by Rebecca York
“I’d better get to the funeral home,” she murmured.
“Your mom didn’t want to be a burden to you, so she had everything spelled out—before…” Again Paula stopped.
“But I’m going over there anyway.” Gabriella stood and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Thank you for being here.”
“Just tell me if you need anything.”
“Thanks. I will.”
BEING CAREFUL NOT TO STEP ON anything that would make a crunching noise, the man watching from the shadows of the trees saw Gabriella Boudreaux hurry back to her car. Probably going to the funeral home.
He waited another minute for the other woman to get into her vehicle. When they had both driven away, he made a satisfied sound.
With the two of them gone, he could finally have a smoke. He was starving for one. After quickly using his pocket lighter, he took a deep drag on the fag, grateful for the nicotine rush. He’d broken the habit out of necessity in prison. As soon as he’d gotten out, he’d started again.
While he smoked, he reviewed the day’s events. The old lady had darted upstairs, and he’d followed, knowing that if he pushed her down, the daughter would come running home.
He was an expert at digging into people’s backgrounds, and he knew that she was one of the children from the Solomon Clinic in Houma.
It had been set up to help infertile couples conceive children, but that was only a cover for something else. The guy who’d hired him had wanted to know what had happened there. Not the covert purpose, the unintended consequences.
The doctor had kept records of his activities, of course, but those had been destroyed in a fire long ago.
A few people in Houma had talked to him about the clinic. Which was how he’d gotten Marian Boudreaux’s name.
She’d been a good place to start, but his real objectives were the children, like Gabriella. She was the one he really wanted, out here in the country, where there was more privacy and little chance of her screams being heard.
Chapter Two
Gabriella was already wiped out by the time she met with Burt LeBlanc from the funeral home.
He’d gone to high school with her, although they hadn’t known each other well. She hadn’t been really close to anyone, except one girl named Julie Monroe. It was as if she and Julie were on the same wavelength, although she wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. They’d spent time together, until Julie had moved away in their sophomore year, leaving Gabriella feeling more alone than ever. Because she’d never been great at making friends, it had been easier to keep to herself than to try and work her way into any of the established groups.
Burt LeBlanc, who’d inherited the business from his dad, greeted her as if they’d been buddies.
She shook his hand, getting through the physical contact the same way she was getting through everything else.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said in the deep, reassuring voice that he must have cultivated.
“Yes—thanks.”
“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He gestured toward one of the padded leather chairs across from his broad desk. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thanks,” she answered as she lowered herself into one of the chairs.
“I read about your pastry chef career in that airline magazine.”
She blinked. “You did?”
“Yes. Very impressive. People in town were talking about it.”
Again, she was surprised that anybody in Lafayette would take notice of her.
After relaxing her with a little more small talk, Burt addressed the arrangements that her mom had spelled out—in an envelope full of instructions that she’d given him several years earlier.
“Your mom wished to be cremated, like your dad,” he said. “There’s a place waiting for her in the columbarium, next to him.”
The columbarium was a building with rows of little vaults along the walls. Putting Mom next to Dad made sense, particularly because it appeared that the space was already bought and paid for.
“All right.”
Burt consulted some papers on his desk. “And, of course, there’s to be no viewing and no funeral.”
Gabriella stared at him as she struggled to take that in. “What?”
He tapped one of the papers. “She didn’t tell you that she specified a memorial service—six weeks after her death?”
“No. Did she say why?”
“She wanted the shock of her death over, and…” He paused for a moment. “And she felt it would be less expensive. The lead time would give you a chance to prepare some of the food yourself if you wanted to. She thought you could make some of those pecan pies she loved.”
“Uh, yes.”
Lord, Mom had certainly gotten into micromanaging the event.
Gabriella left the funeral home feeling light-headed. She’d braced to deal with her mother’s friends. Now she had plenty of time to get ready for the service. And to plan what she wanted to say.
Her mother always had been detail oriented. She must have obsessed over all this before she started losing her grip. Or had she already felt her mental state deteriorating, and she’d hurried to write down these instructions while she could still think clearly?
Gabriella made a small sound as she realized the implications of Mom’s carefully considered list with its wealth of details. Her mother had been forced to deal with a daughter who didn’t always follow the parental script. In death, she had the upper hand—at last.
BY THE TIME GABRIELLA returned to the plantation house, it was after sunset. The gathering darkness contributed to her feeling of being utterly alone. Neither Mom nor Dad had brothers or sisters. Which meant no aunts and uncles or cousins. It had been a small family, and it would die with her because she wasn’t going to get married and have children.
Did that make her feel sad? Or relieved? She was too off balance to know.
Glad that she had left some lights on in the house, she hurried up the steps to the front door. But walking into the hall was like a sudden shock to her already frazzled nerves.
When she’d come through here with Paula, she’d been focused on her mom’s friend. This time she was alone, and when she stood looking up the steps, an inexplicable feeling of terror swept over her, making her reach out and brace her hand against the wall as she struggled to catch her breath—and scrambled to make sense of what she was feeling.
Her mother had fallen here. The impact of Mom’s death was hitting her again, which was why her temples were suddenly pounding. However, she knew deep down that her attack of nerves wasn’t just from the accident.
Paula had said her mom had climbed the steps and fallen. But why had she gone up? To get something? Or to run away from someone? Or both?
Gabriella couldn’t shove away the notion that another person had been here and something evil had happened in this hallway.
Her speculations immediately went to the tenant—Luke Buckley. Mom had been afraid of him. What if he’d come over here and attacked her?
But why?
Maybe he didn’t have the rent money. They’d gotten into an argument, and he’d killed her…
“Stop it,” she muttered to herself. “You’re just letting your speculations run wild because this is the worst day of your life.”
She clenched her fists, sure that Mom’s sudden death and her own feelings of guilt were making her jump at shadows.
What did she really believe? Nothing she could prove. Not without some evidence. If she went upstairs, would she find anything suspicious? Or was there something incriminating in Cypress Cottage?
She gritted her teeth as she imagined herself spying on Luke Buckley. What if one of Mom’s friends caught her doing it? People in Lafayette already thought she was a little off. Which was one of the reasons she’d known she didn’t want to stay in town once she had graduated from high school.
She’d fled her childhood reputation for being weird by going across the country
to culinary school then moving to New Orleans, and she didn’t want it back.
But nobody was here to observe her now. Could she start with some kind of psychic impression of what had really happened in the hall—then back it up with evidence? She focused her attention on the stairs, trying to bring the past few hours into focus. Mom had been here. She’d fallen to her death, but had she been alone?
Gabriella put everything she had into trying to bring back the scene. Even as she focused on her mother in the hall—with someone, she silently wondered if she was sending herself on a fool’s errand. No matter how much you wanted to, you couldn’t see the past. Could you?
She’d never tried anything like that before, but she sensed that the scene was hovering almost within her grasp. Shadowy figures flickered at the edge of her vision. Her mom and a man?
She closed her eyes, straining to bring the vision into focus. Yes, she saw her mom, a look of fear on her face as she rushed up the stairs, trying to get away from the stalker. Gabriella saw him only from the back. Or was she making it all up?
Probably.
Struggling with frustration, she tried to see his image from a different angle. Maybe she could have done it, but a massive bolt of lightning struck nearby, so bright that she saw it through her closed eyelids.
It was followed by a clap of thunder that shook the house.
As the thunder rumbled, the lights flickered out, plunging Gabriella into inky, disorienting blackness.
She pressed her back against the wall, suddenly alarmed by the darkness, just like when she’d been little and Mom had insisted on turning out the lights at bedtime. At night, she’d always imagined ghosts from the past coming back to claim this house. Even the toys on her shelves took on sinister shapes, and the closet door had to be closed before she could even think about sleep.
In adulthood, she’d talked herself out of those juvenile fears. But in her fragile emotional state, the sum of her childhood terrors came rushing back to her as she stood in the darkened hallway.
“Stop being ridiculous,” she ordered herself. “The lights are just out. There’s no bogeyman lurking around the corner.”
But she couldn’t deny why she’d come here in the first place. Mom had called her in a panic, talking about a stalker, and there was a man living right on the plantation property who could be up to no good.
With her heart pounding, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The moon was up, and a small amount of light came through the windows on either side of the door.
When she could see well enough, she crossed the hall and turned the lock on the door. Then she started for the kitchen to get the flashlight that Mom kept in the utility drawer.
Was there anything she could use for a weapon?
They’d never kept a gun in the house, but maybe she should have something with her, like a hammer.
SHE MADE IT TO THE KITCHEN as fast as she could in the dark and opened the utility drawer. The flashlight was there, but when she tried to click it on, the batteries were almost dead. Only a feeble light came from the bulb, and she clenched her fist on the shaft, then shut it off again. All it would do would tell someone where she was, not light her way.
Now what?
Go up to her old room? Or was it better to get out of this house, where she already felt spooked?
Luke Buckley was living in Cypress Cottage. But there were two others on the grounds. Water Iris was the closest. She’d feel more secure spending the night over there than here.
Wishing she could see what she was doing, she fumbled through another drawer and found the wad of spare keys that Mom kept. In the dark, she couldn’t even be sure they were the right ones, but that was the best she could do at the moment.
After slipping the set into her purse, she headed for the back door. On the porch, she looked toward the cottages, barely making out their shapes in the darkness. Water Iris was on the extreme right. Cypress was on the left. And Crepe Myrtle was between them. That would put some space between her and Buckley.
All were blacked out, and she couldn’t even discern the shape of a car parked in front of Cypress. Maybe Luke Buckley was away. Or sitting in the dark plotting murder? He’d taken care of the mother, and now he would finish off the daughter.
Acknowledging that her fears were making it difficult to think rationally, she descended the steps, then headed across the yard to the cottage. It hadn’t started raining yet, but the wind was blowing the trees, sending leaves flying across the lawn.
In Gabriella’s long ago memories, the grass had been well tended by a gardening company that did yard work in town. Mom had given up that service after Dad had died. For a few years, she’d tried to keep up the grounds around the house herself. But that had gone by the wayside, too, and now the grass was choked by weeds and needed mowing. She stumbled several times into what had formerly been flower beds, then finally made it to the cottages. But as she approached Water Iris, she had the sensation that someone was stalking her—like they’d been stalking Mom.
She started running, but before she’d gotten more than a few yards, a figure sprang out of the darkness at the side of Crepe Myrtle, grabbing her and pulling her to the ground.
A scream rose in her throat. Before it reached her lips, it choked off as large hands grabbed her throat. A man’s hands.
At his touch, a confusing welter of impressions and sensations assaulted her.
Chapter Three
In a blinding instant, Luke Buckley knew he had made a terrible mistake. In the darkness, he’d seen a shadowy figure sneaking across the lawn and been sure it was a Mafia hitman sent to murder him.
Instead, it was Gabriella Boudreaux, who had as much right to be here as he did.
But he hadn’t known who she was until he’d pulled her to the ground. He loosened his hands from her neck, intending to let her go and apologize.
Except that he couldn’t take his hands off her. And he couldn’t put any coherent words together. Not yet. Because in the moment of grabbing on to her, something strange happened. Her mind had opened to him in a way that knocked the breath from his lungs and made his heart start to pound.
At least he was able to open his fingers and make the hands that had gripped her neck move to her shoulders.
“Sorry,” he managed to whisper. Or had he even spoken the apology aloud?
His head swam as her memories leaped into his mind.
He saw her as a little girl being scolded for making a mess in the kitchen by a younger version of the woman who had rented him the Cypress Cottage. He saw her in high school squirming away when a boy crowded her into her open locker and tried to corner her there. Wandering alone into the bayou and sitting on a fallen log to get away from a town where she had never felt comfortable. Then later, more satisfied with her life, taking culinary courses and icing a chocolate cake.
Overlaying it all were the most recent, sharpest memory and the emotions swirling around it. Her coming home to discover that her mother was dead.
He cursed under his breath, feeling her pain and also her confusion at what was happening between them now.
As her memories assaulted him, his own memories were streaming into her mind. Especially one particularly vivid scene.
The reason why he was on the run.
Three months ago, he’d been at his computer, working on the book that had gotten him into so much trouble.
He’d heard a noise and turned to see a man with a gun standing in the doorway of his little office.
“You’re finished with that writing project,” the man growled. “Get up.”
Luke got up slowly, reaching under his desk for the fire extinguisher he kept there. As he straightened, he pulled the trigger, spraying the man in the face. The guy choked and clawed at his eyes. Luke lunged forward and clunked the heavy canister down on the man’s skull.
When the assailant went still, Luke reached for the phone cord and used it to tie the man’s hands behind his back. Then he wound p
acking tape around his ankles and reinforced the phone cord with more tape.
By the time the guy’s eyes blinked open, Luke was holding the gun.
“Rudy Maglioni sent you?” he growled.
The assailant sneered. “Like I’m going to tell you.”
“What happens when you have to go back to him and explain that you failed? Or will you have to skip town?”
The only answer was a string of curses.
Luke grabbed the man’s hair, yanking his head up and using more masking tape to gag him. His heart was pounding, but he began methodically gathering up the papers on his desk.
He unplugged his laptop, took an already packed duffel bag from the closet and walked out of the room, forcing himself not to run when he wanted to dash to his car.
His attention was brought back to the present as he heard Gabriella gasp.
With the memories—his and hers—came physical sensations that walked a line between pain and pleasure. He scrambled to explain it to himself and could come up with nothing beyond the violence of the encounter.
“Gabriella.”
In the darkness, he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need sight to know what she looked like. Dark-blond hair cut short. Light eyes. A delicate nose. Tempting lips that drew him with an intensity he had never felt before—much less imagined. He lowered his head, and as his mouth touched hers, he was caught by a blaze of need that radiated to every cell of his body.
They had just met. Met? Not exactly. In his haste to protect himself from another mob attack, he had struck first without knowing who she was.
Yet they’d gone from strangers to intimates in seconds. Without understanding why it had happened, he wanted her. Right here. Right now. Out in the open.
