KILLING ME SOFTLY (20 page)

He moved so fast she winced, swerving to the side of the road and slamming on the brakes. Then he turned to look at her.

"An hour and a half ago Millie let herself into your room to freshen the linens. She found the bed unmade, the sheets shredded and smeared with red. On the bathroom mirror she found four words, also written in red.
Will-you-be-next?"
He paused, let out a hot breath. "Still want to go back there?"

Trying not to shake, she sat back and stared straight ahead, watched a hawk circle above the treetops.

"It's happening," Cain rolled on. "Just like I said it would. You've knocked too many stones into motion. There's no stopping them now, not until they destroy everything in their path."

She swallowed hard and forced herself to look at him, felt the breath jam in her throat. Because of his eyes. They weren't victorious, weren't hot and accusing. They were … edgy and volatile, and for a shattering moment they dredged up memories of the night
Oncle's
man attacked her, when Cain had run into the alley and found her in his partner's arms. She'd never forget the way he'd gone to his knees and touched her with a gentleness so excruciating it had seared into her flesh like a brand.

Until that moment she'd perceived fear as a weakness. But like everything else he did, Cain Robichaud wore it like a badge of honor. He hadn't cared what anyone thought of him. He hadn't cared about danger or consequences. He'd only cared about … her.

Fear, she'd realized, wasn't a weakness, but the source of strength and the consequence of emotion, the reflection of humanity. In its absence, there was nothing.

In its presence, there was … everything.

"Does that scare you?" she asked, and her heart slammed hard on the question. She wanted—God, how she wanted.

Slowly his gaze met hers, and scorched clear down to her soul. "Only for you."

His voice chilled. "Cain—"

"Don't." The word sounded torn from somewhere deep and broken and painful. Jaw set, he turned back to the road and jerked the car into Drive, veered back onto the narrow highway.

Within seconds, the trees once again blurred.

Travis was dead. She'd been threatened. And Cain was pulling back by the second. She tried to weave the three together, integrate them with the fabric of all the other information she'd gleaned over the past four days. She was getting closer, she knew.

Someone was running scared.

She wanted to feel victory. And maybe somewhere inside she did. But it didn't resonate with triumph like she'd anticipated. There was only the sinking hollow feeling, the realization that the life she'd walked back into was rapidly coming to an end.

At a narrow, unmarked road, Cain slowed the car and turned back in time. The oak and cypress and pine crowded the bumpy road like an adoring mob shoving and elbowing for the best position. The live oaks, their ancient, weathered canopies stretching across the road to create a tunnel, blotted out the sun. Only slashes and whispers of light fell, dancing with the sway of the Spanish moss.

The ethereal beauty fed Renee, even as it drove home the reality that she really was a dead woman walking.

She knew this road. More than knew it, she'd traveled its twists and turns before. With Cain. She knew what awaited her at the end of a narrow driveway up ahead.

"You didn't answer my question," she said anyway, because that's what a stranger would say. Renee Fox would have no idea what lay ahead. Everything inside of her would not be bracing for the blow. "Where are you taking me?"

Cain's hand tightened around the steering wheel. "Home," he said without inflection or feeling. "With me."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

New Orleans

Nineteen months earlier

I
t wasn't supposed to be beautiful. The breeze shouldn't be whispering like a warm caress against the side of my face. And the sun shouldn't be shining like a spotlight against a sky so impossibly azure that the whole world seems bright.

And the flowers… They're everywhere, all my favorites—azaleas and dogwood and bougainvillea—lifting their faces to the sun in an explosion of color, like a living rainbow shrouding the glowing white of the crypt.

The perfect juxtaposition of life and death.

Slowly, I lift my hand to the cool marble. "Adrian." My voice breaks on his name. He was my brother, my best friend. Sure we fought as kids, and as adults, but only because we loved each other. It is a longstanding theory of mine: Passionate people can't coexist in a static world. There has to be rain. There have to be storms.

But not this. Damn it, not this.

The pain is intense, coiling through me like a python, choking off one organ at a time. "You promised," I whisper. "You promised you'd be careful. You promised you'd never leave me."

Moisture stings the backs of my eyes, but I won't let the tears fall. "You were supposed to protect him," I admonish a crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary. Dropping to my knees, I run my fingers along the wilted daisies at her feet. "Damn it, you were supposed to take care of him."

"What about you?" came a quiet voice from behind me, and the rhythm of my heart changed. Deepened. "Who's supposed to take care of you?"

Vulnerable
isn't a word I like, but there's no other word to describe the way I feel kneeling beside my brother's grave, with devastation in my voice and tears in my eyes. Once, I would have hidden this from Cain. The hard-nosed reporter who came to New Orleans to find the link between the controversial police detective and the Russian Mafia would never, ever have let him, let anyone, see a weakness.

But there's only the woman now, the one who saw the terror in his eyes when he found me in the alley, who felt his arms cradle me when he told me about Adrian. Who'd fallen asleep to the low thrum of his heart. Who'd absorbed his warmth.

Who wants to absorb it now.

There's only me, and I'm so tired of the games.

And so I twist toward him and feel the rush move through me, even here among the dead. My body hums with life as I take in the sight of him, so tall and dark and battered against the blue, blue sky. As usual he's wearing all black. In his hand is a paper bag.

My eyes meet his—it would be so easy to drown. "What are you doing?"

"I was worried when you didn't answer the phone."

The words pour through me in a way the sunshine wasn't able to. "How did you find me?"

He goes down on one knee and hands me the bag. "I'm a detective," he dismisses. "It wasn't hard."

I take the wrinkled brown paper and look inside, see the wilted tulips. White. The color of salvation.

The tears burn hotter, but still, I don't let them fall. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

It seems so simple.

He settles behind me and pulls me between his legs, holds me while the sun grows hotter. I tell myself not to do it, but I lean against his chest anyway and close my eyes.

The sense of rightness is terrifying.

"Promise me," he whispers. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid."

I want to. God, I want to. "He knew." I can't keep that truth inside anymore. "Adrian knew this was going to happen."

Cain eases the hair from my face. "Did he tell you that?"

"He called." My brother's uncharacteristically urgent voice still haunts me from my answering machine. "Late that afternoon. He called me, told me he loved me. Asked me to feed his cat."

Playing in my hair, Cain's hands still, but he says nothing.

I twist in his arms, look into his eyes. "He doesn't have a cat."

Now Cain's expression darkens.

"He was trying to tell me goodbye," I say. "I see it so clearly now, but didn't see it then."

"There's no way you could have."

"But you would have," I point out. "If my brother had called you and asked you to feed his cat, you would have known he was communicating in code, that something weird was happening."

"Maybe … assuming I knew he didn't have a cat."

"If
I
called then." The need to prove my point is strong. "If I called out of the blue and asked you to feed my dog, you would know, right? You would know I was in trouble, that I was trying to tell you something."

The scorched look in his eyes, somehow it reaches inside of me and wraps around my heart. "Don't do this to yourself,
cher
."

"Please," I say. "Answer my question."

He lets out a rough breath. "I would know." Then his hands find my face and his thumbs skim my lower lip. "But that's one phone call I don't ever want to receive, you understand me?"

I do.

But it's a promise I cannot make. Because there is a vow I have made. To find my brother's killer, make him pay.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

New Orleans, present day

P
hone cradled between his face and shoulder, Gabe picked up the microcassette recorder and clicked the rewind button, listened to the whir of the tape as it raced backward. Eleven seconds later, he hit Play for the fourth time.

And for the fourth time, Alec Prejean's distinctive voice filled the office.

"…not gonna stop me. No one will."

"How can you be so sure?" a second man asked.

"Because Robichaud thinks he knows me. I could put this gun to his temple, and he wouldn't believe his days are up until I pull the trigger."

"
Oncle
doesn't believe it either."

"People thought what I wanted them to," Prejean corrected. "What I needed them to."

Somewhere nearby, a freighter wailed. "And now?"

Gabe tightened his jaw at the sound of familiar laughter. "And now I can do anything," the man he'd called friend said. "
Anything at all
, and the good ol' boys in blue will insist I'm still on their side—just like before."

Gabe jabbed the Off button and stared at the series of photographs on his desk, all taken less than two hours before. "Son of a bitch."

D'Ambrosia's dangerously quiet voice sounded through the handset. "Still think he's innocent?"

"Where the hell did you get these?"

"Where doesn't matter." D'Ambrosia had couriered the cassettes over just after lunch. "All that's important is what's on this tape, in these pictures."

Gabe pressed his fingers to his temples. He'd known Alec for over ten years. He'd called the man friend. He'd stood up at his wedding. He'd helped renovate the St. Charles Avenue mansion into an in-demand bed-and-breakfast. He'd even fed the man's dog when Alec and Tara took their dream vacation to Kauai.

The possibility that Alec had been playing both sides all along burned. They'd been counting on the man to have a lingering trace of loyalty, if not to Cain or the force, then to his wife. If the only loyalty he had, had ever had, was to himself, then he was exponentially more dangerous.

Chewing on the implications, he picked up one of the glossy eight-by-tens. "You think he set Cain up?"

"He had the means and the access."

All along, even before Savannah was murdered, they'd been looking for a leak in the force. A dirty cop. Someone responsible for ciphering information about informants and evidence to
Oncle
. Gabe had pulled strings to land himself on the task force, kept up with the investigation as a representative for the district attorney's office. He knew Alec had never once been suspected.

Five weeks into the formation of the task force, suspicion had fallen on Cain; and Gabe, his cousin, had been asked to step down. Suddenly on the outside looking in, Gabe had been forced to resort to alternate methods to stay abreast of developments.

Setting down the picture, Gabe glanced across the hall to the door Evangeline Rousseau usually kept open but today had closed. Shortly before seven he'd run into her at the coffeepot. She'd had bags under her eyes, said she'd been working late. The D.A. had assigned the newcomer to the task force which he'd thrown together when feelers indicated
Oncle
was again planning something. Gabe had wanted on that task force himself. He'd
needed
on that task force. But the D.A. had insisted fresh eyes could see what tired eyes could not.

Gabe thought he was full of
merde
.

But Evangeline didn't know that, didn't know the history. So while they'd waited for the coffee to brew, Gabe had stoked up the charm and lulled her into a conversation. If he'd felt a pang of guilt, he'd ignored that. And if he'd found his hands itching to settle against her rigid shoulders and rub away the tension, well, he'd ignored that, too.

And if he'd found himself wondering if the tension he felt radiating from her really had to do with the task force—or with something else, something related to the phone call he'd overheard the other night—he'd most definitely ignored that.

"What's this I'm hearing about a shipment?" he asked. Evie had been vague, her tone distracted as she mentioned a boat they were waiting to arrive. From Bulgaria.

Christ. When the hell had he started thinking of her as
Evie?

"A freighter due in tomorrow?"

"A shipment?" D'Ambrosia asked.

Either he didn't know anything, or wasn't about to give up what he did.

"Probably just a rumor," Gabe dismissed. He picked up the recorder and hit Rewind, then once again hit Play to the voice of the man he'd called friend.

Alec Prejean had to be stopped.

Movement from the hall beyond his office caught his eye, and he looked up to see Evie's door opening. She ran her hands over her pantsuit that reminded him of the plums he and Cain had once found growing wild at the back of the Robichaud property, then glanced up at him with a strained smile.

"Gotta go," he told D'Ambrosia, then dropped the phone back to the receiver.

Evangeline put a hand to his doorjamb and leaned into his office. "Everything okay?"

The smile was automatic. "That's what I was about to ask you," he drawled, and a little of the light returned to her eyes.