Just one glass of wine, Mia thought. Merlot, partly because she was in the mood for plums, but mostly because the undisputed expert at her club, the Rose Noire, had given her a bottle of 1965 from his personal cellar.

She took the carpeted back stairs to the second floor of her sexy French Quarter lounge. Mellow jazz trailed her up the staircase.

She spotted the fog the moment she entered her office. Pleased, she left the overheads off. A mauve bulb burned soft and low on a balcony that invited her to sip her wine in a cocoon of relative silence.

Opening the double French doors, she stood for a moment absorbing the night. It was like stepping into a film noir, a black-and-white world with a punch of red, courtesy of the petunias she'd coaxed from seedlings into a riot of beautiful summer blossoms.

Pleased with a green thumb she hadn't realized she possessed, Mia took a savoring drink. Because the air smelled delicious, she slipped off her stilettos and gave her hair a liberating toss. Then she caught a muffled thud and lowered her gaze to the alley.

Time froze. The scene below condensed. A single black-and-white frame separated itself from the rest of the film. Nothing and no one moved. Until she blinked. Finally, slowly, the clock began to tick once again.

She saw blood, a fountain of it, pouring from an old woman's throat. She spied the terror stamped on the woman's face. She glimpsed a hand, a man's. One of his fingers was missing. Her shocked mind realized so was most of his face.

No, not missing. Covered. Invisible in the darkness of the alley. He had a black cap pulled low over his forehead and a black scarf tied across his nose and mouth.

But his eyes... Now those were clearly visible. Deep gold and exquisitely shaped, they sharpened to a diamond gleam as they followed a line from the old woman's dying gaze straight to hers.

Black Rose Blood Orchid