Cry Wolf (4 page)

The side door slammed, and Leonce's voice came across the dark expanse of parking lot in staccato French. “Hey, Jack,
viens ici
!
Dépêche-toi! Allons jouer la musique, pas les femmes!
”

Jack cast a longing glance at his friend up on the gallery, then back at Laurel Chandler. “In a minute!” he called, his gaze lingering on the woman, turmoil twisting in his belly like a snake. He didn't credit himself with having much of a conscience, but what there was made him take a step toward Laurel. “Look, sugar—”

Laurel twisted back and away from the hand he held out to her, mortified that this man she knew little and respected less was witnessing this—this weakness. God, she wanted to have at least some small scrap of pride to cling to, but that, too, was tearing out of her grasp.

“I never should have come here,” she mumbled, not entirely sure whether she meant Frenchie's specifically or Bayou Breaux in general. She stumbled back another step as Jack Boudreaux reached for her arm again, his face set in lines of concern and apprehension, then she whirled and ran out of the parking lot and into the night.

Jack stood flat-footed, watching in astonishment as she disappeared in the heavy shadows beneath a stand of moss-draped live oak at the bayou's edge. Panic, he thought. That was what he had seen in her eyes. Panic and despair and a strong aversion to having him see either. What a little bundle of contradictions she was, he thought as he dug a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and dangled it from his lip. Strength and fire and fragility.

“What'd you do,
mon ami
?” Leonce shuffled up, tugging off his Panama hat and wiping the sweat from his balding pate with his forearm. “You scare her off with that big horse cock of yours?”

Jack scowled, his gaze still on the dark bank, his mind still puzzling over Laurel Chandler. “Shut up,
tcheue poule
.”

“Don' let it get you down,” Leonce said, chuckling at his own little pun. He settled his hat back in place, and his fingers drifted down to rub absently at the scar that ravaged his cheek. “Women are easy to come by.”

And hard to shake—that was their usual line. Not Laurel Chandler. She had cut and run. Even as his brain turned the puzzle over and around trying to shake loose an answer, Jack shrugged it off. His instincts told him Laurel Chandler would be nothing but trouble when all he really wanted from life was to pass a good time.

“Yeah,” he drawled, turning back toward Frenchie's with his buddy. “Let's go inside. I need to find me a cold beer and hot date.”

Chapter
Three

“Laurel, help us! Laurel, please! Please! Please . . . please . . .”

She'd had the dream a hundred times. It played through her mind like a videotape over and over, wearing on her, tearing at her conscience, ripping at her heart. Always the voices were the worst part of it. The voices of the children, frantic, begging, pleading. The qualities in those voices touched nerves, set off automatic physiological reactions. Her pulse jumped, her breath came in short, shallow, unsatisfying gasps. Adrenaline and frustration pumped through her in equal amounts.

Dr. Pritchard had attempted to teach her to recognize those signals and defuse them. Theoretically, she should have been able to stop the dream and all the horrible feelings it unleashed, but she never could. She just lay there feeling enraged and panic-stricken and helpless, watching the drama unfold in her subconscious to play out to its inevitable end, unable to awaken, unable to stop it, unable to change the course of events that caused it. Weak, impotent, inadequate, incapable.

“The charges are being dropped, Ms. Chandler, for lack of sufficient evidence.”

Here she always tried to swallow and couldn't. A Freudian thing, she supposed. She couldn't choke down the attorney general's decision any more than she could have chewed up and swallowed the
Congressional Record
. Or perhaps it was the burden of guilt that tightened around her throat, threatening to choke her. She had failed to prove her case. She had failed, and the children would pay the consequences.

“Help us, Laurel! Please! Please . . . please . . .”

She thrashed against the bed, against the imagined bonds of her own incompetence. She could see the three key children behind the attorney general, their faces pale ovals dominated by dark eyes filled with torment and dying hope. They had depended on her, trusted her. She had promised help, guaranteed justice.

“. . . lack of sufficient evidence, Ms. Chandler . . .”

Quentin Parker loomed larger in her mind's eye, turning dark and menacing, metamorphosing into a hideous monster as the children's faces drifted further and further away. Paler and paler they grew as they floated back, their eyes growing wider and wider with fear.

“Help us, Laurel! Please . . . please . . . please . . .”

“. . . will be returned to their parents . . .”

“No,” she whimpered, tossing, turning, kicking at the bedclothes.

“Help us, Laurel!”

“. . . returned to the custody of . . .”

“No!” She thumped her fists against the mattress over and over, pounding in time with her denial. “No! No!”

“. . . a formal apology will be issued . . .”

“NO!!”

Laurel pitched herself upright as the door slammed shut on her subconscious. The air heaved in and out of her lungs in tremendous hot, ragged gasps. Her nightgown was plastered to her skin with cold sweat. She opened her eyes wide and forced herself to take in her surroundings, busying her brain by cataloging every item she saw—the foot of the half-tester bed, the enormous French Colonial armoire looming darkly against the wall, the marble-topped walnut commode with porcelain pitcher and bowl displaying an arrangement of spring blooms. Normal things, familiar things illuminated by the pale, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't moon shining in through the French doors. She wasn't in Georgia any longer. This wasn't Scott County. This was Belle Rivière, Aunt Caroline's house in Bayou Breaux. The place she had run to.

Coward.

She ground her teeth against the word and rubbed her hands hard over her face, then plowed her fingers back through her disheveled mess of sweat-damp hair.

“Laurel?”

The bedroom door opened, and Savannah stuck her head in. Just like old times, Laurel thought, when they were girls and Savannah had assumed the role of mother Vivian Chandler had been loath to play unless she had an audience. They were thirty and thirty-two now, she and Savannah, but they had fallen back into that pattern as easily as slipping on comfortable old shoes.

It seemed odd, considering it was Laurel who had grown up to take charge of her life, she who had struck out and made a career and a name for herself. Savannah had stayed behind, never quite breaking away from the past or the place, never able to rise above the events that had shaped them.

“Hey, Baby,” Savannah murmured as she crossed the room. The moon ducked behind a cloud, casting her in shadow, giving Laurel only impressions of a rumpled cloud of long dark hair, a pale silk robe carelessly belted, long shapely legs and bare feet. “You okay?”

Laurel wrapped her arms around her knees, sniffed, and forced a smile as her sister settled on the edge of the bed. “I'm fine.”

Savannah flipped on the bedside lamp, and they both blinked against the light. “Liar,” she grumbled, frowning as she looked her over. “I heard you tossing and turning. Another nightmare?”

“I didn't think you were coming home tonight,” Laurel said, railroading the conversation onto other tracks. She tossed and turned every night, had nightmares every night. That had become the norm for her, nothing worth talking about.

Savannah's lush mouth settled into a pout. “Never mind about that,” she said flatly. “Things got over quicker than I thought.”

“Where were you?” Somewhere with smoke and liquor. Laurel could smell the combination over and above a generous application of Obsession. Smoke and liquor and something wilder, earthier, like sex or the swamp.

“It doesn't matter.” Savannah shook off the topic with a toss of her head. “Lord Almighty, look at you. You've sweat that gown clean through. I'll get you another.”

Laurel stayed where she was as her sister went to the cherry highboy and began pulling open drawers in search of lingerie. She probably should have insisted on taking care of herself, but the truth of the matter was she didn't feel up to it. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and from her encounter with Jack Boudreaux. Besides, wasn't this part of what she had come home for? To be comforted and cared for by familiar faces?

Much as she hated to admit it, she was still feeling physically weak, as well as emotionally battered. Coming unhinged was hard on a person, she reflected with a grimace. But as Dr. Pritchard had been so fond of pointing out, her physical decline had begun long before her breakdown. All during what the press had labeled simply “The Scott County Case” she had been too focused, too obsessed to think of trivial things like food, sleep, exercise. Her mind had been consumed with charges of sexual abuse, the pursuit of evidence, the protection of children, the upholding of justice.

Savannah's disgruntled voice pulled her back from the edge of the memory. “Crimeny, Baby, don't you own a nightgown that doesn't look like something Mama Pearl made for the poor out of flour sacks?”

She came back to the bed holding an oversize white cotton T-shirt at arm's length, as if she were afraid its plainness might rub off on her. Savannah's taste in sleepwear ran to Frederick's of Hollywood. Beneath the gaping front of her short, champagne silk robe, Laurel caught a glimpse of full breasts straining the confines of a scrap of coffee-colored lace. With a body that was all lush curves, a body that fairly shouted its sexuality, Savannah was made for silk and lace. Laurel's femininity was subtle, understated—a fact she had no desire to change.

“Nobody sees it but me,” she said. She stripped her damp gown off over her head and slipped the new one on, enjoying the feel of the cool, dry fabric as it settled against her sticky skin.

An indignant sniff was Savannah's reply. She settled herself on the edge of the bed once again, legs crossed, her expression fierce. “If I ever cross paths with Wesley Brooks, I swear I'll kill him. Imagine him leaving you—”

“Don't.” Laurel softened the order with a tentative smile and reached out to touch the hand Savannah had knotted into a tight fist on the white coverlet. “I don't want to imagine it; I lived it. Besides, it wasn't Wes's fault our marriage didn't work out.”

“Wasn't his—!”

Laurel cut off what was sure to be another tirade defaming her ex-husband. Wesley claimed he hadn't left her, but that she had driven him away, that she had crushed their young marriage with the weight of her obsession for The Case. That was probably true. Laurel didn't try to deny it. Savannah automatically took her side, ever ready to battle for her baby sister, but Laurel knew she wasn't deserving of support in this argument. She didn't have a case against Wes, despite Savannah's vehemence. All she had was a solid chunk of remorse and guilt, but that can of worms didn't need to be opened tonight.

“Hush,” she said, squeezing Savannah's fingers. “I appreciate the support, Sister. Really, I do. But don't let's fight about it tonight. It's late.”

Savannah's expression softened, and she opened her hand and twined her fingers with Laurel's. “You need to get some sleep.” She reached up with her other hand and with a forefinger traced one of the dark crescents stress and extreme fatigue had painted beneath Laurel's eyes.

“What about you?” Laurel asked. “Don't you need sleep, too?”

“Me?” She made an attempt at a wry smile, but it came nowhere near her eyes, where old ghosts haunted the cool blue depths. “I'm a creature of the night. Didn't you know that?”

Laurel said nothing as old pain surfaced like oil inside her to mingle with the new.

With a sigh Savannah rose, tugged down the hem of her robe with one hand and with the other pushed a lock of wild long hair behind her ear.

“I mean it, you know,” she murmured. “If Wesley Brooks showed up here now, I'd cut his fucking balls off and stuff 'em in his ears.” She cocked her fingers like pistols and pointed them at Laurel. “And
then
I'd get mean.”

Laurel managed a weak chuckle. God, how Vivian would blanch to hear language like that from one of her daughters. Daughters she had raised to be debutantes. Sparkling, soft-spoken belles who never cursed and nearly swooned in the face of vulgarity. Vivian had expected sorority princesses, but God knew Savannah would eat dirt and die before she pledged to Chi-O, and she doubtless lay awake nights dreaming up ways to shock the Junior League. Laurel had been too busy to pledge, consumed by her need to get her law degree and throw herself into the task of seeing justice done.

“Would you prosecute me?” Savannah asked as she reached for the lamp switch.

“Be kind of hard to do, seeing how I don't have a job anymore.”

“I'm sorry, Baby.” Savannah clicked off the lamp, plunging the room into moonlight and shadows once again. “I wasn't thinking. You shouldn't be thinking about it, either. You're home now. Get some sleep.”

Laurel sighed and pushed her overgrown bangs back off her forehead, watching as Savannah made her way to the door with her lazy, naturally seductive gait, her robe shimmering like quicksilver. “'Night, Sister.”

“Sweet dreams.”

She would have settled for no dreams, Laurel thought as she listened to the door latch and her sister's footsteps retreat down the hall. But no dreams meant no sleep. She checked the glowing dial of the old alarm clock on the stand. Three-thirty. She wouldn't sleep again tonight no matter how badly her body needed to. Her mind wouldn't allow the possibility of another rerun of the dream. The knowledge brought a sheen of tears to her eyes. She was so tired—physically tired, emotionally exhausted, tired of feeling out of control.

With that thought came the memory of Jack Boudreaux, and a wave of shame washed over her, leaving goose bumps in its wake. She'd made an ass of herself. If she was lucky, he was too drunk to remember by now, and the next time she saw him she could pretend it never happened.

There wouldn't be a next time if she could help it. She knew instinctively she would never be able to handle a man like Jack Boudreaux. His raw sexuality would overwhelm her. She would never be in control—of him or the relationship or herself.

Not that she was interested in him.

Tossing the coverlet and sheet aside, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, went to the French doors, and pulled them open. The night was comfortably warm, fragrant with the scents of spring, hinting at the humidity that would descend like a wet woolen blanket in another few weeks. The magnolia tree near the corner of the house still had a few blossoms, creamy waxy white and as big as dinner plates set among the broad, leathery, dark green leaves.

She had climbed that tree as a child, determined to find out what the experience was all about. Tree climbing was forbidden at Beauvoir, the Chandler family plantation that lay just a few miles down the road from Belle Rivière. Tree climbing was not something “nice girls” did—or so said Vivian. Laurel shook her head at that as she wandered out onto the balcony.
Nice girls. Good families
.

“Things like that don't happen in good families. . . .”

“Help us, Laurel! Help us. . . .”

The past and the present twined in her mind like vines, twisting, clinging vines attaching their sharp tendrils to her brain. She brought her hands up to clamp over her ears, as if that might shut out the voices that existed only in her head. She bit her lip until she tasted blood, fighting furiously to hold back the tears that gathered in her eyes and congealed into a solid lump in her throat.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit . . .”

She chanted the word like a mantra as she paced the balcony outside her room. Back and forth, back and forth, her small bare feet slapping softly on the old wood. Weakness surged through her like a tide, and she fought the urge to sink down against the wall and sob. The tears choked her. The weakness sapped the stability from her knees and made her curl in on herself like a stooped old woman or a child with a bellyache. The memories bombarded her in a ferocious, relentless cannonade—the children in Scott County, Savannah and their past. “
Nice girls.” “Good families.” “Be a good girl, Laurel.” “Don't say anything, Laurel.” “Make us all proud, Laurel.” “Help us, Laurel
. . . .”

No longer able to fight it, she turned and pressed herself against the side of the old house, pressed her face against it, not even caring that the edges of the weathered old bricks bit into her cheek. She clung there like a jumper who had suddenly remembered her terror of heights.