Sins of the Storm (12 page)

“Home,” Camille said quietly.

“Mine,” Jack corrected. “Not hers.” Half a world away, facing life and death on a minute-by-minute clock, he’d thought only of freedom, never realizing Susan viewed her time in Bayou d’Espere as being locked away, that there’d been weeks when she hadn’t left the house, that she’d sat on the sofa with her wine….

Katrina had been the final straw.

“By the time I got back it was like coming home to a stranger.”

Camille said nothing. As the wind lashed at them, she slowly lifted a hand to his back.

“She wanted to leave.” The words chafed on the way out—in the months since he’d buried the woman he’d once vowed to love and protect, he’d not spoken of her to anyone. “Wanted to go somewhere more exciting.” He could still see her sitting at the computer, pulling up travel packages. Still see the boxes that had started coming in of trendy resort wear. Sometimes she’d have it on when he got home.

“But you needed to be here,” Camille said quietly. “To heal.”

All those fragments, the ones he’d shoved as far and deep as possible, started to slink up.

“She didn’t want me to run for sheriff. She wanted me to…” One night she greeted him in a silk robe he’d never seen before, with her hair twisted behind her head and her lipstick smeared, a crystal goblet in her hand.

It was the first time he’d wondered just what Susan did all day long, while he was in town.

“She finagled a job for me.” Had been ordering him clothes, suits and ties, Italian leather loafers…“In Boston. A friend of hers lived there—her husband’s family owned a bank. Susan wanted me to become a financial planner.”

The light in Camille’s eyes dimmed. “She didn’t know you then.”

“I told her no. We argued. I left.”

Off the Gulf the wind pushed hard. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The words fell around him like a goddamned benediction. “Five weeks after I became sheriff, I was driving home. It was late. I’d been calling the house, her cell, but she never answered. I was angry, tired of living like strangers—she wanted a divorce.”

Camille closed her eyes, opened them a heartbeat later.

“It was foggy.” He’d been driving fast, focused on what needed to be said. “I saw the light, wasn’t sure what it was.” Kids, he’d thought, pulled off the road, making out in the backseat. “I stopped and got out—” The memory cut as a wave swirled around their ankles.

“And saw the blue.” The fender of the convertible he’d bought for her before leaving for Iraq. “And the license tag.”

The quiet knowing in Camille’s eyes slipped like a buffer against all those sharp edges.

“I think I ran,” he said, but didn’t let himself move. He just kept staring at Camille, at those freckles bridging her nose, as the memory played in the same slow, relentless speed of the IED that ended his Air Force career. “Her eyes were open.” Vacant. The car wrapped around a tree. “But she was already cold.”

Camille stepped closer.

He looked down at her and lifted his hand, swiped the hair back. Lingered. “She never belonged here,” he said. On Isle Dernier, with her feet ankle deep in the surf, the sun beating down and the wind swirling. In Louisiana—his life. He should have let go, should have steered clear the second he’d realized her girl-next-door smile concealed a restlessness—

Pushing up on her toes, Camille cradled his face. But he jerked away, pulled it all back into focus.

“Sins of the storm,” he said like a son of a bitch, and the hard, rough edge to his voice killed the warmth in her eyes. “You sure have come to the right place,
cher.
”

“Jack.” The quiet knowing in her voice stripped him bare. “My book isn’t about you.”

A rough sound broke from his throat. He turned and reached for his backpack, slung it over his shoulder. “Keep it that way.”

Time moved forward. Camille knew that. But with every step along the sandy weed-tangled path, she walked back through the miles and years and heartaches, the lies and the secrets, toward the one dream that had never died.

Her father’s.

All his life he’d searched, believed. As a child, she’d been fascinated by his stories of the mystical stained glass, the way his face had glowed when he talked about barren women who could suddenly conceive, the preacher struck by consumption suddenly healthy, a cripple who could walk. All because they’d been touched by the light of the sun, filtered through an intricate depiction of the rapture, crafted by an artisan over five hundred years before. But not just any day. The magic, the miracles, came only on the summer and winter solstices.

“This way,” she said. Behind her Jack walked, dark sunglasses over his eyes, the service revolver in his hand. There’d been no words in the hour since they left the beach. But she could feel him, his unease, feel him watching—retreating second by second, much like the surf pulling back from the shore.

Sins of the storms…you’ve come to the right place, cher.

The words kept right on whispering through her. She’d listened, had wanted so badly to help him past the pain, the guilt, to reach out and touch….

Except Sheriff Jack Savoie, abandoned son, former Air Force pilot, widower, didn’t want anyone to touch him.

Especially not Camille.

If we were really strangers…we’d be in my bed. Naked.

Because then it wouldn’t matter. A stranger could touch without touching. Take without giving. He could be with a stranger, and still be alone.

The small clearing stopped her. She stood inside a circle of bramble where the remains of an old cottage had almost been lost to time. Only a crumbling brick chimney jutted up from the sand like some kind of forgotten placeholder.

“My God…” Her heart started to pound. “I…remember.”

Jack closed in behind her. “What? What do you remember?”

She stepped from him, moved toward the chimney. “The last time Daddy brought me here…just before he died.” They’d picnicked inside the remains of the house. She’d eaten a shrimp po’boy then stretched out on a beach towel and fallen asleep.

“He brought you here?”

The sun glared hotter, but cold bled from the inside. “Yes.”

Her father had been
here,
at the spot on the map he’d marked with a red star. He’d been here less than two weeks before Lambert killed him.

Going down to her knees, she lifted her hands to the bricks and ran them along the surface, worn smooth by time and wind and sand. “It can’t be….”

Jack squatted next to her, kept his body between hers and the exposed area behind them. A hundred feet back, Detective D’Ambrosia kept watch.

It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d opened the box her mother had sent her, when she’d pulled out the last stuffed animal her father had given her—a fluffy lamb, still pristine other than its yellowed fur. She’d gone through the books page by page—and found the safe-deposit box number. And the hope, the dreams that had lain dormant all those years, had burst through her. She’d known what she had to do, what her father had wanted her to do.

Now, fingers sliding against a seam in the bricks, she pulled a loose brick from the chimney—and stared at the chamber.

Crowding in behind her, Jack let out a rough breath.
“Mon Dieu.”

Her hands wanted to shake, but she would not let them. She reached for the metal box tucked inside the vault.

But even before the sun caught on the padlock hanging open, she knew what she would find.

“I’
m too late.”

He’d told her. He’d tried to warn her. The evidence was irrefutable. Shattered glass had been found on the floor of her father’s study the night he’d been killed.

No one had known its significance at the time. The pieces had been swept up and held as evidence until the sheriff had determined they had no significance.

Marcel Lambert had admitted as much to Gabe. Troy Fontenot had found the stained glass, but instead of sharing the finding with his financial backers, the Lambert brothers, he’d tried to hide his discovery.

“He found it…he had it all along.”

The words were quiet, barely audible above the roar of the Gulf. But they came at Jack like a broken shout.

And he could no more kneel there and pretend she was a stranger than he could turn back time and take away all the hurt, the pain. The dreams that had refused to die, that crumbled now at the base of the old brick chimney.

She moved so fast she was gone before he could stop her. She pushed to her feet and held up the metal box, hurled it across the clearing. “How could he?” she shouted against the wind. “How could he betray—”

Jack caught her and held her, held on tight as all those walls she’d erected around the past splintered, and the grief broke free.

“It was his fault,” she murmured against Jack’s shirt. He betrayed them. He stole the stained glass—”

“Sh-h-h…” Jack stabbed his hands into her hair and stroked. “He was a good man. I’m sure he never meant—”

She pulled back and glared at him. “He
lied,
” she said. “He lied to his partners. And he lied to
us…
his family.”

And because of that, because Troy Fontenot had tried to bend fate to his own will, he’d died.

And Camille’s childhood had shattered.

Her hands curled into tight fists. “None of it had to happen,” she snapped. “
None of it!
If he’d just been honest. If he hadn’t been so obsessed—”

The disillusionment…the betrayal in her voice, cut to the bone. One lie. One little sin of omission…

“Do you think your father knew?” Something shifted in her eyes, betrayal giving way to horror. “Do you think Gator knew Daddy found the Rapture, that he tried to stop him, that that’s why—”

“No.” The word ripped out of Jack. “You can’t go there, Camille…there’s no way to know.”

“But what if he found out? What if your father tried to stop mine…?” Dread darkened her eyes. “What if my daddy stopped him first?”

It wasn’t possible. That Jack knew for fact. Gator Savoie had been the town drunk. Everyone knew that. He’d called himself a dreamer, but the correct word had been delusional. Opportunistic.

He’d befriended Troy Fontenot at a poker game, and from that moment forward had talked of little besides the legend of the stained glass window.

If Troy had recovered the artifact, if Troy had schemed to swindle the Lambert brothers, Gator would not have stopped him.

He would have led the charge.

Gator was as dead as Troy was. He’d walked out of a bar that night, had left his family behind. And he’d never looked back. Time had gone by. They’d survived. Even Jack’s mother had moved on, had finally remarried…the surgeon who’d treated her breast cancer.

But damn it, long after they made their way from the far side of the island to the hotel, Jack stood on a balcony overlooking the Gulf of Mexico—and wouldn’t let himself move. Didn’t trust himself to. The memories boiled too close to the surface.

Beyond, the sun slipped low against the horizon, leaving a blood-red bath in its wake, while the lights of a fleet of shrimp boats faded into the night. And from inside the posh hotel room, the hum of the shower barely registered over the rush of the wind.

Room service had come. A rolling cart covered in a pressed white cloth sat in the main room, two silver domes concealing the lobster. There was a bucket with ice in it, a bottle of premium champagne.

The water shut off, leaving only the wind and the surf. Jack curled his hands around the rail, kept his eyes on the Gulf. D’Ambrosia had taken a room, too, but the detective wasn’t a man to sit on the couch and watch TV. He was casing the hotel even now, looking. Watching. Saura remained at the dock. Camille’s cousin continued her vigil on Lambert. Everything was quiet. There was no sign of trouble. And yet…

Jack slid his hand to his Glock.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

He braced himself before he turned, felt the impact slam through him anyway. She stood inside the sliding-glass door, with her wet hair slicked back from her face, a thick white robe tied securely around her waist—but gaping at her chest. The decorative lights strung along the balcony illuminated the freckles.

“It’s hard to look away,” he said with an honesty that scraped, even as it fed some dark place deep inside.

She moved quietly, stepped around a hanging basket and joined him at the edge, bringing with her the scent of lavender and soap, of woman. “Don’t get me wrong, the Pacific is gorgeous.” She put her hands to the rail and leaned forward, closed her eyes and inhaled. “But it’s not home.”

And this was. Louisiana was. Here on Isle Dernier, where she and her father had picnicked before his death, this was home. It was in her blood, could never be washed away.

“I used to think about you,” she said quietly. “When I’d watch the news and see footage from Afghanistan or Iraq, of all the sand and flatness, never a single tree…I used to wonder if you were there…”

His grip on the rail tightened.

“And I hated it.” This time her voice broke on the words. “Hated thinking of you so far away from everything you loved. Hated wondering…not knowing…every time I heard a news report about a soldier killed, a plane down—”

The words fell into silence, but he heard, and he knew. And it slayed him, slayed him to hear her admit, finally, that she’d not erased him completely from her life.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she said, and then her hand, with all its softness and warmth, was on his. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Safe.
It was a nice word, but it stabbed through him anyway.

From the grounds below, music drifted. Jazz, he thought, glancing down toward the gardens, but seeing nothing, only darkness. “We looked for you.” The words tore from him. “Your family—”

“I know.”

He pulled his hand from beneath hers and stepped back, pivoted toward her. “No. I don’t think you do. They were worried sick, Camille. They thought—” The memory twisted hard, shoving him back in time fourteen years. “We all did.”

She didn’t move, other than the breeze playing with the ends of her damp hair. But her eyes were fixed on his, and they glowed. “What, Jack? What did you think?”

He wanted to look away. Christ, the only thing he wanted more than to look away, was to crush the distance between them and touch. He’d left her that long-ago morning, sitting naked and wrapped in a quilt, with no more than a kiss to her forehead and an apology. “Do you have any idea—” He bit the question back, took a hard, sharp detour. “How could you do it, Camille? To your mama, to Gabe? Hadn’t they been through enough? Couldn’t you have at least called, told them you were okay?”

That she wasn’t hurt.

Wasn’t dead.

The soft glow in her eyes dimmed, but she still said nothing. Just stared at him. As if he’d just put a knife to her gut, and twisted.

“Gabe called,” he said, and it all twisted harder. Tighter. “I was in San Antonio, at Lackland. It was three in the morning.” Seven minutes past three. “He was…” Jack had known the second he’d heard the panicked rasp. “You’d been missing twenty-four hours.” There’d been no note, no signs of a struggle. “He told me you were supposed to be in New Orleans with Saura. That you never showed.”

Camille squeezed her eyes shut, opened them a long moment later. Slowly she lifted a hand to her chest, where the robe gaped open, and rubbed.

“I wanted to leave…I wanted to help them look for you.” He’d never felt so helpless in his life. Or so guilty. He’d been in Basic Training. Leave had been out of the question. He’d been forced to wait for Gabe’s updates—and to let his imagination fill in the blanks.

“Do you have any idea what I thought?” This time the words perforated the darkness, the numbness, all those layers he’d slapped one on top of the other, first when his dad left, then Camille. Then in Iraq. Kneeling in the rain, holding Susan’s body. Thicker and deeper, until he could breathe again. Until he could roll out of bed and not reach for a bottle.

Until he didn’t feel a goddamned thing. Didn’t remember.

Didn’t want.

Didn’t care.

“I thought you ran away.” And he’d been angry, even as the guilt had pierced. “That finally you’d spun too fast.” After holding it together for so long. “That you couldn’t stand to be in Bayou d’Espere.” That she was hurting. Scared.

“And then, when you didn’t come back, didn’t call…” This time he stopped himself. This time he pulled it all back in, shoved it deep. “But you were okay,” he said and felt his mouth twist into an insolent little smile. “All that time, you were okay, living it up in California, becoming Cameron Monroe.”

Beneath the intimate glow of the lights strung along the balcony, Camille’s eyes went horribly dark. “Jack—”

“Save it,” he snapped, then because he didn’t trust himself to stand there for one second longer, he turned and strode into the suite.

White. It was all white. The sofa, the carpet, the walls. The little service cart with the two silver domes. Her robe. The past, the memory. The truth…the marble wet bar where Jack stood with a tumbler in his hand and his back to Camille. He’d poured two fingers of whiskey, tossed them back. Poured two more.

Now the stillness throbbed in rhythm with the breeze.

Camille closed her eyes and inhaled a breath, counted to seven, then opened her eyes to see Jack standing in the faded blue jeans and white shirt he’d worn that morning. The sleeves were rolled up and he was barefoot, but his Glock remained shoved into its holster.

She could walk away. Camille knew that. It was the smart thing to do, what she’d promised herself from the very start. She would come back to Bayou d’Espere, immerse herself in the past, get her story, make Lambert pay. Then she’d be free. And that was all she wanted. To be in control of her own destiny. To never allow anyone to dictate to her again.

Especially Jacques Savoie.

Because he was the only one who could.

“There was nothing you could have done,” she said, walking through the stillness, the quiet, until she stood directly behind him. “Nothing anyone could have done.”

Against the tumbler, his fingers tightened. “So you just ran.”

“No.” Her throat burned on the truth. For so long there’d been only her. She’d had friends and acquaintances, but never anyone close. Never anyone who would ask too many questions, want to know more.

Never anyone who could touch.

Control.

Until the day her cousin showed up on her doorstep. The shock of seeing Saura there, with her warm knowing eyes and dark hair braided down her back, had turned everything Camille had worked to build upside down.

“I didn’t run,” she said, tired of it all, the lies and the games, the secrets and the sins. “And I wasn’t okay.”

Jack said nothing. Did nothing. He stared straight ahead as if she’d done no more than comment on the color of the walls.

White.

It was all so horribly whitewashed—
he
was so horribly whitewashed.

But then he turned, deliberately, and her breath caught. Because for the first time since that night at Whispering Oaks, his eyes were vulnerable, open. The angles of his face were tight, his unshaven jaw shadowed. His mouth a hard line. But he said nothing—he didn’t need to.

The question, the need—
the dread—
reverberated through the silence.

“When I left that afternoon…” she whispered, knowing it was time for the truth.

And the fallout.

“…I had every intention of going to see Saura.” She’d needed a change of venue. She’d needed to be able to turn around without slamming into memories. “But when I got to New Orleans…” She could still see the Superdome glowing in the late-afternoon sun, the Garden District, the Twin Span bridge looming over the river straight ahead. “I kept going.”

Jack muttered something under his breath. Cajun, creative and—wholly untranslatable.

“I didn’t know where or why.” Until she got there. “Didn’t stop until I got to Pensacola.” It had been night. She’d driven to the beach and gotten out of her car, taken off her shoes and walked to the water’s edge. “It just felt so…clean.” Pure.

“And you felt dirty,” Jack said quietly.

“No.” It was instinct that had her reaching for his wrist, instinct that had her curving her hand around flesh and bone. “No…that’s not what I meant.”

“Then—”

“I could breathe there.” With the cool breeze off the Gulf of Mexico, much like the one that swept across Isle Dernier. The memory of it whispered through her, bringing with it the faint scent of spice and citrus, of leather and soap and man. “I could be me,” she said. “No one looked at me like I was a nutcase. No one knew…” No one called her a wild child.

“And that’s not running?” Jack asked.

“No.” At least she hadn’t thought so at the time. “It was moving forward, taking control—”

“And running,” he finished for her.

Deep inside, something started to tear. She’d been fighting it for so long, holding it all together, holding it all in, but now she let it spill. Let it bleed. She angled her chin and looked up at Jack, so tall and untouchable, as if he had a damn clue what he was talking about.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But not until Marcel Lambert made his move.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected. For Jack to swear or come alive, for him to reach for her and take her by the arms, fire one question after another, demand answers.

Vow vengeance.

But it wasn’t for him to remain so horribly, unnaturally still, while the night pulsed and the shadows stretched.

“Marcel Lambert followed you.” That was all he said, the simple, detached repetition of what she’d just told him.