Prologue
Canal Street
New Orleans, Louisiana
Monday, November 23, 10:30 a.m.
A gruff old man in an expensive suit walked right up to Gabby Blake on the crowded sidewalk. “Helena?” He looked confused, swiped at his gray temple with a blue-veined hand. “No. No, you can’t be Helena.”
Gabby nearly dropped the grocery sack in her arms. Her heart raced, her body trembled, and her throat went thick. “You knew Helena?”
He squinted and studied her face. “You look just like my sister’s husband, Rogan. Just like him, God rest his soul.”
The doors opened on a black SUV parked curbside and two rough-looking men spilled out. They rushed up to the old stranger and grabbed him by the arms. “It’s time to go,” one of them said in a hushed, urgent tone. “Right now.”
Both men stared at Gabby. “Sorry,” the one on the old man’s left told her. “He forgets . . .”
Ordinarily, Gabby would be guarded and suspicious, but looking into the old man’s eyes, seeing that things weren’t as they should be was obvious. Dementia, or something like it, she supposed. Bless his heart. “No problem.” She nodded at the newcomer who’d spoken to her. Had it not been for an instinctive warning—something in his eyes, in the way they all looked at her that had gooseflesh rising on her arms and shivers shooting up her spine—she would have asked the old man about Helena. Was it possible? After all this time?
It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. The man was confused and mentally incapacitated, that’s all. Maybe some Helena had been his wife, or his sister or daughter and Gabby resembled her. He had said she looked like his sister’s husband. The old man must have approached her for some reason like that. He couldn’t have meant Gabby’s Helena.
Fixing her grip on her bag of groceries, Gabby stood still on the sidewalk, watching the two men guide the old stranger back to the abandoned SUV. “Take me to him. Now.” The stranger’s shout at the other two men carried back to her. “I must see George right now!”
They spoke softly to him, mumbled words not meant to be overheard, and helped the old stranger into the backseat, then quickly got in and rushed away.
Gabby shivered. It must be so difficult to be confused and forgetful. And to care for someone who suffered with those challenges.
Still, wasn’t it odd that of all the people on the street, he’d singled out her?
It was. Very odd. And yet his Helena had to be someone else. After all these years, the odds of her being the same woman attached to Gabby were statistically off-the-charts impossible. Of course, the encounter had been a simple case of mistaken identity. Those men had no way of knowing her Helena. One looked too young to even have been alive then.
Thanksgiving was in three days. Maybe the encounter was something mystical, like a spiritual wink from Heaven just greeting Gabby, wishing her a happy holiday.
Though such a wink hadn’t happened before, it still seemed far more likely than those men running in the same circles as her Helena. Thugs in expensive suits were still thugs. Their paths and her’s never would have crossed.
The matter settled in her mind, Gabby dismissed it and walked on, eager to get home to prepare her solo Thanksgiving feast.
Chapter One
Handel Security, Inc.
New Orleans, LA
Friday, November 27, 8:00 p.m.
Happy 5th Anniversary, Gabby. Good work.
Peter Handel
Gabby read the card clipped to a plastic spike in a fragrant bouquet of flowers. The squat, clear vase had been on the edge of her desk when she’d come in that morning. Now, the cold and rainy day had turned into a cold and stormy night, and she sat alone in the IT division of Handel Security, Inc., certain her boss’s secretary, who surely ordered the flowers, had been the only one to recall today was Gabby’s fifth anniversary with the company. Honestly, if not for the flowers, Gabby doubted she would have remembered. Her time at Handel Security, Inc., seemed far, far longer.
And she had no one to blame for that but herself. What else could happen when you chose a career to please someone else and not because you loved the work?
Inhaling the sweet blend of floral scents, she stroked the petal of a lavender iris and endured a bitter pang of regret. The saddest part was that her plan hadn’t worked. The attempt to find something she and her father could share through their work hadn’t been any more successful than her other many attempts to forge a common bond with him. Face it, Gabby. In his eyes, you’ll always be worthless.
An all-too-familiar ache tightened her chest. Having had years of practice, she buried it swiftly then glanced through the rain-speckled window at the blurred city lights and fixed her gaze on the Superdome.
It is what it is. She had accepted it, truly. She just had to keep reminding herself that she had accepted it and he would never value her at all. Resigned, she turned her attention to work and reached for her keyboard. One more task and Fitch, who worked the IT night shift, should arrive and Gabby would be done for the day. It couldn’t come soon enough . . .
Half-an-hour later, she’d finished her daily report and minutes afterward, Fitch arrived. Soaked to the skin, he pegged his jacket on the wall-hooks lined in a row near the door. “It’s crazy cold and wet out there,” he said, dabbing at his round face with a paper-towel. Scraps of soaked paper stuck to his graying beard. “You run the sweep?” He smoothed his wet, wind-tossed hair. It sprang back, shooting out in every direction.
“I did, and I started the backup at 7:30 sharp.” Peter Handel insisted on protocol consistency. About three times a week, Fitch ran ten to fifteen minutes late, which meant Gabby either started the backup for him or she suffered the fallout with him.
While they rarely physically worked simultaneously, the boss held Gabby ultimately accountable for all things IT. That was a perk of being very good at your job. Having a talented if perpetually late co-worker was a minor drawback. As irritants go, that one was tolerable. Today, she had again covered for Fitch, but not to keep Peter Handel from getting riled up. It was past time he set Fitch straight. Simply put, Gabby felt magnanimous. The boss had sent her flowers—even if he didn’t realize he’d sent them. The gesture was just another insignificant protocol to him, but it was significant to her. In her world, thoughtful and kind gestures from others were both significant and rare.
“Whew! Thanks, Blake.” Fitch slid onto his desk chair and then scanned his monitor. His jeans were wet from the knees down. “Peter would have docked my pay.” Fitch tapped at his keyboard. “I’ve got the controls . . . now.”
Biting her tongue, Gabby glanced at her own screen and confirmed the transfer. “Acknowledged.” Looking forward to a hot meal and a long bath, Gabby logged off the system, then reached into her desk drawer and retrieved her handbag.
As she shut the drawer, her desk-phone rang. Praying it wasn’t an internal or client problem Fitch couldn’t handle, she answered. “IT, Gabby Blake.”
“Miss Blake.” The man’s voice was vaguely familiar. He sounded weary and tense. “This is Dr. Abe Adams at Tulane Medical.”