Page 22 of The Fourth Option
When he turned onto Leigh Ann’s street, he slowed the van to a crawl, looking from the address on a scrap of paper in his hand to the homes, searching for numbers.
Walker was familiar with the history of New Orleans from a paper he had written on Voltaire’s influence on the French Revolution. This had led him to study the governing philosophies of that era, particularly the debate between royalists and republicans, a debate similar to the one that had shaped the country he had just crossed.
Louisiana and New Orleans were founded by the French in the seventeenth century. The state was named after King Louis XIV and the city for the governor of Orleans. However, in the 1760s, the ruling Bourbons gifted the city to their relatives on the Spanish throne to settle a treaty, making it a Spanish colony for the next forty years. In the late 1700s, fires raged through New Orleans and destroyed most of the French structures. They were eventually rebuilt, but the city’s most famous architecture was Spanish, even in the French Quarter.
A few miles southwest, Walker found himself looking at a white two-story Spanish colonial house that would not have looked out of place in old Seville. It boasted a balcony, floor-to-ceiling windows with black hinged shutters, and a wide front porch behind tall columns. Like the neighbors on either side, the entire property was enclosed by an ornate wrought-iron fence.
Walker parked across the street, his old van looking a bit out of place in the neighborhood known to locals as the Garden District. He double-checked the address and compared it to the numbers under the gaslight lantern on the gatepost, thinking he had arrived at the wrong place.
Nope. This was it.
“You ready?” he said to Paladin as much as himself.
Sensing his handler’s impending action but confused by the lack of an accompanying command, Paladin barked.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Walker swung open his door and stepped down to the road. He glanced up and down the quiet street before looking back to Paladin.
“Heir.” Here.
Paladin sprung from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat and then to the ground at Walker’s side.
Walker locked the van.
“Volg,” he said. Heel.
The pair crossed to the house, and Walker pressed a button on the intercom built into the pedestrian gate.
“Hello?” the female voice said.
“Leigh Ann. It’s Chris,” he said.
“Chris! Come on up.”
The gate buzzed.
Wearing teal surgical scrubs, Leigh Ann Staub greeted them at the front door.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said, stepping forward in a welcoming embrace. “And who is this?”
“Paladin, but you can call him Pal.”
“Can I pet him?” She had been around enough working dogs to know that it was best to ask.
“He’d love it.”
She let Paladin smell the back of her hand and then ran her fingers along the top of his head and scratched him behind the ears.
“Come in,” she said, stepping back and holding the door open for them.
“Thank you. It’s good to see you, Leigh Ann.”
“You too,” she replied, closing the door and locking the dead bolt.
As Walker followed her into the house, the first thing he noticed was the fine Persian Tabriz carpet on the floor, maroon with navy-blue geometric shapes. A remnant of a past life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
