The Perfect Stranger (5 page)

H
is eyes. That’s all she saw. In the broken moment before his mouth came down on hers, she saw something steely glowing in his eyes, a neediness that grabbed deep within her, even as her mind shut down. Then she only felt. His mouth slanting against hers. The scrape of whiskers against her cheek. His hands, so big and hard, cradling her face. There was a desperation in his touch, a tenderness that—

A tenderness that made her heart strum low and deep.

It took effort, but she forced herself to pull back, forced herself to open her eyes and look at him. See him. The dirty and torn camouflage pants, the smoke-stained olive T-shirt and field jacket, the solid chest and powerful arms, the hard jaw and the cleft in his chin, the closely cropped dark hair, the impossibly full mouth—the same mouth that had kissed her in her dreams every night for five weeks.

“You,” she whispered, then his mouth was on hers again, and nothing else mattered. She pushed up and lifted her hands, let them touch his face as his touched hers. Beneath her fingers she felt the line of his cheekbone and the warmth of his breath, the softness of his whiskers. And she wanted. She shifted and opened to him, drank him in as greedily as she’d gulped those first few breaths of fresh air.

His body was big and strong and powerful, and in his arms, she felt safe. The horror of the fire faded, the stark realization that she’d made a terrible mistake. There was only the man, and the kiss, and the reality that he’d come for her. He’d emerged from the smoke and—

He’d emerged from the smoke.

Which meant he’d been there. At the old hotel.

Which meant—

In that one cruel instant, everything fractured. She ripped away from him and shoved hard, staggered back.

He made no move to go after her, just remained standing in the shadows of the rickety house and watched with the strangest light in his eyes. “You’ll want to breathe—”

“Don’t—” Against her raw throat, the word escaped.

“Don’t what?” The hoarseness to his voice said he’d inhaled as much smoke as she had. She saw more now that the shadow of life and death had passed, not just his face, but the soot smeared over his cheeks and forehead, the ash on his neck and forearms.

And it hurt. Because when she saw, she remembered. And when she remembered, she felt. And when she felt—

The urge to step closer and wipe it all away had her hands curling into tight fists.

“Don’t help you?” he pressed. “Don’t tell you how to make it better? Don’t touch you? Don’t make you remember—”

With a fierceness that came from hidden depths, she angled her chin. “Don’t pretend.”

“Why not?” He stood so horribly still, all the passion and intensity that had boiled around her moments before congealing into something cold and dangerous. “Isn’t that what we do best?”

The words should not have hurt. The words should not have punished. She stood there in her battle stance, refusing to look away, even as she did a quick inventory of her surroundings. The house was abandoned. From the looks of the dilapidated kitchen, had probably stood empty since Katrina. A gas stove remained, but the spot for the refrigerator stood empty. There was no furniture. Nothing to grab as a weapon—except broken glass.

“This was all just a game, wasn’t it?” The way he’d touched her. Looked at her. Made her feel. The way he’d wiped away her tears and held her, pressed soft kisses to her forehead. “You were just playing me.”

“With you,” he corrected with a slow, devastating smile. “We both know games are more fun when played together.”

The truth seared through her, bringing not warmth but a penetrating chill she’d not felt since the day she’d dropped a single red rose into a gaping hole in the ground.

“You told him about me.” It was the only explanation. The only reason Lambert would want her dead. “You knew he would kill me, but you told him anyway.”

The man whose kisses had made her dream again might as well have set the fire himself.

Now he moved. Now he stepped toward her. Just one step, very slow. Very deliberate. “I’m afraid I need you to be a little more specific here,
belle amie.
Told who, what?”

She glanced at the shards of glass beneath the window. On the sill lay a piece the shape of a flat cola bottle, one edge more jagged than the others. “Is it because I recognized you?” she asked, inching closer. “Because I wasn’t useful anymore?” In the distance sirens wailed. “Because you were afraid I would expose you?”

Even as he took another step, the stillness to him deepened. “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”

No, she didn’t. That had always been one of her greatest strengths—and, according to her brother, an equally great flaw. “You’re not going to win,” she vowed on a low breath. Lunging, she grabbed the piece of glass and jutted it between them. “Stay where you are.”

The lines of his face tightened. “Easy now,” he drawled. “You don’t want to do that.”

Arms extended, she edged toward the back door, which still hung open. “Give me one good reason why not.”

“For starters,” he said, glancing toward a bulge in his jacket. “I’ve got a gun.”

She took another step.
Never bring a knife to a gunfight
was one of her uncle’s favorite sayings—but she didn’t have the luxury of choice at the moment. “You going to shoot me?”

He watched her, didn’t seem all that concerned. “That wasn’t the plan.”

If she could get a head start…if she could make it to the busy street one block away. “Back away then,” she said.

He moved only slightly, bringing his body against a ledge separating the kitchen from the living area. There, he lounged. “You know you can’t go back to him, don’t you? Lambert doesn’t tolerate failure, not even from pretty ladies.”

Failure.
It was an odd choice of word. She would have said
betrayal.
“Then I guess that means you can’t go back either,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “Probably not.”

Heart kicking hard, she wasted no more time, lunged for the door and started to run. The porch boards protested, but she didn’t slow, not even when she tripped on a warped plank. She staggered and caught her balance, raced for the steps.

A few cars lined the sleepy tree-lined street, but none of them moved. She surged out the rusty gate and down the sidewalk, looking for signs of life. Activity. For someone in their yard or a passerby. Her lungs, screaming from the smoke inhalation, burned with every breath, but she ignored the pain. Prytania was only a few blocks away. If she could reach it—

The man rounded the corner on a dead run, and everything blurred. Too late the survivor in her realized her mistake. She hadn’t outwitted the stranger. Hadn’t outmaneuvered or outrun him. He’d…let her go. He’d let her run from the shadowy kitchen, straight into the path of his accomplice.

Mind racing, she darted across the street and headed between two old houses.

But the new man was faster, and in less than a heartbeat he was on her. They went down hard against the winterbrown grass. The impact crushed her, but she kept fighting, scraping and clawing against the cool, damp ground to crawl out from beneath him.

“Easy now,” the man who’d tackled her said—and Saura went very still. That voice. She knew that voice. More than knew it—

On a violent rush she twisted around, and saw. “Cain.”

Her brother glared down at her. “Saura? What the hell—”

“Don’t hurt her,” called another voice, this one equally familiar. “I want her perfectly lucid for what I have in…”

Cain reared back and looked from her to the stranger. His big body tensed, just as it had when she was fifteen and he found her in the foggy back seat of an old Lincoln with an eighteen-year-old. It didn’t matter that technically Cain was her little brother. Never had. There’d never been anything “little” about Cain. “
Merde,
D’Ambrosia, do not tell me this is the woman—”

Everything inside of Saura went painfully still. D’Ambrosia. The stranger had a name—and her brother knew it. The heat came next, the realization that if her brother knew D’Ambrosia, and knew about “the woman,” then he could know more. A
lot
more.

The stranger she’d given herself to in the bayou, the man she’d played cat and mouse with at the party, who’d dragged her from the burning hotel then kissed her within an inch of her life, stooped down beside them. “There’s no mistake.”

She saw her brother’s eyes darken, knew he was connecting the dots with brutal speed—and consequence. “
She
was the one with Lambert?” It was the dead quiet voice he’d used for interrogations, when he stated dirty ugly facts no one else wanted to repeat.

D’Ambrosia grabbed a red bandanna from a pocket inside his jacket and handed it to her. “You’re bleeding.” Then to Cain: “Last night.”

Her brother barely moved, barely so much as breathed. “In—his—bedroom.”

The words, the flat tone, made her cringe. “Cain.” She scrambled to her knees. “Just listen, okay. This isn’t what you think. I can—”

“Cain?” His mouth a hard line, D’Ambrosia looked from her brother to her, then back to Cain. “You know this woman?”

Cain grabbed the bandanna and lifted it to her forehead, dabbed at the wound she could neither see nor feel. “You could say so,” he bit out. “She’s my sister.”

The green walls pushed in on John. Two folding chairs sat against the wall, next to a table covered in outdated magazines. The couch that had been here a few months before was gone, the only window nailed shut. Even if he’d been able to pry it open, the bars outside would make it impossible to escape. Not that he needed to escape. Just needed to breathe something other than the stale store-bought disinfectant that permeated the small clinic.

He paced, refused to give in to the urge to push open the door and go down the hall, find out what was taking Cain so long. They’d been in there for forty minutes. Dr. Guidry had been examining a sick baby at the time, but within minutes she’d taken Saura and Cain to one exam room, John into the other. Over his protests her assistant had checked him over. He was fine, just as he’d told them. But Saura—

Christ. Her name twisted low in his gut, even though he did not speak it aloud.
Saura.
Not Lambert’s mistress, but Cain’s freaking
sister.
A Robichaud. Gabe’s cousin. Niece of a United States senator and one of the most powerful sheriffs in the state.

The walls, they pushed a little harder, a hell of a lot closer.

Gabe’s urgent message, identifying the woman in the picture as his cousin Saura, had come too late. Shoving a hand through his hair, John strode to the window and stared out at the damp gray day, tried like hell to reconcile everything that had gone down. He and Cain had worked together, but their interactions had never bled into the personal. He’d never been to Cain’s house, never met his family. The trip to Bayou de Foi following Alec’s death had been his first—

Saura.

Memories slashed through him, of the first night he’d seen her standing across the smoky honky-tonk. She’d worn jeans that night, tight-fitting and a little out of fashion. And a simple black shirt, not silk as he would expect of someone with her kind of money, but a cotton knit. It, too, had looked old, and more than a little big on her.

She’d looked barely put together, as though she’d picked up the outfit at a garage sale in a deliberate attempt to blend into somewhere she categorically did not belong.

But that’s not what had gotten him as he’d rolled the warm glass of whiskey between his hands. Her eyes. They’d…haunted him, reminded him of an animal tossed alongside the highway by its owner. Something fierce and raw had glowed in depths he later discovered to be the color of moss, and it had seared through all the indifference and the isolation, blistering him despite the fact he’d long since been beyond the point of feeling. Anything. Except hatred. And loathing. Contempt.

It had not been contempt that he felt. Not even when he’d seen her again on Lambert’s arm. That had been excitement, the unholy anticipation of a game he’d neither expected nor wanted, but suddenly looked forward to playing. And winning.

Now…Christ, now she had a name. Saura. And a brother who both trusted and respected him. And she was neither the cat, nor the mouse.

On a low growl he picked up a news magazine and flipped open the front cover, then threw it across the room. Collette never took this long. She was quick and efficient, and she didn’t ask questions. Or file police reports. Which made the lady doctor who split her time between the clinic and Ochsner’s popular with those on both sides of the law.

The door shoved open, but it was not Dr. Guidry who strode into the small room, where she stashed those she didn’t want anyone else to see. Frowning, Cain closed the door behind him.

John stilled. “What’s going on—”

“Collette made me leave the room, said I wasn’t doing Saura’s blood pressure any good.” Frowning, Cain shook his head. “Saura decides to play Nancy Drew and throw herself at a scumbag like Nathan Lambert, and Collette’s worried about
her
freaking blood pressure?”

“How high is it?”

Cain blinked. “What?”

“Her blood pressure? How high is it? She inhaled a lot of—”

“She’s fine.” Her brother bit the words out. “Her lungs are fine. The cut on her forehead is fine.” His eyes met John’s. “It’s her goddamned death wish I’m worried about.”

Death wish.
It was not a term John liked. “You get anything else out of her? She tell you what she was doing with Lambert?”

Cain grabbed his cell phone and flipped it open, pushed a few buttons then jammed it back in his jeans. “All she’ll say is she wants the same thing we do. She and Alec were close. She knows I suspect Lambert, says I should trust her, that she knows what she’s doing.”

Knows what she’s doing.
Cozying up to Lambert. Letting the man touch her. Walking into his bedroom. John’s gut tightened as the memory of Lambert’s big bed flashed into his mind, of Saura alone with that man. In that bed.

He curled his hand into a fist and regrouped, knew he couldn’t let emotion twist through his voice. And Holy God in Heaven, he said a grim prayer of thanks he was not a kiss-and-tell kind of man. “Does she have any idea how dangerous Lambert is?”