A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  Everywhere he turned, she was there. He could see her as she’d been that night the week before, when she’d twisted beneath him and he’d realized she was the one who’d driven him to the ground. When she’d stared up at him with those bottomless gray eyes, trying to pretend he hadn’t hurt her.

  Later that night, when he’d tucked her into bed.

  And the next morning when she’d walked into her living room, with her hair tangled and the oversized T-shirt revealing her long, long legs.

  And so many other times not just in the past week, but before, during the fall, when he’d found himself seeking her out. When he’d tried not to want her, but had—

  “Hello, Gabriel.”

  The voice, quiet and deceptively urbane, came from behind him. He reached for his gun and turned, found Marcel Lambert standing between two stacks of crates. In his khaki slacks and black button-down, with his graying hair neatly combed and his cheeks ruddy, he looked ready to stroll onto the set of a morning news show and begin cooking. “Marcel.”

  “How nice of you to join me,” Marcel said, then nodded toward the 9mm. “But I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have that.”

  “Of course.” Gabe tossed the weapon to the floor. Once, he’d held the illusion that lawyers operated in the courtroom, that they meted out justice after the crimes had been committed. But once again he stood on the other side of the crime, the before. This time, he was prepared.

  “Very good.” Lambert used his foot to drag the gun toward him, stooped to pick it up. “Now there’s really no reason to dawdle, is there? Why don’t you just go ahead and give me what I want, then I’ll give you what you want.”

  Evangeline. The urge to charge Lambert blindsided Gabe. He had on Kevlar. He could survive a blow to the chest.

  But he did not allow himself to move. “Then what? You just go your way, and I go mine?”

  “That all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “How badly you want her to live.”

  This time the words weren’t benign. Gabe surged forward, stopped when Lambert lifted the gun.

  “Now, now,” the older man said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Twenty years before, Gabe had only been a boy. He’d had no choice but to watch and to wait, to plan. But now he was a man and he was done playing Lambert’s game.

  “No deal.” Grabbing the backpack slung over his shoulder, he opened it and turned it upside down, revealed there was nothing inside. “If you want what I have, you’re going to have to let her go, first.”

  Lambert lifted an eyebrow. “And if I do? If I give you what you want, you’ll give me what your father stole from me?”

  Gabe’s smile was slow. “Is that what you’ve told yourself all these years? Is that how you justify murder, by pretending my father stole something from you?”

  Lambert eyes gleamed. “You think I’m the one pretending?” The question was measured. “Tell me, then. Tell me where you found the stained glass—and tell me where it is now.”

  “Somewhere safe,” Gabe said. “Somewhere you won’t find it, until I’m ready.” The microrecorder was running. Every word was being documented. He had only to draw the other man deeper into the past, get him to talk about—

  The laughter stopped him. They stood in the shadows of the condemned warehouse, Marcel Lambert holding a gun on Gabe, Gabe holding Lambert’s freedom in his hands, and Lambert laughed.

  “Ah, dear, boy,” he said, “your daddy could have learned a lot from you.”

  The tightening started low, spread fast.

  “You do know how to bluff,” Lambert went on, “but we both know you don’t have the stained glass.”

  Now it was Gabe’s turn to smile, slow and easy. “Really? I suppose that’s why you’re here? Why you wanted to meet? To trade?”

  The other man shook his head. “Not at all.”

  “Then—”

  “I wanted to see your face when you realized your father wasn’t the saint you’ve made him out to be.”

  Everything inside of Gabe stopped.

  “Imagine my surprise,” Lambert continued, “when I start hearing rumors about the real reason Gabriel Fontenot has been low profile the past few weeks. That he took up his father’s obsession—that he found his father’s obsession.” Gun steady, Lambert stepped closer. “Imagine my surprise, since I was there the night the stained glass was destroyed.”

  Gabe didn’t let himself move. Couldn’t. Because all he could see was the yellow tape streaming through his father’s study. His Uncle Edouard had been there, talking with his mother. He’d been asking about some broken glass found near his father’s desk.

  “You’re lying.” But a bad, bad feeling wouldn’t stop twisting.

  “We were supposed to be partners.”

  Gabe had figured that much out, despite the fact Marcel denied any affiliation with Troy Fontenot. Gabe had a picture that proved otherwise. There’d been four of them, his father and Jack’s father, the two Lambert brothers.

  Now only Marcel remained. He stood only a few feet away, with a gun in his hand and a glassy sheen to his eyes. “He took my money,” he went on, “said he’d used it to fund his search. And I believed him even after the rumors started, the rumors that he’d found the stained glass months before, and that he and that no-account Savoie used my money to gamble and drink.”

  “My father didn’t gamble,” Gabe said.

  But Jack’s father had. Gator Savoie had always been convinced easy street was one hand of cards away.

  “I’d caught them red-handed, found him and Gator holed up one night…with the stained glass.”

  Gabe took an instinctive step back.

  “I’d demanded that they give it to me. It was mine. I’d paid for it.”

  Denial came hot and hard and fast.

  “There was a struggle,” Lambert said. “The stained glass…shattered.”

  Camille had been there. She’d talked about loud voices—and something breaking.

  “Your father was beside himself. He pulled a gun,” Lambert said. His voice was softer now, further away. “There was another struggle.”

  And the gun had gone off.

  Lambert didn’t say the words, but Gabe heard them, had lived them.

  “So, yes, Gabriel.” With the words, Lambert once again smiled. “I was there when your father died. But it was his own greed that killed him. If he’d stuck to our bargain—”

  “We’ll leave that to a court of law.” The words practically tore out of Gabe. It wasn’t the confession he wanted, but a jury would easily see through the lies.

  “No,” Lambert said, “I’m afraid we won’t.”

  Gabe looked from Lambert to the gun, to the crates surrounding him. His timing would need to be perfect—

  “You still don’t see, do you?” Lambert asked. “I’m a smart man, Gabriel, a believer in insurance. You really think I don’t know you have a plan?” He curved his finger around the trigger. “I’ve always known, Gabriel. Always known the first chance you got to avenge your father, you would come after me. And so I’ve taken measures to make sure that can never happen.”

  Evangeline. A quick lunge to the right, and the crates would fall—

  “And I’ve got quite an arsenal, too, Gabriel, beginning with the first case you ever prosecuted.”

  Gabe looked back toward Lambert, but the shadows kept right on bleeding, until there was no line between light and dark.

  “The evidence is in a secure location,” Lambert rolled on, “with instructions, should anything happen to me. It’s all there—the large sums of money paid to three jury members. The testimony of two others about the young prosecutor who tried to coerce them first with money, then with threats—”

  The warehouse started to spin. He was innocent, Gabe. Don’t you get that? Don’t you care?

  “And locked away in your own files is the transcript of an interview you conducted with a friend of young Jimmy Montrose’s, in w
hich she plainly states Jimmy was with her.”

  Didn’t you ever think it was too easy? Too tidy?

  “Of course, you and I know you never conducted that interview, but what’s a small detail like that?”

  All those shadows shifted, those from the night his father was killed and the day Jimmy Montrose was convicted, the devastation in Evangeline’s eyes, swirling around Gabe like the floodwaters that had decimated his city. There was only one reason Lambert would confess this fully, when he had to suspect Gabe was recording every word.

  He had no intention of Gabe leaving the warehouse alive.

  “It’s time for your crusade to end,” Lambert said, backing away. Eyes on Gabe, he removed a small electronic device from his pocket. “You can come after me, of course. And you might even catch me.” With his forefinger, he depressed a small black button. “But know that if you do, she dies.”

  The words slammed into Gabe, stopped him cold. And from somewhere deep in the warehouse came a low hiss.

  “And so I really must be going now,” Lambert concluded, still mildly as he pulled something from a small case. “Because you see, there isn’t much more time. Now, give me the recorder.”

  “You’re lying.” Gabe gritted out the words, but, already, he was coughing, his nostrils and throat burning.

  Lambert lifted a mask to his face. “You are, of course, welcome to come after me,” he said as the pieces fell together, the steady hiss and the mask, the tightening of his throat…

  Gas.

  “But in seven minutes, anything in this warehouse will be dead—including your Evangeline.

  “And if you don’t believe me,” Lambert added, “you have only to see the proof for yourself.” He used his foot to push a small box to Gabe—then continued backing away. “The recorder.”

  Gabe grabbed his shirt and brought it to his face, used it to breathe through the fabric. Then he dropped to his knees and opened the box, saw the small computer screen—and Evangeline. She lay beside a crate, curled on her side with her hands and feet bound.

  “She’s your only chance, isn’t she?” Lambert mocked. “Your only chance at winning—and the only thing standing between you and the revenge you’ve wanted for almost a quarter of a century. Her testimony is the only way anyone will believe you over me…Of course, if you do get her out, I’ll be long gone.”

  Gabe’s eyes burned and his mouth started to swell. “Evie!” At his voice, she stirred, but the gag in her mouth prevented her from answering.

  “It’s not so clear-cut, anymore, is it?” Lambert taunted with another step back. “Come after me, and she dies—and who do you think the authorities will believe? You, the A.D.A. on leave, who destroyed evidence that would have cleared me? Or the man who helped raise half a million dollars for restoration?”

  Gabe’s vision blurred.

  “You’re the one who lured me here,” Lambert reminded, his voice muffled by the gas mask. “The rumors are everywhere. You’re the one who pretended to have what your father stole from me. And to what end? Just to taunt me?”

  Gabe staggered to his feet. All his life there’d never been any wrong choices for the right reasons. But now…

  Lambert was right there. He could go after him. He could avenge his father.

  But in doing so, Evangeline would die.

  “Do it, Gabe,” Lambert invited as Gabe narrowed his eyes and tossed the other man the recorder containing his confession. “Follow me,” he taunted, retrieving it. “Tell everyone what a monster I am. Have your revenge…but know that her death is on your hands.”

  “Evie!” She could be anywhere. Lambert was a smart man. It would have been logical to hide her as far away as possible—

  Which meant Lambert might also have hidden her as close as possible.

  “Give me something!” he roared, then he was running, or at least trying to run. “Evie!”

  He darted around the old piano and saw Lambert backing toward the door with the gun held in front of him. “You son of a bitch!”

  And from somewhere to his left came a loud crash.

  Lambert swung toward the noise, and Gabe had his opening. He was a lawyer by training, but a Robichaud by birth. And he wasn’t about to let Marcel Lambert win. He charged into the nearest stack of crates and sent them tumbling. Then he rammed into the next stack. And then the next.

  The crates crashed down, starting a chain reaction. Through the free fall he saw Lambert twist away and start to run—then he heard the grunt as the other man crashed down.

  “Evie!” She was the one who made the noise. She was the one who’d given him the opening. Staggering, he ran toward the fallen crates and found Lambert shoving at them. The 9mm lay several inches from his hand.

  Grabbing it, Gabe lifted it to Lambert. “Toss me the gas mask.”

  The other man’s eyes flared, panic for the first time bleeding in. “Now.” He wasn’t a man to shoot in cold blood, but Evangeline’s life hung in the balance. “Where would you like me to start?” he asked. “Your thigh? Or your hand?”

  Pinned beneath three crates, Marcel glared at Gabe as he lifted his hands and pulled off the mask, tossed it to Gabe. “It’s already too late,” he coughed. “You’ll never find her.”

  “You better hope that’s not true.” Grabbing the mask, Gabe pivoted and ran. “Evie!” he shouted. “Give me a noise!”

  Yanking the mask over his face, he sucked in clean air and tried not to stagger. But his eyes watered and his throat burned.

  He heard it then, a thump. Twisting, he reached for his phone and stabbed out a number on his speed dial.

  The second he kicked aside a crate blocking his path, he saw her. She still lay on her side, but her eyes were closed. And she wasn’t moving.

  Jerking at the mask, he dropped to his knees and reached for her. “Jack!” he roared into the phone, but then the doors on all sides burst open simultaneously and the shouting started.

  He scooped up Evangeline and ran toward the light cutting in through the nearest door. “Breathe,” he rasped, pressing the mask to her face. “Breathe!”

  “Gabriel!”

  Looking up, he saw Jack and Cain and his Uncle Edouard running through the fading shadows.

  “Get Lambert,” he instructed as his knees tried to buckle. “B-back by…the p-piano.”

  Cain and his uncle ran past him. Jack stayed, reaching for Evangeline. But Gabe wouldn’t give her up, couldn’t let go. Not this time. Instead, Jack fell into step beside them, bracing Gabe as he helped them outside.

  The squad cars and fire engines stunned Gabe. The paramedics were already rushing toward them.

  And Evangeline started to cough.

  Staggering, he felt Jack catch him. And even through eyes that wouldn’t stop stinging, Gabe saw him grin. “You didn’t really think we’d leave all the fun to you, did ya, frère?”

  They knew. He’d been so sure that he’d bluffed his way through dinner, but his friends had known.

  “Evie…” Going down on his knees, he worked at the rope that bound her ankles, her wrists. There were welts. “Come on, baby, come back to me….”

  Her eyes, huge and dark and the most amazing shade of gray, slowly opened. “Gabe,” she whispered. “You’re here.”

  The rushing started then, deep inside like a strong punishing wind. He’d been so damn blind. He’d turned his back on her when he should have held on tight. He’d refused to hear what she said, to listen and understand.

  He’d refused to see anything other than his own vision of the world and, in doing so, he’d almost lost her.

  “I’m here,” he said, taking her hand and drawing it to his mouth. She lay against the concrete, with her lips dry and her cheeks pale. The skin at her wrists and ankles red and swollen and angry.

  But Gabe saw only beauty and a raw courage that had sent him to his knees. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  The smell of coffee woke her. Once, the rich aroma would have made Evangeline smile and
stretch, lazily wander toward the kitchen.

  Now she came awake fast and hard. Her heart slammed as it all rushed back, every damning detail—standing almost naked in Gabe’s study, watching the video of her sneaking into his office, the hard gleam in his eyes when he’d realized who she really was and why she’d infiltrated his life. That she’d had an agenda all along.

  She’d tried to make him understand….

  Come on, baby…

  The meeting with juror number eight that turned out to be a trap. The blow to the back of her head and the darkness, the small room where she’d been kept. The warehouse. The sound of her name on Gabe’s voice. He’d sounded worried—

  Come back to me!

  He’d emerged from the shadows at a dead run and scooped her into his arms, run into the sunshine. There he’d gone down on his knees and held her, refusing to let go even when the paramedics rushed over.

  I’m not going anywhere!

  Time fragmented. There’d been shouting and running, a swarm of police and firefighters. Marcel Lambert on a stretcher. An ambulance. Gabe holding her hand, never letting go.

  Now darkness filled the room. Her room, she remembered. Gabe had brought her back to her loft. Blinking against the dryness of her eyes, she glanced at the bedside clock and saw the green glow of the numbers: 11:13 p.m.

  Only a week before she’d awakened much the same way. Then she’d scrambled out of bed and onto her knees, made sure her box had not been disturbed. But now she remembered reaching for it sometime earlier that day and handing it to Gabe.

  Slowly she slipped out of bed. And slowly she reached for the glass of water and took a long sip. But she didn’t reach for the pain pills. She didn’t need them—and knew he didn’t, either.

  With Simon weaving between her legs, she made her way into the hallway, drawn by the sound of a late-night talk show. And, much like the week before, she found him standing in front of her old curio cabinet, with a mug in one hand and a baseball in the other. A wrinkled gray button-down hung untucked against his jeans.

  “You’re still here,” she whispered, and from deep inside came a quickening that should have frightened. But didn’t.