Masked by Moonlight

by Nancy Gideon

He stood rigid, unmoving, not even breathing. Slowly, because she knew Jimmy Legere was watching them from the house, she flicked up her middle finger behind Max’s head.

  Just then the sultry heavens tore loose, drenching them in seconds with hot, pelting rain. Max shrugged out of his jacket and tented it over her head. He waited in the downpour while she dragged up the convertible top and snapped it in place. When she attempted to return his coat, he waved her off.

  “Keep it. When you have enough of my clothes at your place, I’ll have to start staying overnight so I can get dressed.”

  “Dream on, Savoie.”

  “Every night, detective.”

  He turned and strode up to the house, ignoring the desire to look around to follow the car as it wound toward the road. But he didn’t think he could ever stand watching her leave him.

  Jimmy still sat on the porch, finishing up the last of his eggs Benedict.

  “She’s an unmannerly creature, your detective,” was his mild comment.

  His detective. Who’d come out here to do more than ask about Vic Vantour. She’d wanted to get another look at him, to puzzle over what had happened between them. To fret over what to do next.

  He was wondering the same things.

  His cheek still tingled from the brush of her lips.

  He should have gone right into the house without comment, but something about Jimmy’s attitude provoked him just as much as Charlotte’s confident goading. He didn’t like that they were jabbing at each other with him in the middle. And even more, he disliked the tug-of-war going on inside him as they carelessly pulled on his affections as if he didn’t matter.

  Max paused beside the table, his features closed down tight, displeasure roughening his voice. “If I want her to know any of the particulars about my past, I’ll tell her myself. That’s my business and you’ll stay out of it.”

  Before Jimmy could placate him with an apology, Max disappeared into the house, the door closing quietly behind him.

  Jimmy frowned. This was the first time Max had spoken to him with even the slightest edge of warning. As if man to man, on equal ground.

  It was the woman, of course. Just because Jimmy had never married didn’t mean he didn’t understand and have a healthy respect for the “weaker” sex. There was nothing weak about a woman. Not when she held a man’s foolish hormones in her cold, greedy hands. Even the smartest, shrewdest, most capable male could be reduced to a foolish puppet with one calculating twist. He’d seen it done by his own mother and sister. Clever females, diabolical and treacherous. Sorrow lanced through his heart when he thought of his cousin, led into betrayal by sweet words whispered in his ear. Choosing lust over love of family had been a very bad move on his part. His last.

  Jimmy crumpled his newspaper and tossed it to the floorboards. If that skirt with a badge and impressive tits thought she was going to lead Max down the same self-destructive path to ruin, she was sorely mistaken. Max may not be human but he was still a vulnerable male of his own species, and she was cunningly working him up into a mindless, panting frenzy.

  What she didn’t understand was that Max Savoie was his, bought and paid for. He hadn’t spent so much valuable time and effort to tame and teach and train a dangerous wild thing into an efficient, deadly weapon just to have her distract him from his duty.

  Don’t ask me to.

  Temper simmered as Jimmy recalled those bold words. How dare Max put conditions on his loyalty? Standing on hind legs didn’t make Savoie into a man: He was an animal, an extremely valuable creature of intelligence and talent.

  But if Max was confused about what he was, it was as much Jimmy’s fault as the detective’s. He’d allowed himself to grow fond of his prized possession, as proud and protective as a father of what he’d nurtured and groomed over the years. He’d spoiled Max with love, using that to control him instead of harsh discipline. But loving one’s pets didn’t mean an undeserved bite would be forgiven. Or that they’d be allowed to break loose and run free after the scent of a female without being punished upon return.

  Max would have to learn that, since Detective Charlotte Caissie was rapidly becoming a force to be dealt with.

  “STILL OPEN FOR business?”

  Sister Catherine stopped in surprise, recognizing the voice before she identified the figure slumped in one of the rear pews.

  “My business or your business?”

  “Yours this time. I’m off the clock.”

  Mary Kate had never seen that particular phenomenon before, but there was something in Cee Cee’s expression—a worry, a weariness—that made her sit in the pew ahead of her. “Meter’s running. Go ahead.”

  “Remember when we were little girls, and Lucy Martel used to scare us with her stories when we were supposed to be sleeping?”

  Mary Kate smiled. “The bogeyman. Keeping an eye open all night was the reason I was always falling asleep during catechism class.”

  “Te-taille, couche mal, Madame Grand Doigt, and fille folle, coming to chew off the toes or smother bad little children at night. They seemed so real. The possibility that you might open your eyes and find them there in the room made your heart race and your hands sweat. And if you turned your head real fast, you could almost catch sight of them there in the corners.”

  Mary Kate frowned in concern. “Lottie, are you all right?”

  “What if some of those stories were actually true? I mean, where do stories come from? From fact? From some splinter of fact? Demons, monsters—are they something made up to frighten us into good behavior, or are they warnings that such things can and do exist?”

  Mary Kate grew very still. She knew Cee Cee expected her to laugh or launch into some philosophical tangent. Instead, she slipped her hand over her friend’s and squeezed tightly.

  “Mary Kate, I’ve seen something that shouldn’t exist, not in our world. I can’t explain it. I can’t understand it. I think I must be losing my mind.”

  “Are you talking about Max Savoie?” Mary Kate asked gently.

  As if shocked to the soul, Cee Cee just stared at her for a moment. Then she whispered, “What do you know about Max?”

  “Things it’s time you knew.” She stood. “I’ll put on the tea. And I think Father Furness’s whiskey would probably be permissible.”

  Seven

  THEY WERE TWO best friends, complete opposites. Day and night. Dark and light. Mary Kate Malone was a cheerleader, a student council representative, a fund raiser, a club joiner. She was blonde, bouncy, and a bit bubble-headed. Everyone loved her. Her one goal going into her senior year was to get into the basketball shorts of Terry McFee.

  Charlotte Caissie was the other side of that coin. Tall and intimidating, she would have been Goth if Goth had been in fashion. While Mary Kate craved involvement, she sought solitude. She wasn’t a joiner; she was a watcher. She didn’t want to be like everyone else. She was proud of her uniqueness, calling herself a daughter of the world. A Creole, she was French, Spanish, and Haitian, with all their dark passions. And she thought Terry McFee was an idiot. She had the better hook shot.

  Unlikely friends, they were joined together living under the roof of St. Bartholomew’s.

  Mary Kate’s parents had been killed by a drunk driver during Mardi Gras when she was seven. St. Bart’s opened its door to take her in. Charlotte’s mother was an alcoholic living someplace in California, her father an undercover cop. While he was prowling the underbelly of New Orleans to bring down organized crime, Charlotte stayed at St. Bart’s, warmed by the knowledge that her father loved her. That he was a good cop. Too good.

  Just seventeen, she and Mary Kate were on their way home from a basketball game, walking as if nothing could ever harm them. Then a delivery truck pulled over to the curb, grabbed them up and, over the next four days, shattered their innocence forever.

  Remembrance came back to Charlotte, bringing the taste of blood and kerosene from the rag they’d stuffed into her mouth. Then the terrible fear at being s
natched off the street and locked away in the care of those animals. They’d tried to make her beg on the phone, to beg her father not to testify, but they couldn’t force a sound from her. Not then. Not later. Because she’d believed he’d come for her. She’d believed all she had to do was stay strong, be brave, protect Mary Kate, and he’d come charging to her rescue.

  But he hadn’t.

  “Ancient history,” Charlotte murmured into her cup of tea. “What does this have to do with Max Savoie?”

  “He was there, that last day. Just for a minute, but I saw him. I called out to him for help.”

  Charlotte gripped her cup, her hands shaking. “He saw us and he did nothing?” A host of emotions fisted about her heart. Disbelief, shock, fury.

  A smile touched Mary Kate’s scarred face. “Not then. But he came back later.” Her smile grew cold and savage. “And then he took care of everything.”

  Don’t be afraid. They won’t ever hurt you again. I took care of them for you.

  He would have been around twenty then, already a solid fixture in Legere’s world. But she hadn’t met him until several years later. Until after she joined the force and became part of her father’s vigorous campaign against crime. She remembered it so clearly. She’d heard of him, the sleek, silent killer who carried out Legere’s commands with terrifying and deadly efficiency. Seasoned members of her squad had actually trembled and crossed themselves when he’d been brought into the station in handcuffs on one of many charges never proven. Curiosity had her craning her neck for a look at him and she remembered thinking, Why, he’s not much older than I am.

  She remembered his calm, graceful stride, the way he carried himself so fearlessly through a bristling crowd who would have shot him dead just to claim they’d done so. Because he scared them. He doesn’t look so scary, she’d thought as their eyes met for the first time. His beautiful pale green eyes in that harshly sculpted face met and held hers, and a shock zapped her like a fork in a light socket.

  A shock of recognition for someone she’d never seen before . . .

  Not in his human form.

  “You told me you didn’t remember,” she accused her friend, her tone agitated. “You said you never saw who pulled us out of there just ahead of the flames. You lied to me, Mary Kate. Why?”

  “Because I wanted to do something for you. After all you went through trying to protect me, this was one burden I could carry for you.”

  Charlotte’s voice trembled. “You saw what he did to them? How he did it?”

  “He did what I would have done if I’d been strong enough. He did what they deserved to have done to them. He butchered them like the animals they were, and then I helped him burn the bodies.”

  So they couldn’t be recognized. So they wouldn’t lead back to his boss. Or to him as their killer. Protecting all three of them in that quick, clever move.

  He’d known all along what had been done to them, to her. He’d known why his touch, any man’s touch, would frighten her. So he’d kept his distance, his manner easy and nonthreatening. He’d understood why she covered her weakness with a wrap of barbed-wire temper, so he’d snipped his way carefully through each strand. Knowing helplessness would bring panic, he’d rescued her, then released her when she asked him to. Her soul shuddered. Her emotions splintered.

  “He carried you to the hospital in his arms and wanted to wait to see if you’d be all right, but I convinced him to go, that it wouldn’t be safe for him. Max and I have become friends of a sort over the years, because we shared you.”

  It was too much to take in all at once.

  “But why would he risk so much for the two of us? Why, Mary Kate?”

  “He’s never told me.”

  “What brings him back here? He said it was to cleanse his soul. Is that what you do for him? He comes to you with his hands all bloodied, and you forgive him?”

  “I would if he asked, but that’s not what he asks for. And no, I won’t tell you what it is. That’s between him and God, and only he can tell you.”

  Each fact only added to her distress. “How does he do it? How does he change what he is? How is it possible?”

  “It’s miraculous, Lottie. He was an answer to prayer.”

  “Nonsense. Max Savoie is more demon than angel.”

  “Is he? You don’t know him very well, do you?”

  Now Max Savoie was a saint, and her saintly friend was out for bloody retribution? Charlotte didn’t understand . . . and then she understood all too well.

  “You sent him out to kill Gautreaux and Surette. Mary Kate, tell me you didn’t!”

  Her gaze was cool and unrepentant. “After listening to that poor woman talking about all she’d gone through, tell me you didn’t want them dead.”

  Charlotte drew a tortured breath. “That’s not my decision to make. It’s not yours. It’s not Max’s. That’s why we have laws.”

  “The law wouldn’t do anything, Lottie. The law turned its back on her, just as it would have turned its back on us. It never punishes the true monsters in this world.”

  “So you ask Max to do it for you?” She moaned softly, covering her face with her hands. It was one thing for Jimmy Legere to direct Max’s unique talents. But Mary Kate . . . Sister Catherine . . . “Why does he do it? What’s in it for him? Why would he care about these people he doesn’t know?”

  “Neither of us can condone the harming of innocents. You know my reason. He’s never told me his.”

  But Charlotte knew. It was because of a small boy out in the swamps protecting his dead mother. A mother who’d allowed herself to become a victim so he could have shoes.

  But knowing the reasons didn’t excuse his actions. Or excuse what she herself had done to protect him. As she now would protect both Max and Mary Kate. The weight of those obligations hung heavily on her soul, and she wondered how her friend didn’t buckle under the burden.

  “How many of these little favors has Max done for you?” When Mary Kate wouldn’t answer, Charlotte rested her head on her arms, too sick at heart to think of how to handle the information. Then she lurched to her feet and slid out of the chair. “I have to go.”

  SHE SLIPPED INTO her apartment without turning on the light. She needed the shadows to hide from all the shocking truths she’d learned.

  Inside those robes, behind the rosary and gentle smile, Mary Kate—Sister Catherine—was as bloodthirsty as Jimmy Legere, both of them using Max to dispense their own personal justice without giving him a thought.

  How could her best friend expect her to deal with such knowledge? The code she honored called upon her to do the right thing, but how could arresting a nun be the right thing? How could jailing Max Savoie for stepping between her and horror at the hands of brutal men, not once but twice, be considered justice? Yet how could she excuse either of them, even if she understood so painfully and personally why they did what they’d done? When a primitive part of herself had so often wanted to do exactly the same thing? But that didn’t make it right, legally or morally. What the hell was she supposed to do? By doing nothing, she was condoning murder. By saying nothing, she was equally guilty.

  She picked up Max’s jacket, crushing the elegant folds to her chest.

  She’d had a concussion, a broken arm, and internal bleeding. Her body had slipped into shock; her mind, she’d assumed, into delirium. How else to explain the face of her rescuer? A beast with flaming eyes and dripping fangs, right out of a child’s nightmares. Yet oddly, there was no fear associated with that horrific vision.

  Don’t be afraid. They won’t ever hurt you again. I took care of them for you.

  Relief, safety, gratitude—those were the emotions that came swirling around her even now as she buried her face in Max’s coat. It was his scent that clung to the fabric of the jacket, to her remembered dream. It was the low, firm assurance of his words.

  It was the shoes.

  She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Max Savoie, please. Tell
him it’s Charlotte.”

  A three-second pause, then the deep, cool rumble of his voice.

  “This is a surprise.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At my apartment.”

  “Will this conversation involve poison and torture?”

  “Max, I need to see you.”

  “Some incentive, detective. Will it involve anatomy?” His tone roughened slightly.

  “Max . . . please.”

  He paused. “Twenty minutes.”

  HE WAS AT her door in eighteen.

  He regarded her warily from the stair landing. His dark hair, eyelashes, and brown leather jacket were beaded with early evening drizzle. His words were cautious, concerned. “You sounded strange on the phone. Is everything all right?”

  “Come in, Max. Don’t look so suspicious. I’m not going to try anything.”

  A ghost of a smile. “Should I be relieved or disappointed?” He entered just enough for the door to close behind him. “What did you want to talk about, Charlotte?”

  She moved away from him, all jerky motion and restless energy as she paced and circled until finally facing him from across her crowded living room. Her gaze searched his features intently, as if trying to find something there. Apprehension began to quiver in his belly. This wasn’t the calm, capable woman who always confronted him with her indomitable spirit and words as direct as a bolt from a crossbow.

  “Charlotte, what was it you wanted?”

  She was staring at his feet.

  “Do I have someone on my shoes?”

  Her eyes misted up, and her words were a faraway whisper. “I remember thinking I didn’t have to be scared of a monster wearing red tennis shoes.”

  Silence. Then a quiet, “When were you thinking this?”

  “Twelve years ago.”

  He went completely still.

  Her features worked with anguish, then steadied. “Why didn’t you ever say anything to me, Max?”

  “I figured anything you didn’t remember was a blessing.”

  Her expression darkened with complex emotions, but her voice was low and tough. “Did you know what they were doing? What they had planned?”