by Tami Hoag
“Be a good girl, Laurel,” he purred, rubbing himself rhythmically against her. She shuddered in disgust as he traced his tongue up the line of her throat to her ear and caught the lobe between his teeth. “There's no justice out here for you to find, Laurel,” he whispered. “The only law is my law.”
He dragged her back to the bed, ignoring her resistance. With the dagger, he sliced the ties that bound her hands and quickly shoved her down on the bed, planting a knee in the middle of her chest to pin her down with his weight. Using the ties that had tethered other victims to this deathbed, he lashed her to the headboard.
“Too bad it's raining so,” he said conversationally as he sat on the bed beside her, admiring the sight of her glaring up at him. Taking up the dagger, he dipped it in her navel and drew it lightly up the quivering flesh of her belly, between her breasts. “I would have brought Jack in and tried to rouse him for the performance. He should witness what his imagination only hints at, see for himself the power of it, the seduction. He has the darkness within him. Before he dies, he should witness the glory of it unleashed.”
The blade hooked under the neck band of her T-shirt and, with a practiced move, he sliced it open. With the tip of the dagger he peeled back the ruined garment on either side, baring her to his gaze.
“Dainty,” he whispered, rubbing the flat of the knife against her uninjured breast. “Exquisitely feminine.”
“What happened to make you hate women so?” she asked, choking with revulsion as he dipped a thumb in the blood from the wound he had inflicted and painted it across first one nipple then the other.
Danjermond raised a brow. “I don't hate women,” he said, sounding amused. “This is my hobby. It's nothing personal.”
“I consider being murdered highly personal.”
He rose with a sigh and rounded the foot of the bed to sit on the straight chair. He dropped the dagger on the floor at his feet and casually began to unbutton his shirt. “Well, yes, I suppose you would, all things considered. But then, that's been a longtime problem of yours, hasn't it, Laurel? You tend to personalize everything. That's what got you into such trouble in Georgia. You were too personally involved. You couldn't see the forest for the trees. We both know how important perspective is in building a case. A prosecuting attorney must be cold, thorough, detached. Emotionalism only leaves the door open for surprises from the opposition. As you've discovered for yourself, Laurel, I am a very thorough man. I don't tolerate surprises.”
Without warning, the cabin door exploded inward, the rotted frame splintering, rain and wind sweeping in, and Jack with it. His momentum carried him forward, and he bowled into a stunned Danjermond before the district attorney could do more than turn and gape at him. The wooden chair disintegrated into kindling beneath their combined weight and the two men crashed to the floor.
Laurel screamed Jack's name and struggled to sit up, trying to see. She could hear the struggle—the scuff of boots on the floor, the grunts and cruses. She knew in her heart what the outcome would be. Jack was fighting literally with both hands tied behind his back, and he had to be barely conscious. Danjermond would kill him, just as surely as he would kill her—unless she could somehow manage to get herself free.
She wriggled up toward the headboard, inches at a time, trying not to strain against the ties that held her by her wrists, trying to move into a position that would give her some slack. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated on shutting out the sounds of the fight and tried to focus her mind on her bonds. Silk. Smooth, strong, slick, slippery. Her hands were small, fine-boned, her wrists delicate. If she concentrated, moved just right, didn't tighten them by struggling . . .
Jack struggled to keep Danjermond pinned beneath him, but his strength ebbed and flowed in erratic bursts, and his faulty sense of balance made it difficult to determine which way was up. He fought as best he could with his knees and his feet, jabbing, kicking when he could, ignoring the pain that screamed through his head and bit into his side.
Danjermond writhed beneath him, twisting, heaving upward. He reached for the dagger that had skittered across the floor, and Jack threw his weight hard against him, sending them both crashing into a table along the wall, and sending the table crashing to the floor.
Candles rolled like tenpins, their flames licking at anything in their path, catching hungrily at the old tar paper that lined the walls of the shack.
The men rolled away from the fire, still struggling for supremacy. Jack managed to catch his adversary in the belly with his knee, but Danjermond struck back viciously, slamming his fist into the side of Jack's head. The pain sent Jack rolling, plummeting toward unconsciousness like a diver shooting toward the bottom of a black, black ocean.
He fought against it, held his breath, and fought to claw his way back up through the dark, up through the fireflies that swarmed in his brain. His vision cleared enough for him to make out flames licking greedily up the wall and three wavering versions of Danjermond silhouetted in front of the glow. Three devils from hell. Three Danjermonds raising an arm, three daggers gleaming, slashing toward him.
He dove for the man in the center, his shoulder hitting solid mass at the same instant the dagger plunged into his back. He felt a rib break, then a strange vacuum sensation in his chest. What little strength he had left sucked out of him, and he fell heavily to the floor, mouthing Laurel's name.
“Jack! Jack!” Laurel shouted his name to be heard above the roar of the fire that was devouring the wall of the shack. She shouted a third time, frantic to hear him answer, knowing that he wouldn't.
She had seen Danjermond rise, had seen the dagger slash down. Jack was dead. She was alone. It wouldn't matter that she had managed to work one hand free. She wouldn't have time to untie the other. Danjermond was on his feet already. Coming toward her. The dagger dripping blood. Jack's blood. Danjermond smiled like Lucifer himself against the backdrop of flame.
Don't look at him, work the knot, work the knot. Crying, coughing against the black smoke that was beginning to press down from the ceiling, she scrambled across the bed, fumbling to free her left hand.
Jack raised his head a fraction of an inch. All he could see were Danjermond's feet. Moving toward Laurel. From some deep inner well he drew the last drops of will and courage he had and swung his legs. He hit Danjermond in the backs of the knees, and the district attorney's legs buckled beneath him, sending him sprawling headlong into the flames.
The screams were terrible. Inhuman. Engulfed in flame, he managed to stand and tried frantically to run, stumbling and falling across the bed. Laurel screamed and flung herself off the other side as the silk spread ignited in a flash.
She staggered back from the ghoulish scene, choking on the smoke, eyes stinging so badly, she could barely hold them open. There was nothing to be done for Danjermond. And in that terrible, fire-bright moment, she didn't know whether she would have tried. All she knew with any certainty was that the cabin was going up like a tinderbox, and if they didn't get out quickly, she and Jack would share Danjermond's fate.
Crouching low to escape the worst of the smoke, she ran around the foot of the bed and dropped to her knees beside Jack's sprawled form.
“Jack!” she screamed, the sound almost consumed by the roar of the fire. “Damn you Jack, don't die on me now!”
She pulled at him, gritted her teeth, and threw all her strength into dragging him toward the door, shouting every inch of the way. Her curses and pleas penetrated the fog of Jack's consciousness. Her determination made him move his legs when he wasn't sure he could remember how. He latched onto the sound of her voice and the feel of her hand and the incredible power of her will, and used it all to propel himself forward. At the door, he caught hold of the splintered frame and got his feet under himself.
“Hurry!” Laurel shouted, wrapping an arm around his waist and trying to take his weight against her as they stumbled down the steps and started toward the bayou.
The rain was still falling, but
it was no match for the old dried wood of the shack. The cabin lit up the night sky like a torch. The fire devoured it as if hell had opened up to consume all evidence of the atrocities that had been practiced there, devouring the perpetrator, as well, condemning him to a justice that was absolute.
Weak, choking from the smoke, staggering under Jack's weight, Laurel fell to her knees on the muddy bank, and Jack went down like a ton of bricks beside her.
“Oh, God, Jack! Don't die!” she demanded, bending over him. “Don't be dead! Please don't be dead!”
She bent over him, bawling, her tears combining with the rain to splash down onto his face. With hands shaking violently, she touched his soot-covered cheek, his lips—trying to feel his breath, fumbled to find a pulse in his throat. Was it weak and thready, or was that her own?
His lashes fluttered upward, and he looked at her. Tried to smile. Tried to catch more than a teaspoon of air. “Hey, angel,” he whispered, then had to try to breathe again. “Mebbe I'm one of the good guys after all.”
Then darkness swept over him like a velvet blanket, and he surrendered to the pain.
Chapter
Thirty-One
He remembered in dreamlike bits and pieces. A force of will pushing, prodding, begging, swearing, goading him to move his feet. Take a step and another. The pain was blocked out, but not the weakness or the sense of disconnection between his mind and his body. He remembered feeling as if the essence of him were floating free, connected to his physical shell by the finest of threads. He remembered the powerful temptation to sever that tie and just drift away, but Laurel kept yanking him back. He remembered wondering vaguely how she could be so little and be so strong.
There was a boat in the fragments of memory. And rain. Rain and tears. Laurel crying over him. He wanted to tell her not to. He couldn't stand the thought of making her cry, even though he knew he had done it more than once, bastard that he was. There were many things he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't gather more than the urgency. The words bounced around in his head like bubbles. He had forgotten how to use his voice. The frustration exhausted him.
Darkness, light. The murmured voices of men and women in white clothes. Couldn't be heaven; he never would have gotten in the gate. Had to be a hospital.
Cool hands touching his arm, his cheek. Soft lips and whispers of love. Laurel.
Laurel had stayed with him, Nurse Washington had told him as she shuffled around his room, fussing and checking things. She was a short, squat, cube of a woman with mahogany skin and little sausage fingers that read his pulse with the feather-light touch of expertise. Miz Chandler had visited during the days he had spent in deep, drugged sleep. But didn't she have a lot on her plate, the poor little thing, what with her sister being killed and the sheriff's investigation and all? And weren't they lucky to have escaped with their lives? Mr. Danjermond a killer—Lord have mercy!
Jack tuned out the memory of her chatter now as he stood on his front step and watched Leonce drive away. As the Monte Carlo rolled out of sight, his gaze was drawn inexorably to Belle Rivière. At the core of his pounding head were thoughts of Laurel. She had sat with him, kissed his cheek, whispered that she loved him. He didn't deserve her love, but he knew without a doubt it was what had made him hang on to life when he could have easily let go. Laurel's voice coming to him through the mists, begging him to live, bribing him with her love.
Huey crawled out from under a tangle of long-neglected azalea bushes and climbed up on the step to give Jack's hand a sniff and a lick of welcome. Jack stared down at the hound, meeting the pair of weirdly mismatched eyes, and grudgingly scratched the dog's ear. Huey groaned and thumped his tail against the bricks.
“You're all the welcome I get, eh, Huey? That's what I get for breaking out.”
He pushed the door open and wandered into the house, letting the dog trail after him. Huey abandoned him to nose around the old draped furniture in search of mice. Jack took as deep a breath as he could manage and climbed the stairs one excruciating step at a time.
Somehow, he had expected to feel at home once he made it to his bedroom, but as he looked around, he realized this wasn't his home at all. It was still Madame Deveraux's boudoir. He was just marking time here. He hadn't done much more than change the sheets on the bed. He hadn't made this house his home, he admitted as he sank down on the mattress, wincing at the bite of his broken rib and the stab wound that sliced the tissue around it. It was his prison, the place where he turned on himself and endlessly cracked the whips of self-flagellation. The one thing he had done to make the place his own was hanging all his neckties in the live oak out front, and that had been more a sign of shame than of freedom. Like a flag on the door of a plague victim, it was a warning to those who would venture near that he couldn't handle a life that required ties of any kind.
That life had blown up in his face, and he had had to live with the fact that he'd been the one to lay the powder and light the fuse. What he had rebuilt for himself in the aftermath of the debacle was simple and safe for all concerned, he reminded himself as he stared up at the intricate plaster medallion on the ceiling. He had his writing, his pals at Frenchie's, enough willing lady friends to warm his bed when he wanted.
He had an empty house and an empty heart and no one to share them with save the ghosts of his past and a dog that wasn't his.
Jack shoved the thought away with an effort that had him squinting against the pain. His life swung on a pendulum between penance and parties, and it suited him fine. He was accountable to no one, responsible for nothing.
And still Laurel Chandler had managed to fall in love with him. The irony of it was too much—Laurel, the champion for justice, upholder of the law, in love with a man who had broken so many so carelessly, a man for whom justice was a sentence to emotional exile. She offered him everything he had ever wanted, everything he'd told himself he could never have.
If he had a shred of honor, he would walk away and leave her to fall in love with a better man than he could ever be.
The service was private. A blessing and a curse, Laurel thought. The pain went too deep for her to share it with people she hardly knew, but some of the deepest wounds had been inflicted by the only people present.
She sat with Caroline and Mama Pearl on one side of the chapel. Vivian and Ross sat on the other side, in the same pew but not together. Separated by an invisible wall of hate, together only out of Vivian's automatic attempt to put a “normal” face on ugly family secrets. She would never confirm or deny the rumors once they began to spread—a lady didn't lower herself to airing the dirty laundry in public. She would most likely divorce Ross quietly and go on with her life as if he had never been a part of it, leaving him hanging alone on the gallows of public opinion.
Ross stared dully at the casket with its blanket of pink tea roses and baby's breath. Laurel wondered if he felt remorse or just regret for being exposed after all this time. She wouldn't have allowed him to come, regardless, but the choice hadn't been hers to make.
She wondered how he would weather the storm of accusation and condemnation once the story of the abuse became common knowledge—and she would damn well make certain it became common knowledge. Caroline had told her once that Ross was a weak man. If there was a God in heaven, the shame of the truth would crush him.
Reverend Stipple had pitifully little to say in the way of a eulogy. Laurel would have preferred he say nothing, but it was his church, this church where she and Savannah had been christened, where their father had pledged to love their mother until death. Where death had brought them all and half the parish to see Jefferson Chandler off to the next world.
She looked down at the lace-edged handkerchief she held and remembered too well how Savannah had sat beside her and taken her hand and whispered to her. “Daddy's gone, but we'll always have each other, Baby.”
Always.
Now death had brought them here again, these people whose lives were tied together in a painful knot o
f common experience.
Toward the end of the ceremony, Conroy Cooper slipped in the back and took a seat by himself. Laurel met his somber, soul-deep blue gaze as she walked out of the church, and saw the regret there, and the love, and she ached at the irony that of all the men her sister had known, she would love the one whose nobility put him out of her reach.
When everyone else had gone out, Laurel lingered in the shadows of the vestibule and watched Cooper lay a single white rose on the casket. For a long while he just stood there, head bent, one hand on the polished wood, saying good-bye in his low, smooth voice.
Laurel had labeled him an adulterer and condemned him for not being able to give Savannah the kind of commitment she wanted. But he had loved her as best he could, he said, while trying to keep a vow to a wife who no longer knew him. He had given Savannah all he could. It wasn't his fault she had needed so much more.
There was no coffee served after the burial. No time for normalcy to dilute the grief with talk of crops and babies and everyday things. Caroline drove them home to Belle Rivière in silence.
Mama Pearl went into her kitchen to take solace in the familiar ritual of brewing a pot of café noir. Caroline laid her keys on the hall table, turned and took Laurel's hands in hers. “I'm going upstairs to lie down for a while,” she said, her strong voice softened by strain to a whisper. “You should do the same, darlin'. It's been a terrible few days.”
Laurel struggled for a game smile and shook her head. “I'm too restless to sleep. I was thinking I'd go into the courtyard for a while.”
Dark eyes shining with the kind of love and wisdom a mother should possess, Caroline nodded and squeezed Laurel's fingers. “You've got it so pretty out there. It's a good place to look for a little peace.”
Laurel didn't expect to find any, but it was true she was going to look, to hope.
