KILLING ME SOFTLY (38 page)

Cain lowered his gun and watched Val slump against Gabe, watched his cousin drop to his knees and cradle to his chest the woman who'd betrayed them all. There was a roaring in his ears, a violent pounding that drowned out all the sounds of the swamp which had shrieked so loudly seconds before.

Renee
. He swung around and saw her, kneeling not ten feet away. Her eyes, dark and stunned, were on his. In her hands, Gabe's gun dangled from her fingers.

"Cher,"
he breathed, then was on his feet and running, dropping to his knees and pulling her against him. She curved her arms around him and held on tight, pressed her hands into his back.

"Couldn't let her do it," she muttered into his chest. "Couldn't let her hurt anyone else."

The pain in her voice wrapped around his heart and squeezed. He glanced beyond her to D'Ambrosia, propped up against a big rock while Edouard tended to him and called for air support. Then he saw his cousin, methodically rocking the lifeless body of the woman who'd been on the verge of executing him. His eyes were dark and vacant, completely dry.

"It was my shot," Cain said, pulling back to cup his hands to Renee's face. "I got it off first."

She put her own hands to his face, strummed her fingers along his jaw. "You don't know that."

Her raw courage slayed him. She'd played her part flawlessly, following the instructions he'd whispered while kissing her as though she'd been in on the plot to lure Val into the open from the very beginning. Pretending to shoot him had been the only way.

"Yes," he said. "I do."

Gratitude glistened in her eyes. "You remembered."

"Toujours,"
he murmured, feeling the tight surge all over again, the cold horror of Renee's disguised call for help. He tucked her head against his chest and buried his hands in her hair, savored the feel of her body curled into his. "Always."

The rumors were true. The Goose was a small electronic device, no bigger than a quarter. It looked innocuous enough, like a trinket a child might find in a gumball machine and lose interest in only a few minutes later. Left on the floor or a counter, no one would look twice at it.

Adrian
had
stolen it. And he had hidden it. Ultimately, he'd died for it.

Val had died to get it back.

The FBI could hardly wait to get their hands on it.

Chest tight, Renee watched Cain hand the plastic bag containing the black magnetized device to his uncle. She and Cain had found it concealed in a small carved-out compartment on the underside of the large branch that swooped toward the ground. Adrian had hidden a computer disk in the little vault, as well, its files encoded.

An electronic forensics specialist was already en route—Tara Prejean. Renee smiled at the thought of the delicate-looking innkeeper, who used her bed and breakfast to cover her true passion. She was the FBI's go-to person for decryption, which was, Cain told her, how she'd met Alec in the first place. Tara felt confident that within twenty-four hours, forty-eight tops, she'd break the sophisticated code.

"There was a second shooter," she heard Cain tell Edouard. "We caught up with him a quarter of a mile away."

But not before he'd taken down the tall, dark-haired man Renee recognized from the casino. Shortly after arriving at the hospital she'd learned that Cain's uncle had asked the detective to keep an eye on her, make sure she didn't cause trouble for Cain. "Any word on D'Ambrosia?"

"More of a flesh word than anything else. Bullet grazed his thigh. Doc Guidry says he might have a limp, but that's it."

Relief washed through her. "Thank God." There'd been enough lives lost, too many destroyed. "And Gabe?" she asked, feeling cold inside at the memory of him kneeling in the mud with Val's lifeless body in his arms. She had no idea how a man got past that kind of betrayal.

"Father Voissin is with him," Edouard said, frowning. "So is Saura. I'm gonna get down there just as soon as I check on Lena."

She blinked. "Lena Mae? Is everything okay?"

The change came over Edouard so fast she had to blink to be sure it was real. He was a big bear of a man, always grim faced and on the prowl. But the second she'd asked about Lena Mae Lamont, something incredibly soft had filled his eyes, taking ten years off him. "She will be," he said, sliding a hand into his pocket. "We all will be."

The room was empty.

Edouard stared at the bare hospital bed for a long quiet moment before closing the door. This was what he'd wanted, he reminded himself. Lena. Gone.

According to the nurse, she'd checked herself out of the hospital an hour before, said she had a plane to catch. Dr. Guidry had tried to talk her out of it, but Lena, being Lena, had been determined. There was very little the woman couldn't achieve when she put her mind to it.

Life would go on. Lena would make a new home for herself. She would be happy. He would continue to protect his family and his town, would be ready for the day Nathan Lambert finally messed up.

It still galled him that he'd been so consumed by his belief that the Lambert brothers were behind all the ill that had befallen his family that he'd failed to see the threat right under his nose. Val. She'd always made him a bit uneasy, but he'd attributed it to her being shy. Not cold-blooded.

He looked forward to going through her files.

"Eddy?"

He looked up to see Millie hurrying toward him without a scrap of makeup on. "Honey, what are you doing—"

"I just heard." Breathless, she took his hands and squeezed. Hers were much too cold. "Is it true about Gabe's gal?"

A disturbing combination of hope and grief hollowed out her eyes, reminding him entirely too much of her cousin. "It is," he told her in as reassuring a voice as he could. He'd known her forever. It was damn hard to envision her as a widow. She wasn't that old. None of them were.

But age didn't seem to discriminate.

"Lord have mercy, he was right," she breathed, and her eyes filled.

"Who was?"

"Travis. He always said it was someone close to Cain that set him up. Maybe Gabe or Eti or—"

"Me?" Edouard finished for her.

She had the grace to flush. "He mighta mentioned your name," she admitted. "But Lena Mae always said…"

The words dangled there between them for a long moment, then they started to wind around him, twisting, constricting… "Lena always said what?"

Millie pulled her hands back and looked up at him with a pained smile. "That she couldn't imagine you killing anyone."

Edouard sucked in a sharp breath, would have sworn he smelled fresh-baked cookies. "But she didn't know for sure."

Millie's expression gentled. "She's gone, Eddy. Said to tell you there's no need to keep mowing her grass. The real-estate agent has someone who can do that until the house sells."

He nodded, reached for the pack of cigarettes.

"I—I've got your portrait," Millie added. "It's in my back seat. I thought you might want to see it before—"

"I've already seen it."

"She really captured you, don't you think?"

The sight of the missing cigarette shamed him. "Honey," he said, shaking out a second. This one he wouldn't light, he told himself. This one he would force himself to merely taste. "I hate to leave you, but I need to get back—"

"Of course you do." Millie's smile was fleeting, reminding him for a flash of the girl she'd been before marriage to Travis had replaced smiles with frowns. "Wait," she blurted out, reaching into her satchel. "Here. These are for you."

Not wanting to hurt her feelings, he glanced down at her offering, felt everything inside of him go very still.

Because in her hands she held a pie plate, covered with tinfoil. A small tear revealed the cookies. Chocolate chip.

The butterfly hovered over the honeysuckle blossom, a splash of yellow forever suspended against the shadowy outline of a woman.
Her
shadow.
Savannah's
. Cain had taken her deep into the swamp, said he wanted to share something with her. At first she'd thought he meant the land, but as the day progressed and shadows stretched longer, she'd realized what he wanted to share was himself—the man who took pleasure in simple things, the photographer who found beauty where others found only decay.

Until that afternoon over a year and a half before, she'd known only the hard-edged detective everyone warned her to steer clear of. Because of his photography, she'd suspected the still waters he presented to the world were just a facade, but until she'd watched him go down on a knee and frame a delicate dogwood blossom, she'd never imagined how breathtakingly deep and beautiful still water could be.

Renee lifted a hand to one of the old church windows of Cain's gallery. A light glowed from within, but with the hour pushing toward ten, the doors were locked. She'd left the hospital almost an hour before, after the FBI had hustled Cain and his uncle into a private meeting, something about Val and additional evidence they'd seized from the home she'd shared with Gabe.

Renee had tried waiting, but the walls of the hospital had started to close in on her, and before she even realized her intent, she'd slipped out the emergency room exit and into the night. Now the darkness whispered around her, cool and damp and primal, carrying with it the sounds of the toads and the crickets, the earthy scent of the bayou flowing nearby. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, found it impossible to believe less than two weeks had passed since she'd stood in this exact same spot with Cain on her first night back.

Hasn't anyone told you it's not smart to be alone with me in the dark?

One week. That's what she'd given herself. One week to find the truth. One week to secure justice. But in truth, she'd only needed a day. A moment. A heartbeat. Because the second she'd seen Cain, all the walls she'd hammered into place had come tumbling down, leaving her with the devastating truth that had been slowly and softly killing her from that moment forward.

She should go, she knew. Move on. Her time here had come and gone. She'd accomplished what she'd come to accomplish.

The hum started deep inside, low and fierce like the echo of thunder somewhere in the distance. Her heart kicked in recognition, her breath caught in anticipation. She knew without turning, felt without touching—wanted without defense.

"I used to come here," he said from the darkness, and the low cadence of his voice sent her heart strumming against her ribs. "Late at night." To her right, the steps leading up to the porch creaked. "I'd stand just where you are," he said, coming up behind her but stopping before he touched. "Put my hand to the window, and remember."

The image formed before she could stop it—Cain, so big and brutal and allegedly untouchable, without remorse or conscience, alone in the darkness, staring at a delicate butterfly hovering against her shadow—and it devastated. "Why didn't you burn it?" The question was oddly unemotional. "Like you did all the others."

His breath feathered against her neck, bringing both warmth and a chill. "I couldn't," he said, and then his hand was on the window, slowly tracing the curve of her shadow. "It would have been like destroying you."

Her heart kicked hard. She was acutely aware of him standing behind her, of every line of his body, every beat of his heart, every breath.

All she had to do was turn and she would be in his arms.

On a broken breath she pivoted to her left and crossed the porch, curled her hands around the old rail and tried to breathe.

The cool air rushed against her face and sent her hair flying, but she made no move to push it back. "I used to dream of what it would be like to come back to you," she whispered, staring at the statue of the woman waiting for a lover who never returned. "To see you again. Sometimes I would wake up out of breath with the sheets damp and tangled around me—" her body burning, begging "—with your name burning in my throat." And confusion clawing at her heart. "I'd look for you." First in the bed next to her, then in the room, sometimes she'd even run through the small house. "Because I knew you'd been there with me."

"You came to my dreams, too," he said quietly.

More than anything she wanted to turn to him, to see him, to touch. More than anything she wanted to believe the promise she'd seen glittering in his eyes that afternoon, when he'd kissed her hard and asked her to trust him—to shoot him. It had taken several long, dizzy seconds before she'd realized the beauty of his plan.

Still, lifting the gun to his chest had been one of the hardest things she'd ever done.

"For so long the need to reclaim my life consumed me." Like a living entity it had grown within her, driven her. "Coming home, seeing you, finding the truth and making sure someone paid … it's all I thought about. All I wanted." Her chest tightened on the memory, the reality. "I never imagined success could feel so empty."

Behind her the porch creaked and she knew that he'd moved, but she didn't trust herself to look. Didn't trust herself to see.

"I thought I could just step back into my life and move on," she said, watching the way the big oaks loomed like giant shadows against the night sky, swaying and swishing. "Like a book I'd set down for a while, that it would be waiting in exactly the same spot when I was ready to pick it up again." She'd never let herself consider anything else. "But that life doesn't exist anymore. Time moves forward, not backward."

"It still exists," he said from behind her, and then his hands were on her shoulders, gentle but firm, turning her from the night. Her heart slammed hard at the sight of him, so big and tall, but battered somehow, a man not afraid of violence but capable of excruciating tenderness.

They'd been lovers. They knew each other's bodies intimately. They knew each other's secrets and dreams, passions and fears. But as she looked up at him, at his wide cheekbones and the dark glitter in his eyes, she felt as though she stood before him naked for the first time.

"Time does move forward," Cain said, drinking in the sight of her standing there in the mercurial light of the moon. The crystalline blue of her eyes fed some place deep inside of him. "But that doesn't mean the past goes away."