Stop Me (35 page)

“Dustin! You could get Mom in a lot of trouble. Do you understand that?”

“Mom needs to be set free. You both do.”

“Stop talking like that. You don’t even know what’s going on.”

“I know it has something to do with me, and I don’t like it. I’m tired of seeing the fatigue in her face, Phil. I’m tired of being a burden.” Jasmine was dying to hear the rest of the conversation, but she knew Romain wouldn’t wait more than a minute or two before taking some kind of action, which would interrupt what she was hearing, anyway. It’d be better not to give herself away, better to escape with what she already had in her possession. With any luck, the missing address book and photo wouldn’t be noticed for several days.

Stepping into the hall, she tiptoed down the stairs and made her way as quietly as possible to the front door. There was no sound as she opened it, but she nearly ran into Romain, who’d just raised his hand to knock. Making a quick gesture to indicate silence, she noted his expression of relief as she shut the door behind her. Then she grabbed his hand and they both ran for the truck.

Romain wanted to go back to Portsville and, after their close call in the Moreau house, Jasmine didn’t argue. He liked the idea of putting some distance between them and New Orleans. He knew they needed a safe place to recoup, to sleep. But he had little desire to speak on the ride home. Jasmine seemed eager to figure out what the items she’d taken might mean in relation to her sister’s kidnapping and talked a lot about the possibilities, but all Romain could think about was returning to the truck to find her gone.

Plagued with visions of Phillip pulling her out of the truck and strangling her, then stuffing her body in the trunk of his car, he’d felt just as helpless in that moment as he had when Adele went missing. If Phillip had dragged her off, what could Romain have done about it? Almost nothing. Like Adele, Jasmine would’ve been dead before he could even try to save her. And dead was forever.

Romain had been planning to force his way into the house to search. But if he hadn’t found her, he couldn’t have counted on the police for help. They believed he’d shot Francis. The authorities would be so busy protecting the Moreaus’ civil rights they’d do nothing until there was actual proof of Jasmine’s disappearance, giving Phillip all the time he needed to dispose of her body. And then it’d be too late.

It hadn’t turned out that way. But it could have. And that was enough to remind Romain that he didn’t want to care. About anyone. Least of all a woman who was asking for trouble.

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“What’s wrong?” Jasmine finally broke into his thoughts.

Romain wasn’t in the mood for confrontation. Slinging one arm over the steering wheel, he shot her a forbidding look.

“That’s not an answer,” she said.

“What do you think is wrong?” he asked. “You had no business going into that house. You were supposed to wait in the truck.”

“You’re still upset about that?”

That was no small thing. It’d scared the hell out of him. He almost said, “I can’t take care of you if you won’t let me!” And then he realized she didn’t expect him to take care of her. He was the one who wanted to protect her, regardless the loyalty he felt to Pam. “I’m not upset,” he lied.

“Yes, you are. You haven’t said more than two words since we left.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“You could tell me what you and Dustin were talking about.” He knew he should tell her and be done with it, but that moment of sheer panic still rankled. “Or maybe you could tell me why you didn’t stay put.” She glared at him. “Why do you think?”

“Because you’re reckless? Because, for some strange reason, you can’t appreciate danger and stay the hell away from it? Because you think you’re bulletproof, that it can’t happen to you, only to other people? Well, I’m here to tell you it can happen, damn it! It happened to me, didn’t it?” He thought she was going to shout back at him. But her chest lifted as if she’d just taken a deep breath, and she reached out to touch his forearm. “I’m fine, okay?

I’m right here, alive and well.”

Embarrassed that she’d read through his tirade so easily, he shook her off.

“Stop it. You don’t mean anything to me. I don’t care about anyone. Not anymore.” She turned to stare through the front window, but she didn’t raise her voice. “I scared you, and for that I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, okay? I did it because you scared me first.”

He didn’t want understanding or even explanations. He wanted a target.

Spotting a motel off to one side of the road, Romain slammed on his brakes and pulled into the parking lot.

Jasmine braced herself with a hand on the dashboard and one on her seat belt, but he didn’t bother to apologize. “What are you doing?” she asked, still maddeningly calm. “Where are we going?”

“We’re not going anywhere. I’m leaving you here. I’ll give you the money you need to get out of the mess you’re in, and that’s it. I don’t want anything else to do with you.”

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Finally, some real anger sparked in her eyes. “Why? Because I know you care about me, even though you don’t want to? Because I saw the relief on your face when you found me at the door?”

“I’d be relieved to see anyone at that door. Especially anyone stupid enough to go in knowing a man had been murdered there.”

“You went in!”

“I can defend myself!”

“Like the man in the cellar defended himself? What are you going to do against a bullet?”

The tires ground in the gravel as he stopped and shoved the gearshift into Park.

He opened his door, but she caught his arm. “Tell me something, Romain. How are you letting your first wife down just because you want to make love to me?”

“I don’t want to make love to you.”

“That’s a lie. You enjoyed our time together. You want more of it. And it’s eating you up. You feel guilty because you can go on living and loving and enjoying life and Pam can’t. But it’s not your fault that she got cancer, and it’s not my fault, either!”

Life was so much easier when he didn’t have anything to lose. He’d made the adjustment, knew how to deal with each day. So why was he getting involved with Jasmine? Caring, without the old assurance he’d possessed that fate would be kind to him, was new territory. And he didn’t want any part of it.

Jerking away from her, he stalked to the office, where the buzzer on the front desk roused a sleepy middle-aged man who rented him a room. When Romain walked back outside, it was drizzling, but he didn’t have to encourage Jasmine to get out of his truck. She was already standing in the rain, hair and clothes damp, suitcase in hand.

Although he tried to take it from her, she refused to let him carry it as they located the room. He unlocked the door but, using her suitcase to block him, she pushed past him and grabbed the key from his hands before slamming the door.

Romain stood there, feeling far too many things to sort them all out. He knew he was being unreasonable. He regretted his actions. But he couldn’t deal with the emotions she brought to life, and if this was the only way to put a stop to them, so be it.

Isolation. That was what he needed. He’d known it when they let him out of prison; he knew it now.

Telling himself it was for the best, he returned to his truck, got in and drove away.

Wet and miserable, Jasmine sank onto the bed with her suitcase at her feet, blinking hard against the tears that had started to fall. She told herself Romain didn’t deserve such an emotional reaction, that she barely knew him. But she didn’t have 212

the reserves to deal with the hurt any other way, so she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t crying over him. She was crying because she was exhausted and confused and…lost. Always lost.

Stripping off her wet clothes, she kicked them aside and decided to take a hot shower. She had a picture of the man who’d taken Kimberly. An actual photograph.

And she knew that someone connected to the Moreaus would be able to identify him.

That was a giant leap forward. She should be happy right now, not mooning over someone she had no business wanting in the first place.

Adjusting the faucet, she waited several minutes for the hot water to kick in, then stood under the spray, trying not to think about Romain. Or the fact that she didn’t care whether or not they made love, she just wanted to be with him.

Romain drove for ten minutes, but every mile was harder than the one before.

He kept picturing Jasmine standing there in the rain with her suitcase—and kept wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he could be such a jerk. He’d learned to get angry when he felt threatened, learned to fight. Prison had taught him that, and so had the tough breaks that’d led him to prison. He couldn’t choose what he shut out. He had to shut it all out. But he knew Jasmine didn’t deserve the way he’d treated her. She’d had a few tough breaks of her own and didn’t need him to make her situation any worse.

But besides that, she was right. He wanted her now more than ever. And it made him feel disloyal—because he could no longer remember the subtleties of Pam’s expressions during those intimate moments, could no longer rely on the absolute dedication that’d made other women a very remote temptation. Feelings he’d thought would never change were dimming, slipping away, and he found himself yearning to let it happen, to move on despite the loss of his wife and the subsequent loss of his daughter.

Maybe it was normal that human survival would make a mockery of his devotion, but he couldn’t help feeling shallow for being so weak, so susceptible.

He was only a half hour from home when he began to slow. Don’t turn back.

You don’t want to hurt her again. It was true and, with his track record, hurting her seemed inevitable. But he kept seeing those wide trusting eyes gazing up at him as he rolled her beneath him, and it wasn’t three minutes later that he stopped at an all-night liquor store to buy a box of condoms.

A knock at the door surprised Jasmine just as she was toweling off from her extended shower. She had the television on to distract her from the thoughts spinning around in her head, but the volume was low. Surely it hadn’t disturbed anyone….

Standing behind the door to shield herself, she opened it the width allowed by the security chain and saw Romain there, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his collar turned up against the rain.

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She pulled the towel tighter around her and stepped into view. Romain had seen a lot more than her bare legs and shoulders and, after the way he’d acted, she didn’t mind taunting him with what he couldn’t have. “Did you forget something?” His eyes went briefly to the cleavage showing above the towel. “Will you let me in?”

“No. What do you want?”

He hesitated, glanced away, then met her gaze directly. “I want you,” he said simply.

Jasmine started to shake her head. She couldn’t take any more ups and downs.

But there was something so honest in those words, so vulnerable, that she couldn’t close the door on him, either.

He had to be as exhausted as she was. “You can sleep in the extra bed,” she said and removed the chain. But when he came in and closed the door behind him, he reached for her and she didn’t turn him away—even when her towel landed on the carpet.

Beverly sat in her home office, utterly exhausted. Once she’d gotten Billy and the baby to bed at the transfer house, she’d managed to nap a little, too, but the newborn had slept only two hours before screaming for half the night. She was so colicky and miserable Beverly hadn’t known how to help her. It was dawn when she finally settled down, time for Zalinda Sputero to start her shift. Zalinda had two kids of her own, whom she brought with her. She’d been told that the children in the transfer house were foster kids waiting to be placed and seemed to believe she was doing a good deed. The fact that Peccavi paid her in cash, like he did Beverly, should’ve told her otherwise, but if Zalinda suspected she’d fallen in with a bad crowd she preferred the money to a clean conscience. She had to feed her family somehow.

A noise at the door told Beverly that Phillip had followed her into the room.

They’d just had an argument because he’d taken off again while she was at work, had left even though she’d told him over and over how dangerous it was for Dustin to be alone. Dusty could’ve tried to get up and fallen; he could’ve had a seizure; he could’ve reached the pain meds he was always begging for and overdosed. All kinds of things could’ve gone wrong. Why wouldn’t Phillip listen?

Because he was cracking up right in front of her. She didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to hold what she had left of her family together.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

The contrition was also nothing new. He understood the pressure she was under, felt guilty when he made it worse. And yet he wouldn’t do what she asked.

She doubted he would’ve told her about the door if he’d had any way of fixing it so she wouldn’t notice. As it was, he’d stuck a piece of cardboard in the broken frame, but she’d spotted it the minute she’d walked into the kitchen.

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“Someone was in our house,” she said.

“Nothing happened,” he responded, a point he’d made several times already.

“And if nothing happened, there’s no need to overreact.” She spun in her chair to face him. “How do you know nothing happened?”

“Nothing’s missing, is there?”

Not that Beverly could tell. The money she’d received on payday had been moved but every dollar was there. Even Jasmine’s purse and other belongings were safely tucked away in her bedroom closet. “Not that I can see, but—”

“And it’s not as if anyone bothered Dusty,” he interrupted. “You can ask him.

Tonight was like any other night.”

Ordinarily, she would’ve had to motion for Phillip to keep his voice down, but at the moment they could shout and Dustin wouldn’t hear a thing. The only real sleep he got these days was right after his morning shot, and she’d given it to him fifteen minutes ago. They wouldn’t be hearing from him for at least two hours. It was the only respite he received; it was Bev’s only respite, too.

“I’m not sure he’d even remember it,” she said. “Depends on where he’s at with his meds.”