Stop Me (14 page)

That’s not too much of a stretch. Or maybe it was someone else. I wasn’t the only cop on that search. Kozlowski and Brenner were both there. They could’ve leaked it.

Maybe someone overheard them talking at the station.” Jasmine found it odd that Kozlowski hadn’t mentioned his own involvement.

But Black’s next statement raised even more questions.

“For that matter, it could’ve been Fornier’s brother-in-law.” 83

“His brother-in-law?” she repeated.

“Yeah. He’s some hotshot attorney from Boston who was nosing around.

Fornier thought he was trying to help, but the guy kept getting in the way.” The rain came down harder. Shielding her face with one hand, Jasmine considered this revelation. “You’re saying he might’ve stumbled on the information and accidentally allowed it to get out?”

“Or maybe not so accidentally. From what I heard, he wanted his niece found, but there wasn’t much love lost between him and Fornier.”

“What was the source of the contention between them, do you know?” His eyebrows knitted as if he was irritated by the question. “I have no idea.

I’m just telling you it was there.”

“Then…with so many other possibilities, why does Huff insist it was you?”

“Because Huff doesn’t know his head from his ass. He botched that case, so he pointed the finger at me. I’m the scapegoat. Don’t you get it?” Jasmine “got” that Black was jealous of Huff. He’d aspired to the position of detective but hadn’t made it, although he clearly considered himself superior. Was he telling her the truth, or had he been trying to push Huff from his pedestal by derailing the investigation? “Where did Moreau live when you did the search?” Jasmine asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

A gust of wind blew her hair around her face. “Because I do.” Clicking his tongue, Black shook his head. “You have to see it for yourself, right? What I’ve said isn’t enough.”

She didn’t bother responding to that. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Sure. But you won’t find anything new. I opened the trapdoor to prove my point the night I discovered it was sealed shut.” Maybe she wouldn’t find anything beyond the marks on the lintel Black had mentioned. But she might feel something. Her abilities sometimes worked that way.

“I need to be able to get the setting straight in my mind.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “Like I told you, I have no personal stake in the case.” Their eyes met, but only for a brief moment before he turned his attention to getting himself another cigarette. “It’s 2303 Sea Breeze Way in the Garden District.”

“How come you know the exact address after so long?” she asked.

He lit up again. “I have a great memory.”

“It wasn’t even your case.”

“I go over there occasionally,” he admitted. “His brother and I are friends.” Huff had mentioned Moreau’s brother. In fact, Huff thought the brother might’ve bribed Black to help Moreau out of trouble. “His brother lives there now?”

“Yep. So does his mother. They sold their house to pay Francis’s attorney fees and then moved into his place after he was arrested because it was cheaper.” Jasmine blinked raindrops from her eyelashes. “Where’s his father?” 84

“Died years before the move. Heart disease.”

“Thanks.” Figuring that was all he had to say, she turned toward her car, but he spoke again.

“Be careful.”

Pivoting, she raised a hand to once again shield her face. “Of what?” He flipped his hair out of his eyes, and his teeth—including that fang—glowed white against the heavy beard growth on his jaw. “In this case, if the bad guys don’t get you the good guys will.”

Jasmine couldn’t unwind enough to sleep. Every time she began to drift off, she’d see Pearson Black leaning against his car, smoking—and, seconds later, that smoke would roll over her like a suffocating blanket, burning her nose and throat, making it impossible to breathe. She’d startle into wakefulness, tell herself it was just a dream, then stare at the storm raging outside the window until her eyelids began to close and the whole cycle repeated itself.

After experiencing the same nightmare for the third time, she began to worry that it was some sort of premonition. Was there more to Black than the morbid, drama-loving braggart he seemed to be? She sensed that he’d been selective in what he’d chosen to share with her, but why hold anything back? And was there any truth to what he’d said about that evidence being planted?

Hoping to ease her tension enough to finally get some rest, she was about to get up and take a hot shower, when her cell phone rang. A quick glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table told her it was after midnight, but midnight in New Orleans was only ten at home. She figured it was Skye or Sheridan checking in with her.

“What’s going on at the ranch?” she said, smothering a yawn as she answered.

“The ranch?”

Jasmine blinked and sat up. It was a man’s voice. With the thunder making such a racket, and her disquieting dreams about Black, she didn’t immediately recognize it. “Who is this?”

“Romain Fornier.”

It sort of sounded like him. But she thought he didn’t have a phone. He’d moved out into the middle of a swamp because he didn’t want to deal with other people. “Where are you?” she asked.

“At the Flying Squirrel.”

The ramshackle tavern with the stuffed alligator beneath the overhang at its entrance. She remembered seeing the building, which was basically a lean-to adjacent to the little grocery store on the outskirts of Portsville.

“Tell me something only you’d know.” She was half teasing, but after her encounter with Black there was still that trace of doubt in her mind, that uneasiness that came from being in a foreign place.

85

“I have a cut on my right thigh.”

“Yeah, it’s you.”

“How’d you know?” he asked at length.

His tone indicated that he didn’t like accepting what he was apparently beginning to accept. And she could understand why. She didn’t always like accepting what she could do. “I touched it,” she said.

“When?”

Jasmine reacted to his subtle, sexy change of inflection by lowering her voice.

“When I was touching the rest of you.”

“Damn. Where was I when you were doing that?”

She smiled. “Asleep, I guess.”

“Next time you want to explore, would you mind waking me? I think it’d be a lot more fun.”

“From my perspective, it wasn’t bad the way it was,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

Her smile broadened. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

The gruffness in his voice made Jasmine’s heart pound. She was drawing too close to the flame of their attraction, but it seemed harmless enough, since he was two hours away and she was barricaded in her hotel room. His voice on the phone gave her something to hold on to in the dark. “I was on top,” she murmured.

“I like it so far.” His voice went even deeper. “Was I inside you?” Jasmine knew she shouldn’t let this continue, but the excitement flooding her senses goaded her on. “Yes. A perfect fit.”

He groaned. “It’s getting better.”

Scooting lower in the bed, she covered her head with the blankets. “You were speaking to me in French. I don’t know what you were saying, but—”

“What’d it sound like?”

She had no trouble recalling his words. She’d repeated them to herself at various times throughout the day, relishing the wonder she’d sensed in him at that moment. “Tu es belle.”

“You’re beautiful,” he translated.

A surge of warmth seemed to lift her up and carry her over a large swell, as if she were riding an ocean wave. “Too bad you couldn’t have meant it,” she said wryly, trying to reach solid ground again.

“Why not?”

“You haven’t seen what you were looking at when you said it.”

“I’ve seen the rest of you. What else did I say?”

“I’m probably going to slaughter it, but it was something like ‘Il est été trop long.’”

86

“Wait a second…. This is beginning to sound familiar.”

“Really?” she said with a laugh. “I thought you were asleep.” He hesitated, seemed to wrestle with disbelief, then succumbed to the irrefutable proof in her description. “And I thought my fantasies were my own.”

“I didn’t ask to be invited to your party.”

“You weren’t invited. You crashed it. How?”

All she knew was that they’d both wanted this strongly enough to make it happen. “I have no idea.”

“Does this kind of thing occur often with you?”

“Last night was the first.”

Silence. Then he said, “But you enjoyed it?”

“Every moment.” That memory should’ve lasted her through a lot of lonely nights, but here she was, already craving more.

“Somehow it wasn’t as good for me as it was for you,” he complained.

She swallowed to ease a sudden dry throat. “What was wrong with it?”

“It wasn’t real.”

Jasmine’s breathless excitement told her it was a very good thing they were so far away from each other. Any closer, and he’d be at her door or she’d be at his.

“Real is overrated.”

“How so?”

“It gets people into trouble.” With a capital T. Throwing the covers off her head, she took a deep breath of the room’s cold air and tried to work her way back to logical, to sensible, to responsible.

“What kind of trouble are you afraid of?” he asked.

The kind of trouble that came with a man like Fornier: the addiction, the craving, the risk, the heartbreak. “Losing control.” When she was young, she’d given in to the need to escape, to feel anything but what she felt when she thought of her sister. It’d been a long, hard road since then, pulling herself out of the mire of drug addiction. She was determined to make better decisions, to hang on to her self-respect and protect her future.

“You’d be safe with me.”

Yeah, right. That was what they all said, wasn’t it? “I had some interesting experiences when I was younger, enough to know what I want and what I don’t,” she explained.

“How does one night with me threaten that?”

“It’s out of character.”

He chuckled softly. “I was afraid you were going to say it’s out of the question.”

“It is out of the question.”

87

“I’m not convinced.” He hesitated as if contemplating the problem. “You’re running scared, but you’re not unreachable. Somehow you participated in that fantasy, too.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s psychic.”

“You already let me know how much you liked it. But you didn’t have to. I can tell when a woman’s interested—and when she’s ready to bolt. What’s made you so skittish?”

“A determination to avoid past mistakes, I guess.”

“You’ve been hurt?”

“Not by a man. Not directly, at any rate.”

“Then it relates to your sister.”

She was letting this conversation go on too long, but she liked the sound of his voice, the quiet intimacy she felt despite the small, lonely room. “Maybe.”

“What happened to you after she went missing?”

“Everything.” He was treading too close to matters she never discussed with anyone—even Sheridan and Skye—if she could help it. Kicking off the rest of the covers, she redirected the conversation. “Why’d you call?” She could tell he wanted to press the issue, but he allowed her to change the subject. “I was wondering if you managed to find Black.”

“When you walked out of the restaurant, I got the impression I’d never hear from you again.”

“I figured the same thing.”

“And then…”

“And then I had a few drinks.” She heard him sigh. “Probably a few too many.”

Lightning flashed, brightening the room. Jasmine watched the rain roll down the outside of the window, listened to it plink against the fire escape. “I found him.”

“What’d he say?”

Other than getting him to answer any questions that might come up about Moreau, Huff and Black, Jasmine was fairly sure she didn’t want to draw Romain any further into her investigation. Handsome though he was, he had some deep scars, which made him unpredictable, maybe even a liability. “Nothing, really.” He laughed disbelievingly. “You’re not going to tell me? You want me to trust you, but you’re not willing to trust me?”

Basically. But when he put it that way, she saw the unfairness of it. She also saw that it might be worth telling him if he could refute Black’s claims. “I don’t want to upset you.”

“You’re about six years too late for that.”

“Fine. Black insists it wasn’t Moreau who killed your daughter.”

“Of course he’d say that. He’s the one who destroyed the prosecution’s case.” 88

“He says he wasn’t the one who talked about the botched search. He says it could’ve been Kozlowski or another cop who was there that night.” She thought of Romain’s lawyer brother-in-law, but decided that was too big a stretch. Why mention it? She shouldn’t, not until she had more to go on.

“Can he prove it?”

“No. Or he would’ve done so.” She remembered the painful grip of his hand on her arm. “I think he’s been accused one time too many for a man of his temperament.”

“What does that mean?”

“He doesn’t take kindly to it.”

“He didn’t hurt you…”

“No.”

“What about the evidence? No matter how it was gathered, or whether it was admissible, it was still there, in Moreau’s house.”

“Black claims it was planted.”

“By whom?”

“He doesn’t know.”

There was some rustling on the other end of the line, and Romain’s voice turned sarcastic. “Of course not.”

“I’m not saying he has a lot of credibility. I’m just repeating what he told me.”

“But you’re tempted to believe him.”

She tried to choose her words carefully. “He told me a few details that had the ring of truth. I need to check them out. That’s all.”

“I didn’t kill the wrong man, Jasmine.”

It was a terrible possibility—but the note she’d received made it seem more likely than not. “You might have.”

“Go to hell,” he snapped and hung up.

Jasmine couldn’t blame Romain for his sudden flare of temper. No doubt he’d called, hoping that what she’d found would reassure him, put his mind at rest.

Instead, she’d done just the opposite.

The rapid shift of emotion, his and hers, left her more depressed and exhausted than before she’d spoken to him. She needed to keep her distance from Fornier. That was all there was to it.