Dev said nothing, which was answer enough. Word of Parker Harrington’s murderous intentions and subsequent death had dominated the news. It was only a matter of time before Parker’s sister, his ex-fiancée, was reported missing by her family. Sabrina was out there. Somewhere. And he was going to find her before anyone else did.
Archie closed the file. “And once I’ve located the subject?”
“You know the place, over in Bywater.”
“Same code?”
He nodded.
“Meanwhile, you’ve got yourself a gun, right? Just in case that crazy comes back to you,” Archie said.
“Of course. There’s something else I want you to do for me.”
“I’m all ears.” Archie tossed his arm along the back of the booth.
“I want you to look into something that involves my uncle.”
Archie’s brows lifted, wrinkling his forehead. “The senator.”
“He’s the only uncle left, isn’t he?” Dev’s fingers curled around his glass. “I want you to find anything you can on that intern of his.”
Interest sparked in his eyes. “The one who went missing? Andrea Joan?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to mull that over. “Do you think she’s dead?”
Dev didn’t answer for a long moment. “I hope she is. For her sake.”
“Jesus,” Archie muttered. He was one of the rare people who got what Dev meant, because he knew about one-tenth of what Dev knew, and Dev was guessing that was enough to keep the man awake at night. “On it.”
“Perfect.”
“Speaking of the senator. You did get my update about what you suspected?”
“The Ritz-Carlton while I was out of town?” Dev asked.
Archie nodded. “And many, many times before that from what my contacts have advised.”
“Yes.” Taking a drink, he welcomed the burn as the amber-colored liquid coursed down his throat. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”
Nodding, Archie scooted to the end of the booth and then stopped. He met Dev’s stare. “I’ve seen some shit. Stared evil in the face to know that real evil has a face. And there’ve been times I’ve been terrified by what I’ve seen and who’ve I met. You? Never once seen you break a smile. You scare me a little.”
Dev lifted a brow.
Archie grinned. “I’ll be in touch.”
Watching Archie slide out of the booth and disappear into the shadows, Dev finished off his glass of bourbon as he thought about what Archie had admitted.
“You scare me a little.”
Even his brothers were afraid of him. They had no reason to be, but he understood why. After all, he was willing to go there to protect his brothers, do the unthinkable. But they didn’t know what he knew, and it would stay that way.
He was their shield and that would never change.
“Another glass?”
Dev’s gaze shifted to Justin, one of the servers who’d been at the Red Stallion for years. “Yes. Thank you.”
Bowing, Justin plucked up the glass and disappeared. Dev glanced at his phone and started to reach for it, but stopped. His brother had his hands full at the moment. Both of them, actually. Letting his head rest against the tall booth, he exhaled a long, steady breath and for some damn reason, an image came to him.
Not just an image.
A person.
A person he’d met for the first time on Friday.
A person who searched him down in a cemetery to bring him flowers. A person who told him that his father’s death would get easier to deal with, and she had said that like she had personal experience in the subject matter. A person who turned out to be connected to that annoying son of a bitch journalist. And she was definitely someone not scared of him. Not even remotely. She had not been feeling fear when she’d been pressed against him.
And he’d definitely been feeling . . . something.
Rosie Herpin.
A Creole last name to match the tawny complexion.
Another glass of bourbon appeared in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.
Beaded curtains?
The woman had the tackiest beaded curtains in her apartment. What grown adult with even a thumbnail-sized worth of taste would have cheap beaded curtains in their home? It wasn’t the sixties or seventies, and Rosie wasn’t a child amused by things that clanked together and made noise.
A day after his brother played the white-knight-in-shining-armor routine and retrieved their temporary housekeeper from what Dev was guessing was her best friend’s apartment, this was what was lingering on the edge of his thoughts.
Beaded fucking curtains.
Dev had no idea why he was even thinking about the woman.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. If he was going to be honest with himself for once in his life, it was because Rosie . . . intrigued him on several levels. One of the reasons being the fact she had looked at him like his mere presence in her apartment tainted everything in it, including the beaded curtains.
No one, besides his brothers, looked at him like that or dared to glare at him.
That . . . interested him. And he needed to spend only a handful of minutes with Rosie to know she was nothing like that conniving—
He cut those thoughts off. Shut them the hell down.
Dev thought about where Rosie lived. Not too far from Jackson Square. How in the hell she lived there, with all the noise, was beyond him. His gaze shifted to the glass of bourbon.
There were two types of New Orleanians. Those who thrived on the sounds, the smells, the sights, and the whole atmosphere of the French Quarter. And there were those who avoided the Quarter at all costs.
He was guessing Rosie was the former.
He was the latter.
Dev didn’t know much about her. He could change that in seconds if he wanted to. One call and he could find out anything he wanted to know. Age. Birthplace. Family. Siblings. Education. Workplace. Anything. He could even find out exactly how this husband of hers had died.
Damn.
He’d been an asshole about that, hadn’t he?
His gaze shifted to his phone again. The strangest thing had happened when he stood in Rosie’s apartment that morning, waiting for his brother and arguing with her over what constituted real wood. He stopped . . . thinking.
Thinking about everything.
Dev couldn’t even remember the last time when that had happened, and well, that had been a nice break.
Devlin didn’t believe in coincidences, so there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that she knew exactly who he was when she found him in the cemetery. Had Ross been following him and sent her in? Quite possible since it was a favorite pastime of the reporter. Her apparent close relationship to Nikki and her association with Ross made Rosie dangerous.
So, of course, he’d become hard as a rock arguing with her.
He didn’t even want to know what that said about him, but he knew the whole time he’d been with Sabrina, and that had been years, never once did he get so turned on, so easily.
That was why sex, and it hadn’t been often, with Sabrina had been a chore, a means to an end that was never fulfilled. And there was no way Sabrina hadn’t felt his impassivity when it came to her. He was also a means to end for her.
Hell, he didn’t want to think about Sabrina. He’d rather think about the woman who glared at him like she wanted to kill him with a single look.
What had she called him?
Ah, yes. A dickhead.
His shoulders lifted in a silent chuckle as he reached for his glass of bourbon. A woman who owned fucking beaded curtains actually interested him. A woman with hazel eyes—eyes that shifted from brown to green depending on how angry she was becoming.
Damn.
Hazel eyes.
It made him think of when he was a young boy. His mother had this friend who’d come visit every Saturday. This was before his brothers and sister were born, when it was just him and his mother and . . . Saturdays . Mrs. Windham would always bring her daughter with her. The girl was Dev’s age, give or take a few months. All he could remember was that she had blond hair and hazel eyes. What was her name?
Pearl.
They used to play in the many rooms at the manor, because Lawrence was never home on Saturdays, and Dev could just be. One day, he was rushing from bedroom to bedroom, looking for Pearl. They’d been playing hide-and-seek or some silly game like that. He couldn’t remember that exactly, but he did recall finding Pearl. He’d also found Lawrence with Mrs. Windham in one of those rooms.