The Forgiven

by Amanda Stevens

  “You sound pretty certain of that.”

  Somehow she was.

  * * *

  A FEW HOURS LATER Naomi pulled her Jeep into the parking garage of the Spencer Hotel. She was facing the street, and she sat for a moment, soaking up the sights and sounds of the Big Easy.

  This is it, she thought with a quiver of excitement in the pit of her stomach. New Orleans is going to be my home.

  There was no turning back now.

  * * *

  AFTER NAOMI UNPACKED, she showered, donned her pajamas and then settled in for a cozy night of television. She didn’t really expect to hear from Alex until the next day, but when the phone rang, she knew instinctively it was he. Consequently, her heart was already pounding when she picked up the phone.

  “So you’re back,” he said in her ear. Had she noticed before how intimate and darkly sexy his voice sounded over the phone?

  She wound the cord around her finger. “I just got in a little while ago.”

  “Get everything taken care of?”

  She thought about her meeting with Michael Donnelly. “Pretty much.”

  Alex hesitated, and when he spoke again, Naomi thought his voice sounded even more intimate. “I would ask you to dinner, but you’re probably tired from your trip.”

  “I am pretty bushed,” Naomi admitted, although her fatigue had miraculously diminished at the sound of his voice. With very little persuasion, she knew she would have gotten up, dressed and gone out to meet him.

  “Maybe I should just say good-night then.”

  Naomi closed her eyes. “Good night.”

  But instead of hanging up, he said softly, “Naomi?”

  She squeezed the phone cord. “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “I am, too.” And as she hung up the phone, she realized it was true. She was glad to be back. Come what may, her future was irrevocably tied to Alex DeWitt’s, and the emotion she felt most strongly at the moment was excitement, not trepidation.

  * * *

  SOMETHING AWAKENED HER.

  Naomi had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but as she opened her eyes, she knew instantly that something was wrong. She lay on her side, facing the windows, but the drapes were closed, shutting out all but a sliver of light. The room was almost unbearably warm, and she could smell smoke. Cigarette smoke.

  Fear shot through her veins, turning her blood to ice. But before she could even scream, he was on her, clapping a hand over her mouth as he straddled her. Naomi fought him for all she was worth, but he was strong and he’d caught her completely by surprise. Pinning her arms to her sides with his knees, he leaned toward her. Naomi felt the cold, sharp sting of a knife blade press against her throat, and she went completely still.

  “That’s better, ch;agere. We gonna have us a little fun tonight, no.”

  His breath was hot and fetid against her face. He smelled of cigarette smoke, booze and, oddly enough, brine. A wave of nausea rolled over Naomi as his hand replaced the knife at her throat, and he ran the blade caressingly down the front of her pajama top, then sliced open the buttons.

  She tried to scream, tried to struggle away from him, but the knife was immediately back at her throat. “We can do this fast or we can have our fun, mach;agere. Me, I like ‘em with some fight.”

  The thought of his mouth on hers made her gag. And there would be so much worse to follow.

  She couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t!

  As he shifted his weight, her right hand came free. Naomi flailed out wildly, grabbing the first thing she came into contact with. Her hand closed around the ceramic base of a bedside lamp, and she brought it up to smash against his temple. He grabbed her wrist, deflecting the blow, and then he jerked the lamp from her hand and flung it across the room where it shattered against the wall.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to beat back the panic and horror. If she had any chance at all of survival, she had to somehow keep her wits about her. And there were certain things she had to notice—his age, his size, any distinguishing marks—so that she could keep him from doing this to other women.

  But it was so dark inside the room, Naomi could see nothing more than a silhouette hovering over her. He was large, though. She could tell that from the way he towered over her, the press of his weight against her. As he moved down to kiss her, the splinter of light between the drapes fell across his arm, and Naomi saw the tattoo.

  A shudder of horror ripped through her. She knew him. Oh, God, she knew who he was!

  Gasping for breath, sobbing out loud, Naomi finally managed to free her other hand and her legs, and she jammed one knee into his groin as hard as she could.

  Far from subduing him, the act merely infuriated him. Grunting with pain and rage, he came after her again, but he no longer had the element of surprise, although his size and strength were a definite advantage. But Naomi had fear on her side, and an innate will to survive. She thought of Taryn, had a terrible vision of this animal going after her next, and Naomi fought him even harder.

  Swinging her hand up, she plunged her thumb into his left eye socket, digging in as hard as she could. He roared in agony, and fell back, cursing her violently. The knife dropped to the floor with a thud as he clamped both hands over his eye. Blood seeped between his fingers.

  Beyond fear now, Naomi slid off the bed and scrambled toward the door. But he caught her, grabbing her legs, dragging her to the floor, and then, in a split second, he was on her again. Both hands closed around her throat, squeezing, squeezing, closing off all her air. Naomi clawed at those hands, tried to buck him off her body, but he was almost crazed now. His hands pressed down harder on her windpipe.

  Naomi felt herself weakening, losing consciousness. With one last effort, she flung her hands out, searching along the floor. Cold, sharp steel bit into her flesh, but she was beyond registering pain. She barely had the energy to raise the knife and drive it into the man’s throat.

  Blood spurted from the wound, splattering Naomi, but at first, the man didn’t react. It was as if he were too intent on squeezing the life from his victim to realize that he’d been mortally wounded himself.

  Finally, blood bubbling from his mouth, he fell to the floor, and the sound of his death throes was something Naomi knew she would not soon forget.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  An hour later, Naomi sat huddled in a blanket in the night manager’s office while he paced back and forth behind his desk. Donald Bessant had been very solicitous ever since he’d escorted Naomi downstairs, but it was obvious he had other concerns on his mind at the moment.

  “Mr. Spencer will be very upset when he hears about this unfortunate incident,” he worried, wringing his hands as he paced. “I gave him my personal guarantee that we would look after your every need, and now this! I can’t imagine how that man got into your suite.”

  “The lock on the French door was damaged.” Naomi’s voice came out in a croak. Her throat was still very raw from where the man had tried to choke the life out of her. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her in an effort to keep her teeth from chattering. “Someone came up to fix it a few days ago, but it must not have been repaired properly. The police think he must have climbed up the balconies below mine, and because the lock was faulty, it didn’t take much for him to get inside.” What the police also now suspected was that the man may have been stalking Naomi for days, staking out her hotel room, and that he may have been the one to damage the lock in the first place.

  “Oh, dear me,” Mr. Bessant murmured.

  Naomi almost felt sorry for the poor man. He was meticulous and delicate in both his demeanor and dress, and something as messy as a murder in his hotel, on his watch, was enough to give him apoplexy for weeks.

  He managed to give Naomi his most sympathetic grimace as he ran a nervous finger along his thin, neatly trimmed mustache. “You must have been so terrified, Miss Cross. I can’t begin to imagine! But how lucky that you were able to
fight him off. And how brave!”

  Naomi shuddered. She knew she was lucky to have survived the attack, but at the moment, she didn’t feel very brave. She didn’t feel anything except a lingering horror.

  “Please rest assured that we’ll do everything in our power to help you through this trying time,” Mr. Bessant was saying. “If you choose to continue your stay with us, and I certainly hope that you will, another suite will be provided for you at once, and every precaution will be taken to insure your safety.”

  As he prattled on, Naomi tried to return to the numbness she’d experienced right after the attack. But reality was finally sinking in, and she felt herself slipping into shock. She’d killed a man tonight. How did one cope with something like that?

  But she’d been through far worse, Naomi reminded herself. She’d lived through what she’d thought was her baby’s death, and she’d survived Sadie’s disappearance. Somehow she’d get through this as well.

  Besides, if she hadn’t killed that man, he would have killed her. What if he’d gone after Taryn? Naomi’s stomach churned violently, just thinking about what could have happened.

  The phone rang on Mr. Bessant’s desk and he picked it up with a neurotic jerk of his hand. He listened for a moment, murmured something into the receiver, then hung up.

  “There’s a detective waiting outside to see you. I’m afraid I can’t put him off.”

  Naomi nodded. She’d already given her statement to the uniformed officers who’d first arrived at the scene, but she knew there would be more questions, more interviews. The next few days were not going to be easy.

  Mr. Bessant went to the door and beckoned to someone standing just outside. When the detective entered the office, the elegant night manager took his leave with ill-disguised relief. Naomi was someone else’s problem now.

  The detective was in his late forties, with a heavy, muscular build, a weak jawline, and crystalline blue eyes that were startling against his olive complexion. His light, enigmatic gaze moved over Naomi, then flicked around the room, as if in that split second he could take in dozens of details.

  She wondered fleetingly what he thought of her appearance. Disheveled hair, bloody clothes, bruises at her throat. It was probably just business as usual for him.

  He held out his wallet identification and shield. “I’m Lieutenant Robicheaux, NOPD.” His voice was low and raspy, edged with a latent violence that seemed perfect for a cop. “I’ll try to be as brief as I can, but I’ll need to ask you a few questions.”

  Naomi stared at him in shock. “James Robicheaux?”

  His blue eyes expressed a mild curiosity. “Why, yes. Have we met?”

  “No, but...I read about you recently in the newspaper.”

  “You don’t say.” He walked around Mr. Bessant’s desk and sat down. Tossing his pen and notebook on the surface, he glanced at Naomi. “Which case?”

  She hesitated, pulling the blanket even more tightly around her. “Aubree DeWitt’s murder.”

  His dark eyebrows arched in surprise. “You must be behind in your reading. That murder happened ten years ago. But then, I guess I can understand why you’d be curious.” When Naomi didn’t respond, he said, “You’re about to become the second Mrs. DeWitt, I hear.”

  “How did you—”

  He gave her a slight smile. “Alex DeWitt hasn’t made a move in this town since he’s been back that I haven’t known about.”

  Naomi’s heart thudded against her chest. There was something about James Robicheaux that made her very nervous. “What do you mean? Are you having him followed?” Was he having her followed?

  Again that smile. Naomi didn’t like it much. “Let’s just say, I’ve got friends around town who keep their eyes and ears open for me. Besides, a marriage license is a matter of public record. You weren’t trying to keep the nuptials a secret, were you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “It does seem sudden, though,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You haven’t been in New Orleans all that long, have you, Miss Cross? Let’s see...” He consulted his notebook. “You checked into the Spencer last Tuesday. This is Sunday. So by my calculation, you and DeWitt have known each other less than a week.” His smile sent a shiver up Naomi’s spine. “That’s what I call love at first sight.”

  “You’re assuming we didn’t know each other before I came to New Orleans.”

  The black eyebrows peaked again. “Did you?”

  “No,” she conceded. “But sometimes you meet a person, and you feel as if you’ve known them forever. Haven’t you ever experienced that, Lieutenant Robicheaux?”

  “As a matter of fact I have.” His gaze was very intent. Naomi found the lightness of his eyes oddly disturbing. “For instance, you and I have just met, and I feel I know quite a bit about you already.”

  Naomi swallowed painfully. “You do?”

  “I know you’re from a little town in Mississippi called Eden. I know you founded an organization called the Children’s Rescue Network, which helps locate missing and exploited children all over Mississippi. I know that your own daughter disappeared ten years ago and was never found. I know that until very recently you believed another child, a baby, had died shortly after her birth.” He leaned across the desk as his gaze on her deepened. “I know why you came to New Orleans, Miss Cross.”

  Naomi started to tremble again, and she pulled the blanket around her, gripping it with both hands. But the warmth didn’t help because her chill came from within. “How do you know all this? Am I under surveillance as well?”

  “Obviously not, or what you went through tonight would never have happened. I told you before, Alex DeWitt doesn’t make a move I don’t know about. When you started showing up around town in his company, I had you checked out.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” His gaze deepened. “Because his wife’s murder has never been solved, that’s why.”

  Naomi’s pulse quickened with apprehension. “Are you saying Alex is still a suspect? He wasn’t even in the country when his wife was murdered. The investigation proved that.”

  He regarded her coolly across the expanse of the desk. “Have you never heard of murder for hire, Miss Cross?”

  Naomi’s blood went suddenly cold. Had someone hired that man to kill her?

  The detective said grimly, “Make no mistake, Alex DeWitt is still very much a suspect in his wife’s murder. Everyone who had any connection whatsoever to Aubree DeWitt is still a suspect.”

  “And just how long a list might that be, Lieutenant?”

  He gave her an enigmatic smile, but the look in his eyes was anything but amused. “Enough about ancient history,” he said brusquely. “Let’s talk about what happened to you tonight. I want to hear, in your own words, how a man who must have outweighed you by at least a hundred pounds somehow got between you and a switchblade.”

  * * *

  IT WASN’T UNUSUAL for Alex to arrive at the Ventura Oil Building in the Central Business District before daylight. Sometimes he would have already put in an hour or so at his desk by the time dawn broke, and then he’d set aside his work long enough to stand at the long windows in his office and watch the sun rise over the cityscape. New Orleans had a split personality, he’d always thought. Lazy and insolent by day, dark and dangerous at night. But always mysterious. Always beguiling.

  He was native to the city, but the world he lived in now was a far cry from where he’d grown up in Gentilly. His mother had been a schoolteacher, his father an electrician. Good, decent, salt-of-the-earth people who’d led honest, ordinary lives with none of the turmoil and intrigue that seemed to encompass his.

  Sometimes when Alex stood at this window looking out over the city, he was amazed by the twists and turns his life had taken, all the strange and foreign places he’d visited over the years, the roads he’d traveled and the ones he hadn’t. The mistakes he’d made.

  There’d been plenty of those, he thought, drawing a weary hand across
his eyes. And yet when all was said and done, he’d ended up back at the very place where his troubles had started. New Orleans was like that. You could leave the city, but the city never left you. No matter how far you traveled, something lingered, something haunted, something kept calling you back. It was like a first love. After enough time passed, the bad memories gave way to melancholy.

  He couldn’t say he was sorry he and Taryn had returned to New Orleans, but their lives had certainly been less complicated in London. Still, the problems, he now knew, had been there all along. The lingering threat from Joseph Bellamy. Taryn’s unresolved feelings about her mother’s death. It was all there, waiting to bubble over in time. The catalyst had been his transfer back to New Orleans, but regardless of where they lived, the problems eventually would have to be faced.

  And Alex had a feeling there was nowhere in the world he could have taken Taryn that Naomi wouldn’t have somehow found them. She was that determined.

  Was their coming marriage a mistake? Undoubtedly. But with threats aimed at him from all sides—from Bellamy and from Naomi—Alex simply didn’t know what else to do. At least if he and Naomi were together, she wouldn’t try to take Taryn away from him.

  And, to be honest, he wasn’t exactly dreading being married to her. She was an interesting, fascinating woman, and he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he was attracted to her. Who wouldn’t be? She was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever known and by far the least pretentious. The combination was powerful in itself, but throw in the sadness in her eyes, that melancholy smile, and it’d take more than a mere mortal man to resist her.

  No, it certainly wasn’t going to be a hardship being married to Naomi. The difficulty would be in keeping his hands off her if she insisted on a marriage-in-name-only arrangement.

  They hadn’t even spoken of that. They’d talked about everything but that. Legal and financial concerns. Taryn.

  But the marriage bed was a subject they’d both avoided. Just how, exactly, was he going to handle the wedding night? Play it cool and let her make the first move?