KILLING ME SOFTLY (19 page)

"I've got you," he whispers over and over. "I'm here now. You're okay."

Everything around me is spinning, but Cain is there and he's solid, and I feel my hands digging into the fabric of his shirt. The temptation to sink into him is strong, to surrender to the darkness and trust him to guide me to the light. No one has ever held me like this before, infusing me with the heat of his body, his strength.

"No," I whisper but don't even recognize my voice. Then I'm fighting him, yanking out of his arms and grabbing the collar of his shirt, shaking him. "No, God damn you. No!"

He doesn't try to stop me. "There now," he says in that low, black magic voice of his. "That's a girl. Just let it out."

My fists curl and I shove at him. "Shake me back, damn it." Shove me. Hit me. "Make me wake up!"

His eyes gentle. "You know I can't do that."

"Yes, you can!" There's a ripping deep inside, starting low in my gut and working its way up through my chest. I feel the tremor tear through my throat and rush for my eyes. "You're a cop, damn you. You're supposed to protect people."

With devastating gentleness he gathers me to him again and holds me against his chest, buries his face in my hair and murmurs in French. I don't know what he's saying, but I hear the sorrow, the compassion. I feel the humanity in his touch.

Time passes. I don't know how much. I'm only aware of sensation, the thrumming of Cain's heart and the possession of his embrace, the cool breeze drifting through a door still open. My cat Esmerelda joins us, circling us, rubbing against my arm, stroking me with her sandpapery tongue.

Gradually the fog subsides and the need to know overrides the safety of Cain's arms. On a deep breath I pull back and meet his eyes. "Tell me."

"Not now,
cher
—"

"Now." There's no room for negotiation in my voice.

Frowning, he lets out a rough breath and lifts a hand to my face, slides the hair behind my ears. "He didn't suffer."

Moisture burns my eyes. I want to rage at him, scream that he can't possibly know how Adrian felt in those last moments. But the words don't form. "Was he … alone?"

"Looks that way."

I swallow. "Where?"

"His body was—" He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them a heartbeat later. "He was found south of Bayou de Foi."

Tears well. My throat burns. "What was he doing there?"

With his thumb, Cain wipes the moisture beneath my lashes. "Waiting for me."

The words jolt through me. "You? Why? You hate each other."

He shakes his head. "Things are not always as they seem,
cher
. Adrian called, said we needed to talk."

I struggle to take it all in, but the thoughts gridlock in my mind. "About what?" I manage, but Cain doesn't answer, just pulls me closer and holds me tight.

"We'll talk more later."

I want to protest, but then Cain is scooping me into his arms and striding toward the back of the house. In my bedroom he yanks back the covers and sets me on the mattress, then eases down beside me, pulling me into his arms. Esmerelda joins us.

The darkness is coming in waves now, punishing, jerky, and though surrender is not in my nature, for once in my life, I simply let go, knowing that no matter how far I fall, Cain will be there to catch me.

Sometime later I open my eyes. The sun has not yet risen. Esmy is curled on the pillow around my head, purring. Beside me, the mattress is empty.

Disoriented, I prop myself up and squint against the night, see Cain strapping on his shoulder holster. "Cain?"

He turns toward me and frowns. "Go back to sleep."

"But—"

He moves toward me. "I have something to take care of." The words are soft. "
Mais
I'll be back as soon as I can."

The disappointment is acute. "Don't go."

I've never said those words to another human being.

He leans down and eases the hair from my face, skims a kiss to my forehead. "I have to."

I reach for his face, savor the rough feel of whiskers beneath my thumbs. "Hurry back."

I've never said those words, either.

"I promise." The dark light is back in his eyes, the one that feeds some place deep inside of me. But then he's gone, leaving me alone in the bed with a pillow clenched to my chest. The tears start then, deep, gut-wrenching. For my brother. For myself.

And the man who stands between us.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

New Orleans, present day

S
lowly, Renee stood. She knew the look in Cain's eyes. And without even having to ask, she knew what he'd found inside.

"No." Her voice broke on the word, just as it had that dark night a lifetime ago, the one that had catapulted them down a path unimaginable at the time. Unimaginable even now. "Cain—"

"I need your phone." His voice was tight. So were the lines of his face. "Mine's in the car."

Heart pounding, she reached into her purse. "Something bad happened, didn't it?" It seemed a gross understatement.

Cain jabbed seven numbers and looked beyond her, toward the trees. His body blocked the door. "Get to the old Comeaux place." The muscle in the hollow of his cheek thumped. "I've found Travis." On a rough breath, he met Renee's gaze. "Get the coroner."

Horror coiled through her, and squeezed. A week ago she could have passed Travis on the street and the encounter would have meant nothing to her. But now he lay dead, murdered, because he'd dared to tell her what no one else would.

"God, it's happening again." The vertigo whipped hard, fast. "It's got to stop," she murmured, pushing past Cain and shoving at the door, stumbling inside.

Everyone said Adrian hadn't suffered, that his death had been quick and clean, painless. But the second Renee's eyes adjusted to the shadowy room, she knew the same could not be said for Travis. The broken chairs told her that he'd fought. The blood against the wall told her it hadn't been fast. The unnatural position of his body told her that he'd suffered.

"Don't look," Cain said, turning her from the grisly scene and pulling her into his arms. On some distant plane she knew she should fight him, should not accept his comfort. But his body felt so good against hers, and the low thrum of his heart steadied her like nothing else ever had. Just for a moment, she bargained with herself. She could allow herself just this one moment. It didn't mean anything. Didn't change anything. It was just a time-out.

Every game had them.

Cain's imagination betrayed him, throwing him back in time to another night, another woman. He could still see the devastation in her eyes when she'd realized what he hadn't known how to tell her. He could still hear her voice break. And though it was Renee in his arms, it was Savannah he felt sag against him and hold on tight, Savannah he held with a savagery that stunned even him.

It was time to let go. He knew that. He just didn't know how.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he savored the feel of her soft body molded to his, breathing of her, wanting more. This time it would be different. This time he wouldn't fail. This time he would be there for her—

Her.

Abruptly he opened his eyes and stared down at her hair. Brown. Not blond. With a sharp twist to his gut he pushed back from her and put his hands to her arms, looked down into a face so flawlessly beautiful it defied logic. Mossy eyes, not crystalline blue. A thin nose, not sloped. A soft mouth, not challenging.

"Mon Dieu."
The truth appalled.

He had no idea who he'd just been fantasizing about—the woman who still haunted his dreams, or the one looking up at him as if he'd just broken her heart.

He wanted to be angry with her. Furious, actually. Her arrival had kicked events into motion, as he'd predicted. Travis would not be the only casualty.

But as he looked at her, he could find no anger. Only fear. Like an icy fist, it reached into his gut and twisted.

"I told you to stay away," he bit out. Not trusting himself to look at her one second longer, he turned and strode outside, grabbed the porch rail and stared at the trees standing like emaciated soldiers against a dreary autumn sky.

Her voice came from behind him, so quiet he could barely hear the words above the crows. "I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt."

"We don't mean for a lot of things to happen, but that never seems to stop them."

"You're talking about Savannah," she whispered.

Beyond the trees, he watched a torn plastic grocery bag flail against a chicken-wire fence. "She didn't listen, either." His voice was thick, and he hated it. "She thought she was invincible, that she could walk through fire and not get burned."

"Maybe she was scared, didn't know who trust."

A hard sound broke from deep in Cain's throat. The temptation to turn to her was strong, but he wasn't interested in looking into Renee's eyes and seeing another woman staring back at him. "The first time I saw her was on the news. She was covering a story about medical malpractice, and I remember sitting in this dive in Baton Rouge, watching this pathetic little black-and-white TV, thinking 'Now that is one fine woman.'

"Six months later I'd just busted an airline pilot trying to smuggle money out of the country, and the press is hounding me, wanting to know why we think this is a major bust, and I hear this voice from behind me. I turn, and there she is."

"Sounds like fate," Renee whispered.

"I used to lie awake and watch her sleep, wonder what the hell I'd done to deserve her. She was so beautiful sometimes I couldn't even breathe. Sometimes I'd touch her face and she'd smile. Sometimes I'd kiss her and she'd whimper." He closed his eyes, let the memory wash over him. "She started having bad dreams after her brother died. She tried to be so tough when she was awake, but in her sleep she would cry." The first time he'd heard the sound it had slayed him. "I've never felt so helpless in my life."

Renee let out a shaky breath. "What did you do?"

"The only thing I could," he said, not sure why he was saying anything at all. "Hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay."

Behind him, the porch creaked with movement. "Why didn't you make those promises when she was awake?"

The question scored a direct hit. He turned, found her standing close enough to touch. "Who says I didn't?"

Her eyes, awash with an inner light, met his. "You," she whispered. "I hear it in your voice. The regret. You wonder if saying those words would have made a difference."

That wasn't true. He didn't wonder. He knew, had spent too many nights alone in bed, rewriting the script, changing the ending. "I didn't want to spook her."

The wind whipped up, sending long strands of dark brown hair against Renee's face. "Sounds like you were the one who was spooked."

His fingers itched to ease the hair from her eyes. "Maybe," he said, but did not let himself move. They were at a crime scene, for God's sake. Two men lay dead inside with the mark of the fleur-de-lis. But all he could think about was what it would feel like to taste her again.

From the direction of the road the sound of an engine shattered the moment before he could do something stupid. He turned and saw his uncle's squad car pull into the driveway, realized maybe there was such a thing as salvation, after all.

"Wait here," he said, and if the command came out a little too rough, he refused to let himself care.

"Cain—"

His booted foot coming down on dusty gravel, he turned back to her. "Leave it alone," he said. "I have." He walked away from her then, refused to look back.

Renee didn't trust herself to move. She stood on the old porch with her hand curled around the railing, absolutely certain if the wind blew so much as one more strand of hair against her face, she would shatter like the Limoges porcelain swan her grandmother had given her for her tenth birthday.

Just breathing hurt. Remembering destroyed.

Slowly, carefully, she uncurled the fingers of one hand and brought her palm to her chest, wondered how her heart could still pound while everything inside her bled. It wasn't fair that he could still touch her like that, way down deep, without so much as lifting a hand. She wanted to hate him for that. She wanted to condemn him. Black magic, she remembered thinking all those months ago. Voodoo. Some kind of strange spell he could cast to coerce those leery of him into doing his bidding.

But as she watched him talk to his uncle, she could find no hate, no condemnation. Not for him, anyway. She'd been wrong, she realized. So horribly wrong. With absolutely certainty she realized she'd not returned to Bayou de Foi to punish.

She'd come home to heal.

"This isn't the way to the hotel," Renee said fifteen minutes later. She'd been staring out the passenger window and watching the blur of pine and cypress, searching for something benign to say—anything to break the silence.

Words seemed as inadequate as taking a water gun to an inferno.

Something had happened with his uncle. She'd watched them talking, seen the agitation in the movement of Cain's body, heard the edges of their voices carry on the wind. Then he'd turned and strode back to the house, taken her hand, and all but dragged her to the car. But that was it. No words after that. No explanations.

Then she'd noticed the gas station where Cain had left his car. But rather than turning left, he'd turned right.

Now she looked at the hard line of his jaw and the casual way he had a hand draped over the steering wheel, the way he stared straight ahead as if she'd not said a word.

"Cain." She spoke calmly, despite the drumming of her heart. "What's going on? What did your uncle say to you?"

The muscle in the hollow of his cheek thumped.

She'd seen him like this before, knew the brutal control was a protective mechanism. When something pushed him to the edge, he shut down to stop himself from going over. "It's been a long morning," she said, and let her voice gentle. "I'd really like to go back to the hotel and take a shower, get cleaned up." Wash away the stench of death.