KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

  "Not a word."

  Fighting a wave of unease, Val pulled open the night-stand drawer and lifted the guidebook she'd picked up for Barbados. "How long has it—" she started, but then went very still.

  "Val?"

  She blinked, felt the room tilt. "Yeah, I'm here," she said.

  But Gabe's .9 mm was not.

  "Damn it, Cain, where the hell are you?" From his position on the second story of an old warehouse, Gabe glanced out the grimy window and scanned the deserted building across from him. He'd been trying to reach Cain since before sunrise. "The pieces are falling together, cuz. I think we've finally got our man."

  Jabbing the call-end button, he narrowed his eyes and stared out at the dreary November day. For eighteen months he'd been looking for a way to lift the suspicion from his cousin's shoulders. Now the means had been practically gift wrapped and dropped into his lap. Back during the dark days when the grand jury had convened to determine Cain's fate, he'd never imagined it would be Alec Prejean who would ultimately take the fall.

  Time dragged. He kept his gaze on the warehouse, looking for the slightest movement, kept his hand stabbed into the pocket of his trench coat, curled around the butt of his .9 mm.

  When his phone vibrated sometime later, he checked the caller ID box and frowned when he saw Val's name.

  She'd looked so peaceful when he'd left her that morning, lying on her side with her hair spilling against her face. For a long moment he'd stayed, watching her. Then he'd allowed himself a touch. He'd let his fingers drift against her cheek, and her lips had curved into a soft smile.

  He hated keeping secrets from her, knew how much she valued honesty. So did he. Lies and deception were not commodities he enjoyed. But this was not something she would understand. Sometimes, the truth really was more dangerous than deception.

  After thirty seconds, the phone went quiet, and guilt did a cruel last stand through his chest. Soon, he promised himself. Soon this mess would be over and it would be safe to leave town without fear of something blowing up in his absence.

  Another vibration, and this time the caller ID box showed a different name. Evangeline. They'd hardly spoken since the awkward scene in his office, but that morning she'd suggested they do lunch. Scowling he checked his watch, realized more time had elapsed than he'd realized. But he did not answer the phone.

  Movement then, only a few minutes later, the quick blur of a shadow against the side of the warehouse. Gabe lifted a pair of binoculars and scanned the area, zeroed in on a man dressed in all black easing along the shadows.

  Recognition came swiftly. "Son of a bitch."

  D'Ambrosia wasn't supposed to be here. After waiting for a rendezvous the evening before that had never come, the two men agreed the information they'd received had likely been a setup. They'd parted with sundown, had not mentioned one word about returning with sunrise.

  Not liking the direction of his thoughts, Gabe turned from the window and moved through the shadowy warehouse. He drew his gun and stepped into the drizzle, edged along the side of the wet bricks. Adrenaline boiled through him, but he kept his movement deliberate, cautious. The element of surprise was critical. He would find D'Ambrosia, and stop him.

  The sound of a car engine changed everything. He stopped and turned, crowded himself against the side of the building and saw the bloodred Porsche. The door opened, and Alec Prejean emerged. The sight brought an acrid taste to the back of his throat. Justice or not, he could find no glory in what was about to go down.

  With a furtive glance around the deserted parking area, Alec shut the car door and headed for the warehouse.

  Only then did Gabe see the semiautomatic in the other man's hand. He took off after him anyway.

  Cain had told him about raids before, how everything goes still and quiet, reducing the world to a vacuum devoid of activity and sound. That one moment could stretch forever, and no matter how hard his heart pumped or how fast his legs moved, it was like moving through molasses. But they'd always been mere stories for Gabe. He was a lawyer, not a cop. His world was an office and a courtroom, not a dilapidated warehouse district where snipers could exist behind darkened windows.

  But now he knew, and now he felt. And it was too late for turning back. The dread was intense, tightening through him like some horrific tonic that turned his muscles to rock. He pushed through the haze anyway, even when he saw the second car idling at the end of the driveway, even when he heard a voice he recognized shout for him to stop.

  Alec reached the entrance and slid something into a slot, then pushed open the door.

  "Get down!" was the only warning Gabe got. The warehouse blew out toward him, metal and glass and fire raining down like blistering shrapnel. The force of another body hit him from behind and he went down.

  Then … nothing.

  "That Travis, I know he came across a bit reckless, but me … he was my first crush. He lived across the street from me. Our mamas were friends. When we were little, they used to fancy we'd get married and give them beautiful grandbabies. For a while there, I thought so, too. He gave me my first kiss. It wasn't anything special, not at all like Ed—"

  Lena Mae Lamont stopped and looked away, but not before pain flashed through her eyes. She stared toward the church's vestibule for a long heartbeat before lifting a hand to her face and resuming her story. "We were just kids then, but there's truth in childhood, mais oui? Honesty. We're born who we are. We don't become someone different from that little babe who draws its first breath and lets out its first squawk. Oh, we can mask it for a time, but the seeds, they're always there."

  Renee drew her leather jacket tighter and wrapped her arms around her middle, resisted the urge to rock. Like venom, the chill oozed deeper with every beat of her heart, Numbness wouldn't come. She felt everything. Vividly. The acidic sting of each breath moving through her body. The pressure in her chest. The strangling grip of reality curling around her throat.

  It had been four hours since Cain had walked away from her.

  "Well put," she said with a forced smile. "Is this why you think you know something about why Travis was killed?"

  The librarian frowned. "Back when we were kids we didn't have all these TV shows and video games like they have today. We had books, and our imaginations. Travis and I used to play out in the swamp. One day he found a billfold stashed in some Spanish moss. There was no ID, no way of tracing it back to its owner. I told Travis he should just toss it, but he became obsessed with trying to find out who the wallet belonged to and how it came to be lying empty by the knee of an old tree."

  Renee rubbed a hand along her arm. Blind obsession was something she knew well. "Did he figure it out?"

  "Never did," Lena Mae said with a quick glance toward the altar draped in white. "But the stories he came up with were amazing."

  "I'll bet."

  "And he never stopped. Time went on but there was always a new mystery. For a while it was that blasted stained-glass window. He was determined to find it, thought he could use its healing powers to save his mama from cancer."

  The church started to spin. Renee fought the dizziness, but the stained glass and pews whirred and blurred and merged. She tried to focus, knew she had to let go of what could not be changed and concentrate on what could. But letting go had always been a weakness of hers. She just didn't know how.

  "So when that reporter disappeared—"

  Renee blinked. "Savannah?"

  "The Trahan woman," Lena Mae clarified. "When she went missing, Travis jumped on the case like he was Sherlock Holmes."

  That first night came back to Renee, the warning in the other man's eyes. She'd taken it as ramblings. Now she had to wonder. "Did he find anything?"

  Again, Lena Mae's gaze darted around the vestibule. "People didn't pay him any attention, you know? They thought he was a drunk and a clown … but that was the way Travis wanted it. He pretty much used it as a smoke screen. If anyone had taken him seriously, he wouldn't have been able to
learn the secrets he did. And as long as the real bad guy thought Travis believed Cain was guilty, then Travis never had to worry about anyone finding out what he was up to."

  It was all Renee could do to keep herself from lunging across the confessional. "Did he find anything?"

  Lena Mae frowned. "He swore me to secrecy, but I—I … I'm scared he might have been right."

  Renee reached for the librarian's hands, found them clammy. "About what?"

  Lena Mae looked down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap, then let out a slow breath and met Renee's eyes. "He was sure Cain didn't do it, said he loved her too much. He thought…" She hesitated, lowered her voice. "He said the only way Cain could have taken the fall like that was if someone close to him set everything up."

  Renee's heart gave a cruel lurch, and her mind started to race. Cain was a cautious man. He didn't trust easily. "That's not possible."

  "But it's the only explanation that makes sense," Lena Mae said, and her voice was sad. "The only way Cain could have looked as guilty as he did is if someone close to him framed him, someone who knew his secrets and his weaknesses, his comings and his goings. Someone who could manipulate the seemingly innocuous into something dark and sinister and condemning. Someone he and Savannah both trusted. Someone who could have tricked them both, who had access to his files and his calendar and even his car—"

  "Someone he called friend."

  "Or partner," Lena Mae added nervously. "Or cousin, or—"

  The librarian's stricken expression sent a jolt through Renee. Lena Mae's face went pale, her eyes dark. "Or who?" Renee urged, but the second she followed the other woman's gaze, she knew no more answers would be forthcoming.

  Sheriff Edouard Robichaud stood at the back of the church with his hands on his hips and a cold glitter in his eyes.

  "Damn it, Lena, what in tarnation did you tell her?"

  Her chin came up at a sharp angle. "There's no law that says I can't talk to folks I run into while praying."

  Edouard prided himself on control, despite the hot blood of his Cajun ancestors that ran through his veins. Like his brothers, he'd listened to his daddy's lectures about making your own fate, your own life. In 'Nam, those lessons had crystallized. The only way to stay alive was to keep your eye on the prize. Contrary to what sports pundits said, the best offense was, in fact, a strong offense.

  Defense was for cowards.

  He'd come home from war to a world he no longer recognized. Folks he'd once laughed with turned from him. Sweet Cassie Blankwell, the second girl he'd ever kissed, had turned from him on the street as if he was a baby killer. Only Millie and Lena Mae Lamont—the first girl he'd ever kissed—had treated him the same.

  But he'd seen the pity in their eyes, and he'd felt like a goddamn charity case.

  That was Lena Mae to the core. She wouldn't have turned down a starving, mange-ridden dog if it showed up on her doorstep, even if she knew that in taking the creature in, she was also taking her life into her own hands.

  Edouard had refused to be that dog.

  But he looked at her now, standing in the dappled light of the vestibule with her jaw at a fierce angle and defiance in her eyes, and realized he was dangerously close to barking.

  He wanted to be angry with her, damn it. He wanted to blame her foolishness on that hot little number who'd blinded Cain to reality. But deep inside he knew the change had occurred before the woman who claimed to be Renee Fox ever stepped foot in Bayou de Foi.

  And the only real emotion he could find was fear.

  "It's not about laws." He tried to strip the emotion from his voice. Letting it shake would get them nowhere. "It's not about talking to whoever you please, either. It's about common sense. Safety. Travis is dead, Lena. Murdered. Because he talked to that reporter. Don't you get it? If you keep doing what I tell you not to, there's a damn fine chance you could end up just like him."

  She didn't move, not physically, but something cold and hard moved into her eyes. "Are you threatening me?"

  "Threatening you?" He strode toward her, stopped when he saw her step back. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."

  She held his gaze, didn't back down. "You should go now, Edouard."

  Edouard. She never called him Edouard.

  But she was right. He should leave. Turn, walk away. Leave the church, go back to the station and read his most recent surveillance report on the Lambert brothers. But he looked at her standing next to the statue of the Virgin Mary, with strands of black and gray hair falling from the twist and whispering against her face, at the mutinous line of her mouth and the hot demand in her eyes, and something inside of him pinched. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look more provocative, not even when he was seventeen and she was sixteen and he'd picked her up for the school dance.

  "I'll go," he growled. But instead of turning away, he charged across the wood floor and took her shoulders in his hands, her mouth with his own. The kiss was hot and greedy and surprisingly desperate, and even though she stood rigid in his arms, he pulled her closer, fisted his hands in her hair and damn near drowned in the scent of antique roses and sorrow.

  He pulled back abruptly, brought his hands to her face, refused to let himself feel the sting of rejection—or the cold finality of goodbye.

  "This wasn't how it was supposed to be," he ground out, and despite the hot emotion churning through him, his voice was soft, rough. Realizing he was damn close to making a fool of himself, he dropped his hands and turned, walked out of the church.

  It was only when he reached for his ringing mobile phone a few minutes later that he noticed the moisture on his fingertips.

  News of the explosion stopped him in his tracks. "Is he dead?"

  "Yeah."

  "Does Cain know yet?"

  "Haven't been able to reach him."

  Edouard swore softly. Saura had called with first light wanting advice about how to tell Cain what she'd learned. Then, she'd called a few hours later after Cain had grabbed a bottle of scotch and stormed out without saying one word. She'd been scared. Worried. Said she hadn't seen him like that in months, not since Savannah had gone missing. There'd been something in his eyes, she said. More than simple anger or betrayal, but something sharp and volatile and it had frightened her.

  His niece didn't frighten easily.

  "I'll find him," Edouard said on a hot rush. The need to locate his nephew before someone else did burned like a hot poker to the gut. The press would be all over this. They'd want a statement. They'd want to make connections, to make the easy, obvious link between yet another suspicious death and the man many still wanted behind bars.

  Edouard wasn't about to let that happen, because finally, at last, he had the means necessary to clear Cain's name once and for all.

  Dead men could neither talk nor deny.

  Someone close to him framed him…

  Renee clicked off the microcassette recorder and stared into the darkness beyond the window, knew in her heart that Lena Mae was right. Someone close to Cain, someone he trusted, had framed him. It was the only way he could have looked so guilty.

  Closing her eyes, she saw the rookie cop as he'd been that night in Jackson Square

  , but no longer knew if he'd spoken the truth. Maybe his story was just another lie.

  The pieces were falling together faster now, painting the picture she'd spent eighteen months dreaming of: Cain's innocence. No matter the price, coming back had been the right thing to do, the only way to find the answers that would clear his name. She was the only one who knew what had happened to her that night, what she'd seen and heard.

  Restless, she stood and lifted her flashlight, let the beam run along the interior of the small room. Little had changed in the eighteen months since she'd last been in the remote cottage tucked away on Robichaud land, where she and Cain had come to escape the chaos of New Orleans, where they'd made love to the tune of crickets and cicadas and the occasional family of toads.

  She had
commanded herself from that first afternoon not to return here. But that was before. That was when she was trying to pretend she wasn't Savannah, when she was exerting every ounce of strength she had to not feel anything. Not remember.

  But the truth was out now, and the need to feel again, to remember everything, yammered within her. Outside the rain of the day had passed, leaving a stillness in its wake. Out here in the middle of bayou country, without the glaring intrusion of city lights, the stars shone brighter, endless almost, beaming down from a brilliant black sky and flirting with the land. Their light filtered through the dust-coated window and blended with the flashlight, illuminating everything she'd tried to forget.

  The intensity of it knotted in her throat. Memories lived in the cottage, lingering in that hazy place between life and death. They shimmered off the wooden walls and streamed through the open spaces, making it difficult for Renee to move without bumping into the ghosts she no longer wanted to avoid.

  Crossing the small space, she ran her hand along a bottle of merlot on an old Formica counter. It was as though the room stood suspended in time, a door back to the life she'd lost. With a twist to her heart she closed her eyes and remembered the weekend when heavy spring rains had drenched the land and flooded the roads, trapping them. It had been the most bizarre, romantic encounter of her life, stranded without radio or television, with no idea of what was happening in the outside world, other than the rumble of thunder and slash of lightning, the rain and the wind. She'd been too consumed with Cain to care about anything else. It was as though the rest of the world had stood still, granting the two of them their own private time-out.

  Then the storm had cleared and they'd returned to reality.