KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

  Every game had them.

  Cain's imagination betrayed him, throwing him back in time to another night, another woman. He could still see the devastation in her eyes when she'd realized what he hadn't known how to tell her. He could still hear her voice break. And though it was Renee in his arms, it was Savannah he felt sag against him and hold on tight, Savannah he held with a savagery that stunned even him.

  It was time to let go. He knew that. He just didn't know how.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he savored the feel of her soft body molded to his, breathing of her, wanting more. This time it would be different. This time he wouldn't fail. This time he would be there for her—

  Her.

  Abruptly he opened his eyes and stared down at her hair. Brown. Not blond. With a sharp twist to his gut he pushed back from her and put his hands to her arms, looked down into a face so flawlessly beautiful it defied logic. Mossy eyes, not crystalline blue. A thin nose, not sloped. A soft mouth, not challenging.

  "Mon Dieu." The truth appalled.

  He had no idea who he'd just been fantasizing about—the woman who still haunted his dreams, or the one looking up at him as if he'd just broken her heart.

  He wanted to be angry with her. Furious, actually. Her arrival had kicked events into motion, as he'd predicted. Travis would not be the only casualty.

  But as he looked at her, he could find no anger. Only fear. Like an icy fist, it reached into his gut and twisted.

  "I told you to stay away," he bit out. Not trusting himself to look at her one second longer, he turned and strode outside, grabbed the porch rail and stared at the trees standing like emaciated soldiers against a dreary autumn sky.

  Her voice came from behind him, so quiet he could barely hear the words above the crows. "I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt."

  "We don't mean for a lot of things to happen, but that never seems to stop them."

  "You're talking about Savannah," she whispered.

  Beyond the trees, he watched a torn plastic grocery bag flail against a chicken-wire fence. "She didn't listen, either." His voice was thick, and he hated it. "She thought she was invincible, that she could walk through fire and not get burned."

  "Maybe she was scared, didn't know who trust."

  A hard sound broke from deep in Cain's throat. The temptation to turn to her was strong, but he wasn't interested in looking into Renee's eyes and seeing another woman staring back at him. "The first time I saw her was on the news. She was covering a story about medical malpractice, and I remember sitting in this dive in Baton Rouge, watching this pathetic little black-and-white TV, thinking 'Now that is one fine woman.'

  "Six months later I'd just busted an airline pilot trying to smuggle money out of the country, and the press is hounding me, wanting to know why we think this is a major bust, and I hear this voice from behind me. I turn, and there she is."

  "Sounds like fate," Renee whispered.

  "I used to lie awake and watch her sleep, wonder what the hell I'd done to deserve her. She was so beautiful sometimes I couldn't even breathe. Sometimes I'd touch her face and she'd smile. Sometimes I'd kiss her and she'd whimper." He closed his eyes, let the memory wash over him. "She started having bad dreams after her brother died. She tried to be so tough when she was awake, but in her sleep she would cry." The first time he'd heard the sound it had slayed him. "I've never felt so helpless in my life."

  Renee let out a shaky breath. "What did you do?"

  "The only thing I could," he said, not sure why he was saying anything at all. "Hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay."

  Behind him, the porch creaked with movement. "Why didn't you make those promises when she was awake?"

  The question scored a direct hit. He turned, found her standing close enough to touch. "Who says I didn't?"

  Her eyes, awash with an inner light, met his. "You," she whispered. "I hear it in your voice. The regret. You wonder if saying those words would have made a difference."

  That wasn't true. He didn't wonder. He knew, had spent too many nights alone in bed, rewriting the script, changing the ending. "I didn't want to spook her."

  The wind whipped up, sending long strands of dark brown hair against Renee's face. "Sounds like you were the one who was spooked."

  His fingers itched to ease the hair from her eyes. "Maybe," he said, but did not let himself move. They were at a crime scene, for God's sake. Two men lay dead inside with the mark of the fleur-de-lis. But all he could think about was what it would feel like to taste her again.

  From the direction of the road the sound of an engine shattered the moment before he could do something stupid. He turned and saw his uncle's squad car pull into the driveway, realized maybe there was such a thing as salvation, after all.

  "Wait here," he said, and if the command came out a little too rough, he refused to let himself care.

  "Cain—"

  His booted foot coming down on dusty gravel, he turned back to her. "Leave it alone," he said. "I have." He walked away from her then, refused to look back.

  Renee didn't trust herself to move. She stood on the old porch with her hand curled around the railing, absolutely certain if the wind blew so much as one more strand of hair against her face, she would shatter like the Limoges porcelain swan her grandmother had given her for her tenth birthday.

  Just breathing hurt. Remembering destroyed.

  Slowly, carefully, she uncurled the fingers of one hand and brought her palm to her chest, wondered how her heart could still pound while everything inside her bled. It wasn't fair that he could still touch her like that, way down deep, without so much as lifting a hand. She wanted to hate him for that. She wanted to condemn him. Black magic, she remembered thinking all those months ago. Voodoo. Some kind of strange spell he could cast to coerce those leery of him into doing his bidding.

  But as she watched him talk to his uncle, she could find no hate, no condemnation. Not for him, anyway. She'd been wrong, she realized. So horribly wrong. With absolutely certainty she realized she'd not returned to Bayou de Foi to punish.

  She'd come home to heal.

  "This isn't the way to the hotel," Renee said fifteen minutes later. She'd been staring out the passenger window and watching the blur of pine and cypress, searching for something benign to say—anything to break the silence.

  Words seemed as inadequate as taking a water gun to an inferno.

  Something had happened with his uncle. She'd watched them talking, seen the agitation in the movement of Cain's body, heard the edges of their voices carry on the wind. Then he'd turned and strode back to the house, taken her hand, and all but dragged her to the car. But that was it. No words after that. No explanations.

  Then she'd noticed the gas station where Cain had left his car. But rather than turning left, he'd turned right.

  Now she looked at the hard line of his jaw and the casual way he had a hand draped over the steering wheel, the way he stared straight ahead as if she'd not said a word.

  "Cain." She spoke calmly, despite the drumming of her heart. "What's going on? What did your uncle say to you?"

  The muscle in the hollow of his cheek thumped.

  She'd seen him like this before, knew the brutal control was a protective mechanism. When something pushed him to the edge, he shut down to stop himself from going over. "It's been a long morning," she said, and let her voice gentle. "I'd really like to go back to the hotel and take a shower, get cleaned up." Wash away the stench of death.

  He moved so fast she winced, swerving to the side of the road and slamming on the brakes. Then he turned to look at her.

  "An hour and a half ago Millie let herself into your room to freshen the linens. She found the bed unmade, the sheets shredded and smeared with red. On the bathroom mirror she found four words, also written in red. Will-you-be-next?" He paused, let out a hot breath. "Still want to go back there?"

  Trying not to shake, she sat back and stared straight ahead, watched a hawk ci
rcle above the treetops.

  "It's happening," Cain rolled on. "Just like I said it would. You've knocked too many stones into motion. There's no stopping them now, not until they destroy everything in their path."

  She swallowed hard and forced herself to look at him, felt the breath jam in her throat. Because of his eyes. They weren't victorious, weren't hot and accusing. They were … edgy and volatile, and for a shattering moment they dredged up memories of the night Oncle's man attacked her, when Cain had run into the alley and found her in his partner's arms. She'd never forget the way he'd gone to his knees and touched her with a gentleness so excruciating it had seared into her flesh like a brand.

  Until that moment she'd perceived fear as a weakness. But like everything else he did, Cain Robichaud wore it like a badge of honor. He hadn't cared what anyone thought of him. He hadn't cared about danger or consequences. He'd only cared about … her.

  Fear, she'd realized, wasn't a weakness, but the source of strength and the consequence of emotion, the reflection of humanity. In its absence, there was nothing.

  In its presence, there was … everything.

  "Does that scare you?" she asked, and her heart slammed hard on the question. She wanted—God, how she wanted.

  Slowly his gaze met hers, and scorched clear down to her soul. "Only for you."

  His voice chilled. "Cain—"

  "Don't." The word sounded torn from somewhere deep and broken and painful. Jaw set, he turned back to the road and jerked the car into Drive, veered back onto the narrow highway.

  Within seconds, the trees once again blurred.

  Travis was dead. She'd been threatened. And Cain was pulling back by the second. She tried to weave the three together, integrate them with the fabric of all the other information she'd gleaned over the past four days. She was getting closer, she knew.

  Someone was running scared.

  She wanted to feel victory. And maybe somewhere inside she did. But it didn't resonate with triumph like she'd anticipated. There was only the sinking hollow feeling, the realization that the life she'd walked back into was rapidly coming to an end.

  At a narrow, unmarked road, Cain slowed the car and turned back in time. The oak and cypress and pine crowded the bumpy road like an adoring mob shoving and elbowing for the best position. The live oaks, their ancient, weathered canopies stretching across the road to create a tunnel, blotted out the sun. Only slashes and whispers of light fell, dancing with the sway of the Spanish moss.

  The ethereal beauty fed Renee, even as it drove home the reality that she really was a dead woman walking.

  She knew this road. More than knew it, she'd traveled its twists and turns before. With Cain. She knew what awaited her at the end of a narrow driveway up ahead.

  "You didn't answer my question," she said anyway, because that's what a stranger would say. Renee Fox would have no idea what lay ahead. Everything inside of her would not be bracing for the blow. "Where are you taking me?"

  Cain's hand tightened around the steering wheel. "Home," he said without inflection or feeling. "With me."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  New Orleans

  Nineteen months earlier

  It wasn't supposed to be beautiful. The breeze shouldn't be whispering like a warm caress against the side of my face. And the sun shouldn't be shining like a spotlight against a sky so impossibly azure that the whole world seems bright.

  And the flowers… They're everywhere, all my favorites—azaleas and dogwood and bougainvillea—lifting their faces to the sun in an explosion of color, like a living rainbow shrouding the glowing white of the crypt.

  The perfect juxtaposition of life and death.

  Slowly, I lift my hand to the cool marble. "Adrian." My voice breaks on his name. He was my brother, my best friend. Sure we fought as kids, and as adults, but only because we loved each other. It is a longstanding theory of mine: Passionate people can't coexist in a static world. There has to be rain. There have to be storms.

  But not this. Damn it, not this.

  The pain is intense, coiling through me like a python, choking off one organ at a time. "You promised," I whisper. "You promised you'd be careful. You promised you'd never leave me."

  Moisture stings the backs of my eyes, but I won't let the tears fall. "You were supposed to protect him," I admonish a crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary. Dropping to my knees, I run my fingers along the wilted daisies at her feet. "Damn it, you were supposed to take care of him."

  "What about you?" came a quiet voice from behind me, and the rhythm of my heart changed. Deepened. "Who's supposed to take care of you?"

  Vulnerable isn't a word I like, but there's no other word to describe the way I feel kneeling beside my brother's grave, with devastation in my voice and tears in my eyes. Once, I would have hidden this from Cain. The hard-nosed reporter who came to New Orleans to find the link between the controversial police detective and the Russian Mafia would never, ever have let him, let anyone, see a weakness.

  But there's only the woman now, the one who saw the terror in his eyes when he found me in the alley, who felt his arms cradle me when he told me about Adrian. Who'd fallen asleep to the low thrum of his heart. Who'd absorbed his warmth.

  Who wants to absorb it now.

  There's only me, and I'm so tired of the games.

  And so I twist toward him and feel the rush move through me, even here among the dead. My body hums with life as I take in the sight of him, so tall and dark and battered against the blue, blue sky. As usual he's wearing all black. In his hand is a paper bag.

  My eyes meet his—it would be so easy to drown. "What are you doing?"

  "I was worried when you didn't answer the phone."

  The words pour through me in a way the sunshine wasn't able to. "How did you find me?"

  He goes down on one knee and hands me the bag. "I'm a detective," he dismisses. "It wasn't hard."

  I take the wrinkled brown paper and look inside, see the wilted tulips. White. The color of salvation.

  The tears burn hotter, but still, I don't let them fall. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome."

  It seems so simple.

  He settles behind me and pulls me between his legs, holds me while the sun grows hotter. I tell myself not to do it, but I lean against his chest anyway and close my eyes.

  The sense of rightness is terrifying.

  "Promise me," he whispers. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid."

  I want to. God, I want to. "He knew." I can't keep that truth inside anymore. "Adrian knew this was going to happen."

  Cain eases the hair from my face. "Did he tell you that?"

  "He called." My brother's uncharacteristically urgent voice still haunts me from my answering machine. "Late that afternoon. He called me, told me he loved me. Asked me to feed his cat."

  Playing in my hair, Cain's hands still, but he says nothing.

  I twist in his arms, look into his eyes. "He doesn't have a cat."

  Now Cain's expression darkens.

  "He was trying to tell me goodbye," I say. "I see it so clearly now, but didn't see it then."

  "There's no way you could have."

  "But you would have," I point out. "If my brother had called you and asked you to feed his cat, you would have known he was communicating in code, that something weird was happening."

  "Maybe … assuming I knew he didn't have a cat."

  "If I called then." The need to prove my point is strong. "If I called out of the blue and asked you to feed my dog, you would know, right? You would know I was in trouble, that I was trying to tell you something."

  The scorched look in his eyes, somehow it reaches inside of me and wraps around my heart. "Don't do this to yourself, cher."

  "Please," I say. "Answer my question."

  He lets out a rough breath. "I would know." Then his hands find my face and his thumbs skim my lower lip. "But that's one phone call I don't ever want to receive, you understand me?"
>
  I do.

  But it's a promise I cannot make. Because there is a vow I have made. To find my brother's killer, make him pay.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  New Orleans, present day

  Phone cradled between his face and shoulder, Gabe picked up the microcassette recorder and clicked the rewind button, listened to the whir of the tape as it raced backward. Eleven seconds later, he hit Play for the fourth time.

  And for the fourth time, Alec Prejean's distinctive voice filled the office.

  "…not gonna stop me. No one will."

  "How can you be so sure?" a second man asked.

  "Because Robichaud thinks he knows me. I could put this gun to his temple, and he wouldn't believe his days are up until I pull the trigger."

  "Oncle doesn't believe it either."

  "People thought what I wanted them to," Prejean corrected. "What I needed them to."

  Somewhere nearby, a freighter wailed. "And now?"

  Gabe tightened his jaw at the sound of familiar laughter. "And now I can do anything," the man he'd called friend said. "Anything at all, and the good ol' boys in blue will insist I'm still on their side—just like before."

  Gabe jabbed the Off button and stared at the series of photographs on his desk, all taken less than two hours before. "Son of a bitch."

  D'Ambrosia's dangerously quiet voice sounded through the handset. "Still think he's innocent?"

  "Where the hell did you get these?"

  "Where doesn't matter." D'Ambrosia had couriered the cassettes over just after lunch. "All that's important is what's on this tape, in these pictures."

  Gabe pressed his fingers to his temples. He'd known Alec for over ten years. He'd called the man friend. He'd stood up at his wedding. He'd helped renovate the St. Charles Avenue

  mansion into an in-demand bed-and-breakfast. He'd even fed the man's dog when Alec and Tara took their dream vacation to Kauai.