KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

Two weeks later her world had crashed down around her.

  Now she put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath, wondered how it was possible for her heart to beat on, when everything inside of her bled.

  She felt the change immediately, the way the land goes quiet and still before a hurricane storms ashore. Tension wound through her chest and squeezed, and even before the door slammed open and the cool gust swept against her back, she knew.

  The time for reckoning had come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  New Orleans

  Eighteen months earlier

  The water is cool. It started out scalding hot, but that was twenty minutes ago, and my water heater can't handle more than a fifteen-minute shower without running cold. That's how I know the water is cool. But I don't feel the discomfort like I usually do. I don't feel anything. Except shock. And horror. Those I feel in abundance.

  Three hundred and thirty-eight. That's how many little white tiles are on the far side of my shower, tiles that I splayed my hands against while Cain made love to me in this very place only the morning before. It had been the first time we'd come together without facing each other, and the intensity of the sensation had prompted me to cry out long before I came.

  Now I want to slam my fists against those cruel white tiles, smear them with black and make them go away. Make the memories go away. They're obscuring everything, seducing me into thinking with my heart, rather than objectively facing the new pieces of the puzzle, necessary no matter how unwanted they are.

  Stay away from Robichaud, my brother warned. He can't be trusted.

  Be careful, my editor instructed. Deception comes in all shapes and sizes.

  He scares me, my friend Val confided. This thing between you two is happening too fast. Have you ever stopped to wonder why?

  The memories lash like a thin leather strip, and my body convulses. Wincing, I reach for the shampoo and squeeze a blob into my palm, then lift my hands to build a lather. Only then do I feel the silkiness of my hair and realize I've already applied shampoo and conditioner. Twice.

  It's time to quit stalling.

  Cain wants to meet at the cottage this evening. He says we need some quiet time, to get away. He says he has something special for me…

  The chill is sudden and intense, starting in my chest and shooting out like venom to my arms and my legs. Trying not to shake, I step from the shower and reach for one of the oversize towels I bought to accommodate Cain's large frame, and wrap the soft material around me.

  I shouldn't go, I realize as I step into a pair of pants and slip on a blouse. I know that. I'd be a fool to meet Cain alone in an isolated spot after learning that with his dying breath, my brother whispered my lover's name—and certainly not after the rookie cop who'd risked everything to give me that information had been found shot execution-style only hours later.

  It doesn't mean anything I tell myself as I step into the bedroom. None of it. It could all be a coincidence or some elaborate frame-up—

  The scent stops me. I stand there and breathe deeply of leather and patchouli, feel my heart strum low and deep and longingly. I love that scent, would know it anywhere. My sheets even smelled of it—but I washed them this morning as soon as he left my house.

  Swallowing hard, I slip from my bedroom and head down the hall, expect to find him in the kitchen making a po'boy or sprawled on the sofa watching Sports Center—those are the only two things I can imagine him doing besides joining me in the shower.

  But the kitchen is empty, and the TV is off.

  I want to call out to him, but the incessant voices of my brother and my editor and my friend warn me not to. Hating the direction of my thoughts, I turn and move quietly to my office.

  He's not there. The room is small and he is big, so his absence is easy to see. But I see something else. My microcassette recorder, the one I used to tape my conversation with Bender, is sitting on my desk.

  I left it locked in a drawer.

  Alarmed, I run across the room and grab it, find the tape gone. And my files, the ones I'd also locked away, are on the floor. Empty. My laptop is turned on—critical files deleted.

  The sense of violation is swift and complete. Reeling, I reach under the rug and grab the key I keep stashed there, cram it into a lock and yank open another drawer—but my .22 is gone. My heart kicks hard and my mind starts to race, this time in concert with my imagination.

  For the first time in my life, I'm scared in my own home.

  Shakily, I reach for the phone, but before I can hit the nine key, I realize there's no dial tone.

  The feel of something brushing against my legs brings a scream to my throat and I scramble around, only to find Esmy staring inquisitively at me. My heart slams hard. "It's okay," I whisper, and pray that it is.

  My mobile phone is in my purse in the kitchen. If I can get to it, I can call—

  Who? Who can I call? Who can I trust?

  The realization that I can't answer that question freezes the breath in my lungs. I stand anyway and make my way across the office and back toward the kitchen.

  Max. I can trust—

  The keys stop me cold. Three of them. On a New Orleans Saints keychain. Sitting on the back of my grandpappy's recliner.

  Cain's keys.

  Swallowing hard, I know I have no choice. I can't let him see me like this, unraveling at the seams. I can't let him see the horror and doubt slicing through me like daggers. I have to pretend everything is fine and normal. I have to do whatever it takes. Whatever. It. Takes.

  "Cain?" My voice is thin and strained, so I try again. "Cher, I was hoping you'd stop by…"

  "Vannah."

  Just my name, that's all I hear, whispered in that black-magic way of his, and my heart starts to bleed. Forcing a smile like I usually give him, I turn toward him.

  And see the candlestick.

  There's no time to scream or twist away. I raise my arms in pure reflex, but the big iron fleur-de-lis smashes down on me with stunning force. Pain blasts me. Vaguely I'm aware of falling. Of everything spinning. Swirling. Fading.

  No, I scream, but know it's only in my mind. No, no.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bayou de Foi, present day

  The week after Cain's mother died, his sister went missing. His uncles and the sheriff had mounted a search party, ordering a seven-year-old Cain to stay behind. But he'd been no more capable of sitting idle than he was of bringing his parents back to life.

  He'd gone in search of her, wandering deep into the swampy territory at the back of the Robichaud estate. That's when the storm struck. The wind and rain had come on him so fast and violently there'd been no chance of finding the main path in time. With night the storm waned, but the darkness had been complete, trapping Cain where he stood beneath a massive red cypress.

  He'd waited. Night sounds had rustled around him, and his imagination had wandered. He'd envisioned alligators sneaking up on him. Snakes slithering by. Maybe even a panther, even though his uncles swore the cats no longer inhabited the swamp.

  He'd hated being alone in the dark, unable to see. He'd despised not being in control. But when he heard his sister's cry, he'd struck out anyway, and found her.

  The two of them, wet and cold and frightened, had huddled together until sunrise, when he'd led her back to the main house.

  And the two of them had gotten spanked within an inch of their lives.

  In the ensuing years he'd pushed hard to develop the ability to see when others could not. He'd forced himself to spend countless nights in the swamp, to learn how to discern shadows from ghosts, reality from imagination. That's why he'd become both cop and photographer. The skills he'd developed had served him well, helped him see truth where others saw lies, danger where others saw only beauty.

  Until Savannah Trahan walked into his life.

  He'd known she was trouble the moment he set eyes on her, but for one of the few times in his life, he hadn't given a sweet damn. She'd be
en like a wild lily flourishing unabashedly and against all odds in the swamp, and his need for her, his desire, had blinded him to the instinct and caution that normally guided his every move. After they became lovers, he'd felt his focus slip even more. Suddenly the cop with the legendary concentration could hardly keep his mind on the biggest case of his career—because he'd been so flat damn terrified something would blow up in his face and he would lose Savannah.

  And then he had.

  Too late, his mistakes had glared, taunting him with the insidious fact that when it mattered most, he'd failed. He'd vowed to never again allow himself to be blinded, not by determination or deception or even by desire. He would see with his mind, like he'd always done.

  He would never again see with his heart.

  And he hadn't—until the afternoon he'd found a woman standing in the clearing by the cottage. It shouldn't have been possible, but just like the wild lily he'd once compared Savannah to, blooming irreverently at the base of a bald cypress, she'd looked completely out of place, and stunningly at home.

  Mind versus heart, he knew now. His mind had decreed that this intruder didn't belong on his land, in his life, while his heart had immediately and automatically known that she had.

  He looked at her now, standing so unnaturally and painfully still, like glass spun too thin. Not ten feet separated them. It would be easy to destroy the distance and go to her, do what he'd wanted from the moment he'd first seen her—in the distant past, and the recent past. To take.

  But he didn't trust himself to move. Didn't trust himself to touch. Knew once he started, he'd never be able to stop.

  He'd told himself to stay away. He'd spent the day with his camera and a bottle of scotch in the swamp, with his mobile phone turned off. He hadn't spoken to a soul since he'd walked away from her that morning. He didn't want to, either. That's why he'd told himself he was coming here, to the cottage. To spend the night by himself.

  But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he knew that for the lie it was. Somewhere deep inside, on some primal, destructive level he'd known she would be here. And he'd wanted.

  With the cool breeze whispering around him, he slammed the full liquor bottle onto a counter and drank in the sight of her—bathed in the mercurial light of the moon and drenched in uncertainty—and knew he'd never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.

  With his foot he kicked the door shut, and the sound of it slamming against the frame rattled the cottage. But Renee—Savannah—didn't move. She just watched. And waited.

  "I dreamed of you." The words were low and hoarse and torn from that dark place, and on them he saw her eyes flare.

  "Cain—"

  His sharply raised hand stopped her cold. He didn't want her to talk. He didn't want her to explain. He just wanted her to listen. And feel. And … want. "It didn't matter how long I'd gone without sleep or how much whiskey I drank, you were always there, waiting."

  With the words, he crossed toward her.

  "Sometimes you were smiling." His hand wanted to shake, but he lifted it anyway, let his fingers settle along her hair. Long now. Dark. Sleek. No longer wavy and blond as it used to be.

  But it felt the same.

  "You'd gaze at me like you were drunk on a secret no one else knew, but if I played my cards right, you would share it with me."

  Through the hazy light, pain glimmered in her eyes. Dark now. Haunted. No longer vibrant and daring and blue.

  "Other times you were frowning, thoughtful." His fingers threaded through her hair, closed into a fist. "Like you were that last morning, when I came home whipped and you looked at me like I'd just stepped on your grave."

  She winced.

  "Sometimes you were crying." The need to feel her closer, feel all of her pressed against him, lashed at him like the wind through the trees. There was something edgy and violent growing inside of him, something pulsing and relentless, that he understood too well.

  "Screaming." That had been the worst, the cruelest of tortures, a broken sound that echoed insidiously through the night. "Calling for me." He swallowed the acrid taste at the back of his throat, the fog of memory and nightmare all roiled together. "Begging."

  Her eyes were huge now, dark. "No," she whispered against his fingers.

  "That's when I would run." The way he'd done that night a lifetime ago. "I would shout your name and promise you everything would be okay, that I was coming—"

  "Don't do this." The words were barely more than a rasp.

  "Then I would wake up." Hot and sweating and out of breath, crashing hard from too much adrenaline. "And I'd go outside, awake now, and run some more." Usually ending up at the plantation ruins. "But no matter how far I went, the questions were always there. Had you suffered? Had you hurt?"

  Her eyes filled. Her hands lifted. She brought them to his face and cradled, let her fingertips sear into his flesh.

  The sensation of her touch, familiar yet foreign, almost sent him to his knees. "I knew you'd bled," he forced himself to continue as his thumb eased along her lower lip. "I had your blood on my hands."

  A broken sound slipped from her throat. Wincing, she slid her hand higher, skimmed a finger beneath his eyes.

  For ten hours he'd been holding on tight, trying to make sense of the nonsensical. But his grip slipped now, and need shoved against restraint. "That's how they found me."

  There was something in her eyes, something vulnerable, and it coiled through his chest, and squeezed.

  "Savannah," he rasped, and God help him, the reality of it sang through his blood. She was here, and she was real, and he knew—he knew—that this time when he put his mouth to hers, she would not dissolve into the shadows.

  But he didn't move, couldn't stop looking at her. Couldn't stop seeing what he'd not let himself see before. Feeling what he hadn't wanted to feel. "Savannah."

  She'd always been a woman of passion and conviction. She'd never hesitated, rarely faltered. But there was a stabbing vulnerability to her now, a fragility that stirred something within him—and had from the moment he'd found her in the clearing. The way she was looking at him—sweet merciful God in heaven, no one had ever looked at him like that, as though she didn't know whether he was going to crush her in his arms or put a knife through her heart … and didn't care.

  Questions pushed closer, harder. The need for answers coiled deep. But it was the need for something else—the need for her—that obliterated everything he'd ever taught himself, everything he'd ever believed about honor and survival and loyalty.

  "Five seconds," he said. "That's how long I'm giving you to leave."

  The flicker in her eyes was so brief he wasn't sure if it was real—or imagined. Her lips curved, though. That was real. And she pushed up on her toes. "I'm not going anywhere."

  "I don't issue warnings twice."

  "I know."

  In his dreams, this was when he would wake up. When he would always, always wake up.

  Swallowing against the burn, he slid his hand from her mouth to her throat, the sobering red streak left by the knife in the alley. He let his fingers slide around her neck, saw her eyes flare.

  The unguarded reaction brutalized the detachment he wanted to feel.

  "Do it," she challenged, and he felt her throat work against his palm. "I dare you."

  Somewhere along the line the night had fallen silent. Not even the toads or the owl that nested nearby dared to make a sound. He felt his fingers tense, felt them hesitate, felt the truth pulse through him. There was no fear, he realized. No fear in her eyes. Only inevitability.

  He refused to analyze why. "Be careful what you wish for."

  "Why start now?" The words were low, quiet.

  He let his hand slide lower, to the neckline of her blouse. Her skin was soft, abnormally warm, and beneath his fingertips he felt the steady thrum of her pulse. He wanted to hate her. He wanted to chase her away, tell her he never wanted to see her again. But even more he wanted to touch and taste and posse
ss, to be inside her again, to feel the way she would welcome him as she had in his dreams.

  "Cain," she whispered, and for the first time, her voice broke on his name. "There's so much I need to tell you."

  "I didn't come here to talk."

  Beneath his hand, the beat of her heart turned erratic. He watched her a long moment, just watched her, loving the play of shadows across a face so perfectly foreign to him, yet an expression of desire and defiance that had flourished in his memory long after he should have said goodbye.

  His hand drifted lower, to the column of buttons, and slowly, expertly, his fingers began to work. She didn't move as he bared first her black lace bra, then her midriff, then, finally the curve of her waist.

  The scars sent him to his knees. He hadn't seen them before, when he'd torn at her clothes to see the freckles he'd loved to kiss. He'd been too blinded by shock and the need to confirm what he'd been denying from the start.

  But now—God. Now they glared at him, angry, contorted stretches of skin beneath the right side of her rib cage and just above the left side of her groin. She'd been stitched, but the flesh so obviously torn by a knife hadn't healed smoothly.

  The need to punish ground through him, but he pushed it aside and brought his face to her abdomen, pressed his mouth to the first scar. Lifting his arms to curve around her waist, he held her like that, face to her stomach, mouth to the lingering evidence of a violent attack. Her hands fisted in his hair. And her breathing, the rise and fall of her abdomen against his cheek, quickened.

  So did his own.

  He fumbled with the snap of dark jeans riding low on her hips. Then he released the zipper. More flesh came to him, fully exposing the second scar. With his tongue he traced the jagged length. With his mouth he wanted to absorb the pain that stood between them. With his body, already hard and straining, he wanted to reclaim what they'd lost.

  Eighteen months was a long time to want. He'd caged the need away, tried to pretend it didn't exist, but it tore through him now, more volatile and punishing with each beat of his heart. The otherworldly light slipping through the windows dimmed. The cottage he'd come obscenely close to torching in the months following Savannah's disappearance pushed in around him. Everything else faded. There was only her. Always her.