KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

  "Obviously not," he said quietly.

  "But she mentioned Savannah, and I thought I should let her know why that's not a good thing to do around here…"

  "Very kind of you, too, sugar." The sheriff stepped toward her and put a hand to her waist, steered her toward the hall. "Now be a sweetheart and give me a few minutes with our visitor. If I discover you've left anything out, I'll be sure to fill in the blanks."

  "Of course." With a slightly awed look at Edouard, Millie hurried off, leaving Renee alone with Cain's uncle. He turned toward her with the cool, assessing eyes of a cop—but his easy smile was pure Southern gentleman.

  "Ms. Fox," he said in a slow molasses drawl. "As sheriff, I like to personally welcome all visitors."

  Especially those he wanted gone. "I appreciate it," she said with a forced smile. Now was not the time to provoke. "It's a lovely little town you've got here, almost picture-book perfect."

  Unless you looked too close. Then it was neither picture book. Nor perfect.

  "It's no secret we've had our trouble," he said, "but we've done a damn fine job of putting all that behind us. Folks around here know I don't tolerate shenanigans." His eyes bored into hers. "They also know not to talk about Savannah."

  Her throat went tight. "I'm not here to cause trouble, if that's what you're worried about."

  "Not worried at all," he said mildly. They might have been discussing antiques. "Just curious. Bayou de Foi is hardly on the beaten path. It's not often a lady like you comes to our little backwater—unless, of course, she's one of Cain's."

  The insinuation scraped. So did the truth. There were very few legitimate reasons for her presence. Soon, she'd have to throw them a bone. "Just passing through," she said.

  His gaze slipped to her two suitcases. "Traveling alone?"

  Instinctively she glanced at her purse lying on the bed, was relieved she'd snapped it shut and nothing could spill out. "For now."

  "Anyone know where you are?"

  She stiffened. "Excuse me?"

  "Law enforcement isn't pretty," he drawled. "I've seen things I don't like to think about, much less discuss with a lady. I know the danger that comes from being alone. Something happens … it can be a long damned time before anyone realizes it."

  The chill was immediate. "I appreciate your concern, Sheriff, but I assure you I can take care of myself."

  "Glad to hear it," he said, and his eyes were on hers again. "But know that if you need anything—anything at all—I'm never too far away."

  Sheriff Edouard Robichaud had been in law enforcement long enough to recognize a bluff from a parish away—they didn't call him the Silver Fox simply because he'd returned from Vietnam a twenty-two-year-old with hair the color of his grandfather's.

  Frowning, he strode down Main, sparing an occasional nod for the good folk who waved his way. For over twenty-five years he'd kept the parish on an even keel, even during his brother Etienne's senatorial campaign. Things got dicey when Eti won, with a few reporters slipping into town, determined to prove the charming senator who spoke fluent Cajun French had skeletons in his closet.

  He did, they all did, but the Robichauds were a fiercely private family, and folks in the parish knew better than to jabber with strangers. Even Millie and her husband had kept their mouths shut back then. The media went home empty-handed.

  Everything had been quiet in the eleven years since, just an occasional mention when a hurricane hit the coast or the Saints made the playoffs—neither of which happened all that often.

  Quiet, that was, until the night eighteen months before when a tip had sent Edouard running through the woods only to find his nephew kneeling with his lover's torn blouse balled in his hands, covered in her blood. The murder weapon—a knife—had been found a few feet away.

  The memory galled him. He glanced at his watch and picked up his pace, didn't want to be late. Cain said it was important.

  He'd warned his nephew not to get involved with that woman. A reporter, for crissakes. But Cain hadn't listened. He'd been too blinded by lust, something else Edouard had warned his nephew against. Not that he didn't enjoy sex, because he did. But Robichauds and intense relationships had a bad track record. Early on Ed had taught himself the importance of keeping a clear head and staying in control, not letting a lady cloud his judgment. Kind of like a priest—but with certain fringe benefits Father Voissin was forbidden to enjoy.

  Zydeco music blasted from the open front door of the honky-tonk side of Le Bon Temps. Ed did a cursory check to make sure the early-evening party wasn't out of hand, then stepped into the lobby of the restaurant. Lily greeted him and led him through the crowded dining area, toward the booth at the back of the room, where the Robichauds always dined. Cain sat there, staring at what looked to be a photograph.

  The restaurant grew quieter, out of respect Millie always said, but Edouard knew it was salacious curiosity. Everyone loved a scandal, and over the years the Robichauds had provided not just the financing on which the town was built, but the gossip upon which the town thrived. In the days following Cain's arrest, the once sleepy town had again been thrust into the national spotlight. The media had converged on Bayou de Foi hungry to revel in the scandal. Sex and murder. It was a juicy combination no reporter could resist. The press had gotten downright drunk on its witch hunt.

  Edouard and Etienne had quieted things down, working hard to keep their deathbed promise to their brother, Cain's father, to keep the boy out of trouble.

  But now this woman was here, and Edouard would bet his last dollar that Renee Fox was up to no good. His nephew knew it, too, but Edouard worried that after so many months of living like a monk, Cain might be thinking with the wrong part of his body.

  Cain slipped the photograph into his leather portfolio and picked up his beer, took a long, slow drag. He didn't need to glance around to know his uncle was coming. The silence announced that. It always did.

  Where Edouard Robichaud walked, the folks of Bayou de Foi stared. Whether it was love, hate or outright fear was debatable, but the citizenry kept putting Edouard back into office, and in turn, Edouard made sure the town ran like a well-oiled machine. There was nothing the man didn't know, no lengths he wouldn't take to ensure he was always, always in control.

  Which is why Cain knew Edouard not only knew about the Fox woman's sudden appearance in town, but also that she'd driven south when Cain had told her to drive north, and that she was now ensconced in Bayou de Foi's only hotel.

  Like his uncle, Cain made a point of knowing everything there was to know about everything that affected him.

  And the lady with the sleek body that made a man think of tangled, sweaty sheets definitely affected him.

  Joining him, Edouard wasted little time on pleasantries. "She wants something," he said, signaling the waitress for a drink. An Old Dixie. His usual. "Something from you."

  The words want and from you triggered images Cain knew better than to indulge. He could still see the photographs he'd developed only a few hours before, the image of the reporter materializing like a ghost taking form. Her sudden appearance was so damn dead wrong he couldn't let it go.

  "I've got T'Roy on it." Some would say it was a premature to have a private investigator digging into the life of a woman whose only crime was sending off bad vibes—but Cain's instincts were never wrong. And the woman most definitely was.

  "He's decent." Edouard paused as the waitress set his bottle of beer on the table. "But it's a dog-damn shame that other gal never surfaced."

  Femme de la Nuit. Lady of the Night. Over the four years she'd catered to New Orleans elite, she'd developed a reputation for giving her clientele exactly what they wanted. Information. Cain had started working with her after his cousin Gabe had sung her praises, and the private investigator had never failed to deliver. She'd never revealed her real name, either—or her face. That had been part of her allure.

  The slice of regret was quick and brutal, the knowledge that he was as responsi
ble for her death as he was for Savannah's.

  "If she's got a skeleton or an agenda, T'Roy will find it," Cain said.

  Edouard took a long swig of his beer. "My money's on Oncle."

  The possibility that the brutal crime organization responsible for taking Savannah from him might now be responsible for delivering the Fox woman sent something dark and primal twisting through Cain. Corruption was to New Orleans what a whore was to a weak-willed man. Everyone knew about the corruption, but few people talked. And virtually no one tried to stop it. Because the payoff was too damn good. One, quite literally, thrived off the other. No one got hurt, and everyone looked the other way.

  With Oncle, people had gotten more than hurt. They'd died.

  Now sources alleged that the Russian Mafia's link into the city was active again, ready to slip from the shadows and finish what Cain had interfered with two years before.

  "A man can hope," he said as the waitress returned with two plates of blackened redfish.

  There were those who believed Savannah had been his downfall. That his desire for her had blinded him, made him weak. And maybe they were right. But the heinous way in which she'd been taken from him had made him strong. He'd surrendered his badge, but not his determination to take down Oncle.

  "But if someone thinks resurrecting Savannah's ghost is all it takes to neutralize me, I look forward to showing him just how wrong he is."

  Edouard's eyes took on a gleam. "Well, well. Speak of the devil."

  Cain glanced toward the front of the restaurant, where Lily was handing a menu to none other than Renee Fox. She'd abandoned her fashion-magazine suit in favor of black pants and a sweater in muted tones that screamed expensive even from across the room. Moss, he noted, the same shade as her eyes.

  She took the menu and smiled, then visibly stilled, reminding Cain of the young doe looking up from a watering hole that his Uncle Etienne had wanted a ten-year-old Cain to shoot. As a rite of passage. Cain had lifted the rifle, shot wide.

  His preference for film had begun that very day.

  Now Renee's gaze went straight to his, and held. The flicker of recognition was dark and immediate, but she neither smiled nor waved.

  The urge to penetrate that untouchable aura and make the folly of playing with a Robichaud explicitly and unforgettably clear was strong.

  "She's testing you," Edouard said as she lifted her chin and pretended he wasn't there.

  "Let her." He'd been lying in wait too long. "She won't win."

  They were watching her. Renee could feel the glare of the nonexistent spotlight in every pore of her body. The slow burn of Cain's stare had seared her before she'd even turned to find him dining with his uncle. The message in his gaze had been unmistakable—I'm watching you.

  The warning in his uncle's perusal had been equally chilling—you've been warned.

  She had. That was true. But too much lay on the line for her to turn back. She'd taken the critical first step. Now she had to keep her eye on the prize and anesthetize herself against the disturbing undercurrent that hummed like a prelude in her blood.

  Five minutes dragged into ten, ten into forty. Renee quietly finished her meal and glanced across the restaurant, found Cain lounging in the booth with one arm slung across the back, his long legs jutting out from the table and crossed at the ankles. His message remained clear—I won't warn you again.

  With equal insolence, she picked up the water glass the waitress had just refilled, lifted it toward him and smiled, then drank deeply.

  His gaze darkened, but he didn't move a muscle.

  Renee fished out a twenty-dollar bill and smacked it on the table, then stood and walked toward the door with the grace that had been drilled into her by her Southern belle grandmother.

  A quiet buzz rippled through the restaurant as she neared the exit, making her realize that just as the sights of countless rifles would track a single mallard across the marsh, the people of Bayou de Foi were tracking her as well. Heart pounding, she glanced at the vacant-eyed birds and game mounted on the walls, and reminded herself Cain was not the only one who would frown upon her presence.

  The cool breeze greeted her as she stepped outside. She inhaled deeply of the earthy scent of southern Louisiana, an odd combination of decay and life, and headed down Main Street

  .

  Far from the glare of New Orleans and obscured by trees that had stood for over a century, the sleepy bayou town had a simplicity that seduced almost as completely as the man she'd been warned about. The quiet song of the crickets and the rhythmic refrain of the toads, the occasional splash from the bayou across the street, were all different and yet hauntingly similar to the quiet nights she'd left behind in Nova Scotia.

  Confident she was alone, she fished her mobile phone from her purse and punched a series of numbers.

  "It's me," she said when the answering machine picked up after the fourth ring. "I'm here … I've made contact."

  One week. That's all she had. One week in Cain's fallen world to find the truth, and expose the lies. One week to mete out a justice too long denied.

  Seven days hadn't seemed like a long time before she'd stepped off the plane, but now that the clock was ticking, she realized the naiveté of her plan. One week was an eternity. A lot could happen. Lives could change. Hopes could shatter. And the best-laid plans could blow up in her face.

  A man like Cain Robichaud only needed one day—one tiny minute—to compromise everything.

  "Don't worry," she added at the end of her message.

  "I'm being careful." She knew better than to play chicken with a wounded animal—and yet, she couldn't suppress the tiny rush of accomplishment. It was the most primitive female victory, the thrill of being able to knock a male off balance. To know that even though he claimed to want her gone, he couldn't stop watching her.

  And that's where the danger lay. No matter how seductive she found the cat-and-mouse game, she would have been far safer if she'd never aroused Cain Robichaud's curiosity.

  She could still turn back. She'd caught Cain's attention, but he didn't yet think of her as the enemy. There was still time to abandon the plan her grandmother called foolhardy.

  Picking up the pieces of a dead woman's life ain't like pickin' up toys, she'd said, and Renee knew it was true. Especially a woman who'd been the victim of a violent crime. Whose attacker remained free.

  There was only a finite amount of time she could poke around before curiosity turned to suspicion. Then danger. When a cornered animal was afraid, he didn't run for cover. He attacked.

  Biting down on her lip, Renee slipped her phone into her purse. Soon, she would have to give Cain Robichaud a plausible reason for her interest in a warm May night from what seemed like another lifetime, and the questions that had never been fully answered.

  What had really happened the night he'd lost his lover? Why was her blood on his hands? There'd never been a body or an indictment, but he'd been forced to give up his badge anyway.

  "You're Savannah's friend."

  The quiet words stopped her. Pulse jumping, she turned toward the alley between the florist and the coffee shop, saw two men standing in the shadows. Every scrap of self-defense training she'd ever received said to run.

  Curiosity wouldn't let her move.

  "Don be 'fraid," the taller of the two said. He had to be at least six foot. The gray in his hair placed him somewhere near fifty. "We ain't gonna hurt ya."

  Slipping a hand into her purse, she curled her fingers around the butt of the .22 she'd tucked inside, just in case. "How do you know who I am?"

  He glanced beyond her, toward the restaurant. "Pretty lady," he said, his eyes sharper, more focused. Alert. "Nice clothes, never seen you before—who else could you be? We don't get many like you here."

  "We was at the restaurant," the second man added, this one shorter, with a deeply receding hairline. Younger. Renee guessed. "Saw the Robichauds watching you like a drake on opening day of hunting season."
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  The analogy didn't sit well. Renee swallowed and studied them closer, found the memory. They had been at Le Bon Ton, a few tables away from her booth. And they had definitely been watching her. "What do you want?"

  The taller man shifted his gaze back to her. "The name is Travis," he said, then gestured toward the second man. "This here is Lem."

  The smell of liquor that came to her on the breeze explained a lot.

  "We mean you no harm," Travis was saying. "We just wanted to tell you to be careful. Folks around here don't like questions."

  Instinctively Renee glanced down the quiet street, lined by trees and flanked by buildings, saw the hotel four blocks away. "Thanks. I appreciate the warning—"

  "But if you're serious about exposing the truth, I kin tell you things nobody else will."

  Renee's breath caught. "About Savannah?"

  "About who killed her."

  "You know?"

  Travis shoved his hands into his pockets. "I've got it narrowed down pretty close."

  She knew better than to believe him. He was clearly drunk—or at least he wanted everyone to think that. And yet, something in his eyes got to her—a stark light she immediately recognized as fear. "Then why haven't you gone to the police?"

  Lem shifted uneasily, shot a quick look to Travis. "That's enough—"

  "Got a wife and a kid," Travis muttered, and the urgency to his voice betrayed the fear the big grizzled man was trying to hide. "A couple of grandkids."

  In other words, he was scared spitless.

  "Push me."

  Mind spinning, she blinked. "What?"

  He put a big sweaty hand to her arm and slid it down to her wrist. "Push me away," he practically snapped. "Pretend like I'm annoying you!"

  Lem pushed closer.

  Renee jerked back. "What—"

  "Just do it!" Travis commanded. Then, "Such a sweet thang…"

  Someone was watching. Catching on, she shoved him away from her. "I'm not interested," she said extra loudly, to which Travis laughed and staggered back into the alley, Lem hot on his heels.

  Only then did Renee allow herself to glance behind her, where she saw a tall woman with long hair standing stiffly outside the restaurant.