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Authors: Jenna Mills

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Suspense

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BOOK: Sins of the Storm
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“No.” She ripped away and stepped back, tried to breathe. “No one is trying to hurt me.” Just stop her.

“Then how do you explain this?” he asked, and before he even pulled the envelope from his back pocket, everything inside her stilled. Because she knew. He’d found something. There in the bank she’d planned to visit in a few hours, Jack had found what Camille had come looking for.

And now her plan to slip in and out of town without him discovering her true intent was about to blow up in her face.

For a long moment, he watched her in that mistrusting, assessing way all cops had. Then he opened the envelope and dumped its contents onto the small desk. Old documents came first, the parchment paper faded and yellowed, thin, but the official seals still visible. Certificate of marriage, one read. The second: Certificate of live birth.

Hers.

“My God.” Trying to process it all, to understand, she extended her hand just as the old Polaroid slipped from the envelope—and the light pink walls started to close in on her.

There’d been no proof, after all. Until now, there’d been no proof the safe-deposit box remained at the bank after so many years of abandonment. Only a hunch—and a hope.

“I remember that day,” Jack said as she fingered the picture on top, of her in a pale yellow Easter dress, sitting on her tricycle with ringlets falling against her face, a stuffed lamb tucked under her arm and chocolate smeared on her cheeks. “You were three.”

It took sheer determination, but somehow she breathed. And somehow she allowed herself to sift past the Easter picture to those below it, all pictures of her and Gabe, their childhood. Special pictures, taken on special days.

Special pictures that stopped because the special days stopped, nine years after the first picture had been taken.

Looking up, she found Jack watching her. “I don’t understand…”

It stunned her how badly she wanted to see one flicker, one trace, of what they’d once meant to each other.

“Oh, but I think you do,” he said in that horribly quiet voice. “That’s the funny thing about coincidence,
’tite chat.
It doesn’t exist.”

Refusing to let him back her into a corner, she lifted her chin and smiled. “I never said that it did.”

“You’ve been gone fourteen years, Cami.
Fourteen years.
That’s a long time. Then suddenly you show up sneaking around Whispering Oaks like—”

“I wasn’t
sneaking.

“The bank is broken into,” he continued in full-interrogation mode, “a safe-deposit box destroyed, and inside I find pictures—of you.”

Put together that way, it sounded pretty incriminating.

“What was supposed to be in the box, Cami?”

The question, so abrupt and simple, the kind any cop would ask, scraped. She looked down at the table, stared at the completely benign image of her on the tricycle. “Not pictures.”

One step and he was there, tucking a finger to her chin and tilting her face to his. “Tell me.”

She had to. She knew that. She could lie, but he would know. And if he so much as even suspected she was hiding something, he would keep digging until he found out. If she was the one who measured out the information, then at least she maintained some morsel of control.

“I don’t know.” That
was
the truth. “I…” She swallowed as the cold, slow burn of disappointment spread from her throat to her chest. “Not pictures of me.”

Jack kept watching. “But you expected to find something. That’s why you’re here.”

The sunlight slipped through the curtains, brighter now, harsher, illuminating nuances she didn’t want to see. “Yes,” she admitted. “I—It was my father’s box. I only found out about it recently. I thought if it was important enough that he kept it a secret, then there must be something in there—”

“About the night he was killed.”

“Yes.” There was no point pretending.

“Last night that man took something from your car.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact—a fact she’d deliberately withheld. “And that something led him to the bank.”

And now she might never know what her father had gone to great lengths to protect. “My laptop.”

Jack swore softly. “Damn it, Cami, why didn’t you tell me this last night? We could have been waiting…we could have caught the son of a bitch before he got his hands on what was inside.”

She turned before he could see the quick twist of frustration. “I didn’t know,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot and carrying it to the bathroom sink. If she’d had any idea the man who’d stolen her laptop was going to go after the safe-deposit box, she would have taken precautions. But she’d thought he’d only meant to stop her. Scare her. “If I could change—”

“Son of a bitch.”

It was his voice, low, hoarse, more than the actual words, that stopped her. Slowly, she looked into the mirror and saw him, saw Jack, standing next to the nightstand between the two beds. He looked taller than he had moments before, his broad frame dominating the small, warm room. But it was his eyes that got her. They were flat and coldly furious—and before she even looked at his hands, she knew what she would see.

Chapter 4

W
ords. That’s all they were. Black, crudely printed, carefully chosen. Insidiously clear.

 

Stop while you still can

 

Slowly Jack looked up to find Camille watching him in the bathroom mirror. She stood there in an oversize T-shirt, her hair falling against her face, looking so much like the girl she’d been.

But it was a stranger’s eyes that met his, dark and secretive.
Aware.

He moved toward her, kept his eyes on the mirror. On her. She should have been afraid. She should have been terrified. Someone had threatened her. Someone wanted her gone.

Questions twisted through him, but he kept his steps steady, measured. He didn’t want to—

Didn’t want to frighten her.

The absurdity of the thought burned.

Nothing frightened Camille Rose Fontenot—even when it should. Once her fondness for doing the unexpected had been cute, innocent, nothing more harmful than curtains in an all boys’ fort.

Then the innocence had died, and her stunts had spun out of control.

“You weren’t going to tell me about this, were you?” Over the skies of Iraq, he’d learned to shut out emotion. To focus or die. He used that now, used it to strip all those hot boiling edges from his voice.

She closed her eyes, opened them a heartbeat later. “Jack, I need you to trust me—”

“How?” The question tore out of him. “Tell me how I’m supposed to do that, when it’s been nothing but secrets and lies from the moment I found you sneaking around Whispering Oaks.”

“You
know
me,” she whispered.

He did. That was the problem. He knew her. He knew her penchant for keeping secrets—and rocking the boat. He knew the desperation, the completely fearless determination that drove her.

“Jack,” she said into the deliberate silence. “This is me, Camille. I’m the same person—”

“Trust me, I know who you are.” With cold efficiency he reached around her to turn off the water. “That’s why we’re standing here right now.” Why she wasn’t downtown, in jail. “That’s why you didn’t bother to call me, why you sneaked back into town without so much as one single damn thought about what you might be walking into.”

Turning, she looked at him with wounded eyes.

“That’s why you’re so scared,” he added silkily. Not because of the man who’d broken into her rental, not because of the threatening note.

Because of him. Because he knew her.

He always had.

“Saura was right,” she whispered, wedged between his body and the tacky little vanity. “You’ve changed.”

He stood without moving, even as the disappointment in her voice sliced—and the smell of lavender taunted. “Time’s supposed to move forward,
cher…
not backward.”

The glow in her eyes dimmed. “Unless it’s just one big nasty circle.”

His smile was slow, easy. “Then let’s try this again.” He returned to the bed, picked up the note. “I’m listening.”

Blond hair fell against her face. “Of course.” With a briskness that surprised him, she reached for the small pot and poured out the excess water, carried it back to the coffeemaker. “What do you want to know,
Sheriff?

Sarcasm wasn’t supposed to slip like a caress. “Everything.” Where she’d been. Why she’d come home…why she’d inserted herself in Lambert’s crosshairs.

“Which came first?” He looked back at the crude handwriting. “The note or your car being broken into?”

She tore open a little foil packet—dark roast. “The break-in.”

Which meant there’d been time for someone to access her files, see something they didn’t like. “Where did the note come from?”

With a laissez-faire that burned, she poured the grinds into the filter. “Slipped under my door sometime after midnight.”

When she’d been alone. Probably in bed. “And you didn’t call me?”

Now she turned, rested her hip against the chair. “Would that have made you happy, Jack? If I’d called you?”

His chest tightened, but before he could continue the interrogation, his cell phone rang. He grabbed his phone and glanced at caller ID, jabbed the talk button. “Savoie.”

“Sheriff.” The voice belonged to the youngest deputy on his force, Russ Melancon…and it was shaken. There’s been an accident.”

 

Two sets of skid marks veered off the narrow, canal-lined highway. One went right. The other went left.

Both ended in murky water.

Lights flashed and sirens screamed. Cars were every where. Some people ran; others stood and gaped. Margot Landry held her two grandchildren—and cried.

Jack closed in on the scene, refused to let himself run. To limp. The leg itself had healed, but the doctors had warned the nerve damage was likely permanent. With effort he kept his stride brisk, his expression unreadable, his voice authoritative. Everything was under control. Janelle and her kids had been pulled from their minivan. The little girl was crying, but their grandmother was with them. The paramedics were with Janelle. She was hurt—hurt bad. But she was alive.

So was the driver of the little muscle car who’d gunned his engine after a deputy had turned on his siren and signaled for the driver to pull over….

“Name’s Hebert,” Russ said. “Billy. License lists an address in Bunkie.”

Jack glanced at the stretcher alongside the shoulder, where two paramedics tended the motionless man. Mid-thirties, Jack would guess. Thin. Track marks on his arms. “Find anything else?”

“Not yet. Just his wallet and the envelope.”

Against the folder found on the front seat, Jack’s fingers tightened. Hank had spotted the black sports car just outside town and had immediately linked it to the description of a car seen in the vicinity of the savings and loan break-in. He’d turned on his lights and signaled for the driver to pull over, but the bastard had floored the engine instead. Like a coward, he’d tried to run, to get away, tearing down the highway at a ridiculous rate of speed. He’d seen the minivan too late.

Grimly, Jack glanced toward the growing crowd on the other side of the highway—and saw her.

And the edges of his vision blurred.

Dressed now in low-riding jeans and a soft peach poet’s shirt, she stood with Margot Landry. He couldn’t see her face, just the way she lifted a hand to stroke the little girl’s hair from her tear-streaked face.

And the slow boil worked from his gut to his chest.

“Sheriff, you want me to—”

“Go on home,” he said as he twisted toward Hank, the deputy who’d initially given chase. “You took a nasty blow. You should get some rest.”

Hank shook his head, even as he lifted his fingers to the gash at his cheek. He’d barely brought his car to a stop before ending up in one of the canals. “Looks worse than it is. I can—”

“Everything’s under control. We can take it from here.”

Hank’s mouth tightened into a flat line, but he did as told—and Jack started across the highway.

She didn’t see him at first. She’d gone down on a knee, was holding little Annie’s hands. But he could see her, could see the concern in her eyes, the gentleness in her touch. And all those hard edges inside him started to scrape.

Abruptly she looked up, stilled as he eliminated the last of the distance between them. But it was not to her that he spoke. “Mrs. Landry,” he said, and his former fifth grade teacher turned toward him with dark, frightened eyes.

“Jacq—I mean, Sheriff,” she said in a voice thicker than usual. “Have you heard anything else?”

He took her hands and squeezed.
“Mais non.”
Just that Margot’s daughter had lost consciousness and was bleeding inside. Just like—

He shoved the thought aside, refused to go back to that cold foggy night. Instead he focused on the little boy, no more than seven years old. He stood next to his grandmother like a little man ready to take on the world.

“The folks at the hospital are waiting for her,” he said. “You need any help with the kids?”

“Thank you,
mais non.
Their daddy’s on his way.”

Greg. He ran the local insurance agency and doted on his family. “Let me know then,” Jack said, and forced himself to look down, to see Camille pressing a soft kiss to a scrape along Annie’s forehead. And all those sharp edges cut even deeper. He didn’t let himself touch her. Didn’t trust himself to. Because if he took Camille’s hand—

She didn’t belong here. The thought sliced through him as her eyes darkened. She didn’t belong here with Mrs. Landry, didn’t belong with little Annie, shouldn’t be the one comforting them, not when she could have prevented all of this with a few simple words.

“Jack—” she started to say.

He didn’t let her finish. “If you’ll excuse us,” he said to Mrs. Landry, but before she could respond, he was reaching for Camille. She stood and stepped back, lifted her eyes to his as he put a hand to the small of her back and steered her away from the accident, toward a yellow road sign warning of a dangerous curve. Just beyond sat his squad car.

The second they were out of hearing distance he released her and stepped back. “I told you to wait for me.”

“I was worried—”

“Why?” The question, in the same silky tone he used during all interrogations—
and seductions—
hovered there between them. “Because of the accident? Or what I might find?”

She stilled, even as the wind kept whipping hair into her face. “What you might find?”

“Tell me,” he pressed. “Tell me what else is on your computer.”

Before she could answer, a car zipped around the curve, stopped just as fast. “My computer? I don’t understand—”

Greg Martine pushed open the door and bolted from the car.

“None of this had to happen,” Jack said with a stillness at odds with the way Greg ran. “None of it. The break-in, the theft, the—” He broke off and glanced up the road, watched Greg reach for his wife’s hand. “If you’d just told me the goddamned truth.”

“Jack…I had no idea—”

He spun toward her and allowed himself to back her against the front of the car. To feel her thighs pressing against his. “But you should have.” Fourteen years had gone by, but Camille Fontenot still didn’t give a damn about consequences. “What else?” he asked as one of the ambulances took off. “What other little surprises are on your computer?”

Her eyes darkened, but she didn’t answer. At least not with words. She lifted a hand to her mouth as Greg ran with Annie to his car. Little Greg raced behind him. “My God,” she whispered. “I never…” She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them a moment later. “What about the driver?” she asked, as he’d known she would. “Was he the one?”

“Yes.”

“Did he still have—” The words died off, but the question hung there in the void of sirens that had finally gone quiet. The blue of her eyes glowed with it. Her body practically vibrated. And Jack wanted to know why. Camille claimed she had no idea what her father had hidden in the box, but exposed by the relentless wash of sunshine, she reminded him a little too damn much of her own father—and of Jack’s. It was the fervor…the obsession.

“This?” he asked, holding up the folder. Slowly, deliberately—the only way he allowed himself to do anything—he withdrew the plastic bag he’d tucked inside. Her eyes flared as she saw the yellowed paper. Then came the slow, brutal wash of recognition he’d known would come, the same wash he’d seen the morning he’d walked away.

“My God…”
she whispered as he set the plastic bag on the car behind her. She turned toward it and braced her hands against the hood.
“Daddy…”

Jack stepped closer, looked over her shoulder at the map her father had constructed—and his had coveted.

“All these years.” Her voice was soft, faraway, and it damn near sent him to his knees. “I thought Lambert had this.”

They all had. It had been the only explanation that made sense. “Wouldn’t have done him any good.” Camille’s father had already found the stained glass.

Found. And destroyed.

But standing on the edge of the accident scene, in the sudden deafening silence, she didn’t seem to hear. She dragged her finger along a straight line, much as she’d once—

He stiffened, crushed the memory before it could form.

“I used to find him in his office at night,” she said, “sitting at his desk with a glass of scotch, just staring….”

Obsession. Jack knew the disease well. As kids, the legend had fascinated them: a stained glass depiction of the rapture salvaged from a church in France and smuggled to Louisiana before the revolution.

“Sometimes your dad was there, too.”

They stood on the side of the road, surrounded only by water and cypress and pine. But the walls pushed in anyway. And the sun burned through the haze.

“They were fools,” he said, looking beyond her, to the muscle car partially submerged in the canal. “Both of them.” All of them. So driven by their quest to validate a legend that they’d sacrificed their families, and their lives.

“I remember the first time he told me the story,” Camille said, but Jack didn’t look at her, just kept watching Russ talk with the tow truck operator.

“I sneaked into his office and found a file open on his desk…I remember being surprised to find drawings inside.”

From his front pocket, Jack grabbed his sunglasses and slid them over his eyes.

“When he found me I was coloring away.”

The image formed before he could stop it, of Camille destroying without even trying. He turned back to her, found her looking south, where a few miles down the road her childhood home remained. Abandoned now, in disrepair after the hurricane…but still standing. There was an odd glow to her eyes, as if she could see through the trees and the moss, through the years….

“That night when he tucked me in, he asked if I wanted to hear a true story.”

Jack remembered. He’d been there.

“I remember it all,” she added so damn quietly he barely heard over the low rumble of the tow truck’s engine. “The mysteries and the miracles…”

Jack had heard, too. His father had been Troy Fontenot’s partner. Every night after dinner, Gator Savoie had reached for a beer. And like clockwork, after three beers, the stories had started: the stained glass window was not of this world; it could heal and it could weep, and sometimes it would bleed. Twice a year, his father had said, on the winter and summer solstice, when the sun hit the window just so…that’s when the miracles happened.

BOOK: Sins of the Storm
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