by Nancy Gideon
“I just put tea on.”
“I’d appreciate that, Sister Catherine. It’s been a rough night.”
“Do you have any other kind?”
Cee Cee chuckled softly as she followed the graceful figure to her private quarters in back. The room was small, sparsely furnished, with no personal effects except two pictures; one of two teenage girls with their arms about each other, and a Polaroid of a couple, its coating now faded and cracked by years. Cee Cee took a seat at the small table, saying nothing as she watched the other woman move efficiently about the kitchen area. Once the cup was placed before her and the scent of Earl Gray filled her nose, she couldn’t resist relaxing. But the ugliness of her visit couldn’t be kept at bay.
“I’m looking for someone,” she began as the young nun took the other seat. “Dolores Gautreaux.”
“Why would you look here?”
“Because she’s come to you for help before, for her and her baby.”
“Lottie, you know I can’t discuss those who come here for refuge.” Calm eyes lowered to follow the current her spoon created in the cup.
“Her husband beats her, almost kills her, but she keeps going back for more.”
“Lottie . . .”
“The man was a real nasty piece of work, but tonight, pieces of him were scattered all over my streets. And I need to find out what she knows about it.”
The sister sighed. “They’re safe. They’re sleeping.”
“How long have they been here?”
“I can’t—”
Cee Cee didn’t have time for formalities of conscience. “Mary Kate, in my opinion, the man got what he deserved. I just want to make sure they’re all right. I have some questions. The sooner I talk to her, the better. I don’t want them to suffer any more than they already have.”
Sister Catherine regarded her somberly, with a trust that went back through decades of friendship. “I’ll speak to her. I’ll arrange a time. I’d rather not wake them, considering what they’ve been through.”
“If you’ll give me your word that you’ll keep them here until I can talk to them.”
“More tea?”
Cee Cee made an aggravated sound, then relented. “Sure. You don’t have any of Father Furness’s whiskey to put in it, do you?”
A giggle reminiscent of the girl Mary Kate had once been made Cee Cee grin. For a second, she saw the free-spirited companion who’d once shared makeup and make-out tips over teen magazines and Top Forty hits. Love rose unbidden, like the fragrant tendrils from the tea, delicate yet hardy and restorative. Then she studied her friend more closely. “You look tired, Mary Kate.”
“So do you. There’s always too much work to do.”
“Amen.”
“Have you seen Dr. Forstrom lately?”
Cee Cee stiffened at the mention of the police psychiatrist. “Haven’t had anything to discuss lately.”
“Would you go to him if you did?” A soft chiding.
Cee Cee considered lying, then remembered where she was. “No.”
“Would you come talk to me?”
“To do what, rehash old times?”
Pain flashed across Mary Kate Malone’s still-lovely features. Even the scars across her cheek and throat hadn’t marred that beauty. Cee Cee’s scars were on the inside and hadn’t healed quite so neatly. She wanted to feel bad for her friend’s anguish but at the moment her frustration was too keen, her anger too acute.
“We’ve gone over this before, Mary Kate. You handle it your way, and I’ll handle it mine.”
“Does tracking them down by their own violent means change anything?”
“Does patching up their victims with false hope, before sending them right back home, accomplish anything other than to delay the inevitable?”
Sister Catherine’s gaze grew as hard as her tone was gentle. “We do what we can to help.”
“It’s not helping unless the problem is eliminated.”
Mary Kate didn’t flinch at that ruthless statement. She argued wearily, “You can’t hunt them all down. You can’t kill or imprison every man with a heart of evil.”
“I can try.” Cee Cee pushed away from the table. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
A warm hand clasped hers. “Sit. Finish your tea. And don’t ever say you’ll stay away. This is your home, your family.”
Charlotte squeezed that tenacious hand. “I am tired, right down to my bones. Otherwise I wouldn’t hurt you with words I don’t mean.”
“They don’t hurt me. Seeing you like this hurts me. How long has it been since you’ve slept?”
Cee Cee smiled grimly. “Twelve years.”
Mary Kate’s gaze softened with understanding. “Talk to Dr. Forstrom.”
“Dr. Foreplay wants to give me drugs and look down my shirt. I have the feeling he’d like to get in touch with more than just my emotions.” A harsh sigh. “If I lose my edge, I can’t do my job.”
“Talk to him anyway.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Your word?”
At that tough prompting, Cee Cee smiled. “I guess if I say so here, I have to mean it, don’t I?” She drank down the rest of her tea. It was sugary and sweet, just the way she liked it. Mary Kate never forgot those little details. “I’ll come by at one to talk to Mrs. Gautreaux.”
“She’ll be here. But I don’t know if she can tell you anything that will help your situation.”
“He’s dead. I’m sure that’s a big help to hers.”
Sister Catherine sat silently for a long moment after Charlotte was gone, then she spoke softly to the shadows. “Does she suspect?”
“She’s too smart not to,” came the quiet response, a deep voice edged with admiration. “Will she figure it out? Maybe someday, but not today. There’s no trail for her to follow back here.”
“Yet here she is. We can’t involve her in this. I won’t involve her in this. She wouldn’t understand that what we’re doing is necessary. You know that.”
No answer.
Finally she sighed. “Thank you.”
Again silence, then a harsh whisper. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“Yes, I do.” She turned toward the darkness that she occasionally called upon. “Keep her safe. She still won’t accept that there are so many things out there that can hurt her.”
He was one of those things.
“I won’t let any harm come to her,” he promised fiercely. Not again. Never again.
“Thank you. Go with God.”
“Is that who’s traveling with me?” She heard a smile in his tone. “I rather doubt that. But you can pray for me anyway if it makes you feel better.”
“It does.”
It made him feel better, too.
THE RESTLESSNESS RETURNED the second Cee Cee stepped across the threshold. She paused there, leaning against the heavy wood door, holding it open, and pulled a cigarette from her purse. She’d been trying to quit smoking for twelve years. Oh well, what was one more day? She lit the end and took a long drag, then nearly choked as a gasp of surprise sucked the smoke into her lungs.
Inside a man moved quickly across the front of the church. She couldn’t see his face, but there was no mistaking the lethal grace of his steps.
The cigarette fell, forgotten, and was quickly crushed beneath her toe as she reentered the sanctuary to race up the wide aisle. Dodging through one of the side doors and down a narrow hall, she burst out into the pale shimmer of dawn. Steam rose off the dirty streets as weak sunlight crept down the sides of nearby buildings, pushing shadows closer to the ground. And out of those shadows, in a swirl of his long black raincoat, Max Savoie disappeared into an alley.
What was Jimmy Legere’s henchman doing at St. Bart’s, where the wife of a recently murdered man was in hiding?
She sprinted down the sidewalk to ask him, but when she ducked down the alley, there was no sign of him. Just a tight gauntlet of overflowing trash bins and stacks of broken skids. Water
dripped down from the air conditioners above, where the buildings leaned in to seal out the new day for a few moments longer. This wasn’t the kind of position she liked to get into: no backup, no traffic, and no room to play it safe. But Savoie had gone down this alley, which ended at ten feet of chain-link fence topped with vicious curls of razor wire. The fence wasn’t moving, so he still had to be on her side of it. He couldn’t have gone up and over it so quickly without leaving a sway in passing.
She unsnapped her holster as she stepped into the dank corridor.
For the first twenty feet, the only sounds were her footsteps on puddled brick. Then she heard a quiet rustling behind one of the Dumpsters. Though she couldn’t picture Savoie hiding from her behind a heap of garbage, she continued on, more irritated than cautious.
A man suddenly rose up in front of her, smiling ferociously when his gaze swept over her. His smile never reached the flat soullessness in his eyes.
“Well, hello there, little lady. Don’t you know it’s not safe to come down here all by yourself, unless you’re looking for trouble?”
One hand was on her pistol grip as she reached for her badge with the other. “You don’t want my kind of trouble. I’m a—”
His fisted blow caught her in the midsection. The pain was so sudden, so stunning, she doubled up. She hung on tenaciously, swinging an elbow to catch him in the jaw, knocking him back a few steps while she wheezed for breath. Son of a bitch! She knew better than to put herself into this kind of situation. She rose above her heaving nausea into a defensive stance.
When he came at her again her fists connected with stunning impact, once, twice, followed by an uppercut that staggered him. As he tried to shake it off, dazed and momentarily malleable, she moved back to put room between them. Angry, still fighting the urge to wretch, she reached for her cuffs.
Large, cruel hands gripped her elbows as another man came in behind her. She was so woozy, she hadn’t even heard him. She threw herself back against him, clawing, twisting, kicking, and cursing, inflicting almost enough damage to get free. Then she saw the arc of the first man’s hand and the glint of her own weapon in it. The butt smashed into her temple, dropping her to her hands and knees with the other man atop her.
She choked on acidic bile as he tore her shirt, popping all the buttons off, before shoving her facedown. The wet stones were cold and cutting beneath bare skin. And the man straddling her was cold and determined as he yanked on her belt, reached beneath her to fumble with her zipper, and started dragging down her jeans.
A remembered fear, so strong that she couldn’t breathe past it, paralyzed her. Her reflexes failed her; her courage curled into a fetal position as she knew with soul-crushing certainty exactly what was going to happen if she couldn’t rise above the debilitating horror.
Move now! Do something!
She turned her head to scream, when something wet and hot suddenly splashed her face, blinding her.
The weight lifted off her in an instant. She could hear the man scrambling, trying to run. Then awful screams—first of terror, then of agony that went on and on. She tried to get up, but was trapped by her pants. Dizzy and disoriented, she rolled onto her side and found herself looking into the glassy eyes of her first assailant. His mouth was open in a silent scream; his throat was shredded. And there was nothing beneath that jagged neck wound. Nothing at all.
She must have fainted. A tug on her clothes woke her, but before she could struggle, her pants came sliding up her hips. Firm hands closed on her upper arms, sitting her up. Something damp and revivingly cold swiped across her face and neck. Her senses spun and she clenched her lips tight, afraid she was going to throw up.
Then his voice reached through her fear and pain with a deep, steady familiarity.
“It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”
She made herself open her eyes, and that wonderfully strong face appeared before her in an almost ethereal blur. For a moment, his gaze seemed to glow, hot, bright, iridescent; then she blinked rapidly and it became an intense, steady stare. He wore an expression of grim concern—and a splattering of blood. As she started shuddering involuntarily, he stripped off his raincoat and wrapped it about her shoulders, concealing the rent in the front of her shirt that exposed her muddy bra.
With her breath coming in quick, anxious pulls, she glanced around them—at the headless corpse, at the arm dangling out of the trash bin dripping crimson. Her shaking intensified.
“I came back because I smelled your perfume,” he said.
She stared at him for a long minute, then her laugh sounded thin and a bit crazed. And her arms were around his neck. “Max.”
He couldn’t move, startled, stunned by the feel of her in his arms.
It had happened so fast, he hadn’t paused to think it through. He’d felt her following him, smiling to himself as he easily slipped away. But as that smug amusement warmed him, the hair on his nape prickled and he caught the unpleasant scent and stealthy sounds of two others.
He’d slowed, reluctant to push his way in where she wouldn’t want him—Charlotte Caissie was hardly helpless. So he lingered, imagining her knocking the snot out of her would-be attackers. Watching her was always quality entertainment. He’d pay just to stand there, slack-jawed and tongue hanging out, while she pumped gas. The thought of her pumping her fist into some petty criminal was pay-per-view material. The husky growl of her voice was a hand running against the nap of his senses, stirring him up effortlessly into a rough bristle of want.
When her words were abruptly cut off and she moaned in pain, the speed of his rush made the fence shiver as he cleared it. Several powerful bounds brought him onto a scene that burned through him like napalm. She was facedown on the filthy bricks. One of them had rough hands on her, sealing his fate when she cried out in distress. It was the last mistake either of them would ever make, as he tore into them with merciless fury.
He should have disappeared the minute he’d eliminated the danger, before she could gather her wits and identify him. But the sight of her sprawled and vulnerable and cruelly exposed called to him in a way she never would. And he couldn’t leave her like that. Never like that.
Then she’d looked up at him and said his name. He was lost in an instant.
Despite her shivering, he noticed that her body was lush and firm and strong, just as he’d imagined when caressing her for years with sidelong glances. He held himself still, calling on rigid self-control as her scent swirled about him, teasing up his nose. Carefully, rapturously, he inhaled. Her heat scalded through his clothing to imprint her shape on his skin. And he would have gladly remained on his knees forever, if it meant indulging his chastely ravenous desires for just a moment longer.
But she was still shaking, in shock. Daylight and discovery were almost upon them.
He stood, lifting her up off the damp stones with him. When she wobbled, he scooped her up into his arms to carry her out of the carnage-strewn alley. She was hardly a small woman, but he carried her as if she were no burden at all.
Cee Cee was too shaken to marvel at his strength or question his intentions. She lay limp and trusting against his chest, her head aching, her heart still racing. His body heat slowly thawed the paralyzing chill, yet she lingered in his powerful embrace, enveloped by a sense of safety. She buried her face against the warm pulse of his throat, her fears vanquished by the rhythm of his breathing, oblivious to her surroundings. He stopped and asked quietly, “Do you think you can drive, or do you want me to sit with you for a while?”
Her fingers tightened in his shirt. She wanted to curl into him, to indulge for just a little bit longer, but her senses began to reassemble and she knew that she couldn’t. She shouldn’t. Reluctantly she lifted her head from his shoulder, surprised to discover they were beside her car. How had he carried her for such a distance without the slightest strain?
“Put me down.”
She must have sounded more capable than she felt, because he eased h
er down to her feet. She stumbled back to look at him a bit wildly, her gaze touching the blood on his face, on his shirt, on his hands. Feeling traces of it drying on her skin.
“You killed those men.” Her voice quivered between accusation and awe.
His eyes were unblinking. He didn’t admit it. Not exactly. “I’m sorry. Did you want to get to know them better?”
She tried to speak but had to turn away quickly so she wouldn’t vomit on his shoes. She swallowed down the bitter taste, saving her dignity in at least that one thing. His hand touched her shoulder. A surprisingly careful touch, as if she were fragile and he feared she might break. She hadn’t expected such gentleness from him, and it made her uncharacteristically compliant—for a moment. She took the handkerchief from him to blot a cold sweat from her face. Then she abruptly straightened, gripping his wrist, wrenching it toward the center of his back as she spun him up against her car. He allowed her to manhandle him with a surprising good grace.
“Where’s my gun?”
She patted him down roughly, jerking her revolver from his trouser band before continuing the search.
“I never carry a piece, detective. You know that. I don’t like guns.”
The image of those dead, staring eyes made her shivering start up again, which agitated her all the more. “You rushed in to take on armed men with your bare hands? You expect me to believe that? Are you insane?”
“Should I have just kept walking?”
She was running her hands up and down his long, muscular legs, over his hips, the movements brusque and impersonal, convinced he had some sort of weapon on him. Something brutal enough to decapitate a man.
As her palms moved up his abdomen, he turned so they were face to face. Her eyes widened in surprise, then objection, as he cuffed her wrists with his hands and reversed their positions to press her back against the car. His gaze locked into hers, his eyes darkening with something she’d never seen in them before but recognized as the rawness of want. Nothing as ugly and degrading as her assailants in the alley, but suddenly just as overwhelming.