KILLING ME SOFTLY (18 page)

But last night had proved just how wrong she'd been.

Impossibly cold, she wrapped the bulky robe tighter and hugged her aims around her middle, told herself if she concentrated hard enough, she could ignore the sound of water from across the hall. But she was wrong about that, too. Because the sound came from the room where Cain had stayed, and too easily she could see him standing under the spray of the shower. He was a big man—the average shower hit him just beneath his shoulders. With a slow smile she remembered how he would turn into the water and throw his head back, let the water stream down his chest.

Renee turned from the window and ran a hand through her hair, but the memory, the sudden warmth, kept streaming through her.

Something had to give.

Everything had seemed methodically straightforward from the relative safety of Nova Scotia. Like an animal in captivity, she'd forgotten the thrill of living in the wild. Confronted only with what could be found in newspapers or on the Internet, the punishing memory of Adrian's last words, she'd forced herself to strip every droplet of emotion from her body. Allowing herself to feel anything—sorrow, longing, even anger—would only compromise her ability to conduct a thorough, objective investigation. She'd convinced herself the past wouldn't matter. Didn't matter.

Then she'd stepped off the plane … and gone straight to Cain.

That was the fatal flaw in her plan. Emotion could not be scraped away like toxic residue. Emotion could not be discarded or ignored. Emotion was real and powerful and like a tree in the path of a hurricane, it had a way of surviving, enduring, against every single odd that predicted otherwise.

From the moment she'd stepped into the past, she'd walked through the remnants of her life like a crumbling old movie set. Everywhere she went, she saw people, places and things she recognized. She saw memories. She saw dreams. Fractured now, but there all the same.

She had a new face, she knew that. New hair color. New eye color. A new voice, a new name. Even a new way of walking. She'd worked tirelessly to make sure no one connected her with the woman she'd been. It was the only way to guarantee her safety, but the longer the charade went on, the more unsettling it became.

The water stopped, and in her mind's eye she could see Cain stepping from the shower and reaching for a towel…

Stay away. That's what the reporter in her demanded. Stay away from Cain. But that was one command the woman didn't know how to follow, not when simply being in the same room with him brought a song to her blood. It was like spontaneous springtime, everything inside her bursting into full, desperate bloom at the same time. The craving was still there, the need and the desire.

Because there was another truth she'd overlooked.

Life had gone on for the people of Bayou de Foi. But not for her. For her, it was all just yesterday. Her love affair with Cain. Her brother's murder. The attack. In coming to New Orleans, it was like stepping into a life trapped almost two years in the past, and though she knew the danger, every chance she got, she found herself seeking out Cain.

Throat tight, she crossed to the small bathroom and turned on the cold water, splashed it against her face. She was still standing there when her mobile phone rang.

Grabbing a towel, she ran it over her face and hurried into the bedroom, picked up the flip-phone. "Talk to me." The wince was automatic. She'd not answered a call with those three words since the afternoon the nervous rookie cop had called, promising her explosive information about her brother's death.

"You that gal with
True Crime?"

She tensed. "This is Renee Fox. Who am I speaking with?"

"Dey're after me," the man said. "Saw me talking with you in the alley, scared I told you something I wasn't supposed to."

"Travis?" Her mind raced. She'd slipped him her mobile phone number, but the last she'd heard he and his sidekick were still missing. "Who's after you?"

"No," he whispered away from the phone. "I know what I'm doing." Then he said to her, "The same people who killed yer friend."

Renee noticed the difference immediately: the maniacal, drunken slur to his voice was gone, replaced by an edge of urgency. "And now you think they're after you?"

"I know dey are," he said. "The sheriff warned us this would happen if we said anything, but I can't keep living like this. I cain't hold quiet when I know what happened to Savannah."

Her grip on the phone tightened. "Travis, what are you talking about?"

"Someone needs to know," he said, and his voice slipped on the words. "Before dey get me, too."

"No one's going to get you."

"There's a fishing camp a couple of miles off the highway. You'll pass a gas station—Al's, he closed up years ago but there's still a sign out front, an old pump—you'll want to turn three-quarters of a mile later. Take that road until it dead-ends, then go right. That'll take you straight to the cabin."

She knew the spot. Cain had taken her there one afternoon for a so-called fishing lesson—they'd done very little fishing.

"Come alone," he said. "Make sure no one follows you."

The line went dead.

Renee tilted her head and took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Travis wasn't someone she'd known before. She had no experience to call on other than their encounter a few nights ago. Now she had to wonder. He'd sounded oddly … sincere. And he was clearly scared spitless.

Class clowns and town drunks, she'd learned, were often gold mines of information. While no one took them seriously, they watched and heard everything. Decision made, she untied the robe and headed for the bathroom.

The loud knock stopped her. "Open up, Renee."

She absorbed the voice, the cadence, let it wash through her like an infusion of hot moonlight. "I'll be downstairs in a few minutes."

"The door,
belle amie
. Open it."

Her heart kicked, hard. In the beginning she'd bristled when Cain barked out commands, but then the shadow dance had slowed and she'd glimpsed the man behind the hard-ass detective, the passion that fired his blood, and the bristle had smoothed into a flood of anticipation. Because she'd discovered a secret.

The belligerence wasn't a form of control, but of fear. And it seduced like nothing else ever had.

"This better be good," she protested as she opened the door.

The sight of him was almost unbearable. His dark hair was damp and wavy, his shirt unbuttoned, his jaw unshaved. He looked exactly like he had after the last time they'd made love, when they'd woken up together, dressed together, gone back to bed. When they'd gone their separate ways an hour later, she'd never imagined it was forever.

His gaze dropped from her face to her chest, down to her waist, where the robe was slipping open. "You do have a way of opening doors," he muttered with slow appreciation.

She grabbed the sash and yanked the ends into a quick knot. "Somehow I don't think you banged on my door to steal a peek."

He laughed.
"Mais,
cher
. You never know what a man like me might try to steal."

Her lips wanted to twitch. She didn't let them.

"Mais non,"
he conceded. "No matter what the sight of you in that robe does to my imagination, that isn't why I'm here." He moved into the room and closed the door. "I'm here because I want to know what Travis told you."

Cain eased off the gas and glanced at Renee, saw that she'd barely moved in the fifteen minutes since he'd left his Mercedes behind the old gas station and climbed into the driver's seat of the rental. Like a statue she sat ramrod straight, her face angled away from him, her hands clenched in her lap. He knew that if he touched them, they would be cold.

She hadn't wanted to tell him about the phone call. She hadn't wanted him to come with her, either. But in the end, he'd given her little choice.

The road curved, seeming to vanish into a wall of live oaks. He took the bend faster than he should have, then abruptly slowed. "We're here."

Mechanically Renee turned toward the fishing camp barely visible through the skeletal cypress trees. The wood was weathered, the windows dark with grime. "Good."

He killed the engine, scanned the perimeter. The day was still, quiet save for the incessant caw of blackbirds filling the trees.

The spider tingle down the back of his neck was immediate, the tightening in his gut. As a cop, he'd learned to trust instinct above all else. As a refugee from that life, he still did. "Something doesn't feel right," he said, reaching for his gun.

Renee swung toward him. "They're hiding."

He pulled his Glock from its holster and pushed open the driver's-side door.

"Cain!" she started, but he didn't stop. He'd already made up his mind. From the time he was a small boy, his father and uncles had taught him and Gabe and their other cousins the way of the land, the way of the woods. He'd learned the nuances of the wind, the air pressure. He'd learned how the birds were supposed to sound—and how they weren't.

He'd learned how to smell a trap from a mile away.

"You can't do this," Renee said from behind him.

He slowed at the porch, took the two steps quietly. "I'm sorry,
cher
," he said without turning to her, "but you can't stop me."

At the door she grabbed his arm. "You lied."

The words shouldn't have stung. No promises bound them. "Not intentionally," he surprised himself by saying. Then he turned to her. "I need you to stay here while I check things out."

"Travis called
me
."

"But I have the gun." And that should have been all that mattered. But he hesitated, disturbed by the way she was looking at him, the piercing combination of betrayal and longing. "Not now," he said, and the words sounded more like a growl. Then he surprised himself again by pressing a kiss to her mouth. Hard. "Please." He pulled back to look at her. "Stay."

It was the
please
that got her. Instincts Renee had honed as a reporter urged her to charge after Cain, but the volatility she'd seen in his eyes, the pleading, held her in place. He'd seemed scared, not of what he might find inside, but for her.

Lifting a hand to her face, she touched where he'd touched and stared off at the trees, wondering what had triggered his alarm. He'd always had the ability, a sixth sense that had kept him alive when conventional wisdom guaranteed otherwise.

Restless, she put her ear to the door and strained to hear what was happening, voices, a struggle, something—anything—but heard only the whisper of the wind and the incessant drone of the birds. Then she saw the blood.

On a broken breath she squatted and stared at the partial footprint, the dark red smears beside it, the trickle leading down the steps to the dusty dirt path.

The sound of a door opening had her swinging around to find Cain emerging from the darkness with death in his eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

New Orleans

Nineteen months earlier

I
t's late. I should be tired. Normally I'm in bed by midnight, but tonight I can't stop pacing. It's been hours since my last cup of coffee, but the jittery high still jumps through me. Maybe that's why I can't stand still. Maybe not.

Cain should have been here hours ago. Things have been different since the attack. Something changed between us as he'd cradled me in the damp darkness. Words had been said. Touches shared. Truths exposed.

At first we'd both tried to deny, to go back to the way things had been, the comfort of antagonism and sparring, the ironic safety of focusing on
Oncle
. But that was impossible. Neither of us could forget. Pretending didn't work. The want was too strong.

But being together is new, different. Awkward. We don't know how to have a relationship. Neither of us is pure as the driven snow, but somehow we still act like teenagers drunk on the discovery of raw physical attraction, the desperate, chaotic
need
to be with each other.

I thought tonight was going to be that night. Cain invited himself over, said there were things we needed to talk about. That he was tired of playing games. The words had washed through me on a delicious wave, sending me shopping for new lingerie.

I notice the slash of headlights first. Then the rumble of an engine above the wail of Leroy's sax two blocks away. I brace myself as the car slows, stops. A door opens, closes.

Slowly, I look toward the front of the house, where I see Cain open the iron gate and move up the walkway.

The anticipation is intense, the way my heart starts to pound and my palms go moist. I hate that he can do this to me, reduce me to waiting around for him like I haven't anything better to do.

Bracing myself, I wait for the knock.

Long moments pass. I'm not sure how many. Thirty seconds. Maybe forty. Far too many for the short distance he has to cross. Ready for this to be over with, I stalk to the front door and yank it open—go completely still.

His eyes. God. They're always gleaming with the dark light of a predator, capable of slaying one moment, seducing the next. They do neither now. They're vacant almost, dull … like death.

The dread is immediate, a tight fist squeezing my throat. The cold comes next, sharp, debilitating, bleeding from the inside out. Because I know. It's the middle of the night. And Cain is a cop. On my doorstep. Stoic. Somber.

And my world tilts.

"Adrian."
His name breaks on the way out. I see Cain wince, see his mouth form words, but hear nothing beyond the brutal roaring in my ears.

"No—"
Vaguely I'm aware of my knees buckling, the floor rushing up to meet me.

But then Cain is there, reaching for me, pulling me into his arms. "S'okay," he murmurs, and somehow I'm in his lap, and he's rocking, just rocking. His hands are all over me, running along my arms and my back, tangling in my hair, gathering me as close to him as possible.