Stop Me

by Brenda Novak

  “You’d be safe with me.”

  Yeah, right. That was what they all said, wasn’t it? “I had some interesting experiences when I was younger, enough to know what I want and what I don’t,” she explained.

  “How does one night with me threaten that?”

  “It’s out of character.”

  He chuckled softly. “I was afraid you were going to say it’s out of the question.”

  “It is out of the question.”

  “I’m not convinced.” He hesitated as if contemplating the problem. “You’re running scared, but you’re not unreachable. Somehow you participated in that fantasy, too.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s psychic.”

  “You already let me know how much you liked it. But you didn’t have to. I can tell when a woman’s interested—and when she’s ready to bolt. What’s made you so skittish?”

  “A determination to avoid past mistakes, I guess.”

  “You’ve been hurt?”

  “Not by a man. Not directly, at any rate.”

  “Then it relates to your sister.”

  She was letting this conversation go on too long, but she liked the sound of his voice, the quiet intimacy she felt despite the small, lonely room. “Maybe.”

  “What happened to you after she went missing?”

  “Everything.” He was treading too close to matters she never discussed with anyone—even Sheridan and Skye—if she could help it. Kicking off the rest of the covers, she redirected the conversation. “Why’d you call?”

  She could tell he wanted to press the issue, but he allowed her to change the subject. “I was wondering if you managed to find Black.”

  “When you walked out of the restaurant, I got the impression I’d never hear from you again.”

  “I figured the same thing.”

  “And then…”

  “And then I had a few drinks.” She heard him sigh. “Probably a few too many.”

  Lightning flashed, brightening the room. Jasmine watched the rain roll down the outside of the window, listened to it plink against the fire escape. “I found him.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Other than getting him to answer any questions that might come up about Moreau, Huff and Black, Jasmine was fairly sure she didn’t want to draw Romain any further into her investigation. Handsome though he was, he had some deep scars, which made him unpredictable, maybe even a liability. “Nothing, really.”

  He laughed disbelievingly. “You’re not going to tell me? You want me to trust you, but you’re not willing to trust me?”

  Basically. But when he put it that way, she saw the unfairness of it. She also saw that it might be worth telling him if he could refute Black’s claims. “I don’t want to upset you.”

  “You’re about six years too late for that.”

  “Fine. Black insists it wasn’t Moreau who killed your daughter.”

  “Of course he’d say that. He’s the one who destroyed the prosecution’s case.”

  “He says he wasn’t the one who talked about the botched search. He says it could’ve been Kozlowski or another cop who was there that night.” She thought of Romain’s lawyer brother-in-law, but decided that was too big a stretch. Why mention it? She shouldn’t, not until she had more to go on.

  “Can he prove it?”

  “No. Or he would’ve done so.” She remembered the painful grip of his hand on her arm. “I think he’s been accused one time too many for a man of his temperament.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He doesn’t take kindly to it.”

  “He didn’t hurt you…”

  “No.”

  “What about the evidence? No matter how it was gathered, or whether it was admissible, it was still there, in Moreau’s house.”

  “Black claims it was planted.”

  “By whom?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  There was some rustling on the other end of the line, and Romain’s voice turned sarcastic. “Of course not.”

  “I’m not saying he has a lot of credibility. I’m just repeating what he told me.”

  “But you’re tempted to believe him.”

  She tried to choose her words carefully. “He told me a few details that had the ring of truth. I need to check them out. That’s all.”

  “I didn’t kill the wrong man, Jasmine.”

  It was a terrible possibility—but the note she’d received made it seem more likely than not. “You might have.”

  “Go to hell,” he snapped and hung up.

  Jasmine couldn’t blame Romain for his sudden flare of temper. No doubt he’d called, hoping that what she’d found would reassure him, put his mind at rest. Instead, she’d done just the opposite.

  The rapid shift of emotion, his and hers, left her more depressed and exhausted than before she’d spoken to him. She needed to keep her distance from Fornier. That was all there was to it.

  So why did her fingers itch to call him back?

  * * *

  She couldn’t breathe. Only it wasn’t Black’s cigarette smoke that threatened to suffocate her. It was steam. Thick, hot, heavy steam. She was in a shower. And Fornier was with her. She would’ve recognized the way he handled her body, the way he kissed, even if her hands hadn’t immediately sought out, and found, that identifying cut on his thigh.

  “It’s me,” he murmured, his body slippery as he purposely brushed against her. “Did you think it’d be someone else?”

  No. But she’d been nervous, apprehensive. Too many dark thoughts had made her feel that way.

  “Relax.” He ran a bar of soap over her breasts and stomach, pausing to take advantage of her more sensitive spots. “You want this, don’t you? You want me as long as it’s safe.”

  The bitterness in his voice reminded her that their last conversation hadn’t ended well. He was angry. It was apparent in his movements, which hinted at barely leashed emotion. But Jasmine didn’t care. He was as masterful with her body as he’d been the first time. Sure of himself, sure of her. She’d never known a lover like him.

  Bending his head, he let the water run over them both as he kissed her, nibbling her bottom lip before toying lazily with her tongue. She could taste the water, his mouth, and then his skin…

  Light came from a muted source in another room. A fire? A lantern? Whatever it was, it wasn’t very bright. She didn’t know any place that was so dark and quiet and private, any other place she’d rather be….

  Romain lowered his head to lick the water beading on the tip of one breast. Jasmine was beginning to tingle, to want him to do more, and she let him know it by curling her fingers into his broad shoulders.

  “You like that?” he whispered.

  “Mmm…” She arched into him, and he laughed.

  “Patience, ma belle fille.”

  Closing her eyes, she moaned as his fingers began to work in conjunction with his tongue. Soon her pulse was pounding in her ear, so loud she couldn’t hear the water anymore. But she didn’t care. About anything. Especially when he knelt in front of her and used his hands to pin her against the shower wall.

  His mouth was so soft, so warm…

  She made fists in his thick hair, eager to take what he offered even as she was tempted to reject it. It was…intimate. Too intimate. She’d never felt so vulnerable.

  But he moved her hands away, insisting she trust him, and she soon lost the will to fight. Dragging a gulp of steamy air into her lungs, she held her breath and turned her face into the spray, letting him do as he would, and it wasn’t long before her legs began to shake. She gasped, ready for the climax he promised her—

  And then he stopped.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered helplessly.

  His hands slid up over her hips and around her waist, pulling her against him, his mouth at her ear. “You want more?”

  She dragged in another breath. “What do you think?”

  “I think you know where to fin
d me.”

  Just like that, he released her and let her fall, except she didn’t hit the ground. She jerked awake and found herself wrapped in her own blankets, tormented with frustration.

  At first she thought she’d somehow experienced another of his fantasies. But she doubted he’d dream up a shower when he lived out in the swamp with no running water.

  No, she couldn’t blame this one on anyone but herself, and the conversation they’d had earlier.

  She wanted to make it real. But she refused to go to him. Instead, she got up and read, paced and wrote down every piece of information she’d collected since coming to Louisiana. Then she drew a picture of Fornier, vilifying him with mean eyes, a harsh mouth and a devilish goatee.

  But it changed nothing, of course. Crumpling the picture, she threw it away and occupied herself by playing Hearts on her computer until the storm dissipated and the sun began to rise.

  Finally, at seven, her alarm went off. “Thank God,” she said as she crossed the room to turn it off. It was time to get showered and dressed so she could visit Moreau’s house. Once she left for the day, she’d be too preoccupied to think of Fornier.

  She peeled off her pajamas in preparation for a shower. But she couldn’t forget him as easily as she’d hoped. When she passed the mirror, she paused to study her reflection. Would he really consider her beautiful if he ever saw her?

  I’ve seen the rest of you….

  Damn him. How had he managed to get inside her head so quickly?

  “I don’t want to make love with him,” she told her reflection. But the way her skin burned at the thought told her she was a liar.

  CHAPTER 9

  Moreau’s house looked deserted. Jasmine knocked at the front door, even called out, but no one answered, which felt decidedly anticlimactic.

  She should’ve asked Black if Moreau’s mother and brother worked during the day. He seemed to know them pretty well, which was odd. She could understand a cop becoming friends with a victim’s family; that happened occasionally. Empathy, a desire to make things right, a sense of responsibility, frequent contact—those were the threads that connected the protector to the protected. But it was rare for a cop to form a lasting bond with the family of a perpetrator. Those families tended to maintain faith in the innocence of their loved one, which made the two parties natural adversaries.

  Of course, if Huff was correct, Black had played a fundamental role in Moreau’s release, so there was that.

  Stepping off the sagging gray porch, Jasmine gazed up at the dormered windows on the second story. The place had a shut-in feeling, as if the occupants didn’t like visitors even when they were home. The blinds were pulled. The garage, which was separate from the house, had a big padlock on it. Most glaring of all was the No Trespassing sign tacked to the cypress tree in the front yard.

  Not the friendliest place Jasmine had ever been. There was no barking dog, no welcome mat, no Christmas wreath on the door.

  “Bleak,” she muttered. She could definitely see someone like Moreau living here, which made her glad no one was there. Maybe it wasn’t legal, or ethical for that matter, to snoop around, but as long as she didn’t break in or steal anything, she wouldn’t get more than a slap on the wrist if she got caught.

  She wanted to see the cellar where the video and those pants bearing Adele Fornier’s blood had been found, wanted to examine the marks on the door. It made sense that a home owner wouldn’t crowbar his way into his own cellar if he could get in easily via an alternate entrance.

  A glance up and down the street confirmed that no one was out, which gave her the nerve to move toward the garage, skirt around the old Buick sitting in the drive and head to the backyard. As uninterested in visitors as these people seemed to be, she expected a gate, but there was only a chain-link fence, with nothing separating the front yard from the back.

  Careful to muffle her footsteps—she was positive they’d announce her presence to the world—she slipped between the house and the garage, where the first thing she saw was a pile of at least thirty garbage bags full of trash. Jasmine couldn’t understand why anyone would create a dump like that, but the sheer number of bags, and the dilapidated state of those at the bottom, indicated that the Moreaus hadn’t taken their garbage to the curb for quite some time.

  “Strange.” She shook her head as she stared at the mound, but was almost instantly distracted by the cellar door. Too warped to close properly, it stood open by an inch or so. The gusty wind snapping the tops of those plastic bags and whipping at Jasmine’s long hair had no effect on it.

  She pushed her long bangs out of her eyes as she neared the three steps leading down to the cellar—and noticed a couple of soggy cigarette butts on the cement landing. She knew Moreau’s mother and brother could be smokers, but the sight of those butts made her think of Black.

  Had he come here last night after his shift was over? She couldn’t imagine Moreau’s brother or mother having any business that would entail waiting at the cellar entrance in the dead of winter. Especially considering the stench of all that garbage. There were no chairs, no barbecue and no garden. And these butts looked recent.

  Removing her digital camera from her purse, Jasmine snapped a picture of them and of the garbage pile—she didn’t know why, except she found it so weird. Then she located the Baggies she kept in her purse and carefully lifted the cigarette butts into one. Black had already admitted he was friends with Moreau’s brother, which gave him a reason to come to the house. But she’d been involved in enough police investigations to be vigilant about every detail, and these gave her the impression Black had stopped by last night or earlier this morning.

  Did her investigation threaten him in some way? Had he visited the Moreaus to warn them that she’d be coming?

  She wished she could get more of a feel for the person she’d sensed in her mind, the one who seemed almost desperate to be normal, and yet knew he never would be. But that encounter had frightened her too much. She couldn’t convince her mind to accept another contact like that, couldn’t seem to get anything these days—except the brief snatch of Fornier’s dream when she was in Portsville.

  Moving closer to the cellar, she examined several marks on the panel and the lintel. Sure enough, someone had used a crowbar to open this door. She just didn’t know when. Or why.

  After taking two more pictures, she put a hand on the damp wood and shoved. The door didn’t budge at first, but with continued pressure she finally got it open.

  The smell of damp earth greeted her. Water dripped somewhere in the far corner; it sounded as if she was standing at the entrance to a cave. The Moreaus obviously had a drainage problem or a leak. But if they didn’t mind thirty bags of garbage right outside their back door, they most likely didn’t care about puddles and mold in the cellar.

  So where had Huff found Moreau’s blood-smeared pants, that tape and Adele’s barrettes? Black had said they’d been tossed near the entrance….

  She took out the flashlight she’d bought on the way over and used it to scrutinize the muddy, undulating ground. Farther away, boxes and bags sat on a wooden pallet—storage, it appeared. Jasmine was curious to see what the Moreaus were storing, but she didn’t want to leave the safety of the exit. The closer she drew to the cellar, the worse she felt about this place. Bad things had happened here. She wasn’t sure whether it was Adele’s experiences she felt or someone else’s, but there was suffering.

  Her beam revealed something that struck her as odd because it was over by the dripping water, in a corner that didn’t seem to have good access or any storage. What was it? A white rag?

  Nervously hitching her purse higher on her shoulder, Jasmine bent to clear the low doorway so she could get a better look. She had no plans to go farther. The negative energy coming from the house and the cellar was like a hand, pressing her back. But she just needed a few seconds, a chance to change the angle of her flashlight—

  Movement behind her made the hair on the b
ack of her neck stand on end. But she didn’t have even a split second to turn around. Someone yanked her purse away and pushed her hard at the same time, sending her flashlight and camera flying as she pitched forward.

  She landed in the mud. Then the screech of wood scraping rocky cement echoed in the damp air, followed only by the rattle of a chain, the snap of a lock and her own cries for help.

  * * *

  The cellar stank of decomposition. Or maybe it was her sixth sense. She didn’t know if she was actually feeling something or merely reacting to her own fear, but she kept envisioning dead bodies rotting in shallow graves around her—thanks to the work of a psychopath she’d helped catch last year—which made it difficult to keep panic at bay. She’d seen too much in her years with The Last Stand—too many crime scenes, too many grisly pictures—not to recall the worst of them now, when she was locked in a place that literally resonated with evil. No one even knew where she was.

  Actually, there was one man who knew exactly where she was—the man who’d locked her in here. She was pretty sure it was a man. Only a very strong woman would be able to pull that stubborn door closed so quickly.

  A crack between the door and its frame allowed Jasmine a narrow glimpse of where she’d stood a few seconds before. But she couldn’t see anyone, couldn’t hear anything.

  Where had he gone? What did he hope to achieve by locking her in? And was he coming back?

  “Hello?” She banged on the door, trying to attract attention or break the lock, or both. “Can you help me? Please! I’m down in the cellar, in the Moreaus’ cellar. Help me, please! Hello? Is anybody there?”

  She went on like that for what seemed forever—until both shoulders were bruised and aching, and her throat felt too hoarse to yell anymore. She would’ve continued banging despite her exhaustion if she’d thought it would help. But her efforts seemed futile. If the neighbors were home, they were inside and couldn’t hear her. Or, more likely in this working-class neighborhood, they were away until dinnertime.