82 Desire

together while he taped her ankles—no doubt to reassure herself he wasn’t going to rape her. “I’m real sorry about this, but they’ll find you when they come home. I’m going to leave you alone now.”
    He could hear her release her breath, maybe for the first time in the encounter, as he strode away. Nice lady , he thought. I hope she doesn’t have nightmares.
    The upstairs was such an odd warren of rooms he felt uneasy—he wasn’t sure he’d hear if anyone came in. And as luck would have it, the room equipped with computer, humidor, television, and hunting-lodge photos was way in the back.
    Nervously, he sat down, turned on the computer, took off his ski mask, and wiped the sweat off his face. Ray looked in the index for “Skinacat,” but of course it wasn’t there.
    He used the “Find” command to locate his own name, and sure enough, there it was, in a file called “Xmas List.”
    He opened it up and … yes! A veritable Xmas present. A list of names, including his. Descriptions of properties, with stats—leases, seismic findings; in some cases, dates. In his case, it was the date of sale. The next-to-last word in the entry, just before the date, was the name Fortier.
    Marion Newman’s name was on the list, too, and his also had a date by it, preceded by the name Cavignac.
    Ray’s heart speeded up. It must be a target list; a wish list. And in cases where they got the leases they wanted, they added the date. The name must be the person assigned to get the lease. He skimmed the list for more names and came up with two: Favret and Seaberry.
    He pulled a disk from his pocket and copied the file. Then he copied it several times more onto Beau’s hard disk and gave each copy a different name. So if anyone deleted “Xmas List,” there were plenty of backups.
    On his way out, he dropped by the landing where Marka sat. “I’m going now, baby. I’ll undo your ankles, okay? At least you’ll be a little more comfortable.”
    She made a deep sound in her throat as he slit the tape. It could have been fear, or a grunt of gratitude for not killing her.

Twenty-six
    “JANE, IT’S ME.”
    Calling her at home again. She didn’t need to be told who. She knew the voice perfectly well. “Mr. Tipster,” she said. “How are we today?”
    “We are tip-top this fine Sunday, Ms. Storey—funny you should use that particular pronoun, ‘cause this is our day.”
    Her heart fluttered briefly. Maybe he was just some kind of stalker. She kept quiet.
    “I’m bringing the goods.”
    Oh, sure. They all say that, she was thinking, when it dawned on her whom she was talking to. “Did you say bringing, or did I misunderstand?”
    “I’m coming right over. I’ve got what Eugene Allred was killed for. Maybe Cavignac was killed for it, too; I don’t know.”
    “Right over to where, Mr. Tipster? You just called me at home.” She prayed he didn’t know where she lived.
    “Oh. Guess I forgot my manners for a minute. What about we meet at the paper?”
    “What the hell have you got?”
    “Something that’s gonna win you a Pulitzer.”
    She sighed, wishing she smoked. “Look, if this were a movie, you’d get killed on the way over. So just in case, could I have your name, please?”
    “Sure. Ray Boudreaux.”
    He was waiting for her when she got to the paper, a tall, lanky customer who obviously cultivated a rough-hewn cowboy look. She had dated men like him—slept with them anyway. They never planned enough ahead to make dates. Small-scale con men. They could be bothered with the minor con of seducing someone, but hadn’t the ambition for major ones. So far she wasn’t impressed.
    Boudreaux held up a disk. “Here’s what’s going to get you the Pulitzer.” He handed it over along with some audiotapes. “That, and these.”
    “Let’s go look at it.”
    But he shook his head. “It’s just the proof. First, I’ve got to tell you the story. Where can we go?”
    Somehow, Jane thought this was more than a cafeteria kind of story. “I think,” she said, “we need a power lunch.”
    They went to the Pizza Roma on Bienville. It was convenient and it was reasonably noisy—it wouldn’t be easy to overhear them.
    Ray told his own story first—how he’d built up his own company and lost everything when he was cheated out of his lease by a company that was already making millions out in the Gulf.
    They had demolished a vast salad and most of an artichoke pizza by the time he said, “So I told