KILLING ME SOFTLY (32 page)

Because God help her, she knew.

He hadn't come to the cottage to tear down the wall between them or offer forgiveness and love.

"I loved you, goddamn it," he said, but the words were empty now. Cruel. "I loved you so much it hurt just to breathe. I would have died myself before I let anything happen to you."

The words, the brutal truth of them, destroyed. "Let—"

"Don't." His eyes flashed and his nostrils flared, his mouth flattened into a hard line. Tilting his hand, he let the ring fall to the scarred wood of the floor. "Don't."

Then he turned and walked into the blood-washed morning.

Cain tore through the underbrush and hacked at a dangling vine, swiped away a clump of Spanish moss and reached for his mobile phone, turned it on. He'd been out of contact for almost twenty-four hours.

The small screen lit immediately, and the second he saw the message there, he stopped. Twenty-seven missed calls. Swearing softly, he thumbed through the menu and saw numbers belonging to his uncle and his cousin, his sister and D'Ambrosia. On a cruel rush he called his voice mailbox, swore when he heard the mechanical voice announce fourteen new messages.

Saura's was first. She was worried about him. Wanted to talk. Hoped he was okay.

Cain deleted it and started walking, felt his blood run cold at the hesitation in his uncle's voice. "Where the hell are you?" Edouard roared. "We need to talk. It's about Alec."

Then Cain started to run.

CHAPTER THIRTY

"
I
want to see the forensics report the second it hits my desk." Edouard glared into the mirror and fumbled with his tie, worked the knot for the third time. "You're to find me, you understand?" he called to his secretary.

"I've already checked with the lab," Becca said from the other side of the door. "They expect it this afternoon."

Edouard frowned. He already knew what the report would show—absolutely nothing. Lem and Travis had been shot at point-blank range, execution style. Casings at the scene indicated a semiautomatic. There'd been no footprints, no fingerprints. The place had been wiped clean. Other than the blood—and the scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled on it.

Nothing linked to Nathan Lambert.

Reaching into the pocket of his suit jacket, Edouard ran his hand along the CD-ROM that had been delivered anonymously that morning, then pulled open his office door—and saw her.

She looked nervous. That was his first thought. Pretty, he quickly amended. He was used to seeing her in conservative suits and sensible shoes, her hair twisted behind her face. But now the salt-and-pepper streaks flowed well beyond her shoulders and made his hands itch to touch. Her blouse was soft and gauzy and the same pink as the azaleas that bloomed outside her house every spring, loose fitting like that of a gypsy.

The stab of regret was immediate. So was the twist of longing. They hadn't spoken since he'd stormed out of the church. But he'd been watching her. Constantly. Making dog-damn sure she didn't pay for her mistake.

"Lena." He hated the way his voice thinned on her name. Scowling, he cleared his throat. "I'm on my way out."

"I know." There was a wariness in her eyes, and it punished. "I won't be long."

He glanced at his watch. "I have to be in New Orleans in—"

"I came to say goodbye."

The words were soft, but they dropped around him like a heavy net. "Goodbye?"

She shifted her purse higher on her arm. "I—I've been interviewing for a job outside of Denver. A small town. Highlands Ranch. They made an offer." Her halting smile threw him back over a quarter of a century to the day he saw her for the very first time. She'd been wearing braids, he remembered. She'd lowered her eyes and looked away the second she caught him staring at her. But not before he'd seen her smile, so soft and tentative.

The pounding started then, a loud roar through his ears. "Colorado?"

"There's nothing for me here," she said, and the words, so matter-of-fact and true, sliced through him. "My friend Nini and her sister Jodie live out there. They're going to help me get settled."

He grabbed for his tie and jerked the noose from his throat. Still couldn't breathe. "When?"

She stepped toward him and lifted her hands to the collar of his shirt, yanked them back before touching the silk tie she'd helped him pick out years before. "My plane leaves in the morning."

His chest tightened on the words. "I hear it's real pretty out there," he said. But that was it. He would allow himself no other words. No other feelings.

With a curt nod, he turned and walked away, refusing to think about the fact there would be no more Monday-morning cookies.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Gabe stared at the mahogany casket poised outside the ornate crypt where Prejeans had been laid to rest for over a century. Not even his sunglasses muted the glow of the white marble against a sky insanely blue for this time of year.

He restoreth my soul…

The slice of regret was immediate. He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard, tried to concentrate on the priest's baritone booming through the silent oaks of the old Metairie cemetery. But his thoughts kept traveling back seventy-two hours to the warehouse. The scene played through his mind in excruciating slow motion, unearthing more doubts with each showing.

What if he'd run faster? What if he'd shouted out?

What if he'd been wrong?

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…

From the back of the canopied area, he looked at Tara standing so rigid and alone. A widow now, instead of the divorced woman she'd been about to become. He'd spoken to her earlier, had no idea what he'd said. Words of comfort, he hoped as Val leaned into him and put her head to his shoulder.

Alec's death had shaken her more than he'd expected. They'd walked around the house like zombies for three days. He'd seen the travel books stacked on the coffee table, but neither of them had brought up the trip.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

Overhead a formation of geese soared toward the gulf. Gabe tracked them, then found his cousin standing next to his uncle near the front of the small crowd of mourners. In his black suit, Cain stood hard and unyielding, and though he stared straight ahead, Gabe saw the readiness to his stance. He also saw the bulge beneath his suit coat and knew Cain had come prepared. For anything.

Except the secret he'd confided the night before.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Savannah
. Frowning, Gabe glanced around for the woman who'd deceived them all, stilled when he saw a solitary figure standing in the distance beside one of the graceful old oaks. Not Savannah, he realized instantly, but despite the black veil that concealed her face there was something disturbingly familiar to the way she was watching … not the priest or the casket, but … him.

Adrenaline surged on the realization, but then he blinked and just like so many other times over the past few days, she was gone, and he realized she'd never been there to begin with. It was his own mind playing tricks on him, imagining he was being watched when he wasn't, that he was being followed when no one, not even Val, knew where he was.

Holding Val tighter, he realized the priest had finished the psalm and returned his attention to the casket, where the man he'd once called friend lay inside. Whatever secrets Alec had known, whatever truths he'd refused to disclose, lay inside with him, lost forever.

Guilty or innocent, Gabe thought and felt his mouth go flat.

No one would ever know.

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother, Alec Michael Prejean…

Cain stared beyond the coffin to the stretch of brown grass between crypts where the bagpipers should have stood. A stream of police cars should have been parked along the winding road that snaked into the cemetery. Men and women of uniform from throughout southern Louisiana should have been standing behind him, paying their respects to a fallen officer.

But Alec had walked away from the force, and his death was not one of honor.

…earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust to dust.

Vindication, Cain had heard whispered at the sparsely attended wake. He'd felt the stares the second he'd walked into the funeral home, heard the whispers even as he stared at the picture of Alec, smiling and alive and in uniform, placed atop the casket. One of the detectives had actually thumped him on his back, asked if he'd come to enjoy the last laugh.

The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace.

Closing his eyes, he saw Alec as he'd been eighteen months before, when he'd found Cain kneeling with Savannah's blood on his hands. His partner had been among his staunchest defenders. He'd stood beside him when very few had. He'd dragged Cain out of bars and poured coffee down his throat, driven him into the swamp and pressed his camera into his hands, stood in the cold while Cain had stared out at the mist rising from the water, and silently wept.

But now Alec was dead and Savannah was alive, and sweet Mary have mercy on his twisted soul, Cain could make claim to neither.

Amen.

"Someone thinks they've gotten away with murder," he said to his uncle as the small crowd broke fifteen minutes later. He glanced at each of them, Alec's grief-stricken parents and Tara's sister, a childhood friend Alec had introduced Cain to a few years before, Gabe and Val, five members of the New Orleans police department who'd come not to pay respects but to gawk at the spectacle of burying a dirty cop, two men, one woman and a little girl he'd never seen before. Two reporters and a photographer hung farther back.

Cain would stake his life that at some point during the past twelve hours, he'd come into contact with not just Alec's killer, but the bastard who'd framed Cain for attacking Savannah.

Edouard slipped his hand into his suit coat and pulled out a CD. "You need to see this."

Cain took the disk and turned it over, saw his partner's name scrawled in bold black marker. "That's Alec's handwriting."

"Came this morning. There's two files on it, one word processing, the other encrypted."

The buzz started low, spread fast. Dirty cops didn't leave messages in case they were taken out.

Cain turned toward the dispersing crowd and spotted his cousin and Val, waiting to talk to Tara. "Gabe knows someone," he said. "Let me get—"

"No." Edouard's voice was urgent, his eyes grim. "The Word file had instructions, said to make sure no one in the district attorney's office finds out about the disk until it's decoded."

The implication sickened. "Gabe's blood," Cain ground out. "One of us."

"I'm not taking chances."

"There's no way in hell—" His protest died the second he saw her step from behind a marble crypt. Dressed in a slim-fitting black suit and dark sunglasses, with her long dark hair pulled behind her head, she walked with a disturbing combination of grace and apprehension. He watched her move toward him, watched her skim a hand along a statue of the Virgin Mary, and felt something sharp and ragged shift through him.

His heart pounded hard, a brutally familiar rhythm as though not a day had passed since he'd stood inside the small French Quarter jewelry shop and fingered the ring she'd unknowingly picked out. He could still see the shock in her eyes when he'd shown it to her three days before. Still hear the broken edge to her breathing. Still feel the cold moment of truth when he dropped the ring to the floor and walked out the door.

But Christ have mercy, if he let himself, he could still see and hear and feel other things, unwanted reminders that intruded during the long hours of the night—the glow of passion in her eyes when they'd made love and the sound of his name on her lips when they'd come together, the hope and promise and hunger in her kiss. The way she'd touched him and held him, the way she'd given herself to him with such unabashed abandon that it had almost killed him to roll from the bed.

He stood there now and watched her approach, using each step she took to shove aside everything that made him weak and made him want, still, after everything, baring the impervious edges that allowed him to feel nothing.

"What the hell is she doing here?" his uncle asked.

Cain slipped the disk into an inside pocket. "What she does best," he drawled. What she'd always done best.
Messing with my mind.
But he didn't say that, wasn't about to let his uncle think she'd crawled under his skin. Wasn't ready for him to know the truth. Wasn't ready for anyone. Except Gabe. Half a bottle of scotch and Cain had told him everything.

He glanced at his cousin now, found him standing quietly as Val and Tara embraced, but his eyes, hard and implacable, tracked Renee.
Savannah
.

"That woman doesn't belong here," his uncle said. "She's like one of those storms that blows up from the Gulf and catches you off guard. Mark my words, she's up to something."

Cain watched her approach, didn't allow himself to move. Didn't trust himself to. For seventy-two hours he'd been maintaining a death grip on the hot boil inside of him. The sight of her now, walking toward him through a labyrinth of crumbling statues and weathered monuments to the dead threatened to undermine everything he'd taught himself about survival.

"Leave her to me," he said. "I know what she's about."

His uncle snorted. "I've seen the way you look at her—"

Cain lifted a hand in silent warning. "Leave her to me."

She hesitated when she neared Val and Gabe and Tara. Sunglasses concealed her eyes, but the uncertainty, the longing, was obvious. Gabe and Val had been her friends. They'd cared for her, mourned her. But their lives had moved on. They stood together in a small intimate circle, with Renee—Savannah—on the outside. She was a stranger to them. A passing acquaintance. Someone they didn't know, didn't trust.