like they went on forever in a dress that looked like a metallic gold prom gown that had been cut in half. She stood out from the crowd instantly as she hung out near the end of the bar with a much shorter and plainer woman Kate suspected was her cousin. Not that meeting her and enjoying the festivities mattered much now.

Eve saw her coming toward them and opened her arms wide, a drink in each hand. “Where have you been? We’re at least four drinks ahead of you, honey!” she yelled as she enveloped Kate in a drunken embrace that resulted in at least half of the drink in her right hand spilling down Kate’s back.

Quickly extracting herself from the hug, Kate waved her toward a corner of the bar where she hoped it would be quiet enough to explain what happened. Eve’s cousin stood drunk and confused looking at her, but there was no time to explain or apologize for being rude.

Eve’s heels tripped her as they walked toward the corner, causing more of her drink to spill out of the glass as she grabbed onto the back of Kate’s shirt. “Damn! I’m not going to have anything to share with you at this rate, honey,” she said in her usual chipper voice.

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