KILLING ME SOFTLY (28 page)

"Someone he called friend."

"Or partner," Lena Mae added nervously. "Or cousin, or—"

The librarian's stricken expression sent a jolt through Renee. Lena Mae's face went pale, her eyes dark. "Or who?" Renee urged, but the second she followed the other woman's gaze, she knew no more answers would be forthcoming.

Sheriff Edouard Robichaud stood at the back of the church with his hands on his hips and a cold glitter in his eyes.

"Damn it, Lena, what in tarnation did you tell her?"

Her chin came up at a sharp angle. "There's no law that says I can't talk to folks I run into while praying."

Edouard prided himself on control, despite the hot blood of his Cajun ancestors that ran through his veins. Like his brothers, he'd listened to his daddy's lectures about making your own fate, your own life. In 'Nam, those lessons had crystallized. The only way to stay alive was to keep your eye on the prize. Contrary to what sports pundits said, the best offense was, in fact, a strong offense.

Defense was for cowards.

He'd come home from war to a world he no longer recognized. Folks he'd once laughed with turned from him. Sweet Cassie Blankwell, the second girl he'd ever kissed, had turned from him on the street as if he was a baby killer. Only Millie and Lena Mae Lamont—the
first
girl he'd ever kissed—had treated him the same.

But he'd seen the pity in their eyes, and he'd felt like a goddamn charity case.

That was Lena Mae to the core. She wouldn't have turned down a starving, mange-ridden dog if it showed up on her doorstep, even if she knew that in taking the creature in, she was also taking her life into her own hands.

Edouard had refused to be that dog.

But he looked at her now, standing in the dappled light of the vestibule with her jaw at a fierce angle and defiance in her eyes, and realized he was dangerously close to barking.

He wanted to be angry with her, damn it. He wanted to blame her foolishness on that hot little number who'd blinded Cain to reality. But deep inside he knew the change had occurred before the woman who claimed to be Renee Fox ever stepped foot in Bayou de Foi.

And the only real emotion he could find was fear.

"It's not about laws." He tried to strip the emotion from his voice. Letting it shake would get them nowhere. "It's not about talking to whoever you please, either. It's about common sense. Safety. Travis is dead, Lena.
Murdered
. Because he talked to that reporter. Don't you get it? If you keep doing what I tell you not to, there's a damn fine chance you could end up just like him."

She didn't move, not physically, but something cold and hard moved into her eyes. "Are you
threatening
me?"

"Threatening you?" He strode toward her, stopped when he saw her step back. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."

She held his gaze, didn't back down. "You should go now, Edouard."

Edouard
. She never called him Edouard.

But she was right. He should leave. Turn, walk away. Leave the church, go back to the station and read his most recent surveillance report on the Lambert brothers. But he looked at her standing next to the statue of the Virgin Mary, with strands of black and gray hair falling from the twist and whispering against her face, at the mutinous line of her mouth and the hot demand in her eyes, and something inside of him pinched. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look more provocative, not even when he was seventeen and she was sixteen and he'd picked her up for the school dance.

"I'll go," he growled. But instead of turning away, he charged across the wood floor and took her shoulders in his hands, her mouth with his own. The kiss was hot and greedy and surprisingly desperate, and even though she stood rigid in his arms, he pulled her closer, fisted his hands in her hair and damn near drowned in the scent of antique roses and sorrow.

He pulled back abruptly, brought his hands to her face, refused to let himself feel the sting of rejection—or the cold finality of goodbye.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," he ground out, and despite the hot emotion churning through him, his voice was soft, rough. Realizing he was damn close to making a fool of himself, he dropped his hands and turned, walked out of the church.

It was only when he reached for his ringing mobile phone a few minutes later that he noticed the moisture on his fingertips.

News of the explosion stopped him in his tracks. "Is he dead?"

"Yeah."

"Does Cain know yet?"

"Haven't been able to reach him."

Edouard swore softly. Saura had called with first light wanting advice about how to tell Cain what she'd learned. Then, she'd called a few hours later after Cain had grabbed a bottle of scotch and stormed out without saying one word. She'd been scared. Worried. Said she hadn't seen him like that in months, not since Savannah had gone missing. There'd been something in his eyes, she said. More than simple anger or betrayal, but something sharp and volatile and it had frightened her.

His niece didn't frighten easily.

"I'll find him," Edouard said on a hot rush. The need to locate his nephew before someone else did burned like a hot poker to the gut. The press would be all over this. They'd want a statement. They'd want to make connections, to make the easy, obvious link between yet another suspicious death and the man many still wanted behind bars.

Edouard wasn't about to let that happen, because finally, at last, he had the means necessary to clear Cain's name once and for all.

Dead men could neither talk nor deny.

Someone close to him framed him…

Renee clicked off the microcassette recorder and stared into the darkness beyond the window, knew in her heart that Lena Mae was right. Someone close to Cain, someone he trusted, had framed him. It was the only way he could have looked so guilty.

Closing her eyes, she saw the rookie cop as he'd been that night in Jackson Square, but no longer knew if he'd spoken the truth. Maybe his story was just another lie.

The pieces were falling together faster now, painting the picture she'd spent eighteen months dreaming of: Cain's innocence. No matter the price, coming back had been the right thing to do, the only way to find the answers that would clear his name. She was the only one who knew what had happened to her that night, what she'd seen and heard.

Restless, she stood and lifted her flashlight, let the beam run along the interior of the small room. Little had changed in the eighteen months since she'd last been in the remote cottage tucked away on Robichaud land, where she and Cain had come to escape the chaos of New Orleans, where they'd made love to the tune of crickets and cicadas and the occasional family of toads.

She had commanded herself from that first afternoon not to return here. But that was before. That was when she was trying to pretend she wasn't Savannah, when she was exerting every ounce of strength she had to not feel anything. Not remember.

But the truth was out now, and the need to feel again, to remember everything, yammered within her. Outside the rain of the day had passed, leaving a stillness in its wake. Out here in the middle of bayou country, without the glaring intrusion of city lights, the stars shone brighter, endless almost, beaming down from a brilliant black sky and flirting with the land. Their light filtered through the dust-coated window and blended with the flashlight, illuminating everything she'd tried to forget.

The intensity of it knotted in her throat. Memories lived in the cottage, lingering in that hazy place between life and death. They shimmered off the wooden walls and streamed through the open spaces, making it difficult for Renee to move without bumping into the ghosts she no longer wanted to avoid.

Crossing the small space, she ran her hand along a bottle of merlot on an old Formica counter. It was as though the room stood suspended in time, a door back to the life she'd lost. With a twist to her heart she closed her eyes and remembered the weekend when heavy spring rains had drenched the land and flooded the roads, trapping them. It had been the most bizarre, romantic encounter of her life, stranded without radio or television, with no idea of what was happening in the outside world, other than the rumble of thunder and slash of lightning, the rain and the wind. She'd been too consumed with Cain to care about anything else. It was as though the rest of the world had stood still, granting the two of them their own private time-out.

Then the storm had cleared and they'd returned to reality.

Two weeks later her world had crashed down around her.

Now she put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath, wondered how it was possible for her heart to beat on, when everything inside of her bled.

She felt the change immediately, the way the land goes quiet and still before a hurricane storms ashore. Tension wound through her chest and squeezed, and even before the door slammed open and the cool gust swept against her back, she knew.

The time for reckoning had come.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

New Orleans

Eighteen months earlier

T
he water is cool. It started out scalding hot, but that was twenty minutes ago, and my water heater can't handle more than a fifteen-minute shower without running cold. That's how I know the water is cool. But I don't feel the discomfort like I usually do. I don't feel anything. Except shock. And horror. Those I feel in abundance.

Three hundred and thirty-eight. That's how many little white tiles are on the far side of my shower, tiles that I splayed my hands against while Cain made love to me in this very place only the morning before. It had been the first time we'd come together without facing each other, and the intensity of the sensation had prompted me to cry out long before I came.

Now I want to slam my fists against those cruel white tiles, smear them with black and make them go away. Make the memories go away. They're obscuring everything, seducing me into thinking with my heart, rather than objectively facing the new pieces of the puzzle, necessary no matter how unwanted they are.

Stay away from Robichaud,
my brother warned.
He can't be trusted.

Be careful,
my editor instructed.
Deception comes in all shapes and sizes
.

He scares me
, my friend Val confided.
This thing between you two is happening too fast. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?

The memories lash like a thin leather strip, and my body convulses. Wincing, I reach for the shampoo and squeeze a blob into my palm, then lift my hands to build a lather. Only then do I feel the silkiness of my hair and realize I've already applied shampoo and conditioner. Twice.

It's time to quit stalling.

Cain wants to meet at the cottage this evening. He says we need some quiet time, to get away. He says he has something special for me…

The chill is sudden and intense, starting in my chest and shooting out like venom to my arms and my legs. Trying not to shake, I step from the shower and reach for one of the oversize towels I bought to accommodate Cain's large frame, and wrap the soft material around me.

I shouldn't go, I realize as I step into a pair of pants and slip on a blouse. I know that. I'd be a fool to meet Cain alone in an isolated spot after learning that with his dying breath, my brother whispered my lover's name—and certainly not after the rookie cop who'd risked everything to give me that information had been found shot execution-style only hours later.

It doesn't mean anything I tell myself as I step into the bedroom. None of it. It could all be a coincidence or some elaborate frame-up—

The scent stops me. I stand there and breathe deeply of leather and patchouli, feel my heart strum low and deep and longingly. I love that scent, would know it anywhere. My sheets even smelled of it—but I washed them this morning as soon as he left my house.

Swallowing hard, I slip from my bedroom and head down the hall, expect to find him in the kitchen making a po'boy or sprawled on the sofa watching Sports Center—those are the only two things I can imagine him doing besides joining me in the shower.

But the kitchen is empty, and the TV is off.

I want to call out to him, but the incessant voices of my brother and my editor and my friend warn me not to. Hating the direction of my thoughts, I turn and move quietly to my office.

He's not there. The room is small and he is big, so his absence is easy to see. But I see something else. My microcassette recorder, the one I used to tape my conversation with Bender, is sitting on my desk.

I left it locked in a drawer.

Alarmed, I run across the room and grab it, find the tape gone. And my files, the ones I'd also locked away, are on the floor. Empty. My laptop is turned on—critical files deleted.

The sense of violation is swift and complete. Reeling, I reach under the rug and grab the key I keep stashed there, cram it into a lock and yank open another drawer—but my .22 is gone. My heart kicks hard and my mind starts to race, this time in concert with my imagination.

For the first time in my life, I'm scared in my own home.

Shakily, I reach for the phone, but before I can hit the nine key, I realize there's no dial tone.

The feel of something brushing against my legs brings a scream to my throat and I scramble around, only to find Esmy staring inquisitively at me. My heart slams hard. "It's okay," I whisper, and pray that it is.

My mobile phone is in my purse in the kitchen. If I can get to it, I can call—

Who? Who can I call? Who can I trust?

The realization that I can't answer that question freezes the breath in my lungs. I stand anyway and make my way across the office and back toward the kitchen.

Max. I can trust—

The keys stop me cold. Three of them. On a New Orleans Saints keychain. Sitting on the back of my grandpappy's recliner.

Cain's keys.