Into the Darkness (2 page)

Was this lust at first sight?

He pulled her leg across his thigh, and then dampened the

gauze with antiseptic and wiped at the blood staining her

skin. “Natalie?” His glance came back up to hers.

“Why am I in New Orleans?” she repeated his question,

into the darkness

7

feeling flustered. Good Lord, her whole world had shattered,

and here she was falling into this cop’s brown eyes. Even the

sting of the antiseptic didn’t stop her body from reacting to

his proximity.

She shrugged, pretending nonchalance. “I don’t know. I

used to live here.” Her words were unconvincing even to her

own ears. Besides foiling a killer, she had her birth mother to

find—something that had no bearing on the murders of her

adopted family. Somehow, keeping that secret gave her a small

measure of power.

His attention returned to her leg.

How easily he distracted her. She imagined what his hand

would feel like caressing the back of her ankle as opposed to

the impersonal grip he used to turn her leg. Her mouth went

dry as he methodically cleaned her small wounds. Despite

this unexpected and heady attraction, she reminded herself

he was a cop—something she hadn’t much use for lately.

“We’ve read through the reports from the Memphis PD,

right after your parents were killed,” he said, his voice uninflected with suspicion or emotion. “They didn’t consider you

a suspect.” He rolled her leg outward and swabbed upward.

The scratchy gauze grazed the inside of her knee.

Growing more uncomfortable by the moment beneath his

tender care, Natalie felt her cheeks warm. The oddest urge to

reach out and touch the dark brown hair that curved around

his ears washed over her. She forced her attention back to the

conversation. “And now they do . . . believe I killed them?”

He gently cleaned another puncture and reached for ointment, which he applied with one finger to the wound. “First

your parents, then your roommate . . . it’s not looking good

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to them.” His glance came up, pinning her—almost as if he

were trying to see inside her soul.

He probably just wanted to see whether she’d squirm.

“Tough. I didn’t do it. I would never hurt them,” she said, her

voice growing thick, her gaze never wavering beneath his.

“We should have taken her to the emergency room,” the

woman detective said, flopping down into the seat across the

metal table from Natalie. She leaned forward. “Although, you

seem to heal pretty fast.”

Natalie heard a note of suspicion in the other woman’s voice

and looked down at the dozen or so little punctures, already

covered with scabs, and the blue bruises where the birds’ beaks

hadn’t broken the skin. “I’ve always been a quick healer.”

The two officers shared a charged glance.

“We might have jumped to the same conclusions the Memphis PD did,” Detective Broussard said, releasing her leg,

“but the murders bear a striking resemblance to a string of

unsolved crimes we’ve been investigating for a while here.”

“It just seemed a little too coincidental that your parents

and Ms. Masters were killed in Memphis,” the female cop said,

“and now, you’ve shown up on our killer’s home ground.”

Natalie slipped her foot into her pink slide, glad to be free

of the big detective’s disturbing touch. “I don’t know anything about other murders. I came to New Orleans because

I know the city. I’m comfortable here.” That was only part

of the truth. She hated feeling defensive and lifted her chin.

“But you already know that.”

“Yeah, we do,” Detective Broussard said. “You went to Tulane. But moving back into your old neighborhood probably

wasn’t too smart. If you wanted to disappear—”

into the darkness

9

“Who said I wanted to disappear?”

Neither police officer blinked or moved.

Natalie felt a strange satisfaction . . . she’d surprised them.

“Do you really think I’d take a walk around Jackson Square if

I were hiding?”

A frown darkened his handsome face. “Are you telling us

you deliberately stayed in the open with a killer on the loose?

One who might be targeting you?”

Natalie didn’t reply. If they were so smart, they could figure it out for themselves.

“Why?” the female cop asked, the single word coming fast

and blunt as a bullet.

Natalie kept her expression shuttered for a long moment,

but the two appeared ready to out wait her little show of

defiance. She blew out a breath in irritation. “Maybe I’m just

tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. It’s not like I

expected him to follow me.”

“Him?” Again, Miss Quick Draw fired the question.

Natalie shrugged. “Him, it, them. Does it matter?”

“You think you were followed?” Detective Broussard asked,

his voice soft and disarmingly low.

How’d he guess? She shrugged, unwilling to open her

mouth and give them any more clues to pounce on.

“Why do you think you were followed?”

He wasn’t going to leave it alone. Why was she resisting him?

He wasn’t the bad guy. “My next door neighbor said a plumber

tried to get into my apartment last night while I was out getting a bite. But I don’t have a leak or a backed up toilet.”

He picked up more clean gauze and indicated with a curl of

his fingers that she should give him her other leg.

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Natalie didn’t know if she could bear his touch again. The

temperature in the room escalated each time she gave herself

into his care. She held out her hand for the gauze. “I can do

it.”

He lifted a brow in challenge, a small smile curving his lips,

drawing her attention to his mouth.

God, she wished she hadn’t looked! Her body tightened,

the skin across her chest flushing with heat.

His hand curled again.

Sighing, Natalie slid her right leg over his thighs and resigned herself to more sensual torture.

“Your super didn’t order the work?” His tone remained casual as once again he scraped dried blood from her leg.

“At ten o’clock at night?” She regretted the sarcasm bleeding into her voice. The two of them didn’t really deserve the

brunt of her frustration and fear. “It’s him . . . I just know.

I’m not paranoid,” she said, hating the hint of hysteria entering her voice. She drew a calming breath and continued. “It’s

happening again. I can feel it.”

“What do you mean you can feel it?” Detective Tomas’s

eyes narrowed.

Damn! Would she get off her back? “It’s just a feeling I

get . . .” she ground out, “. . . when something’s not quite

right. A smell. Something not in its place.”

“Your intuition didn’t give you a warning before your parents were killed?”

A stab of guilt left Natalie breathless. Her angry defiance

crumpled. “I had only just started having these prickling

sensations . . . like someone was watching me. But I wasn’t

home when it happened . . . when they were murdered. I’d

into the darkness

11

gone to the store to pick up groceries for my mom. I took her

keys . . .” For a moment, she was standing in the doorway of

her home, looking at the carnage that had been her parents,

their throats laid bare. Her gut twisted at the remembered

horror.

Detective Broussard’s fingers tightened on her calf. “So,

someone was tryin’ to get into your apartment last night?”

His deep voice calmed jangled nerves, while his thumb

smoothed up and down the back of her ankle in an oddly comforting caress. “Why not run again?”

Natalie shook herself, grateful he’d changed the subject

and drawn her back from that doorway. “I didn’t run before.

There just wasn’t anything left to stay for.”

“You were trying to lure him today, weren’t you?” the female cop asked, not letting her partner deflect the original

line of questioning. “What would you have done if he’d come

near you?”

Natalie tossed back her hair and narrowed her glance. “I

bought a gun. It’s in my apartment.”

“And if he’d caught you in the open today? What the hell

good would it have done you?” The other woman snorted.

“Do you even know how to fire a gun?”

“He doesn’t work like that, during the day, and yes, I can

hit what I’m aiming at,” Natalie said, lifting her chin.

Detective Tomas shrugged. “So you know enough to flip

the safety off. How come you’re so sure he wouldn’t go for you

in the daytime?”

“I just know he prefers to strike in the dark,” she said, feeling like a butterfly tacked to a mounting board beneath the

other woman’s hard stare.

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“You know this based on . . . ?”

“Three deaths—my parents and my best friend.” Natalie

resented the woman’s look of disbelief and gritted out, “I

just know he waited for the dark to take them.”

“Let me guess. You took a walk today, just in case he was

watching. Were you taunting him?”

Natalie flushed.

Detective Tomas lifted one eyebrow. “If he only strikes at

night, why lure him during the day?”

Put that way, her actions didn’t make much sense. Maybe,

she didn’t have it right. Natalie shrugged again, feigning indifference while her faulty strategies deflated like a slow-leaking tire.
Damn, I’m so tired of being scared.
“Maybe I am getting

a little paranoid,” she admitted, lifting her gaze to Detective

Broussard and wanting him to understand. “But I feel like

someone’s watching me all the time.”

The female detective leaned across the table, her eyes alert

for any misstep. “You dressed special for him—made sure you

looked sweet as candy—all sugar and spice.”

Angry at the accuracy of the woman’s guess, tears of

frustration clouded her vision. “I’m tired of waiting for it

to happen!” She halted. She hadn’t meant to shout. That

wasn’t her—wasn’t who she’d been before. Under their relentless stares, she added, “But then, the birds attacked . . .”

She glanced away and discovered she’d bunched the fabric

of her skirt in her hands. Frowning, she smoothed out the

wrinkles.

Detective Broussard patted a scabbing puncture with antiseptic, and then tossed the gauze toward a metal trashcan.

“All done,” he said, aiming a glare at his partner.

into the darkness

13

Was he ticked on her behalf ? Was she pathetic for hoping

he felt a little drawn to her?

“Yeah, what was up with the birds?” Detective Tomas

asked.

Suddenly, the last bit of tension drained from Natalie, leaving her tired and confused. “I don’t know. I was just giving

them my beignet when that tiny whirlwind whipped through

them.” She turned to the man, relieved to see compassion

softening his eyes. She paused before blurting, “Did you see

their eyes?”

He shook his head. “What about their eyes?”

Natalie didn’t want to say it, knowing how weird it would

sound, but decided to forge ahead anyway. It seemed important to mention it—and she always followed her instincts.

“Their eyes were red. I’ve never seen pigeons with red eyes,

and they seemed to glow.”

His expression remained neutral, but he leaned forward.

“Could it have been a trick of the light?”

With him so close, his broad shoulders filling her hungry

gaze, the room seemed smaller, warmer. The moment paused

like water dripping slowly from a faucet.

“Maybe you were scared,” he said softly.

She hadn’t imagined what she saw, but the truth made her

sound foolish. So she nodded. “Probably.”

“You know,” he said, his tone intimate, “you need our

protection.”

She closed her eyes for a moment before returning his penetrating stare. “I don’t want anyone else hurt . . .”

“Do you think your parents and friend were killed because

of you?”

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She shrugged.

“Let me guess,” the female cop said, heavy sarcasm in her

tone. “You just know.”

Detective Broussard threw his partner a quick irritated

frown before returning his gaze. “We can take care of ourselves, Natalie.”

The faint French inflection in his pronunciation of her

name made her shiver.

“We’re going to keep watch over you ’til we catch this

killer.”

“You?” she asked, and then wished she’d bitten her tongue

rather than reveal her eagerness.

“Sure,” he said, a small smile lifting the corners of his lips.

“But we’ll swap off. I’ll get a daytime team to stake out your

place. Cheech and I will take the night shift.”

Not him
personally
. “Cheech?” she asked, glad he’d misinterpreted her previous question.

He nodded to Detective Tomas. “My partner, Chessa is her

given name. I’m Rene—since it looks like we’ll be getting to

know each other.”

For the first time in weeks, Natalie felt a glimmer of hope

the nightmare might end. Like maybe, for once, she didn’t

have to face her fears alone. She wished she could believe

they’d keep her safe.

“I’m not through with my questions,
Rene,
” Chessa Tomas

gritted out.

Rene Broussard’s back stiffened, but he nodded to his