Cry Wolf

by Tami Hoag

  Women were the bane of his existence. Sluts and whores, all of them. Some came in more respectable packages than others, but they were all alike underneath the wrapping. Wicked as Eve, every last one of them.

  He laughed a little at the biblical reference and tossed back a gulp of brandy. Shit, he was even starting to think like a preacher.

  The night was still and hot as hell, the air electric with something like expectation. A dark restlessness shifted inside him and he lifted his glass and tried to douse the feeling with the last of his drink. The quiet pressed in on him, irritating raw nerve endings like fingernails on a chalkboard. He longed for the noise of New Orleans, the sounds and smells of Bourbon Street, the dirt and dark alleys of the Quarter, the places the tourists never saw.

  A man could get anything he wanted in New Orleans, any way he wanted it.

  But he was out here, stuck on the edge of the godforsaken swamp. He had an apartment up in Lafayette, but he had chosen Bayou Breaux as the spot to launch his campaign, and so had rented this one-room bungalow at the edge of nowhere in order to have some privacy.

  Bayou Breaux had seemed the perfect choice for his “War on Satan”—the heart of Acadiana, where good Christian people were as thick as ants on a watermelon rind, where times were a little lean these days because of the perilous state of the oil industry and the agricultural economy, where crime was pressing in and people needed something to grab on to and believe in. There were too many Catholics to suit him, but there were also busloads of fundamentalists fervent enough and gullible enough to believe anything. They were the core of his ministry. They would bankroll him into stardom and carry him there on their shoulders.

  If Laurel Chandler didn't get in the way.

  The screen door swung open with a creak and Savannah Chandler walked in, a seductive vision in her short flowered dress and red high heels. Her gaze scanned the shabby little room, taking in the dingy yellow walls, the cheap, mismatched furniture, the bottle of E & J on the battered coffee table, assessing the surroundings the same way she might judge a new boutique.

  Finally she turned toward him, not saying a word, acting as if she had more right to be there than he did. She had eyes like a she-wolf—pale, translucent blue—and something in them sent a shiver of awareness down his spine. A white-hot flame that burned. A hunger that called to his own. A recognition of a common need.

  “All dressed up and nowhere to go, Jimmy Lee?” she drawled.

  “I could say the same to you.”

  She shot him a sly look from the corner of her eye. “No, you couldn't. I came here.”

  “What for?”

  “For a while.”

  He said nothing as she skirted around the old iron bed, trailing a forefinger along the foot rail. She stared at him from under her lashes. He could feel the heat of her gaze on his face, on his bare chest, and he couldn't quite resist the urge to suck in his stomach. She came toward him, head down, her long wild hair tumbling over one shoulder, twining with the long strand of pearls she wore. Her hips rolled sensuously from side to side. The only sounds in the room were the click of spike heels against linoleum, the creak of the old ceiling fan as it turned, and the soft, seductive swish of fabric as it rubbed against skin.

  Jimmy Lee held himself still as lust rose up inside him like a demon. She stopped a scant inch away. Her perfume mingled with the faint scent of brandy and the damp, earthy aroma of the swamp that drifted in through the window, and beneath it all lay the unmistakable musk of arousal—hers, his. . . .

  “Your sister made a fool of me today,” he said, his voice low and whiskey-hoarse.

  One corner of her mouth curled into a subtle sneer. “You oughta be used to that, Jimmy Lee.”

  He moved so quickly, she couldn't help gasping as his hand closed, tight and punishing, on her upper arm. “I'm gonna be a star,” he said softly.

  She didn't ignore the pain of his fingers biting into her flesh. Instead she drank it in, fed on it, smiled a little deeper. “You're nothing but a two-bit hustler.”

  “And you're nothing but a cheap piece of snatch,” he said. “A whore without a price tag.”

  She slapped him so hard that the blow sang up her arm and her palm burned like live ash. In one explosive move, Jimmy Lee was on his feet, his hand thundering down to return the slap. It snapped her head back and the split that had knitted together along her bottom lip cracked open, instantly filling her mouth with the sharp, thick taste of her own blood.

  As if a door had been suddenly thrown open inside her, all the restlessness, the recklessness, the wildness rushed out on a wave of hate. Hate for him, hate for herself, an all-encompassing, drenching, drowning hate that washed away control, compunction, restraint. And all of it—the need, the hate, everything—glowed in her eyes as she turned her head and looked up at Jimmy Lee Baldwin.

  He stared down at her for a long while, feeling again that strange kinship between them. Something dark, something evil. And it stirred arousal like nothing else he'd ever known. Desire rose up like a beast inside him, wild, rabid, unchained. A sound of animal need rose up the back of his throat as he pulled Savannah roughly against him and crushed her mouth with his.

  She fought his embrace—not to escape, just to fight—but all her hands could grasp was the fever-hot, sweat-slick skin of his chest and upper arms, and she groped and clawed and pinched as the ripe male scent of him filled her head and his tongue filled her mouth.

  Behind her back, his fingers worked frantically at the zipper of her dress. He pulled the tab down a few inches, then curled his fingers into the opening and tore it the rest of the way. He worked it past her shoulders and lower as he dragged his mouth from her lips to her throat. He grasped the neckline of the dress in both hands and jerked it down, hunger snarling inside him like a wild dog as her breasts sprang free, full and firm. He bent over and caught one turgid peak in his hot, avid mouth, sucking hard, wringing a frantic sound from her . . . and another and another. Winding his hand into her pearl necklace, he rubbed the cool, satiny beads across her other aching point.

  Unsure of whether she wanted to hold him to her or push him away, Savannah shoved at his shoulders, tangled her hands in his slicked-back hair and pulled. This was a battle for her mind, for her soul, and desperation gripped her throat at the idea that she stood no chance of winning. This is what you were born for, Savannah. Don't try to deny it. . . .

  For an instant she was back in her room at Beauvoir, and the man sucking greedily at her breast was her stepfather. She cried out, not at the assault of her body, but at the conflicting feelings that assaulted her. Her body responded to his touch, tingled and burned and ached. In the beginning she hadn't liked it, but over time she had come to see that Ross was right—this was what she was made for, this was what she was good at. But the pleasure that ribboned through her body brought with it a wrenching shame. She was a whore. That was all she would ever be. That was all any man would love her for—sex.

  She sobbed a little, feeling trapped, but she cast aside the sensation and let Ross's words balm her ravaged heart. “You're so beautiful, Savannah. You're so much more woman than your mother. I want you all the time. Sometimes I think I'll go mad with need of you. . . .”

  Need of her. He needed her. He wanted her. The words gave her a sense of power, and she grasped it and hung on.

  “You're wicked, Savannah,” Baldwin muttered, trailing his mouth down the slope of her breast, over the quivering muscles of her stomach. “You're a witch the way you make a man want you.”

  A wild, bitter laugh tore from her. She braced her hands against the window frame as Jimmy Lee went down on her. He caught the hem of her dress and shoved it up past her hips, so that it bunched around her waist. The strand of pearls hanging down between her breasts, she teetered on her red high heels, feet braced apart, head swimming dizzily, drunk on a mix of need and hate and self-pity and self-loathing and rapacious, insatiable arousal.

  Jimmy Lee devoured her, as gree
dy and ravenous as a glutton at a feast. His tongue teased and flicked and probed, bringing her to the edge of orgasm but never beyond, never granting her satisfaction, only pushing the pain of unfulfilled arousal to its outer limits.

  “I hate you, Jimmy Lee!” Her voice was little more than a rasp, as tormented as the rest of her body, as seized by desire and frustration. “You're a son of a bitch.”

  He tumbled her back across the creaking, sagging mattress of the old bed, falling across her, pinning her arms above her head with one hand. She struggled beneath him as he reached down with his free hand and stripped his belt from his trousers.

  “You're nothing but a pervert, Jimmy Lee,” she taunted, her heart racing as he bound her hands to a rail on the iron headboard.

  “It takes one to know one,” he growled.

  She laughed, a throaty, seductive laugh, her cool, she-wolf eyes glowing with hunger and anticipation as he sat back, straddling her thighs, and unfastened his trousers. He didn't bother to take them off, but he did bother to protect himself, pulling a condom out of his pocket and slipping it on with practiced efficiency.

  “Can't be too careful these days,” he said. He braced himself above her on his elbows and stared down at her, his breath coming in hard pants. “My adoring public wouldn't take it too kindly if I caught something nasty from some alley cat who spreads her legs for every man in town.”

  Savannah glared at him. “I'll be sure to tell them you said that.”

  “Who'd believe you?” he asked, contempt for her festering inside him like a boil. “I'm their savior. You're just a bitch in heat.”

  “Don't bother telling anyone, Savannah. No one will ever believe you. . . . They'll see you for what you are—little slut, little prick teaser. . . . You're a bad girl, Savannah, and everyone knows it. . . . There's no use telling. We both know you seduced me. . . .”

  She closed her eyes as the voice played in her head. She raised her hips as Jimmy Lee thrust into her . . . and hated herself.

  The midnight moon cast a silvery sheen down on the trees, and the mist crept, soft and white, across the surface of the black water.

  A lot of women were afraid of the swamp. A lot of men were afraid of the swamp. It didn't frighten Savannah. She felt something other than fear out here. Something ancient. Something that called to her and stirred her blood.

  This place had always been her escape. This was where she and Baby had run to get away from home and the unhappiness there. Out here she felt free. She felt like a part of the swamp, like an animal—a deer or a bobcat or a copperhead snake. She wanted to take her clothes off and be naked here, be a part of it, a creature of the Atchafalaya.

  Giving in to that primal desire, she slipped off the dress the Revver had ruined for her, tossed it on the hood of the car, and slicked her hands down over the curves of her naked body.

  For a moment she closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to lie down here on the mat of dead leaves and welcome her lover into her body beneath the light of the bayou moon. They would mate as all animals mated, without guilt, without inhibition, glorying in the pure excitement of it. She would scream out in ecstasy, her cries mingling with the eerie cacophony that carried across the swamp at night.

  The mental image wrung a low moan from her, made her ache with need, a need Jimmy Lee hadn't been able to assuage no matter how many ways he used her—and he had used her in every way a man could use a woman. This was a need no man could quench, a need that was rooted deep in the core of her.

  She threw her head back, lifting her face to the moon, tumbling her wild hair down her back. The restlessness stirred harder, hotter. The wildness pulled at her, drew on something deep within. She needed . . . needed . . . needed . . .

  Need drives the predator. Not the need for food, but for sustenance of another kind. A need for blood, a taste for death. A need to punish, a desire to inflict pain. To watch pain grow like a cancer, from a simple response into something all-consuming. A need to control. To play God.

  To play. A game. The thought brings a smile. The smile brings a chill to the prey. For every game there is a loser. The one bound and held captive knows the outcome before the game begins. For the victim there is no game, only anticipation, pain, terror, and, she prays, death. Please, death. Soon . . .

  No one hears her screams. No one comes to her aid. There are no saviors in the swamp. Cruelty here is a way of life. Death as commonplace as snakes. Danger hidden in beauty. No salvation. No justice. Life. Death. The hunter and the hunted.

  The knife gleams silver in the moonlight. The blade cuts delicately, with skill, slicing like a bow across the strings of a violin. The song it plays high-pitched and eerie. Human. A prelude to death.

  And in the end, the instrument will fall silent, the prey will succumb. She will die as the predator believes she deserves to die—naked and defiled. Another dead whore left to rot in the swamp. A fitting end, a fitting place. And the predator will glide away in the bâteau, silent, safe, the secret shared with only the trees and the creatures of the night. . . .

  Laurel sat up suddenly, shaking, cold, her skin slick with sweat, her heart pounding. The nightmare faded as she grounded herself in reality, but the sounds of the children's cries still echoed in her mind, driving her from bed. She crossed to the highboy and pulled out another oversize T-shirt, trying to crowd the last of the dream from her brain. She was trembling violently, her stomach knotting with residual anxiety, and she cursed a blue streak under her breath, battling the weakness.

  Her hand brushed across the bottle of tranquilizers tucked in among her underwear, left over from her stay at Ashland Heights. Dr. Pritchard had told her to take them when she needed help sleeping, but she wouldn't. No matter how badly she wanted to, she wouldn't take any. They were a crutch, another weakness, and she was so damn tired of being weak.

  She changed quickly and went out onto the balcony, hoping to rejuvenate herself with fresh night air, but the air was heavy and warm, without a breath of a breeze. Folding her arms against herself to keep from shaking, she padded down to the French doors of Savannah's room and peeked in. The bed was unmade, the rich gold-and-ruby spread a tangled drift across the mattress, lace-edged satin pillows mounded along the ornate French headboard and tossed carelessly onto the floor. The rest of the room had Savannah's stamp of housekeeping draped everywhere in the form of discarded lingerie and articles of clothing that had been dragged out of the closet and abandoned in favor of something brighter, skimpier, sexier, trashier.

  Fear cracked through the other emotions that were thick in Laurel's throat as a medley of lines played through her head. “Murders?” . . . “Four now in the last eighteen months . . . Young women of questionable reputa-tion” . . . “She gonna come to grief, dat one.” . . .

  She chewed hard on her thumbnail as she wrestled with the urge to call the police. She was being silly, jumping to conclusions. There was nothing unusual in Savannah's staying out past two—or all night, for that matter. She could have been anywhere, with anyone.

  With a killer?

  “Stop it,” she ordered, her voice a harsh whisper as she reined in the irrational urge to panic. Dammit, she wasn't an irrational person. She was logical and sensible and practical. Wasn't that what had saved her when she was growing up in the poisonous atmosphere of Beauvoir?

  That and Savannah.

  Her gaze fell again on the bed, and she jerked herself away and headed for the stairs that led down to the courtyard, her stride brisk and purposeful.

  She was feeling unsettled, skittish. The evening at Frenchie's had rattled her, from her encounter with Baldwin to Savannah's fight to Jack's tirade to the role she had agreed to play for the Delahoussayes. Truth to tell, that probably had her the most on edge. Tomorrow she would have to go down to the courthouse and see about solving the problem of Jimmy Lee Baldwin. She would have to go to work as if she had never stopped, as if she hadn't left her last job in disgrace. She would go into the halls of justice
and face the secretaries, the clerk of court, the judge, other attorneys, Stephen Danjermond.

  She had been mulling over that prospect as she walked home from Frenchie's. With Jack nowhere to be found, and the last rays of day still seeping through the gloom of evening, she had set off for Belle Rivière on foot, hoping to walk off some of the anxiety and self-doubt. But after only two blocks, a bottle green Jaguar pulled alongside the curb, its passenger window sliding down with a hiss.

  “Might I offer you a ride, Laurel?” Stephen Danjermond leaned across the soft gray leather seats of the car and stared up at her, his green eyes glowing like jewels in the waning light. He smiled, that handsome, perfectly symmetrical smile, tinting it with apology. “As much as I enjoy bragging about our diminished crime rate in Partout Parish, I hate to see a lady take chances.”

  “I could be taking a chance with you, for all I know,” Laurel said evenly, keeping her fists tucked in the deep pockets of her baggy shorts.

  Danjermond regarded her with a touch of disappointment, a touch of amusement. “I think you know me better than that, Laurel.”

  She looked at him blankly, trying to cover her confusion. They had only just met, but somehow she knew if she pointed that out to him, he would only be more amused. She felt as if he were a step ahead of her in time, that she was coming into a play already in progress and missing her cue. If he could rattle her this much with a simple conversation, he had to be hell on wheels in a cross-examination. A man destined for great things, Stephen Danjermond.

  She pulled open the door of the Jag and sank down into the butter-soft seat. “I don't know you at all, Mr. Danjermond,” she murmured, her tone as cryptic as his expression.

  “I intend to remedy that situation.”

  He let the car ease along the deserted street, silent for a moment, the Jag as quiet as a soundproof booth. He had shed his tailored suit for a knit shirt the color of jade and a pair of tan chinos, but he still looked immaculate, perfectly pressed.