KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

  Everything stopped. Just … stopped. The question hovered there between them like a grenade, then exploded. Renee staggered from the impact, used the column to brace her, but after the debris cleared she saw and felt everything in sharp, crystalline focus, the birds and the rain and the wind, and most especially, the truth.

  Whatever truth he'd found, he still didn't know who she was.

  "I think she did," he went on, but from one heartbeat to the next his voice changed, went rough and broken. "I still hear her sometimes, when I'm alone in the swamp. I hear her cry my name, and I run, and I run, and I call out to her, promise her that I'm coming, but when I break through the underbrush she's never there."

  Renee sagged against the column, tried to breathe.

  "Is that what you wanted to hear?" He leaned closer, shrank the world to the two of them. "Is that why you dragged Savannah between us? You thought in resurrecting her you would soften me for the kill?"

  The magnitude of her mistake stole her breath. She'd been seeing everything through her lens, that of the truth that only she and her grandmother knew. But now she viewed everything through Cain's filter and saw what she'd not allowed herself to see before. The look in his eyes, the anger and the contempt, but not the bone-deep betrayal of discovering the woman he thought was dead, the woman most people believed he'd killed, the woman he still dreamed about, was not only alive, but parading around town as someone else, earning his trust and seducing his heart, while all along he grieved. There was no recognition in his eyes, no white-hot fury like she knew he would feel the second he learned the truth.

  She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. How in God's name had she actually thought Cain would clinically discuss her strategy and tactics if he knew the full truth? He was a man of hot driving passion. He'd be much more likely to—

  She didn't want to think about what he'd be more likely to do. But she knew it wouldn't be pretty. Or soft. Or even clinical. It would be hard and brutal and … final.

  "You're good," he murmured, lifting a hand to her face. But he did not touch. "You knew just how to play me, what to say and what to leave out, how to look at me and how to look away." His mouth twisted into a contorted smile. "But I hired a private investigator anyway, knew something wasn't right."

  "I wasn't playing you."

  "Your initial story held up," he said as though she'd never spoken. "Your Web site with your credentials. Your credit cards and bank account. Even the producer at True Crime backed you up."

  She'd had to do some fast talking to secure that. "But you kept looking." Just like she'd known he would.

  "Deeper," he said, and with the word brought his body closer. "Way back," he said. "And guess what? There you were. A classmate of Savannah's, just like you claimed." With his body pinning hers to the column, he reached behind him and pulled a packet of papers from his back pocket, opened them to reveal a faded class photo. "In the fifth grade."

  The gap-toothed little girl who'd lived down the street beamed up at her from the page.

  "But Renee Fox never made it to middle school," Cain said. "That little girl drowned during the summer in a friend's swimming pool."

  Renee closed her eyes to the memory, but still saw her friend as she'd been that hot sticky afternoon, when she'd waited until everyone went inside for lemonade before venturing into the pool. They'd found her floating facedown ten minutes later. No one had known she couldn't swim.

  "What's the matter?" Cain's voice came to her through the darkness, low and mocking. "You can't look at me? You're too scared of what you'll see?"

  She opened her eyes, lifted her chin.

  "Men are dead, damn it. Good men. Because of you."

  "Don't say that!" she shouted against the wind that wouldn't stop blowing.

  "Why not?" Cain bit out. "It's the truth. If you hadn't started poking around, Travis and Lem would never have opened their mouths." His eyes went even darker. "I knew, damn it. I knew there was something wrong about you, knew better than to let myself trust you. You've made me uncomfortable from the very first, and now I know why. You're a fraud. But even when my gut insisted something wasn't right, I wanted you anyway. Told myself the unease was because of Savannah, because in wanting you, I felt like I was betraying her."

  "Cain—"

  "Don't." He yanked away from her, severed the contact between their bodies. "Don't say my name, not ever again."

  She swallowed hard, pushed forward. "You didn't kill Savannah! I know that."

  "Non?" he asked, and reached for the knife sheathed to his ankle, the one he always carried. He turned it over in his hand and ran the blunt side along his palm, straight through his lifeline. "You don't think I'm capable of murder?"

  His pain blasted her. "I—I never meant to hurt you."

  "Then what did you mean to do?" he snarled, and for the first time she heard his ironclad grip on control slipping. "What could you possibly want from me? It's been eighteen months, damn it. What in God's name possessed you to come here and start digging? What was your angle? Your end game? To distract me? Discredit me? Do you work for Oncle, is that it? Is that why you're so interested in Adrian Trahan? Oncle found out Adrian and I were friends, wants to use me to get to what Adrian stole from him. Is that it?"

  "No!" The denial shot out of her. "You have to believe me—" Before she realized her intent, she was reaching for him, needing to touch him, feel him, to reestablish the connection he was trying so hard to destroy.

  He stepped back from her, lifted a hand in warning. "You don't want to touch me right now." His voice was quiet, controlled, "It'd be a mistake."

  She froze, everything inside of her going horribly still.

  "And I don't have to believe a damn word you say," he went on. Droplets of mist gathered on his forehead. "Sweet Mary, I don't even know who you are."

  She'd done this to him, she thought in some agonized corner of her mind. Her blind search for the truth had taken this strong, proud man and eviscerated him.

  "Yes," she countered slowly, "you do."

  "It's over," he ground out. "The games, the lies. You think it was bad when you first got here? Well, hang on for the ride, darlin', it's about to get a whole lot worse. I want you gone." He raked his gaze over her, then clenched his jaw and turned from her, took three steps before turning back. "You'll follow me to the house, where someone will arrive to take you to New Orleans. You'll be on the next plane out, and if you so much as think about coming back, trust me, you will be sorry … Renee."

  He turned from her and started walking again, and she knew he expected her to follow him. And she wanted to. That's why she'd come back to Louisiana. That's why she'd stepped back into his world. Because she'd never been able to expunge him from her system. Because she'd needed to see him, needed him, with an intensity that had strengthened with every day spent apart.

  But she remained there with her back to the column and watched him walk away from her, knew the time had come. "You know who I am," she said again, this time louder, stronger. She let the Midwestern accent she'd forced into her cadence drop, let the rhythm of the South flow back in. "You've always known…" she said, then added the killing blow, "Robi."

  Cain stopped dead in his tracks. His body, so big and tall and dampened by the mist, went rigid, his chest arching and his shoulders bowing back, as though an arrow had just pierced his back.

  Because in a very real way, it had.

  The black birds cawed and the wind whispered, but she would have sworn she heard the broken rasp of his breath, the violent slam of his heart. Then he turned to her. Very. Slowly.

  His eyes, they were on fire. And in them, she saw what she hadn't seen when he'd first confronted her—the shock and the fury, the disbelief and the rage. "What—did—you—call—me?"

  Robi. Short for Robichaud. A private nickname only Savannah had ever used, one shared between lovers in the heat of passion.

  Numbly, Renee looked down at her hand for the nonexistent gun that had just gon
e off, saw only the deep crescent gouges from her nails in her palms. The shaking started then, ripping through her in a violent tide. In the isolation of her mind, she'd rehearsed this moment countless times, how she would tell him, the look that would come into his eyes, what he would say in response. In her dreams joy flooded his eyes and he opened his arms to her, pulled her to him and held her tight. In her nightmares it was contempt and hatred burning from his gaze, and he turned and walked away.

  Reality hovered much closer to nightmare than to dream.

  Cain moved toward her with the precision of a predator. One. Slow. Deliberate. Step. At. A. Time. The survivor she'd become demanded that she turn and run, but she knew the time for that had come and gone. She'd made her choices. Now it was time for consequences. With her back to the column, she just stood there like a woman condemned and watched her executioner approach.

  For so long she'd lived with the darkness, craving the light. Now it blazed before her, ready to consume her. And she welcomed it. Even as he moved, there was a stillness to him. And when he stopped, it was as if everything around him stopped, too. His eyes were dark and concentrated on hers, and for a moment he just stared at her. Then he lifted a hand to her blouse and released the buttons one at a time.

  And she let him.

  When her shirt hung open he unfastened her pants and pulled down the zipper, eased the fabric back to reveal her right hipbone, and the three freckles nestled just below, the ones he'd discovered while exploring her body with his mouth.

  "Have mercy." The words were raw and rough and ripped from somewhere deep and agonized.

  Renee's mouth went dry. Her skin exposed to the cold and the mist, she felt only his scrutiny and the hot rush of awareness. She swallowed against the quickening, channeling everything she was, everything she would ever be, into the one fragile moment that would define everything. "I can explain."

  Betrayal flashed hotly in his eyes, the contempt she'd known she would see. The contempt she deserved.

  "No, Savannah," he said in that dead quiet voice of his. "You can't." Then he turned and walked toward the emaciated trees, stepping into the wooded area and vanishing from her line of sight. Not once did he hesitate or falter or look back.

  Renee stood there with the cool wind cutting against her abdomen and watched him go. Finally, at last, it was done.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  New Orleans

  Eighteen months earlier

  The breeze blowing off the river is warm, carrying with it the somber strains of Leroy's sax. The young man stands outside Café du Monde as he does every night, sharing his music and hoping for a few coins in his cup.

  It's late, close to midnight. Cain is on duty tonight. He won't tell me where or why. He's been different since we became lovers, quieter. More secretive. I can tell something is eating at him, but even when I straddle his back and rub his shoulders, I can't get him to open up to me. When I ask him about Oncle, he tenses. When I press him, he promises me everything will be over soon—and asks me to trust him.

  I want to. Sometimes I think I do. But I know he wants me to drop my investigation into the crime syndicate and my brother's murder, and that I cannot do.

  "Savannah Trahan?" The voice comes from my right. Glancing up, I see a skinny kid approaching the Jackson Square

  psychic's table where I'm sitting.

  "Bender?" I ask.

  The kid, in reality a rookie cop, nods. "I wasn't sure you'd come," he says, yanking his cap lower.

  I gesture for him to sit. "Give me your palm," I say as I always do when using Magdalene's table to meet with informants. "You said you had information for me."

  He extends his hand toward me, palm up. "I was the one who found your brother," he says. "I was with him when he died."

  The jolt is immediate. I bank it, lift the flashlight to his palm and pretend to study his fate line. "The report says Adrian died alone."

  "Because he wrote the report."

  Another jolt, this one deeper. Sharper. "Who?"

  "I know you're sleeping with him." Bender's voice is harder now. Almost desperate. "Everyone knows. But you shouldn't be. He's just using you."

  The words slither through me, weaving their way around insecurities I'm not proud of. I've been in love before, but never with a man who blinds me to the world around me the way Cain does—and never with a man my brother, whom I trusted with all my heart, begged me to steer clear of.

  "Somehow I don't think you suggested we meet to discuss my love life."

  Bender winces as I drag my nail along his lifeline. "Don't you get it? Robichaud is playing us like puppets. He arranges the murders then writes the reports. Who in their right mind is going to come forward with evidence, when they know doing so is like signing their own death certificate?"

  My heart slams hard against my chest. "Why are you coming to me then, if you know I'm his lover?"

  "Because you were your brother's sister longer than you've been Robichaud's lover, and you need to know."

  "Need to know what?"

  In a lightning-quick move he yanks his hand from mine and pulls an envelope from his pocket, shoves it toward me. "Your brother named his killer before he died."

  I feel the blood drain from my face.

  Bender stands and leans toward me, braces his palms against the table. "'Cain,' he said. 'Evan. Lynn.'"

  Everything inside of me goes horrifyingly cold. "No…"

  "I was there," Bender says again. "I found him dragging his finger in the dirt, saw the C and the A and the I."

  "No," I say again.

  Bender straightens. "My daddy was a cop and his daddy before him. They taught me right from wrong, that if a man doesn't have his honor, he doesn't have anything. But the force is dirtier now, filled with people like your lover who use their badge to further their own agenda. But I won't be part of that. I can't live with myself knowing your brother used his last breath to name his killer, only to have me sit on the information because I don't know who I can trust and who I can't. But you were his sister and you have a voice. You can do with the information whatever you want. My hands are clean."

  I watch Bender walk away, but can't move. Can barely think. He's lying. That's my first thought. He has to be. But then I tear open the envelope and pull out a stack of black-and-white crime-scene photographs, and deep inside, my heart starts to bleed.

  Ten hours later I'm sitting dry-eyed at my kitchen table with a cup of untouched coffee in front of me when Cain puts the key I gave him into the back door and lets himself in. He's been gone all night. He never called.

  "Cain," I say. "We need to talk."

  He looks at me through eyes completely devoid of emotion. "Not now," he says. "It's been a long night and I need a shower."

  There's a weariness to his voice, and it reaches inside and touches me, despite everything. "Then after," I say, but then I see the blood on his shirt and feel my own run cold. "What's that?"

  "Cop bit it last night," he says.

  No, I pray. No, no, no! "Anyone I know?"

  He pulls a glass from the cabinet and goes to the sink, turns on the water. "Don't think so. He was a rookie. Good kid. Smart, dedicated—Bender. He was the one who found your brother."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  New Orleans, present day

  "Barbados." Just saying the word brought a smile to Val's heart. Images formed immediately, of sun-drenched beaches and dazzling bays, warm breezes and frothy pina coladas. "Can you believe it? Maybe as soon as next week."

  "Sounds lovely," Tara Prejean said from her bed-and-breakfast across town. "If you're not careful you might find me stashed in your suitcase."

  Putting away a stack of burgundy towels, Val winced, chastising herself for being so insensitive. For a moment, she'd been so high on the prospect of getting away with Gabe she'd forgotten what Tara had just been through. "You know you're always welcome."

  Tara laughed. "Thanks, but I think this is a case where three would defin
itely be a crowd."

  Val turned to leave the bathroom, saw the pill bottle lying on the counter. Phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, she picked it up and took off the lid, counted the painkillers inside, and frowned. "Don't rule it out," she said with a breeziness she no longer felt.

  Yesterday there had been nine. Now there were only four. "You know we love being with you."

  "I know, thanks," Tara said. "I'm guessing this trip means things are … better?"

  "Gabe's under a lot of pressure." Was getting his headaches more frequently, staying up late and waking up early, closing the door when he spoke on the phone. "But I think the end's in sight."

  Tara hesitated. "Any word on … Alec?"

  Val slipped the prescription bottle back into the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom. Tara always wanted to know—but Val never knew how much to say, and how much to keep to herself. "Nothing definitive."

  Just last night she'd slipped from the bedroom and stood barefoot outside the closed door to Gabe's office, and listened. He'd been on the phone, and agitated. Something about a shipment, about Prejean needing to be stopped. "He doesn't like to talk about work when he comes home."

  "Alec never did, either," Tara said, and despite her resolution to be tough, she sounded sad. "He'd come home late and leave early, promise me everything would be okay but lie about where he was going, plan a romantic evening but come home too tired to do anything but fall straight into bed."

  "But you loved him anyway." Val glanced at the black teddy abandoned on the damask rug by the bed. It had taken a couple of hours, but eventually Gabe had come to bed, and they'd made love.

  Tentatively, she put a hand to her stomach, and wondered. In thirteen days, she'd know.

  "I did," Tara said. "That's what makes this so hard. The man I loved, the man I wanted to start a family with, is not a murderer. He cared about Savannah. There's no way he could have killed her."

  Val sat down on the bed, saw no point in shattering Tara's illusion with what she'd overheard Gabe saying the night before. Everyone wore masks. Everyone kept secrets. It was impossible to fully know someone, no matter how many promises they made, how much you loved them. Sometimes, if you really wanted a future with someone, it was better to just not ask the questions. "I take it you haven't heard from him, either?"