A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  The lame excuse fell on deaf ears. He turned from her and strode from the office, went into the spare room and grabbed her dress and panties. When he turned, he practically ran into her.

  She stopped and lifted her hands, reached for his arms. “Gabe, I know you don’t—”

  He stepped back and held out her clothes, let go when she had no choice but to take them. “Trust me, catin, you don’t want to touch me right now.”

  Here there were shadows. Here the blinds were still down, leaving virtually no light to leak through and spill onto the bed. Here everything personal had been scrubbed away. There was nothing of Val, nothing of—

  Only the bed. Evangeline looked from the wad of clothes in her hands to the tangle of sheets on the bed. That was all that remained of the night before.

  “Why not?” she asked, jerking her gaze away to glare up at him. All those cracks she’d thought glued tight…now she realized no amount of glue in the world could fix this. “You might hurt me?” she shot back, even though she was pretty sure that he didn’t hear her. Couldn’t hear her. “I don’t think so, Gabe. That’s not you.”

  The last thing she expected was for him to smile, slow and steely. “You sure about that?”

  All that emotion she’d shoved inside, tried not to feel, blistered closer to the surface. “Damn it, Gabe! Stop it! I love my brother. I want his life back, his future. Is that so horrible?” Even as she flung the question, she knew what Gabe’s answer would be. “Can’t you see?” she asked as the truth, the small room, closed in on her. “Sometimes the world isn’t as clear-cut as you want it to be. Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? That if you’re just a little bit guilty, it’s okay?” His gaze dipped low over her body, as his hands had done only a few hours before. “Is that what you thought the first time you kissed me—” his gaze raked back to hers “—last night, when you went down—”

  “I was wrong about you,” she whispered. Holding the towel tightly, she backed away. Wrong to think some damage could be undone. That some wounds could heal. That it would matter to him that she no longer believed him guilty. “Wrong to come here, to think the invincible Gabriel Fontenot could ever see anything other than black-and-white.”

  A wince, a twitch of a muscle, the slight narrowing of his eyes—anything. That’s all she wanted. Anything, no matter how small, to let her know that he heard. That he felt.

  That he cared.

  But he gave her only whitewashed, completely bleached-out words. “You want to know what I see?” His voice was dead quiet. “I’ll tell you what I see. I see a woman who offered herself to me to further her own agenda, not just once, but twice.”

  Just as Val had done. The truth of that, the reality, shamed. The fact she’d been looking for evidence to prove his innocence, rather than his guilt, could not erase her bigger indiscretion.

  Later, she told herself. Later she would fall apart. But not now. And never, ever in front of Gabe. Of everything she’d been wrong about, most of all, she’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t the man she’d thought he was, the man she’d so foolishly believed him to be. Not the cutthroat attorney, and not the fiercely loyal, compassionate man.

  He was broken, and he didn’t want to be fixed.

  “You see what you want to see,” she said with another step back. “What you let yourself see.” Her hands clenched the fabric of her dress so hard she wasn’t sure blood still flowed. “Haven’t you ever loved someone or something so much the consequences didn’t matter?” Jimmy, she told herself. She was talking about Jimmy.

  But deep inside, she knew the truth.

  She was talking about Gabe.

  “That wrong became right,” she whispered, “and right became wrong?”

  For a long hard moment he looked at her. Then he moved. He walked toward her, kept right on walking as he passed her. Down the hall and into the living room, then out of sight. But she could hear him, hear his footsteps against the hardwood floor. And then she heard the creak of the front door opening.

  Slowly, mechanically, she let the towel drop and pulled her dress over her head, yanked at the zipper, gave up when it stuck between her shoulder blades. She jerked on her panties, didn’t care about her shoes.

  And then she walked down the hall and through the living room, past the dining room where her cereal bowl and empty glass still sat on the table, past the kitchen and into the foyer, to where he stood with the screen door held open.

  Then she walked past him and into the cool swirl of an early-morning breeze.

  There was no reason to look back.

  He watched her go. He watched her walk toward the old Mustang parked across the street—a car he’d seen before cruising down his street. Had seen parked outside. He’d always assumed it belonged to one of his neighbors.

  Never once had he considered that it had belonged to Evangeline, that she’d sat there behind the darkly tinted windows, watching and waiting, planning her next move.

  Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons.

  He watched her slip inside, heard the rumble of the engine override the warblers nesting in his pecan tree. With the screen door propped open and the cool air rushing against him, he watched the car drive away.

  He should have gone inside then, but he couldn’t stop staring at the dogwood tree he’d planted the year he moved into his house. The sapling had quadrupled in size since then. Now its branches draped under the weight of new blooms. All around his yard, all up and down the street, the blooms were everywhere, white sprigs and fresh bursts of green had replaced the gray. Next door, even Mrs. Miller’s tulips and daffodils had lifted their faces to the sun.

  It had all seemed to happen over freaking night.

  He watched it all a few minutes longer, until the kids across the street raced out into the yard with a kite. He turned before Gracie and Rene could see him, closing the door quietly behind him. Then he went to the kitchen and walked to the stove. From the cabinet he retrieved a bottle of whiskey. In the dishwasher he found the crystal tumbler that had once belonged to his father. Standing there, in the Spartan kitchen that still smelled of goddamn vanilla and powder, he took off the lid and poured.

  The scent hit him immediately. He lifted the glass and savored, rocked the glass and watched the amber liquid swirl.

  Haven’t you ever loved someone or something so much the consequences didn’t matter?

  The images flashed hard and fast, and then he wasn’t in his kitchen anymore. Wasn’t a man, but a boy. In his backyard with Jack and Saura—and Camille. They’d been making bets as to who would catch the most crawdads.

  Then he saw his dad, walking up from the bayou behind their house with his hip-waders on, warning them that the water was deeper than usual. To be careful.

  They’d gone, anyway…and Gabe had damn near drowned dragging Jack out of the water after he’d lost his balance on a rock and fell, hitting his head before slipping into the bayou.

  That night there’d been gunshots.

  And his father had died.

  Slowly, Gabe lifted the tumbler to his lips. He’d loved. And he had forgotten about consequences. Funny thing was, they never forgot about him.

  His hands were steady as he glanced down at the glass, then threw it across the kitchen. It hit the granite countertop and shattered.

  “Grisly Murder Rocks New Orleans.”

  “Fontenot Wins First Case.”

  “Montrose Sentenced to Twenty Years.”

  Evangeline stared at the collection of newspaper articles. There were others, too, ten years’ worth of articles about a rising star in the New Orleans district attorney’s office. And pictures. Lots of them. She saw Gabe as he’d been back then, young and green, full of Southern charm and reckless confidence.

  Mechanically, she sorted through the clippings and articles, until she came to the last one she’d tucked away, only a few months before. She saw Gabe�
��s picture there, too, saw the indelible marks a decade in the criminal justice system had left on him. The cocksure young man from that first picture was gone, replaced by a stoicism she’d always believed to be part of the game he played. His bluff.

  Now she realized it was how he survived.

  “Fontenot on Unpaid Leave.” That was the title of the article that had appeared two days after Val had been killed. There’d been little coverage of her betrayal, virtually no mention of the way she’d infiltrated Gabe’s life with the sole intent of siphoning critical information about cases the D.A. was prosecuting to the highest bidder—in most cases, organized crime. The articles glossed over all that, concentrating on the scandal of linking a leak in the D.A.’s office to one of its finest. The fact that Robichaud blood ran through Gabe’s veins only made it all the more juicy.

  Next to the article sat the notebook in which she’d documented her investigation. At the bottom of the last page on which she’d written was a name and today’s date.

  Slowly she gathered her notes and returned them to her fireproof box, grabbed her purse and walked out the door to her car. Almost three hours had passed since she’d walked away from Gabe, but the adrenaline kept right on rushing. She’d showered again and dried her hair, put on makeup and dressed in a pair of tan slacks with a white, peasant-style blouse. Now she headed toward her meeting with juror number eight.

  Maybe Gabe didn’t know how to forgive. Maybe she’d been an idiot to let herself fall for a man who couldn’t see anything but black-and-white. And maybe he was right, that there was no such thing as only a little bit guilty. In bending the laws to suit her own purposes, she’d compromised more than herself. She’d compromised her brother—and the man she’d come to love. But someone had gone to great lengths to convince her Gabe had tampered with Jimmy’s jury.

  She owed it to all of them, to Gabe and Jimmy, to herself, to find out who—and why.

  Half an hour later she turned off Canal Street and into the department store parking garage. Juror number eight was upstairs, in the china department. They would meet casually….

  Opening her door, she stepped into the cool shadows and started to turn—saw him too late.

  The blow came hard and fast. Staggering, she slumped into the front seat and blinked only once before the darkness came—bringing with it the freezing realization that juror number eight was not the one who’d arranged this meeting.

  “Les Bon Temps Roulez.”

  Gabe stared at the bold headline, then the accompanying picture. Of Evangeline—and Marcel Lambert. The man had his arm around her. They both smiled. The caption noted that the desire to rebuild New Orleans made strange bedfellows: even the woman the D.A. had handpicked to prosecute Darci Falgoust’s murder had turned out with her checkbook to support Marcel and his campaign to bring back New Orleans.

  The good times roll.

  Over four hundred thousand dollars had been raised and the credit was being heaped on Lambert as liberally as his crawfish étoufée over rice. There was no mention of his arrest or the charges pending against him, the upcoming trial.

  Gabe dragged his finger along the curve of Evangeline’s dress, the same dress that had been pushed up over her hips when they’d made love the first time—and the same dress he’d slipped from her body sometime later.

  The same dress he’d handed to her in a wad that morning.

  He blocked the memory before it could form any further. He didn’t want to go back. But the slow freezing burn kept right on incinerating everything in its path.

  Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons….

  Very slowly, very deliberately, he pulled the sports section over the society page and glanced at his phone, saw that he had plenty of battery. The night was young. There was plenty of time for the call to come. She would—

  Not she. He. He would call. Lambert would. The rumors would have reached him by now; that Gabe had picked up the pieces of his father’s obsession. Lambert would call and take the bait, make arrangements to walk into Gabe’s trap. And then Gabe would close the circle that had opened the night he’d lost his father.

  The double beep from his computer came less than a minute later. He swung toward his laptop and moved it out of sleep mode, clicked open the e-mail box—and saw the new message.

  “Gabriel, frere—” brother “—something you forgot to tell me?”

  The voice came at him like a lazy slap, and he looked up to see Jack lounging in the doorway. He and John had shown up shortly after six. They’d unearthed a little more information, had learned that the girl who’d sent Gabe and Evie to the cottage had been none other than Darci’s younger sister.

  Gabe clicked on the message, waited for it to open. “Tell you about what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jack drawled, his eyes gleaming. And then he lifted his hand. “Maybe about these?”

  The stilettos came into view just as the e-mail opened. She’d been barefoot, he remembered. She’d walked across the street in her wrinkled black dress, barefoot.

  Crushing the memory, he glanced at his laptop and saw the words:

  You have something of mine—I have something of yours.

  Everything inside of him went cold.

  “If I didn’t know better…” Jack was saying, but Gabe heard nothing after that.

  Tomorrow morning we will trade.

  For over two decades Gabe had been waiting. And for over two decades he’d been anticipating. Now the low hum inside him grew louder with each additional line he read. There were instructions, very detailed, very specific.

  He was to arrive at an abandoned warehouse in the morning, with the stained glass. He was to tell no one. At the warehouse, he would hand the relic over. Then, and only then, he would receive something very important to him.

  “…shrimp po’boys?”

  He blinked, forced himself to look at the doorway, where John now stood beside Jack.

  If you tell anyone, the deal is off.

  These men were his friends, but at the moment, with their eyes narrowed and concentrated on him, they looked all cop.

  Slowly, he stood.

  If you don’t show, the offer is over.

  “Po’boys would be great,” he said.

  If you don’t produce, you’ll never know what happened to her.

  He reached for his mouse and scrolled lower—saw the picture. Of her. Evangeline. Lying in a fetal position. Her eyes closed.

  Her hands and feet bound.

  “Gabriel—” Jack said, and Gabe blinked, saw his friend moving toward him.

  The roaring came from all directions, but with discipline born of a single gunshot, he logged out of his e-mail and closed his laptop, stood and rounded his desk, joined his friends. They would go out for po’boys. They would eat; the other two would drink.

  Gabe would plan. The trap had been his. But with seven simple words, Marcel Lambert had turned the tables.

  You’ll never know what happened to her.

  Chapter 15

  C ondemned.

  Gabe slid his 9mm into his waistband and stared at the sign tacked outside the old warehouse.

  It had not been there the week before.

  Frowning, he reached for the door and stepped inside. Seven days before there’d been only darkness. He’d moved through the shadows, slipping between crates and ignoring the stench of decay, drunk on the conviction that soon Marcel Lambert would fall.

  In the process, he’d found Evangeline—and a truth that damn near eviscerated him. He could still see her as she’d been that night on the concrete beneath him, with her hair spilled around her face and her eyes glowing with courage and defiance and something else, a light, a confusion that he hadn’t understood then. But did now. Too well.

  Through the filter of early-morning light, he pressed deeper inside, cataloging what the shadows had tried to hide: a shopping cart of threadbare clothes, a pile of mismatched shoes, empty cans of beer and broken whiskey b
ottles. A stack of waterlogged photos and the shell of a grand piano. An empty bag of dog food.

  In the world before Katrina, the sight would have puzzled him. But the people of New Orleans no longer questioned things out of place. The floodwaters had swirled everything in their path into one big gumbo. Even the dead had not stayed put.

  The image formed before he could stop it, of the photo embedded in the e-mail. Of Evangeline. Lying so horribly still. He’d bluffed his way through dinner with Jack and John, had sat there stone-faced while everything inside of him had twisted and tangled.

  Haven’t you ever loved someone or something so much the consequences didn’t matter?

  “I’m here,” he called, working his way among the crates. He knew he was being watched, just as he knew it was no coincidence that Lambert had chosen this warehouse. It was strategy, another piece of the invisible game they’d been playing since the day Gabe had joined the district attorney’s office.

  Over his shoulder he had a backpack. Inside, he had a tape recorder. “I’m ready,” he invited.

  Only silence greeted his words.

  Sludge covered the floor, but he barely smelled the stench. With the same discipline that had allowed him to eat a po’boy and drink iced tea without giving Jack or John a clue that anything was wrong, he forced himself not to think of Evangeline the last time he’d seen her, the hurt in her eyes as she’d walked out the door. Because if he did, if he allowed himself to see and remember, to feel, he would drown in all the shades of gray he’d never allowed himself to see. The shades that made him realize her sins were no different than his. And now, more than ever, he needed the focus—without it, he would lose more than Marcel Lambert.

  He’d lose the woman who’d made him realize that when you loved someone, consequences didn’t matter.