No Hero

by Mallory Kane

  When she’d finally found the man she wanted to live her life with and had started talking about marriage, he’d confessed that he had no intention of leaving his wife—whom she’d known nothing about.

  Heroes? She didn’t think so.

  She shampooed and rinsed her hair, all pretense of clearing her mind gone. She was still back there at the crime scene, feeling powerless and impotent as Dev gave her the brush-off.

  He’d been right. She should have brought the DVD with her. It was a testament to how tired she was, and how spooked she’d been about a second kid dying, that she’d watched the recording then walked out without it. Too bad. If she’d had it, she’d have thrown it in Detective Gautier’s arrogant face. He’d have probably let it drop to the ground and left it there.

  All day she’d expected a police officer to show up at her office asking for the disk, so she’d gotten a copy from the media lab just in case. But no one had materialized. It surprised her and, if she were truthful, ticked her off that Dev had dismissed her and her information so carelessly. No matter how he felt about her personally, she’d figured he was too good a detective to ignore a possible lead.

  Which in turn made her doubt her own confidence that Fontenot’s ravings actually contained the key to the murders. After the first boy’s death, after her informant, Annie the dispatcher, had mentioned he’d been a resident at Dev’s center, Reghan had played the DVD again and again, enough to convince herself that Fontenot’s words were fraught with threats. But unless someone had been in the room with the man and listened to every chilling word he’d said in that silky voice, it would have been close to impossible to believe that the wheelchair-bound lunatic on the disk was a real threat.

  A cold chill settled at the base of her spine. She needed to distract herself somehow—with something as far removed from the violent deaths of two teenage boys as she could get. Maybe she’d crawl into bed with a book or flip channels on the TV for an hour or so, then go to sleep. She wasn’t even hungry. She towel-dried her hair, pulled on a tank top and drawstring pajama pants, and headed downstairs to get some water—or better yet, a glass of wine.

  The instant she stepped off the bottom stair, a loud banging on her front door split the silence. She looked over her shoulder at the silhouette outlined through the beveled glass. The shadow looked familiar. Familiar and big and intimidating. A thrill of apprehension slid through her.

  Another sharp rap shook the glass in its frame. “Connor?” The voice rumbled through the door like summer thunder—deep, warm, ominous.

  It was Dev Gautier.

  For a split second, she couldn’t move. What was he doing here? She recovered, then gathered up the ends of her hair in one hand and squeezed out the excess water as she flipped the lock and opened the door.

  Dev, who’d turned around to survey the neighborhood, pivoted back. His gaze touched hers then dropped to her bare toes and slid back up her body, trailing sensation everywhere he looked. Her breasts tightened. The night air was chilly on her damp skin, but the flames of his eyes warmed her like a midnight fire. When their gazes met again, his brows drew down. But not before she’d seen his unguarded expression, full of heat and hunger.

  Longing streaked through her, leaving her knees weak. “You came,” she whispered, then clamped her mouth shut at how ridiculous she sounded. She gripped the doorknob and hugged the door, as if it could shield her from his magnetic presence. “I mean—” she cleared her throat “—can I help you?”

  He regarded her. “You escaped from Stevens this morning.”

  “It’s not like it was hard.”

  A slow smile curved his mouth. “You got that right,” he drawled. “But why? I thought you were so hot for me to see the DVD.”

  “I was. I am,” she stammered. “But you weren’t interested, and I’d have been late for work.”

  “So you’d have given me the slip too?”

  “No,” she said. “I’d have—” she stopped, then grimaced. “I guess I’d have been late for work.”

  He gave her a knowing smile. “You going to invite me in?” Without waiting for a reply, he moved past her. The lightweight wool of his jacket brushed against her arm and she shivered, feeling goose bumps rise all over her body.

  In the gesture she was coming to associate with him, he slid his hands into his back pockets as he took in his surroundings quickly and efficiently, his sharp gaze noting each window, each doorway, and each item in the room, before turning back to her.

  Her living room was spacious and airy, with high ceilings and large casement windows, but his presence filled it up. He emanated power and danger—and something else. Something that felt surprisingly like…safety or security. If he were anyone else, she might be tempted to believe that he could protect her from any foe.

  But this was Devereux Gautier, liar and fraud, whose name was not even his own. She wouldn’t dare trust this man to keep her goldfish safe, much less herself.

  He cocked a hip and crossed his arms, and her gaze was drawn down the front of his shirt to the low-slung waistband of his jeans. Catching herself, she averted her eyes, and caught a flash of metal from the gun in his belt holster. Gun. Danger.

  She cleared her throat, reminding herself he was a cop. “So, did you come for the disk?”

  “So, you going to close that door?”

  After a second of surprise, she loosened her death grip on the knob and nudged the door shut with her hip. “I thought you’d send somebody by the studio for it.”

  “It’s been a busy day. I did go by, but you were already gone, so I thought I’d swing by here.”

  Since I know where you live.

  The unspoken words hung between them, reminding her he’d been here once before, that he’d kissed her right out there on her front porch.

  Her tongue slipped out to moisten her suddenly dry lips. His gaze flickered toward her mouth. He took his hands out of his pockets and straightened his coat, settling it on his shoulders in a distinctively masculine shrug. The air around him stirred with the scent of soap and coffee and something else, indescribable but intoxicating. The scent of him. She closed her eyes. She’d never forgotten that heady aroma, or the hot promise of his lips and the confident strength of his hands.

  “Connor?”

  Her eyes flew open. He was still watching her. Their gazes held, and for an instant the air crackled with intensity. Her body strained toward his like steel toward a magnet.

  Stop it. She stiffened and lifted her chin. She was not attracted to him. It was just that he was big and commanding, and such strength would draw anybody, right? He made her house feel claustrophobic.

  “Let’s see this DVD.” There was a faint mocking tone in his voice. “There is a DVD…?” he added with a raised eyebrow.

  She bristled. “Are you insinuating—”

  “Hey.” He held up his hands. “I’m here. I believe you. I want to see for myself what that maniac Fontenot has to do with the murders of my kids.” His eyes narrowed and in their depths she saw a fleeting shadow of grief and sadness. A pang stabbed just beneath her breastbone. She remembered what Annie had said. I’ll bet that boy thought of him as a hero.

  She dropped her gaze, feeling a little confused. Somehow, she couldn’t reconcile the untrustworthy liar she knew he was with the man who’d built a haven for homeless teens.

  “Ms. Connor? The DVD?”

  “Yes, sure,” she said quickly, gesturing toward the TV. She had what she’d wanted, didn’t she? He was here. He was ready to listen—maybe. She took a long breath, trying to calm her racing heart. She wasn’t sure if her fight-or-flight reaction was because she was afraid he wouldn’t agree with her about Fontenot, or because she was afraid he would. She didn’t want to be right. She didn’t want to be responsible for a second teenager’s death because she’d failed to act.

  “Okay,” she said tentatively. “The disk is in the player. But, you know what a very strange man Fontenot is. He actually believes he’s
a superior being. He’s probably a paranoid schizophrenic or a megalomaniac.”

  Dev snorted. “Megalo-ass is more like it,” he muttered. “Where’s the remote?”

  She glanced at the coffee table, then at the couch, then back at the coffee table. “I was sure I left it on the coffee table.”

  “There it is, on the top of the TV,” he said with exaggerated patience.

  “Oh, right.” She picked up the remote and pressed rewind. The machine buzzed then clicked, as if it were already at the beginning.

  “What are you doing? Just give me the disk.”

  “I wanted to show you what I’m talking about. The things he says on here seemed so, so vague. But then, when it really happened—” She raised her gaze to his with a shiver.

  “When what really happened?” His voice was tight, controlled. His black eyes bored into her, all the way through to her soul. She had all of his attention, and all of Devereux Gautier’s attention was a daunting thing.

  “Your—kids. I think Fontenot told me he was going to kill them.”

  For a couple of seconds Dev didn’t say anything. Then, “He told you?” His voice was ominously quiet.

  She silently begged him to believe her. “N-not when, not who, or how. But why.”

  Shock and disbelief crossed his face. “You’re saying— My God. You knew this when Brian was killed? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. That was the question that haunted her, the whole reason she was so desperate for him to see the DVD.

  She wanted him to tell her that she was wrong.

  …

  Dev watched Reghan swallow heavily. “You have to understand—”

  Dev slashed a hand up and controlled his growing anger. Barely. “Stop. Just show me the damn video.”

  She nodded bleakly and pointed the remote at the screen. He could see her hand shaking. “Maybe I’m crazy, reading too much into it.”

  He made another impatient gesture. “You can’t be as crazy as he is,” he said.

  Connor continued to have trouble getting her machine to work. “I don’t—”

  “Here, give me that.”

  He took the remote from her. When his fingers brushed hers, he felt the electric spark of her touch. He cursed silently. He did not need this. He’d been tamping down on his libido ever since she’d opened the door dressed in those ridiculous little pajamas. Yes, the top covered her breasts demurely and the legs of the bottoms went past her ankles. But the top was short and the bottoms were slung low on her hips, revealing a sensually rounded belly and shapely hips. Hell, the thin material clearly outlined her breasts. He clenched his jaw. He found every casual, rumpled inch of her as sexy as if she’d been totally nude. And then there was all that damp red hair, which he’d been fighting the urge to plunge his fingers into.

  He had no idea why she evoked such an intense reaction in him. It wasn’t as if he even liked her. Just the opposite. He’d been drawn in by her effortless sexuality once before, and look where that had gotten him. This time he knew better. He wanted the information she claimed was on this disk, but then he was out of there. He pointed the remote and pressed play.

  As the picture came into focus, Connor stiffened beside him. He watched, waiting to see Fontenot’s pasty little face. But the image on the screen was not Fontenot. It was him. A sharp pain hit him in the chest as he looked into his own dark, haunted eyes. Next to him, she gasped softly.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “No,” she whispered. “Oh no. Wait. That’s not—” Her voice cracked.

  He hit the pause button, and on the screen his scowling face froze. “Is this some kind of joke?” Or maybe a setup? After what she’d done to him before, he almost expected cameramen and microphones to appear out of nowhere.

  “What the—?” His voice rasped as it pushed its way past his constricted throat. All the pain and fear and humiliation he’d managed to put behind him came flooding back—along with the resentment he’d felt toward her for exposing the fabrications he’d spun to make himself appear “normal.” All in the name of the public’s right to know. He’d only been back in New Orleans and the station for three weeks since it had all blown over, not enough time to feel comfortable in the best of circumstances.

  When he turned, ready to rip into her, he was surprised to see that her face had lost all its color, and her palms were pressed to her cheeks. Her huge green eyes stared, horrified, at the screen. She looked totally bewildered.

  “Th-that—” she stammered, pointing vaguely toward the TV screen. “That’s not the disk. That’s not Fontenot.” Her voice sounded odd, tinny and hollow, and she swayed. Dev wondered if she was going to faint.

  “I can see that.” His jaw ached from clenching, and his pulse thrummed painfully in his temples. If he could believe what he saw, she was as shocked by the picture on the screen as he was. But could he believe what he saw? “What’s going on?” he growled. “I swear, Connor, if this is some kind of setup—”

  She shook her head. “No. I mean, I don’t know.” She looked at her hands, then up at him, confusion and fear tightening her features. “Someone must have changed it?”

  Dev looked at her narrowly. “Someone?” He assessed her. If she was acting, she deserved an Oscar. He wasn’t sure it was possible to make one’s face that pale on purpose.

  He pressed play again.

  “Don’t—” She stopped, her words cut off by the sound of her recorded voice.

  He muttered a curse. He knew exactly what he was watching. It was her feature on the kidnapping and rescue of his ex-partner Cody Maxwell’s wife. Captain Hamilton and Cody had been her guests that day, along with Dev. He hadn’t watched the interview, but he remembered every damn word by heart. He watched as the camera moved in on his eyes. He steeled himself, working to counteract the instinctive fight-or-flight reaction he remembered from that day.

  “And what about you, Detective Gautier? You seem uncomfortable in front of the cameras.” Connor’s recorded voice held a note of excitement.

  Dev watched himself shoot a quick glance, edged with panic, at the camera. Connor wasn’t on-screen, but he’d not forgotten her bright-eyed anticipation as she’d watched him. He had pasted on the lethal smile that worked surprisingly often, praying that whatever she was leading up to, it wouldn’t be what he feared.

  Beside him, Connor said something, but Dev didn’t catch it. He couldn’t take his eyes or his attention off the screen. It was like watching a fatal car wreck—sickening and compelling at the same time.

  “Isn’t it true, Detective Gautier, that your real name is John Devrow, and you’re not from Louisiana at all? That you left Seattle on the run twenty years ago, after bludgeoning your stepfather to death with a baseball bat?”

  He watched his own face drain of color, as he’d felt the same tightness in his chest, the same vise around his head, the same sickening wash of terror that had dogged him throughout his childhood and teen years. That same terror had been his constant companion again during the two months he’d just spent in Seattle. He’d had to go back and deal with the charges against him, and the fact that he’d fled the scene of a murder and had remained a fugitive for two decades. Thankfully he’d been just a kid at the time, and had been exonerated of any wrongdoing.

  Enough. He shoved away the residual fear from his long-buried memories and replaced it with anger. He jabbed at the stop button. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he ground out. “I ought to—” He stopped abruptly when he saw the abject terror on her face. Controlling his anger, he spoke in an even, controlled tone. “Where’s Fontenot’s disk?”

  She looked from him to the TV, then she hurried over to the DVD player and punched eject. He saw her hand trembling as she waited for the machine to spit out the disk. When it appeared, he could see the word Gautier and the date printed on it.

  Still struggling to maintain his even tone, he said, “Maybe you just forgot which of your favorite dis
ks you were watching, eh, cher?”

  That seemed to snap her out of her bewildered fog. Her chin went up in the way he was beginning to recognize. “I didn’t forget what I was watching, Detective. You can believe me when I tell you that I do not spend my evenings sitting around watching DVDs of you.”

  No, he didn’t suppose she did.

  She turned to the shelf and searched the stacks of DVDs desperately, running the tip of her finger across them. Then she went back to the top and did it again.

  “It’s not here. I don’t understand,” she said in that same tight voice. “The disk was in the player and the case was lying right here on the shelf when I left this morning.” Her eyes darted from the DVD player to the shelf and back. She shivered visibly. “And I know the remote was on the coffee table. Someone—someone’s been in my house.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

  Dev watched her, his anger slowly fading as he began to accept that she was telling the truth. She was certainly acting like a burglary victim. He’d seen plenty. They all had that kind of shocked, bewildered look on their faces as it slowly dawned on them that their homes and their lives had been invaded.

  “Okay,” he said gently, holding out a hand in a reassuring gesture. It was a technique he’d successfully used with victims many times. Reassurance and a calm, even tone went a long way toward preventing panic. “Just take it easy, and let’s go over everything.”

  Connor stiffened. “I don’t have to go over anything. I know. Someone’s been in here.” She glanced at the windows and door of the living room, then quickly walked into her kitchen.

  She was a tough one, all right. She was barefoot and in pajamas with her hair curling damply onto her shoulders, but she carried herself with a brave, graceful dignity as she checked the back door and the window over the sink.

  When she returned to the living room, she was visibly shaken. “Everything’s locked,” she said, her voice lifting almost as if she were asking a question.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you tell me everything? Start with why you came to the crime scene.”