The Accused

by Jana DeLeon

  Before she could enter a courtroom again, she had to figure out what that thing was. Had to be certain she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. She placed the file on the nightstand next to the bed. The case file might be the only thing that could take her mind off the strangeness of the house, the caretaker and the flashes of memories that she hadn’t anticipated and wasn’t comfortable with.

  Lightning flashed right outside the balcony doors and she jumped. First thing tomorrow, she had to find something to serve as drapes. Ornate wooden rods were mounted over the French doors, so at one time they had been covered. Likely years of neglect had led to dry rot and the original drapes were long gone.

  Thunder rumbled across the sky seconds after the lightning, letting her know the storm was directly above the house. She was beginning to think the pounding would go on forever when she realized the thunder had trailed off and the pounding was coming from downstairs.

  She glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock.

  She couldn’t begin to imagine what someone was doing here so late and in the middle of the storm, but the pounding on the door didn’t appear to be slacking off. Amos would have let himself in, so the caretaker was out, and she couldn’t imagine the attorney making a trip here this late at night. No one else in Calais had business with her except the sheriff, and he’d already done his duty for the day.

  Grabbing her pistol and the flashlight, she hurried downstairs to the front door. “Who is it?” she yelled, hoping her voice projected through the thick wood and over the storm.

  “Carter!”

  Frowning, she placed the flashlight on the table next to the door and unlocked it.

  A burst of wind blew the door open the instant she turned the handle, and she struggled to keep it from banging into the wall. Carter hurried into the house, rain billowing behind him, carried by the wind.

  Alaina gave the door a final shove as soon as he cleared it and then stared at the dripping-wet sheriff. “You’re making a mess on my floor,” she said, pointing at the water pooling around him.

  “That’s only because the house is so dirty. That rain is going to create mud.”

  She shook her head. “Are you crazy, coming out here in this storm? Being outside tonight is no place for man or beast.”

  He ran one hand over his head and then shook his hand to fling off the water. “The storm wasn’t so bad when I left. I thought I could beat it.”

  “Looks like you were wrong. Let me get you a towel before you drown.”

  She hurried to the laundry room and returned with one of the towels she’d washed earlier.

  “Thanks,” he said as he rubbed the towel over his head and face and then down his arms.

  Alaina couldn’t help but notice how the wet T-shirt clung to his arms and chest. It was a display worthy of an underwear advertisement or one of those hunky calendars.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked when he finished his wipedown.

  “No. Not anything serious. I just thought I’d check on you because of the storm. I wasn’t sure you’d have provisions for a power outage. I see you have a flashlight at least.”

  She nodded. “Amos stopped by earlier and told me where to find them. I guess I wasn’t exactly prepared for all this.”

  “Hard to be when you didn’t know what you were walking into. There’s a general store in Calais. It’s not a large store, but it will have the basic supplies you need.”

  He passed her the towel and gave her a once-over. “You might want to dry off yourself before you catch a cold.”

  She glanced down and her breath caught in her throat when she realized that her clothes must have gotten damp from the blowing rain. The thin T-shirt clung to her chest, and without her bra, it left little to the imagination. The hint of a smile on Carter’s face made his obvious appreciation clear and she felt a flush run up her neck and onto her face.

  Rubbing the towel up and down her arms, she removed the thin layer of rain, then draped the towel around her shoulder and over her breasts. Carter’s lips twitched and she was certain her action wasn’t lost on the hunky sheriff.

  He took a step closer to her and lifted up one end of the towel, his fingers brushing against her breast. “You missed a spot,” he said and wiped the end of the towel down the nape of her neck.

  She stared at him, frozen, as the soft fibers of the towel brushed across her sensitive skin. Despite logic telling her that getting involved with Carter was the worst idea she’d had in her lifetime, she worried that if he made a move, her body was going to shut her mind off and go along with anything he wanted.

  He studied her for a moment, then lowered his mouth to hers, gently brushing her lips with his. Her knees weakened and her mind screamed, What are you doing?

  She completely ignored the voices in her head and lifted one hand to touch his chest. He wound his fingers through her hair and pulled her closer to him. Then as he began to deepen the kiss, a boom of thunder shook the walls of the house, and instantly, they were pitched into darkness.

  Startled by the storm and her completely inappropriate behavior with the sheriff, Alaina dropped her hand and took two steps back to grab the flashlight on the entry table. She clicked it on and shined it toward the hallway ceiling, creating a dim glow in the entry.

  It was still enough light to see the amused expression on Carter’s face.

  She swore under her breath and mentally chided herself for her complete and utter lack of control. Carter knew she was attracted to him—despite her every intention not to be—and probably thought he was well on his way to scoring if the storm hadn’t interrupted. The worst part was, she wasn’t sure he was wrong.

  “If you want me to stay...” he offered.

  “No,” she said before she could change her mind. “I’m going to lock myself in my room until daylight. Hopefully the power will be back on by morning.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It’s just a storm. Believe it or not, we had storms in Baton Rouge, too.”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he was too smart to argue, which only cemented her belief that Carter Trahan read people very well.

  “I’ll check in sometime tomorrow, depending on what my work schedule allows.”

  “I’m not going anywhere except into Calais for refrigerated items and, if I get ambitious, some home improvement supplies.”

  He gave her a single nod and slipped out the front door and into the storm.

  Alaina locked the door behind him, then leaned back against it and blew out a breath. So many thoughts were competing for space in her head that it felt as if it would explode. It was time to get a grip.

  The utter devastation of the case that had gone all wrong, losing the partnership to an idiot, the memories of this house that she’d never expected to return, the spooky house and strange caretaker... It was all jumbled together in her mind, jockeying for position and leaving her confused and exhausted.

  It was no wonder she’d practically thrown herself at a sexy man. So far, Carter was the only thing about her life that seemed normal. Her intense reaction to him must be because of all the stress and anxiety she was feeling about all the other things.

  At least that was what she told herself.

  Chapter Seven

  Carter took off around the driveway, the truck’s tires spinning on the wet stone. He let off the accelerator enough for the tires to grip and then sped away from the house as fast as his field of vision allowed in the downpour.

  What the hell had he been thinking?

  He’d spent a good ten minutes with William that evening, denying that he had any interest in taking up with a woman. Then at first opportunity, he’d made a move on the worst choice of women in a hundred-mile radius.

  Alaina LeBeau was beautiful and her body would make sculptors weep, but she was prickly, inconsistent and abrupt. Even worse, she was off balance and a bit fearful. He had no business taking advantage of her questionable emotional state and no desire to risk the fallou
t when the fear was gone and she realized exactly what she’d done. He had no doubt that if they’d finished what they’d started, she wouldn’t have appreciated it tomorrow morning.

  He probably would have appreciated it a little too much.

  Which was why beginning right now, he was all business with the heiress. If he felt even a twinge of faltering, he’d just repeat “she’s an attorney” over and over again in his mind. If that didn’t squelch any amorous feelings, nothing would.

  As he made his way down the gravel road that led to his house, he saw lights on in his mother’s kitchen. He had no reason to stop—well, other than his mom often made chicken and dumplings on Thursdays—but he turned the steering wheel and pulled his truck under the carport next to his mother’s ancient Cadillac.

  The gap from the carport to the back door was only a couple of feet, but Carter was still drenched by the time his mother opened the door to let him in.

  “Good heavens,” she said, and hurried to the laundry room, then returned with a clean towel. “What in the world are you doing out in this storm? I swear, sometimes I think I didn’t do such a good job raising you.”

  Carter took the towel and dried off, trying not to think about the last time he’d been in a situation with a towel and a wet body. The whole point of stopping at his mother’s house was to put his thoughts back into perspective.

  The smell of chicken broth wafted by, making his mouth water. “Your chicken and dumplings are worth getting a little wet.” He grinned and handed her the towel.

  She shook her head, but he could tell she was pleased with the compliment. “Sit down, then,” she said as she carried the towel back to the laundry room. “I’ll fix you a bowl.”

  She scooped him a huge serving of dumplings into a bowl and placed it in front of him along with a beer. “You look like you could use a drink, but William had the last of my whiskey.”

  He smiled. “No one knows me like you do, Mom.”

  She slid into the chair next to him. “That’s true, which is why I know that you didn’t come here for supper, even though I’d be the first to agree that my chicken and dumplings are first-rate. So are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to ground you until you talk?”

  He stuck a huge dumpling in his mouth and held up one finger. Absolutely amazing.

  His mother shook her head. “You know, if you’d find yourself a woman who cooks, you might get a decent meal other than the nights you stop here.”

  He popped the top on the beer and took a swig. “I have three women, to be exact—all working down at the café. They provide me with home-cooked meals and I provide them with a good portion of my paycheck.”

  “You get a wife and she could provide you with a lot more than food.”

  “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

  “What conversation?”

  “The one about all the things a wife could provide me with. Some of those aren’t the sort of thing you think about sitting at the dinner table with your mother.”

  She waved a hand in dismissal. “You think I don’t know anything? Your father and I had forty glorious years together and we darn sure didn’t spend them all watching television. Do you still think the stork dropped you off?”

  He stared at his mother in dismay. “Can we just change the subject? Please?”

  “Fine. So if it’s not woman troubles, then what’s got you out this late in the middle of a downpour?”

  He tried to formulate a response that didn’t include Alaina LeBeau but couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Aha!” His mom clapped her hands. “I knew it was a woman.”

  He dropped his fork in the bowl and sighed. It was absolutely useless to try to hide things from his mom. Her uncanny ability to read people had left him little wiggle room as a child and it sometimes seemed even less as an adult.

  “Alaina LeBeau arrived today.”

  His mother studied him for a couple of seconds. “I see. How does she look?”

  “She looks like a city lawyer.”

  She smiled. “Beautiful, then. William said she favored her mother, so I expected as much.”

  “Her looks are not the problem.”

  “So there is a problem.”

  “The beautiful, cast-off daughter of an heiress turns up decades later after her evil stepfather’s death to live in the big mansion of horrors, and you have to ask if there’s a problem.”

  “So she is beautiful.”

  He sighed. “Can we stick to the problem part, please?”

  “Of course. I was just trying to get my facts straight.”

  “Uh-huh.” He took another bite of the dumplings and began to tell his mother about his first meeting with Alaina, his concern that someone else had been in the house, his subsequent conversation with William and the lack of readily available information on Trenton Purcell. He left out the part about his second visit. It wasn’t relevant to the case.

  His mother frowned when he was done and tapped one finger on the breakfast table. “I don’t like it,” she finally said.

  “Me either, but I’m at a loss as to what to do about it. I have nothing concrete to go on—no direction in which to focus.”

  “So I take you didn’t get anything further in your second visit with Alaina?”

  He stared. “How did you— Never mind. No, I didn’t find out anything except that the power was off and Amos told her where to find flashlights.”

  “You should have stuck around, at least until the storm passed.”

  “I offered, but she turned me down.”

  His mother raised one eyebrow.

  “Scout’s honor,” he said.

  “You were always a horrible scout. Gave the scout leaders fits, but you are my son, so I suppose you made the offer. Makes me wonder about the girl, though.”

  “Why is that?”

  “If a fine-looking man offered to keep me company in an unfamiliar and creepy house during the rainstorm of the century, I would have taken him up on it.”

  He smiled. “You’re great for a man’s ego.”

  She patted his hand with hers. “I’m just telling it like it is.”

  * * *

  ALAINA LOCKED the bedroom door and checked it twice before moving to the patio doors to check them again. The doors were secure, both flashlights were working and her pistol was handily positioned on one of the nightstands next to the bed. She’d forgone the protein bar in favor of a peanut butter sandwich, chips and too many chocolate chip cookies, but she would worry about the calories tomorrow. Or not.

  Likely, the stress of spending the night in this house would burn off half of what she ate, and the stress of figuring out how to stop turning into a wanton woman around Carter Trahan would burn off the other half.

  She stacked pillows against the headboard and snagged her plate of food from the top of the dresser where she’d placed it earlier. The sheets were crisp and cool against her bare arms. Normally, she’d be relishing the refreshing, clean fabric against her legs, but given the uncertain nature of everything, she thought it would be prudent to keep her yoga pants on. If there was an emergency, the last thing she needed was to leap over the balcony and run down the road in her T-shirt and underwear, despite having seen a woman do exactly that at least twice on late-night movies the week before.

  She nestled back against the pillows and took a bite of her sandwich, wishing she had a television—that and the power to run it—and cable. Watching television wasn’t often on her list of things to do, but she usually had the set running in her condo back in Baton Rouge just to break the silence, especially when she had trouble sleeping. Right now, she’d give up cookies for a month if she could switch on some mindless late-night show and lose herself in the babble.

  Chiding herself for not thinking to bring a book, she reached for the file she’d left on the nightstand, but it was on the far edge just out of her reach. Staring at the folder, she frowned. Hadn’t she left it on the edge of th
e nightstand closest to the bed? She could have sworn that was the case.

  She stiffened and her pulse picked up a beat in her temples as she scanned the room to see if anything else was out of place. Suitcase, laptop, clothes from earlier, shoes...all appeared to be right where she’d left them.

  You’re spooking yourself.

  Yes, that was it. That had to be it. Still, she fought the urge to climb out of bed and check the locks she knew she’d checked right before getting into bed. She had fourteen days to manage here. Paranoia would make it feel like a hundred.

  She leaned over to grab the folder, then relaxed against the pillows again, forcing her mind to switch gears.

  You can do this. No one is as hardheaded as you.

  She placed the folder on the bed beside her, opened it and lifted the first paper out of the stack to begin reading while she finished her supper. Soon, she was so caught up in reviewing the case file that she didn’t even realize she’d finished her sandwich, chips and every single one of the cookies until her fingers brushed against only an empty plate.

  Everything in her notes so far was exactly as she’d remembered—exactly as she’d read a thousand times and committed to memory. Nothing gave even the most remote indication that the teen she was defending was a sociopathic serial rapist and murderer. She’d replayed every single meeting with him in her mind a million times and watched the video of the sessions over and over again, looking for something she missed.

  She’d never found anything.

  But she must have missed something, because the alternative wasn’t acceptable. If someone so young could fool her so absolutely and completely, she wasn’t fit to do her job. Logically, she knew he’d fooled everyone, including his teachers, employer, doctors, his parents and most important, the jury, but that fact did nothing to alleviate her guilt.

  She slid the empty plate onto the nightstand and reached for the next set of documents. This was it, she promised herself. She’d read every document in the file one more time, then she’d force herself to let it go. Sometimes, bad things happened. Maybe this was one of those times.